Haunted By Hollows Part Two

Caroline: "You have repeatedly raped me!"
Adelle: "Excuse me? I have done no such thing! You agreed to this!"
Caroline: "I never had a choice!"
Adelle: "We always have a choice!"

That's the exchange I've been waiting to see since the first scene of the first episode of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Since we first saw the two main characters of this shadow play treating tea drinking as if it were a chess board, that's the elephant in the room to which I wanted them to eventually return. Adelle DeWitt, mistress of the Dollhouse, gives Caroline an ultimatum: let us use your body as we see fit for five years, and we will give you back the rest of your life only better. We will fix whatever you perceive to be wrong about it, and you'll get a fresh start. Or except the consequences of your actions and the fact we will not let you go to the authorities and shut us down. Caroline had a choice, but if she wanted to continue breathing, she only had one choice. People feel like that all the time.

I don't get to make the choices that lead to that exchange though. Those decisions are far from my grasp. There's now rumors that Fox Television is not going to show the thirteenth and last episode of Dollhouse. It won't get broadcast. Something they want to save for the DVD no doubt, to encourage more people to buy it. The carrot put out on the stick for us consumers to go 'nom nom nom' on like hopeless squirrels. Joss Whedon has strived throughout this mockery of television publicity to shine a light of beauty and compassion on the Fox Network. He does not want his loyal audience to blame them for the inevitable cancelation of Dollhouse. It was perhaps doomed from the start. It's a premise that network television can't abide. We're talking about using technology to rape people. That's the long and the short of it. A fascinating concept actually. I wish I'd thought of it.

Oh wait. I did. Doctor Xanus. Back in elementary school. A crazy man built a fortress laboratory into a mountain, inside which he had captured human specimens which he then did insane experiments that tortured and twisted the very genetic make up of these poor souls, and he brainwashed their minds so they would follow his every order, fulfill his every maddening whim. Then one day, Doctor Xanus went out into the world to capture another victim for his experiments. He had left instructions for his slaves to continue their routines until his return. While away, his laboratory was self-sufficient, and was even designed to withstand nuclear winter, because he believed humanity was going to eventually destroy itself, and his efforts alone would find a way to make superior humans that could survive anything. He was an insane genius.

Anyway. Something went wrong. Xanus never came back. Maybe he was captured by police. Maybe he just died of natural causes. Maybe any number of a thousand other possibilities occurred. I don't think I ever answered that part of the story. Yet his fortress laboratory under the mountain remained for years, and those inside it continued his work and followed their routines as instructed, waiting for his return. Then one day, years later while on a camping trip with friends, a nerdy teenager named Trevor happened to fall into what he had thought was an old abandoned mineshaft. While trying to find a way out, he stumbled upon an entrance to Xanus' laboratory, and the creatures inside it thought he was their Doctor Xanus. I never finished the tale. I think I started from the idea of a kid falling in a mineshaft and finding a crazy doctor's humanoid brainwashed slaves, and then built the hows and whys around that fall into the mountain. That initial moment of surprise and shock and awe. I guess the end of the story would be the real Xanus somehow returning. Or maybe just the discovery of what happened to him once and for all, but I never answered that for myself.

So maybe the Xanus laboratory in the mountain is not exactly The Dollhouse. I guess there's nothing new under the sun. However, it's how we interpret the old in new ways that puts our individual mark on it. Still, perhaps one of the many reasons why I enjoy Joss Whedon's work so much is that it inspires one's creative juices. Not so that one thinks they can do better. That part kinda keeps my creative juices in check cuz I SO cannot do better than Whedon. Still, one sees a story about vampires existing in modern day and one thinks what other things could co-exist today upon which stories could be told? How many other alleys are there that some other blonde chick could walk down it and begin an adventure?

I'm not satisfied with part one of this vomiting of thought upon these pages [and I'm not satisfied with part two either now that I'm done with it]. There's something in me that won't spit out. It's painful typing these words and I'm not sure why. It's a simple thing. We all have choices. Every day. Every fucking day we make choices, from the nanosecond we wake up in the morning. To quote from the illustrious Margaret Cho, "should I get up and pee, or just pee in the bed?" Those choices have consequences. Peeing in the bed would feel good for about ten seconds, but eventually you're gonna have to clean the sheets... and air out the mattress. So we make the only viable alternative choice; we get the hell out of bed, go to the damned toilet, and we start our godforsaken day, which is going to contain a whole nightmare of other choices like that. Freedom versus control.. or rather the illusion of control via choices that are not really choices when you weigh the options. We make the best choices based on those available. The choices that are least painful or have the least number of bad consequences.

I could have written Evelyn Hollows story. I coulda tried harder to get it right. I coulda found the right medium within which to tell her story. I coulda done whatever one has to do to figure out what an audience really wants in storytelling and then mold and shape Evelyn Hollows' story to meet an audience's expectations. I could have done Evelyn justice. Whedon did it with Buffy. And Angel. And Reynolds. And Echo. Why can't I do that for the population of characters inside my head? Evelyn deserves better than me.

When I saw the episode Haunted, my mind's eye superimposed scenes of the Hollows Eve storyline when snippets of visuals or dialogue coincided coincidentally with where my mind had gone years before. Objectively speaking the comparisons are totallly irrational. Both stories have a leading talented equestian female from a well-to-do family who cheats death. That's about where the similarities end. However, seeing Eliza Dushku walking through the paces of a story vaguely similar to that of Evelyn Hollows... was rather creepy. Evelyn Hollows was buried in a long black dress, so that's how I see her pretty much throughout the story. So when my mind's eye would superimpose images of the Hollows Eve story as I watched Dollhouse's Haunted, the similarities were uncanny. Even her facial expressions triggered images I could only paint mentally from 1987.

Revisiting this, I'm still not doing it right, or conveying to you the reader how heartstoppingly queer this experience was. I did enjoy Haunted very much, but I can't tell if that's because it is thus far the best episode Whedon's Think Tank has done for the series, or because it rekindled a fire I'd long since thought extinguished, and without even realizing it, did justice to a tale I couldn't regurgitate out of my creative juices no matter how many times I have tried in the past twenty years. Perhaps that's a true sign of genius, if the talent of one storyteller can spark the creative juices in another. I don't know.

They say there are two different kinds of the same story. There's the story the writer writes, and there's the story that the reader gets. How the reader interprets the writer's story is something over which the writer has only an illusion of control. When I read Michael Crichton's "The Lost World" before seeing the movie, I had in my mind's eye seen only Sigourney Weaver in the role of Sarah Harding. In the movie, Stephen Spielberg obviously saw Julianne Moore in the part. Decidedly different strong women with remarkably different approaches to their role in storytelling. I was not disappointed in Ms. Moore's performance, but I had to do some mental gymnastics to hop on board Spielberg's superiority of the situation.

So there's more than two interpretations. There's as many different versions of a story as there are people reading it. If you have a group of people writing the story, each of them perceive the story differently too, even though accumuatively they only churn out one physical version of it. Even for one individual, there's multiple stories for the same story. I can't explain with any simplicity how many different versions of the stories surrounding Bridgeborouogh have taken in my mind's eye as I've struggled with trying to find a place to put it or a way to convey it that does the story justice. I have often also tried to leave Bridgeborough and tell stories that don't go there at all, but much like Kevin Smith's relationship with the View Askew universe, one always finds oneself gravitating back to the well that helped one begin. The neurons that fire creatively in my cerebellum are hardwired to a place I've never been, that doesn't exist, but I know precisely where it is. I can smell it. I can taste it. I can feel it.

And when something out of the blue triggers those memories in the most unlikely places, I find myself trying to make these connections and understand why, but there are no answers. Just as the perfume of a passing woman in a bar might suddenly call to mind an apple tree I loved to climb when I was eleven, that woman is not going to understand or appreciate the sudden sensations that flow through me, and I'm not going to be able to tell her she makes me feel young again. She's not going to understand. Or she's going to think I'm trying to stick my dick in her when what I really want her to do is help me find an apple tree we can climb together. Considering the dress she's wearing, she'd probably be less inclined to climbing than the other thing. Besides my back ain't what it used to be. Maybe it'd be enough for me to just politely ask her what fragrance is that, and then thank her and walk away. She'd never know why I asked. I'd be unable to tell her the story. Doubtful it would be of interest to her anyway.

Perhaps these stories of Evelyn Hollows and Justin Graves and Brandon Witcher should never be told. Maybe that's the point. If they were worth telling I would have been able to make it work by now. Or maybe I have failed them. The choices that I have made in my life have been choices that ultimately failed them. I am unable to go back and make different choices and I can't seem to find a choice now going forward that would give these characters their deserved day in the sun. All the years they have entertained me, and I lack the power to return the favor.

So I put them in the back of my mind and I try to forget them, and sometimes I'm successful in that choice. Sometimes I go entire years without thinking about them, or maybe that's what I tell myself. I actually think I think about them far more often than I let myself remember.

But last night, watching Dollhouse's Haunted, the floodgates were once again opened. I guess you could say I'm having... difficulty closing the gates again.

Haunted By Hollows Part One

"...you don't pitch 'Buffy' with 'The Body.' You earn that. You pitch it with the premise, and then you get to all the stuff that you're really doing it for."
-- Joss Whedon

This will take a little explanation. I'll try to keep it brief. [I lied. This so is not brief.]

Back around the early 1980s, I wrote a story mostly for my own benefit; entertaining myself and trying to teach myself how to write. I never got the story to a final draft. It took many incarnations. It was a poem at one time. Then a short story. Then it became the inspiration for a comic book I could never draw. Then I game mastered DC Heroes for friends and elements of the story filtered in. This story grew and blossomed and I still carry it with me. It's more than one story now. It's a lot of stories. Far too many than I could ever tell. And while parts of it remain solid in my mind, other parts remain fluid. The majority of the foundation was built in the early eighties, but now and then I return to this place in my mind - it's an entire city now - and I find more there that I hadn't found before, like I'm a tourist, or a journalist, or even an archeologist, digging up more streets and buildings and people and places and things. Like it's all always been there waiting for me to discover it.

Currently I tell myself stories about one of the estranged granddaughters of one of the characters in the original tale. She doesn't even know about her past. Part of the ongoing narrative is that eventually she's supposed to figure it out, but so far she hasn't, because ironically her personality tends to look forward and not back. I should get all this down on paper somehow. I have tried. It's just bigger and better inside my head than my humble talents to tell it on paper. I can't convey it in a way that would enrapture an audience as much as it has already enraptured me.

Every now and then, I see elements of my story show up elsewhere. In movies. In books. Other talented people telling their stories, and I see reflections of my story in theirs. Like ripples of my own reflection in a disturbed pond owned by someone else. I can't grasp my reflection and claim it as mine. As soon as it's there, it's gone.

The movie Mask for example, with Jim Carrey. It reminds me painfully of my failure to tell Justin Grave's story. Elements of a character in my own story called Harlequin, that I came up with easily a decade before I saw the movie, appear in Mask. There's no way the writer of Mask could have known about my story cuz I never got it down on paper in any public manner. I never published it. However, watching Mask the first time left me a little disturbed. It's not the story of Harlequin. There's a lot of major differences. However, a mask that gives powers to whomever wears it? That was the impetus; the germinal idea behind Harlequin's character. The Mask just did it better than I could ever do. And the humor.. well, Justin started as a standup comedian who couldn't be funny, but the mask had the spirit of a medieval jester that over time ...well Justin learns how to laugh, but he also learns how to grieve. It was the whole tragedy versus comedy mask thing. I guess the story could still work. Maybe there'd be an audience. However, after seeing The Mask with Jim Carrey, I felt the wind knocked out of my sails. I couldn't ever make Harlequin better than Mask.

There have been other examples of this, but as I said when I started, I wanted to keep this brief. Enough preamble. Tonight I felt it happen again. Another character from this city, her name was Evelyn Hollows. She was a colleague of Justin's after he got the mask, and after she got to die.

Evelyn was a popular and successful equestrian who competed with her favorite mare, but there were people who didn't want Evelyn to continue winning, so they drugged her horse just before a competition. The plan was for the horse to go crazy during the routine and throw the contest. The people who drugged her horse didn't know that the mare would throw Evelyn off and then trample her to death. It wasn't the mare's fault, but the drugs ruined her and after an animal publically kills a human being, there's little that can be done but put her down.

So Evelyn and her mare both died that night. However, Evelyn had previously made a bargain with supernatural forces, and challenged the Reaper to a game of chess for her soul. She won, and was able to return to life in her original body. The Reaper didn't tell her though, that she'd come back to a body that was supernaturally enhanced, and linked to a minor diety that had her own agenda. Evelyn wanted to come back to life to investigate her death and that of her horse, but first the minor diety had to be appeased, and Evelyn didn't want to do what the diety wanted her to do. Evelyn essentially returned to the streets of her childhood as an undead thing. Unable to do more but observe her loved ones from afar, and tho the minor diety was powerful enough to grant her special abilities, there were also limitations and side effects to this imitation of life.

Eventually, with the help of the father of her best friend (a paranormal investigator named Brandon Witcher) Evelyn Hollows was able to both appease the minor diety that gave her a second life, and discover that her life was ended by someone close to her. The discovery of this betrayal struck her more painfully than any horse's hoof, and she no longer wanted this illusion of life. However, the deal struck allowed the minor diety and her lord and master to keep her animated as long as she wanted, and she wanted Evelyn to convince people to worship her again, because more believers and converts means more power. That's about where she's at when Evelyn encounters Brandon Witcher's granddaughter some thirty-odd years later.

Now, I guess based on the above description, anyone who saw tonight's episode of The Dollhouse, which was titled Haunted, would probably not see what I saw. Again, this isn't the same story. However, I see elements of Hallow's Eve reflected in Haunted. I see a story better told than I could tell. The equestrian woman who gets a second chance at life is older than Evelyn, and it's not a minor diety she strikes a bargain with but Adele DeWitt of the Dollhouse. Still, the pain of learning how her family members really felt about her when she lived - I gasped. The look on Eliza Dushku's face in that moment is the look I see on Evelyn Hollows every time my mind's eye looks upon her. The sadness and frailty of knowing in death what one could never have known in life. The realization of how precious every waking breath truly is, that you can only know when you are trapped inside a body that no longer needs to draw a breath.

Now, in this incarnation, the equestrian woman came back in a younger form, and was able to talk to her family directly. That wasn't the case with Evelyn. She could never go near them because she looked too ghastly. She needed someone to intervene on her behalf, which is where Bewitcher came into the picture. He was a paranormal investigator. Murders involving people not really dead? Kinda one of his specialties. So there are obvious differences, but I can honestly say Haunted was a far superior way to tell the kind of story I wanted to tell back in 1987 when I first tried to get all this down on paper somehow.

It both hurt and helped, to see on a screen images that I had previously only seen in my mind's eye. I'd never thought about it before but dark eyes, dark hair, pale skin. Eliza Dushku woulda made a good Evelyn Hollows... ten years ago. It's too late to tell the story now.

My problem has always been that I can't dissect it. When I see the story, I see the big picture. I keep trying to whittle it down to just something that I could manage into a single meal for an audience, but the end result loses its flavor. The relationships between Witcher and Graves and Hollows are intertwined, and yet they're not at all because they're each separate individuals with their own lives to live, but I can't seem to introduce one without finding myself having to describe the others. Never to my satisfaction, and all I do is lose the audience.

It's all connected, but Whedon was right. You have to earn that. I was never able to find an in into the overall story arc. I had hoped Witcher's granddaughter would be the in, but she looks forward, and so much of the story is now trapped in the past. Locked forever in 1987. Graves is long since dead, Witcher is missing, but Hollows is still there. ..and is she even still Evelyn anymore? I can't tell, and I created her. I think she's fooling even me.

Oh my God. It's Evelyn's body but it's no longer her soul! Of course! If she'd been an actual zombie she woulda bit me. But that means.. Who the hell is she? The diety? Did she actually get a church started? How strong is she? Have I misplaced Evelyn's soul, or is that part of why Witcher disappeared? I thought Witcher disappeared because of Malcolm Factor but that was long since over by then. Maybe he took Evelyn's soul somewhere that minor diety couldn't get to her. Which would explain why he can't return.

Damn. This story is just bigger than me. It always has been. I can never get a grip on it. The more I learn, the more I don't know. I haven't earned any of this. I have to find the story in the story - the part that an audience would actually want to know. A meal that isn't biting off more than can be chewed. If that worked, from there I could get to the rest of it, maybe someday.

Keep It Or Kill It?

Websites that insist on spreading lame lists like this over twenty or thirty pages so they can get more ad clicks piss me the hell off. Still, Zap2It has put together a list of television shows that, as we approach May Sweeps and head towards an uncertain summer break, appear to be on the bubble for renewal next fall. From their list of almost thirty shows, these are my picks. If'n I were a network executive god type dude, which TV shows would I keep and which ones would I kill?

KEEP!

• Dollhouse: MEGA AWESOME! I'm a Whedon fan. Can ya tell? It started rocky but has really hit a stride in recent episodes and I wanna see where it's going.
• Castle: Formulaic. Predictable. Procedural. also? MEGA AWESOME! Katic is hot & Fillion is hilarious.
• The Unusuals: Procedural, but unpredictable. Funny. Great cast. Kinda formula but has a quirky slant. I like it.
• Lie to Me: Great cast. Interesting premise. Bad writing. I liked it at first, but it's already jumped the shark for me. You think you understand the characters one week, but next week they behave like pod people. No consistency. I still say keep it tho cuz Monica Raymund and Kelli Williams make business attire sexy hot.

KILL!

• Better Off Ted: never seen it. not interested.
• Samantha Who: never seen it. not interested.
• Surviving Suburbia: never seen it. not interested.
• In the Motherhood: never seen it. not interested. not a mom.
• Reaper: never seen it. Never heard about it before today. Looks mildly amusing, but I might have trouble suspending my disbelief.
  
• Cold Case: This is still on? Very formulaic and repetitive. Depressing. Didn't like the regulars.
• Without a Trace: This is still on? Very formulaic and repetitive. Depressing. Didn't like the regulars.
• Everybody Hates Chris: This is still on? ...Wait. The entire CW Network is still on?
• Sit Down, Shut Up: I try not to watch Fox - especially animated shows. The Simpsons should have been canceled around year seven. Fox kills the shows I like and keeps other crap going long after it should have died. FOX SUX.
• Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles: I watched the first season, mostly cuz I like Summer Glau. Stopped watching around the finale when the big action scene consisted of an artsy use of stunt men jumping into a swimming pool with Johnny Cash music playing. If you can't afford regular fight scenes, explosions and gore, don't call it Terminator anything.
• Chuck: I'm happy for Adam Baldwin getting a regular paying gig. Aside from that? DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE. I really don't care if Chuck gets the blonde spy chick. The entire premise is unbelievable. The humor is hokey and trite.
• Gary Unmarried: Huh?
• Harper's Island: Huh?
• Eleventh Hour: Huh?
• The Unit: Huh huh huh huh huh.. he said 'unit'
• Privileged: Uh not really.
  
• Medium: I used to like it. Fun if tedious premise. Nice cast. Tolerable writing early on. There just came a point where I could no longer believe what was going on. Suspension of disbelief flew out the window and I went with it.
• New Adventures of Old Christine: I really wanted to like this.. for about 5 minutes. Then I really wanted to watch anything else. I tell ya, the Seinfeld alumni are cursed.
• My Name Is Earl: I never wanted to like this. They lost me with the first episode. I don't care about the characters. I don't find the situations amusing - more like cringeworthy. The humor is forced and juvenile. The accents are annoying. The lack of intelligence on the part of the characters... just sad really. I understand it's trying to break new ground and be different, but I really don't enjoy the journey.
• Parks and Recreation: I like Amy Poehler, but not enough to give this a try. The premise does not remotely interest me.
• Worst Week: Note To Self. If I ever get to name a TV series, try not to put the word "worst" in the title.
• Life: Note to self. If i ever get to name a TV series, try not to use a word that could be used to describe ANY other television series ever in the history of anything.
• The Game: Note to self. If you ever get to name a TV series, don't start with the word 'the' and don't use a vague four letter word that'd look boring on a t-shirt.
  

I would also like to add Smallville and Heroes to the Kill list, although those two have been picked up for next season. I stopped watching Smallville around the second or third season, when it became obvious they were not trying to describe to us how he gets in the cape and long johns. This was admittedly not the Superman story of my youth. It was a retread that turned it into a weak-kneed soap opera. I liked where it started but I despised where it's gone. Recently I revisited it and watched a few recent episodes, witnessing Chloe marrying Jimmy Olsen. Since when was Jimmy Olsen ever married to anyone?

I'm currently still watching Heroes but I wish I could stop. What began as one of the most innovative and imaginative series to come along in some time has deteriorated into a convoluted and mixed up narrative that has no focus or drive or spirit any longer. This is by no means the fault of the actors who are struggling with scripts thrown at them by committees obviously more interested in appeasing product placement than what's required for the story. This show has literally been all over the map. It's overly reactionary to fan opinion. It repeatedly breaks its own rules regarding things like how powers work, usually changing powers based on the needs of plot convenience. Characters join and leave as the story needs it with only cursory explanations regarding motive and despite any common sense. I'd rather they kill off over half the cast, and then focus solely on a handful of survivors who would band together out of necessity and fear that united they survive but divided they'll be next. Keep the narrative more focused, driven, and cut down on the globe trotting. HRG must have frequent flyer miles coming out of his ass.

The only other prime time show that comes to mind which isn't mentioned above is Lost, which I'm happily addicted to and sadly it will end after one more season, but that's a good thing cuz it means the producers of this show know when to end it - when the story is done. Most tv shows do not know when they have worn out their welcome. I'm happy to report that Lost will leave us still wanting more, yet satiated that the tale the writers wanted to tell will be complete. So Lost would definitely stay in the KEEP category, but I understand with fond sadness why it must go when it does.

I used to like a lot more television than I do currently. I'm not sure if that's because I've changed; that maybe I've gotten older or my tastes have matured.. I'd prefer to blame it on the TV industry, which in many cases seems to be phoning it in and it's been like this for some time. The rare exceptions usually get canned, either for political strangeness that only men in suits would understand, or because good quality television costs more to produce, and for some reason advertisers don't want to support that when cheesy talk shows, fake news magazines, and unrealistic 'reality' game shows are cheaper with more stupid people watching who will buy the shit they're hocking. I'm obviously not a part of the demographic that networks want, so I watch television less and less.

That's probably a healthy thing, when you really think about it.

Smishing = Masochistic Sadism

Three quarters of all cellphone users send text messages via the Short Message Service provided in their cellphones. That's over two billion users every day. That's a lot of texting. That's where the minds of roughly one third of the population of the planet are currently. You guys love your cellphones. I say you guys, cuz I don't own one. Nor would I want to. Follow:

I learn something new every day. I already knew about spam, beyond the edible meatish stuff in a can, or the Monty Python reference. I already knew about phishing, where annoying and desperate people use computers to trick people into giving away sensitive personal information that can lead to getting robbed in a cold heartless digital way. Now there's Smishing. Will wonders ever cease? Smishing is so new of a phrase, that the spellchecker which Blogger.com lets me use thinks it's misspelled.

Rather than using email, as in phishing, the process of Smishing utilizes SMS text messages sent to people's cellphones. The message pretends to be some legitimate sounding company like a bank or a dating service, informs the Mark that they will be charged fees for NOT responding to the message, and gives a fake website or phone number. The Mark then responds and learns they must give up their bank account or credit card info in order to have the charges canceled. Of course, there were no charges in the first place because the original message is phony. However, once the Mark gives up their confidential bank info, the Smisher robs them blind. I think that's called a "Sting" in the biz of being an asshole for money.

Currently the standard response to this behavior is to ignore it. Really, there's nothing more you can do. If you respond, you risk the bad guys gleaning some kind of info from you. It's possible if you click on the phony site link, the second you do that server will be able to determine who you are, what ISP you use, your IP address, and other info you probably wouldn't want them to know. Some hackers are able to set it up so the second you click on a website, malicious software or "malware" might infect your computer through the website. You might have that on your computer now and are unaware of it. Most of the time keeping anti-virus software running in the background can help deter that, but there's no such thing as an unhackable program. And since the info provided by the smisher is purposefully fake, it's impossible to use that info to trace back to the source. You can't learn the identity of the person trying to get your identity, so you can't respond by driving to their house and TPing their front lawn.

The sad truth is that simply ignoring them is not the answer either, and I'll tell you why. The reason spam and phishing and now smishing continues to proliferate is because spammers and hacks can continue repeating this behavior with little to no fear of retaliation. Arguably there are laws on the books against this sort of thing, but it's difficult to police and the penalties even if convicted are not a big deal compared to the possible profit one can get if one succeeds. Same reason why thieves rob banks. Sure you'll go to jail, IF you get caught, and thieves always think on the outset that they're smart enough to get away with it. Sometimes they are.

It takes little to no effort or resources on the part of a spammer or Smisher, and because there's hardly any investment on their part, it only takes one fool responding for them to eke out a profit. A spammer or Smisher can spam tens of thousands in minutes or seconds, and if only one person falls for it, they profit. Ignoring them may save you in the short term, but it does not improve the situation for the long term, and there's a sucker born every minute.

As for being charged per text message, I don't own a cellphone so can't speak to that. However, I'm shocked that anyone would sign up with a cellphone company that would charge them per message sent to them. That's absurd. I wouldn't even want a plan where I'm charged per msg I send out. That's crazy too. I'd want a monthly fee and that'd be the end of it. Can't get that, so I live without a cellphone just fine. One of the many reasons why I don't have a cellphone is because I've yet to hear a plan that doesn't sound like I'd get nickeled and dimed to death by the phone company. If they started charging me by the webpage, I'd drop my ISP in a heartbeat! Why do you put up with that on your cell?

If those of you with cellphones would demand more respectable plans from the phone companies, maybe then I could get one, once phone companies are forced to use common sense instead of scamming tactics to rob people of their money. Use your brains, cellphone users! Furthermore this entire issue should not be your problem. The phone companies should be stopping spam and malicious messages BEFORE they get to your phones. What ARE you paying them for, anyway? If you wanna pay someone to randomly annoy you every day, there's homeless people out there who would do that for half the cost of a cellphone. Come to think of it, I'm unemployed currently. I'd love to get into a business where I can annoy people for money. I'd charge twelve dollars an hour - minimum of two hours a day. That'd be like $120 per person per week - I just struck the mother lode!

Et Tu Jackie Chan?

I don't know which one of these is worse!

1. Jackie Chan says: "we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."
2. Jackie Chan says: "You know what the world really needs? A remake of Karate Kid with me as Mister Miyagi!"

OMG! WTF! Say it ain't so, Jackie! You've turned on us! You've turned on me! Despite the fact you've spent your life pursuing life, liberty, and happiness in your own unique way, you now question whether you or anyone has the right to do that? You'd rather just hand the reins of your life and the lives of all Chinese subjects to the rule of your masters? You wound me, Mr. Chan. I'm struck! You might as well have hopped on a plane to Dallas, got in a cab to Oak Cliff, knocked on the door to my home and slapped me in the face.

Perhaps Jackie Chan is under duress. Maybe the Communist regime of China has secretly implanted little doohickeys in all of Jackie Chan's friends, family members, handlers, hair stylists, cooks, massage therapists, and most beloved fans, and if Jackie Chan doesn't do what the Communist regime tells him to do, and say what they tell him to say, some Red China dude will push a button and Jackie Chan's entire entourage of well-wishers and helpers will simultaneously die of mysterious deaths that won't be traced back to the Communist government cuz they control the police force that would normally investigate such things. Boom.

I can't believe a man who co-starred in the Cannonball Run movies would think for a nanosecond that freedom is a bad thing. Okay. Maybe a man who co-starred in the Rush Hour movies would want the power of shutting Christ Tucker's mouth. Who wouldn't? Still, capitalism has done wonders for Jackie Chan's fame and fortune and even his well-being. How could he possibly look at the parts of his life under capitalist rule in comparison to the parts of his life under communist rule and go, "you know what? I like it better when they tell me what to do."

Still, let's try to look at this in context. If there's anyone on this planet who has fully experienced both sides of this coin, it's Jackie Chan. In his dealings over the years with multiple governments in obtaining capital to make his films and obtaining permissions to pull off his stunts for the cameras, Chan is in a most unique position to tell us which way works better for him. However, don't think for a second that he comes from a fair and impartial position, or that he can be objective or fair in his opinion. His opinion is just that; an opinion. Something that everyone in a capitalist society can freely express (provided they understand they're gonna get rebuttals like this one).

Whereas, in a Communist society, you have a right to their opinion.

Chan's point, if you read his entire quote and not just the headlines, is that historically speaking, Chinese people have made mistakes when not under Communist oppression. Sometimes they did the right thing, but sometimes they did the wrong thing, and if one looks at the recent history of the Chinese people, one can look at it as "the glass is half empty" while seeing times the Chinese have been ruled by Communist dictators as "the glass is half full."

I'll grant Jackie Chan that much. I'll go halfway with him there. Provided one accepts that the converse is also true.

When left to our own devices, human beings (not just Chinese people but all kinds of humanoid peoples - even the purple ones) will make mistakes. The real truth is, and don't let them know this cuz they pretend to not know and telling them just pisses them off, but believe it or not Communist regimes make mistakes too. The only difference is, Communist regimes tend to rewrite history as soon as mistakes are made in order to make their past appear flawless. They can do this because they control the historical organizations that would normally keep track of such things.

Capitalist regimes try this too, but since they don't control the media, they don't often get away with it. Case in point; the Bush Administration. The truth will out on that one. Just wait and see. Even Nixon's attempts to convince people he was not a crook soon became a sick twisted joke, and he's the one who helped to open China and US relations in the first place! And Obama's already making mistakes, but contrary to other capitalist run governing, he doesn't seem to be even trying to hide it. So maybe at least Obama's smart enough to know better, or maybe he's just better at hiding the real mistakes by covering them up with smaller more laughable mistakes. Again, the truth will out.

Now, if you let the Communists control everything, and something goes wrong, in theory, you know who to blame. Since they run everything, it's all their fault. However, by the time you give all power over like that, it includes the power to do anything about it. Here in a capitalist state, there's always crazy extremists who are ready to try stuff like seceding from the union or burning things in effigy or protesting on the streets of major cities and interrupting traffic in attempts to orchestrate change.

We have some messy events in American history, but I can't think of anything as scary or bad as Tiananmen Square, which I understand most Chinese children don't learn anything about nowadays. Correct me if I'm wrong. Do those Chinese children learn about Jackie Chan? Now that Chan's publicly prostrated himself before his masters, I'm sure Chinese govt-funded schools will soon require their children to memorize dialogue from Rumble In the Bronx for extra credit.

Paying The Poor

This was my response to a Digg post and I thought I'd repost it here so that, in theory, I can find it later; not that this tactic has worked well for me in the past. In a nutshell the contrary argument to which I respond is thus: "If you pay people to be poor, you'll never run out of poor people. Poverty is not simply an absence of money. Rather, it is bound up with a whole set of other circumstances: lack of qualifications, demoralisation, family break-up, substance abuse, fatherlessness. It follows that you do not end poverty by giving money to the poor..."

We have an economic system that allows a very small minority to control the majority of wealth. Do the math. If the majority of your society has to share a small percentage of the wealth, some people are gonna be left with nothing. An economy is not determined healthy because some of its participants are rich. It has nothing to do with how much an individual saves, but how much an individual spends. Economies are healthy when money is changing hands. Without constant bartering and constant transactions, an economy will stagnate. Only when people give money to one another, or spend money on goods and services, is there a fluid economy that supports the society it serves.

If you think by giving money to poor people you are paying them to be poor, you completely miss the point. By investing in people who are down today, you help give them a chance to pull themselves out of the hole and become productive members of society. If they have no resources, they can't improve themselves. Now granted, most poor people also need education and support so they don't spend what's given to them in a frivolous manner. Most people wouldn't know a good investment versus a bad investment without proper education.

For example, if you come across a homeless person and want to give him money, and he has a liquor bottle in his hand, there is a relatively high probability he'll use the money you give him to buy another bottle of liquor. However, if you take the man to a grocery store or restaurant and buy him a healthy meal, that's a more resourceful way to invest your money on his health. It may cost you more time and resources than if you just throw five bucks at him, but he'll be in better shape when you leave him, and it may help him get out of his hole. Most people just throw money at homeless people to get them to leave them alone. It allows a person to get on with their day and they feel like they helped somebody, but it's not as good an investment as it could have been with more forethought put into it.

Also keep in mind some people just don't wanna get out of their hole. Most of us are always trying to improve our lives whether we're at the bottom of the ladder or on top of the world, but some people just give up on the foolishness of the rat race and find a comfortable place to just be. Maybe you think everyone should constantly be fighting one another to be top dog on the hill of life, but not everyone has the same goals. Some people just want to live a peaceful and happy life, and bring joy to the people around them. Their lives are no more or less forfeit than the lives of the go-getters in the world. We can't all cure cancer. Some of us are just meant to light the way for others with a smile or a word of encouragement. Everyone has their place in this universe, no matter how big or small that place may be.