Christmas Gift Guide for the Significant Other You're Going to Dump.

This guide is intended to keep you from conveying the wrong message to the person you plan on breaking up with...after Christmas (kinda a dick move) and maybe also save you some cash. Oh believe me, I'm not calling you out as a terrible person, I know shit happens, you end up stuck living with someone it turns out you really hate now, you have to wait for leases to expire, to get people off your cell phone plan, you need to find a new ride to work. Now that we've justified your emotional fraud to some extent lets move on to the all important material trappings!

•No personalized gifts or Jewelry. Nothing says I love you like a t-shit with someone's name and picture on it or a diamond necklace, you don't want to say that. If you do go this route make sure to spell their name wrong or "accidentally" get the name of an Ex instead. You can also go for the crappiest walmart or kmart jewelry you can.

•No large purchases. Electronics and furniture are a big no no, except in the case you are replacing something that is mutually owned in the shared dwelling that you want to take with you. "Oh look now we have two TVs."If you can't get away with having two of something invest in some storage for however long you plan to continue the charade that is being part of someone else's life.

•Never ask what they want, never tell them what you want. No reason to further ingratiate yourself to this person or commit yourself to buying something that may be expensive and will show that you care. As an added bonus in the final break up argument you can say, "You didn't even get me what I wanted for Christmas!"

•Never get them anything that shows you have been paying attention to them as a person. Don't get them a CD from their favorite band or their favorite movie on DVD. If you must get them a movie they kinda liked or a CD from a band you think they "might like." In reality you shouldn't give a shit if they like it, so pick a CD at random.

•Don't get them anything that symbolizes the future, no calendars, no journals. This is an easy one, because there is no future. This also includes planning trips and subscriptions or memberships that will last all year.

•Stick to cheap. Walgreens is a good place to shop for crap no one would ever want, try the off brand sugar free chocolates, unless they are diabetic.

•Gift Cards! Nothing excites people yet at the same time says "I didn't give a shit enough pick out a real gift for you" like a gift card. They may like it at first and be able to get what they really want, but after the relationship is over they will think to themselves, "all they got me was a god damned gift card."

Basically stay smart and stay cheap out there. If you find yourself thinking about a gift chances are it will mean to much. Stick to apathetic impulse purchases. And just remember, you don't give a shit anymore. Now if you are a person who thinks that they are going to be broken up with there is a completely separate Christmas gift guide for you, but here's a hint of what to get them: lots of sex.

A Plea From a Cat Named Virtue.

I just got home from Eddie's and should sleep, but a brief update. Today was the worst day in a very bad two weeks (the reason for my long hiatus.) And tomorrow will most assuredly be worse. Sorry for being dramatic and vague. The things I've been feeling have just been keeping things from progressing in the reading, writing, working department. I was surprised to find the bravery I had been looking for from an unexpected source. That sounds like a double negative, or redundant, but the source was unexpected and I was surprised, mostly because I had lacked what I needed for so long that I forgot what it was. I feel blood flowing through my heart again. I realize I'm not perfect, further from it now, just remember I was once virtuous. 


On the way home I felt compelled to write a story mocking thinly veiled autobiographical fiction and "marry-sue" type stories like twilight. Or maybe I should just write a thinly veiled autobiographical story about wanting to write that. 


I also felt the desire to be Canadian. I know I've given them a lot of shit and they've kinda been my arch-nemissis, but bands like The Weakerthans and other people make me think they are nicer. 


To close I'd like to share my new writing philosophy. I think writing is not knowing how to say something, then writing it down anyway, because people who aren't writers just never write it down because they are never sure. 


  

How to save the fourth estate.

Saw this article today on a report on how to save journalism. Of course the solution that the politically moderate and fiscally responsible folk over at Columbia University suggest is to tax and spend other people's money to solve the problem. Because that solution has worked so well in so many other areas, like failing public schools, they are doing fine now because of all the money thrown at them. The premise behind all this is that journalism serves an important role to society and society should pay to preserve this institution. That premise however fails on two levels the first level is that journalism has failed to keep up with technology and almost everything they once provided is now available to everyone around the world for free on the internet. The second level on which it fails is journalists have been neglecting their duty and not providing a decent product that people will put their faith in and pay for. Research and fact checking is almost non existent, unless the party you are fact checking disagrees with your worldview. That's right, CNN fact checked Saturday Night Live making fun of Obama. This only shortly followed the White House's communications director calling Fox News a wing of the republican party on CNN of all places. Did she not see the campaign? Did she not see the entire media establishment hurl Obama into office without taking time to wipe the drool from their mouths or responsibly investigate him? The point is there is a template in the establishment media, republicans bad - democrats good. I would rather they treat them all as bad, because they are, but you have sitting democratic congressmen who hid bribe money in their fridge or belonged to the KKK. Democrat scandals get ignored and anything against the republicans gets amplified and repeated, even if it's proved untrue later. There are still people who claim that Bush lied because all of the inelegance services of the world were wrong and Sadam didn't have WMD's.

Journalism is dead, and journalism killed it. I don't know why reporters believe that everyone has to share their worldview or that journalism is about opinions and scandal with absolutely no research. It could be argued that the "opinions" of journalists are just them trying to promote what is good or morally right, but a good journalist would realize that things that are decided in the arena of politics and elections are not for them to decide. Also from a marketing point of view, going political alienates %50 of the country. Why does Fox News do so well? Because they appeal to the %50 that have been alienated and they have no competition. Why do MSNBC and CNN do so poorly? Because they have lots of competition saying the exact same thing.

How do you save journalism? Here's my multistep plan. Step 1: Take journalism out of the archaic (liberal infested)  liberal arts system and put it into business schools or communication schools. Journalism isn't about writing, it's about communicating what's going on and selling it. Make at least a year if not two about just research. You need to know about what you write about and people stop trusting you if your work is constantly in opposition to the facts, see the New York times. (I'm also for everyone at every level of education having to take economics every year. Just like history, science and math. Maybe that will destroy this notion that the way to solve a problem is to tax rich people and spend their money to give stuff away for free.) Step 2: Disavow the establishment. News outlets need to start fresh and start over. Divorce your ideology and start producing an objective product people can trust. That means take the editorials off the front page and leave them in the back with the crosswords. Step 3: Change. Just change, it's time to change the way you do business. I think this internet thing is going to be a big deal, and it's time to start acting like it. Stop trying to save newspapers and local news.

In short, tell the truth, not your truth, and stop being old.

Monday Writer's Block

Been brain dead for 5 or 6 days as what to write here or on anything else I'm working on. I might lock myself in the library for the rest of the day just to make myself work on stuff that I need to get done. Had a pretty good weekend, I saw Couples Retreat and watched a bunch of Sopranos and Criminal Minds. Couples Retreat was pretty good, if just a little bit long. Not the typical Vince Vaughn movie. He was a lot funnier and not as annoying.

Went to the airport yesterday to pick up the girlfriend. I was really glad she was back, but going to the airport made me miss traveling and living out of a suitcase. Oh well, I chalk it up to "the grass is always greener."

I've also been moderating spam comments on my article on whowritesthisstuff.net, that's been kinda annoying. I wish people weren't such shit heads on the internet. People who write spam bots should be put in prison.

Best part of this weekend of relaxing: no football.  

University of Cincinnati: Where did our money go?

I'm a bit frustrated with the University of Cincinnati right now. Tuition was steadily rising before the governor capped it, enrollment has been growing to new record numbers every year, and I just read about UC's research programs getting a new record high of funding. With all of this money coming in Arts and Sciences has been suffering, along with the business college and libraries. Huge budget cuts, scaling back of programs, not replacing tenured professors who leave, and this all leads to less classes students need to graduate. The only colleges that seem to get to keep their huge budgets and get to continue taking space away from others are the colleges that bring money and prestige to the university, like engineering, DAAP, CCM, and Medicine. This seems logical, but most of those students creating the record enrollments are not in those colleges, they are in the two that are the most neglected. Granted most of the freshmen that create those numbers drop out, but the ones who don't won't realize for two to three years that they aren't getting what they pay for until they want to take classes they need to graduate. The department that seems to typify this the best is English, pretty much all of the upper level classes are full every quarter. You think this would be a sign to create more classes for majors to take, but the main function and concern of the department is to have 100+ sections of english 101 (which everyone in the university has to take.) Which brings me to my point, it seems pretty evident where our money goes, and that is not towards the education we pay for. Remember this when they call you begging for money for the rest of your life.

My frustration with the university is two fold today as I have already mentioned on facebook and twitter. This morning the first thing I got to witness at work was a UC police officer chewing out a professor for not having a key. Again, this is what we pay for?

Ohio has the second highest public college education cost in the nation next to California. I would venture to call UC the second best thing run by a state government since California. Is libertarianism the only answer when even federalism fails? How do you hold a university accountable when it has no regard for the students it services and the tax payers who fund it?    

Books

Came up with a plan for what order to read my books in. After The Greatest Show on Earth I'm going to read the rest of my biology books, then other science books. After I finish my war hammer books including  Heroes of the Space Marines I'm going to start knocking a chunk out of my political books, probably starting with Culture of Corruption and Arguing With Idiots.


I renamed the blog as you may have noticed. I came up with the idea while reading about carbon 14, even though Nitrogen is really 14 the hard way since it has 7 protons and 7 neutrons. I figure carbon 14 is really the hard way since it's a radioactive isotope created by cosmic rays. Carbon 14 isn't lazy like nitrogen.

Going to Rehab.

That's right folks, after doing some cleaning I've decided to go into rehab, book rehab. I consolidated all the piles and baskets of books from around my room and filled an entire empty bookshelf with books I bought and have yet to read. Along with two shelves on my other book case already filled with books I need to read that adds up to about one hundred books that are just taking up space.  In order to remedy this and add a bit of discipline to my life I have decided to put myself in a self prescribed, hyperspeed, book rehab program.  My goal is to read at least one hundred pages from two different books everyday. This should allow me to finish around two and a half books a week, allowing me to read all the books I haven't in a little under a year.

That means once a week or so I should be writing an update here with reviews and thoughts about the books I have finished. The books that I bought this weekend and started today are Richard Dawkins' Greatest Show on Earth and the Warhammer 40k pulpy collection of stories Heroes of the Space Marines. I met my goal for the first book and need to read one more story out of the other to meet that goal.

Hi my name is Nate and I have an Amazon.com and Barnes and Nobel problem.

On a side note about reviews, I saw Invention of Lying this weekend and it was pretty good. I didn't realize it was supposed to be an atheist jab at religion till I saw this review over at Big Hollywood. If anything I thought it did the opposite, even though the religion part of the movie just came off like any of the other jokes. In the end I thought it was a funny movie that made a statement about right and wrong and the influence of lying on our social fabric. I don't think it's great enough to write a longer stand alone review of, but I did think it was funny enough to recommend to other people. Leon went to see it with Kresso and Bobby after I recommended it, and they all hated it. So I wouldn't expect a glowing review of it on whowritesthisstuff.net.

Movies that we need more of (Draft)

Recently in a review of Zombieland by Mike Leon he compared Zombieland to Ghostbusters and said, "we need more movies like Ghostbusters." I agree. I have seen many movies in the past 10 years and I feel like we have lost something. There have been movies that I liked because they were good, movies that I loved because they were bad, but there haven't been any movies as great as great movies of the past. We need more movies like Ghostbusters and Jurrasic Park, we don't need a Ghostbusters remake or a Jurrasic Park 8. If I had to classify the two thousands in film it would be the ten years that Hollywood ran out of ideas and just remade old movies and TV shows.  Oh and sequels, a shit ton of sequels. That's nothing new though, hollywood has been ruining movies with bad sequels for a long time, Beverly Hills Cop, Lethal Weapon, Chinatown, Police Academy, Revenge of the Nerds.

The Bottom has fallen out of the DVD market, and blockbusters aren't making back their huge budgets. I blame this trend on Hollywood forgetting how to make movies.  Over ten years all they have done is increase ticket prices and decrease quality. Movie ticket prices have almost doubled and DVD prices haven't. People stopped going to movies a long time ago because of the price, now they've also stopped buying DVDs because the movies are so bad.

Another problem with modern movies is a formula that is typified by Toy Story and Oceans Eleven, you don't need every damn star in your movie to make it successful.  Even the Coen brothers fell into this trap with Burn After Reading. It was a mildly entertaining movie that would have been much more successful with lesser known actors.  The latest victim of this problem was Funny People. The movie with almost no overhead cost $70 million to make because of all the star power. Needless to say the dark understated comedy did not make it's money back, even though it was well written and a good story.  The reason all of these people who make $15 million dollars a film make that much is because people liked them in better movies fifteen years ago that they got paid a lot less to be in. Good movies have fresh stars that can make roles their own.  Having Tom Cruise play a factory worker, average joe in War of the Worlds or a Nazi general in Valkyrie doesn't work, it's not believable.

Failed formula number two when it comes to wasting all your studio's money are special effects orgies, see Peal Harbor, Day After Tomorrow, AI, War of the Worlds and the upcoming abortion-on-screen 2012. Paying hundreds of millions of dollars isn't really going to make your effects more believable and it's not really the draw that it used to be.  The effects made movies like Independence Day and Jurassic Park because people had never seen it done before, now it's been done, stop it.

You have to spend money to make money, it's true, but you have to spend less money and make more. Hollywood has taken on the Sony Playstation 3 attitude of the more money you spend the more money you will make. Coincidently, or not, this change in Hollywood has coincided with Sony buying up most of the studios and consolidating the movie industry. Stop spending money Sony, you suck at business. And other studios should stop spending money like Sony. I guess this ended up being more about what kind of movies we need less of, but the bottom line is we need more movies that are worth the money it costs to make them, think Ghostbusters, think Jurassic Park, fuck even think X Men. Follow these two rules 1. Make your movie cheap 2. If you can't follow rule #1 give people something new.            

Sara Palin stole my book idea.

Sara Palin stole my book idea about a no nonsense hockey mom that becomes governor of Alaska then vice presidential candidate. Except in my book she also fights crime, uncovers a terrorist plot, and kills the terrorist leader in a fiery explosion after a car chase at the end. My title: Transporter 4 - Alaskan Pipeline.  

Rock Band is not "the social gaming experience of the year," because there is no such thing.

You can read the final version of this article at whowritesthisstuff.net

Recently I've been seeing these commercials for one of those "Rock Band" or "Guitar Hero" games that claims it to be "the social gaming experience of the year." This is impossible because there is no such thing as social gaming. Video games are not an experience for one thing, they are a sad refuge from a harsh boring reality.  And games that you play with other people are not "social," they are more like a support group like cutters anonymous. A more fitting title would probably be "I can't stop shoving things slightly smaller than my fist in my face while I play this game and cry anonymous." Games as a "social" phenomena only include two variables that solo gaming lacks, mutual enjoyment of something bad and someone bad to fuck up the progress of everyone else.  Here's some spoilers for your favorite "social games,"

Rock Band: You're pressing buttons to bad music. You can replicate this exact experience by having the person in the cubicle next to you play bad music while the two of you type. If you really want the whole dead rock star visual thing like Beatles Rock Band, find a youtube video of John Lennon banging that Jap skank that broke up the Beatles and ruined rock and roll, and watch that while you type. I liked rockband better when it was called "listening to iTunes while I play a good game."

Let's not forget that both of these games require you to buy stupid plastic instruments that make you look like an idiot playing a tiny guitar. Sorry you never got the experience of learning an instrument only to become a member of an unsuccessful cover band. The game doesn't really replicate this because you probably shower and aren't addicted to meth.  

Halo: Having a "Halo Party" means you like dudes and are probably in a frat. That's all, the hardest FPS you have ever played was probably Counter Strike, and you bought the Xbox version, and liked it. If you don't believe me about the homosexual nature of this game get on Xbox live or have a halo party then play a drinking game where you drink every time someone gets "t-bagged," you will die of alcohol poisoning. I'm not saying playing Halo is synonymous with enjoying sex with men, but it is. Halo party's should follow the same rule as contact sports, you have to be the only guy on both teams for it to not be gay.

MMORPGs: Massively multiplayer online role playing games. Congratulations you pay fifteen dollars a month for final fantasy plus AIM. There should be a show on A&E about these games, on right between intervention and hoarders.  I enjoy collecting things and killing stuff for days at a time as much as the next guy, but at some point you have to say fuck these other people and just go back to Zelda. Video games should also be like romantic relationships, little to no conversation and instant gratification. MMORPGs are like the needy unemployed ever present girlfriend, you're always giving her money and spending all your time trying to keep her happy and maintain the relationship, then by the time you actually get in her pants you're too exhausted to get it up.  Games like Rainbow Six are like the perfect girlfriend, I turn on my Xbox, I want to kill terrorists, I kill terrorists. Then I take a nap. No talking, no items to collect, no money is exchanged, perfect relationship.    

All of these types of games have people who will talk shit, piss you off, and fuck up your game. So why play at all?  The reason why they developed this new term "social" gaming is because rock band is a non-competative game, everyone is doing different things to achieve the same goal.  Thus you don't get to see who's best, who wins, you only get to see who is worst, and fucking up the progress of the song for everyone else. (You can even turn that off if someone is really bad.) Playing video games was better back in the 80s and 90s, it was like masturbating: done alone and occasionally experimentally with one other friend. (In a totally not gay way.) In conclusion you want your video games to be like your girlfriend or like masturbation. Would you want to share your girlfriend or masturbation with your idiot friends to stupid songs you hate? Actually, mostly just like masturbation, because we know that is way better than your girlfriend. 

#MPMF or Why you're an indie fuck.

In an effort to keep you informed on local events and as to why you are an insufferable douche let me tell you about the Mid Point Music Fest. First let’s start with the good news, you didn’t get ripped off, twenty nine dollars is not a bad price to pay for three days of music that will never be commercially available.  The bad news is you spent three days in downtown Cincinnati incurring numerous costs listening to bad music you could have listened to on Misplace for free. Just to be brief and to the point, you spent three days at indie Myspace.

In order to understand why this makes you uncool you need to realize why indie music is uncool.  The logic seems to be, “Oh no one else has discovered how great and relevant this band’s music is, they must be cool and I must be cool for listening to them.” No. That is the exact opposite of how things work. The reason your band isn’t popular is because they are contrived and unsuccessful. You are following the same misguided logic as goth kids. Being different does not make you cool, being the same makes you cool.  Being the same also makes you lots of money. All the indie cred in the world is not going to help these bands when they are starving to death in an alley or working their real job at starbucks or kinkos.

If you legitimately enjoy the music that’s fine, but if at least one point (hopefully more) during the MPMF you find yourself thinking “this band is terrible,” you are probably an indie music scene fuck. Did I go? No, do I feel bad reviewing an event that I didn’t go to? Not in the least, and here’s why, 1. The event was held in downtown Cincinnati, the fact that it wasn’t held in a better venue speaks for itself. Cincinnati is in such a state of decay that it would host a convention for transvestite meth addicted pedophiles. 2. None of these bands will ever get signed, if they do I will buy you the CD and the tickets for us to see them at river bend. These are the bands that will reunite on holidays when you are in your 50s and you will have to ask your wife to see if you can drive to Columbus to see them. They too will be old and taking time off from real jobs to reminisce back to the time where they were mildly artistically successful. 3. The primary sponsors for this event were radio stations, who the fuck listens to the radio?

Brief post on things that are pissing me off.

Writing is hard enough as it is, but contemplating whether or not there is actually a "great american novel" yet to be written makes me too depressed to even try writing anything.  In the age of Dan Brown and Harry Potter I wonder how the field of literature will look at this time in one hundred years, if there is such a field.

Something that has been bothering me for a longer time is: no you are not "kinda OCD."  It may sound cool, but it actually is a real problem for lots of people.  I don't care if you got a therapist to agree with you and give you medication, I find it offensive that people develop fake mental illnesses out of chronic narcissism.  I'm also offended by shows like "Obsessed" and "Intervention."  Why is it okay to showcase this kind of suffering in such a macabre spectacle?  It may help a few people come to terms with problems with themselves and their families, but for the most part these shows are watched by the same people who moved on from Trading Spaces to shows about midgets and people with 1000 kids.  Instead of further stigmatizing mental illness we should be teaching people to not be afraid to ask for help.   

Summer Wrap-up

They say you can't know where you are going unless you know where you have been.  I would like to amend that, you can't know where you are and where you are going unless you know where you have been and where you can never go.  Not everyone can be an astronaut, not everyone you love will love you back.  I think this is what I've learned this summer. 


I re-commissioned this blog about a month ago with the intention of writing more and actually saying something meaningful about the things going on in my life and in the world around us.  So far I have failed abysmally. I'm not going to go as far as to say that this is a bad thing since the main reason I have failed to write is because I have been so busy (only the second reason is laziness.)  This summer has consisted mostly of work, class, going out and meeting new people, and camping.  I know this is the short lame version, but the time I have spent away from the internet has been great and far too interesting to encapsulate in one brief wrap up post.  The third reason it has been hard to write is because of twitter.  It's much harder to properly formulate your ideas into topics to write about when you can spew them out 140 characters at a time as they pop into your head.  Writing really feels like home though, being able to form complete sentences and not a single @ or # in sight. 


One topic about the summer that I love and I will go into some depth on is the movies.  This summer offered up an awful selection of "blockbuster" movies.  I actually want to say something about all of the movies so I'm going to break them up into 3 posts, the good, the bad and the mediocre.  I'll include the good in this post since there were so few:


Watchman: Cinematically beautiful in every way.  Music was also amazing.  By far the best comic book movie movie I've ever seen, and the truest film adaptation of a story ever.  People who whine about the changes are losers. 


Star Trek: Loved Sylar as Spock.  It was a great story and a well made movie.  I wouldn't call it ground breaking science fiction. 


The Hangover: Funniest movie of the summer.  Zach Galifianakis was the best.  Definitely offered something other than how this movie was marketed.  Barely deserved an R rating. 


I Love You Man: Funny movie that captures the weirdness of guys hanging around guys. 


Observe and Report: Really a shame this movie came out so close to Paul Blart: Mall cop because it was much funnier and darker.  It was good to see Seth Rogan play a different character, the angry simpleton instead of the smarmy befuddled funny guy. 


Funny People: Kind of hard to watch in parts because of the dying thing and a little long, but it ended up being pretty good.  Definitely not a full on comedy, more of a drama. 


Julie and Julia: Definitely surprised with how good this was.  The Julia Childs half was way better than the whinny blogger girl half.


District 9: This could have been a great science fiction film if it weren't for the overdone political allegory.  It ended up just being a good film.  I wish it had more of an ending. 


That's the most positive stuff I have to say about this film season.  More bad movies and more stories from the summer later. 
     

Summer reading lists:

Contemporary politics:

An Army of Davids - Glenn Reynolds

The Road to Serfdom - F.A. Hayek

The Forgotten Man - Amity Shlaes

The 5000 year leap - W. Cleon Skousen

The End of History and the Last Man - Francis Fukuyama

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order - Sam Huntington

Jihad vs. McWorld - Benjamin Barber

The Suicide of Reason - Lee Haris

The Shia Revival - Vali Nasr

The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein

Rules for Radicals - Saul Alinsky

The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman

Science:

Our Posthuman Future - Francis Fukuyama

The Phsyics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku

The Unknown Universe - Richard Hammond

The Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil

Your Inner Fish - Neil Shubin

The Red Queen - Matt Ridley

The Ancestors Tale - Richard Dawkins

A Sea Without Fish - David Meyer and Richard Davis

Pleasure:

The Secret History - Donna Tartt

The Know it all - A.J. Jacobs

The Story of Sushi - Trevor Corson

Out of Place - Edward Said

(Theodore Roosevelt) When Trumpets Call - Patricia O'Toole and The River of Doubt - Candice Millard

Need to finish a lot of these and write about them. After that I need to post lists on Asia and the middle east.