Sorry Local Buissness

I'm not a good person but I do random little things that help me pretend that I am. One of those things is today I tried to support my local used books stores. There are two of them near me, one right on the way to the other and so I was excited at the prospect of being able to pick up some books I wanted to read cheaply and quickly. Instead I was bitterly let down.

BITTERLY!

I wanted a copy of The Road. I loved what I read of Blood Meridian and sasha loved The Road so I figgue I should pick it up, and I should do it for cheaper than 15 bucks, which is the price of a new book now and days. What the fuck is all that about? Both of the books stores, were, well they were just a plain old disapointment. They were both really small, and amazingly they both had an almost identical selection of books. It was creepy. I noticed something else about the both of them, they were both closed on mondays, and they both closed up at 5.

I've talked about it before and I will do it again. Small businesses can survive. They can survive things like walmart and amazon. However, they have to want it. Wanting it doesn't mean closing at 5. II mean come on I am their target customer, a crap job working ninja badass who doesn't shoplift but still hates paying 15 bucks for a book. They need to be open later if they are going to be able to cater to people like me. Subterranian books had the right idea but its gone now.

Oh well. So it looks like I am back to ordering used books off of amazon. I mean these used books come from small buisnesses so I don't feel that bad about it. And I mean nothing stops these local folks from listing on Amazon and Half.com.

See the thing is I do like sifting through stacks of books, and I do like hanging around stores and stuff. Sadly though, these stores just aren't cutting it. My eccentric needs aside, they just don't have what I need/want/desire and the interent does at the same price. I hope they wisen up enough to offload some of their stock on the interwebs. One store who is run by a little old lady will not. The other store who is run by some guy just might. I hope so. Best of luck to you kids.

In a strange side note today I was reminded of vacationing in the outerbanks with my Dad and step mom. The outer banks is an area that is almost compleatly tourist driven, and that place had more used book stores per capita than anywhere else in the world. Okay that may not be true but it certainly seemed like it. They were everywhere and they all had this dizzying collection of stuff. To be fair though there wasn't much to do on that island other than read, swim, and minature golf. I don't think most of the houses had tv and if they did there was no cable. So there were books everywhere. Out there is where I read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Amtiville Horror, and the Excorcist. The first two books actually changed my life they were absolutly fantastic reads. The Exorcist was kind of lame actually.

Anyway, we would spend hours scouring these stores looking for things to read and I would find all sorts of stuff that interested me, but I never picked up. Like this crazy series about one man's adventure in a post apocalyptic wasteland. It was pure 70s grindhouse pulp, it was a series that went on forever, there must of been over 20 books, and they all looked terrible. I wanted them so much but I was afraid my parents would say no. They aren't around now though so I'm thinking it is time to go looking for them.

Moral Conundrums

So the other day I was watching a couple of episodes of the underated but amazingly cool show Millenium. The first season is vaugly meh, the second season though, the second season is a work of art. Then it was canceled and the planned third season never happened. NEVER FUCKING HAPPENED. One of the things I really appreciate about the show is how well it really captures the rising panic of an era. So many things where changing then and we were having a hard time coming to grips with all of it. One episisode in paticular sparked all of this. A serial killer mastermind was killing people over the internet and taunting the police with crypitc cyphers as to his location. The thing is this is mid/late 90's there was no streaming video then. So it all happened over the course of rapidly uploaded photographs.

It is a chilling look at the future where now we have youtube, and anyone with a little bit of knowlage can see real people being killed and and tortured for free.

There is a problem here. See here's my thing. I am deeply invested in the idea that violent media doesn't cause violent behaviour. I don't watch Ong Bak and punch people in the head, I don't watch Gone in 60 Seconds then go drive a stolen car really fast, I don kill people after American Psycho. The same is true for roleplaying games, video games, books, movies, and porn. It just doesn't happen that way. This is an argument I have heavily theorized, and to protect it I will leap all over some seemingly innocent theories just because of their potential applications. It is one thing I will not back down over, and if you ever really really want to see me argue with someone this is the way to do it. Yet I have a problem.

The main flaw of my argument, which oddly enough no one ever brings up because people don't know how to debate is, "If it isn't violent media then what the fuck is the problem". Blaming parents? Trendy but a little overplayed, also parents have been fucking up the gentle art of raising children since the dawn of time and we didn't nearly have the same problems we do now. SO I'm willing to let them off easily.

The thing is that the core of my argument is that what people are watching is a fictional representation of a series of actions. They aren't real and they are in of themselves inert. See how two people can read the same book but get wildly diffrent views of what happended? That is part of the proof that media doesn't cause violence because media doesn't cause anything. If it did then we would all have the same reactions and we'd all buy pepsi and a consordium of poets would rule the earth with an iron fist.

However, this youtube thing. I can go watch someone die. For real. And to me that is sick. I have a solum rule which not even I want to break. I don't watch movies where people/animals are delivertly injured for my enjoyment. So no "Children of the Sun", "Cannibal Holocaust", or "Apocalypse Now" for me. I've watched some intense movies. Really intense disturbing movies, and I got to say that I enjoyed them. I am looking foward to the third Lucien Valentine vomit movie if that is saying anything. But watching real things die for my petty burgeoisie entertainment is wrong. Flat out. If I am bored I can watch tv, masturbate, inflict my prescense upon other people, drink, do drugs, but to go onto the internet to watch people die? That is pretty delibertly fucked up.

4chan takes it to another level. Where they will take the deaths of real people and turn them into jokes. People who will no longer dance, laugh, love, or sing, who's lives ended in cruel horrible ways plastered over the internet so that people can laugh. That whole activity is fucking sick.

So how do I rationalize the two. How can I say that violent media doen't cause violence when people are turning real pain/tragidy into their own warped form of entertainment. I don't know. But I do care. I slightly feel that I have been backing the wrong horse. Maybe I have. Maybe, despite all their fear, their terrible terrible ignorance, bullshit science, maybe they are right. There something out there has eroded our ability to maintain a healthy relationship between what we watch, how we watch it, and what we do. Something that is inside the individuals themselves.

I dunno. In other news NASA wants to move the damn earth. That deserves it's own entry though because what the fuck NASA seriously you are made of retarded.

Well I am apparently going to go shoot up a school now because I play violent video games. Or something like that.