messiestobjects

Wal To Wal Bargains On Wal To Wal Damn Shoddy Workmanship

Growing up in a world where the minimum wage was $4.50 an hour, there are two things that I learned to buy the best quality of that I could afford: shoes, and a wristwatch. I learned this lesson by finding myself back at Payless Shoes every month to replace the pair I'd bought there the previous month which already had seams with holes and flappy soles. And also by that same day stopping at K-Mart for another Timex because the one I'd had for only a few weeks was telling me the time on the planet Crapwatch.. So, eventually I figured out that If I went to the Army/Navy store and spent my shoe budget for the next 4 months on a pair of Officer's shoes, I wouldn't have to replace them for two to five years. And if I bought a mid-priced Swatch (Their quality line, not those candy-colored vomit things they got famous for back in the day) for the price of 8 Timexes, I could count the dollars saved on the additional 20 Timexes I eventually didn't have to buy.

It's a lesson that really only needed to apply to those two items for most of my life. Other items that applied to my life in such an intimate way never seemed to be an issue. Clothing lasted a good long time, whatever you paid for it, books came only in hardcover or paperback, and Mom & Dad supplied the rest until I moved out, and then I was really happy I already had a good watch and good shoes because then I could barely afford food, but that's another story.

But I'm finding that, after my burning re-entry into the atmosphere of the planet United States, this is a lesson that needs to be re-learned about many other things, and after a few anecdotes and some preliminary research, I've discovered the cause to be Wal-Mart. Here's the thing; Like McDonald's and other fast food, Wal-Mart tastes great to me. I like going to one hugeongous warehouse store and getting everything I need at one go, and getting the hell out, because I actually hate shopping. My feet get tired and my brain begins to swim when I have to make choices between things like strawberry, or blueberry, or whitening, or breath-freshening, or anti-plaque toothpastes! So I say, get in, get out, and enjoy the extra time you've gained in your life from it by locking yourself in your room with your computer and  your bloodshot eyes.

But, also like fast food, there is shit in Wal-Mart's meat! The anecdote that I first heard was from my friend Stephanie; she related that she (or a friend of hers, I can't remember) had bought an HP laptop computer there for a couple of hundred dollars cheaper than the same model at Circuit City. In a matter of weeks, the hard drive crashed. She sent it back in for repairs, got it back, and a few weeks later, System Failure 2, at your local box office! So they brought it in and had it replaced with a new one, same model. System Failure 3: Joke's On You, Sucka! Intrigued as to why this should be, when HP is a respected manufacturer of fine computers, she did a little research and discovered that Wal-Mart, in their quest to bring loyal Wal-Mart shoppers lower prices, actually dictates to their manufacturers what prices they are willing to pay to stock their shelves with stuff. So, what companies like HP wind up having to do, in order to continue making any sort of a profit at all, is to manufacture a line of computers with their name on it, using inferior materials and cheaper production costs in Mexican child slave factories*, solely to be shipped to Wal-Mart stores!

If it's not obvious to you why this might be a bad thing, here's the breakdown: Johnny Dipshit wants to buy a computer. At Circuit City, he sees one for $1200, but at Wal-Mart, he sees the same one for $800. So, obviously he buys it at Wal-Mart. Well, there are 10,000 Johnny Dipshits in the world out there buying laptops right now. When Circuit City, or any other retailer, doesn't sell their $1200 model, they stop selling them and all that you can find, anywhere, is the crappy fall-apart in 3 weeks $800 model. Do the math, it's not good.

Well, I didn't really buy this anecdote, (seriously, I didn't. I'm not just saying that to sound like a reasonable crank with an educated conversion to Wal-Mart haters R us) but I started noticing little things. My Dad's wife Erin bought me a few car accessories at Wal-Mart for Christmas that I had asked for. The very solid-looking extendable snow brush and ice-scraper snapped in two the first time I tried to use it on my icy windshield. A pillow that I bought there for my room started off nice and fluffy but within two weeks you wouldn't have been blamed for mistaking it for a table place mat. ALL of the clothing I've purchased there has either shrunk, lost it's color, or frayed to an unacceptable degree after just a few washes.

Not everything I've bought there has caused me problems. Those blank DVD's for instance. The toothpaste seems to work just fine. So far my beanbag chair is ok... I'll keep you updated on that if anything happens there. But... it's all a part of the general degradation of US standards that I've been seeing everywhere. Mike Judge is a genius for his film Idiocracy, because the more I look around, the more prophetic it looks. It also reminds me of the bit in the novel 1984 by George Orwell about how everybody is eating substandard food and drinking crap Gin that makes your stomach into a big fat churning ulcer, because of the devolution of standards, or something. It's been a long time since I read it. Feel free to fill in the blank there, for me.

Anyway, I did some of my own internet based research, and with a preliminary article scan, here are two links that are quite troubling and eye-opening that I've found. The Wal-Mart You Don't Know, and The Man Who Said No To Wal-Mart. I'm sure some of you who like to comment when I talk about stuff you already know all about will have already looked into all this, or had your own experiences... send me anecdotes, send me links! I'd like to read further. I'm already considering boycotting Wal-Mart, as I have done with fast food; In both cases more for my own benefit than for any gung-ho anti-establishment reasons. I have already decided to limit at the very least the types of things I'll buy there. No electronics, no clothes, and no crap. Toothepaste, milk, other things that I don't see any degradation of the product on... for now. But you're in my crosshairs, Wal-Mart! Bow down before me and tremble! MUAHH HAHAHAHA!!!

Right. Anyway. The point of all this is, I think you'll find that in the long run, whatever your budget may be, that you're better off buying your laptops from quality retailers, and your clothing from the non-budget stores... granted, it's harder to find those sorts of things at decent prices outside of Wal-Mart these days because they've put so many lesser entities out of business, but it's still possible... FOR NOW!

 

*This was an attempt at humor, not a statement of fact. Although it's my opinion that Wal-Mart probably uses Mexican child slave labor as a bargaining tool with their manufacturers to make a cheaper product, I have no facts to back it up. It's also my opinion that they should not be allowed to dictate the manufacturer's pricing, but what do I know?

I Ain't Askin' Fer Yer Advice, See? I'm Just Whinging My Bored Little Guts Out.

I'm hoping that, years and years from now when I look back on this period of my life, I don't say to myself, "Yup. That's where it all went bad." I'm saying this because it's weird; I'm in a rut, I know that I'm in a rut, I can easily afford to get myself out of the rut any time I want to, and yet, I continue not to. Don't get me wrong, there are good things going on for me right now: I have good friends, my last blog post inspired over a hundred comments for the first time, I'm learning how to make pop-corn having neither a microwave nor an air-popper, discovering the joys of coffee percolators, sampling many of the fine restaurants in the Stroudsburg area to find out who serves the best buffalo wings, (so far it's that place in the Delaware Water Gap that is where the old Brownies used to be) and I'm, ahem, backing up a whole bunch of DVDs onto blank DVD discs with my new Dual Layer DVD burner. So, obviously I have a full life.

It's just that without any forward momentum, a Man isn't really a Man, you know? And I'm not talking about romance or marriage or house mortgaging or anything like that, either, which is what most people consider forward momentum. And I'm only sort of talking about a job.

I'm talking about where do I want to go next? And it could be a travel destination, or a place to live, or hell, just a little old-fashioned direction... either way. I just don't know. Part of me wants to get a "temporary" job in Stroudsburg... but, I put quotes around "temporary" for a reason. Because then you need a place to live, which usually means a lease of some type, and then you need a bed and a couch and that home theatre system I've been looking forward to. And then "temporary" becomes "well that's a really loose definition of "temporary", isn't it then?" It's not even that I'm really against staying in Stroudsburg, you know? But the career opportunities are bleak bleak bleak, here.

I think I'm paralyzed. I mean, it's not permanent. The thing I'm best at is picking myself up and going somewhere. I just am waiting for the right moment to hit me, and it feels like a rut. And honestly, I thank BOB for that feeling. Knowing that you're in a rut is half the battle, right? ...RIGHT?! Lots of people don't notice that they're in a rut until they're already too depressed and stationary to do anything about it. I know, I've been there. Anyway, I'm still waiting on lots of other little things and details and nonsense and such to fall in to place, and though they all seem like small little stickies, together they add up to a large wad of super glue on my ass.

One day, I promise you gentle readers, I will get back to travel blogging. I swear.

I did make a second trip to Washington D.C last weekend... not for business this time though. Christy wanted to get out of town for a bit, so I caught a ride with her and Will. An eFriend of hers that goes by the handle KC met us there... very nice girl. We all had a few drinks on some fashionable street or other and things were moving along nicely until, in a fit of inexplicable exuberant derision, certain epithets were ill-advisedly shouted out of certain passing car windows at silly preppyuck D.C. club-goers waiting in long lines for their chance to make asses of themselves on the dance floor, and really it was only funny if you were wasted at the time, so I will bore you not with the details. Suffice it to say, I'm really happy that I didn't get beat up.

Other than that, my time has been spent trying to figure out how those little chinamen stuffed all those big bright fireworks into little containers, discussing the costs of flying to LA, imagining how depressed I would get if I had nothing to write about, and compensating for having nothing to write about by writing about nothing. It's a mad mad world.

Now, for all you mad mad commenters, (and I include myself in that category) other than the usual slicing, dicing, & ribbing banter that will no doubt ensue, I'd like to suggest a thread to hold you all together: A certain fellow blogger asked for a  list of movies that were bound to produce good belly laughs. In keeping with all of your high though misguided opinions of silly 'ol me, I want to get a list of movies that made you think. For those of you who don't know what I mean, what I want are movies that confused you and kept you up late making your poor head hurt in unfamiliar ways. Like this one did to me.

Carry on.

Time Wounds All Heals, And I May Be It This Time, So This Round To You But The Game Is Far From Over

I watched The US vs. John Lennon last night. Good flick. I admit I don't know that much about him, never having dove headfirst into Beatlemania, but it seems he had a bit of a Messiah Complex. Which, hey, good job, I say. If more people had Messiah Complexes, and weren't, you know, sociopathic, but went around getting millions of people to chant things like "All we are saying, is give peace a chance", I might have more hope for humanity. Anyway, the movie focused on the part of John's life where he evolves from a moptop into a political activist, and the US government's attempts, under Nixon and Hoover, to intimidate and have him deported.

As an aside, one thing that struck me in this movie were the bits of Government propaganda used to support the Vietnam War in those days, and how similar... no, how identical they were to our present day Nixonish regime's propaganda. Lord, we need another Messiah!

One thing that troubled me about the whole incident was something G. Gordon Liddy said in the film. John Lennon was a British citizen, living in New York under a visitor's visa. It galled G. that a foreigner, who loved living in the US and enjoying the freedoms that our National forefathers provided would dare to criticize the US war policy. "If you don't like it, go back to Britain", was the sentiment. And, as anti-US policy as I am, it sounds like a good point. As a US citizen, it would be supremely galling of me to go hang out in London and criticize the Blair administration for it's part in the Iraq war, wouldn't you agree?

Where it breaks down is here. The favorite Republican slogan, said off-camera, of "Shut up, or get out" is so twisted and unAmerican that anyone who says it and believes it, and even worse uses it as a policy making idea, ought to be the ones that get bitchslapped. I feel that, something that is often not thought about in those circles is that America was not a nation founded on religion, or borders, or policy. It was founded on ideas of equality and human rights, regardless of where you come from or who you worship or what kind of hat you hang on your coatrack in the evenings, and as such should be able to stand up to the critical eye of truth, or survive the attacks of lies, whichever Nation the mouthpiece hails from. Obviously, America failed that test in Vietnam, and we are woefully failing it again in Iraq. When the powers that be try to silence people, regardless of their citizenship, it means that they're scared. George Bush isn't scared, which means that Peace & Love and all that hippie malarky has no champion this time around.

Okay, getting off my high horse now, whom I've named Lennon.

Well, I've been "tagged" by Miss Luongo, and when such an august persona as she tells you to write something, you do not decline. I have been told that I must blog about my answers to the questions in the following category: Things I Know By Heart. Before I continue, I feel I must offer the disclaimer that although this rather feels like one of those emails you get with a list of half-questions such as: Favorite Color? Most Embarassing Moment? Second Favorite Movie? etc... and you answer them and reply to everyone on the mailing list, additionally sending it to five new friends, who in turn have to answer, it is not. One of those emails, I mean. First off, it's not an email. It's a "tag you're it!" blog game. Secondly, I was tagged under the geas of Buffy the Vampire Slayer metaphors, and seeing as I'm such a starstruck fanboy when it comes to Buffy, I must oblige. It's like when religious people invoke their deity. God told me to do it, amen! Well, Buffy has commanded me, via her latest acolyte Miss Luongo, and the power of the Slayer compels me.

Man, sometimes when I write things, I realize how lost a cause I really am. Anyway, moving on.

Things I Know By Heart:
Two Novels/Poems/Plays: What am I, Abraham Lincoln? When I was in the sixth grade I was in a play called Snow White and the Six Dwarves. There were only six because Smiley went to Hollywood to do toothpaste commercials. It was a stupid play. But I knew my lines by heart, does that count? I hate poetry. It seems to me that poetry is a cheap economical affected way of saying things in a misleading manner. Say what you mean, dammit! I understand that it's all supposed to be pretty, and in the old days a good way to make chicks weak in the knees. But, give me a good novel any day. I don't know any novels by heart though, that's ridiculous. So...

Love guppy

			You mean all the world to me.
			Without you I can't be free.
			You make me pant considerably.
			You're my love guppy.

			You have the finest rosebud's taste.
			Without you my life is waste,
			I'll stick to you like Elmer's paste.
			You're my love guppy.

			I'd break through a citadel.
			I'd fight with a raging bull, 
			Though winning would seem improbable.
			You're my love guppy.

			My love's as strong as the mid-ocean ridge.
			You shine like the rainbow bridge
			or like that light inside my fridge.
			You're my love guppy.

			For you I'd consume haggis,
			or lose the joys of Bacchus,
			or live in sin with Mike Dukakis.
			You're my love guppy.

			No time's too long for me to wait.
			For you, I'd fight against Fate,
			though maybe you could lose some weight,
			You're my love guppy.

			Without you, I'd be not whole,
			I would have to sell my soul,
			or gulp a quart of Tide-E-Bowl.
			You're my love guppy.

			My passion is always mounting.
			I'm like a geyser founting.
			Well, maybe not, but who's counting?
			You're my love guppy.

			The love that is the more intense
			always has the most silence,
			like quiet bursts of flatulence.
			You're my love guppy.

			I know that my love is true.
			I know that you'll love me too,
			or I'll hold my breath 'till I turn blue
			You're my love guppy.

			I'd not forget you if I tried.
			You make me all warm inside.
			My love's as pure as Naugahyde.
			You're my love guppy.

			Then I hear the words let slip
			From betwixt impatient lips,
			"I want to have a relationship.
			You're my love guppy."

So I don't actually have it memorized, but that's poetry!

Two Films/Television Shows You Can Quote From:  Well that's easy. The Kids in the Hall. The funniest show ever made, and I quote from it on a daily basis. If not out loud, then at least in my head, because if there isn't someone else around who knows the show as well as I do, it's not funny. For instance: "Well I think the great leader is some sort of twisted ass freak!" Or, "I'm crushing your head!" Or, "I'm not being sarcastic." And, not to be too obvious or anything, but you had to see it coming. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Cordelia: "So, does looking at guns really want to make you have sex?" Xander: "I'm 17. Looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex."

Two Songs To Which You Know Every Word: Actually, I have a real problem with this. I don't know any words to any songs... at least, you know, not if the song is not playing at the moment so I can kind of stumble along with it, and that's only if I am extremely familiar with the music already. It's a serious mental block. I'm sure it has something to do with my disdain of poetry. When there's music on, I don't actually really ever pay attention to the words, which shocks my friends to no end. But, like I tell them, it's the music I care about, not the wooing of women by post-pubescent songwriters. Even when I really like the lyrics to something, I never commit them to memory. But having said all that, Scott, being so distressed over my handicap, saw his solemn duty as my best friend to teach me a song, and after days of practicing, (I'm not joking. Days.) I got this one down:

Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I want to go to bed. I had a little drink about an hour ago, and it went straight to my head! -From JAWS.

Two Dishes You Can Make Without A Recipe: My Mom's special cheesecake, and tacos. If I buy the kind that come in that little yellow box.

Two Cities You Can Navigate Without A Map: I'm going to take this opportunity to be snotty about how well-travelled I am. Munich, Germany. Because I lived within an hour of it for six years and it's actually one of my top 2 favorite cities in the world. I spent alot of time there. The Hauptbahnhof (main train station) is one of my favorite parts of the city and makes a great starting point.
And while it may seem boastful considering what a maze the place is, but Venice. Because it's also one of my top 2 favorite cities and I've been there about 7 times, and because I know all of the major points and I don't mind wandering around it's back alleys lost for a few hours until stumbling upon a place I know. Actually, that's one of the most pleasurable activities in Venice. The other is riding the vaporetti (boat buses) around all day. San Marco piazza is sublime, too.

By the way, if anybody needs a personal tour guide, you know, I am totally for hire. For those two cities, or any other place I've been. Or not been. I'm really good at travelling.

And An Extra Question–What’s A Date You Always Remember, and What’s A Date You Always Forget?: This is the silliest question and reminds me more of those emails I was talking about than the other questions. But, the power of the Slayer compels me regardless, so, I always remember Christmas, because even if for some reason I didn't want to, the retail community makes sure that I don't. And I don't know of any dates I've forgotten, otherwise they wouldn't count as answers to this question, would they then? That was a very British answer in honor of John Lennon. Peace out.

Here's a picture of me in Prague which I thought of posting here because of the inherent personality-typing implicit in the tag questions. It's supposed to be mildly snarky. Probably it's narcissitic. Damn you, Myers-Briggs!

A Cranky Family Heritage, And Damn Proud Of It.

Well I hope everyone had a splendid St. Patrick's day. I myself spent the entire day in Cincinatti helping the Ohio Williams clan help my Grandmother move from her independent living home into her newer, smaller, assisted living home. Other than to say that these are NOT the same things as a nursing home, I won't bore you with descriptions.

I am really, really sore. She has alot of old family heirloom furniture, and you know, that old time furniture is not nearly as good as IKEA. For one thing, it's all huge and made of solid, solid wood. Oak and whatnot. So, very tiring to move. I can't believe any of that stuff still exists; think about how much more useful it would be as firewood, and modern furniture is so lightweight and cheap that it's either much easier to move or is so fragile that you might as well throw it all out and buy new stuff every time you move. God Bless mass consumerism and the global pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Also, speaking of mass consumerism and the global pandering to the lowest common denominator, the area where my Ohio branch of the Williams family lives is chock full of fast food joints, chain restaurants, and chain stores... the modern strip mall hell that we're all used to seeing, right? Well, something I noticed, and have been noticing in the Stroudsburg area as well, is that if you don't fucking feel like eating at a Ruby Tuesday's, or Red Robin's, or TGI Friday's, or any of a hundred other chain restaurants that serve identical menus with identical-tasting food nationwide, you don't have much else in the way of choice. What I mean is, if you want to eat at a unique but tasty privately owned restaurant, where the owner is very proud and/or involved in his business and the food is cooked fully right there on premises (meaning that rather than an employee of Outback Steakhouse unfreezing a pre-cooked steak, warming it up and sending it out, a real live Chef in a fully functional kitchen picks a piece of raw meat out of the walk-in and cooks it to perfection and serves it to you fresh off the grill just the way you asked for it) you really have to search. While driving around town out here, I didn't see any businesses, food or otherwise, that weren't part of a chain located in a strip mall. And I was looking. In Stroudsburg there are still a few genuine restaurants left, but the chains are slowly taking over even there. Where my Dad lives, near Allentown, it's horrendous. There are still a few non-chain diners in the area, however, and hopefully that's an East Coast tradition that will never die out; I love Diners. The greasier spoonier the better.

But since leaving PA with my Dad for the 10 hour drive out here yesterday, we've eaten at a Bob Evans, a Red Robin's, Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast, a Street-something or other (we don't have them in PA, I don't think. Can't remember the name) which is a chain that specializes in chili cheese dogs, and a Twin-Dragon Chinese buffet. And that's all I've eaten. I feel unbelievably bloated and greasy, actually. This isn't even fast food, folks! Well, mostly not. But the point is, I'm beginning to suspect that chain restaurants are no better for you than fast food, and that our finer dining-out options are slowly disappearing. And that the food in our grocery stores is slowly becoming pre-cooked individually wrapped crap.

Not totally of course, but think back to what grocery stores and restaurants were like when you were a kid... there is a definite downward progression in quality. Hell, I remember going to Pizza Hut when I was like 6 or 7 and the pizzas were made totally from scratch in an oven and they served beer and the place was cigarette, cigar, and pipe smoky as hell. And you could play Space Invaders on a glass table top console. Those pizzas were awesome, and it was before they began joining the fast food method of streamlining everything into utter shit. Ah well... I'm just sore and cranky and full of chain food gas, don't mind me. I'm not even being consistent. I may have to think deeper about my argument before I even know if I have a point.

But actually it hasn't been a bad trip. I got to see my cousins, and my closest cousin, Karen, has a 1 & 1/2 year old daughter named Kennedy, who is , I suppose as these things work, my 2nd cousin, and she was alot of fun to meet. While we were moving Grandmother's stuff, my other cousin Keith and I stumbled upon her photo albums, which generally we avoid like the plague because if she sees you with them she will want to go through every single picture with you for hours and I've lost one or two cousins to insanity that way, I'm sad to say. But it was an altogether different matter without her around, and I got to see alot of pictures that I haven't seen in maybe 25 years of when Cousin Karen and I were babies and of my very young Mom and Dad... It was nice because I often forget how beautiful my Mom was (My sister Katie looks alot like Mom did then) and how much I loved my cousin back then... but sorry, you guys don't really care about all of this. It was just one of those deeply nostalgic moments for me and I didn't want to forget.

But one thing I do want to mention is the story that I finally got straight (well, mostly straight) from my Grandmother on my great great (great?) Grandfather, Hawkins Hart Hatchett. I love this story and am very proud of it. His dad stole a horse. He was caught, and although he could have been sentenced to hang, Judge Hart was lenient and only made him pay a fine or something. So great great great (great?) grandpa middle-named his firstborn son after the Judge that didn't hang him, and Hart has been the firstborn's middle name ever since. Of course my line came through my Grandmother (née Hatchett), but she passed on the Hart name nonetheless. And on the Williams side... well, all we know there is that great great (great?) grandpa was a stowaway on a ship from Portugal, possibly a pirate, and when he hightailed it off the ship upon arrival in the New World he changed his name to Williams and we haven't got a clue what family he was originally from. Horsethieves, pirates and mysterious stowaways, that's my heritage. And I couldn't be more set-up about it.

Also, I may have embelleshed one or two details purely for my pleasure, but it's all essentially true. He could have been a pirate. What else was he doing, all stowing away like that on Portugese "Trading Vessels?"

Anyway, I've got another long day of driving back to PA with Dad tomorrow, and possibly some disgusting food to vomit up later. Time for sleeping and dreaming of my gloriously shady ancestors.

No Humans Were Harmed During The Writing Of This Blog Entry.

My friend DK posted something on her blog recently about the absurdity, well, of alot of things, and seeing as how she's smart, and funny, and the filthiest potty mouth ever to grace the internet, we tend to agree on lots of stuff. She also makes it a habit to acutely deflate my supposed big head, which I know she does out of love and so I reciprocate by saying how great she is, which I suspect is also the basic cause and effect of her fan abuse popularity on MySpace, but I digress. She brought up one point in particular that I have actually been mulling over recently, and seeing as how I am back from D.C. and don't have much else going on at the moment, I figured I'd blather on about it myself for a bit.

Something I've always thought was funny is the progression of word sensitivity. (Keep in mind that the progression of word sensitivity is the subject here, not individual words.) For instance, and obviously I'm not condoning usage of the word here but it's a fine example, take the word Nigger. I believe when it was first used, it was nothing more than a descriptive term. The root of it comes from the latin word niger, which merely means black. Meaning initially it was not necessarily an offensive word. Of course that changed very quickly: It became an emblem for slavery, being used in an extremely ugly manner in most cases. When the world began to care about racial sensitivity, Nigger became less socially acceptable, and was replaced among the concerned with Coloured. Honestly, that was a more genteel way of describing black people for a time. Then it was Blacks, and currently it is African Americans. But think about it. Obviously if you call someone a Nigger, you're taking your life out of your own hands. If you say coloured, it's also really dangerous, having extreme Southern superiority overtones. Now, calling someone a Black isn't necessarily a beating offence, but if there wasn't some sort of discomfort with that term, they never would have invented the African American. Even now there are people who kind of intake their breath and go "ooohhh" if you say African American. It's just a matter of time before that one goes bad.

I think that what this trend is indicative of is that people don't realize that what they find offensive isn't so much the word itself as the arbitrary singling out of the subject material. Think about it. In what sane mind can calling someone a black be considered gauche? It's purely descriptive! Only if you're using the term in a singling out or hateful manner should it be frowned upon. So my point is, don't use it as a hateful word, and it won't become one.

Nigger has become a curse word, in much the same manner as the word shit, and so should be taboo. At one time, shit was merely a descriptive term. In many other places in the world, it still is. Germans do not consider sheisse to be an unusable word. They use it as an expletive, sure, but in polite society would be not much different than our "shoot", or "aw heck". But in America, with our mythological prim and proper past, somewhere along the line it became a censorable dirty word. That is how curse words are born. Words of descriptive use which describe something that someone finds too offensive for thought.

This makes me think that people who go {breath intake} "ooohhhh" at something as innocuous as black, or African American (which is a silly term anyway for lots of reasons), or Indians (as opposed to American Indians), or whatever, are really the ones who are singling those people out in their minds and are uncomfortable with the idea of black people or Indians or whatever as a whole anyway. These are the people that try too hard to be comfortable around black people, because they're not comfortable, because there is some inner, perhaps even unconscious, racial conflict going on there.

I know it's unfair of me to be so blasé about this, but you know, I don't care if someone uses a racial epithet against me... yes yes I'm white, and the only good ones against us are honkey and cracker, and those are kind of lame, but what I'm saying is that those words carry no weight because there is no offense against white people so bad that it makes people too uncomfortable to use the terms. Because our whiteness is not a taboo subject. So nobody cares about racist white terms. If there were no racist issues against blacks, nobody would care what descriptive terms were used for them, except perhaps the N word, because of the history.

Words are only painful because of the meaning behind them. When the meaning behind them becomes universally recognized as offensive, they become curse words. If such innocuous terms as 'black dude' must be whispered, it's because you are using it to say something derrogatory, not descriptive.

DK's point was about the use of PC terms, and how ridiculous PC terms are. PC terms hide the user's own un-PCness behind a facade of insincerity. Not always, of course. I understand the genuine desire not to offend people. But sometimes the genuine desire not to offend is only hiding the real problem, or lying to them. I just like to think about where PC terms come from, where they're going, and why they're being used. Ultimately, the distaste of curse words and taboo subjects is the fear of the object itself.

Anyway, here's a picture from my Washington D.C. trip. Click on it to go to the rest of my D.C. photos.

Mr. Williams Goes To Washington And Has A Splendid Time Complaining About Nearly Everything, As Is His Wont.

So I finally caved and went to Washington D.C. I met with GBG's lawyers and we discussed what I knew about the work we performed for a former client, DynCorp, whom GBG wants to take to court for money owed. Very distasteful all around, but, I have rather a skewed sense of obligation about these things, and anyway it afforded me the chance to have a look around our nation's Capital city. I took a few pictures, but forgot to bring my card reader. Anyway, I was rather lackluster with the photos. You're not allowed to take any in the Smithsonian museums, (not that museum photos are really ever worth it) and D.C. architecture is, (how to put this so as not to offend Patriotic Americans that have never left their country in order to see superior architecture anywhere else) well, uninspiring. Dull. Unimaginative. BORING AS BLOODY HELL.

It's bizarre, actually. Because whoever designed the Washington Monument was obviously going for the Egyptian obelisk design. Because that's exactly all it is, except that they were satisfied by just making it really really big (for any foreigners reading who are unaccustomed to American culture, bigger is always better) and devoid of any actual creativity. An Egyptian obelisk is usually covered in hieroglyphics, perhaps depicting an event or honoring the person or God in whose honor it was erected. Ours is just a large unadorned phallic symbol, with bleeping red lights at the tip so planes don't crash into it at night. Thousands of years from now, when whichever Empire will be in vogue has come to tour the ruins of Ancient America, they're going to say that Washington D.C. was a large city with many unfinished monuments, and that they may never understand the meaning behind any of them, due to a severe lack of clues. Or, they may even be mistaken into thinking that the Roman empire never actually died out; It just moved it's main operation overseas and got really boring. Another case in point is the Lincoln Memorial. It's exactly what you think it is. A really really big sculpture (see American culture rules above) of President Lincoln sitting in a chair in a big empty room devoid of anything else of interest, save Lincoln's speech carved on the wall in big letters in Roman font. I could have been totally satisfied with only ever having seen it on TV. Actually being there really didn't add much to it.

So, generally speaking, American Federal architechture is the retarded red-headed stepchild of Roman design. Seriously, it's like whoever designed this stuff went to drafting school, and only got halfway through that period in the history of Roman style. Far enough to get the basic gist, but then had to drop out during the more detailed sections on the Roman's creativity because he had to go learn his father's trade as a sorting clerk at his firm, Berman, Berman & Boredom. On this one building in particular, I don't remember which one because of the blandness, it's all big stony blocks and Roman columns, without any more detail. They did carve some distinctly Roman-looking faces into the side of the building, but, there is absolutely no indication of who they're supposed to be. Romans would have included a motif, or more distinctive features so that you'd know whose visage you were dealing with, and perhaps a lovely floral pattern or twenty, but the hero of our architectual story seems to have just gone "Eh... good enough. Time to go sort the mail, anyway" after making only two bland faces, one male and one female, and replicating them one after the other around the circumference of the building. Pathetic and dull, and sort of embarassing for us, really.

But The Holocaust museum was really well done, actually. I'd heard of the Holocaust museum from way back and that it was excellent, and have always wanted to check it out, so that was good. I spent several hours in there, and I've been to alot of that type of thing. My favorite part was the wall of Heroes; a long list of names of people that in one way or another helped to save lives during the Holocaust, with brief descriptions of some of the more interesting stories. Good 'ol Oskar was there of course. There were also some other really well thought out displays, weeping people, and apathetic teenagers on school field trips. Ah to be so young, stupid, and bovinely unconcerned again. I was totally there with the teenagers who were nearly dropping dead from ennui at the various outdoor monuments, however not being affected by the holocaust takes some very practiced detatchment. Well good for them, I say. The real world and all it's horrors will come crashing in on them soon enough. Enjoy not being a part of it all while you still can.

The other part of D.C. that I really enjoy is the towniness of the regular parts of the city. I guess that there is some sort of zoning law which limits the height of buildings, (I think that nothing can be taller than the Capital Building, or the Great Phallus, or something. It's just a rumor I heard out of the corner of my ear, so to speak, but it seems to hold up. No high-risers.) so it's sort of a sprawly affair with lots of charming old style housing and vibrant shopping and restaraunt areas. I ate some really good food, and that always makes for a pleasant excursion. The law firm I had to go to was actually a quick hop across the border into Alexandria, Virginia, and that was a sickeningly charming little area, all colonial and junk. It snowed pretty heavily that evening, so as I left the law offices it got even more grotesquely traditional looking. I kept expecting to hear a town cryer wander by. Well you know not really, but it would have felt appropriate had one done so.

Since I don't have any pictures of Washington to paste just yet, I'm going to post my current most favoritest YouLube video ever, which I've appropriated from GoDrex. He always finds the best stuff. Be warned, though; Typical Gen-X irony and foul language abound. Not to mention serious offences to prim and proper George Washington fans. But I think George himself would be proud.

Also, apologies to members of the Gen-X for actual usage of the term Gen-X. It had to be done, it's the only way outsiders will understand. When you say something is Gen-X, people like to nod their heads knowingly and go, oh those crazy slackers. Of course, it's entirely possible that this video was created by a non-member, but if so, they totally get it, man.

You're So Vain, I Bet You Think This Post Is About You. Well, It Probably Is.

Morality. It's a sticky question. Take a favorite party ethics question: If you could go back in time and kill Hitler before he got his hands on any sort of power, would you? Yes yes we've all heard this one but bear with me. So, before Hitler got power, let's translate that. Would you choose to make his mother have an abortion? Kill him when he was a baby? A young boy? A student? A depressed beret-wearing drop-out from art school? (Ok I'm not sure he ever wore a beret, but Hitler as disaffected art student cracks me up.) Or do you wait until he's actually done something evil, so he knows why he's being murdered by time-travelling history buffs? You don't want to be likened to George Bush's bumbling pre-emptive personality, after all.

I think that most people would answer that question more or less the same. Wait until the famous Munich beer hall putsch, follow him home that night, drag him into an alley and club him. My only point with all the baby Hitler stuff was that you need to carefully assess the question before making a statement on who, when, and with what you'd consider actually killing a person, whatever his crime. But, the thing is, there are very few people who consider themselves moral that would actually decide to let him live. Well, not the type of people who would hang out at the kind of horrid party where such hackneyed questions were being asked, anyway. But you know, killing someone is pretty heavy stuff, especially when the question is asked of an individual. State-sponsored killing is much tidier, because it's harder for any one person to accept the blame if things get fouled up with death-row victims post-execution such as, say, new evidence leading to innocence. For the record, I am most certainly not suggesting Hitler was innocent.

Now take it a step further. Say an interstellar time traveler (which is actually redundant because due to the vast expanse of space and the Universal speed limit of light, all interstellar travellers are also by definition time travellers. But we're talking about one of 'em coming back to our time from the future, and from far far away, a much trickier proposition than bland 'ol interstellar forward time travel. Have I lost anyone to sleep and drool yet? Or merely lost cool points? If I haven't yet, I'm certainly about to...) shows up at your doorstep and tells you that the human race itself is sort of the Hitler of the Universal community. One day, far in the future, our ancestors take power from the Galactic government and send all of the dirty credit-hogging three-nosed Heebajaxers to concentration death planets, and then move on to the rest of the dirty job-stealing immigrant aliens. According to this interstellar whistle blower, you will be in a position in 5 years to start the nuclear war which will end the human race, thereby saving the future of the universe. (I'm assuming they can't find anyone else to do the job but another human. I don't know why, so don't ask. It's a stupid blog-party question anyway.) Would you do it?

It's essentially the same question as the Hitler question, but, you know, on a bigger, geekier scale. Instead of being asked to kill another human being and saving millions of human lives, you're being asked to kill billions of humans and save gagagooglegazillions of extraterrestrial lives. And you're a human with a moral code, so, do you side with the human race out of loyalty and wish your great-great-great grandchildren well in their galactic killing spree, or make the same decision that your moral Hitler-killing code told you to make? Maybe it's not really such a hard question, because you know, it's kind of silly, but it's a thought experiment. And before anyone asks, no, I am not on any pretty-colour hallucinogens, although I think something I ate at the Macungie diner earlier today might not be agreeing with me. These are the things I think about when sitting on the can and questioning my own moral code and decisions, that's all.

POST SCRIPT PIX: Gary posted a link to the below photo in the comments, and I have no choice, due to cosmic moral obligation, but to add it here. Because it's awesome.

See? I Can't Be That Depressed.

Ok I never do this. But, this is the best header on a news aricle I've EVER seen. Attention attention! Read all about it! SWISS ACCIDENTALLY INVADE LIECHTENSTEIN!!!
That is the Best. Thing. Ever.

This Post Is My Whiny Self-Indulgent Post-Artum Depression Talking, So Carry On

I was chatting with a certain soon-to-be-famous Author the other day, and she was telling me about the phenomenon that happens to artists after they complete a project. After her first novel was completed, she got really depressed, which surprised me because I always thought that if I were to ever get my act together and get a work ethic and sit down and write a novel, the completion of it would be the ultimate rush, a pinnacle of existence! However, apparently that is not usually the case. She had put all of this time and effort into it, and then when it was completed she was so afraid it wasn't good, or needed more work, and on top of that all of a sudden she had nothing to do and was worried about what was next... anyway, I may be projecting a bit here because that's not how she described it verbatim, but that's what I got out of it, essentially.

After thinking about it, I realized that that is exactly what I'm going through right now. I mean, I'm not an artist, I haven't created anything, but part of the reason I up and left for Thailand and LASIK was that, after getting back from a ten year extended tour abroad and sitting around my Dad's house for a month with not enough to do, and no real idea what to do next, I was freaking out and had to get out again. But that whole trip was just a temporary fix, because it was awesome and I felt great the whole time I was running around over there, but now I'm back, my eyes are mostly healed up, and I'm in the same situation again. In a way it's an extremely familiar feeling; I've never known what I wanted to be or do when I grow up. So, you know, I just never grew up. I left town at the first opportunity, screwed that up, tried again, did a little better but still wound up back at the family house, and the third time I was off and running. I conquered the whole growing up thing by running, and not looking back. Ten years later, the world is still hounding at my heels, dammit.

Anyway that's not entirely where I was intending to go with the whole post-artum (post-pARTum! Ha!) depression thing. Where I intended to go was to the comparison between my soon-to-be-famous author friend's post-artum depression and my own post-travel depression. Not that I'm depressed, exactly. A part of me knows that everything is going to be just fine. I'll get a job. I have a fantastic résumé. I just have to buckle down and actually consider where I want to live, how I want to live... you know. Grown-up stuff. Blech. I ran away to southeast Asia because I wasn't prepared to deal with those questions just yet. I think I'm still not. The rest of the problem is that not exactly depressed also means not exactly not depressed. I love travel! I love just being on the road, with no responsibilities, and a Jungle Wat right over there to explore. Growing up might be necessary, but it sucks. Sometimes I feel that Travel is something that's actually worth throwing the rest of your life away for. That's a realization that doesn't really hit you until you've been to a few places and more importantly, been some place very far from home, (or far from anywhere at all for that matter) where you have no friends, and 2 dollars left to your name with no idea how to get back and you think to yourself, "This is the greatest moment of my life." I haven't been in that situation in a long time of course, but I have been there.

I think that must be how artists feel, when in the middle of creating something.

Anyway, all of my Cambodia pictures are now up, and that's the last of them. They're in 2 galleries; Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and Ruins of Angkor, Cambodia. As a teaser, here's my favorite picture from Angkor: