It appears a common theme in Internet forums is for people to comment on a thread with a four-lettered “F” word to perfectly sum up how they feel about others. It seems that angered Internet forum commenters have become either so disenfranchised at the idea of starting a serious conversation with text on a screen or just flat out lazy.
The term “Fail” has sprung up in my daily life. This is partly due to the fact that some people I work with use Internet slang in colloquial speech, i.e. “gg” instead of good job, LOL, and so forth. Fail has cropped up as a catchall phrase when anybody does anything wrong or didn’t hear something someone said or basically as a condescending retort to just about anything anyone says. It’s obnoxious and it really forces people to attempt to not “fail” so they don’t get bombarded with condemnation.
Very recently I had to acknowledge my own failure. Not in some cutesy internet-slang kind of way, but with a living creature. I failed with the generally simple task of owning a dog. Let me back track a little. Ash and I had adopted a dog in a means of keeping us busy and giving us something to focus on as life, at the time, wasn’t the greatest. Quickly things changed, we both got very demanding jobs that are both time and attention intensive. Thus leaving our poor dog, Eko, caged the vast majority of the time. The poor boy hated it and began lashing out at us, peeing on the couch and bed.
Everyone was unhappy with the situation and we were left with a difficult decision. Do we continue with the way things are and pretend everything is okay? Or do we accept defeat and wrongdoing in the acquisition of our pet and acknowledge that we failed in caring for this living creature.
We admitted that we hadn’t thought dog ownership through enough and agreed that we had failed in providing him the life that he deserved. We made plans with another family for them to take him and give him the life he deserves, one of attention and praise and a yard. It was hard to see him go but not as hard as it could have been. The new family was absolutely ecstatic about him, Ash and I were happy to know he was going to have a rich and full life outside the confines of his tiny cage, and Eko seemed genuinely happy as well, since as of late we had showered him with very little attention and praise.
What have I taken away from all of this besides “think through big decisions a little more before acting on them”? I learned that sometimes the best thing you can possibly do is acknowledge that you’ve failed at something. If I had tried to dissuade myself from acknowledging my shortcomings in caring for another living being and relegated this poor guy to a cage for the vast majority of his natural born life, I may have avoided “failing” as people on the internet are so quick to brand others with, but I also would have stolen a much better life for a very loving and energetic puppy.
I’m not so happy that I failed, but I’m pleased that I had the ability to acknowledge my failure and make things right with no ego involved. I saw a problem and corrected it with no attempt to save face. I didn’t try and talk my way out of my wrongdoing. I accept my failure and with that I know I’ve done right, I will not hide behind excuses, and I didn’t delay the departure of my puppy as an attempt to prove myself right when I was so clearly wrong accepting him into my home. Failure is not the worst thing that could happen to someone. The paralytic fear of failure that causes someone to not even try is much worse.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Failure
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Only Fools Would Bomb Iran
I'm not one to post videos. I've never posted a video here, but I deem this one totally necessary. UN Inspector Scott Ritter, author of Target Iran: The Truth About The White House's Plans For Regime Change, spoke on C-SPAN 2 back in October of 2006, he was discussing the not-so-recent discovery that the US administration was seeking military action against Iran. Ritter, like any American with half a brain, knows that stretching our military even thinner into a third consecutive and on-going conflict will most likely lead to an Apocalypse, a complete destruction of at least one major American city.
Below is the video, he peppers his words with the raw emotion of fear and anger:
Living in LA, this makes me just a little nervous. No Islamic extremist is going to attack a small rural city in retaliation for military action in Iran. A message will be sent, and I highly doubt it will be us sending it. I fear for mine and everyone else's safety in this situation, American and Iranian. We don't get the tallies of innocent Iraqis killed as collateral damage in Iraq but it's well over 600,000. Six hundred thousand innocent lives lost, and that's in just one of our two current wars. And our administration wants to start another? As Ritter said, obviously we'll encounter resistance in Iran and we won't have the reserves in the armed forces to back up a significant amount of troops in harms way. This will lead to our administration authorizing the use of nukes... This cannot happen, why have we let it go on this far? I thought this was the land of the free and the home of the brave? I just see cowards living in fear.
What should churn everyone's stomach is that if this was France, there would already be rioting in the street, because there the government fears it's citizens, because there the government works like it's supposed to, to serve it's people, not control them.
"But keep in mind this, that the Bush administration has built a new generation of nuclear weapons that we call 'useable nukes.' Um, and they have a nuclear posture now, which permits the preemptive use of nuclear weapons in a non-nuclear environment, if the commander in chief deems U.S. forces to be at significant risk. If we start bombing Iran, I'm telling you right now it's not gonna work. We're not going to achieve decapitation, regime change, all that. Um, what will happen is the Iranians will respond and we will feel the pain instantaneously. Which will push the Bush administration to move to phase two, which will have to be boots on the ground. And we will put boots on the ground, we will surge a number of divisions, and probably through Azerbaijan, down the caspian sea coast in an effort to push the regime over. And when they don't push over we now have forty thousand troops trapped.
We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U.S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out, there's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point and time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance and it may not work. But what it will do is this, it will unleash the nuclear genie, and so for all those Americans out there tonight who say 'you know what taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you that if we take on Iran we're going to use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle until an American city is taken out by an islamic weapon in retaliation, so tell me you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city, tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? LA? Boston? New York? Miami? Pick One! Cuz at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.
We have now reached the definition of significant numbers of U.S. troops in harm's way, and there is no reserve to pull them out, there's no more cavalry to come riding to the rescue. And at that point and time, my concern is that we will use nuclear weapons to break the backbone of Iranian resistance and it may not work. But what it will do is this, it will unleash the nuclear genie, and so for all those Americans out there tonight who say 'you know what taking on Iran is a good thing.' I just told you that if we take on Iran we're going to use nuclear weapons. And if we use nuclear weapons, the genie ain't going back in the bottle until an American city is taken out by an islamic weapon in retaliation, so tell me you want to go to war with Iran. Pick your city. Pick your city, tell me which one you want gone. Seattle? LA? Boston? New York? Miami? Pick One! Cuz at least one's going. And that's something we should all think about before we march down this path of insanity that George Bush has us headed on.
-Scott Ritter
Below is the video, he peppers his words with the raw emotion of fear and anger:
Living in LA, this makes me just a little nervous. No Islamic extremist is going to attack a small rural city in retaliation for military action in Iran. A message will be sent, and I highly doubt it will be us sending it. I fear for mine and everyone else's safety in this situation, American and Iranian. We don't get the tallies of innocent Iraqis killed as collateral damage in Iraq but it's well over 600,000. Six hundred thousand innocent lives lost, and that's in just one of our two current wars. And our administration wants to start another? As Ritter said, obviously we'll encounter resistance in Iran and we won't have the reserves in the armed forces to back up a significant amount of troops in harms way. This will lead to our administration authorizing the use of nukes... This cannot happen, why have we let it go on this far? I thought this was the land of the free and the home of the brave? I just see cowards living in fear.
What should churn everyone's stomach is that if this was France, there would already be rioting in the street, because there the government fears it's citizens, because there the government works like it's supposed to, to serve it's people, not control them.
Labels: Fools, Iran, Nuclear Weapons, Scott Ritter, War
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Be Afraid...Be Moderately Afraid
PBS is not a forum for contemporary issues. When a society gathers around a 23-inch widescreen monitor to watch a 25 year old get hit in the nuts by his toddler, the term “sponsored by viewers like you” not only seem archaic and contrived but also completely accurate.
In a recent episode of Frontline, a long running PBS show, the topic of discussion was how youngsters are growing up online thereby creating the largest generation gap since the advent of rock and roll. It approached the topic with the utmost of grace, candor, and fear. The end result of the hour-long program was leaving me with an understanding that PBS is fucking scared shitless about the Internet.
It provided longwinded testimonials from parents of one small-town high school and how the Internet has negatively impacted their relationships with their children. Along with making note of the few cases of children killing themselves over cyber-bullying, Frontline also uses the statistic that there are over 130 million users on Facebook and MySpace, then tries to make mountains out of mole hills out of a few suicides. While immensely tragic in it’s own right, also proves very little and essentially muddies the argument that while a fraction of a percent of online users kill themselves, they spend about a fifth of the entire hour talking about it.
Given the general demographic that watches PBS, this can only be taken as fear mongering. Especially when considering that there is only one educated voice of moderation. Either it’s parents shouting for the Internet’s destruction, or teenagers smugly addressing the camera at how their parents are helpless to stop them.
I, being 25, had grown up in the Internet’s infancy. When I was a teenager, the Internet was amassed with spam. Internet Explorer chugged along on my 14.4 kilobaud modem only to get slammed with 50 pop ups essentially forcing me to reboot as closing one window opened three others. I was instilled with a certain distrust of the Internet and providing it with unfettered information about myself. I was skeptical. I wasn’t afraid or smug, I was somewhere in the middle…and still am.
Frontline was produced, written and presented for parents aged 50+. People who have trouble accessing email or who need to be taught how to double-click. There was a scene in this episode where a smug teen laughed at his mom as she didn’t know how to receive a text message, saying “Jeez mom, didn’t you go to college?” I hope Frontline debated long and hard about editing out the slap across the face the teen received after saying something so pompous and disrespectful to his mother, but I know all too well that she just sat there and took the insult. She took it because she felt stupid, and it’s tough to reprimand someone who makes a legitimate slam against someone’s intelligence. I’m sure she went to college, and I’m sure she has had contact with computers, but I’m also sure that in her lifetime she’d typed a term paper on an honest to god typewriter.
In the end, the Internet is not going to be dismantled and I’m sure there will be more people committing suicide over cyber-bullying. There will be no climactic end to the Internet much as there was no climactic beginning; it’s all a matter of when we joined the party. Parents and children need to be educated; the Internet is a tool, a powerful tool. Abuse and neglect are equally damning to the individual, and it should be the individual who should be demonized. The Internet doesn’t make people kill themselves and the Internet isn’t such a nebulous idea that it can’t be learned at any age. It’s streamlined itself to the point of malleable clay. This tool can be anything you want it to be, as much or as little a part of anyones daily life, but it’s not going away…we best learn to play nice.
In a recent episode of Frontline, a long running PBS show, the topic of discussion was how youngsters are growing up online thereby creating the largest generation gap since the advent of rock and roll. It approached the topic with the utmost of grace, candor, and fear. The end result of the hour-long program was leaving me with an understanding that PBS is fucking scared shitless about the Internet.
It provided longwinded testimonials from parents of one small-town high school and how the Internet has negatively impacted their relationships with their children. Along with making note of the few cases of children killing themselves over cyber-bullying, Frontline also uses the statistic that there are over 130 million users on Facebook and MySpace, then tries to make mountains out of mole hills out of a few suicides. While immensely tragic in it’s own right, also proves very little and essentially muddies the argument that while a fraction of a percent of online users kill themselves, they spend about a fifth of the entire hour talking about it.
Given the general demographic that watches PBS, this can only be taken as fear mongering. Especially when considering that there is only one educated voice of moderation. Either it’s parents shouting for the Internet’s destruction, or teenagers smugly addressing the camera at how their parents are helpless to stop them.
I, being 25, had grown up in the Internet’s infancy. When I was a teenager, the Internet was amassed with spam. Internet Explorer chugged along on my 14.4 kilobaud modem only to get slammed with 50 pop ups essentially forcing me to reboot as closing one window opened three others. I was instilled with a certain distrust of the Internet and providing it with unfettered information about myself. I was skeptical. I wasn’t afraid or smug, I was somewhere in the middle…and still am.
Frontline was produced, written and presented for parents aged 50+. People who have trouble accessing email or who need to be taught how to double-click. There was a scene in this episode where a smug teen laughed at his mom as she didn’t know how to receive a text message, saying “Jeez mom, didn’t you go to college?” I hope Frontline debated long and hard about editing out the slap across the face the teen received after saying something so pompous and disrespectful to his mother, but I know all too well that she just sat there and took the insult. She took it because she felt stupid, and it’s tough to reprimand someone who makes a legitimate slam against someone’s intelligence. I’m sure she went to college, and I’m sure she has had contact with computers, but I’m also sure that in her lifetime she’d typed a term paper on an honest to god typewriter.
In the end, the Internet is not going to be dismantled and I’m sure there will be more people committing suicide over cyber-bullying. There will be no climactic end to the Internet much as there was no climactic beginning; it’s all a matter of when we joined the party. Parents and children need to be educated; the Internet is a tool, a powerful tool. Abuse and neglect are equally damning to the individual, and it should be the individual who should be demonized. The Internet doesn’t make people kill themselves and the Internet isn’t such a nebulous idea that it can’t be learned at any age. It’s streamlined itself to the point of malleable clay. This tool can be anything you want it to be, as much or as little a part of anyones daily life, but it’s not going away…we best learn to play nice.
Monday, April 14, 2008
LA vs WAR
This weekend in LA, a rather low-key showing of anti-war art, graffiti and performing DJs at The Firehouse took place under the ambiguous title of LA vs WAR. It was a great showing with loads of great art and interesting folk. Below are some of my favorite pieces.
This was an altar to peace near the main entrance, people were allowed to write whatever they wanted and tape them to the walls surrounding the alter. Most were similar in tone and message, however the massive amount of them was staggering. You'd almost think that the majority of the people of this country were against the war. Crazy.
This was on the sidewalk outside The Firehouse. It wasn't part of the exhibit, but it is a pro-graffiti homage similar in vein to Banksy. Plus I love the jumpman logo.
This was an altar to peace near the main entrance, people were allowed to write whatever they wanted and tape them to the walls surrounding the alter. Most were similar in tone and message, however the massive amount of them was staggering. You'd almost think that the majority of the people of this country were against the war. Crazy.
This was on the sidewalk outside The Firehouse. It wasn't part of the exhibit, but it is a pro-graffiti homage similar in vein to Banksy. Plus I love the jumpman logo.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Audacity of Humor
I picked up this little gem from Goodwill the other day. I was grabbed by the straightforward title Stand-Up Comedy: The Book. And then was I sold by the fact that a book with such an audacious title was written by the relatively unknown comedienne, Judy Carter, who’s website judycarter.com refers to her as a humorist and motivational speaker. So how is this woman allowed to write the definitive text on stand-up comedy?Well, because she provides the definitive test on Funny. Right there on the cover is an invitation to all those looking at this book at Goodwill’s across the nation to take a chance on the book as they will gain definitive proof if they are funny or not within the first few pages.1
The first question of the test is “Are you Jewish, Black or Italian? If you answer yes proceed directly to chapter 2.” Chapter one was an examination on “what is funny?” What? I’ve met many people in my days, and just because someone is Jewish, it doesn’t make them funny. I’ve met people that are Asian who are hysterical. Yet Judy Carter allows these races to skip over the very first chapter in her book to help them understand what is funny.
Among the massively dated suggestions in the book, written in 1989, was her urge to keep your material personal. As she says “Everyone has a K-mart joke.” I think the validity of this book resides in this statement. Listen to Steve Martin, Woody Allen, George Carlin, or any great comedian from the past forty years. Their jokes transcend their age. A Wild And Crazy Guy is just as laugh out loud2 as when it was first conceived back in the seventies.
I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that no one can tell you that you’re funny, make you funny, or even help you make yourself funny. As Woody Allen said on being funny, “it’s an inborn thing that some have…it’s just in the genes…” No book is going to present the definitive roadmap to being a successful comedian, no matter how much a book will attempt to peddle a shortcut to it. Jerry Seinfeld sums up the road being a successful comedian in two words, "just work." If you love to write, then write. If you love to perform, then perform. If you're funny, you're funny. If not, "well I would suggest insurance sales."
1While I feel many people are generally good-natured, very few are funny. 98% of all of humanity is not funny. This is why a 10-question test doesn’t give you the authority to perform brain surgery.
2Or LOLz to some.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Just Call Me Sam Fisher.
This weekend as the girlfriend and I were doing our laundry we got locked out of our apartment. It was just one of those things, running back and forth to and from the basement to change loads, sometimes it just happens.
What did we do? The management office was closed because it was the weekend, and the landlord wasn’t answering her cell phone1. So we stood outside our locked door and shot back and forth ideas. I grabbed a piece if thin cardboard from the trash in the hall and attempted to jimmy open the door, with no luck. Then I remembered, we have a ventil
ation shaft2 that goes from the bottom to the top of the building used for venting steam from the bathrooms of each apartment3. I figured I could just shimmy down it and break into our bathroom window.
Ashley4 was against the idea, she was very certain that I was going to hurt myself. I mustered as much machismo as I could by shooting back a drawn out “naaaa.” So I went to the roof and stared down the shaft weighing my options. Thankfully she requested we see if our upstairs neighbor was home so I wouldn’t fall as far.
It turns out our upstairs neighbor was home, so we pleaded and begged for him to let me crawl through his bathroom window and shimmy down to ours. He was reluctant but let me. As I was about to do it, he said, "I hope you've had your Splinter Cell training" and I responded, "Just call me Sam Fisher"
Attempting to stay in the macho mindset I kicked off my sandals and squeezed through the tiny window feet first. I pressed my back against one wall and feet against the other and walked my way down to our floor. I used our neighbor’s handy super-tool thing to pry off our screen and climb through.
I got through this unscathed and felt like a bad ass for a day.
1Of course.
2See inset for a view looking up from our window
3Keep in mind that this building is 100 years old.
4The girlfriend
What did we do? The management office was closed because it was the weekend, and the landlord wasn’t answering her cell phone1. So we stood outside our locked door and shot back and forth ideas. I grabbed a piece if thin cardboard from the trash in the hall and attempted to jimmy open the door, with no luck. Then I remembered, we have a ventil
ation shaft2 that goes from the bottom to the top of the building used for venting steam from the bathrooms of each apartment3. I figured I could just shimmy down it and break into our bathroom window.Ashley4 was against the idea, she was very certain that I was going to hurt myself. I mustered as much machismo as I could by shooting back a drawn out “naaaa.” So I went to the roof and stared down the shaft weighing my options. Thankfully she requested we see if our upstairs neighbor was home so I wouldn’t fall as far.
It turns out our upstairs neighbor was home, so we pleaded and begged for him to let me crawl through his bathroom window and shimmy down to ours. He was reluctant but let me. As I was about to do it, he said, "I hope you've had your Splinter Cell training" and I responded, "Just call me Sam Fisher"
Attempting to stay in the macho mindset I kicked off my sandals and squeezed through the tiny window feet first. I pressed my back against one wall and feet against the other and walked my way down to our floor. I used our neighbor’s handy super-tool thing to pry off our screen and climb through.
I got through this unscathed and felt like a bad ass for a day.
1Of course.
2See inset for a view looking up from our window
3Keep in mind that this building is 100 years old.
4The girlfriend
Friday, February 15, 2008
Open Letter to the Superdelegates
I first started becoming aware of politics through a long running late-night Saturday comedy program that weekly lampooned all current events surrounding political figures.
As I aged, SNL became a window for my friends and I, giving us a somewhat basic overview of modern politics in this country. The groundwork done by SNL lead to my interest in The Daily Show and more recently The Colbert Report. These shows lampooned politics four times a week, giving me a daily dose of a generalized understanding of the political system around me. Now as I reach the age of 25 I realize that the majority of my understanding of the political landscape was founded on a joke.
I feel like I had been conditioned to wait for the punch line every time I heard a news story from the white house, I feel like our leaders were meant to be jesters. Political figures that could do no right and were merely on the world's stage for our enjoyment. Sadly, I think that had caused a rather cynical disinterest in politics for the people of my generation.
Unfortunately, nations generally get the leader they deserve. We have been conditioned by years and years of a nepotistic old-boys club full of self-congratulating politicians. A closed society was running this country, which caused us to essentially throw our hands up and just turn our backs to the political landscape not caring what happens, as we felt helpless to change it. This only fueled my cynical disinterest in politics, how could I care about something that I was powerless to change.
In 2004, I had a change of heart. We had suffered for years at this point, under the command of an ignorant, under-educated man who couldn’t even manage an oil drilling business without having it run into bankruptcy. I saw an angry nation wishing we had someone else at the reigns. Unfortunately as that year played out, I saw little interest in the possible replacement for the president. Interest in politics waned once more, and as November rolled around, I saw more and more people just resolving to “Anybody But Bush 2004.” Myself included.
Now, in 2008 there is once again that true desire for change. The difference now is that I feel that I have already found my candidate. I feel energized in politics, as I have found a much better conduit to speak my voice. I no longer feel cynical about the future of politics; Washington doesn’t need to be the butt of the joke anymore. It’s time to grow up, time to get serious, time for Barack Obama.
He will not lie to get a single extra vote, he will not bend to special interest groups to fund his campaign, and he will not fail us when we’ve been so conditioned to allow it. He simply asks us if we believe and without saying a single word, he answers it.
As I aged, SNL became a window for my friends and I, giving us a somewhat basic overview of modern politics in this country. The groundwork done by SNL lead to my interest in The Daily Show and more recently The Colbert Report. These shows lampooned politics four times a week, giving me a daily dose of a generalized understanding of the political system around me. Now as I reach the age of 25 I realize that the majority of my understanding of the political landscape was founded on a joke.
I feel like I had been conditioned to wait for the punch line every time I heard a news story from the white house, I feel like our leaders were meant to be jesters. Political figures that could do no right and were merely on the world's stage for our enjoyment. Sadly, I think that had caused a rather cynical disinterest in politics for the people of my generation.
Unfortunately, nations generally get the leader they deserve. We have been conditioned by years and years of a nepotistic old-boys club full of self-congratulating politicians. A closed society was running this country, which caused us to essentially throw our hands up and just turn our backs to the political landscape not caring what happens, as we felt helpless to change it. This only fueled my cynical disinterest in politics, how could I care about something that I was powerless to change.
In 2004, I had a change of heart. We had suffered for years at this point, under the command of an ignorant, under-educated man who couldn’t even manage an oil drilling business without having it run into bankruptcy. I saw an angry nation wishing we had someone else at the reigns. Unfortunately as that year played out, I saw little interest in the possible replacement for the president. Interest in politics waned once more, and as November rolled around, I saw more and more people just resolving to “Anybody But Bush 2004.” Myself included.
Now, in 2008 there is once again that true desire for change. The difference now is that I feel that I have already found my candidate. I feel energized in politics, as I have found a much better conduit to speak my voice. I no longer feel cynical about the future of politics; Washington doesn’t need to be the butt of the joke anymore. It’s time to grow up, time to get serious, time for Barack Obama.
He will not lie to get a single extra vote, he will not bend to special interest groups to fund his campaign, and he will not fail us when we’ve been so conditioned to allow it. He simply asks us if we believe and without saying a single word, he answers it.