99 Percent

While watching a superhero cartoon the other evening - because I’m over thirty and married, I can do any childish thing I want without feeling ridiculous - I had a bizarre epiphany strike me during a climactic showdown between the heroes and the villain.  This being, called Graviton (dear lord, the people at Marvel really did run out of creative names at some point), had absolute control over gravity - one of the four basic forces of the universe.  One of the heroes calls out to Graviton, saying that such immense power could have been used to benefit all mankind.  It’s the stock moment in so many superhero stories, but at that time a voice in my head cried out, “Bullshit!”
Why?  Because if I was in that situation, where I suddenly found that I could control one of the fundamental laws of physics with my mind, I would have already destroyed my fifth orphanage by the time the hero had even posed the question.  I know that you’re now thinking that I’m a horrible person who should be locked away forever, but I must protest your judgemental attitude.  I am not a horrible person, but at the point I am given god-like powers I would cease to even be a person.  Does that mean I would start sprouting tentacles like some Lovecraftian horror?  Not necessarily, but at that point I would have more in common with Cthulhu than the average joe.
As human beings, we have limitations.  There is only so much we can do to affect changes in reality, but we really are brilliant at going right up to the edges of those limitations and pulling off some fantastic changes.  But should I somehow gain awesome cosmic powers, there would no longer be any limitations to my behavior.  As a result, I would feel a sense of detachment from the entire species.  Anything I could dream of would be possible, so why should I not do it?  Morality would be tossed to the wayside and orphanage-flinging would commence.  The old adage that power corrupts is not as accurate as saying that power dehumanizes the powerful.
Thankfully, there are no laboratory accidents doling out awesome powers, mostly chemical burns and singed eyebrows.  The closest thing we have to that are trust funds and the stock market.  I have had a second epiphany, after the supervillain one.  What I have described, a person completely detached from humanity, seems to also work terribly well for many of the super wealthy.  It’s the only explanation I can find for the callous behavior of so many CEO’s.  They have this vast wealth, which frees them from so many of the limitations imposed on nearly every other human being on this planet.  They feel justified in playing with the lives of ordinary people, all in the name of the shareholders.  They destroy people’s livelihoods, trap individuals in debt, and treat good health as a commodity instead of a necessity.
The more I think about it, the more I realize that we are living in a world with real supervillains.  But this isn’t a time for superheroes.  This is not a struggle that will be won by people in capes and tights.  It won’t be one individual leading the way, taking the fight all on their own.  We do not need such a powerful individual.  It’s time that we realize that we are enough for the challenge.  All of us, together.  

We are individually limited.  We do not have the wealth to confront them financially, because that is their domain.  The oligarchs of our age built that arena.  No one of us can really stand against that wealth and power, but all of us together can.

America has become the wonderland of the Objectivist, Ayn Rand’s “Utopian” dream.  The lower class in this country is responsible for its own problems for having the temerity to be born poor.  On the bright side, this system is not sustainable, as shown by the recent financial crisis.  The challenge for the rest of us it to keep this country and this world from slipping into chaos when the system does collapse under its own largess.  

Thoughts on Twitter

I despise Twitter.  There is no section of that website that does not fill me with an immense loathing of all humanity.  And I like humanity!  I really do!  I think we’re a fantastic species, having accomplished a great deal in our short time on this planet and capable of so much more.  We went from from discovering fire to sending men to the moon in less than 100,000 years, which is brilliant for a species that spends most of its time trying to destroy itself.  But Twitter represents the absolute nadir of technology, and, by association, human development.  I now spend days dreaming that any number of post-apocalyptic scenarios will occur in my lifetime in the hope that Twitter will finally be destroyed.  In other words, I am actively hoping for the destruction of civilization as we know it just to stop another “Tweet” from ever going out.
Why the hatred?  Why the vitriol?  Two reasons, the first being that I love language.  But what’s that you say?  Twitter is language?  It is communication?  My only response to that, alien voice in my head, is that you should keep quiet lest I beat you down with the unabridged OED.  Every “Tweet” - and I continue to use the quotation marks because I refuse to adopt such an idiotic term as part of my own vocabulary, apart from answering the question, “What sound does a bird make?” - is nothing more than a viral sound byte.  It is a random thought, restricted to 140 characters.  Yes, it is communication, but it is communication devoid of any real meaning.  What thought can possibly be encapsulated in such a limited amount of space?  I’ve tried reading some Twitter profiles, and I cannot make any sense of it.  There is no context for about seventy-five percent of what is on there.  There is only one sort of communication that makes a shred of sense on the page, and it is the only form of communication that benefits from short, snappy messages lacking context or complex thought - advertising.  It is nothing but a marketing tool, an attempt by individual humans to sell the world on their own value.
That brings me to my second reason: I love humanity.  I said it before, but I need to reinforce that message.  I truly care about all humans, even the ones I don’t particularly like.  And it pains me to see individuals use such a service to transform their lives into some sort of commodity that must be advertised in order for it to have any worth.  Every life already has worth.  Every one of us is a vast array of thoughts and emotions, constantly shifting as time moves on.  Twitter debases the human experience.  Maybe I’m reading too much into the topic, and perhaps the site is only a bit of harmless fun.  Or maybe I’m just another cynic, and my own voice doesn’t even deserve to be heard on the topic.

In Praise of the Almighty Sarlacc

The single greatest moment for me in the Star Wars trilogy is the Sarlacc Pit sequence in Return of the Jedi.  I know for most people it’s the lightsaber fight from Empire or the trench run from New Hope, and that many consider Jedi to be the weakest of the films, but there is one thing all of these people fail to take into account: people are being fed to giant monster in the desert.  There was no greater thrill in my childhood than when that scene came on, which may be indicative of far greater psychological problems that I would rather not get into at the moment.  It’s a massive, gaping maw at the bottom of a pit where people fall in and God knows what happens to them after that.  All you know for certain is that they are getting eaten.  I still chuckle when Klaatu, Barada and Nikto get chucked into the thing (and yes, I know the names of the characters and had the action figures when I was a kid).  There are complaints about Boba Fett dying such an ignominious death as he is accidentally launched into the Great Pit of Carkoon, but to me that serves as the potent reminder that no matter how bad-ass you are, there is always something in nature that just doesn’t give a damn.

Even after seeing the behind-the-scenes footage of how they made that sequence  didn’t take away any of the magic for me. It actually added a whole new level, as now I could either enjoy it as a scene of monster mayhem or take heart in the fact that a talented group of stuntmen were having the time of their life jumping down the gullet of a foam rubber atrocity.  

And then, George Lucas had to try and ruin it for me.  Evidently, someone showed him a definition of the term vagina dentata and his tiny brain couldn’t stand the idea of anyone possibly interpreting the Sarlacc as a sexual metaphor.  So, being the genius that he is, he decided to give the Sarlacc a mouth within a mouth, a little beak that for all intents and purposes could be seen as either a penis or a clitoris.  But that aside, the idea of giving this thing a mouth ruins the mystique.  This is supposed to be an otherworldly being that is unfathomable to us, a truly alien creature that’s true intent is unknowable.  Giving it a mouth (within a mouth, mind you) just makes it look like a generic, hungry creature.  The whole idea of keeping most of the monster out of side adds to the horror of what might be lurking below the sand.  In the original scene, all you know is this thing has tentacles and a mouth.  It has no personality to speak of, and that just makes it more interesting.

The good thing for me is that the damage George Lucas did to the film will never really affect me.  I know what the Sarlacc is supposed to look like and in my imagination and memory, it still satisfies the bizarre part of me that enjoys scenes of people being fed to monsters.  And I can always enjoy my second favorite sequence, the Rancor Pit, in it’s original glory.  

I really should get some sort of professional help for this monster obsession.

An Angry Letter from Me to the Anti-Vaccine Activists

Hello Anti-Vaccine Crowd,

I’ll admit it, right off the bat, that I’m largely writing this letter as a form of experiment.  I’m testing the hypothesis that a human being can have their head jammed so far up their own ass that the person is then able to actually read this letter.  If this is illegible, it simply means that your head is lodged somewhere around the diaphragm.   If you can read this, congratulations!  You may very well be classified as the first living example of a Klein bottle.

Now, I realize that a lot of those terms might seem confusing to you.  Words such as “hypothesis” and “experiment” have probably never come up in your lives.  Don’t be frightened or confused (which do seem to be your normal states) – these are simply terms used in science.  That thing you tend to ignore in favor of your moral indignation and panic.  But don’t worry; there are literally thousands of people who are familiar with this term.  These are the people who have worked for much of their adult lives on the vaccines that have extended human life expectancy by a good thirty years.

Right now, I can tell that you are frothing at the mouth, ready to pounce on “all those so-called scientists” who, in your mind, are nothing more than corporate shills, trying to line their pockets at the expense of your precious child’s health.  And normally, I am pretty skeptical myself of pharmaceutical companies and big business in general.  However, this is one instance in which these scientists and businesses are doing the right thing.  Due to the efforts of the medical community, many diseases that once ran rampant in American society are now incredibly rare.  Polio is on the verge of being wiped out.  Please note the use of the word “verge.”  All of that good work can be undone pretty quickly if kids aren’t getting vaccinated.

Of course the big bogey man in this argument is autism.  That’s an easy fear to allay, if you are capable of critical thinking.  There is no causal link between autism and vaccines. It’s been tested and retested and retested.  Denmark conducted the most thorough examination of autism and vaccines and found no significant difference in the occurrence of autism in populations that were vaccinated and those that were not.  Scientists still have no clue what the real cause of autism is, but the reason for the massive increase in diagnoses is due to improved techniques for recognizing the condition.  A vaccine is very, very unlikely to alter the neurological system of a child.  Meningitis, on the other hand, could completely alter the mental capacity of a child, if the child survives.

I appreciate your right to decide what is best for your child, but what you’re doing is jeopardizing the lives of a lot of other children instead.  To protect the population from infectious disease requires widespread vaccination.  By refusing to have your children vaccinated because of pseudo-science, you are jeopardizing more than just your child.

Thoughts from an American Doctor Who Fan

Being a Doctor Who fan places you on the bottom of the geek pecking order in America.  In a collection of quirky misfits, you suddenly become the quirkiest of the lot.  It doesn’t help that many of us were more or less inducted into fandom in a way reminiscent of a cult.  Some people came across it late on Saturday nights while watching PBS.  Others were raised up on it by their parents, already dedicated converts who wanted to get their kids on the right track to sci-fi righteousness.  Then there was my path into this bizarre world of Daleks and Autons. 

I was always a geek.  I had been ever since I uttered my first word, which was “Batman.”  All through my childhood, I was pleasantly dragged into the realm of science fiction and fantasy by my older brother. Roleplaying games, Nintendo and comic books made up the majority of my social activities.  After college, I was working at a bookstore, like many others who foolishly chose to major in English without the benefit of a trust fund to see us through to a doctorate and tenure.  There were three other guys at the store I tended to hang out with and complain about the customers.  But every so often they would start talking about the Doctor.  I was lost.  My entire exposure to Doctor Who at that point had been a themed pinball machine and a strange collection of toys I saw at GenCon.  These guys would go on about the mythos of the show, bringing up favorite episodes.  And eventually, I had to ask what the hell they were talking about.  And, like the drug dealers they were, they were only too happy to hook me up with a sample. 

Two of the guys, Andy and Pat, invited me to join in on a viewing of Terror of the Autons (yes, my first Doctor was John Pertwee, and I still love the Venusian Aikido and I still try to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow).  We gathered in Pat’s living rooms, along with his girlfriend, and by the time the DVD was finished, I had become a faithful convert.  I joined in on the conversations about regenerations and sonic screwdrivers.  I sat in basements watching bootlegs.  And I was one very happy monkey the day I learned the show was coming back with a new Ninth Doctor in 2005.  By then, I had left the bookstore in Milwaukee for a newsroom in DC, and still had coworkers I could chat with about the show.

But I found myself in a rather odd position.  In social gatherings of a geeky nature, I found myself mostly isolated from the conversation, as everyone else wanted to talk about Star Wars and Star Trek.  Occasionally, there might be a remark about the show, some people knew about it, but no one around had the same passion for it that I did.  It was never their main interest in the universe of sci fi and fantasy, just another satellite orbiting the core planet of Star Wars/Trek.  I was the outcast among the outcasts.

And to be quite frank, it can stay that way.  That’s because I’ve realized something about Doctor Who that, for me, makes it superior to the more mainstream obsessions of American sci-fi fans.  Star Wars had three movies, three horrendous attempts at expanding the films, and a large number of books that are really necessary to keep adding to the story, and yet those books are an absolute muddle of conflicting ideas.  Star Trek had to be rebooted with a new cast as The Next Generation, then again as Deep Space Nine (which, for my money, is the pinnacle of the franchise), then again as Voyager, then again as Enterprise.  Even the films had to be rebooted, until finally they’ve been reborn as a lens flare-laden piece of shit directed by the biggest hack in Hollywood, J.J. Abrams.  True, all of those stories take place in the same universe, but there is no real continuity except when it is unnaturally shoehorned in.  Both series had to do complete overhauls in order to stay relevant (and unfortunately, in the case of Star Wars, those overhauls have almost destroyed the love of that universe that many have held).  But Doctor Who is a constant, never needing a reboot because it has always been about change.  It is a simple story of a man in a blue box who can go anywhere in time and space, and the few people in the universe who have the good (and sometimes horrifically bad) fortune to go along with him.  Its narrative is as boundless as the human experience.  

Think Different - Just Like Steve Jobs Tells You To

The New York Times referred to Steve Jobs as this generation’s Thomas Edison.  I have no problem with this comparison for the sole reason that I have as much contempt, if not more, for Edison as I do Jobs.  Edison was a patent thief who ruthlessly crushed all competition (sometimes using physical violence) and succeeded by being an all-around asshole and a marketing genius.  And that is also all that Steve Jobs is: a marketing genius.  But the announcement of his resignation from Apple has some people reacting as thought they just found out Christ was going to be crucified again.

Let’s review something here: marketing is simply the science of convincing someone to buy something and, possibly, at the same time convincing that same someone that a similar product offered by a competitor is not as good.  That’s it.  That is the entirety of Steve Jobs’ career.  He made expensive computers and convinced a large number of people to buy them.  That is not an earth-shattering achievement.  He has not done anything that really betters mankind, changes the world, or fixes any of the major problems we face as a species.  He is just a man who made a shit load of money.

It really strikes me as a symptom of the culture.  People seem to heap praise upon those who earn an ungodly amount of money.  Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett – all of them are revered by a large number of people because they were able to become rich.  As if that is the only indicator of success in life.  Never mind the fact that numerous artists, writers, activists, scientists, and other influential people died without a penny to their name, but made a lasting impact.  People who truly changed the world through ideas, altering the way others think and shaping society for the better.  Instead, this country seems to have become so jaded that all anyone can care about is money and how to make more of it.

True, people like Buffett and Gates try to do some charity work with their money, but it seems to me that a great many of the causes they work for would be better addressed if there wasn’t such a massive gap in income between the incredibly wealthy and everyone else.  But Steve Jobs doesn’t even do that.  He actually shut down Apple’s charitable giving when he came back to the company.

In the end, Jobs has sold a lot of luxury items and made countless people around the world desire those items.  And even more so, he has sold the idea that those people were being different by buying those products – different just like everyone else buying them.  The man is not a hero or a role model.  He’s a businessmen, and that is all.

A Dinner Invitation

Dear Col. Gadhafi,

I was wondering if you would be interested in coming over to our house for dinner tomorrow night?  And this is simply a dinner invitation, and not an attempt to lure you into our house so my wife and I can collect the bounty currently on your head.  I have full confidence that you will be able to overcome the multitudes of angry citizens who have completely overrun Tripoli and sent you into hiding, and I just thought you might like to have a nice dinner to relax and recharge your batteries before you gather up your hundred or so loyalists and overcome all odds by testicular fortitude alone.

When you come in, make sure to walk on the palm fronds we have laid out in the living room for you as a traditional sign of greeting in our home.  When you get to the couch, we’ll have a cup of tea ready for you.  Never mind if it tastes a bit different – we found a rare variety of orange pekoe that has a distinct taste.  Make sure you drink all of it.  And please do not look down, because you will definitely not see a diminutive man hidden in a small space under your seat attempting to jab a syringe full of chloral hydrate into your posterior tibial vein.

We simply want you to come and enjoy our hospitality.  Put away those thoughts that quite a few people would love to hand you over to the rebels for the $1.6 million dollars being offered.  We certainly won’t have a burlap sack in the closet and a black cargo van waiting out back with the engine running. 

Yours truly,

Adam