又忘了一个考试日期。 今早刚发现。 昨晚到半夜写一个文章，到期日是昨天，文章是要描述一个博物馆。 昨天刚发现是要在昨天完成， 所以我昨天去了博物馆。 前天我发现我的生活发展课section five测试和作业的到日期是昨天。
所以现在我在写美国历史课的博物馆文章， 然后要做生活发展的作业。我忘了考试是地理学。
我对自己的记忆好不可思议。 咋会每周忘了重要的日期？ 咋会天天想不起是几日，几年？
子欲学。人学难以乎？
老婆打我电话，我和她说“你应该安慰我。” 她不愿意，觉得我很烦。
现在真没劲。。。
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
REVIEW: Transformers 2: George Bush is an Autobot
The political message of Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen became clear to me with the introduction of Galloway, the officious bureaucrat who barges into the headquarters of NEST, the joint military-Autobot combat force that is the only thing standing between soft, hapless humans and the metallic, destruction filled Decepticons.
Galloway has no interest in hearing the truth of imminent robo-terrorist attack that the robot/military heroes at NEST are risking their lives to prevent. He says to Optimus Prime "They are hunting you!" Just like Michael Moore and Chalmers Johnson, they think that the robo-terrorist Decepticons are an example of blowback resulting from the policies of the goodguys.
While Sam is setting off for college, the Decepticons are planning the ressurection of Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons. And we find out the Megatron, the dead villain of the first Transformers movie, is not the worst of the decpepticons, he has a master, The Fallen for the whom the sequel is named.
During the big Decepticon attack on Earth, Megatron releases a Bin Laden style video where he tells the humans "You're governments have lied to you!" What does that make someone who agrees with him, like Jon Stewart?
Then comes the only mention of Obama. As the world falls to the Decepticon attacks that his arrogant meddling paved the way for, a news program announces that he is being flown by helicopter to a hidden location. That is, he is flying away to hide while the robo-terrorists attack.
The heroes are stopped at a checkpoint in Egypt, where a diminutive Arab is dealt with by the mention of the awe-inspiring New York.
That's how you get O'reilly going from Entertainment news to Honest Americanism, and the Fox Network in harmony with Fox News.
Galloway walks right into this gang of secret military/transformers and starts insulting everybody and blaming the Decepticon (terrorist) attacks on the very Heroes who are fighting these evil robots!
And who would you imagine would be to blame for the granting of authority to this physically weak, possibly Jewish, clearly liberal blame-the Autobots-firster?
The New President! Although they don't have the balls to name Obama until halfway through the movie.
Optimus prime tries to ignore Galloway's intrusion. He is in the middle of briefing the pentagon on new intelligence that suggests that the Decepticons are planning an even greater attack on Earth.
Galloway has no interest in hearing the truth of imminent robo-terrorist attack that the robot/military heroes at NEST are risking their lives to prevent. He says to Optimus Prime "They are hunting you!" Just like Michael Moore and Chalmers Johnson, they think that the robo-terrorist Decepticons are an example of blowback resulting from the policies of the goodguys.
The unsung and hidden defenders of freedom are now maligned as enemies of freedom. And they are told that the president might decide that the best thing to do is for the Autobots to leave Earth (as the Republicans were ousted from power after preventing ten thousand more 9-11's.)
Of course, we the audience (the public) know that this is bullshit! The Autobots (Bush-Neocons) are the ones that have been saving our asses from those who have no higher goal than our destruction.
But Optimus Prime (Bush-Militarists) is no tyrant. Unlike the hasty, blame-Autobot-First clique currently in public, Optimus is honorable and must accept the will of Obama (still unnamed at this point in the movie)
The soldiers of NEST hate this overcritical, pompous bureaucrat. The harshest criticism is expressed, safely, by a black soldier, who after being told by this oppressive Obama lacky that his job is to shoot not talk, the black soldier expresses a desire to shoot this obnoxious Obama appointee. Having a black guy criticize Obama's blame America first foreign policy does two things: makes white people feel sympathetic, and lets white people get past the fear of being, or being thought of as a racist.
As the new, ignorant administration is shutting down the fight for humanity, the pure American family, the Witwickys, are getting ready for the hero's (Sam Witwicky's) passage into adulthood: going away to College.
His mother is unable to control her emotions, while his way too hot girlfriend is girlishly fretting over his refusal to say “I love you.”, and whether or not they will able to sustain a long term relationship.
Unfortunately, the normal lives of real Americans are about to be interrupted by the Decpticons lust for the power they need to continue their destruciton. Destruction being, of course, their primary goal, rather than, say, ideological, religous, political, or socio-economic changes.
Sam finds a sliver of The Cube, a source of Tranformer power that is explained throught the film as something scientifically equivalent to a mushroom in Super Mario Bros. The cube sliver that slips out of his hand, burns through a couple layers of his house and energizes his moms kitchen appliacnes into Decepticons who launch an attack on Sam and his family. The lovable, loyal bumblebee comes to Sam's rescue, in the proecess destroying a good deal of Sams house.
Bumblebee is the Jar Jar Binks/Lassie/stupid-but-loyal Native character. Unlike the rest of the Autobots, cannot talk. He demonstrates a rather foolish devotion to his chosen master, Sam Witwicke. His vast computer intelligence apparently doesn't include any complexity of desire, like robot sex, reading, traveling, or Autobot autoerticism.
The Witwicky parents need not lament the destruction of their home, since the existence of all the Transfomers is kept hidden from the public oas a matter of National Security, their damages will be fully compensated, and then some! State secrets really do benefit the little guy!
While Sam is setting off for college, the Decepticons are planning the ressurection of Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons. And we find out the Megatron, the dead villain of the first Transformers movie, is not the worst of the decpepticons, he has a master, The Fallen for the whom the sequel is named.
The Obama administrations clsing down of the NEST program leaves the other magic Cube fragment unguarded and the Decepticons jack it.
Then a super hot decepticon, in the form of a wetdream college co-ed is dispatched to Sam's college campus.
Sam's roommate at college is a conspiracy theorist who ends up seeing how stupid he was to malign the government for keeping secrets from the public, after all, we gotta fight the Decepticons.
During the big Decepticon attack on Earth, Megatron releases a Bin Laden style video where he tells the humans "You're governments have lied to you!" What does that make someone who agrees with him, like Jon Stewart?
Then comes the only mention of Obama. As the world falls to the Decepticon attacks that his arrogant meddling paved the way for, a news program announces that he is being flown by helicopter to a hidden location. That is, he is flying away to hide while the robo-terrorists attack.
The harassed and mistreated soldiers, the men giving their lives for our freedom, confront the Obama-ite about the clear cut need to fight! Fight! Fight! Amazingly, this scoundrel barks at the soldiers that the president wants a comprehensive military plan, not some stupid fight. He is even considering all options, including diplomatic channels!
The soldier explains to us exactly what 'diplomacy' means. He asks the man if this means that the president is ready to give in to the Decepticons demands and hand over the hero, Sam, to these thugs!
The man reiterates that all options are being considered! So we discover the lie behind Obama's high-fallutin' ramblings. He is an appeaser. Ready to appease the Decepticons, who are bent on destruction, not just of America, not just of the Earth, but of the very universe!
Obama is revealed as a man who knows nothing of the fight he quits, or the enemies he appeases!
The soldiers Nest must take their fight against evil underground. After the cowardly Decepticons gang up on Optimus, he dies. But Sam has a plan to revive him.
To carry out this plan, he needs the cooperation of the NEST soldiers. They agree, but must first get rid of the Obama jerk. They try to trick him into jumping out of a plane over Egypt. But the idiot can't even follow the simple instructions in opening a parachute. So the Obama-appointed dummy pulls his cord in the plane and is sucked out into the wide open sky.
Thakfully, the forces of good win in the end. The mealy mouthed appeasers in the White House are unsuccesful in sabotaging the good guys. After a showdown in Egypt, our soldiers achieve a vitory in the desert.
But we couldn't do it alone. The Jordanians, our long time ally in the Muslim, dictatorship dominated middle-east, come to our aid in the fight agaisnt the Decepticons.
Aside from them, there are three other depictions of non-Americans in the film. Sam's parents vacation in Paris, only to find annoying mimes, and 'nast' escargot.
The heroes are stopped at a checkpoint in Egypt, where a diminutive Arab is dealt with by the mention of the awe-inspiring New York.
When the heroes get to Egypt, they get to visit, a typical Egyptian town, apparently influenced by the parodied Arabic town in Team America.
I got used to so much anti-Bush sentiment, from American, other expats and Chinese people, while living in Shanghai, that I was rather shocked to see this bit of apologetics being snuck into the popular culture. But it sure fits in line with the general trend of contemporary Republicans: Use Base Fear and Hero Mythology to sell your bullshit.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
NON-FICTION: Healthcare, get it over with!
I am so sick of the irrelevant arguments traded back and forth over the issue of health reform. Nobody likes HMO's. They were an artificial creation facilitated by the government under Richard Nixon.
Nobody denies that they make profits by denying healthcare and nobody can deny that most people are not satisfied with the current system.
Some conservatives are taking the "I agree theirs a problem, but that's just not the way to solve it." angle, which is entirely disingenuous.
The mainstream conservative angle for the past eight years has been fear of foreigners, be they from south of the border, north of Korea, or east of Africa.
And they still pursue those issues on Fox News. About the only time they give a damn about healthcare is when they are trying to scare people away from accepting government run healthcare or inventing horror stories of the all the countries that have some sort of socialized healthcare.
They find one or two Candians to tell us ignorant Americans the nightmare north of us. Just like they found Iraqis who were begging us to invade, gays who want to be saved, and Iranians who desperately seek the intervention of the great United States.
Their story is the same old story warmongers and advocates of tyranny never tire of telling, fear of the Others.
Fox news might as well hire Ana-Lucia as a prime time host and have her kill an Other every night on air.
And now, when this country is suffering another bout of economic diarrhea, unable to hold down any financial nourishment in the lower parts of it's system (and after binging on food unwilling to meet any standards of safety,) now they come back with more fear, fear of health care for everyone.
Back in the nineties they demonized Hillary with the 'government between you and your doctor' line and now they repeat it every time they face the camera.
They imagine that now we have direct contact with 'our' doctor. As if this were the imagined fifties old timey down home Andy Griffith Show bullshit they remember to ward off the actuality of corruption, racism, and the ever present poor.
Who the hell has 'a doctor' nowadays? More and more of us our unemployed, and our insurance provides us with very little long term one on one contact with 'a doctor.'
At the same time, most people I know over forty have to pay a large portion of their income in prescription bills.
The insurance money they pay goes to guaranteeing them more and more medical costs as they get older, and closer to retiring, and not earning an income.
This is the system the Republicans are defending. Their system.
It's a tired analogy to make, but essential to keep in mind: Libraries. I'm sitting in one. I come here to use the internet and check out books.
I could go to Borders and buy or browse new copies of the books I have checked out now (two on statistics, three on Kepler, two on writing, and a novel "Netherland")
But I get it free here. I can research and learn, all for free! It's magical.
And yet, our pro-freedom, traditional liberty-loving conservatives prefer that I drive over to a privately owned bookstore and pay for every little page I turn.
That's the freedom of the free market. The freedom to pay for everything, the freedom for your bookstore, or your doctors managers, to charge you more and more, as much as they can get away with at each point, so that they can continue to grow.
What a splendid freedom to have to buy books that are cheaper to provide for the cost of a library card and funds provided by taxes.
What a glorious, god-given freedom to pay for medicine and doctor's visits that other countries get for free.
What an even more blessed freedom to not even have to worry about scheduling a doctor's appointment, because you can't find a full time job, you're too much of a risk, or you fit into any of the other free-from-medicine categories.
The fact is that it is more efficient to organize essential services collectively. Production in bulk is cheaper, providing services that you know everyone will need or use is better done on the scale that it is going to effect: the large scale: the national scale.
That's why the conservatives poo themselves at the thought of the federal government not increasing military funding enough, cutting that funding, or not giving certain aspects of our federal government enough power, like the CIA, NSA, FBI.
People that have jobs and pay taxes make more and better service available for those of us who are poor, come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and can't find work.
All this talk of rights and socialism and slippery slopes is a stupid, pedantic distraction from the fact that everyone needs health care, medicine, and access to doctors. The question of how to provide it is one that we can answer as a community, a nation, a people, or as citizens of our private, ideologically formed alienation, wherein we each exist free of systemic cause and effect.
And that is the ultimate freedom conservatives that motivates conservatives to think of every Freddy Krueger nightmare they can to scare; the freedom to ignore the dialectic character of reality, the simultaneity of causation, the dependence of big upon small, poor upon rich, and the history upon the individual, the individual on law, one human on the next.
Nobody denies that they make profits by denying healthcare and nobody can deny that most people are not satisfied with the current system.
Some conservatives are taking the "I agree theirs a problem, but that's just not the way to solve it." angle, which is entirely disingenuous.
The mainstream conservative angle for the past eight years has been fear of foreigners, be they from south of the border, north of Korea, or east of Africa.
And they still pursue those issues on Fox News. About the only time they give a damn about healthcare is when they are trying to scare people away from accepting government run healthcare or inventing horror stories of the all the countries that have some sort of socialized healthcare.
They find one or two Candians to tell us ignorant Americans the nightmare north of us. Just like they found Iraqis who were begging us to invade, gays who want to be saved, and Iranians who desperately seek the intervention of the great United States.
Their story is the same old story warmongers and advocates of tyranny never tire of telling, fear of the Others.
Fox news might as well hire Ana-Lucia as a prime time host and have her kill an Other every night on air.
And now, when this country is suffering another bout of economic diarrhea, unable to hold down any financial nourishment in the lower parts of it's system (and after binging on food unwilling to meet any standards of safety,) now they come back with more fear, fear of health care for everyone.
Back in the nineties they demonized Hillary with the 'government between you and your doctor' line and now they repeat it every time they face the camera.
They imagine that now we have direct contact with 'our' doctor. As if this were the imagined fifties old timey down home Andy Griffith Show bullshit they remember to ward off the actuality of corruption, racism, and the ever present poor.
Who the hell has 'a doctor' nowadays? More and more of us our unemployed, and our insurance provides us with very little long term one on one contact with 'a doctor.'
At the same time, most people I know over forty have to pay a large portion of their income in prescription bills.
The insurance money they pay goes to guaranteeing them more and more medical costs as they get older, and closer to retiring, and not earning an income.
This is the system the Republicans are defending. Their system.
It's a tired analogy to make, but essential to keep in mind: Libraries. I'm sitting in one. I come here to use the internet and check out books.
I could go to Borders and buy or browse new copies of the books I have checked out now (two on statistics, three on Kepler, two on writing, and a novel "Netherland")
But I get it free here. I can research and learn, all for free! It's magical.
And yet, our pro-freedom, traditional liberty-loving conservatives prefer that I drive over to a privately owned bookstore and pay for every little page I turn.
That's the freedom of the free market. The freedom to pay for everything, the freedom for your bookstore, or your doctors managers, to charge you more and more, as much as they can get away with at each point, so that they can continue to grow.
What a splendid freedom to have to buy books that are cheaper to provide for the cost of a library card and funds provided by taxes.
What a glorious, god-given freedom to pay for medicine and doctor's visits that other countries get for free.
What an even more blessed freedom to not even have to worry about scheduling a doctor's appointment, because you can't find a full time job, you're too much of a risk, or you fit into any of the other free-from-medicine categories.
The fact is that it is more efficient to organize essential services collectively. Production in bulk is cheaper, providing services that you know everyone will need or use is better done on the scale that it is going to effect: the large scale: the national scale.
That's why the conservatives poo themselves at the thought of the federal government not increasing military funding enough, cutting that funding, or not giving certain aspects of our federal government enough power, like the CIA, NSA, FBI.
People that have jobs and pay taxes make more and better service available for those of us who are poor, come from lower socio-economic backgrounds, and can't find work.
All this talk of rights and socialism and slippery slopes is a stupid, pedantic distraction from the fact that everyone needs health care, medicine, and access to doctors. The question of how to provide it is one that we can answer as a community, a nation, a people, or as citizens of our private, ideologically formed alienation, wherein we each exist free of systemic cause and effect.
And that is the ultimate freedom conservatives that motivates conservatives to think of every Freddy Krueger nightmare they can to scare; the freedom to ignore the dialectic character of reality, the simultaneity of causation, the dependence of big upon small, poor upon rich, and the history upon the individual, the individual on law, one human on the next.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Next Dimension Editorial: Whither Ad-Archy?
Whither Ad-Archy?
When time, guided by the hand of the almighty, accretes such a layer of institutions atop the debris of generations of chaos and misrule that the entirety of the commonwealth is granted the convenience of being directed in desire and action, towards the ever greater emancipation of their undeserving desires, there cannot but be a reflexive, envious opposition to such a system, an opposition led by the usual malcontents of society, all masquerading under varied guises, but all, nonethelss serving the same end; mere anarchy.
And that is just the place that our world has arrived at. So many of the beneficiaries of Ad-archy would, in an instant, banish the ties of organization that bind together the genius of marketing conglomerates, ad-agencies, content providers, and every conceivable enterprise, all smoothly interlocked to serve the masses by providing us with both will and vision.
This is the real plan of the anarchists. Talk of cooperation, of freedom from the alleged tyranny of consumerism, supposed allegiance to the earth; all these are ad hoc justifications that have risen in the mind of these anarchists, one by one, in response to foolishness of their hatred when it is pointed out to them.
Instead of taking a nuanced view, wherein the faults of our system, which none of us deny, might be redressed, they revert to the simplicity of hostility and youth, and thereby imperil the very masses they purport to liberate.
Ad-archy, they say, manipulates the innocent public. They conjure up monoliths of greed and disaffection, where in fact none exist.
Who is this public that is exploited? Are not ad-designers part of the public? And at what point do the administrators and more successful marketing technicians suddenly get themselves extracted from the public and cease being one of us?
If such a question seem unfair, it is even more so because they would have no answer for it.
They, as all of their apologetics attest, do not even wish to differentiate between the vast majority of lawful and moral advertisement technicians, and the few that run astray.
To them, it is just one large ball of undifferentiated evil.
But, for the sake of a chivalry which they would rather not grant us, let us consider the main tenets of anarchism, as it relates to the desire of destruction for Ad-archy.
Commercials, to the them, are not guides, but fists aimed at smashing the masses into submission.
Likewise, those peoples in developing economies with markedly less sophisticated ad-technology are considered to be under siege from international corporations bent on 'rape and pillaging' natives who lack the sophistication of these educated anarchists.
Wherever in the world, or in time, you find the technicians of Ad-Archy developing the simplistic savagery of native peoples into the comforts and sophistication of modernity, so to will you find the beneficiaries of Ad-Archy denouncing it for not supplying the meaning that these malcontents are too lazy to create themselves.
When time, guided by the hand of the almighty, accretes such a layer of institutions atop the debris of generations of chaos and misrule that the entirety of the commonwealth is granted the convenience of being directed in desire and action, towards the ever greater emancipation of their undeserving desires, there cannot but be a reflexive, envious opposition to such a system, an opposition led by the usual malcontents of society, all masquerading under varied guises, but all, nonethelss serving the same end; mere anarchy.
And that is just the place that our world has arrived at. So many of the beneficiaries of Ad-archy would, in an instant, banish the ties of organization that bind together the genius of marketing conglomerates, ad-agencies, content providers, and every conceivable enterprise, all smoothly interlocked to serve the masses by providing us with both will and vision.
This is the real plan of the anarchists. Talk of cooperation, of freedom from the alleged tyranny of consumerism, supposed allegiance to the earth; all these are ad hoc justifications that have risen in the mind of these anarchists, one by one, in response to foolishness of their hatred when it is pointed out to them.
Instead of taking a nuanced view, wherein the faults of our system, which none of us deny, might be redressed, they revert to the simplicity of hostility and youth, and thereby imperil the very masses they purport to liberate.
Ad-archy, they say, manipulates the innocent public. They conjure up monoliths of greed and disaffection, where in fact none exist.
Who is this public that is exploited? Are not ad-designers part of the public? And at what point do the administrators and more successful marketing technicians suddenly get themselves extracted from the public and cease being one of us?
If such a question seem unfair, it is even more so because they would have no answer for it.
They, as all of their apologetics attest, do not even wish to differentiate between the vast majority of lawful and moral advertisement technicians, and the few that run astray.
To them, it is just one large ball of undifferentiated evil.
But, for the sake of a chivalry which they would rather not grant us, let us consider the main tenets of anarchism, as it relates to the desire of destruction for Ad-archy.
Commercials, to the them, are not guides, but fists aimed at smashing the masses into submission.
Likewise, those peoples in developing economies with markedly less sophisticated ad-technology are considered to be under siege from international corporations bent on 'rape and pillaging' natives who lack the sophistication of these educated anarchists.
Wherever in the world, or in time, you find the technicians of Ad-Archy developing the simplistic savagery of native peoples into the comforts and sophistication of modernity, so to will you find the beneficiaries of Ad-Archy denouncing it for not supplying the meaning that these malcontents are too lazy to create themselves.
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