I Got Tree Raped by the Evil Dead Remake (and not in a good way)

This is my five-word review for the Evil Dead remake: What A Piece of Shit. No Tension. No Characters. No Humor. and Plenty of Plot-less Misogyny to boot. Right Now I'm not as mad about the thirteen bucks i lost as much as i'm pissed off about the 90 minutes that has been stolen from my life. Fede Alverez, you are everything that is wrong with modern horror. You are an amateur who was given way too much money, and If me and my colleagues were given even a quarter of your budget we could make an infinitely (and i mean INFINITELY) better horror film, Guaren-Fuckin-teed. Go back to Uruguay and stop making movies you Fucking Asshole.

Fair Game

This week I finally got around to seeing Doug Liman’s new film “Fair Game” which chronicles the Valerie Plame Leak Case. I found it especially relevant in light of the recent scandal involving Wikileaks and the diplomatic cables. Our reading this week talks about the culture of journalism and the security of information and I think both of those things are being brought into question right now.
The first thing people are questioning is whether or not it is unethical for an organization like Wikileaks to expose information deemed “secret” by the US government. Now in the past, during the cold war let’s say, it probably would be unethical considering most secret information was indeed best kept secret i.e nuclear launch codes. But in recent years the designation “secret” has become so bloated that it’s hard to decipher what’s important and what is in fact bureaucratic bullshit. Thousands of government workers are granted the power to classify information “secret” and Millions more have the Clearance to read that information. It has been argued that classifying everything “secret” actually makes information less safe because it makes people cynical towards Government secrecy and therefore less concerned with keeping sensitive information out of the wrong hands. I have to agree with this argument; and circling back to the first question, is what Wikileaks did unethical? No. The way I see it, as long as they don’t expose information that will put others in harm’s way, whatever they want to put out there is fair game.
On the other hand, what Scooter Libby and Karl Rove did was not fair game. By Leaking Plame’s identity they not only endangered her and her family, but they enabled the murders of numerous assets that Plame Came in contact with in the line of duty, including nuclear scientists she was trying to Shepard out of Iraq. Their actions are a reflection of government’s “do as we say, not as we do” mentality and it has to stop.

Now They Tell Us - My Thoughts

What Michael Massing is saying about the modern news media, or at least about its relationship with the government, is that it amounts to nothing more than a cheap condom. Its lies around harmless, is slipped on when needed, and is discarded just as fast. And I have to agree with him.
The New York Times especially lacked the balls to deliver any serious war reporting. They pulled all their punches during the march to war, and then made a pathetic attempt to save their image by printing a tepid letter addressing the fact that they’re really a bunch of pussies but are going to try to ask hard questions in the future.
At least Massing was smart enough to offer solutions to the problems he presented. He suggests that the major imbalance in modern news media is a lack of alternative perspectives. He suggests having more reporters on staff that can speak Arabic so that they can get a perspective from the Iraqi side of the conflict to counter the narrow view of the war presented by the American armed forces. This, I agree, would have made American coverage of the war much more informative and more on par with coverage from foreign news outlets.
What I found most intriguing in the book, though, was not Massing’s analysis of the media failure leading up to the war, but his description of the Arabic news channel Al-Jazeera and how it was established. Apparently back during the cold war the Arab world was divided into two relatively easy to understand groups, the secular left and the religious right. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, somehow the secular left disappeared and religious extremists began to take their place. It’s quite strange. But now the Emir of Qatar is trying to use the money his country has amassed from its natural gas reserves to try and create a secular democracy, and one of the steps that was taken to help foster that democracy was the establishment of an all Arab news network. That’s how Al-Jazeera was born. Now, even though Al-Jazeera has been described as “the Arab fox news” it is still a strong alternative voice in the news media. It had people on the ground in Iraq from the beginning and was one of the only places to get an Iraqi point of view concerning the conflict. Also, its employees are composed of both religious and secular Arabs, which gives me hope that secularism can still somehow remain relevant in the region despite overwhelming pressure from extremists.

The Consumer Map

Things change. That’s undeniable. But why do they Change? Because of natural forces? Or is change propelled by the ulterior motives of certain individuals. The answer is of course both. But what I’m most interested in is which has more effect then the other.
Over the past two hundred years, society has gone from an economy where local communities produce their own goods and operate independently to an economy where consumers have all their goods produced outside their community and are hopelessly dependent on a single global network of goods and services. Did it get this way as a natural progression of society’s growth? Or did it arise from the natural greed inherent in the capitalist system? Once again, both.
Advertisers have been accused of creating needs that the consumer never knew they had. Numerous holidays now exist only to encourage people to buys goods they would never normally buy. But do people accept this climate of frivolousness because they’ve been conditioned to? Or does the human mind naturally lean toward more numerous and diverse options? This one i think has an actual answer.
I don’t think people are stupid enough to buy something because Google or any other advertiser tells them too. Advertising has pretty much taken over our society, but people still ultimately buy things because the want to, not because their told to. Which makes the whole monster of advertising kind of pointless, right? Well, not exactly. People know what they want, but they usually don’t know where to get it. That’s where advertising ultimately makes its mark. Each advertisement is like a traffic sign pointing in a different direction. No direction is wrong. But if you only have one sign telling you where to go, you’re going to go there for lack of a better option.
If everybody could advertise at an equal rate we’d have a much more balanced consumer map. But that’s not how the system works, is it? The map is dominated by the major players, and when a smaller name breaks through its usually because of some unusual strength. That's how capitalism works unfortunately. A few players grow larger and eat up all the rest. And i can't see it changing anytime soon. In the meantime, all we can do is look a little closer and try and find the names that have slipped through the cracks.

Papers and Rags

Back in Boston we have three major papers, The Globe, the Herald, and the Phoenix. The Globe is what we call "the paper", the outlet considered the most prestigious and objective. Then there’s the Herald which we call "the Rag" because it’s articles are mostly reactionary rubbish and story’s recycled from the AP wire. The Phoenix, the independent paper with no cover charge, is the only paper we refer to by name. Most of its staff writers have communist tendencies, but it’s the only place off the net where you can find a movie review that isn’t studio purchased garbage.
This hierarchy seems to be the norm in most major American cities; a paper, a rag, and an independent. Each appeal to a different sector, but they all print the big stories. Their differences lie with the opinions. The Paper is usually slightly liberal, and the rag recognizably conservative, at least in blue states. People choose the one that reinforces their own views and ignore the other.
This hierarchy has also defined the structure of internet news, but with even starker contrast. There are extremely liberal sites and extremely conservative sites with very little ground left in the middle. You used to be able to rely of newspapers for an objective view point, but they’re dying out fast because no one reads them anymore. But why is that? Is it because people simply hate the feeling of newsprint in their hands, or is it because people aren’t looking for an objective viewpoint anymore? It’s a scary trend. One that I hope gets reversed in the near future.

I Am in Hardware Hell

Let me explain... this Friday i woke up and my PC was dead. or at least blind. The motor was still chugging but the screen was black. So, "dead video card" i thought, "ill just go down to best buy and get a new one". So I pick up a new Mid-range card, bring it back, pop it in, and it works. For a while at least. The next morning i wake up and the thing is deader than it was the previous morning. It wont even boot up. So I call up a friend who's fluent with PC hardware and he says that my Power supply has probably died. So, Once again, Down to best buy, bring back a new power supply and install it.
Nothing. It's now officially a paper weight.

It feels almost as if a relative has died. I feel totally displaced over here on the couch, bent over typing on my Macbook. The PC nook I've established is very comfortable. Perfect chair, perfect desk height, monitor tilted just so. I spend hours there, surfing the web, writing scripts,gaming. Its like my home within my home. An extension of myself.

Needless to say, this will not stand. ITS UPGRADE TIME. As soon as possible I'm going out and buying a new PC with a processor twice the speed of my 2-year old machine. and with the new graphics card and power supply my computing power will be greater than ever. You'll see. The Nook won't even know that i was gone.

Communism 2.0: Governments + Corporations = Better world, Right?

Yesterday I went to see the documentary “Inside Job” which illustrates how the financial sector made hundreds of billions of dollars by making bets against their own investments which were designed to fail. How were they able to pull off the greatest robbery in human history if full view of the public? Well, first they got their executives appointed to government positions and had them burn the regulations put in place after the great depression to protect the public from unstable and predatory financial practices. Then they consolidated into groups so large that their failure would threaten the economic stability of the world. After that it was open season to make whatever risky bets they wanted. Then, when the floor fell out of the market, the banks turned to Uncle Sam and said, “If we go down, everyone goes down.” At which point congress easily coughed up a trillion dollars that the bankers got to keep, no questions asked.
My point is that government deregulation imposed by corporate interests almost always makes things worse. In the reading, I can see this happened in the radio industry a while ago. When the telecommunications act was passed in 1996, it pretty much eliminated all regulations on radio station ownership, and what we got was a white wash of homogenized crap on the airwaves. Corporations only look out for themselves, and when they don’t have to follow any rules they will attempt, and often succeed, at taking over the whole system. Once this happens we are often left with inferior products because the companies see no need to improve or innovate in the face on zero competition. It basically amounts to a form of corporate communism, and suffers from the same shortfalls that the Soviet Union suffered during its short tenure in human history. Deregulation is un-American because it ends up crushing competition under the guise of encouraging it, but since corporate cronies are still allowed to serve in government positions I can’t see the deregulation bandwagon rolling to a stop anytime soon.