Saving the World Part V

Citizen Ted — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 17:51:53 +0000

Here we go again!

I’ve already posted four previous articles wherein I brilliantly solve some of the world’s most complicated conundrums. Today, I will solve a problem that has plagued every democracy in the world for centuries: the question of capital punishment.

This is all a bit untoward, what?

Capital punishment has been employed since the advent of civilization. When someone commits a crime that marks them as a mortal threat to a community, the only options are complete forgiveness (dangerous), banishment (possible repercussions), imprisonment (costly) or execution (barbarous but effective). Execution became wildly popular because it served two sociological purposes: it rid the community of a mortal danger and it wreaked vengeance for those affected, be they community members or the State itself.

When the world emerged from the horrors of world war in the 20th century, many nations banned capital punishment. It was all too clear how dangerous it was to trust the State with the option of executing its own citizenry. The Western world was quick to ban it. Today in the West, only Belarus and the United States continue to enforce capital crimes. Much of Africa and Asia continue to employ it, including the otherwise pacific people of Japan.

Gosh, look how civilized we are!

I’ve read a few books on the subject, but I won’t bother recounting the moral aspects of the various methods of execution. Instead, I will forward a policy designed to bridge the gap between capital punishment supporters and critics.

To do this, I’ll address the aspects that trouble us:

1) That capital punishment deters others from committing capital crimes;

2) That capital punishment is a just vengeance for survivors of a capital murder;

3) That the State can’t be trusted to fairly enforce capital punishment;

4) That capital punishment is morally reprehensible.

In a nutshell, my plan is the following: remove the power to execute from the State and deliver it to the People as a civil matter. Sound crazy? Then let’s get on with the crazy!

Meet our murderers:
John Smith………………………………….Hank Jones

While every criminal case is different, for my purposes I wish to delineate first degree murder cases into two categories: those based on circumstantial evidence and those based on indisputable evidence. John Smith (not his real name) was arrested after his wife was found dead. Police found forensic evidence at the crime scene and on his person that linked him to the crime. Hank Jones (not his real name) was in a public place and, in front of dozens of witnesses, shot to death three people in an effort to murder a man who he mistakenly believed had cheated him of $60.

Right now, lawyers are already angry with me, as “every case has its details and merits” and “you can’t just categorize so broadly”. But yea, I think I can. So stay with me for a bit.

Let’s assume both men were found mentally fit to stand trial for first degree murder. Both men were convicted of the charges. There are families that want to see these men dead. And there are attorneys who disagree on the particulars of these trials and harbor continued concerns about the convictions. People are calling for The Chair. Others are calling for clemency. What to do? Here’s what I think.

My primary concern is the same of all the other Western democracies: the State cannot be trusted to enforce capital punishment fairly. Liberals, Conservatives and Libertarians should all agree on this point. Hell, we don’t feel the State fairly enforces parking regulations, much less the decision to execute its own citizens! We all know that prosecutors are tasked to convict every clown that shows up in the dock to the furthest extent of the law. They build careers on this. They are not obliged to be merciful. And they have been historically unconcerned about having prosecuted innocent people. Shit happens, right?

Well, when your zeal leads to an innocent man being executed, you have crossed a line that most civilized nations find unacceptable.

So, since the State cannot be trusted to fairly enforce the power of executing its own citizenry, we are left looking at the other side of the coin. Does society have a vested interest in seeing a convicted murderer executed?

We can take care of this ourselves, right pardner?

I would faithfully submit that every competent study on capital punishment (in America) shows a negligible effect as a deterrent. That just isn’t how murderers think. If it’s not a crime of passion, it’s a crime of single-minded cruelty and vengeance. Pro’s and con’s aren’t being weighed. And that’s why we can’t afford to have these people running loose.

So, the deterrent argument is crap. That leaves us with the moral dimensions. Is it immoral? And should the survivors of a capital crime have the right to see their antagonist executed? Before you say “yes” and “no”, imagine this:

You’re an anti-capital punishment guy at a house party with your spouse, your two young daughters and seven friends. A guy bursts in with a gun and a bomb. He threatens to blow up the bomb if anybody moves. He proceeds to rape your daughters and forces you to watch. Then he shoots both girls to death as you watch. He has a big belly laugh and urinates on the corpses. He did it for fun, and he says you and your spouse are next. Just then, he is overpowered by the dinner guests. He is arrested, arraigned and convicted of two counts of first degree murder. In court, he leers at you and during conviction threatens to rape your spouse and kill both of you afterward. Your life is devastated. You can’t sleep. Your marriage crumbles. You think you are losing your mind. Through a confederate, this guy continues to send you death threats. He just won’t stop.

Do you now feel a need to have this guy executed? Maybe, maybe not. But the moral dimension has surely shifted. Life in prison without parole for this guy may not be enough for you.

Step 1: weight of the evidence.

Let’s look at my plan now.

To begin, I would remove from the State its ability to sentence anyone to death. Life without parole would be the toughest sentence possible. In most cases, and in most civilized countries, this is the end of it. The State is now charged with dealing with this person.

I must stress that according to American law, this person was convicted because they were found guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt”. Reasonable doubt has been a legal football kicked by attorneys for many decades across untold criminal cases, but it remains the Law of the Land. It is perhaps purposefully vague, yet we still observe it.

So, the State can find someone guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, that standard does not apply in civil cases. The preponderance of evidence is weighed by a civil judge, and that judge’s decision can be appealed. In most cases, the standards of evidence in civil trials is something less strict than “beyond a reasonable doubt”. It’s a weaker standard. Since execution is irrevocable, any legal standard to execute someone must go the other direction: it must have a substantially higher standard of evidence.

You are hereby remanded to a private execution service!

I would submit that in the case of first degree murder, any person who can show direct damage from the defendant’s actions can lobby a civil court to have that person executed, but with the following caveats:

1) The civil court must find that the evidence leading to conviction was not just “beyond a reasonable doubt”, but that the evidence reached a higher standard that I call “overwhelming and compelling”.

2) If this civil court finds the defendant was convicted with evidence that was “overwhelming and compelling”, the plaintiff can ask the court to remand the defendant to a private facility at the plaintiff’s cost.

3) The defendant can appeal the civil decision.

4) If the appeals fail, the defendant is remanded to a private institution and a fixed date of execution is set. This date cannot be delayed or forwarded.

5) At the private institution, the staff arrange for the defendant to be executed in a manner determined to be neither cruel nor unusual.

6) At the proscribed moment, the plaintiff performs the action that causes the execution to occur.

7) After the execution occurs, the defendant’s family or representatives reserve the right to sue for wrongful death should evidence arise that counters the “overwhelming and compelling” evidence that caused the civil execution case to move forward.

I think this recourse solves the many conflicting aspects of capital punishment. It removes the State from responsibility and places it firmly in the hands of the plaintiffs (the aggrieved party). It filters out defendants who were convicted with less-than-overwhelming evidence. It places a substantial personal and financial burden on the aggrieved party. It causes execution to become personal and extremely rare.

In my estimation, the vast majority of capital cases will be reduced to Life Without Parole. Only the Worst of the Worst will become truly capital cases. And even if a bloodthirsty plaintiff insists on pleading to a Civil Execution court, they remain on the hook for a potential counter-suit. Only the most passionate of the aggrieved will bother.

This will likely result in an effective abolition of capital punishment, but (importantly) it does not remove the concept from public consciousness. We can still consider ourselves to be tough on crime. Yet we will no longer be a nation that lets the State do our killing for us. That is a dangerous policy and my plan solves it.

So, unless you are willing to hound your murderer to the very end of the legal rope, and unless you are willing to do the killing by your own hand, you need to suck it up and accept Life Without Parole as the best possible outcome.

As for the private execution services? I’m sure Halliburton could come up with something.

Is Optical Media Dead?

Citizen Ted — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:50:13 +0000

When Apple released the MacBook Air in 2008, there was a very curious omission in the design: the computer had no optical drive. No CD, no DVD. Sure, you could opt to purchase an external CD/DVD drive, but by purposefully omitting the drive, Apple made a bold statement: “We don’t think there’s any future in optical media.”

Microsoft fanboys and crotchety old coots like me howled in disbelief. After all, we had accumulated massive libraries of software applications, games, music and movies on optical media. What good is a new computer if I can’t put my ancient copy of Cubase on it? And what if I need to burn a music mix onto a CD to give to some chick in an effort to show her how cool and sensitive I am? And what if I need to burn an ISO of a cool program or DVD that I just pirated from the torrents? What about DVD backups of my prOn collection? Hmm? Is Apple crazy?

Like usual, Apple was crazy like a fox.

Go ahead. Live the life!

In the intervening years, optical media started to disappear like like cupcakes in Adele’s pantry. Valve’s Steam download service became the go-to method of obtaining new games and in recent months they have started offering direct downloads of mainstream software applications as well. Netflix and other streaming services obviated the need to collect a bunch of plastic disks of your favorite movies and TV shows. Most folks download “apps” instead of full-fledged programs, and most major developers offer pay download services rather than disks. And music? Who buys CD’s any more? Your grampa?

Media storage has never been cheaper. Terabyte drives, home-based NAS file servers and even cheap USB memory sticks serve the vast majority of people as viable back up systems. You can even back up your stuff to “the cloud”, if you trust corporations to be hands-off with your sensitive files.

It seems Apple was right. Optical media is going the way of the floppy disk. But before we start digging its grave, we should consider the ramifications of our actions.

Physical media comes in many forms.

Before we go flying off into the Fantastic World of Tomorrow, we need to slow down and assess what we’re doing. Ever since Julius Caesar, Aurelian and the Christian Patriarchy took turns burning down the Library at Alexandria, we have to ask ourselves: how can we save our works for posterity?

How many of Edison’s cylinders were ever converted to vinyl? How many vinyl masters and tapes were ever encoded to a CD? And how many CD’s have been ripped to MP3 or similar formats? How much music was lost forever in this endless process of media evolution? What have we lost?

I submit to you the following: we have lost a lot. From early 20th century bluegrass to moldering silent films to wacky girlie magazines of the 1960′s, in our headlong rush for the new we are leaving behind the gemstones of civilization. This is all due to the vagaries of physical media. If we could digitize this stuff with the highest degree of granularity possible, future generations will merely have to perform the comparatively easy task of trans-coding to more modern formats.

Errol Flynn’s first film “Murder at Monte Carlo” – gone forever.

Wikipedia has a list of lost films. It is far from comprehensive. Only 10% of silent films and early talkies have survived. Of the golden age of film-making (1927-1950), about half are lost forever. Sure, some of those films were boring. But they all contain at least a grain of insight into the minds of the people that created them and the society that watched them. I’m sure a lot of the scrolls in the Library at Alexandria were pretty damn boring, but civilization is far poorer for their loss.

The Library of Congress and similar organizations are making efforts to preserve as much of this stuff as they can. In fact, the next time somebody tells you that everything the government does is worthless and wasteful, do point them to the Library of Congress website. Then ask them to please continue droning on.

Is it enough? No. Optical media is on its deathbed. It’s up to you, the hoarder of CD’s and unpopular DVD’s, to start a digital library of your stuff and start sharing it. That’s right: share it. The copyright nags are the enemy of civilization. For them, there is a dollar value on the scrolls at Alexandria. They insist that society and culture should move forward only at the pace that provides them maximum financial return. Disney is the enemy, not PirateBay.

The Internet is much more than a series of tubes. It is the first ever repository of human knowledge which has an amazing aspect: the ability to reproduce perfectly, endlessly. But if it isn’t in there, it won’t be out there. To that end, I give you Rudy Vallee singing “My Song” from 1925. After all, he wanted you to hear his song!

Rudy Vallee – My Song

All my pretty speeches are a bust
And so I must try something new.
I’ve been sitting up the whole night long
Writing a song all about you.
I don’t care if it’s a big success;
As long as it will change your ‘no’ to ‘yes’…

Chorus:
My song won’t appeal to a lover of art.
My song will reveal what I feel in my heart.
It won’t have so much of Franz Schubert’s touch.
And I can’t begin like Irving Berlin.

My song, though a poet would never OK,
My song, still you know what I’m striving to say.
My words may be crude; the tune may be wrong,
But you’ll find my heart in my song.

Ghosts

Citizen Ted — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:08:59 +0000

Haunting your house since time immemorial.

When I was a kid, I watched every cheesy 1950′s horror movie broadcast in the New York City area. Some of them gave me a mild chill while others scared the living crap out of me. One of them, Fiend Without a Face, fed my nightmares for years. It was about malevolent aliens composed of human brains and spinal cords who were rendered invisible by radioactivity. To this day I try to avoid disembodied nervous systems.

But of all the aliens, monsters, vampires and zombies, the movies that struck me to my core were ghost stories. Why? Ghosts don’t have fangs or claws. They rarely even physically harm anyone. But they stir a primal fear in us. Their mere appearance drives us into paroxysms of horror.

They’re here.

Ghost stories evolved in the modern era, with Tobe Hooper’s Poltergeist becoming the high water mark in the genre. Now in full color with full gore, we had connected our historical fascination of ghosts with scientific certainty. Kooks and crackpots exalted and filled bookshelves with ridiculous claims and silly narratives (many of which were read by young library visitors in New Jersey) .

Having matured into a Man of Science, I reject all those silly theories and spine-chilling stories. Yet somehow, I still maintain a nagging fear when I convince myself that somewhere in the darkness a phantasm awaits. Why is this?

I returned to my library books of yore and discovered something quite profound: ghosts are the inevitable manifestation of our warmth for nostalgia. They are the impossible past leaping forward to invade our present. They are deeply personal reflections of our foibles and regrets. This is far more terrifying than the external threat of tooth and claw. Let’s look back on the history of ghosts, then we’ll wrap it up with some observations about modern ghost stories.

Ancient Babylonians had some serious ghost problems.

Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt had ghosts galore. The spirits of the Dead sometimes languished among the Living and affected their lives. Back then, ghosts weren’t very malevolent. The Roman writer Cicero told the story of Simonides, who buried a stranger’s body he had chanced upon. To return the favor of a proper burial, the dead man’s ghost appeared before Simonides and warned him not to board a ship he was scheduled to sail upon. Simonides took the ghost’s advice and that ship later sank at sea. Thanks, Mr. Ghost!

Pliny the Younger maintained the “unburied dead” concept when he wrote about a house in Athens haunted by a ghost who terrorized the homeowners until a chained skeleton was located beneath the house and properly buried. Ghosts regularly appeared in Homer’s epics, appearing with spine-shivering regularity and delivering warnings that our heroes would ignore at their peril.

Boo!

The Christian era buried the Pagan Gods but retained the myth of ghosts. On the third day after Christ’s interment, the stone was rolled away and Jesus walked out in his burial shroud. His followers immediately freaked out. It’s a ghost! It took some convincing from the risen Christ to convince them he was not a malingering phantom but actually a supernatural manifestation of God, leaving now to take a seat at the right hand of the Father.

Phew! Glad that all got sorted out!

The Roman Catholic church taught that the spirits of the Dead ascended to Heaven, fell into Hell or were held in indefinite limbo in Purgatory. There was no canon for disembodied spirits to walk the Earth, so the Church assumed any such apparition was surely a demon. And thus began the Western tradition of ghosts as malevolent monsters, usually in league with witches. They caused crops to fail and damned villages. This led to some rather unsavory public policies among European and American societies. Thousands of men and women were burned alive in the quest to stamp out the effects of demonic spirits.

But the ghosts that haunted my dreams were those popularized in the Victorian era. They terrorized us without engaging in murder or slaughter. Their very appearance was their stock in trade: “Malevolence and terror, the glare of evil faces, the stony grin of unearthly malice.” They caused such fear that otherwise sane individuals would go utterly mad and require incarceration in an asylum.

Forevermore!

Edgar Allen Poe became the poet laureate of the spectral apparition. With Gothic pen in hand, he scribbled stories of vengeful spirits haunting the nights of the Living, marking their lives with reproach and guilt. Once again, these phantasms didn’t attack our protagonists with murderous rage. Instead, Poe used vivid descriptions of defiled corpses and eldritch estates to invoke a sense of dread. The ghosts were the inevitable manifestations of our uncertainty about shadows flickering down the hall and odd bumps in the night. The Divine Edgar knew what struck fear in the hearts of the Victorians and he exploited it for all it was worth.

Throughout the Victorian and Edwardian eras, writers continued frightening readers with tales of lurid pasts coming awake to haunt us. From Lord Dunsany to HP Lovecraft, the spectral world was forever reaping the harvest that foolish men had sown.

Cashing in on the craze.

Of course, it wasn’t just Victorian writers making a living from the Dead. An entire industry of “spirit mediums” sprang up, promising to bridge the gap between fictional ghost stories and our everyday lives. For a fee, of course. These charlatans and delusional eccentrics understood the effect of ghosts on the primal consciousness of the average citizen as well as Poe did. The cultural descendents of these con artists continue to operate today.

Yet somehow the lore of the ghost has fallen out of favor in modern times, replaced with rotting zombies and vampires who go to high school. The “Poltergeist” and “Amityville” films renewed the ghost myth in popular culture, but even the laudable “Ring” films were a drop in the bucket of blockbuster werewolf, vampire and zombie outings. A recent series of laughably stupid television programs and “Paranormal” ghost movies continue to exploit our preternatural fear of ghosts, but modern viewers want blood and guts, not bumps in the night.

Modern horror films are less cerebral.

We can attribute this to our truncated attention spans and less-than-introspective lifestyles. If a spy film has no car chase, Hollywood won’t back it. If a horror film has no gore in it, independent studios won’t back it. The days of Vincent Price raising a sharp eyebrow as a clinking noise echoes through a Bavarian castle are long gone.

Surprisingly, it the ghost myth that is most likely to frighten the average person in the night. We don’t assume that creaking noise or muffled footfall is a vampire or a werewolf. Or even a zombie. Instead, we brace ourselves for the possibility that a ghost is in our midst. We squint into the darkness and cast our eyes quickly over our shoulders. Did I just see something? Was that a shadow? How did it move? What is out there? “Hello! Is anybody out there?”

We aren’t calling out to find a person. We are calling out to dispel a ghost. Whether we are successful or not – that is the question. Because if we are not, then we will certainly be faced with a spectral mirage of someone long dead. It may not physically harm us, but it cannot be killed and it cannot be wished away. It has an agenda. And it has nothing to fear, while we have everything to fear.

Bad Design

Citizen Ted — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 01:23:01 +0000

Umm…yeah. This.

There’s plenty of bad design out there. There’s plenty of ergonomic what-the-fucks. The “tear here to open” that rips apart. The child-safety cap that requires the patience of Job and the strength of a gorilla to open. Today I’d like to share some of my gripes about these every day problems.

The Corporate Bathroom Towel Dispenser

Go ahead. Make my day.

These crappy things have been dumping armloads of extra paper towels onto the wet floor since the 1950′s. You pull to get a towel and the weight of the others makes it rip. So you tug, thus releasing a torrent of unwanted towels. And let’s not forget the people that leave a half-torn towel stuck in the dispenser so you have to pry and pull with your wet soggy hands just to get the failed process going all over again.

And don’t get me started on the motion-sensor dispensers. They make us look like a bunch of desperate, wet-handed mimes performing Vaudeville at the Moulin Rouge.

Short Faucets

You’ll never get all the soap off, loser!

The reason you’re reaching for the lousy towel dispenser is because you just washed your hands in a bathroom sink with a tiny faucet. In order to get your giant mitts clean, you have to mush them up against the back wall of the sink just to get some clean water flowing over them. Is it really too costly to get a faucet that reaches a few inches further? I guess it is.

One Function Shower Control

We got hot, we got cold. What else you want?

These things are common in hotels. Trouble is, we never really know what THIS place thinks hot or warm or cold really means, or how long it might take for the hot water to fully kick in. Worst of all, you have no flow control. You get ON-COLD, ON-HOT and OFF. Notice how OFF is the at the far end of HOT, so to shut it off you must first scald your head with boiling water.

I understand why hotels need to control water use, but I’d like them to offer two types of rooms: one for people who can manually adjust two faucet controls and one for the morons.

Low-Flow Toilet

I ain’t flushing that thing. Sorry. Not my problem.

I’m as a big a hippie as any other. I believe in conserving resources and recycling and being nice to the Earth. But I draw the line at low-flow toilets that fail to accomplish their primary mission. I don’t care what the tag says at the store, these things cannot flush man-size turds at all. There’s no point in being “low-flow” when it takes two or three flushes and a stick from the backyard to get the job done. Fuck that. Give me a 5-gallon turbo-action Turd Destroyer. I’m so glad you can still find them at the re-use store.

Coffee Makers

One cup? Two? Five? Spin the wheel and get a big surprise!

If you want an American-style cup of coffee, be sure to use one of these pieces of crap. Don’t pay too much attention to the fact that the two water calibration lines don’t correlate or that the coffee packet doesn’t really say how much you should use. Just shove the coffee in the bin, fill up the trough with water and pray to whatever God you prefer. You are almost guaranteed to get either feather-light dishwater or sludge from the bottom of an oil barrel. Either way, it will be piping hot, so you’ve got that going for you.

Round Doorknobs

I am all there is!

Yes, door knobs! Why did we North Americans fill our homes with these lousy things? You have to have a lizard grip, supple shoulders and an awkward elbow to pull open every door in the house. These things are poorly designed for the job: causing a latch bolt to retreat. In most homes in Europe, they’ve evolved to the lever push-down handle. It’s easy, it’s reliable, it doesn’t loosen up and it applies great amounts of force with very little effort. Just one more thing those dirty Europeans got right.

Band-Aid Packets

I am the Devil and you are my slave!

So you just cut your finger. Blood is gushing out. You squeeze the wound closed with whatever rag was on hand. It seems to be slowing, so it’s time for a Band-Aid. But unless you have some decent fingernails and two hands free, you’re not gonna open that packet. And who has two hands free when they’re busy tending to a wound? And let’s not forget those worthless “pull string to open packet” systems they foisted upon us. That stupid red string would slip right out, leaving you with a closed packet, a bloody digit and a head full of fury.

One would think that with billions of dollars of profit, Johnson & Johnson could hire one engineer to solve the problem. But, no. If you don’t like it you can go ahead and bleed to death. See if anyone cares!

Digital Speedometers

Better watch it, Buster!

These things are stupid on several fronts. First and foremost: unlike an analog speedometer, they don’t tell you much about your acceleration or deceleration. These are good things to know when you’re – you know – driving. Next: it tempts people to glance endlessly at the speedo. 39…40…41…42…OMFG…41…40…39…OMFG! One mph here or there doesn’t mean anything. I want to see where I’m at every once in a while and if I’m accelerating I want to know what the rate is. Finally, these things are poorly solving a problem that didn’t exist. Nothing causes more waste than a marketing team director who “has a great new idea”.

STFU, Mr. Marketing Guy. Just put a speedo in there and let us move on with our lives.

Electric Stove Elements

Touch-a touch-a touch-a touch me! I wanna be burny!

I am plagued with these things. Precise temperature control is impossible. They are ugly as sin and collect drippings and crap, then burn them to uncleanable rusty globs. Disgusting. Worst of all, if you have oil in the pan there is no way to get an even spread because not one of your stove elements is level. Sure, you could prop one end up with tin foil but you’ll never get it right. It’ll just slosh in this direction and that. There is no hope. Give up.

The newer covered induction elements are much better. But nothing beats a properly leveled gas stove. Period.

Mexican Candles

Praise Jesus, especially when the power goes out!

I love these things. They’re a buck apiece and burn for many many hours. Trouble is, they tend to heat up, turning the candle liquid inside. When you blow it out it cools off and buries the wick. Now, when the power goes out you find yourself digging away at the wick in order to tease it out. And when you try to light it, it just won’t stay lit. It drowns itself in wax. So what seemed like an inexhaustible candle turns out to be a one-use waste of money.

Oh, and the photo above says “Ecce Homo”, which is Latin for “Behold the man”, which Pontius Pilate said when producing Christ for the crowd to mock. These candles are not saying Jesus was a homo. I hope we got that all straightened out.

Low Slung Deck Chairs

Go ahead. Sit down.

A descendent of the Kennedy Chair, which was in turn a variation of the Eisenhower Chair, the low-slung deck chair is the bane of the American patio. They look so cool and sleek and inviting, but once you’ve plopped your fat ass in there, you’re not getting back up. You can’t. So instead you give up and start barking commands at the wife and kids. “Get your old man a beer and another cheeseburger, would ya?”

Now that you’re drunk and full of greasy food, the likelihood you’ll ever stand up is gone for good. So you drift off into a nap. Later on, the wife wakes you to let you know the guests have all left and the kids are watching TV. You now have the excuse of post-nap lethargy to ask your wife to pull with all her might and get your fat ass out of that damn chair.

Next Sunday the whole process repeats. But damn – it looks so good on the patio, doesn’t it?

And finally…

Clock Radios

HA HA! Your career depends on me!

Probably the most lasting and egregious form of bad design, the ubiquitous digital clock radio is the biggest piece of shit ever foisted upon an unknowing world.

The various manufacturers have different schemes for making the various settings and none of these awful designs have improved on the plain old alarm clock. There are wind-up travel alarm clocks that have worked admirably for many decades. Until I lost mine, I’d bring it on trips because it was dead simple and totally reliable.

Nowadays, when you come rambling into your hotel room at 2am and need to set your clock to wake you up at 6:20 sharp, you’re screwed. You can barely focus your eyes on the tiny buttons and text, much less make the logical leaps required to perform the sequence for a reliable alarm. So you call down to the front desk for a wake up call that never comes because someone called in sick that day.

In sum, fuck all these cheap plastic clock radios. I hate them.

The Mountain Goat Incident

Citizen Ted — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 20:52:04 +0000

Rainbow over Rainier: a portent of danger!

In July 2003, my friend John and I went on a an overnight trip to Spray Park, a flowery alpine area on the northwest flank of Mount Rainier. We went for the wildflowers, the glaciers and the beautiful landscape. Little did I know it would bring me face to face with mortal danger!

The hike in was wonderful. Clear skies and pleasant temperatures made the strenuous ascent a little easier. We passed up through the treeline, past waterfalls and alpine glory.

The requisite waterfall shot.

Eventually, we broke through the trees and found ourselves on the glaciated flanks of Mount Rainier. We were lucky to find a perfect campsite adjoining the glacier. We had a clear, flat area and access to water. We spent the evening shooting photos, playing songs on our kalimbas and watching the golden hour of sunset pass over the top of the world.

Sun sets before Rainier, which stands reflected in our little camp pond.

The night went by without incident, but John was taken ill. He caught some kind of nasty cold. The next morning, he put down some coffee and biscuits but informed me had no energy to continue up the mountain. There was a plaque at the top of Observation Rock (the rock jutting up on the right in the above photo). The exact elevation at that point is 8,364 feet and I thought it would be a cool idea to climb up there and see if my fancy new altimeter wristwatch was really accurate.

I would have to do it alone.

Approaching Echo Rock.

My plan was to head straight out of camp, then hug the glaciated area along the base of Echo Rock. I would then follow the gently rising slope in the upper center of this photo to Observation Rock. I wanted to hug Echo Rock because the ascent was easier and the shadowed area had firmer snow on it. Up I went.

Once I got to the shadowed area at the base of Echo Rock, they appeared…

MOUNTAIN GOATS!

A herd of mountain goats appeared over the scree above Observation Rock and headed right toward me! The digital zoom on my lousy camera could not do justice to the apprehensive atmosphere they created. They were marching right toward me!

Like most city folk, I wasn’t sure what the protocol was for dealing with mountain goats in the wild. Do you run? Do you puff out your chest and make noise? Do you climb a tree? What? I had no idea. So I just kept my mouth shut and hoped they’d walk past me. They didn’t.

Closer and closer they came!

They crossed the glacier and moved just above me. Here you can see the Alpha Goat regarding me with disdain. It was at this point things got really weird. The Alpha Goat bellowed to his flock: “Follow me! We will destroy this intruder!”

And so began the onslaught. These enormous beasts sidled past me and climbed up the scree above me on Echo Rock. At first I thought they would simply climb up and away from me. I was wrong.

Once the entire herd had mounted the scree, they started kicking rocks down onto me! I had to side step, duck and leap like a running back. Huge rocks bounced up all around me, many nearly clipping my head. I had nowhere to run. I backed off, but that’s where the rocks seemed to be landing. If I stayed forward, they mostly bounced over my head. And besides, I was afraid the whole herd would rush me if I ran.

An enraged goat grimaces at me mockingly.

I was unable to capture photos of the actual rocks flying at me because:

I was busy leaping, ducking and sidestepping.
I was in fear for my life.
Fuck the camera! I had bigger problems.

But I did pull out my camera a couple times to get fast, lousy photos of the goats. My hands were trembling, which didn’t help. However, I got a few more shots off. This one was the most shocking:

A baby goat forced into homicidal rage.

Most of the goats – about 15 of them – were kicking rocks down at me. But the baby mountain goat refused to engage in the cruelty. I continually moved below the baby goat because it was the safest place to be. Then, one of the goats ambled over to the baby and started head-butting it and bleating loudly at it. He was saying “Kick rocks at the human or consequences will be severe!”

To my horror, the baby goat complied and kicked a few small rocks at me! The rotten turncoat bastard!

An angry goat sizes me up closely.

The cavalcade of scree started to slow down. I had evaded their reign of terror. The goats now knew I was made of sterner stuff than they had expected. As the rock attack abated, I got off one more “angry goat” photo and started backing away slowly.

To my relief, the herd dismounted the scree just above me and started back up the glacier, curving out and around Echo Rock.

I stood victorious as the failed assassination broke up and the goats fled.

I took some very long breaths that morning as the goats gave up and headed back up the glacier. I didn’t know it, but far below my friend John was watching the whole thing from his telephoto lens. He was prepared to mount up and haul me off if I had gotten beaned by a big rock. I was in good shape back in 2003 and my 20-mile-a-week jogging habit had served me well. The five aspects of fitness: strength-endurance-speed-balance-flexibity. You need all five at times like these!

Off they go in search of a weaker human.

After they were gone, I took a few minutes to collect myself. I was uninjured, but I was still a bit shaky. I sat down on a rock and looked across the glacier. Just ahead was Observation Rock. The whole damn point was to climb up that stupid rock and I wasn’t about to turn around now. Not after all this shit.

I decided to get my act together and scamper up the rock.

Observation Rock beckons!

The hike across the glacier and up the rock was uneventful. But once at the top, I found I was not alone. Two Irishmen – Fergil and Tim – who were touring the North Cascades had been up there for some time. They offered me hot tea and snacks, which I greedily consumed.

Fergil sorts his gear.

I didn’t mention anything about the recent incident. Instead, I mentioned my cool new altimeter watch. I needed to see the plaque and see if the numbers matched. We jumped over to the plaque and I was pleasantly surprised to see that my watch was only off by about 10 feet. My sea-level calibrations had proved accurate!

We all sat down and quietly enjoyed the day when Fergil finally mentioned, with typical Irish understatement, “Bit o’ goat trouble back there, eh?”

I smiled. “Yeah”.

Then we all broke up laughing. They had watched the whole thing from Observation Rock. Apparently, I looked like a real fool jumping, ducking and sidestepping the goat rock attack. Yeah, laugh it up. It’s different when it’s your ass on the line against an enraged baby goat!

The boys and I loaded up. They were heading around the west of the mountain and I was heading down. They took a photo of me and we went our separate ways.

A rare photo of your humble narrator in the wild.

John was glad to see me back at camp. I told him everything that happened. I think he found the whole thing adventurous and was sorry he wasn’t there, but I put his mind at ease and assured him it was much uncooler than it looked and sounded.

We broke camp and headed back down to civilization. On the way I got a few nice photos.

In the end, adventure can be sought but sometimes it is thrust upon you. Be ready!

Fuck the Olympics

Citizen Ted — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 01:23:09 +0000

Hooray for money!

Sadly, Olympic fever has once again gripped an otherwise reasonable city and turned it upside down. This time, the cheapened whore is London. Now, some of you may point out that I’ve never had much love for London, and that’s true. While I adore England, I’ve always found her capital to be a gray, grotty, sloppy amalgam of a city. It’s like there is no British vision whatsoever in the city. Which probably explains the massive influx of foreigners to “Londonistan” over the last three decades.

So sure, no love lost between me and London. But that doesn’t mean I would wish something as baleful and crass as the Olympics on her. I don’t particularly like Wichita Kansas but I would never express joy should a tornado rip the city apart. I’m an aesthete, not an animal.

London 2012 logo or Lisa Simpson sucking a dick? You decide!

Don’t get me wrong: I love the concept of the Olympics. I love the idea that young athletes can excel in their chosen sport and prove themselves to be world-class on a global stage. Hell, it makes me well up just thinking about it.

So why the anti-Olympic rancor? Because the Games and the process have been hijacked by politicians and corporations. And because this hijack is unnecessary.

Let’s start with the most odious of the processes: the city selection by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This once-proud organization has degenerated into a cynical, corrupt panel of craven scumbags. The Salt Lake City and Beijing selection processes were so corrupt that journalists worldwide had a heyday documenting all the subterfuge and bribery.

Not only is the selection process tainted, but the very idea of world cities vying and bullying their way to Olympic glory is, in my mind, an idiotic process that should be abolished.

It’s sickening to watch. I have a better idea:

Since the Greek economy is about to go down the toilet and potentially take all of Europe with it, let’s bring the Games back home. Let’s make the Olympic Center in Athens permanent. After all, they invented the goddamn Games. Every four years, the Greek economy will get a massive boost with only a fraction of the capital expenditures that are wasted when a city builds an Olympic village from scratch.

The Winter Olympics can then be set up in the Alps. We can let Cortina D’Ampezzo and Chamonix host every other Winter Olympics. Done deal.

Now, some people will get all weepy because we aren’t “spreading the Olympics” all over the world. But like most weepy bullshit, this is just weepy bullshit. It’s the COMPETITORS that matter, not the location. The Olympics will be as international as ever. Young people from every corner of the globe will still have an opportunity to show the world how great they can be. It will be totally awesome and it will become something of a pilgrimage for people who love sport.

Athens will become a new Mecca. Young kids will dream of Athens. The legacy of the original games will connect these young people with a Democratic history going back thousands of years. It will be meaningful and wonderful.

Bring it on home, people!

So anyway, once the corrupt and evil IOC city selection process is finally ended, we can solve the next evil and corrupt problem associated with the Olympics: wasteful civic construction.

When a city hosts the Olympics, it has to build massive stadiums, massive villages, massive transportation solutions and massive security details. All for five weeks of Games. Five. Weeks. People are displaced, homes are destroyed, neighborhoods are altered and massive debt is incurred.

After that, the host city is stuck with massive walls of worthless bullshit. What do they do? They can’t fill them. They can’t lease them. The tear it all down. Yes, the Olympic Stadium in Los Angeles has held up for generations. But that arena is the exception that proves the rule: Olympic construction is a boon for contractors and temp employees and a total waste for taxpayers. The trail of disused, overgrown, wasted Olympic construction sites is endless. And sad.

Look, honey! It’s a cheap plastic piece of shit designed specifically to rip money from our pockets and into the greedy maw of a giant corporation!

Additionally, if we can site the Olympics permanently at Athens, we won’t need all that capital from all those scummy corporations. I wouldn’t dream of banning all corporate sponsorship; athletes need infrastructure for training and guidance. But the Games themselves do not need to be festooned with Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical and BP Oil advertisements every 8 yards. If a company wants to support Olympic athletes, it should do so and feature advertisements that tout what nice fucking guys they are. But that’s where it should end. The Olympic site itself should be free of logoism and the dreary drumbeat of corporate cheerleading. After all, it’s supposed to be about the Games, right? About the young people? Remember them?

Which brings me to my last bitch about the Olympics:

Bringing you the Olympics we think you should see, you common scum!

NBC has the world’s shittiest Olympics coverage, bar none. I’d rather watch full Olympic coverage from Serbia or Laos even though I can’t understand their languages. I can understand a country wanting to highlight its own successful athletes. But NBC has warped its broadcasts as badly as North Korea. It’s all-USA, all the time. It’s pathetic. They think we’re too lazy, stupid and single-minded to enjoy the opening ceremony or something as “foreign” as fencing. That’s why I don’t bother watching the Olympics on NBC. I’m lucky enough to have Canadian broadcasts dribble into my TV. CBC does a MUCH better job than NBC.

I think NBC needs to let go. The Olympic Games should be broadcast by PBS. After all, they are our “national” broadcaster. I’m sure PBS would do a fine job highlighting America’s best competitors without turning it into a circle-jerk rah-rah session.

In sum, fuck the Olympics. We can do better.

Upstairs Downstairs

Citizen Ted — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 18:30:15 +0000

Bo-r-r-r-ring!

Back in the 1970′s, my mother regularly watched this British television program. It drove me nuts because it was so godawful boring. I mean, if we’re going to watch British TV, why the hell isn’t it Monty Python? I guess Upstairs Downstairs served its purpose: it entertained my mother and scared me off to do more productive childhood activities.

Now that I have assumed the mantle of middle age, I decided to give it a try. After all, it’s kind of like an outdated Downton Abbey shot on cheap video tape, right? And everyone loves Downton Abbey.

Downton Abbey is so shiny and new!

All five seasons of Upstairs Downstairs are available on Netflix now, so I dug in. The first few episodes left me flat. Production quality was very poor (the BBC was suffering a crew strike at the time; some episodes were shot in B&W to save money). But I was beginning to understand what the writers were trying to do.

It was actually quite bold. They were framing a drama against the backdrop of much larger national questions and paradoxes of identity. The more I watched (and the more historical research it led me to), the more brilliant it became. By the end of the second season I was enthralled.

I wasn’t alone. Forty years ago, Upstairs Downstairs garnered seven Emmy awards and a Golden Globe. It has been viewed in 70 countries by over a billion people. How the hell did a tame, calm, very formal serial drama about Edwardian life in a London manor house capture the world’s imagination?

You really shouldn’t bang the help.

They did it with brilliant writing, lots of love stories and the inexorable march of history building tension about which the on-screen cast remains chillingly oblivious. I mean, why not hop aboard the Titanic? The bloody thing’s unsinkable, what?

Of course, the primary premise of the program was the strong distinction between the servant class (Downstairs) and the landed aristocracy (Upstairs).

The servant class was a peculiar rank in the British class system. While paid less than the working class, life among the sweeping stairways and colonnaded halls of the bourgeoisie placed the servants above the factory workers. It wasn’t money that determined class; it was placement.

Working as a servant has its privileges.

But perhaps the most resounding class theme in the program is the glass ceiling that kept the landed aristocracy eternally safe from the grubby mitts of the middle class. When a housemaid finds fame as an actress, no quarter is given. In the midst of childbirth, she is swept under the carpet as King Edward himself was dining at the house that night. Can’t have all that “creating new subjects” piffle interrupt a single puff of His Majesty’s cigar, can we?

The merchant class fares no better. They exist only to serve the house with goods and services. Even the ultra-wealthy Armenian magnate who has an eye for the daughter stands no ground. He is, after all, low born. End of discussion.

What’s most astounding is the inability of anyone to shift. It’s not about the money. What the hell is an uneducated servant girl going to do with a sudden windfall? Join the middle class? Is a successful merchant going to welcome an ex-parlourmaid to the family? Not bloody likely.

This may make you feel great antipathy toward the rich Bellamy family, but they are portrayed very carefully. The patriarch is tempered and wise and seems to have everyone’s best interests at heart. The matriarch is calm and elegant and handles the staff with sympathy. When they do show flashes of snobbery they are forgiven in our hearts.

Yet the nagging reality remains: how can they pay their loyal staff a goddamn pittance while living in such luxury? Now you are starting to see some parallels with modern society…

“Good luck, son! Don’t get blown up, what?”

Finally, as World War 1 closes in on the Bellamy family and all of Britain, a parallel series of breakthroughs occur. Young James comes back from the war a changed man. The sparkling playboy has seen enough. Even he – a conservative Tory – found the war to be stupid, useless and unnecessary. He forsakes all veteran accolades. He is sick of all the bullshit and has finally discovered that life (and death) are not games.

On a macro scale, the shattering of the European monarchical powers opened the floodgates of populist socialism. Revolution consumed Russia while electoral pressure ousted conservative governments. The family patriarch finds himself elevated to Viscount and hurriedly shuffled off to obscurity and powerlessness in the House of Lords.

The servants below, however, will have none of the worker’s rights and strikes. There should be some balance, they reason. There is tradition to uphold. And the masters upstairs have been so kind these many years. No, none of this socialist revolution for them. After all, this is a battle for the working class, and they aren’t the working class!

Two friends say goodbye.

Of course, the program’s real strength isn’t its subtext but its dramatic appeal. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a better troupe of actors or more tightly woven scripts. Despite the stifling nature of Victorian mores, the program (and real life) is full of irrepressible joys and tearful losses. The house has its share of surprising deaths whose stark aftermath is handled in the Victorian fashion only by the Scottish butler, a true stoic. The rest of the family and staff soften their upper lips often enough to break your heart.

That’s the driving force here: the humanity. While great affairs swirl around the world, their impact is made visceral only when distilled in the context of family and community.

Master and servant, happy as clams.

And here is where I make my final point: in Upstairs Downstairs, the events that befall the classes are ultimately shared among the classes because they are largely thrown together despite the glass ceilings. In modern America, the classes are utterly isolated from each other. The moneyed class no longer sends its sons to war; that agony is left solely to the lower classes. When recession grips the nation, the moneyed class maintains its wealth with ease while the rest of us suffer. When the shit comes down, we don’t console each other or look out for each other. We turn on the TV and fume.

It isn’t Victorian morals that we’ve lost. It’s the technological isolation of our communities that has driven these wedges. We are more likely than the cast of Upstairs Downstairs to suffer in Victorian silence. They had each other, even when the stock market crashed and everything fell apart. One would think that in “class-free” America that we’d be more integrated socially. But we’re not.

At least we still have Leslie Anne Down!

Yes, we still have Leslie Anne Down. For that we should be eternally grateful.

Prometheus Unsound

Citizen Ted — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 18:50:27 +0000

In space, no one can hear you DERP.

My previous post was a litany of complaints about movie theaters. Thus, I feel compelled to review the new Ridley Scott film “Prometheus”. Why? Because it falls into a web of sci-fi gimmickry that Scott assiduously avoided in “Alien” and “Bladerunner”. These were great films whose few faults were easily overlooked and absorbed as suspended disbelief by all but the most anal retentive among us.

“Prometheus” is not like that. It had some dumb stuff that was so dumb it reverberates with dumbness long after you leave the theater. Before I draw out the long knives, I’ll give the devil his due: the film made efforts to address bigger questions (a rarity in Hollywood) and was epic in sweep, featuring stunning cinematography and CGI stuff. In fact, the opening ground rush sequences were so breathtaking I’d have preferred two more hours of that rather than two hours of the sci-fi stuff.

Now, the problems: the script. This was either the death of a thousand edits or some really lazy work. Unlike previous films where Scott likes to portray his cast as gritty and human (with all the foibles that entails), this crew really are a bunch of morons. Gone is the street-smart, wisecracking crew of “Alien”, replaced with a bunch of genuine idiots. Only the captain seems to have marginal competence; the rest are a bunch of brooding assholes I wouldn’t hire for a day job at the cannery. Their interplay felt forced and stilted and their vocabulary was carefully limited to Disney audience levels.

Remember how at ease you felt with this crew? Yeah, forget that.

And now, we descend into the truly irritating…

Hint: just because the air is OK in one area of a distant and potentially dangerous planet’s unknown atmosphere, that does NOT mean it’s OK to take off your helmet. This time-worn Hollywood staple of removing your helmet because “HEY! The air is OK!” is an idiotic and shallow excuse to allow the camera a better view of the Hollywood stars. Seriously, man: you’re going to remove your helmet and just leave it on the ground somewhere and walk all around an alien world that measured as poisonous just moments before? No. That’s some stupid shit.

Helmets? We don't need no stinking helmets!

Then there’s the the categorically dumb move of getting close to an alien monster and pretending it’s a puppy. And let’s not omit the fundamental cognitive disconnect of the film’s premise: that an alien species seeded Earth with the DNA that became humanity. Despite a childish CGI display that shows the DNA is a match, the question of how our DNA is nearly identical to chimpanzee DNA (as well as the other markers that show our obvious and indisputable location on the tree of Earth life) is debated for about 5 seconds in the film, then ignored. If I had to guess, the film’s producers didn’t want Christian fundamentalists leaving the theaters in droves because Darwinism was supported; instead, the film provides a few moments of cloying respect for the lead’s Christian faith in order to keep the Bible Belt goombah’s in their seats.

This whole “connection” to humans on Earth doesn’t even need to exist for the film to maintain its narrative. We could concoct ample other reasons to be drawn to that planet.

Finally: the cast. Michael Fassbender is so damn talented that he largely held this hole-filled film aloft. In portraying a monotone robot he had more depth than any other character in the movie. A tragically mis-cast Noomi Rapace has one look on her face – starry-eyed aloofness – that she maintains throughout. There is a nigh a furrowed brow in her oeuvre. I kept thinking that she could have been replaced by the equally aloof Audrey Tautou, if that’s what they were looking for. At least Tautou has more tools in her garage.

Dark-eyed aloof European chicks: we love 'em!

I’m not harshing on Rapace. I think she was selected for the “Girl With…” films specifically because of that aspect of her character and she was so good at it that no one can find fault with her portrayal. It was sublime. But we should face facts that she is not, and will not be, an epic sci-fi film heroine. Some reviewers have criticized her as weak sauce compared to Sigourney Weaver. This is unfair. Rapace has charms Weaver lacks; this was all a case of tragically bad casting, nothing more.

Which reminds me: Rapace grew up in Iceland and Sweden. Why is this film trying to pretend she’s British? Why name her “Elizabeth Shaw”? Every time she opens her mouth it’s obvious she’s Scandinavian. Why not just name her “Elisabet Lindholm”? Is that hard? Will audiences not understand that? And before I walk away from casting complaints: why did they include the very gifted actress Kate Dickie and then dispatch her to the background? Hell, she’d have made a better lead than Rapace, but I guess Kate’s nose is too big for American audiences. *sigh*

Alien planet investigatin' is serious bizniz!

Finally, the whole thrust of the story and the cause of the frenetic last half hour is left unexplained. Normally, this would be OK; good sci-fi leaves conceptual elements open for interpretation and allows you to make cognitive leaps on your own. But since the rest of the film is written and paced like a Disney flick, why can’t we be told why our forebears suddenly want us destroyed? The answer may appear in the follow-up film, but I’m kinda watching THIS film right now and would like to know why our Creators suddenly turned on us.

One theory being bandied about is that our outer space forebears are purposefully seeding planets with humanity so the evil aliens have planets to exploit for reproduction, leaving our forebear’s planet alone in the process. But then why warn us with archeological hints? I dunno. I just get angry when I think about it. Fuck this movie. Suffice it to say my disbelief failed to be suspended. “Prometheus” had promise, but Scott let it run away from him. He shouldn’t have.

At the Fucking Movies

Citizen Ted — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:13:59 +0000

Enjoying yourselves? Fuckers?

I really love movies. I love ‘em so much, I sometimes call them “film”, like a snob.

But I don’t go to the movies anymore. Once in a great while, a friend will cajole me into going, and I’ll go. But inevitably I’ll be distracted and irritated and want to leave, especially if I’m interested in the film. I sometimes think I’m the only person in the theater interested in watching (and hearing) the film.

Let’s recap why going to the movie theater sucks ass:

Mouth-Breathing Idiots

Two classes of these cretins exist: those who blatantly disrupt a film, and those who “whisper” about every event unfolding on the screen.

The former is easily handled: you tell them to shut the fuck up before you and your entire row of people rain blows down upon their heads. This works sometimes; other times it will shut them up for only 10 minutes, whereupon the threats must escalate and the film is now second fiddle to the real action.

The latter is more common. It happens when an idiot family from the idiot part of the county comes to watch a film slightly more complex than “Cars 2″. As the film begins and we see foreshadowing, they immediately begin whispering loudly to each other:

“Didja see that, Elmer? I bet she gonna cause him some troubles!”
“Ya think so? But she’s Cameron goddamn Diaz!”
“Don’t matter none! I can tell she’s gonna be the cause of all this trouble later on!”
“If’n ya really think so! But I’m not so sure about that there fella from the FBI, neither!”
“No! The FBI guy ain’t the killer! He woulda hafta been two places at once doncha think?”

This goes on throughout the entire film. And there is no remedy as the idiots will claim they were being quiet and minding their own business. Your only hope is to move out of earshot or leave and wait for the DVD.

I have beheld the latter type of Mouth-Breathing Idiots so often that I’m actually amazed when they don’t appear next to me.

Crying Babies

Look who's enjoying "Salò, the 120 Days of Sodom"!

This one used to haunt me like a nightmare. In the 1990′s, it got so bad that I bet one of my friends that I’d have a screaming baby next to me, guaranteed. We went to the movie and left early. I was $20 richer.

Some sort of backlash must have occurred because baby meltdowns at the movies are kinda rare nowadays. If you go to a comic book movie or a kids film, you should expect a few snot-nosed brats raising a ruckus. But the onslaught of brats at R-rated films has dropped in recent years. I’m hoping it’s because dullard breeders were shamed from such behavior. If parents think that’s unfair, they should either drug their brats into a catatonic stupor or try being more thoughtful about their reproductive habits.

Mastication

No, not masturbation. Most masturbators are quieter than the slack-jawed bovines who down quarts of popcorn and soda or wrestle with a noisy plastic wrapper for 40 fucking minutes. What’s being said in the film? Who knows? All I can hear is crunch-munch-munch-munch, slurpy-derpy-slurp and rustle-ristle-rustle-ristle. I think they said something about needing to escape the office building in order to find the guy who was…oh, I dunno. It’s all just a bunch of noise. Who can hear anything?

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM!!!!

Ka-FLOOM!

And when I’m not losing the plot because of all the noise being made by the perfumed hogs who surround me, I’m being deafened by the Hollywood soundtrack. If a character sets a mug of coffee onto a glass table, it has to land with a loud ker-CHLINK! noise that has been compressed and signal-gained eighteen fucking times before being inserted into the scene.

Ker-FLAAMM!! Buh-ZZZHINGGG! Ka-WOOM...WOom...woom...

And if the action really heats up? You’ll need ear plugs to shield you from the head-splitting noises generated by another idiotic car chase or Michael Bay explosion. At these moments, even the popcorn munchers are drowned out. And everything that happens MUST have an accompanying low-frequency rumble to make your groin vibrate. If there is no low rumbling noise, then the movie must be boring and we should all just listen to the popcorn munchers.

Comfort

My ass hurts. Ass. Hurts.

As a person with chronic back pain, I have to take into account how much money in medical bills I’ll have to pay after sitting in a tired, scummy, beaten-up old movie theater seat for the 30 minutes of commercials, 20 minutes of previews and 2 hours of film I must endure.

I can’t hit the “pause” button and stretch my legs. I am a prisoner here. I must listen to the munchers, endure the ker-FLOOM noises and wriggle in my seat as my ass screams for mercy. Why did I come here again?

I paid $11.00 to watch this?

You have two options once you’ve committed to go to the movie theater:
1. Go in early, get a good seat and endure 20 minutes of television commercials.
2. Go late, get a lousy seat, miss the commercials and watch 20 minutes of previews.

There is no other option. Despite the fact you’ve paid a premium for a seat, burned gasoline to get there, endured a long line to buy a ticket and plumped down next to some popcorn-munching behemoth who smells like a Malaysian garbage dump, you STILL have to endure commercial advertising. Why? BECAUSE HOLLYWOOD SAYS SO.

Hollywood

Finally, there’s the content. I’m like anybody else. I enjoy watching spectacles on the big screen. At this point, that’s only reason I’d ever attend a public screening. If a movie intends to intrigue me intellectually, it can’t do so in a movie theater. May as well go straight to DVD (which is what most foreign films and independent films do anyway).

"It's Jim Carrey in...whatever. You'll pay to go see it. Fuck you."

I have no idea how mainstream America continues to line up for Jim Carrey comedies and stupid revenge films and all the “two women struggling against all odds in a world they didn’t make” movies. Somehow, these films make bank at the box office. I’d sooner shoot myself in the face than sit through that crap, but I guess that’s why the movie theaters are what they are: halls of consumption for the lumpenproletariat.

Will people eventually flee the blockbuster theater experience for the more civilized art house scene? I doubt it, and that’s a good thing.

The Case for Virginia

Citizen Ted — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 18:26:21 +0000

Here’s the challenge: if someone has never been to America and doesn’t have the time to see every corner of our vast country, which one state would you recommend they visit to get the most rounded appreciation of what America is all about?

Which single US state offers a sincere glimpse into the American way of life with lots of cool, interesting things to see and do?

Difficulty: California is too big too see in less than two weeks.

"Thus Always Unto Tyrants". It's so welcoming!

I’ve given this a lot of thought and the answer is Virginia.

Right now, most of my American readers are screaming. They have another state in mind. Probably California. But they are wrong. If you have never been to America and you want to know what “average” America is like while still enjoying some recreational fun, Virginia is the best choice.

Here comes the Case for Virginia!

(note: I’ve only been there twice and I am not employed by the Virginia Tourism Board)

History

How many Monticellos does your area have? Hmm?

European skeptics like to sniff at America because we are ‘inauthentic’ and have no history worth mentioning. These snobs have never been to Virginia!

Virginia was founded 400 years ago. It isn’t as storied as Rome, but Virginia is no Silicon Valley, either. It’s old. From Pocohontas and Capt. John Smith to Washington and Jefferson, Virginia is a microcosm of early American history.

In fact, Virginia is so fucking historical that there’s too much of it to outline here. Tourists will be tripping over colonial mansions and Civil War battlefields until they finally land in Colonial Williamsburg.

Williamsburg may be a tad schmaltzy, but it’s far less offensive than those bell-ringing turds in livery who stand outside European museums. Take THAT, you snooty French academics!

If you have any interest at all in American history, Virginia is practically the goddamn epicenter of it all. You just can’t miss.

Recreation

Virginia Beach doesn't suck!

Millions of Brits flock to Florida every year to escape the grey and loll in the sun. Once their discount airfare gets them there, the poor saps pay a premium for the privilege.

Not so in Virginia. Virginia Beach is reasonably priced and offers a less crushing experience. You’ll see plenty of hot bikini chicks as well as plenty of scary fat people, which is why you came to America in the first place.

Most importantly, Virginia Beach attracts middle-of-the-road American visitors. You won’t meet too many snotty rich people; nor will you have to abide a bunch of ghetto trash. Instead, you will come belly-to-belly with middle class America.

If you have kids with you, Busch Gardens and King’s Dominion should replace your Disney desires without robbing you blind. There’s a couple of big zoos and enough water parks to float your trunks for weeks.

For adult fun, Virginia is for Lovers. It’s true. I know because I once banged a chick from Virginia. And man, she was HOT. If you visit Virginia from overseas, use your sultry accent to score a Virginian. You wont regret it.

Culture

It ain't much, but it's all-American.

No. Virginia is not renown for the arts. But it is the home of GWAR, so that’s gotta count for something.

Yet Virginia is a diverse place. Despite its slave-holding past, about 20% of the population is black, 10% is Latino and the rest are white or various shades of world workers in the industrial northern part of the state. What this means is the outsider will meet a wide array of people.

You won’t like them all. Some of them are jerks. But most of them are nice and actually do believe in exuding some form of southern hospitality. This is where the visitor will really learn something about America. That’s what defines us: ethnicities all jammed together and trying their hardest to get along despite the evolutionary call of the tribe.

We have no Tito or Stalin to force us to live together. Instead, America (and Virginia) tends to unify under Christianity. You’d be a fool to visit Virginia and not check out some churches and even some public church events.

They will likely freak you out. Some churches are…charismatic. But even an old atheist like me knows that life in the South (and most of America) is defined by its churches. In Virginia, it is the neighborly call of Christ that binds them. It shapes the one cultural aspect they all share. Sniff all you like, but if you want to understand America you better learn to understand her strange affinity for this wacky religion.

Landscapes

Are you kidding me?

What Virginia lacks in high culture it makes up for in varied, beautiful landscapes. Bring your camera because in this one state you will be framing misty mountains covered in greens and yellows, lonely roads winding through ancient farms, mighty estuaries racing into the Atlantic, waves crashing on sandy shores and Neoclassical buildings rising up against the azure sky.

Yes, Arizona has deserts and Maine has craggy shores and Texas has endless brush and Colorado has majestic peaks and California has big trees. But Virginia has almost all of that stuff and it’s all within a few hours’ drive. Virginia wins again!

And then there’s DC…

Washington DC

Giant-ass domed buildings? Yeah, we got that shit.

As you head north, you leave behind the mountains and farms and enter something truly American: enormous suburban developments, godawful strip-malls and gigantic glass-and-steel office towers. This is the epicenter of the might that is the government of the United States. Defense contractors, lobbying organizations and massive federal agencies ingest and disgorge hundreds of thousands of busy bees every day. It’s a madhouse. Drive carefully.

Just beyond is the nation’s capital. Enjoy the irony of the grinding poverty in her ghettos. Shake your head at the ostentatious displays in our inauthentic public spaces. Marvel at the galaxy of junk in the Smithsonian and gawp in disbelief at the massive jets suspended inside the aerospace museum.

You want world-class museums? Yeah. We got that shit.

DC is worth a visit, but it’s not more American than Virginia. Seriously.

It’s the People, Stupid

Happy Virginians at the recent presidential inauguration

I’ve been lucky to meet average folks in Europe and Japan. I’m an average guy, too. Weird, but average. And meeting my fellow average people gives me a much greater sense of a nation’s culture than meeting its service workers or representatives or immigrants.

When foreigners visit America, I’d like them to see cool stuff and have a good time and meet average Americans. They’re not the salt of the Earth. They’re not particularly noble or bright. They aren’t even very pretty. But they are the genuine article. They are the are the distilled remains of our history and they are the real faces and real voices that betray all that Hollywood crap you watch on your satellite dish.

These people are hard to find in New York, Florida and LA. There’s plenty of them in the Midwest, but Virginia has more to offer than Iowa does. Sorry, Iowa.

Truth be told, I don’t personally give a rip about Virginia. But if some accountant from Ghana told me he wanted to see America but only had two weeks and no desire for long journeys, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Virginia, man. It’s America in a bottle.

You Virginians can now tell me how right I am; the rest of you can tell me how wrong I am.