Maybe the end?

I think I'm going to end the current run of this blog since my topics have yet to seem to converge to a particular niche. I have a couple of ideas for new blogs with more specific focuses than whatever the hell type of topics this blog tried to cover.

In any case, if I choose to continue this blog, I may lessen my post frequency to that of a biweekly basis. I might even change this to a more personal (and maybe private) journal-like blog (in which only friends would be able to view ... so friend me?).

The ideas are still not clear. I'll (hopefully) update this with a clearer goal later in the week.

UPDATES:
01/06/10: New blog: Crack Theory Thursday

Dating tips

You've seen them. Articles and headlines about how to date better, more effectively, or whatever. On the one hand, they do offer some advice to beginners in the dating market. But on the other hand, they are absolutely ridiculous in their immaturity, generalizing, and sexism. I now only read them for amusement purposes, really.

[Actually, no text will be forthcoming. I've decided that this topic will be elaborated at a later date in a new blog.]


Unrelated: The following music video is a hilariously awesome video from Major Lazer (a DJ/Producer duo consisting of DJs Diplo and Switch) for their latest single "Keep It Goin' Louder" featuring Ricky Blaze and Nina Sky. The video is directed by Eric Wareheim. You might remember Nina Sky from a years ago from their single "Move Ya Body." They are exponentially hotter in the offering below, as is Diplo (the white DJ ... Switch is the crazily-dressed fellow who doesn't do the rapping).

Trust no one

We should kick out immigrants.

They leech off the American system of well-being. True, some may be quite productive to society, but how can we tell the good ones from the bad ones?! We simply cannot. Undocumented workers are a legal mess and cause significant undercounts in employee numbers and business income accounting. And the documented ones provide foreign competition to our domestic companies (which should be our top priority, of course). It would be easier just to kick out anything that did not resemble Americanism.

Any attempt to "mainstream" outsiders, such as bilingual education or affirmative action, should absolutely be met with ridicule, scorn, and immediate rejection. America should have one language. Americans aren't going to go to other countries anyway, so why embrace linguistic diversity at all? And affirmative action is silly. If minorities can't get accepted at schools or jobs on their own merit, then doesn't this just prove their inferiority? YES. The answer is unequivocally yes. Furthermore, we all know real and true Americans don't use drugs, so we should without a doubt push for all the costs of maintaining a war on drugs. It will be worth it when we can one day look at each and every American citizen and see a completely sober face. Likewise, we should outlaw alcohol, cigarettes, and any type of medical drugs. We Americans are hardy enough to not need to be sedated during open-heart surgery or whatever.

We should also keep in mind subversive insiders such as the immoral gays and lesbians, lazy welfare recipients, violent gang members, hippie feminists, and self-labeled "progressive" thinkers (who really just want to change the current American ideals). You're bisexual? Jail. You're a bum on welfare? Cut off. You're in a gang? Kicked out with those illegal (or legal ... who cares, right?) aliens. Feminist? Force you into a male-breadwinner marriage. A thinker? Who are you kidding? We should never tolerate such insider factions in America because change and diversity only leads to corruption and devolution.

America is an economic and military power-house and the most populous developed nation in the world. If we allow such alien outsiders and domestic immoralities to continue existing in and changing the very fabric of what it means to be American, we could lose this stance. Never mind the fact that the world and the political/economic global landscape is constantly changing. We should be the single beacon of stability and continuity of the world, if need be. If a man is swept away by the current of a river, he should cling tight to a tree limb to avoid drowning. He should continue to cling tight to his morals branch even if his surroundings change. Even if rescue comes. Even if the river dries up and there is no longer an imminent threat (maybe another one will appear!). Even if the man sees a wave of cyanide-filled needles approaching quickly from upstream. If he lets go, who knows where he will go? Perhaps the situation downstream is a hundred times worse!

So let's keep America just the way it is. Well, the way it was before all these other cultures (outside and within) tried to change the sameness and monotony that should make America what it is. Out with the foreigners and repress the insiders!



Unrelated music video! This is Emilie Simon's "Fleur de Saison." I don't actually know much about her, but the video is pretty cool. And I'm not sure if my friend who referred me to her mentioned it or not, but she's gorgeous/hot. (Yes, I understand the irony of including a French song with this post.)

An ode to hatred

A series of haikus about hatred(/evilness/badness)! (Because why the hell not?)

It's easy to hate.
When stressed, emotions run high,
And snap-backs frequent.

When one hesitates,
Trying to choose love or hate,
Quick choosing yields hate.

On God and Satan,
It's not simply good or bad,
But loved and hated?

Morals stress goodness,
But history proves diff'rent.
Society fails.

We strive hard to love,
But clear-thinking hap's not oft
Because hate's easy.

Unrelated music video. This is the Norwegian indie/folk band Kings of Convenience's "I'd Rather Dance With You." Their music is nice and mellow and a great listen!

We aren't ready for democracy

On Sunday, November 1, 2009, Swiss voters voted to suppress the Muslims in their country. With a surprisingly high 57.5% of the vote, the Swiss population (or at least those who voted on Sunday) have voted to pass a ban on the new construction of minarets in the country. Minarets are the tall distinctive spires on Muslim mosques.

I'll let you read the (controversial?) back story from the two article links above (and other sources you can easily find yourself if you're an overachiever) because what I really want to do is comment.

It's one thing when America continually votes against basic human rights (à la LGBT rights, gay marriage, health care, and so forth), but this is a European country doing it! America is generally viewed as quite conservative compared to its developed-nation counterparts, so the Swiss vote was definitely surprising to me. But the more I thought about it, the less surprising it should have been.

Europe probably has just as many issues as America has. One of the continually-discriminated groups in Europe are Gypsies. A few months ago in August, Madonna had a concert in Romania where she tried to briefly talk to the crowd about how wrong such discrimination was. She was booed.

Also, Africa is definitely not known to be human-rights friendly, but one such story I came across recently caused me raise an eyebrow. Apparently, albinos are being killed in Burundi and Tanzania simply because they are albino. What the hell?

Asian cultures tend to hold some sort of traditionalistic view. However, of more noteworthiness, I suppose it's a recent phenomenon, but in Japan, older people are starting to become discriminated against more and more, possibly leading some elderly to commit suicide in larger numbers than before (the reasons for increasing elderly suicide rates in Japan are more complicated than simply age discrimination, of course).

So what I'm trying to convey through these examples is that in all different parts of the world, some type of discrimination still exists that would be viewed as outrageous by (some of) the other parts of the world. That said, given the "pervasive" support of democracy (or something that resembles democracy) by the more-developed nations of the world, democratic nations are allowing the general populace to vote with their biased collective mindsets on issues that should really only be legislated by the progressive, more-intelligent higher-ups. A great example here is gay marriage in America. It has never been passed (or kept) by popular vote. It has always been legalized through the legislative or the judiciary system.

This is an excellent place for this comic: http://xkcd.com/603/

So it seems to me that well-educated people tend to have more-progressive, less-discriminatory views that the general population does not share. But we still allow the general population to vote with their collective, biased mindsets on issues that affect everyone--"everyone" including people who might be biased against by the general population. I'd say that people right now aren't fully-educated enough to realize the non-progressiveness of some of their views. Even a marginally additional amount of open-mindedness could go a long way. But otherwise, we just aren't quite ready for democracy with our current population.


Other links of possible interest:

Another article on the Swiss vote (you need to have a NYTimes account to read it now):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/world/europe/30swiss.html?_r=1&hp

(Anti-)Creationist comic
http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1604



Unrelated music video! Here is Shayne Ward's "If That's OK With You." He's from England and was the winner of the second season of the British series The X Factor. I became a fan a couple of years ago from the song below, "No U Hang Up," and "Breathless." The non-single songs "Easy to Love You" and "Melt the Snow" from his first(-ish) and second albums, respectively, are also noteworthy listens.

'New Moon' and women's sexuality

Due to New Moon's record-smashing box office over its debut weekend this past weekend, I think I have no choice but to offer my own commentary on the latest Twilight movie offering. I should preface everything by saying that I have neither read nor seen any Twilight books or movies, but I'm not commenting on the depth (LOL!) of the plots or characters so I think I'm good.

In its first three days of release, New Moon made $142.8 million. In case you live under an economic rock, that's a fuck-ton of money. So much so that it's the third best opening ever. The only two movies with better debuts are comic book movies (The Dark Night and Spider-Man 3), while the movie that got knocked out of third place was about pirates (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest). Not only that, but these three other movies were released during the summer. Here's some movie trivia for you: big-budget blockbusters are usually released during the summer months because they have a better chance at making more money. By comparison, movies released during the slower months can top the weekend box office with about $15 million or less (for example, Sept 4-7, 2009; Feb 27-Mar 1, 2009; and Apr 4-6, 2008). Movies in the weekend box office pole position generally make in the $30-60 million range (don't quote me on that), so there's a significant difference.

Okay, so there's the non-summer-release box office smashing going on, but there's also another factor that we need to look at. Dark Night, Spider-Man 3, and Pirates all have appeal to both male and female audiences. Not to stereotype too much, but there's some action for the guys and some romance for the girls. You would think with a Batman movie, the audience would be overwhelmingly male; however, for the debut weekend, only 52 percent of the audience was male. With Pirates, the audience was "equally divided" between males and females. I couldn't find gender percentage data for the Spider-Man movie. But with New Moon, the audience was 80 fucking percent female. So if you're male and you went to see New Moon this past weekend, you were outnumbered 1 to 4. That $142.8 million was carried mostly by women.

Now I can't claim to know what the appeal of the movie is or why so many more women than men are appealed, but I'm going to try to theorize. I say that it's the "sex appeal" of the the two leading actors Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner. (Does anyone even know the name of the lead actress?) They have been gracing the covers of so many tween girl (and other) magazines for the past few months that it would be shocking if New Moon didn't make as much money as it did with so much easy publicity. Factor in the widespread critical panning of the movie, and you cannot honestly say people flocked to the movie because it was good. It was due to Pattinson's and Lautner's "hotness" (I put this in quotes because I'm still confused about their hotness ... I don't really think they're that hot. Twi-fan women....).

Of course, the implications here aren't too uplifting. Have hot, sexy, shirtless guys that want to do absolutely anything for the love of a girl put into a movie, and SUPERCRAZYFANGIRLS will ensure the movie's financial success. If you have a bunch of hot, sexy, scantily-scad ladies swarming over one man in a movie by offering to his love slave, what's going to happen? 1) Feminists will go batshit crazy. 2) Where are the death-defying action scenes? 3) Guys have porn for this. (Okay, I'm kidding on number 3 here, but I can't imagine such a meager plot widely-appealing to male audiences. Of course, I might be biased.)

So my question here would be as follows: If we can essentially boil down the appeal of New Moon to the (demure) sex appeal of lead actors ("demure" because, well, is there even any nudity or sex in the movies??), then aren't women's sexualities more visually-based than normally thought-of (i.e., men and women aren't really that mentally-different sexually)? Can women really be this shallow?

Related articles that I didn't use:

• From Dracula to Edward: The changing face of vampires: Interesting article showing the gradual sexualization of the Vampire in pop culture
• The Oatmeal blog post: How Twilight Works: This guy actually read most of one of the Twilight books and maybe saw a movie or two
  

Unrelated, but here is (one of) my guilty pleasure(s) Australian singer Anthony Callea. He's done other things since this video, but I became a fan of him from this 2004 Australian Idol performance of his of "The Prayer." The single still holds the record the for the highest- and fastest-selling single in Australia.

The (generational) lag of online media

In the past week, I've perused the following stories concerning online media:

• November 13, 2009: Facebook status update provides alibi
• November 16, 2009: Patients Turn To Online Community For Help Healing
• November 17, 2009: "Unfriend" named word of 2009
• November 17, 2009: Report: Countries prepping for cyberwar
• November 17, 2009: Can the law keep up with technology?

It goes to reason that people are not unaware of the changing cultural norms and customs regarding online tools. From the third article above, the New Oxford American Dictionary even named the single word of the year for 2009 as a word from the world of the Internet. Not since the dot-com boom of the late-1990s has a word from the online arena been dubbed Word of the Year.

So what makes 2009 different from the rest of the years of the '00s? Arguably, the Internet came to mass appeal in the '90s (which could explain how online-related words claimed the Word of the Year throne for six non-consecutive years during the '90s), but it wasn't until throughout the '00s that it has ultimately fundamentally changed the way people function, work, and interact with one another. Think about it. You can apply to colleges and graduate schools online (some only have online applications). You can apply to jobs online. Email is the preferred method for a lot of professional dialogues. If a company doesn't have a website, it is probably severely hindered compared to those that do have one. The company names "Google," "YouTube," and "Facebook" have all become verbs. Most younger people probably couldn't function without Internet access of some sort. You can watch movies and television shows online. You can go shopping online. You can compare prices between/among various competitors online. I could go on and on.

Ergo, this collection of events has essentially been spiraling toward a point in which the legal/cultural/infrastructural boundaries of yester-decade are being hard-pressed to change. Online tools have changed the population, but the infrastructures currently in place are for a population essentially before the Internet. From the articles above, people are relying on online social networking sites like Facebook for legal alibis, people are turning to the online community for mental help, countries are anticipating some type of new warfare via the Internet, and the laws of today rudimentarily apply to issues in the cyberworld.

So how can all these issues be rectified? The people currenly in power (that is, the older working-age population [ages 35-65]) could hardly be said to understand the Internet as well as those coming into power (i.e., the younger working-age population [ages 15-35]). As with any cultural shift, the effect undeniably affects the younger people much more than it affects the older ones, with the more-affected younguns bringing the changes with them as they age to become the older ones of tomorrow. Therefore, any type of foundational change (legal, economical, etc.) related to these cultural shifts must be implemented by the younger generation coming into power, which of course would take roughly a generation (20-30 years) to occur.

Unfortunately, we are already feeling the strains that the online world have been putting on our legal system since current laws have set geographical precincts. The online world doesn't quite understand national/state boundaries. We'll have to see what happens.

By the way, Mashable.com's CEO is surprisingly handsome.


Today's unrelated music video comes from U.K. singer Emma Deigman. I became a fan of her from her acoustic cover of the Killers' "Human" (which you should YouTube ... as well as her acoustic cover of Lady Gaga's "Just Dance"). This video is her official single "It Was You":