It's going to be an interesting election

McCain announced his choice for vice president, and it's pretty obvious that his decision took practically everybody by surprise. What's been fascinating is the amount of double talk that has occurred since then as Democrats try to explain away why this isn't significant and Republicans who act as if the Republicans just nominated the Second Coming of...oh, I don't know...Hillary?

The truly interesting thing is to study the interjection in political impetus this has caused without wearing partisan blinders. Not only does it make the choice interesting, but it also makes it even more interesting to study the people who are going off all nutso because they are convinced that somehow this decision will somehow serve their own side, even if they have to manufacture the reasons that only they believe because they've repeated the ridiculous conclusions to themselves over and over again.

The real ramifications of this choice will come towards the middle of the Republican Convention. To be honest, which no one ever is during an election, NO ONE has a clue what kind of an effect Palin's nomination is going to have until events start to play themselves out. Will she attract former Clintonites? No one knows, although "experts" just love to pretend they know, even though they're pretty much full of crap whenever they open their mouths. Will it hurt the Republicans with women? No one knows, but all sorts of people are already acting as if they're experts on this answer, even though they have zero evidence, zero experience and zero idea what it is they're talking about.

That's what makes politics so interesting to follow. It isn't the "who is going to win?" attitude that comes throughout the election season. No, it's the ridiculous mannerisms of people who take politics seriously, even though politics rarely have anything to do with them unless they're really the winners (the people running, the people being paid by those running, or people who will be given a cushy job by those who won...all others are just horse race watchers who are convinced they are getting rich, even though the track doesn't let them put any money on the horses, and if it does, it doesn't allow them to bank any winnings if they by some chance actually call the right horse).

I had someone tell me today that she believes that McCain's choice was a massive blunder because Palin has to answer for some illegal activities while she was governor in Alaska. I asked what those illegal activities were, and she couldn't tell me, but said they had to be important because she heard someone on the news talking about it. Yep, our elections have finally come down to "scandals" that may or may not be scandals but are obviously important because someone mentioned it on the news, but not in enough detail that we might actually remember what the scandals are. God, I love this country.

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Decadent Pizza Hut

There's this recent commercial where Pizza Hut supposedly supplies its food to some upscale restaurant to fool people into believing the food items come from an expensive restaurant. Well, every time I see this commercial I'm frozen at a spot where some woman is eating Mac & Cheese with bacon and says "How decadent" before she discovers it comes from Pizza Hut. Really? Decadent? Mac and Cheese? Yeah, that's why I freeze every time I see this commercial.

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Um, has Michael Moore finally just gone nuts?

It appears that Michael Moore has a solution to what is ailing America. Stop reading. Don't read any books. Any. Instead, spend ALL of your free time getting candidates elected. Yes, he really said this. Now, don't get me wrong; I like Michael Moore, and I still think Bowling for Columbine was a brilliant documentary, but whenever he digs into politics, he starts to turn really stupid. I mean, honestly, reading? Don't read? You can find the article here.

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Don't tell anybody, but I think I've become a Vegan

It's not that I hate meat or anything. I just discovered it's kind of killing me. So, I've started to stock up on mainly Vegan foods. I think they're Vegan. I never really did figure out the difference between vegetarian and vegan, so cut me some slack. Instead of my Philly Cheesesteak for dinner, I had split pea soup, a banana and some grapes. I did some grocery shopping today and bought mainly vegetables and fruit. Couldn't believe how much food has animal products in it, cheese or various types of milk.

So does going Vegan mean I have to become a liberal? And do I have to take up smoking, too, because I use to see nothing but smoking Vegans when I lived in San Francisco? Part of the "allowable" foods was beans, lots of different types of beans. I'm not ready to go there yet. I can't stand beans, and I might just starve first.

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Tropic Thunder is a brilliant movie

I saw this the other day with Kat, and it was a great movie. Honestly. It takes a really critical look at movie stars and their self-centered Narcissism. Up until this year, I really wasn't that much of a Robert Downey, Jr. fan, but I am now. His portrayal of the drunk, self-tortured Iron Man was something I thought was just a wonderful fluke. His character in Tropic Thunder completely steals a movie that was so good that I never would have thought anyone could have stolen it.

The funny thing (well, one of many things) about Tropic Thunder is that there is this whole protest thing going on because Downey's character refers to Ben Stiller's character's previous role as "Simple Jack" by accusing him of having gone "Full Retard". Of course, the mentally-challenged corps have come out in droves to protest this usage, but the joke isn't even on them. The joke has nothing to do with the mentally-challenged, nor does it even make a slight at them by using the word "retard". The insult is waged at actors who play mentally-challenged characters, like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, or Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, or even Sean Penn in Sam I Am (or something close to that). It's actually a brilliant criticism of actors and how they handle such roles. There's a lot of self-directed criticism in this movie that the main characters continue to use to poke fun at their own profession. Some of the ad libs in the movie are brilliant, and are done so well that you'd think it was originally written into a well-written script.

I highly recommend this movie.

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Turns out TV stars don't actually watch TV themselves

The CNN story can be found here.

I remember when I was sending out short stories, and every now and then some magazine I sent a short story to would send me a nasty letter, stating that they have no incentive to publish me if I don't actually subscribe to their particular publication. Some years later, I came to the conclusion that actually subscribing to their publications didn't EVER win me a publishing success, so I decided they could fend for themselves like every other magazine out there. I'm a writer, not a subscriber. And pretty much the ENTIRE writing population tends to feel the same way.

That's kind of what came to mind when I read this article that indicates that TV stars don't actually watch television. I don't mean just their own shows, but ANY television. Supposedly, they're above television, and they don't want to be caught in any circles that might hint they're part of the low brow Americans who would be stupid enough to admit they watch television. This would be more like me stating that not only don't I read a particular magazine, but I don't read at all, because I wouldn't want anyone to think I was stupid enough to be caught reading ANYTHING.

And supposedly, TV stars don't care. They want us to watch their shows, but they don't "have the time" to watch television themselves. There's some kind of communication paradigm here that needs exploitation, but as I'm an unemployed writer these days, I'll have to leave that to the currently being educated folk.

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Missed Connections on Craigslist

One of my recent vices is to read Missed Connections on Craigslist just cause I'm curious who tries to appeal to other people they've never met through a Craigslist ad. If you've never read these things, usually one is titled something like: "You were the hot bag guy at Safeway who smiled as I threw up on you cause I was drunk--w4m--23". That sort of thing.

First off, I used to get kind of depressed cause there are no hot women stating: "Want to meet the hot guy who orders breakfast every day at Carls Jr". Okay, I can live with that. But then as you read more and more of these ads, you start to notice a pattern, and you begin to wonder, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH WOMEN IN THIS CITY? I mean, I'm reading stuff like "Hot unemployed guy missing front teeth...you smiled at me as I was released at the police department--w4m--27". Others are like: "Even though you abused me and put me in hospital, I want you back--w4m--23". Then they go to the absurd: "Hot asian girl eating a bagel at Bagel Stop--Call me cause I think I love you."

Okay, I need sleep. Really.

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Holding pattern means having nothing to do

As most people know, I'm in a holding pattern for Korea, meaning that I am awaiting some paperwork before I can complete my visa paperwork to send to the place where I'll be working in Korea. This wasn't so bad when I had a thesis to write. Or when I had actual things that needed to be done. But I'm in a holding pattern, meaning I have absolutely nothing to do. Nothing. Zip. And looking for things to do is like looking for busy work that no one really wants to do. All of my acquaintances are working with the new Forensics people. I'm in my studio apartment with nothing to do. This leaves more time to think negative thoughts, and that's never helpful. I really hope some positive news comes soon because I don't think I can really wait that much longer.

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Paperwork and red tape really sucks

I'm having a lot of trouble getting past one hurdle of the application process for Korea, and that's the background investigation. Stockton Police Department states they don't actually do it, that such a thing is initiated by employers, and they don't do background investigations for people who request them. Called Lodi Police Department, and I got pretty much the same reaction. So, I'm not really sure what to do here.

At the same time, I ended up having a telephonic interview with Missouri (Truman State University), and that went really well. It doesn't pay anywhere near what I want to even really consider it, but with this red tape situation with Korea, it may actually force me to seriously consider it. They are well aware that money is a concern for me with what they normally offer for a one year, temporary position, so if they end up increasing that amount, it would be hard NOT to keep it a consideration.

But I'm anxious to go to Korea. But being anxious doesn't mean anything if I can't actually finish the paperwork to actually be able to go.

At the moment, I'm still completing the paperwork preparation for Korea (having to drive to San Francisco to get official transcripts from my undergraduate institution...apparently they don't care about the master's degrees when it comes to paperwork). If I can somehow get past the background information part of the application process, my paperwork will be essentially complete. Already did the rest, including passport, passport photos and all that.

Anyway, trying to move forward....

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The US Army and civilian job boards

I know this probably doesn't bother anyone else, but it drives me batty. I'll be reading over some job board, like Monster or Career Builder, and then of the 20 jobs they send me that are of "interest to me", 80 percent of them are Army National Guard jobs. Instead of just placing ONE AD that states the Army National Guard is hiring, they list EVERY FREAKING MILITARY OCCUPATIONAL SPECIALTY IN THE ARMY as an open job, so that these job boards spam the hell out of you with Army National Guard jobs that have the exact same contact information. It makes job boards completely useless. There aren't 30 different businesses hiring in this context; there is ONE government military hiring and stealing 30 spots of ads that disappear on the boards themselves because these recruiters have become experts at product placement. Spam is still spam, even if our government does it. Doesn't really change a thing.

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Star Wars and the Wrong Direction of Storytelling

Star Wars used to be a great franchise that told a great story that caused its fans to really examine and explore the ideas of good and evil. The first three movies (the original three) really took that exploration and exploded in a great way for all of the fans. Sure, good triumphed over evil, but evil was REALLY evil, and you knew it.

Then these three prequels came along that told the story of Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader), and to be honest, other than the moment where he becomes Vader, the three movies are really lame and pretty much destroy the very foundation of the mysticism behind Star Wars. The Force, an ever-present, omnipotent fabric of dimensional existence quickly gave way to a genetic defect (at least that's how they explained the Force with the young Anakin Skywalker..."he's got lots of mytowhoziwhats in his blood, which makes him the greatest potential jedi of all time"). And Anakin was just Luke Skywalker, Jr., except you knew there would be no redemption for this character; he would only have to get worse and more evil as the storyline continued. I had a really hard time "cheering" on the worst hero of science fiction history. I found his brooding, passive-aggressive disposition to want me to learn how to be a jedi just so I could kick his complaining ass.

Now, a new movie is being released as a cartoon, which is supposed to "fill in the gap" called the Clone Wars. I'm sorry, but I don't really feel there's much of a gap here. I don't really care about the Clone Wars. And I really don't care about a series where Anakin Skywalker is to be seen as the "hope" of the Republic. I'm sorry, but Anakin is the death of the Republic; no amount of cartooning is going to make him into the good guy again, no matter what time line they interject this story.

Star Wars actually has a rich, mystical history that needs to be explored, but they keep coming back to this overdone storyline. I don't care anymore about Darth Vader. There is a whole Knights of the Old Republic era that is hinted at in the series, and has been seriously developed in lots of the Star Wars media (not the movies). The birth of the Sith sounds like so much more interesting than brooding action heroes who complain about their girlfriends. Honestly.

When I was doing the old computer game work, there was a project that was started at Lucas Arts that never really saw the dawn of light, but it should have. It was about a rebellious colonel during the Star Wars era (think "Empire Strikes Back" time) that was fighting a mysterious revolution against the empire during this time. There was so much rich information coming from this particular thread, and then it just died away so that we could focus on brooding, complaining young jedi.

I regret that all we have to look forward to is a cartoon movie and a potential television series (cartoons) of the Clone Wars. What a horrible choice to develop. I would love to see something way prior to the whole Star Wars saga (like tens of thousands of years before), or hundreds of years AFTER Return of the Jedi. But instead, we'll get nothing but product placement shows and movies that will try to sell us a cute robot toy or stuffed ewok, or whatever stupid "in" toy that comes from the next kiddie series that sadly fills the gap that doesn't need filled.

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Political scientists just don't seem to get it

It's amazing how many political scientists with Ph.d.s cannot figure out something so simple about politics: Why don't people have the desire to vote?

Jacob Soboroff, executive director of the election reform group Why Tuesday? asks: "If the United States is supposedly the world's most famous democracy, why is our voter participation near the bottom of all countries?"

Let's forgo the obvious "we're not even a democracy" argument and just deal with this on the surface level alone. Maybe being the "world's most famous democracy" doesn't equal "world's most democratic" country. Think about it. Every election people go into the voting booth to vote for people they generally didn't choose in the first place. For president this year, we have Obama and McCain as the two possible choices (yes, third parties are completely irrelevant in this country). I find it quite important to point out that I never trusted McCain, as he's more of a wild card kind of politician who I equate with the Hillary Clintons: People who will say and do whatever is necessary to get to the next rung of power. Obama, well, I could go on for days, but I'll just leave it at the fact that I don't trust the fact that we really don't know anything about how this guy operates. He's really a relative unknown who is pushing forth his "reputation" of change without actually revealing what that change is going to be. Yet, when questioned on specific manners, he answers with solutions that appear to really be pretty much all the same as before. Change is in word alone, not in any particular actions.

Now interject the common voter into this situation, completely leaving out my criticisms of either candidate, and you have people who really didn't have much of a say in who was going to be running for office. They were given a choice of either McCain, Obama or Clinton. That's it. Democracy left the playing field down to three people and then said that in order to be a truly democratic citizen of this US institution, you had to choose from one of the three. You don't have the democratic option of saying: "I don't like any of them." Because if you do choose that option, all of these political scientists then claim that you are either apathetic, confused, not smart enough to make a decision, or too lazy to find out enough information to make an informed decision. Yes, that's what they say. If you don't choose from the names that have been preselected for you, it's really YOUR fault that you don't participate in "democracy".

Now, that's just the presidency. How about all of those other options you can vote for? Senator. Congress representative. Sheriff. Judge. Tax commissioner. Building inspector. I mean, there are tons of different positions for which people are trying to become elected, and for the most part, EVERYONE knows very little about any of these people, and sometimes what the job itself entails. Yet, they'll be on the ballots, and people are "obligated" to vote for one of them. So, they're pretty much left to either try to remember someone's 30 second ad on television or radio, or to recognize a name they might have seen on someone's sign in a yard they drive by to go to work every day. Yes, lots of people who do vote end up making their decision based on name recognition of names they see when driving by a placard indicating someone's candidacy.

Political scientists keep making the error of asking how to get these nonvoters to actually vote. Rarely do they ever ask the question of what might actually cause people to take an interest in politics that's not business as usual. In other words, is not the status quo. Well, if people could somehow believe they are part of the electoral process from the get go, and I don't mean being respondents to the political players who have decided to be the "rulers of the USA" but to actually be able to do some type of grass roots movement that can put non-political entities in power, then maybe they might be interested. But that's never going to happen. Those who are already in power like the fact that they are already in power. They have set up an institutional framework for their power ascension model, and if you do not buy into their model, then you don't get to play. And even if you do, you still might not get to play.

Some political scientists get all upset when they discover American voting is higher in percentage rates for American Idol than it is for a US election. Well, the numbers can be interpreted a number of ways, but even if that were true, what's wrong with that? All of the people voting actually care about the results. They like a certain performer and vote for that particular performer. It's not like someone decided beforehand that of the 20 performers (I'm guessing a random number cause I don't actually watch the show), you can only vote for one of two that they chose beforehand. Instead, you actually get to vote all the way through the whole process. You don't have to wait until Arizona votes for their idol only to discover that before California's vote showed up, half of the idols were already gone. You got to vote the whole time through. For you, this is actually democracy where you get to participate. Granted, you can't really become one of the performers, which would make it true Athenian democracy, but at least you get to participate for the brunt of the process.

You don't get to do that in American politics. Instead, you have to buy into whomever the "show" decides you get to vote for. If this was equated to American Idol, imagine that when it comes time for the final election, you are told that you can only vote for a musician or a singer, and that you're already registered as a musician liker, so you are expected to vote for the musician, even if you like the singer better. That's our democracy. Try to sell people on participating in that.

In the end, people who don't participate realize that it doesn't really matter whether or not they vote. Sure, people can scream and holler that four more years of Bush happened because people who should have come out for Democrats didn't. Well, from what I've heard from the rest of the people running and people in power from both parties, not much would really have changed in the last four years REGARDLESS of which party was elected. The only difference is who would have profiteered from the contracts doled out for those handling the logistics of the war itself. Right now, in fear of sounding less manly when it comes to defense, both sides are pretty much promising a lot of business as usual when it comes to Iraq, yet the Democrats keep saying that voting for McCain is going to give four more years of Bush-like presidential decisions. Honestly, how much different will Democrats be? Different people, same system.

So without taking one side or the other, let's look at the original argument of this post. Why should Joe Schmoe participate in the electoral process? What has happened that makes this person believe that his or her decision will actually result in something that makes this person happy? Or does the end result result in business as usual, except everyone is wearing different hats? In order to change the status quo on voting, it is necessary to convince Joe that a vote will make a difference. And yelling out: "Your vote will make a difference" doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell if Joe doesn't buy the argument.

That's something political scientists need to wrap their heads around, instead of whining about the fact that 40 percent of Americans don't vote. Give them a reason to do so, and they will. Whine about it and continue to whine about it until the republic becomes nothing but a shadow of an authoritarian regime in democratic wrappings.

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Starting to think about tying up loose ends

It looks very much like I'm going to be moving to Korea. Nothing else came through for me, and they definitely are offering me the position. I was told that the contract would be Fedex'd to me in the next few days (or sent by carrier pigeon...who knows), and then I can actually start working on getting the Korean E2 visa paperwork completed.

I'm going in for surgery next week for the shoulder manipulation. We've been kind of waiting a long time for this, but hopefully this will give me a lot more mobility with the arms and make it so it doesn't hurt so much on a constant basis.

Finally received my thesis back to go over one last time. It looks like once I have these fixes completed, it should be ready to send out to the three professors, and then we'll go into defense mode. I was getting really concerned about this because if it didn't happen soon, I realized I was probably going to be leaving for Korea in a little more than a month, so the defense might never come because I just won't be in the country anymore.

Been doing a lot of playing of Tabula Rasa lately. I have to admit that the game is pretty solid, and it's so much more interesting than World of Warcraft. Sure, it has a lot of flaws to it, but it's completely different than everything else that is out there, so it definitely serves to pass the time in a fun way. Plus, the one thing it has that almost NONE of the other games have is a great, solid backstory that weaves itself through the game. Most other games tend to have a backstory that is just that: A story in the background. This story is very much at the front of the game, and as you play the game you find yourself involved in the story line, which is pretty rare. There were some signs of that in Lord of the Rings Online, but most people knew the general story, yet it was pretty well done in how they incorporated the regular folk into an epic story that is really about a few dozen people. Tabula Rasa becomes one of those stories where the individual is more important than a few key players in the story line and that is both welcome and rare.

A negative, however, is a really, REALLY cheesy publicity campaign that is being used by the people who run Tabula Rasa to link Richard Garriott (the guy who designed the game) and his upcoming space tourist flight he is going to be taking. They've decided to integrate the real world space flight Garriott is taking and turned it into one of the cheesiest publicity campaigns of all time. I think the actual campaign claims that RG is going to space to "save humanity" from the evil bane (the creatures attacking in Tabula Rasa), and that somehow they're going to bring a data disk of the DNA of people playing the game. Yeah, really cheesy. I'm kind of embarrassed to be affiliated with the public relations part of a game I'm enjoying so much. The way I figure it: Go to space and have fun because you're a freaking multi-millionaire who lives in a castle in Austin, Texas. Don't pretend you're saving humanity in a computer game you've created, because even though you have a lot of geek cred, there's a point where geek cred stops being an asset and becomes a serious loser liability.

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