Man

So I finally decided to post one of my short stories for the world to see. It's called Man, is just over 3,000 words in length, and is science fiction. If you're interested, have at it.

EDIT: Apparently, Short Stories Uncut is being shut down on March 12th. I reposted the story to a story forum so that it stays up. If you do read it, please take a minute to leave a comment.

Munich

So my wife an I just got a special dispensation - well, OK, grandma suggested she'd come and babysit - and went on a date to see Munich.

I won't say much about the content. I think it's an excellent script, maybe a bit shallow at times but overall pretty well done.

My biggest problem was that the movie never felt authentic to me. The actors were simply not convincing. As an Israeli, I have never Israelies - nor Arabs or Palestinians - who behave as they do in the movie. It's nothing major, but a lot of little subtleties that would obviously be lost on anyone who did not grow up in Israel. Body language, expression, how they emoted... it just didn't work for me, I could not for any length of time suspend my disbelief enough in order to get into the movie. Everything just felt a little bit "off", constantly.

I think the only moment where I actually felt something was when they did that excellent closeup on the face of Avner's little girl on the stairs in the Brooklyn. Beautiful cinema, right there. But there wasn't any other moment like that, and I just found myself wanting them to get through the motions by about halfway through.

I fully understand how this movie can be a tremendous experience for its intended audience. To me, it just didn't feel real most of the time. Oh well. Difficult subject, and kudos to Spielberg all the same.

Bad chairs

Every monday, I get another form of bad chair to sit on while I'm at my client. Different chairs, but bad ones nonetheless. Why can't I get a reasonable chair? I mean, I know I'm only there on Mondays, but still, I am getting a little tired of coming home with a backache every single Monday.

*sigh*

Response to another blog

Loved this blog entry, so decided I'd post a response - nay, an addition - right here. Heck, maybe I'll get a reader or two this way, too. Now wouldn't that be neat?

Read the other entry first. Then come back here to read my thoughts about it:

Look around you. Ever heard how "everyone is special"? "Each of us has something they are really good at"? Think for a second about why anyone needed to come up with these cliches. Sorry to burst your bubble, folks, but some people ARE smarter than others, and some people have absolutely no special talent whatsoever, they are just average or below average or just plain suck. At everything. So what? That's life. You can still be happy about yourself even if you don't have a "special talent" that makes you better than anyone else in something. The foundation for idiotic shows like American Idol, and the morons who apply to appear in them, who really truly suck and yet are sure that "they will be discovered" one day is this particular societal paradigm. I admire Simon for being so smart and cynical as to understand this particular affliction of modern western society, and coming up with the format for American Idol (initially in the UK). Opportunistic, yes, but dammit, it's brilliant.

People are so worried about other people's self-esteem that even constructive criticism is no longer acceptable. That's politically correct for you, when taken to the extreme. I can't even tell someone that I don't like the food in a restaurant they took me to because they think it reflects on them, somehow. Now what kind of stupidity is that?

I am reminded of a conversation I had a couple days ago with the CFO of one of the companies I work with. She told me how much of an ass I was, basically because I was so darn smart and that made me scary, especially as I wasn't hiding it. You know, when people came to me I would find plenty of reason why I didn't want to help them. Of course, I can factually refute that in an instant, by example and by testimony from the astounding number of people who count me as their mentor, helper and supporter throughout the years.

But why would I care to do so? I'll tell you this: What I'm not willing to do is waste my time with people posing as thinkers but unwilling to think. I just don't have time for the kind of people the poster in that other blogger describes - the ones who are just so afraid of everything around them that they are simply unwilling to go out on a limb, even a little bit. You know, try something slightly different maybe, or figure out a tiny evolutionary step in a process, or just plain take a chance, for fear of making a mistake, to be followed by a complete destruction of their fragile "self-esteem". I get really, really irritated by these folks who come to me and say "can you tell me how to figure this challenge out?", when they really mean "can you do it for me so I don't have to think it through?". I learn pretty fast who these people are, and then I stop wanting to help them. And that, by the way, is by choice. I take full responsibility for this approach. So yes, I guess she was right, I am an ass.

I think this insanity comes from a blend of PC and extreme individualism, two very strong trends that have done so much to shape - at least American - society in the past 30 years. The first, in its current form, basically disallows criticism of anything or anyone. The second encourages people to develop delusions of grandeur from a very early age, heightening their sense of dissatisfaction with their own existence. Between the two, there really is no choice for many people but to try and construct an image of the world that is perfectly self-centered. At that point, the tranishing of this "perfect world" image, even momentarily, even just in possibility, is a huge threat to the core of their being. It creates a severe cognitive dissonance. That's why people won't even dare try something new, most of the time: they have an acute fear of being miserable at it. My wife still thinks it's crazy that I love acquiring new hobbies, or that when I learn (say) a new boardgame, I enjoy losing horribly, simply because I enjoy the experience.

Let me toss some other common cliches at you that seem to originate from this modern line of thinking:

"Try/work hard enough and you can succeed at anything" - now, does anyone really believe this one? I mean, really? How stupid can you be to buy this? And yet, many people do.

"Everyone has a special talent" - the one I mention above. Seriously. There's over 6 billion people on this planet. You really think that each and every one has one?

"You're/I'm OK, it's the teacher that's bad" - usually following a failing grade - now, seriously, ever stop to consider that your child might need an ass-kicking instead? Got an F, huh? Better grind your teeth and study harder, or you're repeating the grade, and screw your precious self-esteem. Teacher may suck but since there are quite a number of kids in their class who don't seem to fail, it most likely IS you.

"Don't show them how smart/pretty/clever/better you are, you'll hurt their feelings" - the ultimate idiocy. This is so stupid that it doesn't even merit a rebuttal. But I'll say this - if you get hurt because someone else is better than you in something, then your life is a pretty sordid affair.

I can go on and on, but I have other things to do. Ciao.

Boomka

Brilliant. Check it out.

Curious George

We took our son to see Curious George on Saturday. It was the first time he ever went to a movie at the theater... it was a wonderful experience for all of us. He felt like such a big boy, and he tried his best to act as one, following our directions, looking very serious, and visibly awed by the occassion. The funniest part was when he sat with a tray full of popcorn on his lap, reaching down with both hands to keep popcorn coming to his mouth without diverting his eyes from the screen from an instant. And sitting there taking sips from the big (for him) cup of diet coke was just precious beyond belief.

Great movie, by the way. They sort of politically corrected it - George is no longer kidnapped from the jungle but instead follows the man in the yellow hat home. And the latter no longer works with the zoo to bring them animals, but instead is an archeological exploration leader. There's even a love interest... overall, really well done, just a wonderfully sweet movie that I highly recommend going to if you have a kid old enough to go to a theater and still young enough to love the theme.

If anything will bankrupt us, this will

I just got our February PG&E bill... I thought I got my real shock last month, when our bill was $370, but I guess the idiocy of government has no real limit... $440! I have to spell this out because it's so hard to believe. That's FOUR HUNDRED FORTY DOLLARS. For one month of elecricity, for the most part.

I mean, people, this is as much as many people pay for a whole month's RENT. And it's not like we're some power maniacs - we run a perfectly normal household, and we even try to limit usage to off-hours for things like the dishwasher. We replaced appliances recently and bought energy-saving ones. I don't know what to do anymore, but $5,000 a year for bloody elecricity is a killer. At over a quarter per KwH it's no wonder, but shit, the average cost per KwH across the nation is 6.1c - we're paying 28c - that's TWENTY EIGHT CENTS! That's almost FIVE TIMES AS MUCH! Why? Where the fuck are you, Mr. Gubernator?

How come we're not hearing a squeak from anyone about this? I can't believe any local economy can survive for long with this sort of hardship. I've spoken to friends all over the US, and they are, to a one, absolutely stunned. A good friend of mine from Denver mention that their monthly energy bill has increased by about 20% recently - to $90 a month. NINETY DOLLARS! I dream about a $200 a month energy bill, and she's telling me how awful a $90 a month bill is.

Will there be a stop to this? Or are we destined for even higher prices? I mean, at this point we are bordering on the ridiculous. Someone tell me it's going to get better. Please. Lie to me if you need to, but tell it's going to get better.

Geez.

Copyrant

My son is 3 1/2 years old, and seems to be a clever little guy to his beaming and none-too-objective daddy. Anyway, he started playing on his own "keyboard" (what he calls a computer) when he was about 2, and by the time he was 3, was already browsing the web with surprising fluidity (Chuck'E'Cheese is his favorite site).

Of course, games are the biggest attraction and we had a few of them installed for a while, but he's grown out of them so I went out and got some more - most recently, a Dora 3-pack and Tonka games from Atari. And it reminded me of something that already pissed me off greatly a year and a half ago, but before I had a blog. Namely, copy protection on kids game CD's.

I mean, what the hell? Do you really think that a 3-to-6 year old will hack your stupid game, copy and distribute to all their friends? Because I am certain you don't think the parents would be the ones doing that... I mean, think about your target market will you?

Who the hell makes these decisions anyway? Which stupid jerk - excuse my language but I am really mad right now - got to work one morning and said "hey, let's put copy protection on our Dora CD's so that we won't get ripped off in the marketplace!"?

Why am I so mad, you ask? Well, if you're asking you don't have kids. I'll explain this very simply. See, when you put computers in front of 3-year olds, you DO NOT, EVER, leave the CD in the drive. EVER. Otherwise, said CD will last less than 24 hours. This is a fact of life. Unless you plan to sit there throughout the whole experience - an even more idiotic assumption than the one attributing game stealing motives to overworked, overstressed parents - then the plan is install the game, take CD out, and keep it in a fireproof safe in another state. Or at least in some place that REALLY SMART, NIMBLE, CRAFTY small children have no chance of finding.

And when you're dealing with kids, you add another step - you copy the CD first in a safe location before even attempting to install the game from the copy. The original should not even get within 10 feet of said computer. Trust me, when you've had a CD scratched irrevocably by a loose paper clip stuck artfully inside of a CD drive you learn this lesson. No originals near kids or kids computers.

Instead, these morons, nincompoops, bloody frigging idiots at Atari decided to make the CD's copy-protected AND added a CD check for added measure. So not only can't I copy the CD, I can't run the game WITHOUT THE CD IN THE DRIVE. What the fuck? I mean, WHAT... THE... FUCK? Did you guys even stop to take a breath and, oh, THINK before signing off on this idiocy?

So I spent an afternoon trying to figure out how to rip these games, got a crash course on the Internet, and have successfully ripped two of the three Dora's as well as the Tonka thus far. Oh, look. Atari actually incentivized me to learn how to rip games! How's that for ironic, huh?!

Oh, if you want some tips, let me help you, too: find some tool that allows you to create an ISO image from the CD (such as the Undisker), then use a virtual CD emulator (such as Daemon Tools) to "emulate" the CD as if it was in the drive. Install the game normally, mount the ISO image in the CD emulator, and let the kids have their fun.

Me, I'm going to find out why I can't apply the same treatment to the 3rd Dora game. Seems like Undisker isn't able to deal with some sectors on that CD for some reason when creating the ISO image. But no worries; I now have the motivation, I am determined, and I WILL figure this out, just like those 15 year olds who do this with Doom. These bastards at Atari and Scholastic (a Clifford CD we have with the same issue) and other publishers who behave this way deserve nothing less. I think that from now on, just out of spite, I will personally make sure that I never, EVER buy a single game from publishers that do this for kids games, and rip them instead. You know, they went into so much trouble to give me the motivation to learn how to do it, it would be a shame to waste all this newfound knowledge.

And to end on a good note, one company DOES seem to get this right - Knowledge Adventure, who provides excellent kids software, with none of this nonsense of copy protection. My son loves their products, and my daughter (who is now 20 months of age) has picked their "duck at grandma's house" game out of the advanced toddler series as the one she fires up every time we let her play. Kudos.