Rousseau and Me

I learned something very exciting last night. I have readers beyond my parents. That is ubercool and energizes me to the point that I want to post more.

After I got over this initial rush of emotions, I became more reflective though. In Literature, we read excerpts from Rousseau's Confessions last week. In my reading journal that week, I spent maybe a third of its fifteen hundred words soap boxing on how arrogant Rousseau was and how much I hated him. Now I ask myself, am I all that different? I'm exposing myself in much the same way. I don't talk about myself as often as he does (in fairness, Confessions is basically a memoir), but I certainly have no problem with announcing my opinions to all who might stumble upon this.

I've spent some time thinking about this because I think it deserves some serious consideration and here's what I arrived at. I'm not like Rousseau. Confessions was written near the end of his life, and he was firm in his ideas. Me, despite flaunting my opinions, I'm sure of very little. If you try, you may very well be able to change my beliefs on more than a few topics. Spice of Life is more like my attempt to learn about myself, discover what I believe and build up a foundation for these beliefs should they be challenged.

Writing these same things in a private place would have the same affect, but I wonder if that, in its own way, wouldn't be more arrogant. Here, I open myself up to and invite criticism. If I kept these thoughts hidden in a journal in a drawer, they wouldn't be contended. On a more practical note though, as I mentioned before, simply knowing people read this causes me to write more. I would certainly less productive if these writings were to be kept secret. Yet another consideration is that I may not be willing to express my opinions on every topic, knowing they exist in this public sphere. Fear of people turning against me would limit my full expression. This could turn into a positive though. It is my belief that I shouldn't be ashamed of anything I do. If I do something, I ought to be willing to admit to it. I readily admit that I don't do this as much as I should in my daily life, but writing here is a good starting point.

Everything Bad is Good For You

I don't remember the exact circumstances of how I first came across this book, but the cultural web magazine Slate played an important role. The underlying premise of this book by Steven Johnson is that major elements of pop culture which routinely get ragged on like hyper violent video games and sex saturated and morally ambiguous television series are actually good for the public in that they challenge us and increase problem solving skills and social networking abilities. Anyway, Johnson writes or did write for Slate and someother contributor called him on this last year, posting a refutation of the points he made. Well, someone decided that it'd be great to have a more formal debate between the two, and they traded some e-mails which were later posted on the website. Let me point out that this event alone excites me, that two people could openly and reasonably debate each other without resorting to sneaky tactics, ultimately allowing the readers decide the better of the positions.

Enough of what isn't my opinion. I do suggest that people read this book if only for the ideas it proposes. They're outside mainstream thought and are well supported. Personally, I didn't find it worth buying, but it's certainly worth a trip to the library or a generous friend's house. Johnson divides his book into two parts, the first examining how elements of pop culture including video games, television, movies, and emerging technologies are benefiting the masses while the second investigates the first part's contribution to the Flynn Effect, the finding that the IQ of the regular person has increased over time, and why this has all occurred.

After finishing Everything Bad is Good for You, I find myself agreeing with the benefits Johnson finds in video games. He finds great benefit in the processes (which is where he finds the greatest contributions to our minds from pop culture rather than content) of learning the rules of virtual worlds and needing to utilize the skills of probing (a form of the scientific method) and telescoping (a method of finding order). One thing that confuses me about this chapter is his ideas on why we play video games. He suggests we play because the rewards are clear and immediate. We can beat a boss and get satisfaction from that in Mario, but life is much more difficult, ambiguity ruling our actions and their consequences. Does Johnson suggest this is a good thing or merely offer it as an explanation? I can't remember. I guess I could check, but I'll instead use this as a hook for you to check out the book. Find your own bleeding answers! Or I'm just lazy. Find your own answer to that too!

On to the television chapter. My respect for Johnson is at its highest here as he gives a fair presentation of his beliefs, comparing like shows (Hill Street Blues to West Wing and Starsky and Hutch to Survivor, the highbrow to the highbrow and the lowbrow to the lowbrow). Still, this is where I raise the greatest objections. Again, Johnson places great importance on the processes involved in this entertainment, focusing here on the complexity of the characters and plot. He claims that we as an audience are forced to work harder to understand what's going on in series like 24 and West Wing as references are made to things never shown on screen and passing references have integral importance to some of the plot lines. From this point, Johnson asserts he learn to better understand social networks in our daily lives. I'm not ready to fully contest the truth of learning to learn about social networks from television series, but I would like to say that it's limited. The shows necessarily limit our knowledge of these characters. We only see them for brief moments in certain circumstances. It seems like the rejection of those same ideas he presented in just the previous chapter where our unparalleled ability to interact with the environment was a huge positive benefit. How much can we really learn about these characters if we can't test them? On a side note, I found the little tables he made of plot difficulty to be unintentionally hilarious.

What gets me bad is that Johnson never suggests watching the news over these more entertaining shows. What about the complexity of unscripted real life? What about seeing how declarations by the United Nations lead to other events? I fully admit that there are problems with the mass media, but a half-hour of checking out the latest news online kicks the tail of watching forty-five minutes of ER and another fifteen minutes of commercials.

I'm not going to spend much time on the two chapters on movies and emerging technologies seeing as how movies is largely a rehash of the television chapter except for identifying the limits of movies and the latter chapter is a lot like the second take of the video games chapter only our interaction with technology is not as much for entertainment as games. I will point out, however, that I think Johnson cheats when discussing the Lord of the Rings movies and his reasons for it being so massively successful. It is belief that this trilogy is so popular because it resembles a television series in its length and complex cast of characters. He goes on to make a list of the characters. First of all, if I remember correctly, he includes Gil-Galad, a character who doesn't appear in the cut movies, and these characters are much more simple than those he celebrated in The Sopranos and 24. They're either good or evil. It's pretty clear cut except for the notable exception of Gollum.

Here are the two websites I alluded to earlier. The first is a Slate writer's critical look at Johnson's work while the second is their dialogue.
http://www.slate.com/id/2117395/
http://www.slate.com/id/2118550/

A New Direction

I have decided that Spice of Life is going to start following a little bit more of a method than its standard scatter-shot manner of laying down on the screen whatever has been running through my mind the past few days. I think that the best semi-consistent approach to take with this blog is to post reflections on whatever I've been reading lately. In my Literature classes, so far, we've spent a lot of time working on reading journals. Though the content my two professors have looked for has differed, the core principle remains the same, to display an engagement with the text and cause us to think about it. Well, it works. If I want what I read to have any impact on my life, I should reflect upon it, and this blog grants a great opportunity to do so. There'll still be random thoughts and reflections on the movies I watch, but books are going to be the focus now.

Lying

This is something that's been bugging me since I got back to college. I started taking Synoptic Gospels this semester and the first few classes were meant as introductory info and an examination into the Synoptic Problem (how the gospels relate to each other). Anyway, first thing we're told is that God didn't write the Bible. I guess I'll have to do a little explaining here, so you can better understand my ignoranc of these issues. I went through a public school, and, even though I went to religious education classes once a week since I was probably about six, they were always about doctrine, not so much the Bible. I never spent much time thinking about it. Ethics and morality were more of my concern. Anyway, back to Synoptic Gospels. Okay, God didn't write the gosepls? I can deal with that. Well pile on top of that the fact the authors of the Gospel are anonymous, there are no original manuscripts, and it probably wasn't an apostle of Jesus that wrote them and believing in the gospels as truth becomes a lot harder.

Why do we do this, simplify and lie to children? The world is a complex, difficult place to live in, and they need to learn to deal with it. Feeding them idealized stories that apply to their everyday lives just sets them up for problems later.

I have a real problem with Santa Claus too. What do we tell children this fantastical story? What's wrong with believing in the capacity for human charity and that those gifts came from people they know and can love rather than some creepy guy who's always watching you?

The Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny just seem like excuses for rampant materialism. Whoa, something happened or someday is coming up. Quickly, let's shower people with candy and material gifts.

End rant.

Being Special

Confession time! I was an avid reader when I was younger. I still am to a large extent, but my interests have diversified and I have friends that I spend time with now. Still, I read a lot when I was in elementary and junior high. I would read everything. I burned through children and teen series like Animorphs, Goosebumps, and even a few Babysitters’ Club. Around my freshman year of high school, Michael Crichton and John Grisham became my favorites. There was always one thing that irritated me in these books though. The kids. I don’t why they did this, (maybe because they didn’t know any young kids or something) but those two could not write believable kids. They were always too perfect and never died. The ones that boiled my blood the most were in Jurassic Park: The Lost World and The Witness. The adult characters couldn’t stop praising how clever and brave these little kids were. I, being about the same age or older, couldn’t help comparing myself to them. Now, you need to understand that I was a bit arrogant at this age. There were about seventy other freshmen, and I was at the top of the class. I thought myself pretty smart and was enraged that these fictional characters were getting all these kudos. “Just give me a chance,” I thought, “and I’ll show them up. I’ll even stop the bad guys way faster.” This was unbelievably arrogant of me, being jealous of fictional characters. On top of that, I had no real reason to feel this way. My world was fairly insulated, and I had managed to not realize that there were millions of people smarter and more talented than me.

So this finally brings me to my point. At some point in my life, I was told that for every person alive today, there are sixteen dead people in the past (which is a really stupid and impossible to accurately calculate statistic if you think about it. Still it gives us a starting point). Seeing as how there are over six billion people alive today, that’s a lot of people who have walked this planet. I’m not special. Everything I’m decent at, there’s at least one person who did it better and had other talents on top of that. Then you have to figure that there is a whole pile of people who didn’t have the same opportunities as I had, and, that given the chance, these people would exceed me as well. Short of the Day of Revelation coming upon us tomorrow, there is going to be a lot more people better than me as well.

I think we all need to square this fact with ourselves. We are not the best and probably won’t be so. Failing to realize this will only lead to disappointment. Once our egos are stripped away by this though, I believe we come to something better. We see our shared relationship with the rest of humanity, recognizing that we’re all in the same boat, and are able to see that their being and existence means as much as ours in the long run, hopefully leading to mutual respect and fair treatment.

I think this was a pretty good post.

Evolution

Something I’ve been wondering about recently is evolution, particularly the development of non-physical traits. Preferences and tastes are what I’m especially holding in mind. I guess this post is at least partially inspired by a National Geographic or Discover article my mom showed me some time ago about a study on what people find disgusting. As I remember, some things people found disgusting, like kissing in public, were cultural. Other things though, like dead and rotting animals, were found disgusting universally. Could there have once been ancient people who found decay enticing and feasted upon it only to be killed by the diseases carried? My question then though is what prevented those same ancient people with the hardiest immune systems from surviving? Were there just too many and too virulent diseases on their rotten meat? Are we born with some innate tastes that keep us alive? Do we know as babies to avoid rancid pork and molding bread?

There’s no doubt in my mind that tastes are rather heavily influenced by nurture. If a person found themselves in financial difficulty, say a college student, for a while and spent that time eating a lot of cheap ramen noodles, it’s not hard to imagine that they won’t like them later in life. On the flip side, some people learn to enjoy foods they once hated. I hear truffles are like that.

Something worth thinking about I guess.

Thoughts on Journalism

One day I hope to be a journalist, preferably for a newspaper or news web site. Thus, my thoughts often turn towards this topic. I recently have had a number of post worthy thoughts on journalism, but none of them are long enough to justify a single post, so, if you'll bear with the schizophrenic nature of this paper, I'll slap them up in my usual manner.

I was reading an article by the International Herald Tribune today on recent attacks in Iraq and arrived at what I believe to be a rather unusual revelation. Though the reporters hold nothing back when detailing the deaths of 'the good guys' (those whom the readers are most likely to sympathize with, in this case being the American and Iraqi soldiers) I don't believe I've ever read how many insurgents died in their fights with American and Iraqi forces. I do understand most attacks are carried out through suicide bombings, where it's pretty obvious how many insurgents died, but what about these skirmishes I keep hearing about. Short of surviving insurgents taking the dead with them or injured fighters dying away from the action, shouldn't there be bodies that can be counted? Why do our news sources shy away from this? Do they fear it would make us appear brutal in the case of many dead insurgents or pathetic if there are few enemy deaths?

Before I left for college, my dad asked a reporter who used him as a source for stories on the Outdoors page for his thoughts on journalism and was told that it was the worst paying job this side of working for the Department of Natural Resources. Well, there is one way I figure to get rich through journalism, be a liar. More than a few of those publicly denounced journalists were in the running for a Pulitzer prize, and movies have been made about their lives. As long as money can buy happiness and allow these fallen writers to hide from their failure, they're living pretty well.

Journey

Today I will post what I believe to be the closest thing to an original idea I've ever had. It's possible that you've heard this or variations of it before, but I came up with it independently. All similarities are coincidences. I'm fond of telling people this personal philosophy when we walk somewhere together, and they find themselves stopping and waiting for me because I walk so slow. I don't remember where or why I first came up with it, but it was greatly refined during my Literature class this semester. While reading The Odyssey, the professor introduced two terms, dilatory and teleological. Both relate to journies, dilatory being the tendency to enjoy the journey and avoid the end, and teleological is the desire to reach the end, complete the journey.

Anyway, here it goes. What is our destination? It's not some store or friend's house. For all of us, it's death. Our lives are nothing more than a journey towards our eventual deaths.

Whoo, great idea Chris. Going good so far with all your originality. Hold on though. It gets better.

A have a number of problems with modern American society, but one that bugs me is our tendency to rush, driving headlong into whatever destination takes our fancy. For all our lives, we're told to look towards the future and keep our eye on the goal. When we're young, we focus on the time when we get our driver's license or turn twenty-one and can start drinking legally. One of the most cliche lines in the world is "Are we there yet?" As a society, we don't care about the journey. Only the destination. I think we really need to readjust our priorities because this is screwed up. Though death is not something we should fear, it certainly isn't something we should be rushing headlong towards. Life is a journey and is all about that journey. The destination is really a secondary concern. If we keep caring only about the destination, we are missing so much. I say we need to slow down. Bike instead of drive, walk instead of bike, and admire our surroundings. Enjoy or, at least, pay attention to every moment of our lives a little more.

You know, if anything affected this idea it's the town where I grew up. Baudette, Minnesota. Population 1,400. About two hours away from any city worth going to. In school, I was happy if my team only had to drive an hour to get to our meet or whatever. There have been more than a few times that I've spent more time driving to than spending time at the place I ended up at. If I only cared about the destination, I would have wasted a lot of my life on the road.

Looking back on this post, I see that it really resembles the aphorism "Stop and smell the roses," but I'm still proud of my idea.

A Stupid Idea That Needs To Be Proven Wrong

I came up with this idea maybe a year and a half ago. I was taking a Philosophy course online and decided to make up something that made absolutely nosense but was logically correct. Anyway, I worked out this clever idea, and now it's driving me insane. If you asked anyone if it was right, they'd tell you it didn't make any sense, but I can't see what's wrong with it. So, I'm posting this in the hopes that someone smarter than me can prove it wrong.

Here's how it goes. Noone assumes that all change is instantaneous. In books, it's cliche to write that something, let's say a person's hand, moved faster than the eye could follow, almost appearing in some new place. We know, however, that the hand had to move through points between its beginning and end. But you can't measure these points. Let's say the hand started at point zero and ended up at point ten, moving in a straight line. At one point, the hand had to be at points one, two, and so on. But the hand still has to get from point zero to point one, so it has go through points one point one, one point two, and so on. Do you see where I'm going with this? No matter how little you divide up the distance, there will always be a gap that the hand magically teleports past. Thus, these changes are instantaneous, skipping over some points.

Please, someone prove this wrong. It's such a stupid idea, but I can't do it myself.

Creepy Calls

Today I was working on my finances and had to call up Wells Fargo because I was paranoid that my credit card wasn't being fully paid off and that interest was building up on me. Anyway, I called up their 800 number and was greeted, unsurprisingly, by a machine. This was a special machine though. Now only did it have a speech recognition system, which I avoided using as much as possible, but it was designed to sound like a real person as much as possible by using phrases like "Hold on while I look that up" and "Okay, here it is. What do you want to do now."

This really irritated me. Come on. It's obviously a machine since it speaks in that jilted, recorded way and asks you to speak your needs into the phone. I guess Wells Fargo is trying to make calls a little less stressful and personal, but the voice is just creepy. I know you're a recording. You're not fooling anyone, so quit faking humanity! Hearing the computer tell me "Okay, here it is" makes me laugh and then I get redirected to who knows where because of the stupid speech recognition system. Personally, I would much rather talk to a real person, even if the spot had been outsourced, and they had a thick accent. At least jobs are being created then.

On the bright side, when I ended up talking to people, my problem was quickly solved, and I shouldn't need to call back anytime soon.

Updating

Well, I missed updating yesterday, broke my promise again, but it doesn't matter anymore. I think I've gotten into the habit of writing. When I have something worth sharing, I think I've matured to the point that I'll write it down on Spice of Life. There's no reason to force myself to write everyday. If my plans of becoming a journalist are fulfilled, then I will be writing everyday. For right now, I'll enjoy myself. Have a good day.

Crash: Thoughts on a Movie

So, I got together with some friends last night. We watched some college basketball, played a few hands of poker, and, as many do, watched a movie. It came down to either Elf or Crash. I fought hard to avoid Will Ferrel and eventually won out when, while people were arguing, someone slipped it into the DVD player. We watch for maybe twenty minutes and one friend pipes up, "Hey, there are some racial undertones to this movie." We laughed at him. Twenty minutes after that, another friend finally figures out that the movie's set in Los Angeles. Shortly thereafter, we've been put into a talking mood and start questioning the symbolism of various characters and acts and someone yelled to stop analyzing the movie. I rejoined that this wasn't meant to be a movie you watch and forget about like XXX or any Adam Sandler movie. To not think about this movie would be an insult to those who worked on it.

So, here I am, thinking about the movie. To get this into the clear right now, I come from a small, homogenous town. Racial issues are hardly something I confront on an everyday basis, they're something I see on TV or read about. Neither have I been to L.A. Is the City of Angels really that bad? Do the people really need to 'crash' into each to feel something? I don't know, and I doubt you could get the city itself to agree. But I digress.

Race is certainly the central issue here. You'd be an idiot to miss that, but there's a lot more going on. Human interaction and communication as well as 'the system' and the progression of good and bad acts are major themes I saw in this movie. The Persian shopkeeper can't figure out what the locksmith's trying to tell him and insurance subsequently screws him. The District Attorney has to (though this is certainly debatable and undoubtedly a controversial claim) act extra nice to blacks after his car is stolen by the two kids. Then the car jacker with cornrows lets the Asians in the van go with forty dollars after the director let's him go, even after being offered five hundred dollars for each by the guy who watches Discovery.

What about race then? Looks like a no win situation to me. Some people fill a stereotype like the black carjackers who, though they didn't run with a gang, were basically thugs with personality. Others don't. Boy was the District Attorney's wife wrong about the locksmith, the only completely sympathetic character I found in this movie. The problem is we don't understand one another. Not that understanding helps much. The bigot cop explains his father's situation to Shaniqua but still gets nothing. The District Attorney's wife doesn't want to look racist and gives the two blacks the benefit of the doubt by not turning around like she wants to but ends up getting her car stolen.

You want to take a message from this movie? Here's what I found. Life's a mess because it isn't simple. There are no good or bad people. Only ones we feel sympathy for and ones we don't because everyone has done things to be proud of and things they would rather forget. I don't know how deep or thoughtful that was, but it's true. Oh yeah, and L.A. sucks. Don't ever go there.

On all other counts, I think the movie does an excellent job. The acting is good, the cinematography is good, and the story is simply phenomenal. Still, I don't think I'll watch the movie again except to pick up things I missed the first time like if the second Asian in the cafe was the insurance man or why exactly the young cop couldn't or wouldn't file a report on his jerkwad partner.

The Chronicles of Narnia Movie: Thoughts

I had some msigivings about this movie. I figured this movie was going to be blown hard core as Hollywood tried to recreate the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, screwed with the plot, and placed incompetent child actors in key parts, a terrible fear of mine since Star Wars Episode I. I went on opening night and was pleasantly surprised, mostly because the acting didn't suck. Besides a few lines by the White Witch and the scenes with Peter and the wolf, Hollywood did a good job of translating the book on to the screen. And I finely discovered the huge Christian allegory going on. In my defense I read the books in elementary, but, geez, there were some huge, obvious metaphors.

Anyway, I watched the movie again and something kind of bothered me about it. The movie opens up with the Luftwaffe bombing London and the Pevensie family. Later, the fight between good and evil is precipitated by the dropping of rocks by griffins upon the White Witch's forces. Personally, I feel that some of the camera shots at these two points were meant to directly parallel each other. I believe we are meant to compare these two armies. I can think of two possible explanations for this. One is to humanize the Germans. Personally I don't like this very much. I prefer to believe that is a shot at the need for the glorious battle scene that so the movie going public was anticipating. In the book, this fight was really glossed over. It was hardly a centerpiece of the action. In the movie, they're building up to it since the Pevensies meet up with the Beavers. Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy are not better than the Germans who bombed their homes, thus leading to their moving in with the Professor and beginning their adventures in Narnia.

Of course, noone else I talked to noticed these parallels, so, whatever, I could be seeing things. Have a good day.

Rhetorical Questions

You know what I hate? Rhetorical questions, especially when people substitute the classic "Hello" with "How's it going?" or its various incarnations. How am I supposed to give a reasonable answer if we're just passing by? My emotional state is hardly a matter to be summed up in a few words. I'm forced to either answer "Fine" or ignore their question. I have no problem being asked that question when it precedes what will be a longer conversation because I can give a full and complete answer then. When people ask "What's up?" in passing I feel as though they're attempting to show concern but don't really care because they know I can't give an involved answer which would likely lead to further questions because we're only passing each other. It's a verbal trap.

You know what? I just noticed that I used multiple rhetorical questions in this post. Seeing as how it's impossible for anyone to answer the questions I posit within this blog, they're all rhetorical. I have seen the enemy, and it is me.

Anyway, I hope everyone has a good day.

Names

So, I was kicking around on Metaphilm.com (an excellent which I suggest everyone check out for some good laughs or intriguing takes on popular movies) and read the essay on Die Hard. It was about how the media was the true villain in the movie and how names and identities were power. Personally, I don't see how Die Hard is unique in either respect, but it did get me to thinking and writing. Don't expect any Wildean social commentary like that found in my other posts but a bunch of observations.

My name is Christopher Francis Heinrich. The origins of each individual component are as follows: Christopher was the only name my parents could agree on (and was preferable to Dwayne or Tryptophan), Francis is the masculine form of Frances (my mother's middle name), and Heinrich, as is the case of most last names, is my father's family name. Normally, I go by Chris because it's faster to say.

Then there's a horde of nicknames that people call me by. My dad calls me Spud for some unknown reason. My friends from high school have quite a few names for me. There's Marlin for the Hawaiian shirt I was fond of wearing. For a while I was called Cubore because they thought my head was square. That ended when I started to grow my hair out, but then one of my friend's dad started calling me Tina (short for Tian Turner) because of my hair. This name undoubtedly arose from jealousy seeing as how the man was bald. For a short while I was called Hurricane after Hurricane Francis went through Florida, and The Scorpion's "Rock You Like a Hurricane" became my unofficial theme song.

Then there are the name I chose for myself. On AOL I go by DarthOzymandias, a mix of the pop (Darth) and classic (Ozymandias). On a bunch of online games, I call myself DarthJoJo, a clever amalgamation of deep evil (Darth) and the ridiculous (JoJo). In high school French I went by Raoul and Sir Galahad (which would've been Sir Lancelot had I not told my friend, the name stealing jerk, my idea and then been gone the day we took names). For some reason I can't remember I created an overly long name. It was JoJo the Half-Naked Insance Australian Super Karate Master with a Doctorate in Hydro-Nucleo Sporadic Physics and phD in Donut Making, Bronzesmith of the Silver Jaws of Irony, and Part-Time Monkey Trainer, or King JoJo for short (the title was implied in the King).

There's some naming game where you combine your middle name and the name of the street you live on to create your porn star name. Mine is Francis 1st or Francis Premiere, which sounds a whole lot cooler.

Juliet said, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet." Well, I have a lot of names, as you can see. Do I remain the same person because the social standards put upon me in these different situations are definitely different, and my actions are different. Does my essential identity emerge or do these different names give me the ability to conform to a new, appropriate performative identity? Ooh ... philosophical if not original. I so smart.

Made-up Holidays

I don't know when it started though I believe the whole movement gained a lot of popularity with the first Christmas episode of The O.C., but this whole winter holiday amalgamation thing is something I truly detest. I don't hear people wishing me a Chrismukkah (of The O.C.) or Chrismahanukwanzukah (courtesy of Virgin Mobile), but I'm disgusted at the their mere existence.

Quit making up holidays and trying to appease everyone! We're not all the same and aren't meant to be! Get over it! Whatever happened to the notion that differences are to be celebrated and make us unique? Or has that idea been discarded in the hope that strict conformity will prevent discord and strife?

These rabid drives at pluralism serve merely to cheapen the original holidays. Chrismukkah is nothing and Chrismahanukwanzukkah is an advertising campaign. I really see no upside to their existence. Moreover, these holidays aren't even compatible! According to Wikipedia (the modern Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and fount of all knowledge) Kwanzaa was invented as a secular humanist response to the Western religious traditions. Combining it with Christmas and Hanukkah, the very holidays it is directed against, is an insult to all involved.

I've read in a few places that these are supposed to be meant as satires on the immense secular natures of these holidays, and, in some sort of screwed up logic, I guess one could rationalize their drive to add to it.

If your lineage includes a diversity of traditions, I don't understand what prevents one from celebrating each individually. Acknowledge your roots as the separate traditions they are. If they overlap, that's great. It shows a shared set of values. Still, there's no need to ram these sacred holidays together. They deserve more respect than that.

And so I say Humbug to Chrismukkah! Fie on Chrismahanukwanzukkah! And shame to those who created these holidays!

Sorry

So, I already failed to uphold my promise of daily posts. It's really inexusable too since I wasn't doing anything yesterday, but I had writer's block and couldn't be bothered to think of any interesting topics. So, as penance, I will put up two excellent posts today. There, now we can all be friends again.

The Office

Last night I was visiting a friend of mine, and he took it upon himself to expose me to a television series that he enjoyed immensely, The Office. The series is set-up as a mockumentary of office life. The cameras are obviously handheld and fairly often they'll sit down with one of the actors and interview them, get their take on the day's happenings. If you think about Dilbert and Office Space, which The Office certainly must draw a lot of comparisons too, you have about the right tone and sense of humor.

I had seen part of an episode on my own before and chuckled a little bit but never made an attempt to watch it again. Now, after seeing another two episodes, I can put into words why. The show is depressing beyond belief. The eccentric, quirky cast of characters the character based comedy are entirely unlikable, and, by the end of the first episode, I just wanted to jump into the TV and beat everyone with a two by four, that is if I hadn't been consumed by the despair for my future The Office generated. I couldn't look beyond the arrogance or timidity or passive-aggresiveness or total disconnect from reality any of these characters displayed and hated all of them. Maybe this wouldn't be so bad if any of these characters displayed some depth or heart, but they didn't. The director's / producer's / writer's idea of moving a character beyond the single trait they were built upon was putting the boss into an improv class where he acted the exact same way he did at work.

For myself, I like reading Dilbert and enjoy watching Office Space even though the closest I have ever come to working in an office was a strange sort of free-lance marketing internship for a local bank last summer. Those had some key differences though. Dilbert is a cartoon which further discombobulates it from reality. As cruel as the boss may be or as lazy as Wally gets, they're still cartoons and not confused with real life. Office Space has a happy ending and a fully developed protagonist.

All that being said, there are still some things I enjoyed about the series. The acting was excellent. I did feel as though I was watching real office workers and not a bunch of actors, and the camera work, which I had originally expected to irritate me, actually worked in the show's favor and drew me in.

Cross-Racial Casting (Like Gender Bending, Only With Race)

So, this particular post was inspired by the movie Memoirs of a Geisha. A few weeks ago some friends of mine were talking about movies they were looking forward to and Memoirs of a Geisha came up. That's when I heard that Ziyi Zhang would be playing the lead role, a Chinese woman playing a Japanese. For a long time, this irritated me something terrible. I respect her acting abilities and everything, well as much as I can since I don't understand her language, but "Come on," I thought "Let's show some respect for the source material," which I recently discovered was book written by an American man.

Anyways, I thought about it some more and read a few reviews, and I like to believe that I have since come up with a more thoughtful idea. One review I read said this was a step up from the days of Hollywood where Asians were simply Caucasians wearing a little eye make-up. This reminds me of the stories I heard of Shakespeare's time when women weren't even allowed to appear on stage, and men played all the roles. Was this wrong? Yeah. These decisions were made because women weren't able to take the rigors of acting or something, and Asians probably weren't allowed to portray themselves because directors had no faith in their acting abilities. These decisions were made from a position of superiority.

Another case that came to my attention was that of Ken Watanabe in Batman Begins. I didn't really pay attention at the time but, when I was flipping through an issue of Mad later, found that his role in the comics was Arabian. Mad suggested that this casting was made because Japanese don't tend to blow themselves up when they want to protest against something they aren't pleased with. So, here we have cross-racial casting because of political correctness concerns, according to Mad. Whoo! Seven degrees of separation. Watanabe is in Memoirs of a Geisha as well!

So, this brings us to the case of Memoirs of a Geisha. To me, the problem, here is of a different manner. I've come to accept Ziyi Zhang's casting. I no longer have a problem with it. The advertisers aren't celebrating the fact that she's Chinese, but they aren't hiding it. Ziyi Zhang is a fairly well-known game in the United States as are the other two Chinese actresses cast as Japanese in Memoirs. Maybe, if they were trying to slip in an unknown Chinese actress into the role, I would have a problem with it. But they didn't.

This is a movie, art. It's not real life. At most, it's a representation. The only reason for proper racial casting is to maintain the suspension of disbelief. In different situations this may be more or less appropriate. This movie is not about race, as far as I know, it's about love. The best actor or actress for the part should be chosen according to their respective acting skills for fitting the part, not their skin color.

So there. My thoughts.

Christmas Break

Woot! I'm on Christmas break now and have copious amounts of free time now. Thus, so my writing skills don't dull over the next month, I plan on writing once every day. So, here we go.