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| FROM THE GALLERIES |
Blaster and his cassettes Botch's Collection (2005) |
| I'm A-Twit |
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I've got to stop reading the comments that readers leave on online news stories. It's pointless and frustrating and rarely has any redeeming or constructive value. Whether it be about the Tea Party movement, or abortion laws, or separation of church and state, or police brutality... it doesn't matter. The commenters are most likely going to polarize along predictable conservative/liberal lines, and the conversation (such as it is) will offer little or nothing substantive to the topic. What you will get is lots of insults, name-calling, and tired rhetoric. I'd publish examples, but all you really have to do is go to any news site that allows comments and you can see for yourself. (In my case, it's CNN.com and OregonLive.com)
I guess the two things that bother me the most are the sheer hatred that gets spewed and the lack of any interest in being open-minded and potentially educated on a topic. This is just symptomatic of how polarized the country has been for the last decade or so, of course, but it seems that the anonymity of the internet really brings out the worst in people. For some commenters, you get the sense that they're filled with palpable anger about current affairs, but as they feel impotent to do anything about it in the real world, online commenting at least gives them an audience to bear the brunt of their frustration. Others just seem to have an unswerving agenda to advance and no other platform in which to do so. And of course there are some people who just enjoy being mean and insulting -- a troll, if you will -- and there's no more potent pot to stir than the news.
What the hell is up with the dentist? I mean, who the hell wants to be a dentist. Frankly, I don't get it. Why would you want to stare at this all day?
OK, this should be a straightforward post. Basically, just in case anyone reading this still thinks otherwise, I want to emphasize that American law is not based on the Ten Commandments. The fundamental root of American law is based on liberty, freedom and -- like most the world -- the golden rule of "do unto others as you would have done unto yourself". Not religion. Don't believe me? Let's look at the Ten Commandments:
"I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me." -- Well, it's certainly not a law in America that you have to believe in the Judeo-Christian god. You can believe in Zeus if you want.
I'm an atheist, and a dedicated one. That is to say, I am fully convinced by experience and all the available evidence that religion is a man-made invention, and that all existing religions are factually inaccurate and examples of wish-fulfillment. While this conviction may influence my overall worldview and my feelings towards things such as life, death, sex, reproduction, marriage, government and education, it doesn't really play into my day-to-day life. I mean, I don't actually steal or kill or rape or lie or inflict cruelty on people or animals. See, 'cause I'm a fucking human being, a social animal, and regardless of whether or not one thinks one's consciousness travels to another plane upon death or not, we're all still in the same society, interacting and relying upon one another. In fact, I live by the very practical belief that my life is easier when surrounded by happy people, and therefore I try to increase -- or avoid decreasing -- the happiness of others around me.
What I find so damn funny is the notion that the majority of Americans nonetheless consider the atheist to be one of the absolute worst things a person can be! Check out this chart from a 2007 New York Times article on religion and elections:
It's funny how many of the most vibrant commentary on this site stems not from Transformers, as one might expect, but from socially relavant topics often stemming from one of my RANTS. It's awesome. So when I created that "Agitated" post, I added a new post category: Rant. Then I went back and added that label to many of my previous posts that closely matched that description. Browsing this new collection I see such past favorites as "Fuck You, Tom Cruise", "I Hate Michael Bay's Transformers", and "My Mailbox is Everything; Defeat is Absurd!"
But don't encourage me, because I really love to rant. Dollface has often had to tolerate my fist-shaking tirades against an ignorant world. I appreciate her patience, and I'd feel more sympathy for her except that I just know I'm right, dammit, and the world needs to hear it!
Sometime in the last year or so I started reading The Agitator, a blog by a libertarian journalist named Radley Balko that deals primarily with police misconduct, the drug war, and civil liberties. I find the site extremely compelling because I care a great deal about all of these issues and share Balko's views on ending the drug war, not sacrificing liberty for security, and greater accountability of the police force. I am an anti-authoritarian, and I believe that so long as my actions do not bring harm to others, the government and the police should not be telling me what to do or how to live my life. With all that said, I am nonetheless surprised by just how angry I become when reading about the various injustices Balko brings to my attention.
But the part I want to mention in particular is police misconduct. Let me tell you a little anecdote from my youth. It's about a day in middle school when I was arguing with one of the class bullies that blessed our little institution. For some reason, circumstances were such that no punches could be thrown, so I had an uncommon opportunity to simply argue with him. At one point I asked what he intended to do with his seemingly worthless life. He replied, "I'm going to be a cop, just like my Dad!" It immediately became clear to me that this bully would grow up to become a complete asshole of a cop, reveling in the sanctioned authority he would wield over everyone else. I imagined his father -- who was doubtlessly also a bully, because bullies are typically bullied into existence by their bully fathers -- this father was probably already one of those asshole power-trip cops. After all, what decent cop who truly believed his duty was to protect and serve would raise such a mean-spirited, petty and unkind son? This was the moment when I realized that not all police officers are epitomized by goodwill toward their fellow man.
Really. Stop having so many babies. Let me explain...
As a web developer, I have acquired a great respect for efficiency, economy, and long-term planning. Most applications may have few or only one real purpose or goal behind its design, but this goal is probably accomplished by lots of tiny tasks and functions all working toward accomplishing the user's objective as swiftly and intuitively as possible. Good code is elegant and clean. If your code is easy to read and well-documented, then another developer who is unfamiliar with the code -- or yourself after enough time has transpired that you've forgotten what you did -- can easily pick it up and parse what it does and how to modify or build upon it. If the same task is performed in multiple places, instead of duplicating your code, you ideally should make only one version and have those multiple instances reference and share it. This is not tech snobbishness or some contest of minimalism; these are proven methods for minimizing bugs (errors) and development time in the long-term.
This appreciation of economical, forward-thinking design guides my life. I have blogged before about how this love of efficiency has recently made me become more of a conservationist. (Plastic is very inefficient in the long-term, for instance.) Thus it should come as no surprise that I was very curious about the topics discussed in The World Without Us, a non-fiction book by Alan Weisman. The book is a thought experiment about what would happen to the world if humanity suddenly vanished, but in exploring this topic it necessarily details at length what changes mankind has already wrought upon the world. If you've guessed that the vast majority of these changes are not very good... well, you'd be right.
A few posts ago I talked about my feelings regarding 9/11 and the current state of America (see "My 9/11 Rant"). The main thrust of the post was urging readers to be more educated and open-minded about their political views, to question the media sound bytes and think critically. I did espouse some traditionally liberal views (like universal health care), but I also advocated some conversative ones (less government intervention in the private sector), as well as many libertarian ones (time to end the war on drugs).
Most of the comments were supportive, but there was one that I found both aggravating and hilarious:
You know what? Fuck you, eBay. Yeah, that's right. I'm about done with you.
I was one of your biggest fans. An early adopter. I've been on eBay so long that my handle is 'botch'; not 'botch666' or 'botch_the_crab', just first-come-first-serve 'botch'. And until very recently, I had a 100% feedback rating, thank you very much.
I think you started to suck when too many sellers were withholding their feedback until you left yours, a blackmail, essentially, to insure that you didn't besmirch their rating. Since eBay takes no active hand in policing the feedback system, the old schoolyard "if you tell on me I'll tell on you" thing actually works, and accusation equals guilt.
9/11 didn't really affect me emotionally, I admit. Even though I was actually living in New York City when it happened, and the lives of my wife and my friends were directly impacted, I never had a real personal response. No one I knew died, and loss of life in general does not affect me emotionally, which is a terrible thing to say, but it's true. People are killed, both individually and in large numbers every single day. Armed conflict, suicide bombers, child murderers, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. None of these faceless deaths affect me emotionally, and I would wager that few to none of them affect you as well.
Should I have felt 9/11 more because my hometown was affected? Because they were innocent? Because of the quantity of death? Because my wife watched the towers fall with her own eyes? I can't find any particular reason to mourn the victims of 9/11 more than any other tragic, horrible death that happens all the time, every day. To me it was just one more fucked-up evil in the world, and it's sad and I wish it hadn't happened, but I just can't muster an emotional connection.
All that said, the aftermath of 9/11 has affected me more than the event itself, in particular my attitude toward America and its politics and policies. In the name of combating terrorism, our government has: preemptively invaded another country for the sake of regime change; systematically eroded our personal freedoms; institutionalized warrantless surveillance; propagandized the media; sank into trillions of dollars of debt; eroded our prestigious standing abroad; fueled conservative religious fundamentalism; and politicized 9/11 itself. This is both Republicans and Democrats, by the way; in our two-party system, you need two to tango.
Throughout most of my life, I have been very untouched by environmental concerns. See, if you don't have any interest in children, and you believe that your involvement with the world ends with your death, then what is the point of conservationism? Disposable planet for me! I've never been a nature buff, either — I dislike being around trees and bugs and sticky wet unsexy things — so what's my incentive to live green? Virtually none, from that perspective.
However, I have of late become something of the amateur environmentalist. I recycle avidly. I bought some reusable cloth bags for grocery shopping, and I save plastic bags to return and recycle there when possible. When things are broken, I try to fix them instead of re-purchasing them. Generally, I prefer buying second-hand items to new, such as CDs and books. Whenever possible I try to sell unwanted things (comic books, cat water fountains, memory cards) either on eBay or to a local store, even if I know it won't make very much money, because I'd rather it continue to be used by someone than go straight to the landfill.
I have become one of those environmental pussies. But why?
Having grown up in the suburbs, I didn't really experience street-corner panhandling until I went to college in the District of Columbia. I had what I believe is for city newcomers a typical progression in my response:
The design of the robots in the last movie was, in my opinion, hideous. They were unrecognizable as Transformers (you know, such as they have been for over 20 years), but even apart from the drastic non-traditionalism, they were just ugly, confusing to look at, horribly derivative of other alien cinema designs, and did I mention ugly? And stupid.
According to Michael Bay, the rationale was thus: "I just didn't want to make the boxy characters. It's boring and it would look fake. By adding more doo-dads and stuff on the robots, more car parts, you can just make it more real." There are so many reasons this is just wrong. Updated, modern designs of the classic characters have been done successfully in recent toys, comics and even amateur digital animation. And all of them look better than the visual crap that was featured in the 2007 flick.
Admittedly, it's been about 10 years since I was driving on a regular basis, and that was back in the somewhat rural suburbs of Philadelphia. It might be the new environment, it might be a change in the times, but tell me: Were there always this many asshole drivers on the road?
Perhaps it's a problem of perception. While you may note the occasional deferential driver who courteously allows others to merge in front of them, or make the difficult left turn first, you are likely to disregard all the "average" good drivers. One might even argue that a good driver is one of whom you have no reason to take notice. But then there's the bad drivers. And I just can't stop dwelling on them.
I think we can all agree that the music industry is completely fucked-up these days. Many people are downloading all of their music for free off the internet, which most agree does not help the artist if they are relying on album sales to earn a living (not for their income, mind you, but just for their continued value to their record company masters). In retaliation to online music file-sharing, the major record labels (via the RIAA) have responded by treating all potential customers as potential criminals. Their reactionary tactics include suing people they suspect of illegal downloading, often with little or no evidence, often using the extortioner's "it will be cheaper for you to settle than fight us" approach. They've also promoted copy-protection (DRM) on legally purchased digital music and CDs, with effects ranging from limiting what you can do with your legal purchase to installing damaging software in your computer. Underlining all of this is the fact that many people feel that mainstream music sucks these days and/or feel that CDs are too expensive [link].
I'd like to offer some thoughts on this broad topic. Hopefully it will avoid the semblance of an unfocused rant.
The other day I stopped by the desk of a co-worker, and upon mentioning the "baby calendar" I had spied near her desk, it was confirmed that she was, indeed, pregnant with child. We chatted about the topic of pregnancy and children here and there, and at some point I mentioned that my wife and I, for our own part, were dead-set on never having children.
When I got to this point in relating the anecdote to my beautiful bride, she already knew what was coming next. My co-worker said something to the effect of, "Never? Oh, well, maybe you'll change your mind in a few years." This is the type of response that we get from 90% of you "breeders" out there, and I gotta say, we are getting pretty fucking sick of hearing it.
You know what? Fuck you, Tom Cruise. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about for some reason when I woke up this morning. Fuck you.
Do you always have to play "the best whatever" in your movies? Best fighter pilot. Best pool player. Best bartender. Best race car driver. Best Viet Nam veteran. Best vampire. Best lawyer. Best boxer (best immigrant). Best spy. Best sports agent. Best gaijin samurai (hah!). Best future cop. And now I gotta see your sorry-ass Scientology people in the subway every day trying to get people to buy books and sign over power of attorney to their cult? Fuck you, Tom Cruise. Most of your movies suck.
This is the cookie I love. Linden's Butter Crunch Cookies, three to a pack. They are delicious. I got hooked on them back when I was working at Cablevision. They were in the vending machine for 65 cents. When you're not really hungry in the morning, but you want a little something to tide you over until lunchtime, these cookies are a tasty and inexpensive choice. Yum!
This is the "gourmet" deli on the corner of my block at work, Village 38. Good sandwiches, good grill. The staff grows increasingly less polite with each breakfast and lunch, but they're not flat-out rude. My main complaint is that they are very pricey.
One of my former NYC bands, The Invincible Doctor Psyclops Invasion, a cinematic spy-rock outfit, is having a reunion show in August as part of a going-away party for the drummer and founder, my good friend Chris Carroll. I decided to take the opportunity to give a final update and face-lift to the band's website, including making both our two lo-fi albums available for listening. The site also lets you send encrypted emails to people and there's a little DHTML puzzle. I'm really fond of it, and the music as well.
Additionally, since it was so lame before, I updated the "Botch's Bands" page on this site to Botch Makes Music and showcased selections from the four lo-fi albums I've recorded during my time in NYC. I'm in the process of putting all these albums up on CDBaby, and several of them on some of the digital download sites. I'll let you know. (Start the hype!)
In fact, I just watched the teaser trailer for the upcoming Transformers movie. It doesn't matter, though. None of it matters. I will tell you what I have told every person who has asked me what I think about the upcoming movie:
It is going to suck so fucking much. Why? Two words: Michael Bay. And now follows the rant...
Now, I'm not what most people would consider an animal-lover. Aside from cats, I dislike most domestic animals (in fact, I loathe dogs). I do not coo and gush when I see birdies, squirrels, deer or bunnies. I avoid natural bodies of water because the idea of swimming amidst other living things is repellent to me. Oh, and I'm willing to eat any animal you put in front of me.
All that said, I have a great respect for all creatures of the Earth, from the cockroach to the motherfucking blue whale. Life is fascinating in its adaptability and diversity. From chemosynthetic ecosystems to penguins on the march, our world's biodiversity serves to educate, enhance and enthrall us. That's why I love documentaries like Blue Planet, Life of Mammals and Life of Birds.
Grocery store adverts. Credit card offers. Telephone company postcard solicitations. Have you ever wondered why there's no easy way to stop junk mail? Snail mail, that is, unsolicited advertisements and solicitations printed on actual paper and stuffed into your mailbox. Unsolicited email advertisements — a.k.a. "spam" — is almost universally despised by both recipients and couriers, and there is a whole industry devoted to the task of halting its transmission and punishing the senders. But no such machine is in the works for postal mail. Why, I wondered?
I wanted to cut down on the amount of junk mail I was getting in my mailbox. They're wasting money and trees sending me solicitations to which I will never respond, if only as a matter of principle. So I looked into it. And I discovered why the post office doesn't really have a mechanism in place for this. The answer is so obvious, I felt like an idiot for not having realized it sooner.
So, it finally happened. Just having left work, I entered the 42nd Street Port Authority subway station. Before entering the turnstiles, a police officer stops me and states, "Excuse me, sir. If you'd step over here, we'd like to search your bag." And he gestures to a nearby table where another officer stands ready.
If you're not aware of this situation, the City of New York decided last year to have the police conduct random bag searches of MTA riders prior to entering the subways and other mass transit systems. In our fearful post-9/11 world, it is thought that these random bag searches provide an extra measure of security for New York City. Personally... I think it's worthless bullshit.
What's up with people who litter? I mean... it's not hard to wait that extra five seconds and deposit your trash in a designated receptacle. Especially in New York City: there's a trash can on every corner. Yet I see people toss stuff on the ground all the time. Candy bar and gum wrappers, empty chip bags, lottery tickets, newspapers, sales flyers, cigarette wrappers, napkins... the list goes on. Hell, people throw their shit on the subway tracks all the time, even though there are trash cans everywhere on the platforms, even though rail trash causes tunnel fires (which in turn cause delays), even though it contributes to the fucking rat problem. I just don't get it!
Do people consciously think: "Fuck it, I'm going to toss this now, I ain't waiting for no trash can." Or does it never even occur to them, a truly thoughtless thing? I'm sure if you confronted most litterers about it, they would acknowledge that they simply don't care, perhaps adding that you should fuck off. Maybe a small majority would become embarrassed, possibly even taking a moment to rectify their carelessness.
I love pizza. Love it love it love it. Pizza and sushi are my two favorite foods. I once put sashimi on pizza and it was awesome, but that's another story. This post is about pizza. Living in New York City, you would think I would be in pizza heaven, right? If you go to newyork.citysearch.com and search for "pizza," you get 2,747 results. But there's a problem: almost all of the pizza in New York fucking sucks.
I mean really sucks. I have explored dozens of blocks in all directions from my Port Authority workplace and found mostly shitty pizza, maybe one passable joint. Once I actually returned the slice. I took a couple bites, went back to the counter and handed it over. "I'm not going to finish this," I said. "There's no sauce on it, really. It's just not good." They stared at me blankly as I walked out, my pizza craving unfulfilled.
I Hate: The holiday music blared in every store, starting even before Thanksgiving and continuing through the last shopping day, usually some shit-awful modern rendition that features the tasteless vocal acrobatics of the artist but has all the soul of a can opener.
I Hate: Gift-giving as an obligatory social priority, even among people to whom you never speak except on holidays; also, token presents or gift certificates given in lieu of something personal or relevant simply because the social priority to bestow a gift takes precedence over the genuine desire to give a personally-relevant item.
Recently, a female friend of mine who lives in the low-income Northern section of the District of Columbia was rather viciously attacked in public by a large man who we shall summarize as being a negative but glaring example of urban youth culture. She and her girlfriend first encountered the individual when he passed them on the street and intoned to the afore-mentioned girlfriend something to the effect of "I wanna stick my cock in your pussy." My friend angrily explained that that kind of unsolicited comment was unacceptable, in response to which this man became agitated and aggressive. To make a long story short, the man — who was apparently at least six feet tall and over 200 lbs. — beat my friend savagely on the street, fracturing her jaw and leaving her with a concussion. The icing on this cake is that while this beating occurred, a large group of youths stood around and egged him on with shouts of "Yeah! Beat that white bitch down!"
Now, my first reaction when I heard this tale (apart from shock) was to utter, "Man, I hate urban youth culture." Seriously. I quote myself verbatim. Shortly thereafter, I decided to examine what exactly I meant by this. I'm not a discriminatory person. I'm pretty fucking left-wing, actually. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I meant exactly what I said. Regardless of race, age or manner of dress, I really hate urban youth culture. But let me tell you why...
I am 30 years old, and I am pleased to say that it was only in the last few years that I began to see my friends start getting hitched. Many people, often from rural upbringings, have told me how most of their friends and acquaintances had gotten married and/or started pumping out kids shortly after high school (if not sooner). I was glad that my social group was more restrained, valuing things like education and independence over familial urges.
Now, about a decade after high school and college, many have paired up and gotten hitched, for better or for worse. Even I have broken an age-old promise to myself about matrimony and will be marrying my lovely mistress before month's end. I have learned that marriage is not the enemy here.
