A Rant # "Implicit Respect"

I was listening to The Howard Stern Show the other day and they were having a discussion that centered around ideas of family life, child rearing, etc., none of which I want to talk about today but that discussion did spark another one I've had floating around my head for a very long time.

I've heard it all my life: Respect your elders. I hate the idea. Don't get me wrong, I'm not at odds with the idea of respecting my fellow man. I'd say everyone has some level of my respect from the outset, no matter who they are. But it's not an implicit respect. True respect needs to be earned and you earn it based upon your actions. I meet a stranger and I treat them kindly, the next move is his or hers, and based upon that interaction the degree of respect I've afforded them is either raised or lowered. In that regard I don't think I'm any different than anyone else, it just makes sense. So I never understood why my elders should be held to a different standard. I think one of the most sobering truths you learn as you grow older is that your elders are really no different than you, they're just people. And like most people, elders can turn out to be real dicks and cunts once you get to know them. And people become real pricks real quick when they feel entitled to something. I've seen certain elders take an obscene liberty with this sentiment around people who fully accept it. I'm sorry, but certain behavior is just unacceptable and I don't care who the fuck you are, if you come at me expecting to shit all over me without any reprisal you've got another thing coming. It's that idea that I have a problem with. Why kowtow to the lowest common denominator? Nobody gets a pass in my book, young or old.


DS333, phew!

A Rant # "Ghettos"

So I was having a chat with a friend of mine the other day and he mentioned something that sparked something else in my head... that seems to happen quite a lot, conversations within conversations.

For anyone who's unaware West Hollywood, which just so happens to be West of Hollywood :P, is a city here in Southern California that's a hub of homosexuality, a man-on-man mecca. I have a love-hate relationship with the place. I love it in the same way that I love the Navajo reservation. There's something about being around people who are like you, there's this familiarity and safety. It's just a pleasant feeling. It's hard for me to imagine myself being anything other than exactly what I am but I would think, I would hope, that even if I were straight I would be enamored with West Hollywood for this overwhelming sense of freedom and acceptance. The place is less about being accepting to the GLBT community and more about being accepting of acceptance. It's a lovely place when you think about it. Everyone is exactly who they want to be, doing exactly what they want to be doing and there's no fear of being shamed or threatened into anything else. There's a spirit about the place... a strength, a courage, a fearlessness, a bravery... heroism.

The thing I hate about West Hollywood and places like it is seeing people shut themselves off in self-imposed ghettos. The picture's not all rosey. I don't see everyone as courageous or brave. I know people who are there because they are the exact opposite. I see people living in fear. There are people there whose entire life is that one place. It's the literature, it's the theatre, it's the community, the culture, everything... all of it is centered around this one perspective. We live in a global community, there is no disputing that. I try not to be judgemental and rarely do I say something is wrong for fear of being wrong myself. But our greatest threats as a global community are these rabid and fanatical enclaves of exclusivity, these self-imposed ghettos. There's this fear and resistance to change that's fostering a toxic xenophobia. It's a dangerous state to live in, literally and metaphorically. But y'know, I don't pretend that my story is that of everyone else. There might be... I'm sure there are reasons for the way things are. People can be ugly, vicious, brutal, violent... and if that's all you've ever known of others who am I to say what you're doing and where you're living is wrong? I don't say it for exactly that reason. I don't know everything and I don't know what's going on... but I feel like something's off.


DS333, doubtful.

A Rant # "Changing The Formula"

Advance Wars (2001) for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance is one of my all-time favorite games in the universe, alongside it sits its equally impressive sequel, Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. Those two games are as close to perfection as any game developer can hope to attain with their design. At the time of their release the franchise was healthy and strong, they found a winning formula and the future looked bright... and then it all changed. With the release of Nintendo's DS came new titles in the Advance Wars series. Those game suck. Okay, suck might be a bit strong but the new games don't garner the same acclaim as their predecessors did. They changed too much. Since Advance Wars 2... there have been two more Advance Wars titles released under the DS banner, the first made some noticeably minor changes while the second is almost a complete overhaul of the franchise. I won't get too geeky about those changes... most of them are artistic; graphic and narrative. The point is that the developers cocked up something beautiful. They had it! They had it and they pissed it all away with some bonehead moves. And it shouldn't be misconstrued, my anger isn't directed toward change or the idea of change... but toward unnecessary, drastic, fundamental change. If something is working... well you've heard it before, If it ain't broke don't fix it. Well it wasn't and they went ahead and broke it anyway. It's so crushing and disappointing to something so perfect fall apart. Usually it's the things and the people that need to make change that are resistant to it, you don't see it enough... but with the things that don't need to change, well change is the watchword. I wish more people had the awareness to know when they have something great in their hands. It's horrible to see it fall apart.


DS333, lamenting.

A Rant # "Heat"

No, I don't have a bone to pick with the 1995 Michael Mann film starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. I wanted to bitch about the weather, that heat, the quality of being hot. I really don't have much to say other than I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! I was actually planning on blogging about something else but this superseded all else. I've awoken the past two days feeling miserable. The heat is incapacitating. I feel like a prisoner under it's sway. I'm a lizard, I keep still and try my best to maintain my body's temperature. I can't move. And when I do, the urge to sleep is great. I hate feeling this way. It's an altered state. I hate this almost as much as I hate being sick. I hate having no control over this spell. Luckily for me, it's a bit easier to combat the heat with my mental yoga than it is against sickness. But it's still a bitch. My mind's not that strong.

My only refuge is the shower, but that lasts only so long. It was actually in the shower today that I decided to bitch about the weather. I thought, This is going to end. It was probably the saddest thought I had in a long time. :P I didn't want it to end, but it would, it did and I just wanted to vent my frustrations about it. If I had a state-of-the-art air conditioning system and no regard for energy conservation I guess I'd be in heaven. But I don't and I don't. Aside from the showers I can always run to the local coffee shops and such. I don't feel guilty about consuming power in a communal space. It's like carpooling, no? But I can only go out so much. I like staying home. But I can't stand this place when it's like this. It's a kiln, or, in keeping with my heritage, a sweat lodge. :P It's unpleasant anyway you slice it. I just want to escape. That's what my mind does. I guess I misspoke (er, mistyped) earlier. When I'm sick I combat it. When I'm hot, I run. It's like they say, If you can't stand the heat... So I use my mental yoga to transport me. I get lost in fantasies of far off places blanketed in snow, encased in ice and drenched with rain.

I guess I could go on and on. I trip out on how fast ice melts these days, or how the aluminum backing of my iPod is no longer cool to the touch. Everything feels fucked up. It's so unnatural, this natural progression of the seasons. :P It's one of the things I love most about California, for the most part the status quo is maintained, but when Summer starts to come around the bend everything gets turned up a notch. I'm going to be absolutely miserable in the coming months. Fuck you Summer! Die! I can't stand this heat! :( I guess it would only stand to reason since I'm such a cold person... I mean, such a cool guy. :P ;)


DS333, melting, melting, melting.

A Rant # "The Human Element"

I'm an avid watcher of The Biggest Loser. It's one of my all-time favorite shows and I think this season is the best so far. As good as this season is, though, they haven't yet managed to slough off the worst part of itself: The human element or the human story. There are actually a lot of things that bug me about this show, but this is my biggest complaint. I also hate the length of the show. It's unnecessarily long. I get the reasoning behind it, they want to extend their viewership on the station for as long as possible. Given that we're in the midst of a writer's strike and reality-based t.v. programming is the only place the networks can turn to for ratings I can understand this tactic. However, understanding it doesn't make me hate it any less. It's all bullshit. Most of the program is filler. And what is it they fill it with? The human element. It drives me insane. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good story and... I like getting to know these people and their stories, but I need it to come naturally. It works best that way.

The greatest thing about this season is the couples aspect. Being in this competition, working together, with someone they know and love makes for some really poignant moments throughout the show. But the best moments aren't manufactured, they're real. And I guess I'm really speaking to another point. I hate contrivances and inauthenticity. The producers of the show consistently try to make these moments happen by their own design. It doesn't work! It's too forced. It just doesn't feel real. I don't know how many impotent pop-psychology bullshit conversations I've had to suffer through all for the purpose of capturing tears on film. I hate it. I can't stand people fucking up a winning formula. All the pieces are in place, the emotion and reality will come naturally without your intervention. Just let it happen! You can't force truth, it just is.

There's also something so disgustingly insincere about these contrivances. It's exploitative, plain and simple. I don't have anything against exploitation, so long as it's owned up to. Here, they play up these situations under the guise of personal enrichment and growth. It's so pathetically transparent. We're not children, we can see through these things. It's so insulting to everyone involved. Most of all, it's counter-productive. It never works. You can't manufacture the real.


DS333, annoyed.

A Rant # "The iPod Touch"

The impetus for beginning this Feature was sparked by the frustration I had with the iPod touch. But now that I've had some time to cool off, well... I've sorta lost the fire. :P But since it was the thing that gave birth to the Feature, I'd feel weird about glossing over it. It should be the first. And it will be, but I won't be as vicious in my criticism as I might have been before. I kinda feel like I'm being forced to trash a lover behind his back. :P

Well the huge gripe that got the ball rolling was this weird bug that made it impossible to sync certain Smart Play Lists correctly. I'm convinced the problem must be specific to me and so, not a fair criticism. I have some ideas about what might be the core issue (dependent rules), so I'm hoping I'll fix the problem soon enough. In the meantime, I've done what I said I wouldn't do: I've had to manually drag and drop selections from my Smart Play Lists into static Play Lists. I'm actually okay with the solution for a variety of reasons, the main one, having absolute control over what comes in and goes out of my iPod.

These next few problems are universal to the iPod touch. The first isn't quite valid but speaks to the overall failing of the hardware: there's no click-wheel. Now, if you weren't happy not having a click-wheel you'd be a moron for buying the thing in the first place. So my problem isn't so much with the lack of the click-wheel, but with the lack of its functionality. The wheel made it very easy to control your music with a blind eye and the flick of a finger, not so with the iPod touch. Play lists are the watchword with the iPod touch since you can't easily skip ahead of your songs while it's in your pocket. You have to know ahead of time that what you're going to listen to is something you won't have the urge of skipping through. It's not the worst thing in the world, but I'd love for there to be an easier way to skip through songs that didn't require me pulling out the touch from my pocket.

Another invalid gripe, which speaks more to the LCD industry, is the greater depth achieved with these awesome screens means a greater incidence of dead pixels. I have four on my iPod touch, five if you've a particularly sharp eye. It's annoying, but not a deal-breaker. What sucks is that it's not something you're assured to get a replacement on, so I've never even bothered. Plus I've never been truly bothered by it to make it an issue. It's fine. But it's there. And the catch-22 of it all is that the more high-res these screens become, the greater incidence of dead pixels... but because the screens are so high-res, the pixels and so the dead pixels are so small that they become negligible.

Okay, now the real problems. I don't know why they decided to do this, but for some reason Apple decided to opt out of using scrolling title banners for songs with long titles. It's such a huge issue if, like me, you have files with titles of the same name save for the ending which denotes what part within a series they belong. That crucial bit of info is truncated into a ellipsis. It drives me insane! A "workaround" is selecting the file, letting it play and putting the screen to sleep, then waking it up. When the screen is locked, but awake, you have the entire length of the screen to display the title. Though, you're already playing the file so it's pretty much useless having to go through this, unless it's not immediately obvious what's being played. It's such a glaring flaw. I'm hoping it gets fixed in a future software update.

Next problem. One of the solutions that Apple came up with to alleviate the trouble of fiddling around with the interface to skip songs quickly was the ability to call up playback controls by double clicking the Home button. This works great. It works great for songs that are currently playing. Say I call up the controls to pause a song and put the iPod to sleep for a moment. If I then decide to play the song again, I can't just double click the Home button to bring up the controls again. That action is only registered as a single press. The iPod awakes, and you're prompted to either unlock it or you can then double click again. It's just one more button press, but I hate having to press a sleeping iPod once, and then twice more to get my playback controls! Grrr! :P

You can't copy & paste in Safari, plain and simple.

No Flash support.

I wish I could easily switch between portrait and landscape mode whenever I'm prompted with the touch keyboard. Before you touch a text field you must decide which layout you're going to use, once that keyboard is there you can't change it. You have to quit your action, align your iPod as you wish, and begin again. A mild gripe, but very annoying. I also hate how the iPod decides how I want my text field displayed in landscape mode. Because there's so little space provided in that mood to see where I'm typing, it means everything to keep the screen where I want it. But once I begin typing, the iPod will sometimes realign the iPod to include more of the cursor. It's understandable, but again, very annoying.

I really wish I could sync my YouTube account to my iPod touch. As is, if you bookmark anything on the touch, it's not being bookmarked on your YouTube account. So if you stumble upon a great video while on the touch, you have to dive to the site on your computer and bookmark it there. Likewise, if you have some great videos you want to show your friends and family that you know you bookmarked on YouTube you can't call them up on the touch. :( It's not something I would expect Apple should fix, and maybe they shouldn't... but it would be nice.

I don't like the way iCal displays appointments. I'm speaking specifically of the author citation. I happen to sync my brother's calendars on my Mac, and I have my own calendars... and while we don't have the same things going on, it still looks like a mess when you're diving around iCal on the touch. I just wish the calendar name under which an appointment was listed was displayed. Simple fix, I don't know why it's not there. :|

Gee, I think I could go on a bit more, but like I said... I lost the fire. I'm not as pissy as I was a few days ago, so I feel I'm bitching unnecessarily. I love this guy more than I find him annoying so I'm not cool with the bashing. ;) I expect the experience will get better down the line as software updates are pushed out. That's my hope anyway. :P


DS333, hopeful.

Explained, "A Rant"

It's that time of the month. Or that time of the week or day. Depends on when you catch me. But since I've been in a particularly bitchy mood lately, I thought I'd create a feature in which I could rant on about any little thing my bitter, twisted heart desired. :P Thus A Rant was born. I'm really not at all pissy very much, but every now and then I have a burning hatred, that if given physical form, would raze civilization. ;) Let's hope I don't make too many entries with this one. :P


DS333, brewing.