How Barack Obama Can Get My Vote
By bring a little Daft Punk into the mix. I admit, one thing that I really like about Obama is that he doesn’t give off that “I’m just a politician and old” feel all the time. I remember seeing him on an episode of Ellen Degeneres’ show where he actually danced live. True, he looked like a dork, but there’s something about the fact that he actually got up there and danced with Ellen that speaks volumes, not to mention the fact that he was on her show, a lesbian and true hero amongst women and men, both straight and gay. I’m still on the fence about him, particularly because I worry about some of his ideas and policies, but I can acknowledge that at least if he becomes President he won’t have the language flaws of Mr. Shrub, nor the look of someone with severe mental deficiencies, like Mr. Shrub.Now, having said this, I’ll go back to how Barack can get my vote, and it goes to the lyrics of one of Daft Punk’s songs called “Harder Better Faster Stronger”: Work it harder,make it better,do it faster,makes us stronger.More than ever,Hour afterOur work is never over. This is how I feel about America right now, and the kind of attitude I want our next President to have and all future Presidents. It goes something like this: Work it harder: Because it’s going to take hard work to fix this country, to make America the great nation of freedom, of opportunity that it once was. We’ll have to work harder to get back our reputation, to make other nations remember why America is great, to make allies with nations we have frequently had issues with, to find solutions to problems our current President has either created or ignored. We’ll have to work harder to fix our schools and everything else. Make it better: Because America is a slump. It can be better. It can improve upon itself and be great again. We Americans can do this. A President can lead us to making this nation a better place for everyone, not just Christians, but everyone. Do it faster: Because we don’t have to time to argue about this anymore. America needs a change, and a good one that will benefit everyone, not just one party or one group of people, but everyone. And because we don’t have time to argue about how we’re going to get more oil, or what we’re going to do about global warming or whatever is going on with the planet. We don’t have time to wait for car companies to start designing economically feasible alternative fuel cars. We don’t have the time for wind power to slowly get hold, or solar energy to become more common. You see, we’re running out of time. There will come a point, if we don’t do something, where this nation will suffer drastically. People are earning the same amount of money they were ten years ago, but everything they bought back then is more expensive now, and it just keeps going up. The poor are getting poorer, and working harder for nothing. Makes us stronger: Because doing all those things, working hard, making this country better, and doing it quickly while we are still able to, will make us stronger as a people. Uniting us under one flag, rather than the banners of parties will turn us into a nation united by a single vision, which is what America needs more than ever. We need to stop fighting over petty differences. Both parties are ruining this country. We need Republicans and Democrats to work for us, not against their rivals, because that’s why we hired them. And if we can get all people, Christian and Atheist, Black and White, Male and Female working together under the same goal, wouldn’t that make us the strongest, greatest nation to ever exist? And we can do it with the right leadership. Will Obama be that leadership? Can he truly lead this nation into greatness again? More than ever, Hour after. Our work is never over: Because we have to realize that even if we make America better in the next year, or ten years, or twenty, our work is never over. We will always have to make America better, improve upon old conventions, adapt and change with the times and technology, and bring in new ideas from different cultures, embracing them and accepting that we are the melting pot of the world. These are the things I need to hear come debate time. These are the things I want to see Obama embracing, but in more than just attacks on Republicans or President Bush, in true words spoken from someone with true vision, not a political agenda…I’m praying that Obama will be the right choice, because McCain has solidified his position as a “no” in my book with his choice of Palin. I want to vote, but times are becoming terrifying now, with candidates being such hard picks and with politics being so insane these days. I’ve been hard on Obama because I don’t trust him and because I’m not a fan of his political views thus far, but can he prove me wrong come election time? I don’t know. I’m afraid to make the wrong choice and have to live with that for the next 4 to 8 years. Terrified even. Because I know people who voted for Bush two times in a row…and now they see it as the biggest mistake they ever made…
Media Tie-ins: A Little More
A lot more discussion has been going on regarding media tie-ins, making me realize how big an issue this really is in the genre world. Lou Anders wrote a fascinating post here and in it he quoted someone else who likened the bias in genre fiction against media tie-ins to the bias of non-genre folks against genre. This has made me question my own bias towards media tie-ins. Am I no better than the literary academia who find joy in bashing us genre folks down for writing crap literature?And as I thought more about all of this I started to think about the wealth of literature I never got to read. You see, during high school I went through a period where I absolutely hated reading. Why? The same reason high school kids to this day hate reading: I was forced to read stuff I didn’t enjoy, that didn’t make reading fun or interesting, and because everything about literature revolved around standardized tests or annoying essays about stuff that was completely irrelevant, and still is, or annoying vocabulary tests of “what’s going on in the book” tests. None of this helped me become a person who loved books. For most of high school I absolutely hated reading. And that was anything. Only in freshman year did I actually read for fun, and those were media tie-ins such as Star Wars and Dragonlance, the former primarily because I was in love with SW through and through (still have some of my SW tie-in favorites, actually). But, then I was subjected to the horrors of our current educational system and that killed reading for me for several years–I got back into it when I started reading Star Wars yet again, and Dragonlance (and the works of Richard A. Knaak, who wrote for Dragonlance and then his own series). I wasn’t a reader before high school either, by the way, for the same reason.So, in a way, it was media tie-ins that made me a reader of science fiction and fantasy. I’ve always loved SF/F, because the movies were always awesome (mostly Star Wars, of course), but media tie-ins created my love for the literary form, where Star Wars novels allowed me to follow some of my favorite writers outside of the SW universe to original universes. And…that’s a good thing, right? If tie-ins drive us to read other things, what’s wrong with that? Nothing, but we’re not really talking about there.I’ll talk more about the crappy educational system in this country later. For now, I think I need to start realizing that I can’t be biased to media tie-ins as much as I used to be. I will always hate the Magic the Gathering stuff, because all of the ones I have read have been terrible, but I remember loving the SW stuff, so why shouldn’t I be able to pick those up again and maybe find new things to read?I think my biggest issue with SW is that it got too…I don’t know what to call it. I loved the stuff that followed ROTJ, showing us what happened to the Empire and our heroes, but then the whole thing lost me when they started delving into characters that just didn’t interest me (such as Han and Leia’s kids, who I couldn’t care less about…). But I can go back. I really can. And I think I will, some day.Additionally, this whole thing got me thinking about media tie-ins as something I should consider doing one day. When I was younger I wanted to write a Star Wars novel so bad that I would spend hours and hours figuring out what things I’d put into my story. I never write anything, but I wanted to. I don’t know when that desire left, but just in these last few days it has come back. In fact, here are the many shared universes I’d like to work in one day, and why: Star WarsThe obvious one. I love Star Wars. Always have. I don’t care much for the prequel stuff, mostly because it feels a bit tired and dull in comparison to the far future. And I’d like to work in the SW universe. I really would. I’m feeling a resurgence of love for the universe and all those childhood memories came flooding back, reminding me of why I wanted to be a part of the SW family. If I can, I’d like to write a SW novel, or two, or more. Star TrekI love SW more, but I do think there is a lot of fun stuff in the ST universe, particularly looking at it from a space opera perspective. I’d have a lot of fun showing the Federation at war and the politics involved. Imagine the complexity of such a complex situation as war within the Federation? Has it actually be done well? I mean the full political, social, and economical implications of interstellar war where allied worlds start fighting against one another? Sounds fun to me. X-men/MarvelI was in love with the cartoon show when I was a kid and wish all five seasons had been released on DVD, because I’d love to watch them again. Something about that gritty world of mutants was fascinating. I don’t know what I’d do with the X-men or any Marvel creations, but I know I’d like to do something with depth, drawing upon the social issues of a society where the minority are scared of the majority, and vice versa. WarhammerI’m not entirely sure why, but something about it makes me curious. It’d take a lot of research on my part to know what I’m writing about, etc., but I’d take a lot of joy in expanding on this militaristic war game’s universe. RiftsThe novels are dead, but dangit, this would be such a cool game to write for. Rifts is my favorite pen & paper RPG and there are so many fantastic stories to write about. It’s such an enormous “world”, with
J. J. Abrams: Moron in Producer’s Clothing
From io9: Abrams talked a lot about why he thinks the time is right for a show about the horrors of science gone wrong. “Every day, every week, we hear about some potentially horrifying thing… Science is out of control.” No, what’s out of control is the overrated producer/creator that gave us the Lost, Cloverfield, and what will almost surely be a horribly overrated junker, Fringe. Let’s discuss for a moment, shall we?You wrote an adult version of Gilligan’s Island, which wasn’t very good and which proved to have no credibility when the fat guy on the show never lost any weight. Really? A guy that size goes on an extreme diet on a semi-deserted island and doesn’t lose a pound? I mean, come on, he had to lose at least a little weight. All that running around, climbing, and eating coconuts and dirt…I’m losing weight just talking about it. Not to mention the show took itself way too seriously, so much so that nothing happens in almost all the episodes, which puts me to sleep (sort of like Heroes, which lost me when it got all “evil government” on me…the X-men cartoon was better).Then you wrote Cloverfield, one of the worst science fiction movies I’ve seen in a long time, sporting the witty narration of a half-retarded guy named Chud, or Chug, or Chum, or some four-letter name for a mentally deficient college-aged guy who clearly took one too many hits in the head during football practice. That movie took all the horribly idiotic cliches of horror movies and disaster films, put them together, and did nothing all that new or original with it. Bravo.Finally, you’re giving us Fringe, which sounded cool to me for a while, until that glorious quote above where you tried to make it sound like science is this big scary evil thing that’s out of control. Excuse me? This is why people like Abrams shouldn’t be allowed to write about things they don’t know anything about. Science isn’t out of control. In fact, it’s strictly controlled by rules, regulations, etc. We’re not producing evil super-humans who go around assassinating people in their sleep, never leaving a trace, and being capable of scaling 20-storey buildings in a single leap. We don’t have super-viruses controlled by the government to keep the masses in check, or nasty robot bugs that go around with little lasers, shooting people that make a vague threat against the government. See, that would be out of control…having those things. But we don’t. Nope, science is cool. Just remember that the next time you get a shot. Science gave us the means to fabricate our own immunities. And that’s all I have to say about this…
The Terminator Movies: Why the robots lost…badly.
I’ve been watching the first and third Terminator films the last couple of days and something occurred to me as to why the robots–from the future, of course–always lose: they’re not very smart robots.Let’s face it, the robots of the future didn’t exactly choose the “calm” approach to getting things done. The first Terminator was a large, muscular Austrian with a trigger finger. Go figure. He can’t talk all that well–no offense Arnold, but sweet-talking isn’t really your forte–and he has a tremendous social deficiency. You’d think that robots who eventually take control of the Internet, the military, and everything else attached to some sort of digital component would have learned a little about what makes us tick. They’d have known that people don’t generally respond well to being shot at, chased, followed by creepy guys in leather jackets who have a constant look of anger and speak like the Grim Reaper if he were born in Eastern Europe or hit over the head with a large hammer. But they didn’t do this research or decided it didn’t matter for some reason.You see, the robots could have easily killed off Sarah Connor the first time around by taking a little time to program “fake” emotions into their robots. I know, they’re robots and are supposed to be emotionless. That’s sort of the point of the movies. But we’re talking about this in a different light, so get over it. They could have programmed their Terminators to be a little more, well, human, even just a smidge. By doing so they would have ended up with a robot that could at least blend, somewhat, into the human world and might actually weasel its way into Sarah Connor’s good graces. And then, with her back turned, all trusting and what not, it could have just snapped her neck and been done with it.But that didn’t happen.And then came Terminator 2, where the Austrian version gets reprogrammed by humans who don’t have the time to deal with implanting human qualities into it, considering their desperate situation and all, and the evil version is a suped up model that can turn to liquid and runs really fast–oh and has the handy ability to turn his hands into toothpicks and golf clubs. The robots were almost there this time around. Sure, the T-1000 has a trigger finger, almost no emotions, etc., but it does manage to express a little humanity at times, albeit in an attempt to get what it wants. But, it’s not nearly enough and in the end the T-1000 is just another monstrous robot bent on killing one of the Connors (this time John) and causing as much explosion-happy mayhem as humanly, I mean robotically possible. And, just like with the first Terminator (T-101 or some such), this approach draws far too much attention, and really, if you’re going to jump into the past to hunt down a kid, you probably should do it quietly so that not every cop within three-hundred miles knows what’s going on. Subtlety is the wave of the future. Wait…no it’s not.Finally came Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I’m intentionally ignoring the Sarah Connor Chronicles, mostly because I haven’t watched them and because the few episodes I have seen really didn’t do much for me at all (sorry, I think they suffer from “stuck in the middle” syndrome like the new Clone Wars movie does). T3 was, more or less, an attempt to expand upon the Terminator story without doing anything too outlandish and ridiculous in comparison to the first two films. It succeeded on that front, giving us lots of explosions, chase scenes, fights, and what not without overloading it with the big movie killer in Hollywood today: excessive CG. Sure, there was a lot of CG in T3, but they seemed to avoid designing scenes that would rely entirely upon CG in exchange for a bit of realism (George Lucas, you should be paying attention here). In T3 we have Austrian Terminator being reprogrammed yet again by humans–human qualities missing, obviously–and sent back in time to protect John Connor and Kate Brewster–who apparently is Connor’s future wife. The robots, however, send back the T-X, and I’m going to use John Connor’s words to describe her: “She’s an anti-terminator…terminator.” She’s supposed to be an extremely advanced Terminator model, but she does come with limitations–she can’t turn into liquid like the T-1000, though she can change her appearance, and she can’t turn her arms into golf clubs. Sure, she’s superior to the T-101, or whatever model you want to call Arnold’s Terminator, but she’s not nearly as terrifying as the T-1000–mostly cause she’s a pretty woman and the T-1000 was that slightly creepy guy who later worked on X-Files. Having said all this, though, we find that despite T-X’s ability to control digital networks–such as the computer systems in our newfangled cars and what not–and her seemingly limitless physical capabilities–like punching through a car seat and a man’s chest all at once or simply walking away after being bitch-slapped by a rocket propelled grenade–she falls prey to exactly what made the first and second Terminators failures: she has absolutely no concept of what it is to be human. Well, I should say “it”, but because it’s a woman most of the time I’ll just say she. In the end, it is the original Terminator’s ability to have some semblance of humanity that leads to the success of humanity (which is sort of a strange type of success, since the robots succeed in starting the war anyway, but don’t worry, cause John Connor and Kate Brewster live, and Connor turns into a scarred badass that eats Terminators for breakfast and probably has his face on a Wheaties box at some point, or the future equivalent–Termies perhaps?).You see, after three attempts (more if you want to include the Sarah Connor stuff), you’d think they would have learned that creating robots that are incapable of blending into human
McDonald’s, Gays, and Retarded Rightwing Christians
An appropriate subtitle to this would be: Why boycotting McDonald’s won’t do a damn thing. So, according to Fox, the ever fair and balanced network (yes, as fair and balanced as Hitler, bah!) a Christian Group is boycotting McDonald’s after they made a donation to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. How many people are boycotting thus far? Two-hundred thousand. Why won’t this matter one tiny bit? I give you the following quote from the McDonald’s website in their FAQ section: Every day McDonald’s serves more than 47 million customers around the world. That’s every day. Not every year, every month, every fortnight, or every week. That’s every single day. All 365 of them. That means McDonald’s serves roughly 17,155,000,000 people a year (not individuals, obviously). That also means that McDonald’s has likely sold enough french fries to alter the tides in the ocean. We should all be concerned.Anyway!Now, let’s just assume that all 200,000 of those on the boycott list keep up with it for the whole year. Heck, why don’t we give them the benefit of the doubt and say they manage to get 500,000 who can stick it out for a whole year, which I highly doubt will occur. McDonald’s will have lost a total of 182,500,000 customer sales. Sounds like a lot, right?Not really. That’s actually minuscule. They’ll have lost probably a couple billion dollars, but you want to know how they can make it up? Charge one penny more on every item on the list. Yup. One penny. Most of us wouldn’t notice and almost all of us wouldn’t care. Heck, you could just charge a penny on things with a 9 on the end of the price, just so you can keep your precious dollar menu. Guess what? McDonald’s now earns almost 17 billion extra dollars assuming everyone buys one item not on the dollar menu.And guess what? McDonald’s can shell out all the money they want without worrying about the wacko religious right not buying their products anymore. How long do you think you could live without a McDonald’s menu item, hmm? Guaranteed most of those boycotting won’t last more than six months. So, having said all that, I can say with absolute certainty that absolutely nothing will come of this boycott except McDonald’s going “huh, we can just charge a penny more on the Big Mac and make up the difference…go figure.” Stick by your principles all you want, but you look like a homophobic moron, you smell like one too, and most of the country will walk by you and giggle cause you’ll have done absolutely nothing for your cause except prove that you’re a homophobic moron. But hey, if that’s what you’re shooting for, then more power to you. Everyone should be able to live their dream right? If you can be a homophobic moron then I can be an astronaut! Ha!
Star Wars: A Letter to George Lucas
Dear Mr. Lucas,This letter is in conjunction with many posts across the web–the World Wide Web, if you will, since you seem somewhat out of touch with popular culture as of late–at places like SF Signal. These posts have been about the fate of Star Wars and what could very well save it from what could be an assured painful death.We were all relatively ecstatic about the original Star Wars movies. The first film was a fantastic romp, a space opera that gave us the adventure we all wanted and didn’t take itself too seriously. Then there came The Empire Strikes Back, which took us somewhere darker than A New Hope and showed us just how complex the Star Wars universe could be while maintaining it’s fun, high-flying adventurous side. Finally we were shown Return of the Jedi, which tried to go backwards to the not-too-serious feel of A New Hope with it’s epic battle of furry teddy bears and comical Wookie nonsense. I will likely be stabbed for saying this, but Return of the Jedi is by far my favorite movie set in the Star Wars universe–as a child I was more interested in the amazing space battles than I was the lightsaber fights, and I’m still amazed by those same space battles to this day.And then you brought us the prequels. Not only was this a generally stupid idea–prequels to movies that already provided us the answers aren’t generally good ideas anyway, considering your prequels only offered us the “how did Vader become Vader” stuffs–but it didn’t exactly work. No offense to you or the people you chose to play your characters, but the original trilogy had better acting and writing than these three did, with the third prequel–Revenge of the Sith–being a possible exception. Okay, perhaps that is a lie, but most fans of your work, and even non-fans, are willing to admit that Revenge of the Sith is the best of the prequels hands down. The problems with the prequels are too many to list here, and you are probably either completely ignorant of them due to some sort of intention to ignore the critics of your work or you just don’t care. I lean towards the former because I do believe that you think your work is of excellent quality and simply don’t pay attention to the folks who are pleading with you to do what you need to do. This means you won’t read what I am writing here.Star Wars is in desperate need of an overhaul, but you, Mr. Lucas, are using your power of control to kill it. Is this intentional? Do you want your beloved universe to die? Would you deprive millions of fans and millions of would-be fans from the wealth of stories that are still left to be told in visual form?Well, that’s why I’m writing this letter: to tell you want you need to do to save Star Wars, to make it better than it is today, to make it wanted and desirable by more than just your obsessed, die-hard fans–the kinds who have bought all your toys since the beginning, who drool whenever Star Wars is mentioned, and name their adopted foreign children after your characters. And, to make it convenient for you, I am going to put it in a list: Don’t direct.I know, you want control, but remember what made your previous films so much better? You didn’t direct them all and sometimes OTHER people can see the mistakes that you don’t. Any creative writer will know this, which is why there are critique groups and the like out there to help us get better at writing. You are not impervious to mistakes. You have vision. I won’t take that away from you. But you also have flaws, and they are apparent on all levels. Let someone else have the reins.Seriously, this isn’t a bad thing. You can still have veto power, but you should definitely leave some of the decisions to someone else. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ve already opened up the Star Wars universe to other writers, why not open up other aspects of it to other people? You can still be involved, but perhaps you should take an executive or producer position instead of being in the hot seat. Stop with the prequel or between-trilogies crap.I don’t care what happened between The Attack of the Clones and The Revenge of the Sith. There was a short mini-cartoon that covered that and that was all I needed. Why? Because it wasn’t an after-thought. It was a teaser, a little bit of Star Wars to tide me over while I waited for you to hurry up and get the last movie out. Now I just don’t care. I know Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader. I know how. I know what happens after that too. Every time you try to cram stuff between the movies you strain my patience. Start digging into the world that follows Return of the Jedi.Let’s face it, if you were to look into the things that immediately followed the last of the Star Wars movies–chronologically speaking–there would be a plethora of stories that could be told. What happens to the empire after the second Death Star is destroyed? It doesn’t just crumble and the rebellion doesn’t win right then and there without any more fighting. Far from it. What are the ramifications of the rebellion’s actions? Hmm? Surely there are a lot of innocent people who are affected by Luke Skywalker and his pals, right? And there are all sorts of stories worth telling visually in the expanded universe novels. What about making a trilogy that follows the New Republic or Mara Jade or the myriad of other equally interesting tales?Why am I saying this? Because WE, the people who make it possible for you to keep making movies, want something new. Prequel crap isn’t new to us anymore and wasn’t really all that new to begin with.