Vacation is something you have to do sometimes. I never really get into the spirit of it, until I'm on the plane. It's weird, because I don't really think in advance that I am going. But I get fend up with things, need a break, and just go.
I did that last year when I went to New York. I had never been, and wasn't considering it until I decided to attend a conference. After I got on the plane and had a six hour ride with a connection to Minneapolis, I arrived in New York and just felt that it was best to look around. With seven days in The Big Apple, I saw just about everything. Went everywhere. Did a lot of things which ended up exploring myself, who I am as a person.
It's interesting to feel that your vacation has turned into an internal perspective.
I ended up going to Chicago on a whim a few weeks later for a shorter vacation. It was fun also, because it was something I had never considered before.
This year, Vegas is the plan. Yes, I've been before, but this should be fun. I don't think the wolf pack will be back (i.e. The Hangover) but at least, I should be able to commit 5 felonies and 13 misdemeanors. HA!
These experiences make my writing interesting, because I met so many characters, have incidences which change me, and are something that keeps everything fresh.
I would encourage it to any writer who wants to keep their writing fresh. Be something other than that person you are 51 weeks out of the year, do a week where you can be anyone and everyone.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
When Players Decide To Get It Right
I was reading an article on the NBA. It had to do with the players filing a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board about the way that the NBA has treated its players, violating the CBA with its draconian methods of bypassing the player's organization. I find it interesting how the players only decide to go on strike before or after a season. But, if they were smart, wouldn't they decide to go on strike during the season?
Right now is the highest point of interest in the NBA. During the playoffs. There are currently four teams involved in the quest for a championship. In a week, there will be two. That means there are 30 total players that you would have to convince of what I am suggesting. It doesn't take much to get 30 total players to do the same thing, especially if the owners are going to do it to those 30 players, plus 400 more, in about 3 weeks after the NBA season is over.
My suggestion: Have those players from two teams, 30 total players, perform a walk-out during Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
That's right. If they don't show up, with fans in the seats, owners sitting back waiting to collect paychecks, it will have an immediate affect on the bottom line.
Imagine how effective that would be. The players would be in the driver's seat. If the NBA wants its Finals played, its games in which the championship is decided (and the most money is made via television and rights, etc), then they had better get in a room and negotiate a deal with the players.
Maybe I'm tipping my hand at my employment, but I see the bottom line here. The owners overspend, then expect the players to make up the difference. No one but the team decided that Kwame Brown was a good asset. Same with some of the bench guys earning $5 million cap exception deals.
That is the problem. The players are playing into the owners hands by playing. Just don't play, see how much money they make.
The NFL players had the same advantage. Just don't play the SuperBowl, see how long it takes the NFL to come back to the table. Instead, they played the game, expecting a different outcome from the owners. And that ain't happening, is it?
Right now is the highest point of interest in the NBA. During the playoffs. There are currently four teams involved in the quest for a championship. In a week, there will be two. That means there are 30 total players that you would have to convince of what I am suggesting. It doesn't take much to get 30 total players to do the same thing, especially if the owners are going to do it to those 30 players, plus 400 more, in about 3 weeks after the NBA season is over.
My suggestion: Have those players from two teams, 30 total players, perform a walk-out during Game 1 of the NBA Finals.
That's right. If they don't show up, with fans in the seats, owners sitting back waiting to collect paychecks, it will have an immediate affect on the bottom line.
Imagine how effective that would be. The players would be in the driver's seat. If the NBA wants its Finals played, its games in which the championship is decided (and the most money is made via television and rights, etc), then they had better get in a room and negotiate a deal with the players.
Maybe I'm tipping my hand at my employment, but I see the bottom line here. The owners overspend, then expect the players to make up the difference. No one but the team decided that Kwame Brown was a good asset. Same with some of the bench guys earning $5 million cap exception deals.
That is the problem. The players are playing into the owners hands by playing. Just don't play, see how much money they make.
The NFL players had the same advantage. Just don't play the SuperBowl, see how long it takes the NFL to come back to the table. Instead, they played the game, expecting a different outcome from the owners. And that ain't happening, is it?
Monday, May 23, 2011
Way of the Gun
Americans love the way of the gun. I saw this website and thought I would share. I’ve never fired a gun myself, but I enjoy watching raw power explode. Some of this stuff is double-exciting because it shows how easy it is to destroy something with a firearm.
Of course, these are Russians firing weapons, which reminds me of the worries everyone had about the Soviets in the 1980s.
This is the raw power of a great shotgun.
The explosion caused by an AK-47.
And the ACR assault rifle.
Sure, this is violent and loud. But as long as no one gets hurt, no reason you can't enjoy the ride.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
The first battle with age
I've been considering shaving my head because my hair appears in full retreat. Yes, that is a comic bit from someone else (likely) but it is true, my hair is not what it used to be. I tried combing it every way but back today which was useless. My hair loves being combed back. I've done it since I was a kid. Mainly because it was easy to manage.
It's easy to manage now, since its starting to thin.
Part of age, I guess. But still, it reminds me of how short life has been from youth to adulthood to middle age.
It's also interesting how the women I am interested in change. While a 23-year-old girl may be what most men desire, frankly, every conversation I've had with one bores me. Look, I understand that with a 23-year-old woman, you are likely not to be talking a lot.
Maybe that's the sign of middle age. Where you look forward to learning about someone more than about their physical attributes.
Every women I've met, I ask myself what I can learn from this person. Whether or not she would bore me in two, maybe three months, let alone a year or two.
Some people don't look for that in person. But I'm one of those people who wants to know a person. Inside and out, because it's important for me to understand who they are. Especially after the physical attributes fail, and my hair is all gone.
The hair thing shouldn't be happening. Much like the gut that I do nothing about. It shouldn't be happening because when I was young, I could grow tons of hair and eat whatever I wanted. Now, I have to manage both as if they are a bunch of drunken 2-year-olds.
You don't know where they are going. Except that it doesn't appear good long term.
It's easy to manage now, since its starting to thin.
Part of age, I guess. But still, it reminds me of how short life has been from youth to adulthood to middle age.
It's also interesting how the women I am interested in change. While a 23-year-old girl may be what most men desire, frankly, every conversation I've had with one bores me. Look, I understand that with a 23-year-old woman, you are likely not to be talking a lot.
Maybe that's the sign of middle age. Where you look forward to learning about someone more than about their physical attributes.
Every women I've met, I ask myself what I can learn from this person. Whether or not she would bore me in two, maybe three months, let alone a year or two.
Some people don't look for that in person. But I'm one of those people who wants to know a person. Inside and out, because it's important for me to understand who they are. Especially after the physical attributes fail, and my hair is all gone.
The hair thing shouldn't be happening. Much like the gut that I do nothing about. It shouldn't be happening because when I was young, I could grow tons of hair and eat whatever I wanted. Now, I have to manage both as if they are a bunch of drunken 2-year-olds.
You don't know where they are going. Except that it doesn't appear good long term.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Noir and reality of detective commercials
I've been a playing a lot of L.A. Noire on XBOX 360.
It holds a lot of the images that people collectively have of the late 1940s, especially the L.A. Noir which was developed in pulp magazines, books and film. James Ellroy holds the key to this revival. And the video game actually plays homage to the author and the crime by creating the entire game around the 1947 death of Elizabeth Short murder (The Black Dahlia).
Regardless of how the history actually played out, this is the type of image we hold dear.
Which leads me to a question: Are we portraying history in actual terms or how we wished it would have played out?
You see tough cops in fedoras, marching with a keen sidearm, a notebook and the idea that every case is solvable. Every ethnic group has specifics to them, especially the Irish captain and the way the squint of a detective's eyes hones in on the truth.
But we know now there were a lot of people railroaded from that era. Suspects confessed or had it beaten out of them. Evidence was tampered with, misread or never found. And assumptions were made. Clearance rates were as important, but less publicized, during that era. Investigative skills, interview tactics and other scientific measures were not as good as they are now.
Does this mean that they were in the dark ages in terms of detective work?
Hardly. This stuff goes on to this day. In some ways, the cops of the 1940s may have developed a case more now with the advancements of blood, semen and D.N.A.
Our scientific advancements may have helped us. But it may have made us lazy as a society. Anything has the possibility of being fakes, misread, tampered (purposefully or not), and it all comes down to a confession, sometimes, anyway.
The detectives of that era are romanticized since they dealt with a short-term decay. The idea that there was one crazy out there, in a world that was being rebuild after World War II with the hopes and dreams of a utopian society which never existed (and could never exist). Now, people expect their scandals. The rarity of someone fighting the system, exposing corruption, within the police force or city hall, has been removed.
Every other day is a scandal of sometime. Communication is rampant. The criminals know the tactics of a police investigation. It's difficult to use the tactics of the 1940s police work now, as those who are guilty now know what every investigator is looking for.
Noir detective stories also play into our suggestion that something can be solved within a few days, hours, minutes. There are always clues around. There are people who are suspects, who give themselves away if you ask the tough questions. The evidence always leads to someone.
That's the farce of criminal detective work in a fictional story.
Sometimes, nothing adds up. The bad guys do get away with it. Those who are suspects can be made to be guilty, confess even if they didn't do it, and the crime can be unsolved forever.
Zodiac (2007) is a perfect film about obsession, how an investigation can stall, have few answers even with a suspect or two, how leads can go dead, be garbage from the start, and how everything might be a MacGuffin.
One of my favorite examples of this is Homicide: Life on the Street (1995-00) which was a television series on NBC. The murder of Adena Watson, a case which haunts Det. Tim Bayliss throughout the series. Risley Tucker, the main suspect, was once in the interview room for 12-hours, but never truly confessed. He appeared guilty as hell, but there wasn't enough evidence for a D.A. Not only that, but Tucker dies in the fourth season. The case continues on, Bayliss keeps it back of his mind, and learns of a 1932 child murder similar to his which was never solved. That gives perspective that sometimes, evil does exist and does get away with it. To my knowledge, the series, nor the TV film afterward, ever solved the murder.
It's funny, but I think of Adena Watson sometimes. In terms of wondering what exactly happened. I was a fan of the show, and it stayed with me. I've read articles which said that NBC executives wanted the murder solved and the show producers kept delaying, saying that they would in a few episodes and never did on purpose. That's really police work, to continue on long after the leads are cold, the story is no longer fresh, and the idea that sometimes, the murderer stays free because there wasn't enough of those damn clues that any good detective pulp novel leaves behind in order to keep the reader's interest.
The Black Dahlia case had thousands of interviews. Hundreds of suspects. Fifty people confessed to the murder. The Black Dahlia prime suspect named in early 1980s was Jack Anderson Wilson, who was the prime suspect in the Cleveland Torso Murders in the mid-1940s. Wilson had never been a suspect until he was interviewed by a book author, John Gilmore, who wrote Severed. L.A.P.D. Detective John St. John told the newspapers that he was "closing in" on Wilson, who would die in an apartment fire in 1982.
The reason for expectations on The Black Dahlia case were the constant media sensation of the William Randolph Heart papers (trust me, they were worse than TruTv and make Nancy Grace look like a puppy). It was also the largest case since 1927.
All of these factors play into murder cases. And this is coming from a layman. I have no inside knowledge which would tell me otherwise. But still, sometimes we suggest how things were "different" back then. But that has more to do with the way we view history.
The younger we are, the less hardened we tend to be. And as we grow, we start to know more. Too much, in some sense.
I'm thirty-five and starting to think that the 1980s were an innocent time compared to now. But I have to catch myself. Because I used to hear how horrible the 1990s were by adults who remembered how cool the 1970s were. It's the 20-year itch. A lot of remembering the way we never were. Because fiction is a lot easier to deal with than the reality of the situation.
Ask those who expected The Black Dahlia murder to the be solved a week after it happened. Because if Sam Spade had been investigating it, the case would have been, right?
It holds a lot of the images that people collectively have of the late 1940s, especially the L.A. Noir which was developed in pulp magazines, books and film. James Ellroy holds the key to this revival. And the video game actually plays homage to the author and the crime by creating the entire game around the 1947 death of Elizabeth Short murder (The Black Dahlia).
Regardless of how the history actually played out, this is the type of image we hold dear.
Which leads me to a question: Are we portraying history in actual terms or how we wished it would have played out?
You see tough cops in fedoras, marching with a keen sidearm, a notebook and the idea that every case is solvable. Every ethnic group has specifics to them, especially the Irish captain and the way the squint of a detective's eyes hones in on the truth.
But we know now there were a lot of people railroaded from that era. Suspects confessed or had it beaten out of them. Evidence was tampered with, misread or never found. And assumptions were made. Clearance rates were as important, but less publicized, during that era. Investigative skills, interview tactics and other scientific measures were not as good as they are now.
Does this mean that they were in the dark ages in terms of detective work?
Hardly. This stuff goes on to this day. In some ways, the cops of the 1940s may have developed a case more now with the advancements of blood, semen and D.N.A.
Our scientific advancements may have helped us. But it may have made us lazy as a society. Anything has the possibility of being fakes, misread, tampered (purposefully or not), and it all comes down to a confession, sometimes, anyway.
The detectives of that era are romanticized since they dealt with a short-term decay. The idea that there was one crazy out there, in a world that was being rebuild after World War II with the hopes and dreams of a utopian society which never existed (and could never exist). Now, people expect their scandals. The rarity of someone fighting the system, exposing corruption, within the police force or city hall, has been removed.
Every other day is a scandal of sometime. Communication is rampant. The criminals know the tactics of a police investigation. It's difficult to use the tactics of the 1940s police work now, as those who are guilty now know what every investigator is looking for.
Noir detective stories also play into our suggestion that something can be solved within a few days, hours, minutes. There are always clues around. There are people who are suspects, who give themselves away if you ask the tough questions. The evidence always leads to someone.
That's the farce of criminal detective work in a fictional story.
Sometimes, nothing adds up. The bad guys do get away with it. Those who are suspects can be made to be guilty, confess even if they didn't do it, and the crime can be unsolved forever.
Zodiac (2007) is a perfect film about obsession, how an investigation can stall, have few answers even with a suspect or two, how leads can go dead, be garbage from the start, and how everything might be a MacGuffin.
One of my favorite examples of this is Homicide: Life on the Street (1995-00) which was a television series on NBC. The murder of Adena Watson, a case which haunts Det. Tim Bayliss throughout the series. Risley Tucker, the main suspect, was once in the interview room for 12-hours, but never truly confessed. He appeared guilty as hell, but there wasn't enough evidence for a D.A. Not only that, but Tucker dies in the fourth season. The case continues on, Bayliss keeps it back of his mind, and learns of a 1932 child murder similar to his which was never solved. That gives perspective that sometimes, evil does exist and does get away with it. To my knowledge, the series, nor the TV film afterward, ever solved the murder.
It's funny, but I think of Adena Watson sometimes. In terms of wondering what exactly happened. I was a fan of the show, and it stayed with me. I've read articles which said that NBC executives wanted the murder solved and the show producers kept delaying, saying that they would in a few episodes and never did on purpose. That's really police work, to continue on long after the leads are cold, the story is no longer fresh, and the idea that sometimes, the murderer stays free because there wasn't enough of those damn clues that any good detective pulp novel leaves behind in order to keep the reader's interest.
The Black Dahlia case had thousands of interviews. Hundreds of suspects. Fifty people confessed to the murder. The Black Dahlia prime suspect named in early 1980s was Jack Anderson Wilson, who was the prime suspect in the Cleveland Torso Murders in the mid-1940s. Wilson had never been a suspect until he was interviewed by a book author, John Gilmore, who wrote Severed. L.A.P.D. Detective John St. John told the newspapers that he was "closing in" on Wilson, who would die in an apartment fire in 1982.
The reason for expectations on The Black Dahlia case were the constant media sensation of the William Randolph Heart papers (trust me, they were worse than TruTv and make Nancy Grace look like a puppy). It was also the largest case since 1927.
All of these factors play into murder cases. And this is coming from a layman. I have no inside knowledge which would tell me otherwise. But still, sometimes we suggest how things were "different" back then. But that has more to do with the way we view history.
The younger we are, the less hardened we tend to be. And as we grow, we start to know more. Too much, in some sense.
I'm thirty-five and starting to think that the 1980s were an innocent time compared to now. But I have to catch myself. Because I used to hear how horrible the 1990s were by adults who remembered how cool the 1970s were. It's the 20-year itch. A lot of remembering the way we never were. Because fiction is a lot easier to deal with than the reality of the situation.
Ask those who expected The Black Dahlia murder to the be solved a week after it happened. Because if Sam Spade had been investigating it, the case would have been, right?
Friday, May 20, 2011
Conversations Conveying Information
Conversation is not an art. It is pieces of information segmented together, hopefully with a little more sense even though it does not have the benefit of being an edited sentences. Much like my blog posts. Huh? Ain't that a kick? Now, I'm making fun of myself which doing a blog about writing.
People who talk rarely make grammatical sentences. And as they speak, they develop a specific code that some can follow, others can't. That is the way of the world. That's why some have the gift of gab, while others just talk and never get to the point.
I had a brief conversation with two people that appeared as if it had a lot of information between the three of us which was conveyed, but it was hard to ascertain what the final outcome was.
Most of it was the environment. We were in a loud bar. There were things going on. Plus, it was hard to know whether each of us should share too much of what we said. It might gets us in a little trouble.
Not enough trouble to be career-threatening. But still, you don't hear every exact thing someone says, even when they say it in a quiet place.
Sometimes people talk very fast, or are boring enough that don't listen.
I hate going out to dinner with someone. Right when some important information is shared, some waiter comes up and interrupts the conversation. By the way, when did that become part of the American server model? Shouldn't you wait until the conversation is lighter between the two people at a table? I would think that would result in a larger tip.
I had a habit of talking over people. My friends hate it, but when you grow up with multiple family members all fighting to speak, you tend to do it.
Plus, some people keep talking and babble.
Yes, I'm talking about you. I write a lot of babble. So, there, it's both of us.
Funny story that happened recently regarding conversation.
At a all-night fast food drive-thru, talking into a speaker system to a faceless guy at a place that rhymes with Jack-In-The-Box, I tried to order extra cheese for my friend who wanted them on his curly fries. The guy on the PA didn't respond. I repeated the extra cheese order. Again, no response. I said it a third time, he said, "I can't put cheese in your drink, dude."
At this point, my friend didn't want his food. He figured it would be spit in. It's not my fault that this guy's G.E.D. was a photoshop fake print-out so he could fulfill a lifelong ambition of working a kitchen grill in the fast food arts. Yes, I was that pissed.
And my friend got soggy tacos that he refused to eat, fed to his dog. Yes, dogs eat anything.
The point is; regardless of what I said, or he heard, the communication breakdown that we had is common enough. Especially when you cannot see the other person to recognize their reactions.
If you look at films, or books, characters always get the correct amount of information from each other regardless if they see each other. I know several times in which I have conveyed an annoyed or tense reaction over the phone, but in reality, I was avoiding running into someone while I paced back and forth with a cell phone. By the way, I've found that I walk more while on the cell phone. Because the rest of my body needs something to do.
So, in terms of dialogue, is it realistic to have two characters talk on a cell phone, send and receive the correct amount of information?
I screw up information all of the time. Screw up e-mail addresses (even when the person is talking right in front of me).
I don't even want to get into my ability to receive directions correctly. Had I not found map quest and internet, I would still be driving around Stevens County on abandon dirt roads with no telephone cable, tall evergreen trees and no sign that anyone had stepped foot in the area for thirty years.
Sports is where communication can be both intuitive and conveyed through verbal skills.
Phil Jackson knows what to say and what not to say. And he gets his point across.
That's why I'm unsure about Erik Spoelstra's coaching of the Miami Heat right now. He seems to convey some of the basketball plays and skills, but tends to overtalk in timeouts which may cause his players to stop listening.
I tend to listen to how people converse with each other. It allows me to hear how people REALLY talk. It doesn't show me where or not each party receives the information correctly, but gives me some detail on who the people are when they speak. And few, if any, speak grammatically. That includes English professors, who tend to butcher the English language when they speak worse than a eighth grade drop-out.
Person 1: "You work in accounting? In a cubicle? You're nuts."
Person 2: "Hey, living the dream, you know?"
Person 1: "Since high school? That's as far as you got?"
Person 2: "Didn't know there was a pop quiz at whose guidance counselor was drinking on the job."
This is a conversation I overhead tonight in the bar. Funny, but not something that you might see in a book. Why? Because writers tend to form grammatically correct sentences. Because it is what editors and readers expect of them.
I wonder if we have higher expectations for ourselves than the reality suggests.
People who talk rarely make grammatical sentences. And as they speak, they develop a specific code that some can follow, others can't. That is the way of the world. That's why some have the gift of gab, while others just talk and never get to the point.
I had a brief conversation with two people that appeared as if it had a lot of information between the three of us which was conveyed, but it was hard to ascertain what the final outcome was.
Most of it was the environment. We were in a loud bar. There were things going on. Plus, it was hard to know whether each of us should share too much of what we said. It might gets us in a little trouble.
Not enough trouble to be career-threatening. But still, you don't hear every exact thing someone says, even when they say it in a quiet place.
Sometimes people talk very fast, or are boring enough that don't listen.
I hate going out to dinner with someone. Right when some important information is shared, some waiter comes up and interrupts the conversation. By the way, when did that become part of the American server model? Shouldn't you wait until the conversation is lighter between the two people at a table? I would think that would result in a larger tip.
I had a habit of talking over people. My friends hate it, but when you grow up with multiple family members all fighting to speak, you tend to do it.
Plus, some people keep talking and babble.
Yes, I'm talking about you. I write a lot of babble. So, there, it's both of us.
Funny story that happened recently regarding conversation.
At a all-night fast food drive-thru, talking into a speaker system to a faceless guy at a place that rhymes with Jack-In-The-Box, I tried to order extra cheese for my friend who wanted them on his curly fries. The guy on the PA didn't respond. I repeated the extra cheese order. Again, no response. I said it a third time, he said, "I can't put cheese in your drink, dude."
At this point, my friend didn't want his food. He figured it would be spit in. It's not my fault that this guy's G.E.D. was a photoshop fake print-out so he could fulfill a lifelong ambition of working a kitchen grill in the fast food arts. Yes, I was that pissed.
And my friend got soggy tacos that he refused to eat, fed to his dog. Yes, dogs eat anything.
The point is; regardless of what I said, or he heard, the communication breakdown that we had is common enough. Especially when you cannot see the other person to recognize their reactions.
If you look at films, or books, characters always get the correct amount of information from each other regardless if they see each other. I know several times in which I have conveyed an annoyed or tense reaction over the phone, but in reality, I was avoiding running into someone while I paced back and forth with a cell phone. By the way, I've found that I walk more while on the cell phone. Because the rest of my body needs something to do.
So, in terms of dialogue, is it realistic to have two characters talk on a cell phone, send and receive the correct amount of information?
I screw up information all of the time. Screw up e-mail addresses (even when the person is talking right in front of me).
I don't even want to get into my ability to receive directions correctly. Had I not found map quest and internet, I would still be driving around Stevens County on abandon dirt roads with no telephone cable, tall evergreen trees and no sign that anyone had stepped foot in the area for thirty years.
Sports is where communication can be both intuitive and conveyed through verbal skills.
Phil Jackson knows what to say and what not to say. And he gets his point across.
That's why I'm unsure about Erik Spoelstra's coaching of the Miami Heat right now. He seems to convey some of the basketball plays and skills, but tends to overtalk in timeouts which may cause his players to stop listening.
I tend to listen to how people converse with each other. It allows me to hear how people REALLY talk. It doesn't show me where or not each party receives the information correctly, but gives me some detail on who the people are when they speak. And few, if any, speak grammatically. That includes English professors, who tend to butcher the English language when they speak worse than a eighth grade drop-out.
Person 1: "You work in accounting? In a cubicle? You're nuts."
Person 2: "Hey, living the dream, you know?"
Person 1: "Since high school? That's as far as you got?"
Person 2: "Didn't know there was a pop quiz at whose guidance counselor was drinking on the job."
This is a conversation I overhead tonight in the bar. Funny, but not something that you might see in a book. Why? Because writers tend to form grammatically correct sentences. Because it is what editors and readers expect of them.
I wonder if we have higher expectations for ourselves than the reality suggests.
The End of the World As We Guess It
This blog entry comes late with good reason.
I had a long time to contemplate something. If the end of the world happens tomorrow, I'm giving up my check for rent until Monday or later. Screw it, why should they get the cash if it ain't going to a good cause.
A lot of people hold the future as destructive. Few are lucky enough to guess that it will be utopian. It's a strange world we live in that you can never with happiness. Especially as a global issue.
The world is fine. I read it once in USA Today.
That's more of a joke than you think. Because as Homer Simpson says, "USA Today is the one paper not afraid to tell us that everything's okay."
And in a way, it's that a pessimism that we as humans have? That nothing can be alright?
What if that's the case? What if we are dooming ourselves into a misery that doesn't exist except that we keep advocating or expecting it?
We should be attempting to develop some type of happiness. Promoting that "everything is okay."
Instead everyone is giving credence to the prediction that the end of the world is happening quick. Apparently it is May 21 at noon, which means the Triple Crown in horse racing is lost and the Vancouver Canucks will not win a Stanley Cup... ever.
The Canucks maybe won't win a Stanley Cup, but assuming that anything short of a mass destruction of everything makes the quest impossible... I don't agree.
By the way, one of the frustrating things about The Terminator series is the future. Everyone lives in tunnels, there are machines hunting humans, and children are still being born? Really? Isn't it hard enough to hide out from killer robots sans children? And if there is little food, it would appear less likely that someone would want to bring children into this world. Forget the fact that you are bringing your children into robot death camps.
I doubt many children were born in such situations. The baby boom happened AFTER World War II, not during it.
See, I'm even guilty of a negative view of the future. Who knows, maybe it's the best way to raise children in the future: Without Baby Einstein tapes and with killer robots hunting them down like dogs.
I had a long time to contemplate something. If the end of the world happens tomorrow, I'm giving up my check for rent until Monday or later. Screw it, why should they get the cash if it ain't going to a good cause.
A lot of people hold the future as destructive. Few are lucky enough to guess that it will be utopian. It's a strange world we live in that you can never with happiness. Especially as a global issue.
The world is fine. I read it once in USA Today.
That's more of a joke than you think. Because as Homer Simpson says, "USA Today is the one paper not afraid to tell us that everything's okay."
And in a way, it's that a pessimism that we as humans have? That nothing can be alright?
What if that's the case? What if we are dooming ourselves into a misery that doesn't exist except that we keep advocating or expecting it?
We should be attempting to develop some type of happiness. Promoting that "everything is okay."
Instead everyone is giving credence to the prediction that the end of the world is happening quick. Apparently it is May 21 at noon, which means the Triple Crown in horse racing is lost and the Vancouver Canucks will not win a Stanley Cup... ever.
The Canucks maybe won't win a Stanley Cup, but assuming that anything short of a mass destruction of everything makes the quest impossible... I don't agree.
By the way, one of the frustrating things about The Terminator series is the future. Everyone lives in tunnels, there are machines hunting humans, and children are still being born? Really? Isn't it hard enough to hide out from killer robots sans children? And if there is little food, it would appear less likely that someone would want to bring children into this world. Forget the fact that you are bringing your children into robot death camps.
I doubt many children were born in such situations. The baby boom happened AFTER World War II, not during it.
See, I'm even guilty of a negative view of the future. Who knows, maybe it's the best way to raise children in the future: Without Baby Einstein tapes and with killer robots hunting them down like dogs.
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