On Bureaucracy (Exciting title, I know)

From a Redditor's comments on why corporations are considered people when it's convenient, but people aren't eligible for the same tax breaks: "The corporate structure exists primarily to arrange for the transfer of wealth from most people to a few people. It is a cleverly arranged ruse. A sinister, but mundane plot."

Quite an interesting perspective, though it's really only the tip of the iceberg. It's pretty clear that the corporate structure (really, any bureaucratic, insulatory structure) "exists primarily" to aggregate prestige, power, respect and wealth to only a few people, while moving responsibility, accountability and vulnerability downward. Anybody who's seen the plainly contradictory and self-serving behavior of management can confirm this.

The emperor has no clothes, of course, though we've gotten so used to it that it's really nothing we think about. Managers often don't know how to measure their employees' performance, either because they're so insulated from the work being done that they have little knowledge of what it takes to do it well, or because they're so far from the work being done that they're left to form small bits of information into their confident minds and act, above all things act. Whatever they happen to view and the way they interpret it becomes their reality. The alternative - that their information is incomplete or that they're simply bad managers - is unthinkable. That's why lunatics and numbskulls get promoted, why managers can behave arbitrarily, ignoring rules or creating new ones when convenient. The responsibility for failure simply doesn't exist at that level, and the rewards (both social and monetary) are great.

Now, most of us would achieve this mindset easily given this level of power - the delusion is simply so convincing that it's really impossible not to subscribe to it. The problem is the structure itself, the way that we think of a corporation as an entity - important in and of itself - while neglecting those who make it run. And I mean really make it run, independent of the mostly manufactured power structure. I remember being amazed when I first learned that CEOs and directors can move from company to company without any real knowledge of the field they're moving to - when did we ever get used to that? Why do we tolerate VPs when they suggest courses of action in meetings that have already been tried and failed, but who couldn't bother to check the facts in their continuous quest for self-aggrandizement? Insulation, charisma and self-confidence, moreso than competence, often seems to be the order of the day. And we allow it.

It takes a lot of character to manage well. I'm now working at the first place in my life which seems blessedly free of most of this nonsense. It's a good feeling.

Mstoc site announcement - music reviews, bacon, free happiness for life and more!

This is just a brief announcement that I've become a contributor to music reviews/interviews site Mstoc, a joint project with a good friend of mine that's still more-or-less in its infancy. We're still working out the list of contributors and building a body of content, though I'm actually pretty stoked and I like the initial look of the site (though we'll certainly be making improvements as soon as we have enough work to really showcase). I've completed three reviews so far under my name [Dustin Steinacker] - check it out if you wish, keeping in mind the whole "the site is still in its infancy" thing.

Regular readers may know that I'm something of a music fan. For some time I was a regular contributor to Sputnikmusic.com, an uneven writer who contributed dozens of reviews and was delighted to see them gain hundreds of thousands of hits, often dwarfing the reviews of the staff writers who, I presume, actually got paid for what they did. I even had a lower-key weekly album retrospective on this site which took too much time from my studies and was hence discarded.

I'm pretty excited for this opportunity to work as part of a larger community, doing basically the same thing I was doing but for something quite a bit snazzier, polished and more consistent than throwing music-related blog posts into my usual stream of non sequiturs and populist political ramblings.

Link

Scripted events are killing gaming

Somebody needed to say it. A decade ago, looking forward to the future of gaming, we could see it - dynamic, highly-interactive adventures, ambitious as Hollywood blockbusters or as moving and subtle as art flicks to be played out on our TV screens, never the same way twice. We anticipated, expected a fusion of story and player choice that would become possible with the new technology we saw on the horizon. What we got in all too many cases was something else entirely.

In retrospect, it's easier to understand the proliferation of scripted events, or moments planned by a title's developers to be triggered at a particular point in a story or upon certain character actions. When used sparingly, some of these moments can be thrilling - for example, triggering the lights to dim at a particularly tense point in a horror game or scripting an ambush of Axis tanks and soldiers as your squad attempts to cross a river. Certainly some of the most memorable moments in all of gaming were written in by the developers, and nothing's going to change that.

But all too often these events become the easy way out, a way of limiting interactivity and diverting attention (and all-important budget) from the difficult parts of game design and toward sheer polish. Too much scripting turns a game into a Universal Studios ride - it makes the experience inherently artificial and kills immersion, the mental bond a user feels with a title when it creates a dynamic, fulfilling experience.

We need look no further than the venerated gods of the medium. 1998's Half-Life used scripted events early and often - for example, a headcrab would burst out of a ventilation shaft with a loud shriek or an impromptu alarm would send a squad of government soldiers running into a room with guns and explosives. Such scripting pushed the player into new and unexpected situations and often forced them to react quickly to avoid a restart.

But some of the moments were a little. . . off. Hours into the adventure, a soldier is attacked behind bulletproof glass, the player unable to save them. A scientist is snatched from a dock and dragged into the water by an enormous sea creature. Wait - they survived this long only to die at a moment calculated for maximum impact? Why aren't there bodies everywhere? How much influence can a player carry by their mere presence before it feels inescapably artificial?

Six years later, in Half-Life 2, we were still doing the same thing: Waves and waves of troops would throw themselves at you as you attempted to escort survivors across a battlefield, only to stop the moment you crossed through a door. Enemies would attack you at regular intervals as you struggled to set up security turrets to save yourself, only to stop attacking you when an ally finally managed to open a nearby door.

Did you just flip a switch? Get ready for a half-dozen wailing zombies to pop out of the murky water around you. Did you just learn something important over the radio? Here comes a tank and some soldiers! Did you just pick up the key you needed? Get ready for the ground to collapse around you and drop you into an electrified lake you have moments to escape from!

In short, it's difficult to place the logical link between picking up a new gun and summoning a missile-bearing helicopter.

When pulled to the extreme, these types of games make the hero an absurd catalyst for trouble. If every action of the hero, no matter how minor, results in attacks, story events from out of nowhere and doom to random nearby characters whose sole reason for existence is apparently to demonstrate the method of attack of a new monster, gaming isn't happening. Story isn't happening. It's an "experience" only in the clinical sense: A bunch of things happen and then you go home. Roll credits.

A little game called Deus Ex came out in 2000. While it wasn't as flashy or as popular as Half-Life, it did something a little different - it gave you choice. From the beginning you had a choice of taking out enemy troops discreetly or flamboyantly, and it would matter. You could run into a facility guns blazing, or hack the building's security from afar, and it would matter. Sometimes these decisions had no direct effect on the gameplay, but they still mattered because they allowed you to be creative or barbaric, play around or take things seriously. In short, and at the risk of sounding sarcastic, you were playing a game.

Characters lived or died based on your decisions, not just while you were there. Unlike Half-Life's roller coaster of arbitrary and inexplicable events, Deus Ex gave you some control over your character's role in the story. Though the game's plot proceeded more or less the same regardless of your actions, the game's best story elements weren't scripted, but were emergent from the player's personality. Whether you were a pacifist who preferred to lurk in the shadows and secret passageways and resorted to guns only when necessary (like me) or a soldier who devastated entire installations, you felt like more than a bystander. You felt like a participant. When you broke into your old facility for information and had to make the choice of either killing the security guard you'd known for the whole game or trying to outrun his weapons, the decision felt real and genuine though it wouldn't matter to the overall story. Choices like that made the game more than just a series of events and explosions.

Playing through Dead Space last week, I was surprised by how transparent and lazy the scripted elements were. The thirtieth time an enemy ran around a corner, out of sight, as you opened a door, or a character interaction with the environment caused something "unexpected" to happen, the impact just wasn't there. Despite Dead Space's virtues (and there were many), I felt as if the game couldn't have cared less about my participation in the story, and was perfectly happy to go on without me. The only thing that really mattered was whether I had enough health and ammo to get to Deck 19 and recalibrate the main whatchamajigger until the next crisis came up and I had to do something else. While fun, this unfortunate tendency to disrespect the player's ability to do anything other than accumulate items and shoot baddies left the experience oddly bland and unmoving.

Heavy scripting is easy, but it's a thematic dead end which creates unfulfilling experiences. Gaming's greatest strengths involve the ability of an individual to influence and interact. Let's not forget that.

Invisibility (how to do it and solving as many related problems as possible)

I've been thinking a great deal about how to accomplish true invisibility. I read a book when I was about twelve years old that clued me into the greatest problem with accomplishing invisibility - in order for you to be able to see, your eyes must be able to absorb and reflect light, hence the areas of your eyes involved in sight must remain visible. It turns out this isn't strictly true. My original idea - to render the whole body except the eyes invisible was kind of stupid - it's clearly better to use pinhole cameras as even floating corneas would be pretty conspicuous. As long as the type of invisibility we're talking about involves bending light around your person or sensing it and broadcasting it at the exact opposite side, you could have light inside (or at least enough to view a camera through some sort of electronic goggles) and it would be fine.

Angles provoke myriad problems. If we could count on observers only viewing us from one direction the problem would be simpler. Even paint works pretty well from ONE angle, as you can see (link):

Now, first we need to go through what I feel is the best way to accomplish invisibility - a suit or other exoskeleton-like mechanism that takes light pointed at the body and passes it through the exact opposite side with as close to the same hue and intensity as possible. One of the greatest problems we have here is that the reflection mechanism must be incredibly variable - it must be able to accommodate every angle, both vertical and horizontal, that the light source broadcasts, in every possible spectrum including the ultraviolet. I am not technically inclined enough to venture a workable solution here, other than to say that we're getting into pretty detailed nanotechnology here, and must build an incredibly receptive device capable of simultaneously sensing and broadcasting in multiple angles. Neither the broadcast nor the absorption qualities of the material must interfere with each other:

Here's a simple 2D representation of a three-dimensional shape capable of sensing and broadcasting in five directions. Obviously you'd need millions (or billions) of these across a single suit (though it wouldn't be "invisibility" by any stretch of the word - even if it worked to some extent it would only work from five angles). Now, moving to a bulbous design capable of hundreds of degrees of sensitivity seems like a good solution. The more sensitive the design (and the quicker the latency and faster the "framerate"), the less "shimmering" we see, like the Elites in Halo. Something that's "pretty" invisible would do OK against human reaction time but not much against devices programmed to notice the effect.

Still, a bulbous design doesn't solve the myriad problems that crop up:

- The gaps between each of our receptors/broadcasters would create shadows. This is such a complex, small design that I can't tell exactly what this would mean. Obviously the more invisible you are, the more the microscopic bulbs must protrude from your body in order to accommodate more angles, and the bigger the shadow problems created. Maybe making the edges completely transparent going in but not out would solve this problem, and maybe it wouldn't. It's also possible that allowing one receptor/broadcaster in this situation to pass light through to its immediate neighbors which would then broadcast to the other side of the suit would work.

- Invisibility would be near-useless without movement, so the suit must have a very keen idea of where every piece of it is at all times and be able to coordinate hundreds of angles from every single reception point which would require a horrendous amount of processing power.




We see here three angles that a single receptor must be capable of, and the coordination with other sensors required. The pink line, for example, must reflect to the upper thigh, the lower torso and the wrist. Not to do so would create shadows and dark spots. Now this is only three angles of a single receptor. These three angles have seven reflect points. Imagine the difficulty of coordinating only three angles with the entire body while it's constantly moving and I think you'll see the work ahead of us here. Millions (or billions) of receptors/broadcasters would each have to reflect thousands of angles, and most of them would have to communicate with at least two other points for broadcast purposes. And damned if you don't also have to be able to get into the suit, so any fasteners and overlaps would also have to be a part of the invisibility mechanism. And Heaven help you if you want to have access to weapons or other external sensing devices, though I suppose that once we've solved the problem of making a functional suit, integrating other devices into the invisibility mechanism would be comparatively simple.

I'm glad that I'm not actually working on this.

Imagine that we've solved all of these problems. Well, now we have some more:


The Thermal Spectrum - Something like a jet with fewer moving parts and a hard design doesn't have the movement problem discussed above (or at least has it in a smaller measure) but serves as a good demonstration of the problem of hiding yourself in the thermal spectrum, an issue that still exists for human bodies but is more workable there. With the advent of invisibility it is a simple affair to program a turret to shoot at anything that broadcasts in the thermal spectrum but not the visible one. So our device must be built out of a material that can reach and maintain absolute room temperature very quickly and thoroughly to almost the same sensitivity that it reflects light. And there'd still be some thermal "shimmering" due to latency and the fact that each node has to absorb and produce light, so your device wouldn't only have to maintain room temperature, but it would have to maintain the difference between room temperature and whatever heat is emitted by its operation. Which means (you guessed it) it would have to have some mechanism for both producing and absorbing ludicrously precise amounts of heat all over the unit.

Any heat produced inside (and there would be much, both from the device and other devices being used, as well as the human body) would need to be sinked off for wearer comfort into some sort of storage unit that could be cooled down whenever it's safe to do so.

And jets pretty much by definition have to expend heat behind them in order to frickin move. Good luck avoiding any missile guidance systems or sensing devices that rely on heat.

Sound - It isn't a stretch to imagine that sensitive areas, particularly governmental and corporate ones, would begin to incorporate sound surveillance into their surveillance rigmarole, particularly looking out for sound-producing bodies with no apparent visual source. We already have devices that can cancel sound to some extent by broadcasting an opposite but equal wave at the same time, nullifying the vibration. I can't think of anything else that would solve this problem.

Other Reflections - The presence of invisibility technology would essentially create a technology war between invisibility and sensing capabilities. I think that the first wave of invisibility devices would be primarily visual, then begin to incorporate some of the other capabilities discussed above. The final step is to determine every last blasted thing the human body can reflect or absorb and to do whatever you can to make the human body behave like empty air. Some of these would require modeling lag and latency to ludicrously precise degrees in order to represent the amount of time a wave takes to travel through the air but not more concentrated matter - any suspicious quickness would be noticed. I can't even imagine the myriad ways people could develop to find an invisible person or object, and we'd have to think of all of them.

Durability - Oh - and it would have to be strong material. Even if only a tiny portion of the suit were damaged it would essentially nullify our invisibility due to the angle problem discussed above. The device would have to be both incredibly sensitive and incredibly durable.

So it turns out that true "invisibility" is more than just not being seen. It's an incredibly complex problem with hundreds of applications that requires an infinite level of adaptivity across a single surface. We need something that can measure its precise location relative to itself at all times while moving, absorb and emit light in all spectrums and precise amounts of heat, nullify sound and, hopefully, still be fairly light and mobile. Do I have any gargantuan flaws in my reasoning or is this really as hellish a problem as I'm imagining? I'm one to think that being able to discuss how something could work theoretically is a bigger leap than actually working it out, so I'm more alarmed by the fact that we can even discuss the issue in these terms. Also note that I stupidly developed this blueprint without reading anything on current invisibility applications, so much better models probably can and do exist.

Peripheral Experiences and Personal Impression

I think much of our interest in something is determined by what we hear about it. First hearing about a negative experience with, for example, a movie or product is often enough to color our view of the same for good. And many people feel threatened by a negative review or impression of something they enjoy.

I think there's a reason that our consciousness works this way - conformity can be a way of institutionalizing proven, tried methods into our daily lives. But feeling insecure about things you've invested in can also be a way to introduce imbalance and dissatisfaction into life. So I've been training myself to look at things another way.

After realizing that it's more important to enjoy something and be personally satisfied than to stretch out a decision or create unnecessary advance distress, I've tried to twist the way I view what I'll call "peripheral experiences," the way that others discuss and review products and people. After realizing that I was often inclined to give extra credence to a single negative peripheral experience even amidst a sea of general acclaim, I've since tried to rely on "information shortcuts" to determine what I'll like. For example, when trying to decide a movie I'd like to see with a friend, I've found that a single positive review from a critic I respect steers me more reliably in an enjoyable direction than going through excessive research. My mind is thus clearer and I'm less inclined to overanalyze the experience and not enjoy it.

Information shortcuts can consist of anything - the experience of a friend with similar tastes, aggregate reviews, or manufacturer. It's quite similar to the ways that many people vote - if you know that a particular party tends to match many of your opinions, then you have a point of reference for building an image of a particular candidate. Likewise, if you've long been impressed by a particular guitar amp manufacturer and you see a new, affordable model with features that you like, just a little cursory research will be necessary to make a safe purchasing decision.

By choosing simple, reliable methods that tend to steer you in the right directions, you're more able to analyze your own impressions and experiences and enjoy something for its utility, entertainment value or benefit rather than counterproductive, contradicting peripheral experiences.

Partisan Associations - Political Imprinting and Strawmen Demagogues

(I wrote this recently for my university's political review and thought I'd throw it up here as well.)
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While recent attempts by top Democrats to paint Rush Limbaugh as the new face of the Republican Party may seem a bit like kicking the GOP while it's already down, this method of attempting to damage parties by creating dangerous associations is actually a part of a mainstream, directed political strategy by no means limited to progressives. This practice of setting up a strawman for an entire political movement is dishonest at best, divergent and damaging at worst.

In the wake of Limbaugh's divisive February speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (one he later termed his first "Address to the Nation"), Rush was seen as an easy target to trump up as the archetypical Republican; blustering, self-assured and unabashedly partisan, the man’s polarizing rhetoric served as a suitable strawman for the entire conservative movement.

In their previous criticisms of Sarah Palin (a controversial nominee to be sure, but also a sympathetic one), the Obama team had been seen as overly harsh, and progressives thereafter went after less vulnerable targets like Limbaugh. The numbers seemed to support the choice: The DNC polling company Democracy Corps found the venerable talk show host's popularity among voters under 40 to be a mere 11 percent, numbers far below that of even the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, both popular targets of the Right during the election and campaign kryptonite for Obama. Rush's audience is comparatively small and highly disproportional – fully 72 percent male according to Pew Research, a gender gap that amused the radio host, who jokingly suggested a "Female Summit" to discuss the issue. The conclusion is obvious: while Rush may claim a mandate to the neoconservative mantle, he commands an influence over but a small, selective portion of the population.

Most of the GOP/Rushbo associations were explicit: when asked who speaks for the Republican Party, Obama chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel referred to Rush as "the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party. . . which is why the Republicans pay such attention to him." When Rush famously wished failure on the new administration (a preference even most of Obama's opponents report not sharing), the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent the tape to its members as part of a fund-raising campaign. Furthermore, when RNC Chairman Michael Steele joined in the criticism, calling Rush's discourse "incendiary" and "ugly," he was forced to apologize personally, giving further ammo to progressives who attempted to publicize what they saw as a close, highly subservient connection between the iconic figure and his party.

But does this strategy work? Similar connections can be made to the tactics of Bush-era conservatives during the 2004 presidential election, when Bush campaign advisor Mark McKinnon acknowledged having used a similar strategy by "making Michael Moore the face of the Democratic Party. . . That's why we gave him credentials to cover the 2004 convention and then turned the spotlight on him." Still, Moore later rejected the concept that his name was used as a pejorative. He insisted that American voters share his values and that Republican strategies had backfired, in effect turning him into an "accidental spokesman for the liberal, majority agenda." Nevertheless, Moore's films and often incendiary statements and politics remain a healthy source of controversy. Like Rush Limbaugh, he remains a larger-than-life figure, representing the extremes of his party rather than the more moderate values and politics of the average American.

In the end, Limbaugh and Moore are essentially cartoon characters - personalities whose constant addiction to controversy, often-questionable behavior (drug addiction on Limbaugh's part, shady editing techniques on Moore's) and radical politics imbue their beings with the sort of excess that makes them untouchable by those of their political stripe and unstomachable by all others. Many political sectarians rely nearly completely on these divisive figures to attack the opposing ideology. A Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore or DailyKos.com can often serve as a shortcut to depict the opposition as thoughtless partisans and sidestep legitimate political discourse. This sensationalistic behavior only serves to glamorize the horse race of politics over the priorities and issues our system and representatives ought to address.

Though political in-games and shifty strategies will always be a part of our political discourse, it seems disingenuous to resort to this type of infighting and partisan bickering when ideologies, not individuals, are on the table for debate. Though associating an opposing party purely with its most extreme of ideologues may strike a chord with the average American - most of whom have little in common with the ferocity or pettiness of these polarized ideologues - it’s a lousy way to win a long-term political victory. Building an ideology based on positions, not partisans, is the only way to ensure a healthy political discourse in America and guard against an increasing apathy of politics.

A thought on insurance

It's clear that the Western world enjoys the capitalistic financial system and its market economy, though the systemic inequality of pure capitalism often results in problems for people who are hit by sudden crises or emergencies and become financially ruined.

So, in the absence of socialism, we see a market demand for a system to fill some of the functions of socialism without replacing the current system. Thus with insurance people voluntarily buffer their successes and failures; they recognize that if they hit an unanticipated rock bottom they will receive assistance (i.e. receive more than they put into the system), with the understanding that it's far more likely they will put more money into insurance than they will take out.

We won't go into the bureaucracies and corruptions of privatized insurance here, but it's clear that insurance in a capitalist nation serves as a sort of market traded, limited socialism. "Market-traded" because it's something that citizens can choose from (although citizens are required to purchase certain types of insurance and don't always have the option to set up a private savings instead), and "limited" because each insurance corporation has influence over only its customers and various plans are available.

Old Poem: Talon Fallacy

I just found a poem I wrote four years ago in an old journal. I have no idea what I was thinking at the time; I think I was trying to make fun of The Mars Volta but I can't be sure. It's about a suicide if you can't tell (I'm actually kind of proud of myself for being so dark at 18):

Talon Fallacy

Through desperate roar of eagle's beak
She passed on the baton
And in the corner unannounced
There crawled a smoking gun

While panicked whispers ran amok
Split hairs all stood on end
Alluded the accusers to
A list of medicine

As millers stopped their milling
The forensic strike zone closed
In staccato slumber she sleeped on
On every side opposed

Still in the corner of the room
The ember smoldered on
Evidence, estranged, wept as
She armed the second bomb

Pedestrian grief Sheol alights
Her soul down there
For one more night

Maggie Simpson: The Overlooked, Crucial Simpson

The next time you watch The Simpsons, pay attention to Maggie. I've been watching the show through sequentially, and the more I watch, the more I appreciate the way that a character I had subconsciously assigned to the periphery has become the center of some truly wonderful gags and some real character.

Maggie crashes the family car into the prison.
The pose on the left is positively Shakespearean.

Maggie's greatest moments are well-documented; she's been the focus of some truly touching episodes, and the instigator of some unexpected gunplay. Frickin' Elizabeth Taylor even voiced her first word, in perhaps the show's strangest guest appearance.

But Maggie's best moments are quieter and briefer - the peripheral throwaway moments that show her demonstrating surprising intelligence with blocks or a baby xylophone (inevitably only to be rebuked or have her project destroyed), or being saved at the last moment from nearly doing something truly dangerous.

Maggie plays Tchaikovsky in "A Streetcar Named Marge."

There's something truly alien about Maggie, from her bugeyed disconnect from the rest of the Simpson family to the continuous sound emitted from the pacifier that she continuously sucks at that impossible angle (a sound effect toned down a few seasons into the show to avoid distracting viewers). Maggie is at once quite savvy and adorably naive; she is easily frightened and prone to falling down, but pulls off some truly epic moments.

Maggie and her baby cohorts plan a prison-themed
pacifier heist later in that same episode.

While some of the show's supporting characters are capable of some pretty immortal one-liners and enduring moments, let's not lose focus and forget the expressive eyes, single-minded wandering and constant source of character that is Maggie Simpson.

Awwwww. . .

MLK Jr.'s "Letter From Birmingham Jail"

Last year for Martin Luther King Jr. / Civil Rights Day, I posted a link to Dr. King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail", one of my favorite readings on race in America and civil disobedience that I've ever seen, filled with tempered optimism and stirring intelligence. This one is all the better for lack of a copyeditor; it's far more honest and stirring than a well-crafted speech with quotable bits (momentous though his speeches were).

I'd like to post this again, in remembrance of the fact that Dr. King was more than just a man with a dream. Focusing on that one speech makes the fight for true egalitarianism and brotherhood feel like a fight of the past, one that resolved itself in previous generations and died with the activists of the 20th century. Our society still has a way to go, and it's a very individual battle.

Martin Luther King, Jr. - "Letter From Birmingham Jail"

Some Universal Literary Morals

This is probably good enough not to confine to Facebook:

I suggest that the following postscripts be added to the following classic novels, for the sake of, in the words of 19th-century educator William Stiles, "Educating our child-ren in all matterf of proper moralf, con-duct and reafoning." With those words in mind, let's start with:

Moby Dick: When a great white whale bites off your leg, go out in a couple of weeks and bag the first whale you see. That should leave you feeling nicely avenged, and you'll save a lot of time and trouble.

Heart of Darkness: Nothing good ever happens in the jungle. Unless you're trying to discover the brutal soul of man you had best stay away.

Fahrenheit 451: In the future, television will be a nonstop barrage of nonsensical, violent images. Nobody will read anything thought-provoking or question the evil schemes of the elite. In other words, things will remain pretty much the same, but we'll have killer robot dogs.

Animal Farm: Work every day of your life, tirelessly building for the sake of society, and maybe if you're lucky they'll ship you out and make glue out of you before arthritis sets in.

Of Mice and Men: Watch how a guy handles puppies before you let him hang out with your wife. Possession of rabbits is not necessarily an indicator of happiness, but they're pretty cute so you should probably get some anyway before something terrible happens.

The Prince (Machiavelli): It's kinda difficult to write a book satirizing sociopathic megalomaniacs without writing a pretty effective how-to guide for - you guessed it - sociopathic megalomaniacs. Whoops!

Dante's Inferno: Hell is confusing and arbitrary, like an airport customs you can never leave. And no matter how many sequels you write about Heaven, nobody will ever hear about them because fire and brimstone is WAY more interesting.

Selections From a Seditious Carol

"Later on we'll conspire
as we dream by the fire
to face unafraid
the plans that we've made
walking in a winter wonderland. . ."

It's a lighthearted Christmas song at the outset, but by reading too much into it we can turn it into an innuendo-laced, anarchic riff on ancient cultures. And isn't that what Christmas is all about?

I don't necessarily have an issue with these lyrics, but "conspire" seems an odd choice of words. I've long been under the impression that long-term relationships are built on understand and affection, and nothing quite as spooky as a conspiracy. And what exactly is that conspiracy, if the chilling final lines are anything to go by? Does society not approve of their relationship? ("And then we'll get married BWAHAHAHA!") Are they some sort of Bonnie and Clyde couple planning some grand heist? Very few Christmas songs end in a hail of gunfire.

I suspect it's a rhyme of convenience. After all, the only other appropriate rhyme ("perspire") is either too suggestive or just too darn sweaty for a sentimental love song. And the other rhymes online resources suggest are just too ridiculous: "catch fire", "transpire", or "inquire." And the higher-syllable entries are oddly appealing but wouldn't work: "telegraph wire", "radial ply tire", or, best of all, "ecclesiastical attire." Nope - better to go with the steamy sweatiness even if it leaves you with a Christmas song the government won't let radio stations play before 10:00 PM.

"In the meadow we can build a snowman,
Then pretend that he is Parson Brown
He'll say: Are you married? We'll say: No man,
But you can do the job When you're in town."

Unless Parson Brown has been receiving transmissions from his snowman counterpart, this just looks like a nifty way for the two youngsters depicted in this poem to continue living in sin.

"When it snows, ain't it thrilling,
Though your nose gets a chilling
We'll frolic and play, the Eskimo way,
Walking in a winter wonderland."

I guess it's fair to say that playing "the Eskimo way" involves playing in snow. I don't think they involved traditional Inuit games like the "Blanket Toss", "Bone Puzzle" or "Cribbage Board" in their pre-Christmas lovestricken conspiracy.

Folk Songs Turned Into Awesome Movie Trailers (Rewrite)

This is a rewrite of a proposed movie trailer I did about a year ago. You should really hear me say it aloud for the full effect, but it's still worth reading:

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Onscreen: "The following PREVIEW has been approved for ALL AUDIENCES by the Motion Picture Association of America."


A group of FORENSIC DETECTIVES is sitting in a large board room, going over unseen grisly photographs. The camera pans over the room, to the grim face of DR. WOLVERTON, the program head (Morgan Freeman if we can get him).

DR WOLVERTON: "Team, we are tracking a dangerous killer. Every time he takes a life, he adopts the surname of his victim. First his name was "John Jacob". Then he killed Doctor Alfsheim Jingleheimer. "

[A BEAT AND CAMERA ANGLE CHANGE]

DR. WOLVERTON: "Dr. Schmidt, I'm putting you in charge of this investigation. We need to stop our friend before his name has a chance to grow any longer."

INSPECTOR SCHMIDT nods grimly.

---

NIGHT - INSPECTOR SCHMIDT is working at his drawing room computer, beads of sweat dotting his brow as he feverishly searches through documents, images, databases. A beat. The music rises as sudden comprehension dawns on his face. The music and breath sound effects rise to a crescendo, and, as the camera draws nearer and nearer to the man's face, come to an abrupt halt:

INSPECTOR SCHMIDT (WHISPER): ". . . his name is my name too."

A window breaks downstairs. SCHMIDT looks up quickly. What follows is a random sequence of inexplicable violent images, the type usually seen in movie trailers: A figure swings a sledgehammer at somebody who ducks as the wall is torn apart behind him. Someone jumps off of a roof. A fire hydrant explodes. DR. WOLVERTON looks up from his desk and yells "Who's there!?", nervously picking up a pistol. A prison door creaks open, and an inmate within shields his eyes from the light and yells "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?!"

---

Finally, everything fades to black. Spooky children's voices sing quietly to screeching sound effects:

CHILDREN: ". . . whenever he goes out, the people always shout. . ."

YOUNG GIRL (whispering): ". . . there goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt. . . ."

Through each beat of the pre-chorus ("LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA!!!" ) a letter drops into place until the screen reads "July 2009" in blood-red letters.

---

I have some friends in the university film program who claim that they would like to help me make this trailer. I haven't yet taken them up on their offer (mainly because I'm sure they were sincere when they offered to help but won't actually be so enthusiastic when the time comes, but also because I'm sure I can't match the awesome image in my head and I'd rather leave it the way it is. We'll see, I guess.