Once again I click “publish” when “save” would have been much more appropriate. There were many bits of absolute nonsense remaining from having combined several drafts. And what I consider a serious error of negativity — one bit remained while other bits of similar context were removed — may have left an impression of which I am embarrassed. So, this version should be good.

Today is the winter solstice and there is about twenty minutes left of daylight as I look westward from the Seattle library onto a vacant building (formerly the Nakamura federal courthouse). Since today marks yesterday as the end of my favorite season — autumn is over, long live autumn! — and the start of the introspective season, I thought I would take a few minutes (um, or nearly two hours amongst one, no, two interruptions) to get back into my Wednesday posting habit regardless of the banality my loquaciousness may convey about ignorance, Hollywood, the holidays, the NSA, and some music.

Ignorance is bliss

This autumn I had thought I would be a more active blogger. Both in my reading and my writing. Especially since I had gone out and gotten me a laptop, allowing me to hang out in the coffeeshops once again with readily free internet access. Something I hadn’t had when I had my first wireless* laptop.

So, I thought that I would do more on the internets this fall than I had ever before with the laptop. Turns out I probably did the least I have ever done (excluding my travels in 2001) since 1996. Alas, so neither my blog writing nor reading saw much light, if any (like now as it has completely disappeared even in the westward view).

Granted, I had jettisoned broadband access and it got spotty in my apartment in November, but mostly I had access. After all, I live in Seattle where you cannot fart without a wireless router sniffing it.

What changed my habits was a decision to no longer be willing to blog about anything negative. Now that self-imposed limitation was maddening at times. Cuz I swear the only thing at times I could think of was to blog about Bush this or Seattle that (I have settled into a love-hate relationship with my temporary (now a five year) stay in Seattle. So, with that and my negelct to read any blogs anymore along with pretty much nixxing any news outlet from my periphery, I found myself getting happier and happier.

No longer do I care about the Bush administration or how fucked up urban planning is in Seattle. They are not my problems. My spending whatever energy typing up some screed about this or that does me nothing. No stress is released. Quite the opposite occurs. Since I lead a relatively stress-free life at the moment, anything that is released is energy that keeps me in my happy medium.

For now I am going to continue in this mode. No soy ink stains on my hands. No news magazine subscriptions. No TV news. No newspaper.coms. No blog reading.

However, something troublesome about this is that I need to replace my media whoring preferences with other media. I have turned to music and movies (see below) again, so maybe that will give me something to blog.

Hollywood

Like many, especially the pre-’57 boomers, my own moviegoing habit has dwindled, especially in the last two years. It isn’t like I do not want to go anymore but that my tastes have changed. Or so I thought. See, I was always willing to see the latest Hollywood schlock. I am no film snob by any means. I have never sought out the art flick. I’ll go. But seek? Uh, no. Still do not. Even when I was actively renting videos and DVDs, I rarely got past the well-received indie flicks. So, why is it that I stopped going?

Well, I have less friends in Seattle and never actively sought many out, but when I do hang out with friends, well, movies just are not what we do. So, that is one reason, but as I had become an avid solowatcher in 1999 (my office was two blocks from a theater, so I would take “creative” breaks there every other week) and I live within a mile of many, many theaters with so much time on my hands… I have actively been going about changing myself these last several years and movie theaters are not helpful when they only play recent releases (I am trying to watch all that I missed prior to 1985, from 1993 to 1998 when I preferred drinking, and from 2001 to the present).

So, why is it again that I don’t go to theaters for new movies?

Have you seen TV lately? By the time a movie is actually opens in the theaters, esp. the Hollywood schlock (but the popular indies are getting just as bad), I feel as if I have seen it already. If I don’t see a movie its first weekend — when the pub machine is at its peak — I really don’t want to bother with something that is “old news” the third weekend. And I don’t think I am the only one who feels this way.

Or notice this fiasco? When a movie’s trailer presents the movie in an entirely different context many weeks after an initial trailer blitz and the movie still is not in theaters… well, it makes me think the second trailer blitz is a copy and why would I see either when both look so… banal? This is the very sort of movie I used to see. If I saw one trailer. A few times. But not anymore. Regardless of the edit. I feel as if the trailer is the movie nowadays.

It is this oppressive marketing omnichannel blitzkrieg that is killing the movies. Hollywood can spend tens of millions marketing a single release. Tens of millions on one movie! I really never saw movies because of marketing. I saw them either because a movie looked intriguing from the one or two trailers I have seen along with maybe one item in print. Today, a movie is in its marketing cycle for a year starting with the advance trailer, i.e., at Christmas there will be trailers for movies coming out next summer and next Christmas. You’ll get an updated trailer in the spring. TV trailers appear six weeks in advance now. That’s too much along with the talk show circuits, the internet, the papers, the zines, etc. (Maybe it is me who has the problem: I confess, I am was a media junkie.)

I used to see movies mostly because of word of mouth or at least that there was a “saw it” buzz. Less of my friends see movies in the theater and the “oh, I saw Movie Title” buzz doesn’t have a chance to develop. Just once I want to first hear about a movie either the week before it opens or the Monday after it opened. I have accepted that it’s too much to ask to hear about it several weeks after it opened. There’s no instantaneous romance anymore. IOW, I am also the poster child for ADXD. You know, the Gen Xer with ADD. Since Hollywood made huge profits off of Gen X, they ought to know that Gen X, and Y, would be turned off by marketing campaigns that run an idea, the movie, into the ground. Or at least that’s my feeling.

National Security Agency

Or the one secret agency actually acknowledged by the government

C’mon, people! No shit the NSA is listening. Everything is Watergate. No, not the cover-up but the mantra “follow the money”. HTF do you think all those billions of dollars are getting used?

And no shit the president ordered it. Frankly, why he even bothered addressing what should be so obvious is beyond me. Personally, I do not want to live in a “free” country where the president does not have this type of power. When Open Source reaches potential, there will be so many checks and balances, that the Senate can continue as it has been doing for years to ignore its policing of the NSA.

BTW, for those who fear Big Brother, think about what it takes to follow someone 24-7. In order to follow one person each week, at a minimum six people are need, three full time (working eight hours per day for five days) and three part time (working eight hours per day for two days). Now, take in the people needed to support those people. Add vacations in there. It gets out of hand for even Big Brother to follow one person.

So, again, ask about the money. Or do the math. Even the billions (okay, trillions over the years) spent by the NSA is not enough to follow the watch list. You’re still unsafe from terrorism. And you always will be. Get over it.

Merry Christmas!

I’m with the Greetings Police. Christmas is what I celebrate, so it is what I say (except when ripping on the commercial aspect of it).

I grew up amongst many Jewish people albeit they were a minority. But my school teachers had a pretty effective policy in the classroom. They taught a little bit about both as well as how others around the world celebrated (or did not celebrate) Christmas. Those who celebrated Christmas as either a religious or commercial event were free to say Merry Christmas. Those who were Jewish were free to say Happy Hannakuh (in response to Merry Christmas, too). Worked pretty well until the Politically Correct movement went over the top.

At least this year there is finally some people actively protesting against how far the Happy Greeting has gone. The one thing the far right has gotten correct this year. Imagine, the far right wants to preserve First Amendment rights while the lefty PC movement remains entrenched in its old principles.

Anyway, if you celebrate something else, what’s keeping you from wishing me whatever?! Have Americans learned nothing from travelling? Sure, we were told to be respectful when travelling in other countries of cultural differences but those lessons were not to be applied at home. When I was learning a new holiday greeting overseas, I said it there. And I didn’t throw a conniption fit when someone said it to me (well, ‘cept that Mexican guy welcomed me to his country by cracking an egg of birdseed in my finely coiffed seventeen year old hair).

So, why did Americans stop sharing greetings with other Americans? I can understand the language chosen by corporations. Media buys are expensive and not the place for thirty different messages if one will cover it. But the employees ought to be free to say whatever to customers, i.e. the Christian employees should be allowed to say “Merry Christmas”; the Jewish employees to say “Happy Hannukah”; the African Americans to say “Happy Kwanzaa”; etc. Co-workers, and most definitely friends, should be free to wish each other whatever. Right?

Music to hear

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah is a band. A very good band. I hope. I love one song. BTW, they are not from Wales or Scotland, which I thought, but Jersey or ‘delphia, I forget which.

Well, I am worn out from the negativity above (some since removed) to continue on about other things that gathered moss in my head this autumn. Or maybe I have fewer words when I am pleased and/or have something positive to say or share. IOW, my worst tell: if I keep talking, you’ll know I am upset. About something. But probably you. Kidding! Usually, it means I am too tired to think clearly and will just keeping yammering until you either acknowledge that you understand or in one case you miss your flight and will have to sleep over.

Adieu! Adieu! And adieu to you and you and you!

I spit the biscuit on this post. To think I just went through and mopped up over half of the word vomit that littered the screen.

Merry Christmas!