A Tale of Two Campaigns: How a Call for Change Degenerated into Nixon-esque Deception

Look into my eyes. You know this love is real.

Obama was for Change. Then McCain was for change. Then Obama was for lowering taxes for the middle class. Then McCain was for fixing Warshington [sic], which clearly was/is "broken." Then Obama was for teaching that old dude (his opponent) how to use the internets. Then McCain was for keeping pornography out of our kindergarten classrooms.


I had such high hopes for this campaign. Obama, with his astounding Horatio Alger-esque story and his nuanced, undilluted answers to difficult questions, made me think that perhaps this country has retained its fabled upward mobility. I thought that, with him in power, this country could once again be run by a pragmatic, utilitarian individual unfettered by ideology. And McCain, a war hero with an undisputed strength of character and a moral compass that no person or group could tamper with ensured that, even if Obama lost, the country would be in much better hands than it was during the previous eight years.


But this campaign has, to varying extents, made beasts of both these men. They have both been responsible for departing completely from the issues this country faces, opting instead to create an atmosphere of destructive, infantile personal attacks and lies on issues such as sexism (Mccain) and racism (Obama) in the campaign, and immigration (both). Obama has publicly quoted McCain as "always [being] for less regulation," which was disproven here. And McCain said that Obama's "one accomplishment" in the field of education was to support comprehensive sex education to kindergarteners, which was disproven here.


The pattern here seems to be that the campaigns have been wildly skewing the nature of commentary given by pundits, government officials, and their opponents to the point that the message percieved by the public is radically different than the reality of what was said. So the obvious next step would be to just completely fabricate speeches, conversations, bills, votes, or events. Given what's being said by both camps, it doesn't seem that far off.


I was watching a Jim Lehrer PBS Documentary on past Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates, and the debates of the past looked quaint and civil compared to what is going on now. Scum-merchants like Rupert Murdoch have rotted our brains so much that we can't handle a debate on the issues anymore. We are becoming a headline-only nation. Welcome to FOX country. Leave your intellect at the door.

Poem

Clickity-clack
And a pound-pound
As the fist, like honeybaked ham slams down on particle-board top
More...I mean less, and buy buy sell sell!
Words shuddering down drywall and vibrating across fiber-optics information stream.

Where did that go, and who put that what where?
While jobs lost families broken
Yellows and greens
On the Bloomberg Machine.
If money is love, call me Don Juan
Whiles fingers blush and faces bleed
Yellows and greens on the bloomberg machine.

Ring ring ring
Ain't nothing happening but out and way-out
Scott-Heron said, he, years before on 125th and Lenox
And bombs fall on tent-cities in hovel-world
Bentleys parked out on high-rise shuddering drywall
Breeze tipping, topping
Bombs dropping.
All for yellows and greens on the bloomberg machine.

Photons sizzle on underground lines
The rest of it sits
It's moving and still there.
Assistant licking up stained-coffee mess
And all of it sits.
The bombs dropping
On the Bentleys now.
We wore cardboard eyeglasses so we couldn't see
All for yellows and greens on the bloomberg machine.

Pretension at the Financial Times: Frederic Malle's Quest for the World's Most Obscure Adjective

Frederic Malle has an eye for good perfumes. The other, smaller one is so he doesn't bump into things.

The place where I work has a vast wealth of magazines and periodicals streaming through it daily, which is how I came across this gem of a cover. It is the cover to an insert in the Financial Times: the metrosexual (it's pink), English version of the Wall Street Journal.

The title of the insert is: "How to Spend It." One of my colleagues has pointed out that I should also subscribe to "How to Make It," the subtext being that, as a career dishwasher, I cannot afford Msr. Malle's fancy perfumes or a Rolls Royce or a diamond-encrusted mustache comb. I have only one thing to say to you, nameless colleague: touche. I am poor, and I hope that pointing this out made you feel richer.

But enough of this, for we are all here for the perfume, after all. The cover, shown above, is of Frederic Malle who, according to the words on the bottom, is "In Search of the Perfect Perfume." I would venture to guess that he is searching a lot easier with his left eye than his right, being that the left is doubly as large.

But funny cover aside, Msr. Malle really is a perfume visionary. According to the article, Msr. Malle "has no laboratories of his own, no big budgets or multinational advertising campaigns and yet, mention his name in sophisticated circles where perfume is truly understood and talked about, and a certain air of reverence enters the debate."

Wow. I really have been going to the wrong parties. Usually we all talk about whether Axe or Bod is the better bodyspray. Clearly my circle of friends neither truly understands nor truly talks about perfume. I bet if you mentioned Frederic Malle in a debate, there wouldn't be the slightest hint of reverence in the room. How pathetic.

So now I know how to spend my money. I'll drop about $250 for 100 mL of this guy's perfume, douse myself in it, and go to classy parties where perfume is truly understood and talked about. I can't believe I actually had a will to live before this epiphany.

Pretension at the Financial Times will be back next week with:

Countdown to Steel-Dog Destruction

Stamp Collecting for Dummies or How to Network With Indian Hobbyists

One of my brother's friends, for some reason, had me join his "stamp collecting" group on Facebook. I am still not quite sure if his supposed love for stamps is a joke or not. That's where all the trouble started...

Just kidding, there really isn't much trouble in this story--I just thought that'd add a little drama. But I shall continue:

So then some "person" on Facebook called Stamps Int friended me. That, I believe, caused me to be friended by an individual in India whose name I will not mention for his (or her) protection. This person left a message when they friended me, which went something like:

Hello,

It is always very nice to meet a fellow collector. I am a stamp enthusiast, and would love to learn from you about what kind of stamps there are in your country, and how it is to be a collector there.

My natural instinct is to, in pure Brando fashion, immerse myself in the role of the stamp collector, and see how far I can take it before making my first enemy on the Indian subcontinent. But I don't know much about stamps, and I'm not sure I can fake it. Here is the complete list of information I can offer this Indian person:

1. First-class postage for a normal-sized letter is 42 cents.


2. Stamps in the United States often have pictures of dead presidents, Elvis, or Neil Armstrong on the Moon on them. Or kitties!


3. When there are wavy lines on a stamp, that means it has been used to mail something. The postal service puts these wavy lines on stamps so that they cannot be used twice. I also believe that a stamp without the wavy lines is worth more than one with wavy lines to stamp collectors.


4. If a stamp is stuck to an envelope, you can remove it with steam. I would probably use a tea kettle. Tea kettles are fun because they are a good excuse to try out your annoying English accent. Just yell "Put the kettle on, love!" at someone.


5. There are 42 cent stamps, 2 cent stamps (only really old people have these), and "forever" stamps, which you can either use to mail things forever (hence the name), or as a really silly investment, since they only cost, like 48 cents or something, so if you hold onto them for 15 years, the postage will probably be 60 cents, and you'll have saved yourself 12 cents per stamp. Glorious.
   

Yea, so I'm pretty much running out of things I know. I don't really think I'll fool this Indian person, but I'll try. I wonder what someone thinks when someone else tries to trick that person in to thinking he/she is a stamp collector. It's not quite normal.

If you have more things I can tell my new Indian friend, let me know in the comments!

The Abortion Argument Put to Rest

People have been arguing about abortion for a long time. I even partook in some argument in my ethics class last year. Now I love beating a dead horse as much as the next guy, but this horse is pretty smelly and mostly decomposed. It's time this argument is put to rest, because this topic is distracting from more current questions that we don't, as of yet, have an answer to.

Sarah Palin, John McCain's maverickish pick for VP, is Pro-Life, and so much so that she is having her 17-year old daughter (pictured left) bring the baby to term, AND marry the "father." I put father in quotes because, if I know anything about men, I know that the look that kid is giving above is the "as soon as this campaign is over, I am changing my name and moving to Mexico" look.

I certainly don't fault Palin and her daughter for choosing to keep the baby, since it is undoubtedly the more compassionate and ethical choice if you have the means to raise it, but the marriage is another matter. I don't think that these circumstances (forced by the parents, the Republican Party and the entire news-consuming public of the United States) are conducive for the formation of a lifelong commitment. This is the product of abstinence-only education, which is such a patently unrealistic and stupid policy that it boggles the mind.

But I digress. Now if you try to argue about whether abortion constitutes murder then you'll be embroiled in a philosophical argument that, like most philosophical arguments, will never end as long as there are human beings that love the sound of their own voice. Trying to come to a conclusion about whether a fetus is alive is like trying to run off the edge of the earth.

BUT if you argue about whether it is reasonable to outlaw abortion in the United States, the answer is simple: no, it is not. There have been societies in the past that have outlawed the practice, and what they end up with are disturbing back-room procedures performed with coat-hangers and other such horrific events. If we outlaw abortion, those practices will make a comeback, and I'm sure no one on either side views this as a healthy alternative to the status quo.

So, there's the end of the argument. I probably should have put that part in the beginning, but oh well. Now on to Republican blog sites so I can futilely try to make them see the error of their ways. Auf wiedersehen.

Crazy Like a Fox: How to Turn Your Brain into Cream of Wheat with Nothing But a TV Set

I know for a fact that I am not the only person that finds mainstream 24-hour news stations disturbing. I brought this up once to someone, who replied to my statement that this trend is harmful to the national current events dialogue by saying: "It's not news, it's just entertainment."

I didn't have a rebuttal to this at the time. Or maybe I did, but I didn't feel like getting into this sort of argument with a person I had just met seconds ago. But here is my current rebuttal: watching clowns riding unicycles is entertainment. But, if someone watches these clowns for an hour on TV, they don't come away thinking: "Wow, I really understand what's going on in the world now."

If you watch FOX News and are impressionable, this is exactly what happens. You come away believing that Barack Obama went to a Muslim school, or that we should care about Jessica Simpson or some crazy woman that is dragging her daughter behind a motorboat in the Florida Keys, or that Sarah Palin is the greatest thing to happen to America since Friends went off the air.

There is something harmful in spouting rumors and half-truths to the American Viewing Public, especially when your demographic is the least educated, least informed, most impressionable segment of America. This is yet another way that an unchecked free market fails this country.

A Dip into the Hate Mail, Part 1 in a Series

So when I first made this blog I consulted a few web sites on how to promote it. What they basically said was ride another site's coattails until yours develops its own following. So that's what I attempted to do on the AV Club message boards, which are in my humble opinion the best message boards in creation. My strategy would be to cite this blog both on the top and the bottom of each post. Simple as that.

Apparently to some people, internet self-promotion is akin to tossing a small child out out of a moving car. I will attempt to re-create what transpired on this fateful message board. For a complete and unadulterated view, click here.

My first post was in response to a previous post, and read as follows:

RE: Getting them
by draincleaner.blogspot.com
I agree, and commend the thoughtful firstie. It really was a nice, sweet movie--kind of like a girl that would be really attractive if only she said something interesting once in a while, and is therefore only moderately attractive. draincleaner.blogspot.com
2:34 AM Mon August 18, 2008

Admittedly a pretty stupid post. How stupid do the others find it (and everything I do for that matter)? Let's find out:

RE: Getting them
by The R-Word
Oren, your blog sucks. Please refrain from using these comments to advertise your stupid fucking blog. Thank you.
3:02 AM Mon August 18, 2008

This one brought me back to high school:

RE: Getting them
by Jorge Von Salsa
You keep fishing for readers with that BS URL signoff, brother, and it's going to make you less and less popular.
3:16 AM Mon August 18, 2008

It was good Jorge reminded me of this, because sometimes I forget to care about what anonymous strangers think of me.

And one more for good measure:

RE: Getting them
by J. Goo
Draincleaner: That was a nice, sweet post - kind of like a relentlessly self-promoting jagoff that would be vaguely tolerable if only he said something interesting once in a while, and is therefore the worst person in the world. yououghtagargle.draincleaner.blogspot.com
4:12 AM Mon August 18, 2008

Here is where I respond with what I think is a fairly reasonable defense:

RE: Getting them
by draincleaner.blogspot.com
It must be tough being you guys, being forced to read my blog and my posts. Oh wait, you're not being forced. Why are you complaining again? draincleaner.blogspot.com
4:21 AM Mon August 18, 2008

And the counter-argument:

RE: Getting them
by Bob On This
I'm complaining because you seem to think it's okay to promote your blog on these comment boards. Everybody else here exercises restraint and does not pervert this forum to serve the interests of their business or hobby. You have repeatedly violated decorum here. So fuck the hell off.
4:43 AM Mon August 18, 2008

RE: Getting them
by Lemur
Because even the name of your blog is fucking stupid.
4:49 AM Mon August 18, 2008

RE: Getting them
by Confucius.fakeblogspot.com
Man who promotes blog on AV Club looks in mirror to find only friend, looks in palm of hand to find only girlfriend. confucius.fakeblogspot.com
5:10 AM Mon August 18, 2008

Just for the record, I have over 400 facebook friends, and I've had sex (with women) like 10 times, so yeah, nice try.

Here's where I give up and concede the fight to the haters:

RE: Getting them
by draincleaner.blogspot.com
I am terribly sorry I offended you people. I will, from now on, post as ChairFace. Thank you for your ridicule and obsenities [sic].
7:15 AM Mon August 18, 2008

So this does not end the ridicule of me, but it does make it more clever and a little less childish. Let's look:

RE: Getting them
by Johnny Hildo
Would anybody here like to start their own business *and* make six figures in the next year? Ask me how, visit my site at Amway.com!or are is it called Confederated Products?
7:53 AM Mon August 18, 2008

RE: Getting them
by phel
I made $6,000 this week, and from home! I must be crazy! Crazy like a fox! Visit my website: www.kdghiuontekaicrazyfox73ihilgheialnsitjslg.com
8:31 AM Mon August 18, 2008

RE: Getting them
by Jorge Von Salsa
I can't take ChairFace seriously until he writes his URL on the lunar landscape with a giant laser.
9:14 AM Mon August 18, 2008

And then people start posting using my name to shore up a bit more hate:

RE: Getting them
by ChairFace
Hey, everyone should check out this awesome blog: draincleaner.blogspot.com
9:09 AM Mon August 18, 2008

And finally:

RE: Gravity Train
by Seriously Guys
You're all a bunch of pussies.
2:21 PM Mon August 25, 2008

I am, of course, not the first person to be panned on the internet for trivial reasons. The plot of the Kevin Smith movie Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is basically about two gentlemen who wish to stop the filming of a movie so that posters on MoviePoopShoot.com will stop berating them. A line at the end of the movie, delivered by Jason Lee, sums internet insults up succinctly: "That's what the internet is for: slandering others anonymously." Or, in other words:

RE: Getting them
by maddog
Elton John is fab-o! I'm a Rocket Maaaaaaaan. Something somethin, somethin be a long long time. Looking forward to more of this featurette. if you've got the nerve to promote your blog so obnoxiously, at least grow some balls and weather the inevitable attack.
9:56 AM Mon August 18, 2008

That might just be some good advice, considering the day all these events transpired saw my blog's highest traffic since its inception. Hopefully, with a little legwork, I can make a series out of my hatemail. Stay tuned for more.

Ethnic Hatred and the Red-Headed Scotsman

I was watching the Morgan Spurlock movie where he's looking for Osama bin Laden yesterday. It's kind of a lame movie, but with a big heart, and Spurlock is a dreamboat when he grows his beard out and tries to look like an Arab even though he is so obviously a red-haired Scotsman. Nice try, buddy.

But he spends a bit of time on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and talks about how it is the rallying call of Islamic Fundamentalists, which is the truth. He talks to people on both sides, and the only people that really come off as douche bags are the Hasidic Jews. Being Jewish myself, I think I am entitled to say that I'm not really surprised.

A lot of people have an opinion on this conflict. Most left-wing people, who I usually agree with, are Pro-Palestinian, sometimes to the extent that they believe that the Jews need to leave and find a new place to shack up. This, in my opinion, is an absolutely ridiculous solution to the problem.

We need to dig into history a bit to understand the situation. First, remember that Israel was founded as a state very soon after the end of WWII and the holocaust. It doesn't take a PHD in psychology to understand that people who've had most of their family and friends tossed into ovens by a man with a silly little mustache won't put up with a lot of bullshit. And they might even act a bit selfishly at times. But who can blame them? They just suffered through one of the biggest tragedies in modern history.

So these Jews want a place where they can call the shots, so they don't have to suffer though another debacle like the holocaust. So, when the Brits and the UN decide that they can all live in Israel, the Jews start cleaning house. They kick out a bunch of Palestinians, kill a few for good measure, and lock the rest in what basically amount to cages. Better safe than sorry.

So the Palestinians are pissed off, and rightfully so. They fight back, and you can't really blame them. They're in the right. But are the Jews in the wrong? What would have happened if they tried to integrate with the Palestinians and trying to softly shove them out of power? Would the Palestinians be down with this situation? Probably not. Would there be bloodshed exceeding that in the actual history of the Israeli State? My intuition is yes.

I took an ethics class last year in college. In it, we learned about two theories of punishment. Retributivist punishment is backwards-looking punishment, which involves punishing someone proportionally to what they did in, supposedly in order to restore the natural balance of justice in a society. This is the philosophy exists in Israel and Palestine right now. Utilitarian punishment is a forward-looking philosophy that involves punishing someone in a way that will best serve society. This is what Israel and Palestine need.

The Israelis and Palestinians needs mutual trust and understanding. They need leaders that don't let their plans get screwed up by extremists. Easier said than done. But I wrote this mainly to show that one doesn't need to be Pro-Palestinian or Pro-Israeli because neither of these people are evil, and because basically because everybody is getting fucked. What we need are more people to call for an end to the fighting instead of just taking sides.

If you are reading this, you have surprised me with your patience. If you comment now, you'll be the first one ever to comment on one of my posts. Be a trend-setter.

Mahalo.

The World's Most Beloved English Misogynist

Now that Daniel Craig has assumed the role of James Bond and rescued it from the last few Brosnan outings, which were garbage (though Goldeneye and the World is Not Enough were dope), I think it might be time to reflect on just what this character reflected about our past, and what it continues to reflect about our present.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that James Bond represents a sort of superficial wish fulfillment for men, much as Sex and the City does for some of our society's more vapid women or Entourage does for adolescent boys and men with adolescent dispositions. The first scene in Dr. No, the first James Bond movie, is a perfect idealized representation of what it meant to be a man in the early 60's:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eAXJOUTcj4

And there is something about the character that still appeals to a man today, which is why it has survived. It makes me giggle like a little girl every time I hear him say "Bond, James Bond" in that scene. But should a man in real life live like James Bond does in make-believe life? Craig and Co. have attempted to humanize the character by showing how he fell in love and then got hurt in Casino Royale, the assumption being that his womanizing in subsequent movies is a defense mechanism caused by this initial lost love.

But is that really what the public wants? I, for one, have no feelings, and have trouble relating to those that do. James Bond was my last refuge in a world of metrosexual male protagonists like Jason Bourne, who was always whining about how he can't remember anything and who didn't take advantage of Julia Stiles after that German chick died, even though it would have been totally easy since he had the badass, super-soldier thing going for him, and since she's probably desperate since she hasn't had much of a career since 10 Things I hate About You, and that came out in '97 or something.

I suppose it had to happen this way. First they burn their bras, and then a few decades later they burn our fictional misogynist role-models. I think I'll move to Saudi Arabia, where my kind is more appreciated.

On to Matters of Greater Weight...

Now that I have a job, I can turn my mind to matters other than bitching about the bad economy. I think I'll use my time here to ruminate on the gift of sleep.

Sleep, of course, was invented by the Almighty in His infinite wisdom. He invented it mainly to make use of all of the beds that He had willed into being after his great creative fit that occurred around 11 hours after the beginning of time. He thought that humanity might appreciate a time in which we were allowed to become unconscious and drool on ourselves, and occasionally get up and walk around and do silly things and then forget all about them afterwards.

But today, as I sit here, I find myself deprived of sleep. I woke up at 5AM this morning for my new (wonderful, marvelous) job. And I find myself cursing God for inventing sleep, though this is a very stupid thing to do, for we all know that God carries a loaded gun. So, in the interest of not upsetting the Almighty, I will now try to recoup and try to quiet my heretical thoughts.

A Plea to Mercy and Good Taste

BIG NEWS!
Got a job (finally), and I'm starting tomorrow morning at 6:30AM which, coincidentally, is my most favorite time to be awake. My job is as a personal assistant. Or rather more like an assistant to a personal assistant. All I know is that it involves making salmon in a microwave and occasionally polishing silverware.

But, more importantly, I would like to settle something regarding things I may or may not have said in previous posts. I want to make it absolutely clear that I in no way derive any sort of pleasure from making light of others or what they do, and that anyone that pays me any amount of money instantly becomes, in my mind, infallible. Any ill-conceived jokes I made in previous posts were done only to elicit laughter from my readership (a.k.a. my parents).

So if you read anything in this blog that you might have found offensive or crude, remember that it's all just to make my parents laugh. Or maybe it was terrorists. Whatever you find to be more plausible. And if you're my new boss, please don't fire me. Mahalo.

Climbing Down the Ladder

My frustration with the current job market continues to grow. I'm thinking about trying to find where day laborers go to get work and taking my chances there. Not many people with college degrees do that, and I feel like it might be an eye-opening experience for me. More on that as it progresses.

Creative Ways to Make Use of Your College Diploma

A college diploma is a wonderful keepsake. There it is in your hands, the product of thousands (hundreds if you're like me) of hours of work and sometimes up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. They come in that roll with the cute little ribbon tying it off, giving it that air of importance that comes from the days when people tied important documents in ribbons before adjourning to don a three-cornered hat and kill some uppity Indians with their fire-death sticks.

But college graduates soon learn that not everything that looks important actually is important. The economy is apparently in such a shambles that not even Dick Cheney's cardiologist can cure it. In these trying economic times, many graduates have taken to applying for jobs that don't require a college degree. I have inquired about job opportunities from Cold Stone Creamery where, if my application is accepted, I will be singing like a vaudeville prostitute every time someone drops a nickel in the tip jar.

So, in light of all of these developments, does it turn out my college education was a waste of time? Of course not! I still have the diploma, and there are all sorts of uses that can come out of that. I can line the bottom of my birdcage with it so that every time my beautiful cockatoo Fifi makes a doo-doo, the mess and odor will be absorbed by my broken dreams. God bless America.

Long Road to Nowhere: Oren Rosenberg and the Invisible Career

I've decided to re-brand this blog. Instead of my aimless musings about anything that happens across my mind, I've decided to make it about my eternal quest to find a job that pays more than 7 dollars per hour. This came as a result of a suggestion from my mother, who calls me several times a day to remind me that her checkbook is slowly closing like one of those stone slab doors in one of the older Indiana Jones movies (fuck Crystal Skull).

So today I had a wonderful interview. It involved myself and about 60 other individuals of every race, religion, age group, and sexual orientation standing on the back patio waiting for our number to be called like cattle to a slaughter. When my number was called (#7, I got there 20 minutes early) I was the proud recipient of probably the shortest interview all day.

The man that interviewed me was an elderly person of probably Eastern European origin who, though polite, was host to a thinly veiled streak of contempt for me. Me, a recent college grad with no experience is sitting here in the basement of HIS building, next to HIS dusty pool table and HIS second-hand art-deco furniture asking for a job. It's enough to make an elderly immigrant sick.

I have no idea who this man is, or even his first name, but I am going to invent his life story anyway. As a young Jewish child fleeing happy Germany in 1938 with his older sister, he came to the United States with not a nickel in his pocket. His first work was hocking papers on the corner of 53rd St. and 5th Ave. in Manhattan. One day, a wealthy oil magnate walked up to him, threw a dime in his tin jar, and asked his name. The next day he was offered a job at Bell Aircraft, which that year had just gone public.

He started on an assembly line fitting ball-bearing joints to P-59 fighter jets, slowly moving up in the organization until he became VP in charge of Media Relations. During this time, however, he had managed to accrue a few enemies at Bell Aircraft, and was forced into early retirement in 1989 at the age of 55. He used what money he had to buy up property in Los Angeles near the UCLA campus.

And here we are, from VP in charge of Media Relations to having snot-nosed kids write about him in their blogs. Life's a bitch, ain't it?

Stay Classy, San Diego: Nerdcon 2008

Just got back (a few days ago) from the San Diego Comicon. What a spectacle of nerdity. If you've never been there, let me explain it to you: it's the size of half a dozen Costco's filled with booths ranging from those that sell comics with paid bimbos dressed as Princess Leia in slave outfit to attract the attention of adolescent boys, to those that are promoting a new movie/video game/TV show with paid bimbos dressed as sexy zombies to attract the attention of adolescent boys. So all in all it's like Jesus' second coming if you believe in that sort of thing.

Also there was a lot of time spent with my friend who's trying to get money for his startup (http://www.reble.fm/), so I had a lot of rich old men buying me dinner. And not in exchange for sexual favors this time, which is a part of my life I'd really rather put behind me.

And lastly, swimming in the pitch-black ocean when you have had a few too many drinks is incredibly fun, but also probably incredibly dangerous and ill-advised. Whatever, we all dodged the bullet this time. Until next time, my faithful reader, vaya con dios.

Thank You, Corporations! If it weren't for you, I'd still be able to drink out of the river near my house.

There are a lot of blogs out there that deal with marketing, organizational behavior, and other subjects that are of great interest to sycophantic corporate social-climbers. I'm a bit of an expert on these people since I went to business school. I also wrote a 30-page manifesto on blogging and corporate culture, which will never be read by anyone for about the same reason that no one ever pours lye in their eyes: it's painful and senseless. At least it got me a C.

But back to these blogs. They are marvelous, aren't they? It's kind of like that game where a bunch of guys jerk off onto a cookie, and the last one to finish has to eat it. Except in this metaphor the semen is money and the semen-covered cookie is an anti-trust lawsuit. Or something. I think I lost myself. What is that game called again?

And I think this is the point in the blog where I should point out that some material may not be suitable for children or elderly people with conservative dispositions and/or pacemakers.

But yeah, more on corporations later. Now I'm gonna go see Dark Knight. RIP Heath Ledger, you sexy Aussie, you.

If high art and a filthy prostitute had a lovechild, it would be named Hollywood

So I Just moved here to Los Angeles, California, and got into a conversation online with someone in the entertainment industry. I basically spouted all of the negative preconceptions I had about the movie industry, and thusly alienated this person and made them not like me. It was a fun conversation for me, at least.

But in an effort to say something positive about American film, it really is undeniable that Hollywood has made, and continues to make, a significant contribution to the history of art. Being able to produce a film (virtually) without any concern for the cost, as is the case in big Hollywood pictures, requires an amount of capital that only this town can muster. And once in a while, in addition to being expensive, these also movies end up also being good.

When you think about it all art requires an investment. A painter requires paint and canvas, a writer ink, a musician an instrument or some bribe money to force people to listen to you sing. Films require midgets, trained beasts and drums full of napalm. Not quite as easy to round up as a ball-point pen.

So as easy as it is to make fun, sometimes Hollywood gets it right. That is when it isn't knowingly producing total garbage because it makes more financial sense than putting in an effort. Or when, as some famous Hollywood philosopher once said (more or less): When they try to make a piece of excrement, and by accident it turns out to be worthwhile.

Chris Martin is a Fruit Tart

First Post!

I wanted to start this thing by talking about something timeless and important like religion or philosophy, but I got sight of the Rolling Stone cover with Chris Martin on the cover, and now it's all I can think about.

For the life of me I can't find a picture of the cover anywhere, but it's the lovable Chris Martin, staring up and to the right of the camera, with his eyes wide the way a deer's are when someone in the vicinity loads a pump-action shotgun. He's wearing that train-wreck of a jacket that makes it look like he is in an all-colorblind marching band. All in all, the image screams "I'm a joke." If only he had a quality album to use as an excuse for his farcical self-importance.

I loved Coldplay's first two albums, Parachutes and A Rush of Blood to the Head, but lately Coldplay seems to be a caricature of the sappy but engaging band it was during those first two albums. Amelie Gillette of the AV Club does a side-splitting send-up of Martin's philosophy in naming his children in her blog here:

http://www.avclub.com/content/node/82506

Martin and the rest of the boys in Coldplay really seemed to be onto something with those first two albums, but lately it seems like the time is right for them to throw in the towel for a while. In interviews, Martin has circuitously suggested that he isn't totally happy with Coldplay's output of late, and for good reason. Unlike Coldplay's sometimes muse Radiohead, who continues to thrive by moving the goal posts, Coldplay started out with a good sound, gathered up a little momentum, and went headlong into a ditch.

Martin was a talented songwriter, but sometimes that's not enough. Sometimes you have to be a good songwriter and stay hungry. Martin should spend some time reflecting on what made his previous albums good, and maybe cut himself off from his Gweneth Paltrow-fueled life of Hollywood excess. I'm not holding my breath that he can return to the form of his first two albums, but stranger things have happened.