Systems of Governance

This is not a political piece. It is a piece about governments. Rather, it is a thinly-veiled nose-thumbing at some people I've met who thought some very stupid things.

Socialism is not a system of government. It is an economic system. It spars off and on with capitalism. Socialism means that the economy, or parts thereof, is controlled by the government, whatever that might be. Capitalism, on the other hand, means that the economy is in the hands of individuals. These are gross oversimplifications. Not only that, but neither are present in pure form anywhere.

Communism, on the other hand, is neither an economic system or system of government. Pure communism is a failure. Okay, that was flippant. True communism incorporates elements of pure democracy (also not really a tenable position in the world) and socialism. It doesn't work. Sorry.

But wait, the uneducated say. What about Russia and China? Well, the educated can now laugh, but perhaps in a manner short-lived. Because Russia, or more accurately the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, is confusing. Marxist-Leninism is not pure communism. But the USSR was not called the Union of Marxist-Leninist Socialisms. The "Republic" part we can dismiss out of hand, because it just means nation in this sense. The "Socialist" part is easy to explain for people who aren't complete morons: socialism is a system of economics which is equally compatible with dictatorships and democracies, not to mention Marxist-Leninisms.

It's the Soviet part about which we should worry. Because, you see, Russia was a sovietism, which was a Marxist-Leninist extrapolation of communist ideas into a larger setting. But soviets don't necessarily imply socialism, so we've moved into the realm of pure government here. In fact, the Chinese are currently experimenting with a soviet captalism, on a Chinese model of course. And the Burmese, or Myanmarians, or whatever the Hell the crazies in their new capital in the middle of the jungle are calling themselves these days (note that I am simply referring to the government, such as it is; I'm sure Burma or Myanmar is filled with nice, non-crazy people who didn't have the chance to give their input to the new regime), are experimenting with a soviet fuckup system. That's, I say, that's a joke, son. Nice kid but a little slow.

And of course, for a large portion of the time, the USSR should have been the Union of Dictated Socialist Vague Geographical Regions Ruled By the Iron Fist of Stalin (and successors). But changing the maps was too expensive. They were still socialist though; no free-market capitalism for the USSR.

For comparison, the United States (the only nation about which I'm qualified to speak) is a democratic republican federalist capitalism. Again, there is no purity in that description.

So you see kids, it's fun to make up words. But socialism is not now and never will be a system of government. And the Burmese "government" is full of shit. Now go fetch Grandpa some more bourbon.

Again With the Taxes

Expect to hear a certain amount of this kind of thing from me, I'm afraid. I'm not much of a political person, nor do I wish to be, but I've got them damn views needing expression, by gar, and there ain't no shaking them. I really should stop reading about politics, but that's like ceasing to listen to sounds: either you plug your ears or you don't. I keep up with the news, sort of, so I guess I can't plug my ears.

So you say you're a Conservative. Big capital letter C there. You're for tax cuts. You're against big government. I can dig it. I'm not a huge fan of paying taxes; I don't think many people are. Some people like taxes as long as they personally don't have to pay them, some people hate taxes unless they personally stop having to pay them, six of one, half dozen of the other. I'm also not a big fan of big government; the government spends too much money as it is and they always want more. A veritable hemorrhage of money, that's government.

The problems are several. First of all, and most usual, you're a Conservative which means you personally don't want to pay taxes and you think that the government should stop paying for anything you personally don't need. This is greed. It's not much to work with, since we're all guilty of it in greater or lesser amounts. No real shame in admitting that we want our piece of the pie.

Second, if we look at government, we should realize that it costs money. Sure, big government costs big money, but small government costs a fair amount of money too. No surprise, really; if you don't want government to cost any money at all, you're not a Conservative, you're an Anarchist, in the strictest sense of the word.

So where does the money that the government costs come from? Well, unfortunately, from taxes, mostly. People who are interested in cutting taxes fail to realize that money gets spent and it has to come from somewhere. Or they do realize it but don't want it to come from a specific area of taxation. So we wind up with no one wanting to pay taxes and the people with more representation getting to decide who pays taxes. Not, "No taxation without representation," (which was not, as some would have you believe, a cry against taxes, but rather a cry for more say in where tax money was spent), but no choice in to whom taxation applies most strongly without representation. It's not as catchy.

Really, money isn't free. If we're going to spend less money in the government, that's fine. I have suggestions on areas that could use pruning, but that's not for the moment. However, the simple fact remains that someone has to pay some kind of taxes for the government to spend any money. To spend the same amount of money and then reduce taxes for some people, regardless of their social class or earning level, is an unsustainable proposition. Plain logic.

Thank You

I was watching television yesterday and it hit me. I cannot thank Bob Ross. For those of you who don't watch public television during the day, Bob Ross is the extremely blissed-out painter of landscapes and teacher of millions via the medium of public television. He's also dead.

I'm sure that everyone probably has someone whom they can never thank, or if not that there are messages to dead people we'd all like to send but cannot. It's not always, "Thank you." I'm sure there are unfinished businesses of less pleasant import, perhaps even messages which are probably better off not sent. But it doesn't matter. You won't be able to send them.

Some people leave flowers on graves. Some people write letters and waste the Post Office's time sending them to dead (or non-existent) people. Some people don't send them, or post them online, or whatever. It's a natural thing to want to send the message somehow. But I don't really think that dead people are reading mail. They've probably got better things to do. We want to send messages for us, not for them.

So I can't thank Bob Ross. Hell, there are some people I never even heard of until after they were already dead that I'd like to thank. Some of them would, I'm sure, be perfectly happy to receive a thank you from me if they were alive, and others probably would not. Without dying, I can't be sure whether or not dead people would like to receive mail. But it's a healthy exercise to figure out whom you'd like to thank.

And then save them up for next year. You never know whether or not the Academy might be calling.

Snow and Ice

I love snow. It's cold but not wet, it muffles everything, it makes small children happy, it sometimes cancels engagements that I didn't want to engage, and it's just all-around good fun. I don't mind snow at all. I even don't really mind missing engagements that I did want to engage.

On the other hand, I hate melting snow. It's wet and cold, it makes mud, it freezes into ice, it's a pain in the ass to shovel, and it gets dirty and ugly. If snow would simply snow, stay cold for a while to look attractive, and then spontaneously sublimate into the atmosphere, that would be the best of all possible worlds.

And I really hate ice. It's almost impossible to shovel, makes things dangerous, and isn't attractive at all. If I could just stay inside and never go anywhere, ice would be okay, but since it seems to sense when I need to go out and then get worse, I'm against it.

You might be able to guess that I live on the East Coast, where I get a wonderful variety of weather, and in February I often get some snow, but nearly always tempered by ice, sleet, rain, and other unpleasantness. I grieve for the people in New York (state) who are buried under seventeen feet of snow, but I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn't prefer that. I like the cold, I like snow, and while the amount they've been getting recently has been perhaps a bit much, I'm not sure I'd begrudge nature; after all, it's the weather of the region. I can't say that I begrudge nature my current weather either, but I wish for change.

I suppose the lesson of this rumination is that no one is happy with what they have, and you probably should be. Or maybe that there are pros and cons to every situation, no matter how unpleasant. Or perhaps that I'm lucky to not be dead. But all of these lessons are boring. My current dilemma is whether 'tis better to shovel snow before an ice storm when it's easier to shovel snow, or whether to leave the snow on the ground in the hope that it will make the ice easier to remove eventually. Since one option involves going out and doing something and the other involves waiting, I think I can guess which way I'll be leaning.

Old Cartoons Suck

This is not a value judgement I make lightly. I realize that there are artistic merits to cartoons of a certain age, say anything before the 1940s. It was a different time back then, and having older cartoons is an important historical record of the past.

But really, they suck. Our ancestors were fascinated by the moving drawing to the point that most older cartoons are nothing but a showcase of animation. And the animation wasn't all that good. Everyone is thinking it, I just have the guts to say it. I'm a huge fan of cartoons, but unlike the "purists" I can see that animation in the "good old days" was terrible, for the most part.

And talk about boring. Once you get past the era where the prime charm is the fact that drawings are moving, then you run smack into the era where the prime charm is the fact that drawings are accompanied by sound of some sort. Steamboat Willie, I am looking squarely in your direction. Then you have the era where animation seemed to serve a purpose, and that purpose was to parody celebrities of the time. We in the modern world might be able to identify a few of the parodies, but for the most part they are terrible jokes anyway.

Bottom line: Disney cartoons are all pretty bad. It doesn't matter what era. Warner Brothers cartoons had a brief period where they produced some truly great cartoons. The rest of them are pretty bad on average, which includes some good and most mediocre. Hanna-Barbera, the door is over there. Please leave.

I love cartoons. Specifically, I love a very limited subset of them. Why show ancient, terrible cartoons? I don't think too many people like them, or even understand them. But then, I'm not sure many people really understand lots of things which are popular.

I take it all back. Old cartoons are the greatest.

Trichinosis

A politician (I can't remember whom, so don't ask) once said, "I'm carrying so much pork I've got trichinosis." He wasn't talking about ham sandwiches. But that's why the title is titled what the title is titled.

Nowadays, everyone seems to be opposed to earmarks, or pork barrel spending, or what have you. They accuse politicians of corruption and waste for spending money on things in their home districts for the purpose of spending money on things in their home districts. Government spending should be national, should be for government programs that matter, so saying the sages. The elimination of such spending is supposed to eliminate government waste, reduce the effects of lobbyists, and make our country a wonderful and super place.

What a load of crap. I'm as anti-government waste as the next voter, but if you take a good, hard look at governmental spending, you'll find that so-called pork is not the problem at all. Lobbyists, for the most part, don't want pork anyway, unless you count the voters as a lobby. Lobbyists want exceptions to laws, loopholes in tax codes, governmental protection, and all that jazz. The corruption issues with lobbyists that involve money are usually straight up bribes, which aren't pork, they're just illegal.

Sure, building a bridge to nowhere in Alaska (the favorite example, which is a huge cliché) is wasteful. But building a bridge to somewhere isn't, and that's what a lot of pork does: highways. There is a tremendous amount of pork allocated to various highways and road constructions in various areas. Are we to call the construction of roads wasteful? What about the money given to poorer areas to build museums, schools, libraries, etc. Is this wasteful?

Some earmarks are indeed wasteful, and the whole system should perhaps have slightly more oversight, but to do away with pork barrel is foolish. I did not elect my representatives in Congress (both House and Senate) because I wanted them to represent the country as a whole. The entire government does that. I wanted them to represent my concerns, and to make sure that government money is spent wisely. And a good way to spend government money wisely is by spending it improving the lives of taxpayers, of which I am one. So when my congresspeople bring home the pork, that seems like a good way to spend money to me.

If the entire government spends less money on everything (Defence, I'm looking sharply in your direction) then it will spend less money on pork for my state and yours (unless you don't live in the United States, in which case you should probably talk to your ambassador about securing some foreign aid, so you too can partake in the hemorrhage of money that is the Federal Government of the USA), and perhaps that would be a good thing. It would be a good thing largely because the government spends too much money on many things. But as long as it's spending, why shouldn't taxpayers receive a piece of the pie? That's not corruption. That's why we elect them.

Unknown vs. Unknowable

There are a great many things in this kooky world of ours that no one knows. Ask a scientist if you don't believe me. Or ask a priest. They'll probably both agree.

The difference is, of course, that most scientists will speak of things yet to be discovered, problems yet to be solved. A priest is likely to speak about mysteries, possibly to be revealed, possibly not. Contrary to what you might be thinking, these two points of view need not be incompatible. And neither side holds the high ground on this issue.

If there were nothing left to learn, life would be fairly uninteresting. I imagine that must be why being God gets tedious enough that one decides to create plagues of locusts and such. But if all things must be revealed rather than learned or discovered, then what is the impetus to do anything other than sit and stare and wait for revelation. Many people believe that God works through humans, so discovery and revelation are really the same thing, but it still leaves an awful lot of the responsibility to the divine.

The adventurous part of me wants to know everything. I can readily understand the Faustian bargain (and the sex probably wouldn't be bad either). Knowledge is powerful, not just because people say, "Knowledge is power." We seek it because we seek to understand. Certainly, knowledge can be used for other purposes, but some knowledge is simply intrinsically interesting to us.

The other part of me, the more spiritual part, doesn't want to know some things. I don't think there are things "man was not meant to know," but there are some things which we cannot know because if we knew them, we wouldn't be human any more. There's something frightening and yet comforting about the idea that there are some things no one will ever know. These things aren't the unknowns that drive my adventurous side crazy; they are simply questions we don't know the answers to, and possibly don't even know the questions to. How do you really ask what the meaning of life is, for example.

The problem is that many people, scientist and priest, seem to believe the either all knowledge is knowable, or that all unknowns are unknowables. They mix the two up as well; no one, for example, should attempt to mathematically prove God's existence, nor should one take the Bible as literal scientific truth. We know too much for either of those things to be realistic.

But I won't discourage people from attempting to discover simply because I think they will fail. If you believe that some things are unknowable, you really shouldn't worry about being proven wrong. The only people who fear discovery are those who fear being proven wrong, and how can a belief ever be proven, one way or the other?

Remembering vs. Learning

There are some things which must simply be remembered. I remember (what a give-away) being forced to learn the multiplication tables by rote in Third Grade. It wasn't much fun, largely because committing numbers to memory doesn't lend itself to hooks. I was too young at the time to have an earnest debate about the merits of rote learning versus synthetic learning (synthetic, of course, meaning that one synthesizes the knowledge into meaningful memes, or some such garbage, which should not be corrected because I don't care for academese), but had I been, I would have argued (unsuccessfully, I might add) that rote learning was wrong and bad and useless.

I would have been unsuccessful because no one really listens to small children when they complain about the qualities of their education. Ah well. But for whatever reason, my argument would have been wrong because some things must simply be learned by rote. If you must memorize something, you must just memorize it. It's no good going through your schooling having to look up the multiplication tables every day, and eventually you would remember them anyway. A brief and semi-painless interval of rote saves time later on.

Rote learning works best when the thing to be remembered is used frequently and is fairly simple. If you stop using something you've learned by rote, chances are good you'll forget it. So multiplication is a good thing to memorize, as are lines for a play. The one will (hopefully) be kept in use throughout your life, while the other needs to be remembered for a short period but then forgotten. Obviously, not all things we should remember fall into these categories.

The reason I'm talking about this is the prevalence of bumper stickers and signs saying, "Never Forget," or "Always Remember." Many people would like to believe that history is a simple thing which should simply be learned by rote and then activated at the appropriate times. Convention of NYC Firefighters? Remember September 11, 2001. Elderly Jews? Remember the Holocaust. Black people? Remember slavery, the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, and/or the Civil Rights Movement. George Bush? Remember the war dead. If you can invoke the appropriate rote memorization, you'll be fine, or so sayeth the bumper stickers.

The problem with remembering is that it's not helpful. I'm pretty sure there are unrepentant murderers who remember (with great fondness, undoubtedly) their crimes. Sure, memories can bring up guilt, and forgetting important things is completely unhelpful, but the cult of memory to which we as a society seem to belong is fallacious. History is not a series of discrete memories. It isn't simple. Memorizing dates and events by rote doesn't teach us anything.

It would be far better perhaps for bumper stickers to say, "9/11: Learn From It." Learn what, you might ask? Well, this is why no one actually says this slogan, because a little learning is a dangerous thing, and learning is much more open than memorization. The lesson someone might learn from September 11 might be a lesson in better terror tactics, or that the security of the United States is actually remarkably frail in a lot of ways. The lessons of the Holocaust might inspire a generation of anti-Semites to perfect the murders of the past. History's lessons are myriad, and many of them are not things we feel people should learn.

In the end, remembering and learning are not enough. We must have teachers. I don't necessarily mean school teachers, I mean guides. Our choice of guide is the most important choice we can make. So remember, learn, and seek to guide and be guided.

Cell Phones in Cars

This will be quick because it's not much of a topic. Various state legislatures have passed laws prohibiting cell phone use in cars under a variety of caveats. Sometimes people under a certain age can't use them. Sometimes you can only use them if you have a hands-free setup.

Cell phones grew from portable phones, which grew from car phones. So obviously we feel that we need to be talking on phones in the car. It doesn't take much thought to show intuitively that this is a bad idea; just try reading while talking to someone. Reading is only one activity; driving is many. And the added complexity of talking to someone just makes it worse. Many people are poor drivers without added distractions. There are more scientific studies to consult if the intuitive nature of my example is too soft for you.

Meanwhile, companies continue making more and more gadgets for use in cars. There are TVs, computers, email, phones, radios, coffee makers... the list goes on. If lawmakers are serious about making people safer, they need to attack the problem, which is the fact that these products are made.

I hate cell phones. Therefore, my belief that cell phones should not be used while driving period, no exceptions, no age limits or gadgets, should be interpreted through that lens. If they passed a law making car radios illegal, I would have a problem with it because often I find that the radio keeps me awake and keeps me focused rather than having an adverse affect. But it does take away concentration to change stations or switch CDs or what have you, so obviously those things need to be done at the appropriate time.

The difference is that music for me is a passive participation, whereas talking to someone is an active participation. I know people who drive better while talking to someone because it functions for them like music does for me. But inexperienced drivers probably shouldn't have distractions at all.

Okay, so this wasn't short, but it was disjointed. I am against the use of cell phones while driving, period. Hand-free sets do not change the basic distraction, so using them should not be mandatory because it's a pointless rule. Inexperience does not stop with age, so simply making an age limit to cell phone use does not do enough, but it does something.

In the end, enforcement is the biggest issue. Cops will not pull you over if they see you talking on a cell phone. They will only do so if they see you do something which is already illegal, such as running a red light or speeding. At that point, what purpose does a prohibition on cell phones serve if a separate infraction is required to trigger enforcement?

There Oughta Be a Tax

As surprising as this might be, I don't remember a time when the Federal income tax didn't exist. I venture to guess that the same can be said for the vast majority of Americans (a terribly condescending distinction for people of the United States, but the only one I have available to me). And before that, there were still taxes. Death and taxes, that's what is supposed to be certain in life. I could add a few items to the list, and if you make a small enough amount of money, taxes can be removed, but someone will be paying taxes somewhere, always.

There are many arguments about taxes. Should we tax the living shit out of the rich and run the risk of destroying our economy and turning into a Communist state where hard work is not rewarded? I point to the disparate records of taxation amassed by Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower (both Republicans) for the answer to that question (feel free to look it up if you're interested). Should there be a flat tax? Probably not. Should the IRS legally be allowed to put electrodes up your... no, wait, that's not really up for argument, since they'll do it regardless.

My modest proposal to address some issues is an Un-Earned Income Tax. It's not simple, but let me explain it anyway. If you don't earn money, the government gets to tax the hell out of it. Some examples:

1. Interest: oh baby, we're going to tax that.
2. Inheritance: bring on the death tax, Grandpa, because your kids sure didn't earn that money. We won't tax it if you spend it, but when you leave it to them, ka-ching!
3. Gifts: you'd better believe we're going to tax them.
4. Stock Market Dividends: did you grow those pork bellies? I didn't think so. Tax 'em.
5. Investments: are you working for the company? No. Taxation without reservation, mi amigo.
6. Gambling/Game Show Prizes: playing a game/going on TV is not earning money. Better start filling out the forms.
7. Counterfeit Money: well, you made that money, so we won't tax it, but we will be sending Treasury Bureau agents to your home if you use this as a tax dodge.

I think you see where this is going. The problem I see is that, unlike the iron hand of yours truly which could state once and for all what will and will not be taxed, the government seems to exist to create loopholes for rich and/or powerful people, not to mention the fact that, if they can't get it together to vote on a non-binding resolution, figuring out just exactly what will and will not be taxed will probably take them, conservatively estimated, until the end of time. This is, of course, why other needed changes to various laws haven't been made. You can blame this cause for practically any problem you might have with the government. It's convenient that way.

If I ever become rich (possibly through counterfeit money or marrying a billionaire) I would like to believe that I wouldn't mind giving up some of my money to pay for things that other people need. I would like to think that my progressive and near-Communist views on taxation would remain the same if they threatened my own cash lump. But I would probably become bloated and awful just like all other rich people. However, I would not spend my money on stupid things. Which brings me to my second tax solution: the Spending Your Money on Stupid Things Tax. Again, this tax would fare better under the ruthless (but benevolent) dictatorship of yours truly.

Wiki Tikki Tavi

Why does everyone complain about wikis? Do they not know what wikis are? When abuse of the wiki system takes place, why are people surprised?

I'm all in favor of the communal sharing of knowledge and all that hippy bullcrap, as the kids from South Park would not put it because they would undoubtedly use the word "gay" as a pejorative, but come on people. Relying on the basic human goodness of the world is an exercise in shattered expectations.

Note that I'm not saying that there is no basic human goodness in the world. Far from it. But if you expect all humans to exhibit this basic goodness, you are doomed to disappointment. And that, unfortunately, is what most of the wiki community continues to do. Sure they have grudgingly come down from their Utopian visions and introduced some controls in an effort to minimize the damage that a small minority of people do, but the premise of the wiki system relies on people basically not being assholes, and that's a major flaw. Note, by the way, that I am not pointing a finger at wikipedia, but at the wiki idea in general.

In a controlled environment, wikis have their uses. I've never found one personally, because most of the time the environment has to be so controlled that some other form of content management would work better, and the rest of the time the environment isn't controlled enough and the problems start. But I suppose that somewhere in this great world of ours, there are uses for wikis which don't run into the problems everyone has with them. I've had to use them because people have a thing for them, but I can't say that I've ever liked using them.

But wikis implicitly rely not just on the goodness of all mankind, but on the goodness of a certain subset of mankind that uses the Internet. That's iffy. Then there's the fact that most of the people who use the Internet don't use wikis, so that cuts out a fair number of basically good humans right there. So you're left with people who are idealistic about wikis, and people who see wikis as an ideal target for their basic not-goodness.

If wikis worked in a way where the large numbers of idealists could cancel out the small (or possibly large, depending on how I'm feeling about humanity in general and people with too much time on their hands in particular when I make this statement) numbers of assholes, then all would be well. I think idealists usually care more about being ideal than assholes care about wrecking ideals. Maybe I'm wrong. But in any case, this is not the way wikis work. One bad apple can spoil the bunch in a small community. So wikis are destined to be just like they are, which is why I guess I don't get why people complain about them.

Participation in a wiki is like belonging to a club. In this case, it's a club of people who weren't invited. Depending on the level of security in a wiki, it can be anything from a wall for graffiti (not a bad use for a wiki, actually, so maybe there's one use out there) to something that isn't really a wiki. A public wiki is a club of people who care enough to join, and since joining can be accomplished simply by visiting the wiki in the first place, it's not a terribly exclusive club. Why does it surprise us that the club's open bar never has any ice cubes (that was an advanced metaphor; don't try this at home kids)?

For the record, I use wikipedia. Like everything I find on the Internet, I take it with a grain of salt. I then take it with an additional grain or three of salt depending on what topic I'm researching. And I then take it with the final grain of salt with which I take everything. Overall, it doesn't taste too bad. But then I don't spend my life making sure my wikipedia article hasn't been deleted.

And Blogger can spell wiki, but not its plural.

Wicca Wham Wham Wazzle

That's a quote from Futurama, not an insult. If I wanted to insult Wicca, I could do it much more easily.

I should have called this blog, "I Missed the Boat," because I seem to be stuck in a rut of boat missing articles. But no matter. I didn't really miss the Wiccan boat; I just don't know how to feel about it.

I belong to a religion founded in the 1950s by stoned bowlers. I have no problem admitting this. I do not believe that I can trace my faith's roots back to Atlantis any more than I believe that if I eat a hot dog bun, I will go straight to Hell (as I don't believe in Hell, this is hardly a threat, but still). Conspiracy theories are all good fun, but I don't believe that Adam Weishaupt and the Bavarian Illuminati have anything to do with my spiritual well-being. I can say all these things in completely seriousness, knowing full well that, should it come time to serve some higher calling, I will gleefully believe that Atlantis is located in the ruins of New Jersey (wait, strike that, reverse it) and that I am the reincarnation of a yam named Mick from Upper West Ghana (a completely separate entity from the Ghana of today). That's just how we roll.

So I find it a little disconcerting that some Wiccans seem to believe that they are druids, or builders of Stonehenge, or whatever. They didn't call it the Salem Wiccan trials for nothing, am I right? If you want to believe that kind of thing, fine, but you really shouldn't take it quite so seriously as some Wiccans (or other pagan types, and I use that word respectfully) do.

I don't know enough about it to judge, and I'm not really judging. I just find religious wackos of any stripe to be annoying. Jesus never said he hated homosexuals. The druids did not remain underground for centuries, only to reveal themselves to New Age hippy types. Native Americans are not a tribe of Israel. L. Ron Hubbard is dead and alien psychiatrists did not kill him. The ancient Greeks ate hot dog buns. The list goes on.

If it helps you to feel connected with a past spirituality, by all means, call yourself Reform Druids for all I care. My understanding (limited as it is) is that Orthodox Drus (Mel Brooks' joke, but still a good one) would be rather less welcome in modern society. But then, so would a lot of other orthodox religious practices of the past, some of them still hanging on in the present. Just don't fool yourself. I guess that's a lesson we could all stand to learn.

Me, I'm not a Wiccan because... well, I don't know enough about it to say, actually. I'm sure they're very nice people, most of them. But do they have an ancient Greek goddess? Huh? How about Atlantis? The Rothchilds? The founding fathers? I thought not.

Live From Blogger

I missed the boat somewhere. On a lot of things, actually, so what I'm about to say should be filed under "G" for, "Get, Things I Do Not." I'm not completely sure whether I am alone on the shore waving away as the boat sails serenely into the distance with everyone else, or whether the boat is mostly empty and crewed by zombie pirates, and I'm just not looking around to see the many people standing ashore with me, all of whom look glad not to be going to sea at all. Now that was a Hell of a metaphor. But the fact remains that I'm missing boat after boat.

The boat I'd particularly like to talk about this evening (as opposed to the boat crewed by lovers of Grease, for instance, or crewed by Red Hot Chili Peppers fans) is the boat of live music. By this I mean rock concerts, mostly. Why rock concerts, mostly? Because I can see going to classical music concerts (much better live), or music of various other stripes (often better live), but I've never been to much of a rock concert.

Okay, so I've been to a few, but not with names that would be recognized. The massive arena as venue for concert is lost on me. For one thing, rock musicians are usually not on their A game at all times due to various substances coursing through their bloodstreams, and even when a rock musician brings his A game, chances are good it's not that A, if you catch my drift. Modern music relies heavily on post-production to sound good. I am not criticizing it, but I do believe this to be true.

So there are musicians I'll go to see live (not unless the price is right, of course, and many musicians I would pay to see are not available for purchase). I can see that, even if I'm personally not excited by the prospect of seeing twenty bands from the Eighties in an arena that seats 100,000, there probably are people who are excited. This mostly has to do with the fact that I can't really stand the Eighties, so the live-ness and arena-ness of the occasion have little to do with it.

But what I really don't get is recordings of live music. Unless they are masterfully done (and there are a few recordings which fall into this category) or you really like the band (and as I said, many musicians I would see live aren't available in that form anymore) they sound like crap. In fact, even if you do like the band, usually I'd prefer listening to the studio version of a song over a poorly-recorded bootleg version. Perhaps this is just me.

The preponderance of live albums can't just be aimed at collectors, can it? I own a few things which include live music (recorded at a concert, that is), and I can't say as they offer a great deal of draw for me. If a song is unavailable except as a bootleg, then you have to make do, but I would always prefer a studio version if one became available.

I can keep beating the horse, but the long and the short of it is that I missed the boat on live music. There are exceptions, but for the lion's share, they're on the boat and I'm sitting on the shore. And in this case, I'm not completely certain that's not a good thing. The zombie pirates can keep the various exciting bootleg versions recorded on wax cylinders. I prefer production.

Civil Unions

This is a cliché, but it's still true. If the federal and state governments wanted to pass a law (or Constitutional amendment) forbidding two people of different skin colors from marrying one another, how would you react? It's worth thinking about, not because it proves a point, but because it's a question people should answer for themselves.

And I won't go into how it relates to the issue of gay marriage both because it would be condescending and because it's undoubtedly been covered before. The only thing I'm doing is asking the question. I'm not trying to say that it proves that gay marriage should be allowed.

Just figure it out for yourselves. When you say God hates fags, how does God feel about interracial marriage?

Now that the question has been asked, we also have to ask what place God hating fags has in the debate about the legality of certain types of marriage. The last time I checked, God hated divorce (depending on what God you listen to) and the State (capital S because we mean the government, not North Dakota) doesn't seem to mind. Should we waste our valuable time passing laws and amending our Constitution to prohibit divorce? So you hate fags (which is what people really mean when they say "God hates fags"). Don't recognize their marriages as sanctified by your God then. The State doesn't give a damn about your stupid, fag-hating God. At least it shouldn't.

Separate but equal my ass. You know what, fuck God! The State is all-powerful! It can do whatever it wants, and there's nothing your whiny little bitch of a God can say to make that any different. Suck it, God!

Okay, I'm done. My philosophy has always been: if people are going to be offended by something no matter what you do, you might as well really offend them.

Retired But Still Rocking

The fact that The Who are still touring sometimes makes me wonder just what the appeal is. There are only two of the original members left, and they're not alone. These days it seems like every other day some rock group is "coming out of retirement for one last tour," or whatever. Frank Sinatra made a business of retiring; The Rolling Stones appear to be doing likewise. And as The Who have proved, death is no obstacle.

On the one hand, it's somewhat pathetic to see people who sang a song about hoping to die before they got old still on tour. There's an element of the macabre when musicians die in the midst of a tour and the band continues the tour anyway. I'm not accusing them of being cold-blooded or money-grubbing; I think that, were I in their situation, I might do the same thing. In fact, if I were a rock star and I died, I would want my band to continue on in memory of me, or something like that. It is convenient that the two things hardest to replace, lead guitar and vocals, haven't died yet (but AC/DC seemed to do alright for themselves after their singer died, so you never know).

On the other hand, why shouldn't older bands keep playing music? If people want to see them, let them play. It's what they do. If you hate going on tour, fine, but if you genuinely enjoy making music for your fans, then who am I to condemn you.

So why drum up hype by "retiring" or declaring this to be "absolutely the last tour ever" (N.B. I am not quoting anyone). Why not just keep making music. Many non-rock-star-types do it; why can't they? I imagine that a fair amount of it has to do with hype and money, but again, other non-rock musicians manage to make a go of it without being superstars. Maybe it's an opportunity to play smaller venues, to be more intimate.

And maybe sometimes people should just let things go. The Beatles never reformed and toured, even when it would have been possible (I suppose Paul and Ringo could get together with two other musicians, but it's hardly the same, as should be amply evidenced when Paul himself sings his old songs solo). Sometimes it's time for a good thing to end. That doesn't mean you have to stop making music, but perhaps some people need to stop living in the past. And I say this as someone who will never get to see his favorite band tour again, so perhaps you should take that with a grain of salt.

Put a Price On It

Prostitution comes in many forms. There is a certain part of me which likes to think that anything anyone does for money is a form of prostitution. That part of me is also the part of me that likes to stick it to The Man and be all rebellious and shit. That part of me likes to curse. It also thinks I'm a horrifying sell-out.

I don't think everyone is a whore. Far from it. I wish, sometimes, I could be a whore, because prostitution involves making money, and I need money for most of the things I do. Capitalism being the greedy demon feeding on the blood of the oppressed that it is, and all.

But it serves us occasionally to examine just what our prices are. How much money (or other less-tangible reward) would it take to make us forget our principles. Because if that isn't prostitution, then I don't know what is. If your principles include selling sex for money, then you're not really a prostitute, except in the legal sense. But I doubt that there are that many people out there who genuinely believe that selling sex for money is within their moral compass. Most people may ignore their moral compass in exchange for money, but at the end of the day, that's prostitution.

I have a price. I think everyone does. Even if it is fairly high, or involves the threat of death to one's self or loved ones, or the destruction of innocent lives, or whatever, I think pretty much everyone has a price. Why fight it? Why live in denial?

In the spirit of this, I would like to announce that I would have sex with pretty much anyone in exchange for money. I charge a sliding scale, and I really can't quote you a price unless I know something about you, like how much you might be prepared to pay. Also hygiene. And if I find you attractive, my prices will drop dramatically.

The problem is that I am not exactly a hot commodity, so there's little chance of my making a living as a prostitute, as I said above. I would have a hard time underselling some people, for one. And I'm not exactly going out of my way to drum up business. So at the end of the day, you'll probably be keeping your money, and I'll be keeping my pants on. Everyone will probably be happier that way.

Let's get it out in the open. Put a price on it. It's probably terribly unhealthy and morally wrong, but setting your price for selling out is honest, so there's something.

Couch Potatoes

Philosophy books are notoriously poor sellers in the modern bookstore. I'm not talking about self-help philosophy, I'm talking Schopenhauer. It's not universally true, and it's not an easy statement to make (but watch me make it in sentence one because I am not an easy person) because spirituality, religion, and self-help, among others, have turned "philosophy" into New Age garbage, but it's mostly true.

I'm not here to confirm or deny this. I'm stating it to bear up my point: reaching the masses via a philosophical treatise (viz Aristotle) has become pretty difficult stuff. It happens, but not too often, and it usually winds up being New Age garbage as witnessed above. You have to be a damn good writer to write a philosophy book which is readable.

However, you do not have to be a good writer at all to write mass-market fiction. So many erstwhile philosophers, who in previous eras would have been consigned to the dustbin of history, couch their philosophy in fiction. I'll throw out a name: 1984. It's a philosophical tract in disguise. You think you're getting Asimov, but you get Marx. But it's not Marx. It's future-Marx, and you don't get him either, you get excerpts.

Historical fiction can tread a fine line in this arena. Sometimes the historical part is setting, or even plot, but the point is to tell an entertaining story. Sometimes the writer does "research" and includes "previously unknown facts" which play to a particular message the author wants to get across. I can name names again, but I won't, because Dan Brown is a jackass. That too is not an easy thing to say... oh, who am I kidding, yes it is.

So we have two dangers of this couching. Firstly, fiction is not as deep as philosophy. Literature already has to abstract its message by the simple fact that it is literature; we wouldn't read a book which simply said, "This book is about the existence of God," would we? I hope not. And there's nothing wrong with abstraction. Points can be made more easily sometimes by subtlety. Philosophy and fiction are meant to serve different ends. Because philosophy can come right out and say what it means, it is already deeper than fiction by its genre. Deep is a bad word to use. I just can't think of a better one.

Secondly, people think that fiction which has some historical or philosophical couching is all real. This is perhaps more a problem of people being stupid, but it still deserves notice.

I don't really know why I myself couched my point in a discussion of fiction. My point is simple: Dan Brown is a jackass. Neil Stephenson is quite possibly a jackass. George Orwell is a jackass. Aldous Huxley is as well. Don't be lazy. Write a philosophy book, or a scholarly non-fictional book on historical evidence for points raised. Doing anything less is being a jackass.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Safety Dance

This article has absolutely nothing to do with the song. I just wanted to call an article "Safety Dance" because it's fun.

I'm not even really going to talk about safety. I could have called it "Backup Dance" but where's the fun in that? Nowhere, that's where. And anyone who thinks differently is selling something. And that something is a cheap Czech knockoff CD featuring a song called "Backup Dance." Don't fall prey to these people.

Wow, tangent city in the first paragraphs. No matter. We're back on target and heading down the track. Destination: the problem of losing information.

I have heard from various sources that Blogger lacks finesse in the area of not eating archives. I have yet to see evidence of this, but by writing about it I will no doubt call down the evil gods of data loss upon my blog and will experience the horror first-hand. And horrible it will be. For you see, I don't have any backups.

I'm sure there's probably some way to use Blogger to make backups. And the low-tech method of simply typing out these things in a file on my own computer, then copying and pasting them, is also a possibility. I wish I could say that the reason I don't do either of these things is something other than laziness.

Actually, I can say that. I don't do either of these things principally because of laziness, but also because of the transient medium that is the Internet. There is something cathartic about knowing that nothing is permanent, and that things come and things go and if the evil gods of data loss will it, I shall be archive-less. Or archive-impaired, as is the correct term. I am not writing for the ages. I am writing for its therapeutic benefits to my brain. Albeit that these therapeutic benefits are slow in coming.

For that matter, I don't know why I restrict myself to views. I could just as easily have named this blog, "Nobody Wants To Read My Writing." That's not a bad idea, actually, since it's the truth. I should have used that. But I have views, and I ought to express them. Nobody wants to read poetry by me, or short fictional pieces by me, or vague rants by me, or indeed any of my writing. And of the broad category of, "My Writing," the narrow sub-category, "My Views," is the most difficult to write.

It takes a fair amount of effort to have views on new things every day, and even when I don't, I can't just glob out several paragraphs of random garbage. They have to be views. So I stuck with views because they're harder to write and require more thought. I think.

I am sorely tempted to create a backup of the archive now, because I'm egotistical enough to believe that something I write might actually live on through the ages. But, as I said above, I'm mostly lazy. So the gods of data loss still have their pigeon.

I promise, I will not write random crap for the next article (damn that word, damn it to hell), which will be entitled, "Foghat!"

Repentance as Badge of Honor

In the past, I've had the opportunity to watch some excellent programs on World War II, read some excellent books on World War II, and... well, I debate the actual information content one derives from listening to music, but I've listened to some excellent music on World War II as well, I suppose. I've seen lots of Nazis, a fair number of jerks of other stripes, and a whole heaping mess of atrocities committed by all of the above during the historical period in question (remember, the Second World War). And I can say without question that I am not at all interested in going through any of the things I've seen myself.

But there are a fair number of people out there (growing smaller daily) who did go through some of these events, and a fair number of them participated actively in them. Leaving aside the victims (we remember of course previous discourse on victims), those who are guilty of some sort of misdeed (either by actually committing atrocities or by simply ignoring said commissions) tend to fall into three categories, based on my observations of ex-Nazis (and other assorted jerks).

First off, there are those, thankfully few, who either are in complete denial or who don't see anything wrong with what they did. Sergeant Schultz from Hogan's Heroes falls into this category; you can readily see him at a war crimes tribunal testifying, "I did nothing. I saw nothing. I know nothing." There are also those misguided people who still really believe that Nazism was the right thing.

Most people fall into a grey area, which is the second type; everything between one and three. Usually these people are in denial as well, but they will perhaps own up to certain things, while marginalizing them. The epitaph of many Nazis seems to be, "I was only following orders," but, "I would have been killed if I didn't," or "What could I have done? It wasn't so bad," can also be popular. Most people realize what they did was wrong but attempt to ameliorate it somehow. It's easy to understand why, in many cases. Human nature at its finest.

Then there are the members of the third group, sadly also quite few. As I said, most people fall into a grey area, and all one can hope for is that people come closer to this category than the first one. The third group admits their wrongdoing. I don't care whether they have gone to Jerusalem every day and knelt by the wailing wall and begged forgiveness or simply stated, on record, their guilt; they all belong in this third group. Again, there are few of them, sadly. Most people shy away from saying, "I'm a monster. What I did was completely inexcusable, and I can never make up for it." They're hard words to say.

I pity the first group. They're in denial, one way or the other. They're an object lesson not to do bad things, but more than that, it's hard to see. They have no hope for redemption because they aren't even looking for it. One could even bear a kind of grudging respect for the certainty of their views. I don't, but I suppose it's possible.

The second group are a warning, not of the dangers of evil actions, but of the dangers of too many people ignoring evil. There is a great deal of hypocrisy in these people. But be careful lest you judge too harshly, because we're all, unfortunately, far too likely to fall into this second group. As I said, admitting fault without any excuse is hard. The best feeling one can have is the hope that, before they die, the many people who did these terrible things will find a way to admit it, to own up to their part. Even if you are only truthful to yourself, it's a start.

The third group is deserving of respect, but tempered with the realization that just because you admit guilt doesn't make you cease being guilty. It's hard to respect people capable of such evil, but I respect their actions in dealing with the evil they've done. I don't admire these people, I treat them as an object lesson too: how to deal with your own failings. Obviously, one can only respect true repentance; if a Nazi publicly denounces himself and then goes out and secretly murders Jews, that's hardly deserving of anything other than disgust.

The point I want to make is a point which, now that we have a lot of people changing their tones on various topics (Iraq being the biggest example, but there are others), is important to remember. There are some people who will never admit that they've made mistakes or done bad things. There are some who admit mistakes but try to minimize them. And then there are those who own up to them. We have some of all three in the political spectrum these days.

But the point is that, even if you own up to a mistake, you still made the mistake. Even if John Edwards says he made a mistake in voting to go to war in Iraq, he still made the mistake (I bet you probably thought I was going to begin stumping for Mr. Edwards, didn't you? Admit it). It is not a badge of honor to admit failings. It's a show of character, perhaps, but the more important show of character is what you do in the first place, not how you react to having done it. We all make mistakes, and I'm not saying that making a mistake should remove one from consideration as a good person, or even as a not-bad person. Owning up to mistakes is important.

I'm not going to bash any politician any longer. John Edwards is simply one of the more egregious examples of trying to turn admission of error into point in one's favor currently in the public eye. It's not a new story.

Admiration should be reserved for actions which are not mistakes. People who saved Jews during the Holocaust should be admired for those actions. Even people who could do nothing more than simply say, "What the Nazis are doing is wrong," should be admired. People aren't perfect, and every little bit counts. That's something even the most powerless person should remember.

The Dearth of Good Entertainment

No, I do not personally think there is a particular dearth of good entertainment. There is as much entertainment present now as there has been for as long as I can remember, some of it good, much of it mediocre, and some of it truly terrible. That's life.

I speak, in fact, of the dearth of entertainment for certain types of people, namely people with slightly more narrow sensibilities than I possess. Calling a spade a spade, the people who patronize Christian bookstores, watch only officially sanctioned movies and television shows, and listen only to Christian music. In other words, people who want "Good" entertainment as opposed to people who are willing to make do with merely entertaining entertainment.

Far be it for me to criticize others' sensibilities regarding fun. I am a sick monkey, and I will own up to this fact. I respect people who don't want to watch programs about tracking down serial rapists while listening to Satanic music (of which there are more than I care to think about). I myself find many of these programs less entertaining than more wholesome fun (and by that, I mean programs about tracking down serial killers while listening to only mildly blasphemous music). Seriously though, I know many people who, for one reason or another, do not consume certain types of entertainment media, and I say bully for them.

The fact is, however, that so-called "Christian" entertainment is almost universally awful. I don't want to pick on Christians, but I don't know enough about "Muslim" entertainment or "Hindu" entertainment (well, Bollywood, I guess, but I really know next to nothing about that) to speak. Plus, the radical fringe of Christianity (and make no mistake, it's only a fringe, since I know many people of a Christian bent who, while they have scruples, do not limit themselves to purely "Christian" entertainment) is fairly vociferous on the subject of entertainment.

It hasn't always been this way. Nearly all entertainment used to be Christian (in the Christian world); Shakespeare, for instance, would have been slightly amused if you had called his entertainment "non-Christian," and let's just say that it's best not to even mention the subject around Tolstoy. Great works of art, literature, theatre, music... they were all Christian. Now we have Left Behind, which is to Tolstoy as Hop On Pop is to... no, actually, Hop On Pop is too good for the purposes of this comparison.

The problem is that "Christian" entertainment has shrunk itself into a genre which must mention Jesus and/or God in every sentence. It has become more about what topics cannot be covered than about what topics can, and as a result it is pretty much universally drab and awful. The message, "Jesus is Lord," becomes much more important than the package, which is garbage. Even so-called populist "Christian" entertainment is hit-you-over-the-head obvious.

Case in point: if an artist is liberal, it is natural that this opinion will probably find expression in his/her works. Musicians who are against the war in Iraq usually make this relatively plain (and not just pop musicians either, who have a track record of not being subtle; see Rzewski's Stop the War, a piece I've seen performed, and believe me, it's not pop music) in their music. But if every single song a musician sings is called I Hate Bush and the lyrics are always long polemics about how much the artist hates Bush, we'll rapidly grow tired of said musician. At least I will.

This is not to say that God and faith are not profound topics suitable for framing. They are at least as broad as love, a topic covered ad nauseum. But the extremely limited subset of God and faith that is allowed to make its way into "Christian" art is a different matter.

Many things are Christian without being "Christian." If you exclude all art which does not line up precisely with your point of view, you miss out on the beauty and faith-affirming wonder of most of the world of art. You also miss out on great entertainment. I am heartily in favor of scruples; don't consume entertainment you find offensive, by all means. But not everything that isn't in your pocket is offensive.

Another case in point (and then we all go home): Twisted Sister's final album, Twisted Christmas. There is not a single song here which is offensive; they're all (okay, save the last one which is mostly) Christmas standards. No alterations of words (with that exception mentioned above). No curse words (to my knowledge). These are Christmas songs that, if Andy Gibb sang them, would be welcomed in most Christian homes (okay, so truly radical fringe Christians might take umbrage at the songs not specifically about Christ, but they're too far gone). But it will be a cold, dark day in Hell (unless you read Dante, another Christian author not found in most "Christian" catalogues) before any album by Twisted Sister finds its way into the "Christian" music shop.

But turnabout being fair play, I must also state for the record that I'm sure there are many metal fans (remember, I said I wasn't going to use any sub-genres because I don't get them) won't purchase what is a terrific album because they have prejudices too. People could stand to be a little less prejudicial. What a great title. Must remember that one. Actually, I should have used that for the list containing Isaiah Washington, Mel Gibson, and Michael Richards. Eh, go back and read it and pretend I did.

Hearts as Microcosm

Anyone who wants to talk about game theory should really play a game of Hearts.

For those of you who don't know (and why should you), Hearts is a card game played between four people where the object is to get the fewest points. Each heart in the deck is worth one point, and the queen of spades is worth thirteen. The trick is that if one person managed to capture all the point cards, they score no points and everyone else gets twenty-six (the sum total of the possible points). I won't describe the rules any further, because that pretty much sums up my position on the subject.

You could look at Hearts as a metaphor for all sorts of things; indeed, any time a group has something undesirable and must parcel it out, you could draw a Hearts analogy. The capture of all points (Shooting the Moon) is harder than it might at first seem, because as a player you need to be on the lookout for people who seem to be getting all the points. The ideal situation is to engineer it so that multiple opponents each take points, but at the end of the day, there is often a situation where it's up to the individual to prevent the opponent from taking that last point and sticking everyone else with the bill.

What do you do? You see the other players all around you, snidely expecting you to save them from defeat by scoring a point yourself. They even seem to be laughing at your situation. How unfair. If they were in your shoes, you wouldn't be snickering behind your cards at them, waiting for them to take the plunge. You are a civilized person, unlike your enemies who want you to save them in return for nothing. And that's what you'll get: nothing. They won't remember that you saved their butts from that twenty-six point kiss of death. They'll just congratulate themselves for taking no points at all. Maybe they'll even go on to win by just a few points, points they would have taken if it weren't for you being a sap.

Can you see what I'm driving at here? I can get extremely angry at opponents in a computer game of Hearts who have no minds, who aren't snickering because they don't exist as anything more than numbers in a machine. I begin to ascribe personality traits, or imagine that they are ganging up on me to ensure that one of their number wins. Imagine how I am when I actually play Hearts with real people.

So you can keep your prisoner's dilemma, because Hearts will teach you everything you want to know about human nature. In the end, we're all selfish, and only one of us can shoot the moon.

Grease

What is it with Grease?

No, really, what is it? Because I'm dying to know. To my (obviously unenlightened, because why else would I think this way) mind, the musical is terrible, the movie is awful, and the television show that both these abominations have spawned is atrocious. And yet people seem to disagree with me. Not all people; as a matter of fact, there are a lot of people I know who are dead-set against Grease in all its forms. But there have to be enough people who want to watch it to make these things possible, otherwise I would never have had to sit through it myself.

Let's look at the facts, and by facts I mean slander. Grease is a show (and when I say show, I mean play, because the television show is just about the play) which seems to glorify a certain lifestyle I personally find distasteful. It tells its audience to become a slut because nobody likes you. Change if people think you aren't cool enough. Give in to peer pressure. Great lessons.

If that's not bad enough, it's a musical set during a period of time when music was painfully bad, and the play doesn't even use any actual music, but rather pastiches clunky proto-rock together like a Frankenstein monster. Elvis was, take him or leave him (I'm pretty much in the second category myself, but I respect taste) a fairly important influence on music, but the music of Grease reminds one not of Elvis (or the numerous black artists of the time who get no credit) but of terrible commercial rock created by record labels. It's not even good musical music; it's like the current trend in musicals where a popular artist's songs are linked together by a vague story as an excuse to hear the popular artist's songs, but in this case the songs are terrible knock-offs which don't advance the plot much at all.

And who likes this musical? Is it nostalgia? No, it's children too young to remember that Grease is sanitized pap who are... well, they aren't nostalgic because they weren't there at the time. I can't fathom why they would like the music, or feel a connection with the time period, save that it's about High School. And they are just at the age where they become impressionable to the message of Grease (which is, in case you forgot, become a slut because no one likes you) without being old enough to know better.

So this terrible musical made John Travolta famous (or more famous, and in either case, that's cause enough for weeping), spawned a Fifties nostalgia kick which sees perfectly ordinary teenagers being heavily into music their parents find old-fashioned, and has now given us a reality TV show which is more annoying than American Idol for the simple reason, leaving aside the content, that its host is more annoying than Ryan Seacrest. People keep supporting it. There must be some reason. I just want to know why? What am I missing? Why?

California Me Crazy

What is the problem with the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I could point you to any number of much funnier sites on the subject, but seriously, what is their problem? It's like they've started a tribute group to themselves, only instead of simply playing their old, popular songs, they compose new parody songs to more accurately express their great love for themselves.

It's like if a Led Zepplin tribute group, let's call them House and the Holies, were formed, but instead of singing "Stairway to Heaven" like everyone expects, they compose a song called, "Stairway to Kevin" about Kevin Federline. But that doesn't even accurately describe the level of problem which appears to be afflicting the Red Hot Chili Peppers' tribute group (for those of you who weren't paying attention, the name of that group is the Red Hot Chili Peppers).

I want it to be made perfectly plain, I never really liked the Red Hot Chili Peppers. A few of their songs were catchy. A few. They were overplayed on the radio. All the good crap that makes bands these days tepid. So I am not lamenting their fall from greatness. They've just gotten worse.

I think, and I may not be alone, that there must have been some law passed by the state of California (Arnold Schwartzenegger is crazy enough to do this, but we must also give credit where credit is due to the many crazy lawmakers of California) saying that the Red Hot Chili Peppers must include the name of the state in every other song. In protest, the Chili Peppers decided to also include the names of other states, and other nations, in their songs as well. Talks failed to bring a resolution to this crisis.

I foresee a time when Red Hot Chili Peppers songs are nothing but long lists of place names, with California incorporated somehow therein. Sort of like those songs on Animaniacs, but with more mentions of California.

Or maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers just really like California. There's no real shame in that. But to make every song you write sound exactly the same and include the name "California" in it is tedious. Maybe the Chilis should move to Massachusetts. But that's harder to rhyme. And a girl named Danny Massachusetts (or whatever the name is) doesn't have quite the same kick to it.

Long and the short of it: the Red Hot Chili Peppers are tedious, and I'm as tired of hearing about California as I am of hearing about New York City.

And for those of you who were wondering, the title of this article is a takeoff of "Jamaica Me Crazy." It's funny. Trust me.

Deficits All Over

Do you know how much the Federal government of the United States spent on the Department of Defence is 2006? Well, okay, rather how much the government allocated in the budget for the DOD, because there is also a lot of money allocated outside of the budget. According to the Washington Post (and my apologies if you can't view this link), 419.3 billion dollars, again not counting extra allocations.

According to the White House, which actually seems proud of this next quote:

Under this Administration, the Department of Defense (DOD) has received the largest increases in funding since the Reagan Administration, and this Budget builds upon that record. The 2006 request represents a 41-percent increase over 2001, and a 4.8-percent increase over 2005.

Ah, the Reagan years. I'm sure we remember fondly the unprecedented military spending of those wonderful times. There were Commies to the left of us, Commies to the right, and here we were, stuck in the middle with Ronnie. I have no idea how Gerry Rafferty felt about the defence budget of the USA when he wrote that song.

According to wikipedia, which in turn gets most of its facts from the CIA, the USA in 2005 spent roughly 58% of the money the entire world spent on the military. You can argue with these numbers, but the fact is that the USA spends more money on the Defence Department than it does on any other department, a lot more.

I could use this as an argument against war, which I would feel perfectly right in doing. War is expensive. But that point of view doesn't win many friends and influence many people. I just want to know where the Hell the government gets off spending this much money on defence. No one, not even countries ruled by the iron fist of the military, spends this much money. The figures are not per capita or factored as a percentage of the GNP, but if we can't afford all those things the government says we can't afford, why the hell not? We have all sorts of money being funneled into the most bloated program the world has ever known (hyperbole but true anyway) and we can't afford things?

This is not a liberal/conservative thing. It isn't a Democrat/Republican thing. The Defence Department is a sacred cow which no one in government will go after because they are afraid of seeming cowardly. Where's the cowardice in wondering why we aren't getting our money's worth? How does it support our troops to spend this money? We can ask these questions about education, about the EPA, or about programs which seem much more vital to our national security than space-based defenses against Communist ICBMs (of which there are relatively few these days), but ask them about the defence department and you're a peacenik hippy Commie-lib.

Where's the accountability? Where does the money go? How does pouring billions of dollars into the military make our military better? I don't have the answers to these questions, and I'm not sure anyone does. I'm not arguing that we spend too much money on defence (not here, anyway), I'm merely wondering how we can spend so much and yet seemingly still need more.

Brand me a peacenik hippy Commie-lib if you like. From a big-government standpoint, I'm actually being extremely conservative.

On the Transmigration of Comments

Oh dear, someone actually commented on an article. I'm not completely sure how to feel.

On the one hand, it is natural I suppose to feel a marginal amount of self-importance; after all, someone read something one wrote and felt strongly enough about it to comment. It's a mildly euphoric feeling. I recommend it for those who need a brief pick-me-up.

The problem is that it becomes addictive, like a mild euphoric. Sure, at first it's just nice that people are reading. Then it becomes more. You feel down if enough people aren't reading. You develop an attachment to your work, and if people disapprove of it, you wind up feeling worse than if those people had simply not commented at all. You sit by your computer day after day, wondering why people don't comment more.

Or you start answering back to commentary. Sure, it's innocent enough to begin with; you want to have a conversation with your readers. But the your blog turns into a forum, where the comments are at least as important as the articles. You get into arguments with readers, start Internet wars, visit their sites and comment on them, plot massive denial of service attacks on their servers, and get elected President, pass sweeping legislation to outlaw your enemies' websites, get caught in a closet with a German Shepherd... you see where this is going.

I made a conscious decision a while back that I would hold off from commenting on other people's opinions on their own websites. I will occasionally leave throw-away comments to express general approval, or longer, nonsensical comments because I am bound to do so for religious reasons, but I try with all my might not to be involved in on-line conversations. There's something which is missing when all you see of another person is text, and I also have not anywhere approaching enough time to personally respond to all the opinions on the Internet with which I disagree. It's just not worth it to me.

So someone cared enough to comment on something I wrote. I'm flattered, and I'm even so flattered that I have devoted an article (I wish that sounded less pretentious than it does, because these aren't really articles, but I hate the term "post") to commenting on said comment. But don't feel rejected if I don't start a conversation. I left comments active because it's flattering, but flattery won't get you everywhere.

Thanks for your comments. Or lack thereof.

Satire vs. Realism

Satire is great. It's the weapon of the powerless, as many people have said in a quotable manner. It's funny too.

The problem is that you can't satirize the powerless. You can't blame anyone but the powerful. If you do, you're being elitist. I completely agree with this point of view.

Reaching beyond satire, however, we must be realistic. For instance, it is easy to exempt victims from blame; they're victims, after all. Members of the Lunatic Fringe Religious Wackos (call them whatever you want; I will be using as abusive a term as I can because if you're going to do something, you might as well go for the gusto, and people will assume I'm being abusive anyway) are simply victims; they shouldn't be blamed for their upbringing making them into soulless androids incapable of doing anything other than what they are told by their wacko leaders. Television audiences aren't to blame just because television is mindless schlock pandering to the lowest common denominator. You can't blame the victims, can you?

I can, actually. This entire article is in response to http://http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2007/02/lb_casting_the_.html , because as I said I'm not simply planning on linking to other blogs and then commenting on them. That's not what I'm interested in. So I'm going to do it now.

People who watch TV are to blame for the poor quality of the programming. They're not the only ones to blame, of course, but they have to get their share. Religious nut-jobs are to blame for reading crap like Left Behind because they do have brains. Simply blaming some higher power for your own failings is ridiculous; there are many cases where the victims are stupid people who should not have done what they did. We feel sorry for them, we might even want to help them, but that shouldn't stop us from admitting that these people are stupid.

Unless you believe that everyone who is a victim has no control over their own actions, you have to parcel out blame. In some cases, the victim is blameless. In most cases, the victim is and must be held responsible for their choices. This does not mitigate others' actions, but if someone acts irresponsibly and suffers because of it, even if the suffering is grossly disproportionate to the action, then that person should own up to their part.

I guess I just feel that there's a big difference between blaming someone and making them solely responsible. I could go on making up hypothetical examples, but the bottom line is that no one is entirely blameless, and that is meaningless. Blame is a pointless concept; find a problem and solve it, don't find someone to blame for the problem's existence. If the solution to a problem is to punish someone for the problem, then I'm hard-pressed to find that a suitable solution to most problems.

Welcome to February, Population 2

Yesterday was the official start of February, but since no one reads this, I don't write these on the days I say I do, February is the shortest month, and I hate idiots, I didn't say this yesterday.

February is the last gasp of winter most years, which is why I don't expect much in the way of snow, just dreary, cold, and wet. Global warming will no doubt exacerbate this situation immensely.

It's hard to get up a lot of enthusiasm for February. It's largely just a filler. Why it has to be shorter is beyond me; it's not because it has occasional leap days, because even with a leap day it's still shorter. One of the 31 day months could easily give up one day to February to make things simpler, but that would confuse schoolchildren and probably cause some massive upheaval in the calendar business. I don't know the explanation for February's shortness, but it undoubtedly has to do with Christianity, because everything in our calendar has to do with Christianity. This makes the name February ironic, as it is named after a Roman god. On second thought, maybe the calendar has to do with ancient Rome.

I've also never been able to understand why we insert a day into the second month of the year during Leap Year. The extra day could be tacked on to a better month, one which could use it more profitably. All we get in February is one extra day of boring, bleak cold-and-wet. I'm not against the cold, mind you, and if February were a more interesting month an extra day of cold could be quite nice. But things stand as they are and always shall be. Like Daylight Savings Time. Maybe when that rolls around I'll be tepid about it as well.

The month gets short shrift on pretty much every list, especially the list of months where it is easy to keep up your New Years Resolutions. If you've made it through January, February should be easy to coast through, but most people don't make it through January because of reasons into which I've already gone. Later in the year people who maintain the resolve find it easier, but the short month when you can claim to have one month under your belt is actually much easier, because there's not so much pressure built up. This is all completely non-scientific, and I've already said that I don't make resolutions.

And yet here I am, a few days late, but still in style. Fashionably late, as it were. The Christmas rush has worn off and the year is official. February isn't too bad indoors.

Apparently I Don't Know What Emo Is

There is an old joke (sort of joke, actually) applied to numerous people: "If you put two in a room together, they'll come out with five opinions." It's a long-standing problem with any point of view, actually; people are just too damn different to agree on anything. Even people who agree don't agree on the whole agreement.

That's a deep philosophical start to what is actually a shockingly banal topic: emo. I could generalize and talk about any genre of music (or indeed thought) but I'm talking about emo because I'm tired of hearing about it. I don't know what the hell it is. People bandy about the term like Web 2.0 and I think no one really knows, which is how it differs from other points of view.

See, there are universal questions to which most people have answers, and none of these answers agree. Why are we here? Where did we come from? What the hell is going on in Washington (if you're not from the USA, insert your own capital here; it's fun and interactive)? There is no universal answer to these universal questions, but each person has at least some idea of their own answer, even if that answer is, "None of the above."

But there are universal qualities, like "emo-ness" which are applied to various things and I don't think anyone really knows what the hell they're talking about. People who use terminology that they don't really understand, buzzwords that they heard in the elevator, are destined for a particularly bleak sector of Hell, probably including fire-breathing maggots that eat your eyeballs.

So I'm no longer going to use the term, "emo," because I haven't the faintest idea what it means, and I don't really want to know. There are a lot of crappy bands out there who appear, upon cursory inspection, to fall under the emo umbrella, and I'm better off without them.

I am also not going to use any subset of the genre, "Metal," because I don't know what that is either. Not even the record executives who make up these stupid buzzwords know what they really mean, and that's pretty scary. If buzzwords could come to life and destroy major cities, we'd be more concerned about their reckless proliferation. As it is, they can stuff it.

And Blogger doesn't know how to spell, "emo."