Gender Parity and You with Honor Harrington Too!

Gender equality, parity, and representation is one of those things that, when I'm confronted with it, I find myself just throwing my hands in the air and moving on.  It most recently caught my attention when a University decided to cancel the annual reading of the Vagina Monologues on valentines day because it excluded Trans folk.  This is what happens when you have people who lack any sort of critical thinking skills trying to enact societal change.  But that's a tirade for another day.

See my problem with most people's idea of how representation should be handled is that it rings false.  If you demand that for a piece of media every X characters there needs to be one LGBT person then it isn't going to feel natural.  For an example of this you need look no further than the teen movies of the late 80's and 90's.  Or if you wanna make it easy on yourself Not Another Teen movie where they point out the token black guy.  Or how so many horror movies has the near obligatory black guy and how almost always the black guy dies first.  My favorite example of racial diversity gone wrong is the original Power Rangers.  Oh man was that shit ever funny.  I knew that was messed up even in the 4th grade, "Look at how diverse we are!  SO DIVERSE and yet we all have colors to match our steriotypes.  Jocky leader guy is red, boy is blue, black guy is black, all asians are yellow, pink is for girls YAY the diversity!"  Yeah.  See what I mean when you force diversity and it ends up ringing false?  To bring the gender back into focus in the Return of the King when the Nazgoul was saying it couldn't be killed by any man I turned to my friend and whispered, "Hobbit KO incoming!"  I was excited.  It would of fit with the theme of the movie too, small people in events to big for them being brave.  It would of been awesome.  Instead we got, "I am no man" which compared to what it could of been just seems forced.

Alright lets stay focused on gender for a bit.  I've always had a theory of what gender parity would look like in a book.  My theory was that unless a character's gender is important for the medias plot, subplot, or a subtext then the gender itself should be interchangeable and randomly assigned.  For example Han Solo.  There is nothing inherent about the character that demands he be a male.  So make him a woman.  The core character remains entirely unaltered with the exception that he might of ended up in the slave outfit instead of in carbonite.  Similarly if you swapped the genders of Luke and Leia the story itself remains relatively unchanged.  In Star Trek TNG 99% of the crew could undergo a gender swap and the essence off the characters would still remain the same.  

Gender in of itself is not an indication of how a character needs to act unless you are really into propagating stereotypes.  The book "Honor Harrington: On Basklisk Station" is the perfect example of this.  The book weighs in at 432 pages and it has a rather large cast of characters.  Some are pretty flat and two dimensional and the book lacks subtlety and grace. It is a military Sci-FI book where the author took Napolionic navel battles and finagled the technology so that they have been replicated in space and he is a hell of a lot more interested in that than dealing with things like character development.  And yet it feels like when he made each and every character he flipped a coin and assigned their genders that way.  During the book no one falls in love.  There is no sexual tension.  There was a character who once tried to rape Honor but she kicked his ass.  There is tension between Honor and her executive officer but it had to do with the fact that the executive officer wanted command of the ship and was jelous she got it.  Not because she was a girl.  The head engineer was a woman.  So was the ship's doctor and the leader of planet Basklisk.  

The point is that the books simply didn't care care about gender.  The book was about a small ship being given an impossible task and they managed to do it anyway through grit and determination.  Their genders neither helped nor hindered this task and to me this is perfect.  It didn't feel like the author mixed up the genders to meet some sort of quota.  He was much more concerned with telling you about how hyperspace worked.  The mix felt natural and that naturalness is what's going to help people get used to the idea of gender equality going forwards.  I liked the book but in later ones Honor falls in love and gets trapped in love triangles and other stuff and I'm quite frankly not interested in any of that crap.

That said I might end up reading a few more books in the series anyway.  As it stands this first book is a fascinating look at what a world looks like where the differences between the sexes aren't broken down but ignored entirely thus treating everyone equal.  

I'm Not Done Writing

So I just wrote like 3 pages but I'm not done yet.  So I am going to write some more.  This is good though.  I've been writing more fiction recently.  Nothing coherent mostly stuff  on scratch paper on my lunch breaks to get me into the groove of fiction writing again.  National Novel Writing Month is around the corner and I want to participate this year.

I thought I had an idea of a novel all planned out and ready to go.  This is something I wanted to do and I was ready to do it.  Then all the sudden a couple of weeks ago I was like, "but what if I don't".  What if I write something else?  So I've been planning for that.  I want to do a noir style book where a guy starts with a normal happy every day life and then it all gets flipped upside down and by the end of it he's in thick with the wrong crowd but he decides to stay.  Part Black Lagoon, part Sin City, part Fatale, part American Tabloid, part Cold in July, and a dash of creativity.  I hope I like it.  I've decided to write it in the first person.

One of my favorite authors, James Ellroy, once said, "If you don't have an interesting perspective then don't bother with the 1st person.  Just stick to 3rd".  That's always stuck with me and as a result all of my novels and stories have been in the third person,  When he said that he was eluding to White Jazz which is the one book that people seem to hate the most.  It is very different than his other works but man it just drew me in and took me along for the ride.  I loved every page of it and yeah he's right.  If you aren't going to get in your character's head and I mean really get into it then don't fucking bother.  Stick to third person.  I've been trying out various characters in first person and it is a hell of a ride.  Here's an extended quote.  To give you the set up the main character is trying to track down a murderer and set up a prostitution sting operation to help find someone who might know the killer.

"Bluesuits out in force: popping tricks, impounding trick cars.
Prostie vans behind Cooper's Donuts; Vice bulls bagging IDs. Men stationed southbound and northbound- hot to foil sex prowlers hot to rabbit.
My perch: Cooper's roof.  Ordnance: binoculars, a bullhorn.
Dig the panic:
Johns soliciting whores-cops grabbing them.  Vehicles impounded, van detainment- fourteen fis bagged so far, prelim Q&A:
"You married?"
"You on parole or probation"
"You like it white or colored?  Sign this waiver, we might cut you loose at the station."
No Lucille K.
Some clown tried to run- a rookie plugged his back tires.
Epidemic boo-hoo- "DON'T TELL MY WIFE!" Leg-shackle clangs-the prostie vans shook.
Luck-whores mixed fifty-fifty: white gils, coons.  Fourteen tricks arrested- all Caucasian.
Panic down below: Shriners bagged en masse.  Five men, fez hats flying- a whore grabbe one and pranced.
I hit the bullhorn: "We've got nineteen! Let's close it down!"

This along with the description of Catch-22, just before the execution of  Colonel Aureliano Buendia, and a certain passage out of Nightwood make up my pantheon of favorite literary moments.  Anyway you see what I mean by making first person work and I mean really work.  It isn't worth it unless you get into someone's head.  Someone who think and acts differently than you.  I'm not going to go quite that far.  I am going to use him as kind of an unreliable narrator.  He is also going to undergo some signifigant changes.  If I take the time to do it right the style of writing would be different from the first and second half of the book but it is NaNoWriMo so what will more than likely happen is that I'll just be frenzily hammering out the plot.  Speaking of the plot I have the beginning and the end pretty well thought out and part of the first part of the middle.  So I am actually pretty excited about this novel.  I hope it turns out well.  Last years novel was fun but easy.  I set it in an rpg universe and while I had a blast writing it and it turned out surprisingly well it wasn't challenging.  It was the most complex plot I've ever tackled but still it all clicked together a little to well.  That said I do very much want to edit it up and do something with it.  This one I am really looking forwards to.

They say not to compare yourself to others and just do your own thing but Gérard de Villiers wrote 3 novels a year for most of his life.  Granted they aren't very good but they certainly are fun to read which is all he wanted really.  It gives you pause to think.  Anywho the self comparison always inspired me to do better and reach for more and not be to self satisfied which is something I am prone to.  However, I have fits of depression that make getting out of bed and not being cruel to people and unbelievably difficult task so sometimes I earn it.

I don't want to dwell here lets move on.

I am going to get an ebook reader in November.  I am getting a Kindle.  I could just order it now.  Right now.  I have Amazon open in a tab because I needed to look up the spelling of Gérard de Villiers's name and it has an add for the kindle.  I could one click order that shit.  However, I am waiting till black friday/cyber monday in hopes of a good sale on the things.  Whenever I mention my Kindle quest people always say, "printed books are awesome" and they are right.  I am with these people 100% but damnit I am out of room for books.  I have books everywhere.  I have shelves of books.  I could sell them at a used book store but I have a rather "distinctive" taste in books.  Most of my prefered books aren't even carried by Barns a Million let alone a used book store so giving them a milk crate of books in exchange for 5 bucks credit doesn't do me any good.  That and a lot of books I want to read are political in nature and those books have a shelf life of maybe 5 years before the information is out dated and needs updating.  These books are a third of the price digitally.  Mostly though it is the space issue.  It is just a pain in the ass.

The thing is though is that the Kindle or the idea of the Kindle is quaint.  I've put off getting an ebook reader for awhile.  Me?  I hate reading off the computer screen.  There is something about it that sends my reading comprehension into the shitter.  Even when I unplug from the internet and my book is the only thing on the screen my comprehension goes in the shitter.  Don't know why.  The reason I say the idea of the Kindle is quaint though is because it is a dedicated electronic device and those are going the way of the dinosaur.

Back in the day a computer with a net connection was your gateway to the world.  Then it was if you had a lap top you could take your world anywhere.  Now?  Now people hold the internet in the palm of their hands.  Cellphones have procession power that wasn't even dreamed of 20 years ago let alone in the palm of your hand.  Kindles are quaint in the same way desktop computers are quaint.  The vast majority of the things most people do with a desktop pc can be done on a cell phone or a tablet.  Heck with Skype, Facetime, and Facebook messenger you almost don't need a cell plan anymore.  So why get a dedicated device when for the same amount of money I could get a phone, internet browser, mini multimedia station?  The plain and simple answer is that the Kindle's screen is better for reading than a cell phone one.  That's all and I am willing to overpay for a nice screen and cheaper books that won't clutter up my house but would break my heart to throw away.  Perhaps there is somewhere I could donate them.  It is strange though.  I had a baby laptop and I loved it until it died.  I mostly interneted and wrote on it.  If I hadn't decided to use my PC as a gaming platform I prolly would of just invested in another baby laptop and a stream box for my tv.  One day having a desktop PC will be completely outdated.  I don't know what the work space will look like but I do know I'll still need a keyboard to type on.

I just can't seem to organize my thoughts as well when I use text to type.  I can also type faster than I can talk so there's that.  I just think it is a little funny.  All my life I've had a desktop PC in one form or another in my house from the ancient commador 64 to my custom built gaming rig.  It just seems odd that in the next 20 years they might not even be a thing any more.  It is also odd to think of me living 20 more years but that's a different topic for another time.

I keep seeing more and more about how we are addicted to technology and it is rewiring our brains and blah blah blah.  Me?  I think that most of it is a load of crap.  I think that blaming our problems on technology is a convenient way of putting the chicken before the egg.  People claim we are now more isolated than ever before but we have 50 thousand different ways to fucking talk to each other so I don't see the problem.  There is that endless meme of the people all sitting near each other on their phones instead of having conversations with each other but let me tell you before we all had cell phones we all didn't live in some mystical fucking fantasy land were we all sat around and talked to each other for hours on end.  That never happened.  The only time that happens is when you are in a bar because that's part of what being in a bar is all about.

People aren't addicted to technology they are addicted to themselves.  Hell they aren't even addicted to themselves they are addicted to things that validate themselves.  That's what the whole gamer's gate thing is self validation of some stupid identity that doesn't matter.  That is what the like button on facebook is.  It is a non verbal one click way for you to validate other people's posts.  It lets you say, "I support this message" without actually typing the words.  It is also why you are a chode when you like your own posts.  Communication over facebook is secondary to the idea of self validation.  The comercialization of the internet just made it easier for groups of like minded people to gather and exchange idea that they already agree on.  The reason why this happens is because people like to talk to people they already agree with.  So why not monetize it.  This is why certain tumbler groups get really weird.  Or why forums become overly policed so everyone stays on message.  This policing can be either formal or informal.  It is also why some people talk in memes.

The other day at work Cory and I were discussing Gamer's Gate and he made the comment that the Chans are the most horrible thing to come out of the internet.  I disagree.  Other than the specifically illeagal stuff like child pornography I kind of accept the Chans.  I've met a lot of people over the course of my life and as a result I've gained an understanding of the chans.  I don't like them but like most internet communities if you leave them alone they are happy to exist in a self perpetuating circle jerk.  No the worst thing to come out of the internet is the meme.  The picture with the white words.  This picture can then be shared over and over again without any thought from the person who shares it.  People can then "like" it and even optionally share it again.  Memes intrinsically have no value.  Oftentimes they only require a modicum of creativity and effort to make and distribute.  That's okay though because in general people spend a minimum amount of time processing the information within the meme, usually in the form of retension and then they move on.  Meme's are essentially short hand for thought proceeses but what is horrible about them is that because of the way they are distributed they are perfectly preserved.  A meme can be shared hundreds or millions of times.  I can go viral and when that happens it penetrates the national consciousness and everyone knows what this meme is and yet it is perfectly preserved the entire time.

Things need to change in order to improve.  Sometimes they change for the worst.  Sometimes they change for the best.  The point is that things need to change.  If things remain static that is just what they are.  Static.  Static thoughts are the worst and that is exactly what a meme is.  For the most part they are fun, like grumpy cat.  But more and more they are being used to boil down complex issues into easily digestable and believable facts.  On large comment threads on facebook, after a certain point it degrades into people tagging their friends and people posting pictures of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.  When people want to make charged statements they pull out that fucking Willy Wonka picture instead of just saying what they think and lord if you ever feel like taking a trip down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole one day the comment threads are littered with pictures that have words on them.  Memes are an actual honest to god horror.  Sure in moderation they are fun but I've listened to multiple groups of people have entire conversations in memes in real life for hours.

Why?  Well Memes are a quick and simple nugget of thought.  You can throw one up and quickly get validation as to whether or not people agree with it.  If they do then score you can post related memes and it is cruise control for having a thought process.  The more meme's you know the easier it is to fit in with other people who know their memes.  After awhile it allows people to talk in shorthand.  Jargon laden specialties in acedemia lets you do the same thing.  The difference is that jargon lets you expand ideas quickly while memes preserve ideas indefinitly.  When people talk in memes they aren't really talking to each other but instead it is like a preverse call and responce.

This is a topic I'd like to revisit another time however.  It is 1:30 in the morning and I've been writing since like 9ish.  I'd also like to bring in some literary theory to this dicussion.  Marxists are usually technophobic which is ironic because currently technology has out paced the means of production in many areas.  However, the meme plays directly into a lot of their fears specfically the fears of Walter Benjamin so I want to reread one of his essays and use that to frame my thoughts.

This was good thought I got a nice rough draft of what I wanna say right here.

Something Else

It has been a very long month.  When my pay check came in the mail and I saw that I had 10 hours of overtime on it I got physical proof that I was tired because I'd been working a lot and not because I'd become some tremendous sissy in the past couple of years.  My relief was tangible so much so that it caused a gentle rain to grace a drought stricken land.  It wasn't enough of a rain to do anyone any good.  It just made some mud which got tracked into a house and caused a fight which spun out of control.  The police got involved.  But I am sure in the end it will work out alright.  The lesson here is that I very much need to take some time off and I will!

That is not what I wanted to write about though.  I just wanted a little bit to warm up.  However, seeing as how I haven't picked a topic yet I'm just going to go through things  that are on my surface thoughts.  I have at least 4.

1)  Sometimes when I come up across a thing I don't understand I don't research the solution to said problem.  Instead I keep it in the back of my mind, mull it over, and try to unravel it for myself.  I know full well that the solution to my problem is a well asked question away or in most cases 45 minutes with google but sometimes it is best to put your problem solving skills to work especially when they are big concept problems that greatly affect our every day lives.  I am ashamed to admit that this particular problem took my a couple of years to unravel.  Now granted I didn't spend several years in a row puzzling over it.  In fact I went for months without thinking about it.  However, it is one of those things that should of been much simpler to solve and it wasn't due to my fundamental lack of understanding of how our monetary system works.  This pisses me off a little bit but that's a different topic.

The problem was, "Why did President Clinton merge investment banking and personal banking?".  See before Clinton a law was passed by someone, I don't remember who and I don't feel like looking it up.  The law stated that there would be a separation of investment and personal banking.  Personal banking is what you use when you want  a loan, a savings account and a checking account.  The bank is supposed to take part of your savings account, turn them into safe loans.  This keeps your money in the community and offers up some safe guards against financial crisis.  An investment bank does all the crazy fucking stockmarket shit.

So why on god's green earth would we merge the two.  During the great depression people lost everything when the banks folded.  We have institutions which are to big to fail.  By the by our pathetic excuse for a media organization has been using that phrase wrong.  To big to fail means that should the institution fail it would take enough of our ecconomy with it that the results would be catastrophic.  They are a thing that legally shouldn't excist and yet there they are.

Anyway the reason for the merge is simple.  Like bloody simple.  One most of us belong to national bank chains like Bank of America, or Wells Fargo or something similar.  So it isn't like our savings and loan comes from and goes to local sources anyway.  Two money in a savings account is, ecconmically speaking, useless.  It might as well be shoved under a mattress, buried in your back yard, or even burned.  Money that doesn't circulate has no purpose.  It has to move through the system in order to grow.  By opening our savings accounts to the risks of investment banking now all that money we tuck away for a rainy day is free to circulate around the ecconomy which helps stimulate growth.

I am unable to verify this, because I lack the research material but I am willing to bet there are links to the explosion of the financial markets and this law.  Has it been a bad law?  Well that's still up for debate but I am leaning no but until I can explain it I can't really have an opinion.  Oh well.  That is something I can't just magically figure out for myself.  I'd need to do some heavy reading and it is a question that is still being answered to this day.  Is it a good law or not?  Oh well.  Yeah I am nerd.  But whatever nerds are in.

2) I was doing the same process with the problem of minimum wage being 15 monies an hour.  I figured both of these problems out in the same week!  YAY!  I may be tired and have most of the joy sucked out of me but damnit I am thinking about shit.  WOO!  *removes top* *then gets shy and puts top back on and sits back down a little red faced*.  Anyway yeah some people want the minimum wage to be 15 monies.  They keep siting the law that states the minimum wage should provide a working wage.

Now opponents to this have mostly been really dismissive and nasty.  Basically you are poor and you work a shitty job so go fuck yourselves.  Or less agressivley, "Well why don't you hire a lawyer and...OH WAIT we don't pay you enough to do that HA!  Fuckers".  If I had the energy I'd go find a quote from the CEO of Applebee's I never really ate their because their food is a bunch of bland overpriced piles of shit but holy crap did that man  make an ass of himself during the passing of the Affordable Care Act.  I've hated him ever since.

Back to the topic at hand as a poor worker, I and the people around me would benefit greatly from a 15 dollar per hour pay check but it is a bad idea and I finally fucking figured out why.  This one only took a could of months.  Okay so here's the skinny.  The minimum wage was started in 1938 and back then the world was a very different place than it is today.  Hell the world back in the 50's was a different place that it is today.  When manufacturing was America's major source of jobs the American economy was a very different place than it is today.  The main reason being is that just about everyone who was working was working for their lives.  By that I mean these folks worked while they were either in high school or immediately after in factories, stores, farms, salesmen, for the rest of their lives.  Summer break still existed so kids could help out on the farm or get a job to help their family raise money to get through the winter.  College was reserved for those who were already rich and planned on entering into business or law.  It was also the year Superman made his first appearance.  The specter of WW2 loomed writ large though no one really knew it yet.  Most families subsisted off of a single income provided by the man while the woman stayed at home to take care of the house and children.  This point is important because our work force was 51% smaller as a result.

Things are very different now.  Hell things are different now then they were ten years ago.  NOW there are kids who get a job in high school because they are bored and they just want some spending money.  There are people who are getting jobs as a form of recreation I can't fucking fathom what is wrong with people like that but they are out there.  I've met them.  There are kids who get jobs because their parents believe that having a job will help teach them responsibility.  College is something that everyone can now go to.  Granted the student debt thing is fucked and something to be tackled latter but the point is that you can at least get in the door.  Women are part of our workforce now and they are holding more and more positions of power every year.  Good on them I say.

The point being is that 15 dollars an hour for a minimum wage is silly because not every person in the workforce is working for their lives.  Some of them are just passing through.  Do they need 15 bucks an hour to pay for school?  Yeah absolutely but lets not muddy the waters here.  Lets stick to two basic things.  One in 1938 when people entered into the workforce they were generally there for good.  Today that is not so much the case.

By setting our wages to 15 dollars an hour it kills our ability to negotiate and there.  Right motherfucking there is the problem.  I got it.  See 10 bucks an hour is a pretty reasonable minimum wage.  I've yet to see an actual job that doesn't deserve 10 bucks an hour.  It also still allows employers to hire on people at 12-15 and more marginally skilled positions without melting the budget.

Lets be very clear when you are paid the minimum wage it is because that is the least amount they are legally allowed to pay you.  If they could get away with less they most likely would and in the past they did.  The minimum wage wasn't enough to protect workers.  That's why they formed unions.  This way workers of similar jobs could band together in a large enough group to force their employers to do horrible things like pay them a living wage or have better working conditions.  I hate to put it this way but people don't want a 15 dollar minimum wage.  What they want is the ability to negotiate their wages in a legal way that avoids retaliation on the behalf of the employers.  Let's use me as an example.  I make X amount of money.  Because of the next sentence I can't say the exact amount.  Now lets say my friend Corey makes X+2 amounts of money.  Corey got hired after me and was made full time almost immediately while my boss dicked me around instead of making me full time.

Had I put down the actual amounts of money we make and it got back to my bosses I could be fired.  Hell I could be reprimanded for talking about the full time situation.  What this does is that it shields my bosses from having to pay us fairly.  To be clear I am not talking about Chef, or the head of Culinary I am talking about their corporate overlords.  They don't have to worry about pus organizing because they can auto fire us for discussing our wages.  This is true for every job.  If the retail workforce were to unionize in a big way they'd have to undertake a serious risk.  Most of us are way to poor and have people who rely on us so we can't afford to take risks.  Our corporate overlords know this.  They know they have us between a rock and a hard place.  They know the one hard worker who is worth the three shit workers will work for the same meger pay as the shit workers so why bother giving anyone merit based raises and yeah that's that son.

The 15 dollar and hour minimum wage is an attempt to circumnavigate this and it isn't a bad one.  Unions have had to fight for their existence for a long time.  They are portrayed as the bad guys and they've had their fair share of problems but they are important for keeping their employers in check.  But they come with a risk.

So what's the solution?  Well it isn't the 15 buck minimum wage.  As much as I'd like it it would slaughter small to mid sized businesses along with some small to mid sized corporations.  It is easy to look at the 1% and say, "Well just give us part of that" but that is a very small population getting a very big piece of pie.  The 15 min wage would fuck everyone over except them and the poor who got to keep their jobs.  At the same time there needs to be a better format for dealing with our bosses than unions.  Unions are the right idea but the wrong methodology.  I can't prove that but it feels right.  We can't use the legal system because, well, it is to slow and to expensive.  Workers do need a better outside arbitration system to quickly and safely air their concerns it needs to happen outside the corporate structure and possibly anonymously but yeah.

I get the problem though.  I understand the feeling but we can't loose sight of the bigger picture.

Well that's enough for one night.  There did something productive.  Imma gonna go eat candy now.

MOVIE TIME WITH MIKE!

So I've been writing more, and reading more, and generally doing more and it is working out pretty well. Sadly I haven't been writing more in my actual blog which is silly so I am going to do that now. I was thinking of tackling the christian persecution complex but seriously that is a really big issue that is worthy of a book not a Saturday night blog post where I have a headache. So instead we are going to talk about movies because I LIKE movies and I wanna.

In the past week I've seen an unusually large number of movies mostly because an unusually large number of amazing movies came out and it is one of those things where if you don't see them you are going to miss them. Then to add to it I watched some more movies at home because I guess that is the thing to do this week. To start off with I want to talk about God's Pocket.

God's Pocket is one of those extremely rare pitch black comedies that flutters into my life like some glorious bird and takes roost in my heart. It is a simple movie about poor people living in a run down part of some nameless city. In all likelihood it is Boston but it really could be anywhere. Where it is isn't important. The movie is narrated by a columnist for the local paper who's life is quickly spiraling out of control due to alcoholism and a crushing loneliness. There is a line in the movie that goes something like, “The one thing no one from God's Pocket can forgive is no being from God's Pocket”. That is where we get our main character played by Hoffman, an outsider, small time mafia goon, who is in love with a wife he can't please.

It is a sad strange little movie. Centered around the murder of a boy who is by all accounts an asshole who was heading for disaster one way or another. The subsequent coverup of the murder and Hoffman's attempts to pay for a funeral he can't afford. I found it engaging and more than a little sweet but sad at the same time. It is a surprisingly slippery movie. It is less a sequential story told with pictures and more of a series of moods, emotions and memories. It transcends the, “and this happened then this happened plot” and instead it drifts about almost as a surreal slice of life. I understand why it isn't very well received. It is a strange movie on par with Only God Forgives or Cosmopolis but it doesn't look, sound or feel strange. It just creeps up on you and then there is this conflagration of events cascading to disaster and while you know how we got there you can't help but think, “jesus this is such a strange movie”. It ends on a sad not then a bittersweet one. It also ends in Florida. I liked it very much and months from now when I watch it again I feel like I will be continued to be mystified by its mix of banality and disaster. Good times.

I also watched Walk Among the Tombstones. This movie is brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. By the end of this movie my back cramped up and I had to wheeled out an a stretcher because I was in a perpetual cringe. The movie made me feel gross. Like honest to god gross. My soul needed a shower. Best movie I've seen of its kind since 8mm. I can hear the question now, “What about A Serbian Film” and it is actually a good question. What sets 8mm and Tombstone apart is the distinct lack of onscreen violence. Tombstones is a movie about two men who stalk, kidnap, then mutilate women for fun and profit. There is this moment where one guy plans on using a garrote to sever a woman's breast and yet they don't show it. The level on onscreen violence for Tombstones is about zero. The amount of blood spilled is miniscule. The deathtoll is low even when you consider the entire career of the two killers and yet the movie itself was absolutely chilling. It did this by letting the viewer's imagination do the heavy lifting. It cuts away just in time but you can hear the screams. The two actors who play the killers do so with absolute perfection and we watch with dread as the killers stalk a new victim while somewhere far to far away Liam Nieson does his best to unravel the mystery of the killer's identity and you know deep down inside that he is to far away to catch them in time.

The moive exudes a deep breathless air. One of details I love about the movie is that Nieson isn't this island of a man who talks to no one, has no friends, and does everything by himself. It isn't true. He is friends with the waitress at the diner. He goes to AA meetings which is how the plot of this particular movie gets started. He befriends a homeless black boy halfway through. People are his main source of information. He doesn't just blunder into information, or he doesn't just have that one friend in the fbi who owes him a favor and he grudgingly cashes it in to move the damn plot along. No. Instead we are treated to a competently written procedural as our hero tries to get information for people he doesn't like.

When the movie ends it doesn't feel like it is over so much as it feels like you are being released from its clutches so that you may go home and be thankful that you aren't any of the characters in this movie. It is a damn good and I am sad more people aren't going to go see it.

Lets contrast it with the Equalizer. Man was the Equalizer a terrible movie and what's worse is that I am predisposed to like the Equalizer. I love movies about people who try to escape from their previous lives but their lives catch up to them either because of circumstance or they just get drawn back in. History of Violence is my penultimate example of the genera but there are many others as well. Including the Equalizer. The problem is that the movie had no focus. The trailers made it look like he was going to save a young girl from a life of prostitution. That means PIMPS! I love Pimps as movie villains no matter what happens to them I don't feel bad at all. Instead it is the Russian mafia. That's cool I guess. Russian mafia is in. Still pimps I still hate them but when the whole situation resolved itself within the first half hour I was a little confused. Then he did this thing with some dirty cops. Then there was this bad ass Russian troubleshooter who spent an HOUR investigating to find out who our main character was. Predictably he was ex CIA. Not the CIA who spend most of their time reading files and using other people to get information for them. No this guy was the one man army CIA. The type of CIA man that makes you wonder why we even bother with an army when we can apparently just make one man killing machines. I don't know I do know I was relieved when the movie finally ended because I was so crushingly bored by the uninteresting action scenes that I couldn't care less.

Women have been speaking up about their portrayals in movies a lot lately because they are tired of being the people who are put into danger, or get mutilated, or raped, or killed, so that the main character can have a reason to go do the plot. Die Hard, John Mclain needs to go save his wife. Die Hard 2 he does it again. Die Hard 4 he is saving his daughter this time WHAT A TWIST. The examples go on and on. The idea is that a dead chick equals instant drama. This is a complex issue that is worthy of its own post so lets set that aside and refocus on the Equalizer because this is a bad example of what a movie looks like when the character has a no clear motivations for his actions. Plot wise the Equalizer is a combination of Die Hard 2 (because the movie isn't very good) and Die Hard 3. Yes he saves the girl from a life of prostration. She is then promptly and fucking improbably never heard from again until the end of the movie. The movie then shifts to Die Hard 3 as there is a man after Washington trying to kill him for the actions he committed in Die Hard 2. The problem is that this is all happening in the same movie and if you think this paragraph is a train wreck then it is nothing compared to the mishmash of things that happen in The Equalizer.

Going back to the girl thing movies seem to be moving away from the “girl in danger” plot point. Out of the Furnace has Patrick Bateman looking for his missing brother. John Wick goes forth on a murder spree because someone was dumb enough to kill his puppy. With the Equalizer it is a minor point and not the main thrust of the movie. Moreover it is becoming more noticeable when it is clumsy and lazily implemented like in Homefront or The Purge. It is a trend that I am more than okay with. And yeah I don't really have anything to add.

The general ineptness of The Equalizer was made all the more apparent due to the fact that I watched it in close proximity to superior movies. It isn't so much that it was bad but rather that it was lazy. All the parts that made Walk Among the Tombstones so enjoyable for me, the procedure of seeking and getting information is hand waved away in The Equlizer, and replaced with meaningless stuff. There was a vain attempt to make the villain seem like he might be an actual threat to Washington but the villain never got close. Not really. Our hero was always at least one step ahead. The hostages were freed long before we could be worried that they were in any real danger and the final conflict was just sad. Also I am done writing for tonight so TA!

Fergison

Just before I sat down to write this I, on a whim, looked at my other subscribed blogs.  Just about all of them stopped 4 years ago like some mysterious force swept across the land leaving only a few scattered survivors in its wake.

I have annihilation fantasies.  It is one of those things.

So that Fergison thing is happening.  I've wanted to write about it ever since the first night of protests but I couldn't quite grapple onto what I wanted to say.  After all it would be easy to just go the, "pigs bad.  toys bad. capitalization and proper punctuation bad. lootars bad. everything bad."  But that's not what I do.  Well okay I do that sometimes but it isn't something I wanted to do right now.  To be honest I still want to write about the topic and yet I don't.  Well not really.  Instead I want to pull the camera back and take a look at the broader picture cause that's where its at.

Mostly though I want to talk about the problems with the police.  There are certain things that once you see them you remain effected by them for the rest of your life.  For me that is the French film La Haine which is about the day after a race riot in Paris and three unusually racially divers friends living out their day.  The movie has a lot of messages in it but the biggest one is the utterly unbalanced power relation between people, particularly poor people, and the police.  The other big issue is what to do about that power imbalance.  The movie doesn't give out any easy answers on everything and as the years roll by I find that the movie itself remains distressingly relavant.  I'm going to get back to this.

I'd like to pull back even further and talk about the Police's role in society.  Were I to ask that question to the class someone would shoot up their hand and say, "To serve and protect".  That's not really their role in society though.  That is how they achieve their role in society.  There is a difference between the two.  Their actual role in society is to preserve the order of that society.  That may seem strange but I'll break it down a bit.

The idea behind the police is that they will act as a neutral third party for when you've been wronged and they are the first step in the process of making it right.  So if I were to get robbed the police would dedicate resources to finding my stuff, returning it to me, and punishing the wrongdoer.  This work on all levels from robbery up to murder.  It is the comfort that there are people out there who possess the resources and the training to help me so I don't "have to take matters into my own hands".  We may give cops a lot of shit, hell even to much shit if that will make you feel better, but a cops response is almost universally better than taking matters into your own hands.  Look up the Hatsfields and McCoys feud that went on for years and caused a lot of death all because outsiders couldn't maintain order.  Or there is this wonderful man.  The point I would like to emphasize in this article is that he shot them while they were trying to flee.  They were running he was in no danger.  The woman surrendered and he decided to shoot her anyway.  Speaking of which to find this news story I googled man kills thief.  I had plenty of stories to choose from.

This is why we need the police.

The police may do some crazy shit.  But it isn't anything nearly as bad as what we would do to each other without them.  The interesting thing about the police is that we don't seem to need that many of them  On average we only have 17 police per 10,000 residents.  That's mostly for larger cities for smaller ones the ratio is even lower.  If we were to all violently rise up the cops would be fucked.  Even if we were to half assedly kinda rise up but not very violently we get things like Fergison.  However, in general we like our order.  It brings us comfort and security and the police are supposed to be here to help maintain comfort and security.  When things like Rodney King, The Zoot Suit Riots, Fergison happen it is because there is no longer any faith that order can be maintained.  When this happens it is a result of a cascade failure on the officers to do their job properly.  They have one job.  To maintain civil society.  To aid in the maintenance of civil society they both serve the citizens and they protect them.

So why does it go so fucking wrong?

I have opinions on answers!  YAY!

Lets do the easiest one first.  We need to stop using Police Officers as nannies.  This is a pro police officer point!  I wanted to start with it because it think it is the most critical.  Police Officers joined the force to uphold the law.  Yet they spend most of their time sitting around writing speeding tickets, checking for seat belts, telling kids to turn their damn music down, shuffling around drunks, and parking tickets.  This helps no one.  It doesn't help the public because it means that the public will be subjected to a parade to tiny annoyances that are going to fester until it turns into "fuck the police".  Our very own Gulf Breeze brags about how they gleefully pull over people going less than 5 miles over the legal limit and you know what?  Everyone hates them and their asshole cops.  Cause lets face it officers went through about two years of training.  They are men and women who are willing to put their lives on the line for us.  They will try their damndest to keep us safe and sitting around doing shit work isn't one of those things.

It eats at you.  Worst it eats at us.  After enough traffic stops, trumped up moving violations, or someone tut tutting us because our tags are expired we can't help but think that cops are not here to serve and protect but instead to harass and annoy.  Our respect for them wanes.  There are any number of ways to deal with this problem everything from a separate force akin to meter maids to a probationary period that officers go through before becoming full fledged officers.  The point being is that the people who enforce silly bs nanny laws can't be the same people who will be showing up to domestic disputes, helping car accident victims, et cetera et cetera.  These people are supposed to be professionals give them the respect they reserve and maybe they won't feel the need to take their frustrations out on us.

NEXT! I just flipped a coin and we got the brotherhood of silence thing that cops do.  The vast majority of cops are good people who are good at their jobs...even if you are black.  There is a long history in this country of cops abusing their power and these cops in particular have always been.  Nothing new.  Even if you were to take my above example you'd still get the bad eggs.  However, cops are hesitant to rat out other cops.  This is for two reasons.  One good one bad.  The bad reason is that it makes other officers not be able to trust you yadda yadda yadda I shouldn't have to spell it out.  The good reason is because officers are under an unreasonable amount of regulations.  Those regulations don't fit reality.  They don't even come close and hey sometimes shit gets a little bit to real and you gotta take actions that don't exactly fit within the regulations.  Me?  I'm a dishwasher at a corporate owned retirement home.  There are all sorts of silly rules that I should follow that I don't.  The difference is that officers literally make life and grievous bodily harm and possibly death choices.  They do so quickly and being raked over the coals for doing so sucks.

However, there is a cynic in me and I can't help but think that the "brother hood of silence" thing is mostly pushed by shit cops.  Just a gut feeling.  It also doesn't help that cops have no incentive to tell the truth.  Traditionally it comes down to the officer's word versus mine and he's been entrusted with the authority to maintain the peace soooo why would he lie?  It is his job not to!  Officers need a better way of reporting misconduct and police departments need more tools available to keep cops in line.

There is the training issue but I don't feel like going into that.  Police need to be trained better.  They need to be evaluated more often, and blah blah blah.  The media has latched onto this point you don't need me for it.

Lastly, there are quite a few cops out there who need a fucking attitude adjustment.   Do what I say and you don't get hurt is what a mugger say to a victim.  Also he "gaurntees that we will come out alright but it might involve some forced cavity searches.  Cause you know forced cavity searches.  I could go on with the butt stuff (which is sad) but the point is that this is not something an officer should say to a citizen.  It is time for Cops to relearn that they are not the boss of us.  We are allowed to film you no matter how much you may not like it.  You are not allowed to search my bag, my car, my house, or me without a warrant.  If we aren't breaking any laws and I mean real laws then back off and go do something important.  It is not up to us to just curl up in a ball and take it so that we can go through the proper channels later because it is your sole job to make sure that this doesn't happen in the first place.  It is not my job to placate cops with attitude problems.

Most officers are good people who do a good job.  However, sometimes they make mistakes, sometimes they are thrust into situations that they are under trained to handle, and sometimes they look the other way while their co-workers commit monstrous injustices.  When I originally was going to write this blog I was going to say if you look the other way while something horrible happens you are no better than a nazi but that's a rather pathetic take on a complex issue.  None of us know how we'd react until we are in that situation.  That said they need to do better because the buck stops with them.

Let's Switch Gears Pathfinder time!

Originally when I was going to write this post I was going to write about something serious like depression, suicide, Gaza, the flood of refugees hitting our boarders and how we are still calling them immigrants, how frustrated I am with President Obama, or racism.  Then I realized deep down that I didn't really want to write about any of these topics and so I am going to switch to Pathfinder.

I've been into roleplaying games in one form or another my entire life though it wasn't until middle school that I got to take my first hesitant steps into running a game.  I've both run and played games on and off ever since.  I'll be perfectly honest I haven't run as many games as I liked and I certainly haven't played as much as I want to but it is hard when most of the people my age still don't work 9 to 5 jobs, myself included.  One of the most important things for a roleplaying game to work is everyone being on a set schedual so you can reliably tell who is going to show up.  I understand that life happens but god damn.  So there is it.  Currently I am running nothing.  I was preparing to run a Pathfinder game when a friend of mine declared that he is okay with running it and so I rolled up an alchemist and I find myself very much looking forwards to game night Friday.

It still doesn't stop me from coming up with campaign ideas some of which I am gleefully still kicking around.  I kinda want to start writing up rpg materials and start selling it for "what you think it is worth".  That thought has lead me to start writing again in this blog because I need the practice.

Anyway one of the things that I love about Pathfinder is that it seizes my imagination.  When I look at 4th edition it does nothing for me.  I see stale stat blocks and characters that slot together with little independent choice for the end user.  It just doesn't strike up my imagination.  Whatever this is old territory and I wanted to write about the stuff I had kicking around for the current game.

One is a Crusader Kings style courtly maneuvering.  Crusader Kings has provided just about everyone in my play group with a crash course in medieval politics.  What a duchy is, cassius belle, getting claims killing children you know the deal.  Throw some monsters, magic, gods, and player characters into the mix and you got the potential for a pretty rocking campaign.  The obvious parallel is Game of Thrones but this game would have fewer wars and more boarder skirmishes IE high crown authority.  However, the vassles could be plotting to get the crown authority reduced and should that happen all hell would break loose.  I really like that idea it would suit a group of rouges and bards really well.

On a similar tangent either the players themselves or the Player's duke have all recently served with distinction in a war that struck deep into foreign lands.  The king to show his gratitude forms a new dutchy with either the players of their duke in charge depending of the level we settle on.  Of course in Crusader Kings terms this is the equivalent of taking Jeruselem in a crusade while you are playing Spain and you dump off one of your least favorite vassals in the foreign land grant him independence and watch his ass get eaten.  I've done that before and it is fun.

On a similar vein but not quite.  The idea that a new continent has been discovered!  A ship got blown off course, and stumbled upon a landmass of indeterminate size.  Everyone from the great wizard colleges, to the various kingdoms want to explore the strange new island and learn its secrets.  This would give the players a chance to play honest to god explorers.  Not only would they be forging new paths and making bold new discoveries but they would also be helping to build up the settlement, fending off the natives, and generally being important.  It would be less "Heart of Darkness" and more Alan Quatermain/Indiana Jones.  I think that would be super fun.  There would be a little bit tensions like when they have to save clerics from being chucked into a volcano but in general I want it be more of a grand adventure than post colonial finger waving.

Going back to Crusader Kings and medieval politics I find it interesting that there is so much hand waving that happens with that stuff in most games, mine included.  The idea that the players just kinda get randomly hauled before the king who then tells them to go do something is kinda silly.  It is romantic in a, "Are you bad enough to rid the hills of goblins and save my daughter" kind of way but realistically the King is busy doing other things.   And there is plenty of time for swords and sorcery.  Like in order to get a claim on a neighboring country the players need to explore an ancient crypt and recover an amulet once thought to be lost but whose previous owner is the rightful air to the county and thus they go to war.  Hell the orcs could stand in for the norsemen and I mean damn there is just so much that can be done with the setting and a small dose of complexity of the government.  For example the possessed trait could take on a whole new meaning and a witches coven with a little bit of access could seriously fuck some things up.  Like one of the witches has access to the King's son due to his penchant for "ladies" who aren't his wife.

The last idea I was kicking around was SPAAAAAAACE.  A proper space sourcebook for pathfinder is coming out next month.  Until then to get reading the world the players would be playing on would be getting ready for something call the bazzar of wonders.  Once every 300 years their planet gets visited by the bazzar.  The people of the players planet have the opportunity to trade away their crafts and treasures for great secrets, powerful items, or exotic pets.  The bazaar is a grand event felt the world over.  During that time no war is allowed and even the Orcs and the barbarian tribes hold true to this tradition because the bazzar's wrath is something no one wants to behold again.  For one month Drow walk among their elven kin, Drugar with the Dwarves.  The great dragons of the world awaken from their slumber and liches from their studies.  All are welcome at the bazaar, assuming they do no harm to anyone else during the course of the week.  Dwarven kings spend decades on crafts, Elves create incredible works of arts, Dragons bring their most valued treasures, and humans innovate at a breakneck and reckless speeds.  That isn't to say that just before the bazaar there isn't some old fashioned score settling and hey sometimes tensions boil over.  The idea is that the players do something to distinguish themselves during the bazaar and they are offered passage on the ship and are allowed to see the stars.  I think that could get awesome real quick.

I have other ideas too but those are the main ones and my hour is up.

Writing, Superman, and wanderings.

Today Robin Williams died a city is rioting over the questionable death of black youth at the hands of a police officer, someone somewhere is falling in love and I've decicded while taking a shower that it is high time I start writing in my blog again. Much like Amilie on that fateful day temporarily blackened by the death of Lady Di but with less drama, I've decided to change my life. Here it goes.

The idea is to dedicate an hour of my time before I go to sleep to writing at least on the days where I am not doing anything like a game night. I don't know if I will publish every night. Maybe I'll select the “best of the week” and publish it all over the weekend. Maybe I'll publish everything. Publishing isn't the important part. The writing is.

In all honesty this is being caused by a couple of things. The desire to run a roleplaying game, the excitement of being able to play in one, the proximity to NaNoWriMo, and some other stuff that is harder to put a specific name on. I've been thinking a lot about NaNo, what I want to write about and stuff like that. The current front runner is a sequal to what I wrote last year which I never published but whatever. It is set in the Eclipse Phase universe and it is actually my second favorite thing I've ever written. It also feels a bit like cheating. I like to try to do something different every year, to exparament. NaNo is by and large a judgement free excersice for me so I feel like if I am not trying something new and different I am wasting the opportunity. My first novel blended aspects of magical realism, Twin Peaks, and melocholic reflection and it turned out great. It remains my favorite thing I've written. The year after I wrote about a support group of people who tried to end the world at the turning of the milenium, failed, and now are adrift in a world that is not supposed to still be here. This book still has potential and I want to redo it. As is it didn't turn out all that great. The lone female character feels tacked on, the ending was forced, and some other things. It was my first time writing using a large group of people and it turned out strangely. I'd also like to talk about how dour and grey America became after 9/11. It isn't so much that we've gone mad. We are America we've always been a little bit crazy. It is just that after 9/11 we started to let the crazy off the leash and that's a bad thing.

Trying to recapture my previous glory I decided to write a sequal to the first book I wrote. The first book ended in the main character's suicide cause that was always gonna happen. As soon as I hit 50k words he was gonna pull out a gun and off himself. I was kinda hoping he'd be just walking down the street or something but no he was in the middle of an epic battle. It still worked and it even looked a little bit like I planned it. Go me! The sequal was going to be about the characters getting on with their lives. It was horrible. I want to rewrite it. I really do but not this year.

Last year my book was about a guy who everyone in power hates but he's to dangerous to kill and to useful to cut loose. He is the enemy that the keep closer and the only man for the job. He's old, mean, and haunted by his past. Trying to make up for his mistakes he joined Firewall to do good but he keeps ending up on their bad side. I loved it. It was actually a very plotty novel. Most of my otherones have a lot of navel gazing which is code for, “I have a daily word count to meet and I have no idea what to do next so we are going to stand around and think about life”. I really like doing things like that so it doesn't bother me.

It is nice to remember what you wrote. All my characters are very much outsiders, like myself. Sometimes they have a tight knit group of confidants. Sometimes they are utterly alone. Sometimes they struggle to be alone and sometimes they just struggle. Go with what you know I suppose. The thing I currently have on the burner is something that is very much along the same lines of what I've done before. The idea is that a small group of American teenagers have turned into people with low level super powers. There is a secret family of assasins who have sworn to protect such people but they can't operate in America because, well, America sees and hears to much and this group is supposed to be invisable. One of the group sets off to guard these kids anyway even though the partiarch of the family has ordered their deaths. He's alone, he's one of the most dangerous men in the world even amongst his family, and he's gotta keep these kids alive, out of the hands of the military, and away from the various groups who might want to capitalize on them. It came from the idea of, “Just because you can life and throw a car doesn't mean you can fight”. It has been knocking around in my head for a very long time. Originally I wanted it to be part of a serialized fiction thing I was going to do but it never got off the ground. However, I kinda want to do something different this year. Something new.

I'd like to write something about someone who is comfortable with his otherness. They know they are different and they are okay with it. Think of Superman without Clark Kent. Kent is more than just a secret identiy. It is a security blanket or if I am feeling uncharitable it is a type of madness. Here is a person who in modern comics could cure every disease on the planet, create and infinite clean powersource that could power the planet forever, to give us interstellar travel and to introduce us to the multitudes of alien life out there and instead he runs around Metropolis getting into trouble and pretending to be a bumbling do gooder from Kansas. Clark is Superman's insistance that he is human. That he belongs on our planet, that he thinks, feels, and looses just like the rest of us do. The crazy thing is that it works. He needs Clark to be Superman. Without him he is something differen. Something other. I find that it is this distinction that causes people to not understand the recent Man of Steel movie. That is what Superman looks like without Clark. He still loves his mom but he is torn between his Kryptonian heritage and the life built on earth. As the movie went on he piece by piece lost his connection with Kypton until there was nothing left but he and Zod. I think that even at the end Zod would of accepted him if he submitted to his will and let Krypton be rebuilt. Instead he chose us and at the very end of the movie we saw the half joking mischevious man of steel we know and love from his best comics. It was a very subtle journey. Sublety isn't something the internet is capable of.

I want someone with a confidence to be different. The modern day retelling of Sherlock on BBC is a good example. The big thing is less the character but what are they going to do? One of the most brilliant things I've ever read on the nature of heroism is, “Only villians try to change the world...” I wanted the exact quote but I couldn't find it. It is in the Runaways somewhere after they defeated the Pride. I don't need a whole lot of excuses to reread it I'll find it later. The point is that just about all my character's have ridden the line between heroism and villiany. I am okay with that I did it on purpose most of the time time especially with my first and last books. I don't know. I do know that I want to do something different this year. Maybe something truly reflective. Like a magically realistic memior. Actually that sounds really good. I might do that. The completely true story of my life. It would be more emotional than literal. Actually that wouldn't be very happy so I'd use my life like a model. Take some things fictionalize others and create something new. I like this. Imma do that. There is a 99% chance that it will turn out horribly. However, it has been an hour and I need to sleep.