Puffs of steam are coming out of my ears: I'm going to have a RANT today, so -- bear with me.
Good gods, they make it hard. I'm within eight seconds of saying, "stuff Kindle." And this, after I've blown off two days formatting documents to suit them.
What goes on --? Amazon.com just slammed the door in Keegan's face, is what's wrong.
In order to sell my books to Kindle readers -- and bear in mind, Amazon is out there, hyper-marketing their platform in order to command an ever-growing market share! -- I have to have the following:
American TIN number for tax purposes (done: got one).
American bank account access (done: no problem).
American mailing address (how the hell do they expect me to have this?)
American phone number (ditto).
To all intents and purposes, Amazon Kindle is open ONLY to American writers and authors ... at the same time as the American marketplace is 90% of everything, and Amazon is actively at war with all other ebook platforms, to command the lion's share of the market.
Does this sound kosher to you? Point one: non-American writers are being shut out of the market -- at the same time as Amazon.com makes a ton of money dumping cheap goods on the rest of the world (books for 10c, for instance!) ... and Point two: American readers are soon going to have vastly limited access to foreign works --
Foreign works which, for example, express the global point of view, the cosmopolitan concept of humanity, in which the thoughts, dreams and dreads of people living in -- oh, Paris, Rome, London, Tokyo, Beijing, the centers where culture was born many centuries before America was even dreamed of! -- are reckoned, in the wider scheme of the cosmos, to be just as important as those of people who are curiously gifted enough to live between the borders of Canada and Mexico.
Moreover, there is one additional thing that carbonizes my noodles:
The simple statement: "Non-Americans need not apply" is not posted until you get five layers deep into the publication process.
There is no easily accessible FAQ. There is a labyrinthine forum with all the welcoming characteristics of an asylum, filled with abusive inmates who seem to believe one has nothing better to do with one's time than to read "threads" which have run 11 months, and are now forty yards long -- filled with poison-pen retorts for non-Americans, blatantly WRONG answers, hapless misinformation, helpful responses to questions that were NOT ASKED, and --!!
The situation regarding Keegan on your Kindle right now is this: I'm going to try negotiating with family in the States, to use an acceptable address and phone number. If for any reason the other half of the family has a problem with this, you won't be reading Keegan on you Kindle. Before that happens, Amazon.com will have to come out of this self-imposed shell of isolation, drop the parochial behavior, join the global community (which it has ambitions to dominate) and play nice.
Till then, my Kindle ambitions are snookered. Which, as I said above, burns my noodles ... because Kindle is already a millions-strong marketplace. When people change over to Kindle they cease to buy paperbacks --
Meaning, there is a millions-strong sector of the reading community that's a dead zone for any writer or publisher who does not have a physical foothold, complete with phone number, between the borders of Mexico and Canada.
Now, Amazon has made squeaking noises about trying to get Kindle to work in Europe and Australia, but so far they haven't even been able to swing a reliable deal with wireless providers in the UK. Down here in Aus and NZ? Forget it. The infrastructure doesn't exist. Not going to happen.
Here's the bottom line: If Amazon wins the marketing battle (as it intends to), if Kindle becomes The Platform of the future ... if enormous numbers of readers change over and don't want paperbacks any longer ... and if only American writers and publishers are allowed to sell on Kindle ...
There's going to be a whole lot of professional writers, globally (myself being one of them) who will just jack it in and get a proper job. Literature itself will suffer, because the only people publishing on the massive platform will be a small nucleus of real professional writers who are just geographically lucky ... plus about fifty million semi-literate wannabe authors, none of whom would know good grammar if they tripped over it in the street, who are not just allowed to publish -- they're invited. They're exhorted. They're marketed alongside the giants of literature, as if they belong there; and why?
The privilege of geography. No matter that Amazon's marketplace is global and vast amounts of its profits are raked in from overseas customers.
You bet, I'm PO'd. Wasting my time (or, having my time wasted for me) tends to do that to me.
Now I have to take on the challenge of Smashwords. Go back and reformat all the documents over again. But at least Smashwords is playing nice -- I can put my books there. If you were asking me, Amazon could learn a thing or two from Smashwords.
Mark Coker's new company at the very least lives in the right century, with both feet planted firmly in the global community. Meanwhile, whoever designed and built the apology for the architecture supporting Kindle appears to live in some parochial cyber territory, temporally and psychologically analogous to the 1950s.
Message to Amazon.com: get real people. There's a world out here, and if you want to dump cheap goods into it for your own profit, you have to wake up to the fact the conduit must run both ways. Or are you actually trying to shut out the global voice, lock in the all-American point of view, raise a generation of Kindle-users who couldn't find Belgium on a map? This might result in a generation of more American Americans, but I ask you, does this kind of intellectual isolationism have any place in the twenty first century?
Okay: I'm done ranting for now.
Yeah, yeah ... I posted the next segment of Legends before I threw away the rest of my time. Find out what happens when Soran wakes up...
And people, email the Legends URL to your friends, please!!! At this point, according to Statcounter, I have loads of people coming in to collect only Chapter Ten, folks who have never touched down on Legends before -- which says clearly, the files are being emailed, not the URL. Remember, to make this work we need people on the page, taking advantage of the advertising: sending the files to your mate won't help! Thanks for your help here.
And, uh, I imagine I'll be in a better mood tomorrow! Meanwhile, the ebooks are available at PayLoads, and will be appearing at Smashwords when I've had the chance to thrash through the conversion process.
Ciao for,
ML
Showing posts with label RANTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label RANTS. Show all posts
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Saturday, February 14, 2009
POD Publishing: why do it? And ... why not?
Writing has been likened to bashing your head against a wall -- with one exception: it's not so great when you stop. I guess this is because writing is in your blood, something you do because it's ... what you do; and the fact is, you'll do it whether anyone is reading what you write, or paying you, or not! Writing is a vocation, like religion, medicine, the law.
Publishing is a different can o' worms (or kettle of fish, if you prefer). Publishing is like jabbing yourself in the foot with a sharp stick. In terms of the pain and anguish you're inflicting upon your anatomy, it's about the same ... but it can actually do you more physical damage! Let's face it, if you give your head a good enough bash on the wall the first time out, you're going to knock yourself right out -- and I ought to know! I did this last week! (See also Gay novelist, battered and fried.) Technically, you could jab yourself with a sharp stick enough times to do a whole lot more damage --
Which is where the publishing analogy becomes utterly perfect. Publishers are gluttons for punishment, especially the self-marketing variety. They could stop anytime. But, do they? No. We go on, bashing our heads (and jabbing our feet) when we know that every single day we're going to be up against unutterable rubbish like this:
Six reasons that self-publishing is the scourge of the book world.
...and I cannot tell you the degree to which this article is wrong in its sweeping statements. The blood boils. Consider this:
1. No one vetts self-published books, allowing even the most puerile piles of crap to adopt the guise of polished, professional prose.
Point one: Mr. Tom Barlow, you must stop generalizing on this first line. All self-published works are not the same, and some are vetted to destruction point. Some will be proofread many more times, by more pairs of eyeballs, than could plausibly be assigned to them by "small" publishing houses who can't afford a large enough editorial staff to do a proper job. (Point two: drop the alliteration. It makes you sound like an over-inflated idiot.)
2. Self-publishing kills the drive for writers to improve their craft. The artificial, undeserved success they will achieve will trap them in mediocrity.
This is such utter piffle, I was speechless for a moment. Mr. Barlow, who told you this? You were sold a priceless line of BS. The drive to improve one's craft is born in a writer, and continues to flow in his or her veins irrespective of whether they're published (slim chance) or not.
Editors do little to inspire writers to improve, because the process of editing any but the bestselling author is so robotized, so impersonal. You mail your manuscript in; a year later you get the galleys back, and a few days to read through them. You have no real idea of what was done to the work, or why, you just check it for errors and mail it back as fast as humanly possible.
And what gremlin whispered into Tom Barlow's naive ear, that a self-publishing author of a "puerile pile of crap" is going to achieve any kind of success whatsoever? Does he think books sell themselves? Does he honestly believe readers will buy a book without having read at least 10% of it as a free download, seen the cover at full-size, and read numerous reviews, either online or in the print media?
Any copes sold, anywhere, any time, are the result of massive amounts of hard marketing work by the author, and before it could start, said author had to have a real, solid work to go out there and sell. The rubbish he's describing exists -- by the wagonload -- on Amazon, on Lulu, and "wherever books are sold." The point he's missing is this: "puerile piles of crap" DO NOT SELL COPIES. Their authors do not enjoy success, artificial or otherwise, and what traps them in mediocrity is their own -- mediocrity.
3. Self-publishing demeans the accomplishments of successful authors.
Wrong, Mr. Barlow, on so many levels, I barely know where to begin to take this to pieces. I was a highly successful niche author with a swag of fully professional credits. I was a very successful author with a swag of credits to my name -- until my publisher disappeared in a triple business merger which made the paperback list vanish into the mist. I was stranded without a publisher, and was far from alone in having a full-professional backlist, and a suitcase of current works which are better-edited and better-prepared than they have ever been -- and not a damned thing to do with them, unless they are issued POD. Several other writers were caught in the same business deal, and ten years on, we're all still picking ourselves up, driving forward, and making something positive of ourselves, our skills, and our intellectual properties.
What constitutes a "successful writer" in your canon, Mr. Barlow? A bestseller? They represent the top few percent of the writing community, and the rest of us look with skepticism upon them, sharing the serious suspicion that bestsellers are manufactured by hype and advertising. Some such books are "puerile piles of crap," while gems of literature are found languishing on the dung heaps of remainder tables.
If bestselling authors choose to poise on their soapboxes and view the rest of us with the lofty disdain Mr. Barlow intimates, when he states as a fact that the small victories we enjoy as the result of backbreaking hard work "demean the accomplishments" of million-copy sellers, then I have only one desire: to see a flock of pigeons fly over and, mistaking the figure on the soapbox for a statue, do their pigeon thing before they continue on their way.
There's more -- Barlow's driveling feature article goes on for some time -- but I'm done commenting, with one exception:
He can't count, either. His ridiculous piece is called Six reasons that self-publishing is the scourge of the book world. However, he rounds up on FIVE reasons, after having missed #3 completely and numbering his list 1,2,4,5,6.
With such great attention to detail, he should be an editor.
Okay --
Rant over for today.
But sometimes, really, somebody has to say something, or this kind of nonsense will take on the aspect of rational, reasonable journalism. Perish the thought.
I'll leave you with a couple of links here:
The Valentine's Day segment of LEGENDS is up;
and,
As through a glass... is my post to Digital Kosmos today.
Happy Valentines to all Aussies and Kiwis!
Cheers,
Mel
Publishing is a different can o' worms (or kettle of fish, if you prefer). Publishing is like jabbing yourself in the foot with a sharp stick. In terms of the pain and anguish you're inflicting upon your anatomy, it's about the same ... but it can actually do you more physical damage! Let's face it, if you give your head a good enough bash on the wall the first time out, you're going to knock yourself right out -- and I ought to know! I did this last week! (See also Gay novelist, battered and fried.) Technically, you could jab yourself with a sharp stick enough times to do a whole lot more damage --
Which is where the publishing analogy becomes utterly perfect. Publishers are gluttons for punishment, especially the self-marketing variety. They could stop anytime. But, do they? No. We go on, bashing our heads (and jabbing our feet) when we know that every single day we're going to be up against unutterable rubbish like this:
Six reasons that self-publishing is the scourge of the book world.
...and I cannot tell you the degree to which this article is wrong in its sweeping statements. The blood boils. Consider this:
1. No one vetts self-published books, allowing even the most puerile piles of crap to adopt the guise of polished, professional prose.
Point one: Mr. Tom Barlow, you must stop generalizing on this first line. All self-published works are not the same, and some are vetted to destruction point. Some will be proofread many more times, by more pairs of eyeballs, than could plausibly be assigned to them by "small" publishing houses who can't afford a large enough editorial staff to do a proper job. (Point two: drop the alliteration. It makes you sound like an over-inflated idiot.)
2. Self-publishing kills the drive for writers to improve their craft. The artificial, undeserved success they will achieve will trap them in mediocrity.
This is such utter piffle, I was speechless for a moment. Mr. Barlow, who told you this? You were sold a priceless line of BS. The drive to improve one's craft is born in a writer, and continues to flow in his or her veins irrespective of whether they're published (slim chance) or not.
Editors do little to inspire writers to improve, because the process of editing any but the bestselling author is so robotized, so impersonal. You mail your manuscript in; a year later you get the galleys back, and a few days to read through them. You have no real idea of what was done to the work, or why, you just check it for errors and mail it back as fast as humanly possible.
And what gremlin whispered into Tom Barlow's naive ear, that a self-publishing author of a "puerile pile of crap" is going to achieve any kind of success whatsoever? Does he think books sell themselves? Does he honestly believe readers will buy a book without having read at least 10% of it as a free download, seen the cover at full-size, and read numerous reviews, either online or in the print media?
Any copes sold, anywhere, any time, are the result of massive amounts of hard marketing work by the author, and before it could start, said author had to have a real, solid work to go out there and sell. The rubbish he's describing exists -- by the wagonload -- on Amazon, on Lulu, and "wherever books are sold." The point he's missing is this: "puerile piles of crap" DO NOT SELL COPIES. Their authors do not enjoy success, artificial or otherwise, and what traps them in mediocrity is their own -- mediocrity.
3. Self-publishing demeans the accomplishments of successful authors.
Wrong, Mr. Barlow, on so many levels, I barely know where to begin to take this to pieces. I was a highly successful niche author with a swag of fully professional credits. I was a very successful author with a swag of credits to my name -- until my publisher disappeared in a triple business merger which made the paperback list vanish into the mist. I was stranded without a publisher, and was far from alone in having a full-professional backlist, and a suitcase of current works which are better-edited and better-prepared than they have ever been -- and not a damned thing to do with them, unless they are issued POD. Several other writers were caught in the same business deal, and ten years on, we're all still picking ourselves up, driving forward, and making something positive of ourselves, our skills, and our intellectual properties.
What constitutes a "successful writer" in your canon, Mr. Barlow? A bestseller? They represent the top few percent of the writing community, and the rest of us look with skepticism upon them, sharing the serious suspicion that bestsellers are manufactured by hype and advertising. Some such books are "puerile piles of crap," while gems of literature are found languishing on the dung heaps of remainder tables.
If bestselling authors choose to poise on their soapboxes and view the rest of us with the lofty disdain Mr. Barlow intimates, when he states as a fact that the small victories we enjoy as the result of backbreaking hard work "demean the accomplishments" of million-copy sellers, then I have only one desire: to see a flock of pigeons fly over and, mistaking the figure on the soapbox for a statue, do their pigeon thing before they continue on their way.
There's more -- Barlow's driveling feature article goes on for some time -- but I'm done commenting, with one exception:
He can't count, either. His ridiculous piece is called Six reasons that self-publishing is the scourge of the book world. However, he rounds up on FIVE reasons, after having missed #3 completely and numbering his list 1,2,4,5,6.
With such great attention to detail, he should be an editor.
Okay --
Rant over for today.
But sometimes, really, somebody has to say something, or this kind of nonsense will take on the aspect of rational, reasonable journalism. Perish the thought.
I'll leave you with a couple of links here:
The Valentine's Day segment of LEGENDS is up;
and,
As through a glass... is my post to Digital Kosmos today.
Happy Valentines to all Aussies and Kiwis!
Cheers,
Mel
Monday, January 26, 2009
Template tantrums and Blogger bustups
Keegan's having a rant today -- bear with me. Little puffs of steam are coming out of both ears, it's been One of Those Days, and alas, it ain't over yet.
There are times when Blogger makes it easy. There are times when it's so impossible to make the engine do what you want it to do, you want to turn off the computer and walk away.
I just spent a couple of fascinating, joyful, bliss-filled hours bashing my head against Blogger's walls, and at the end of it I'm no closer to uploading LEGENDS than I was this morning.
Now, as you know, the template was designed like this:
There are times when Blogger makes it easy. There are times when it's so impossible to make the engine do what you want it to do, you want to turn off the computer and walk away.
I just spent a couple of fascinating, joyful, bliss-filled hours bashing my head against Blogger's walls, and at the end of it I'm no closer to uploading LEGENDS than I was this morning.
Now, as you know, the template was designed like this:
...you remember the one. Sure. We've sweat blood on it for weeks to get it perfect. And on the other blog, which is nothing more than a "test bed," it works 100%. I figured we'd copy it over, set up the gadgets, and it would be good to go. Right?
Well, it was a nice idea! It was copied over, and it ... exploded. It's currently doing things I've never seen Blogger do. Things I had no idea Blogger could do. Like -- you edit one "widget" in your sidebar, but the results execute, and appear on-screen, in the footer section of the page. You add a widget to the sidebar, but it appears in the footer ... so you delete some of the accumulating dross from the footer section, and in its infinite wisdom the engine deletes elements from a sidebar!
I have no no idea what's going on with it. I imagine Jade will have to get in there and rewrite it at the code level -- which won't be happening for a couple of days because DreamCraft is flat out right now with another job.
So ... I wait a little longer, just as I'm still waiting on the proof for The Lords of Harbendane, which should have been here over two weeks ago; and I'll continue to wait for Google to show a little courtesy, if not actually compassion, and eventually take a look at this blog and deign to say why its page rankings were zeroed out and the Googlebot ceased to index it, over two months ago.
Y'know, of all the things in this life I think I dislike the most, it's the waiting. Being utterly dependent upon a third party to do his, her or its bit to make the machine go, and having them do nothing, or do it wrong, or otherwise stuff things up to the point where several centuries' worth of hard work are back in the desk drawer, languishing.
Today has a bright spot: have you seen AG's Album today?! Check this out, throw up your hands and surrender: Brendan's back! But I doubt he'll be looking quite like this in his new movie... someone out there has got one hell of a lasso around Photoshop! Fantastic work.
Actually, the day has two bright spots. It's about 102 degrees in the shade outside. It's so cold where I'm sitting, I need a seater. And you gotta like that. The a/c ... works.
Thank gods something does!
Let me go grab a cup of tea, take five, and then I'll have another go at Blogger. They also serve who sit under the a/c beating their brains out.
Ciao for now,
MK
Saturday, January 3, 2009
More free software ... and the toolbars you can live without
I was going to have a minor rant today, in a post entitled "the cost of free software," and then DreamCraft's resident guru ambled by and said, "Why don't you turn it off?" And, to add insult to injury, got rid of the offending toolbar in three (count them: THREE) mouse clicks.
Well, rabbits. I've been putting up with their pestilential toolbars for about six months ... my browser window has been getting progressively smaller and smaller as the fantastic free addons installed their bloody little toolbars which, when they start to accumulate, aren't so little any longer.
Ahem.
Apparently you can turn them off. If I were the kind of person to shove emoticons up your nose as you read, you'd be gagging on one right now. It would be chuckling in glee on the one hand and blushing slightly in momentary, transitory, more or less insignificant ... embarrassment.
Okay: go ahead and get the addons I'm about to recommend here, because momentarily I shall disclose all ... ie., how to get rid of the aforementioned bloody little toolbars that clog up your browser window like the cybernetic equivalent of arterial plaque.
I've just stumbled over two beauties: both free, and both better than stuff that costs an arm and a leg. We'll start with the PDF reader. Are you sick and tired of the length of time it takes to load Acrobat Reader, the commercials you have to turn off, the constant whining about updates you don't want ... and the sheer amount of your computer's brain this prog commandeers?! If you answered yes to any or all of the above, you're ready for this:
Foxit. Go here: http://www.download.com/Foxit-Reader/3000-2079_4-10313206.html
It's a trendy, nifty, slick PDF viewer with every feature you'd get from Adobe, and a whole lot LESS of the hype, the marketing, the "overhead" that crashes your computer, and ... the angst inspired by the above. There are loads of Foxit versions and addons to buy, but the reader itself is free. If you get into making, converting and adapting PDFs, obviously you want more, in which case go here: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/ ... and even though you'll have to pay some money, it's about 5% of the price you could expect to pay for Adobe products.
I took this for a test drive this morning, and was delighted -- except for the bloody little toolbar it installed in my browser. Hence the mini-rant, and the gleeful chuckles as the DreamCraft guru clicked me out of that particular wood ... like this:
[The following paragraph is for the cybernetically handicapped. If you and your computer speak the same language, enjoy the same sports and are cultivating romance, feel free to skip ahead]
Forget about searching the copious menus of the Foxit toolbar for some way, any way, to turn the damned thing off from within its own mechanism -- you're wasting your time here. You RIGHT click on the gray area to the right of all these accumulating toolbars, and you get a popup menu. Then, you take the trouble to notice something that always blew by me. There's a listing for UNLOCK TOOLBAR. Uh huh. Click to unlock it ... click to un-select all the things you don't want plugging up your browser window ... they vanish one by one ... and then LOCK the toolbar again.
No prizes will be awarded for observation! I never even saw the "unlock toolbar" thing. I'd be prepared to swear it wasn't even there until somebody who knew what it was looked for it. Then it spontaneously appeared. Anyway: Foxit Reader comes on high recommendation, and you don't even have to put up with its toolbar.
The other freebie that's impressing me greatly is Notepad++, which is the souped-up programmer's version of the Windows Notepad. This will save your life when you start to muck about with the "css" gibberish which makes the Blogger templates do what they do. Get into the code for these pages to make they do something special, and you see this:
Well, rabbits. I've been putting up with their pestilential toolbars for about six months ... my browser window has been getting progressively smaller and smaller as the fantastic free addons installed their bloody little toolbars which, when they start to accumulate, aren't so little any longer.
Ahem.
Apparently you can turn them off. If I were the kind of person to shove emoticons up your nose as you read, you'd be gagging on one right now. It would be chuckling in glee on the one hand and blushing slightly in momentary, transitory, more or less insignificant ... embarrassment.
Okay: go ahead and get the addons I'm about to recommend here, because momentarily I shall disclose all ... ie., how to get rid of the aforementioned bloody little toolbars that clog up your browser window like the cybernetic equivalent of arterial plaque.
I've just stumbled over two beauties: both free, and both better than stuff that costs an arm and a leg. We'll start with the PDF reader. Are you sick and tired of the length of time it takes to load Acrobat Reader, the commercials you have to turn off, the constant whining about updates you don't want ... and the sheer amount of your computer's brain this prog commandeers?! If you answered yes to any or all of the above, you're ready for this:
Foxit. Go here: http://www.download.com/Foxit-Reader/3000-2079_4-10313206.html
It's a trendy, nifty, slick PDF viewer with every feature you'd get from Adobe, and a whole lot LESS of the hype, the marketing, the "overhead" that crashes your computer, and ... the angst inspired by the above. There are loads of Foxit versions and addons to buy, but the reader itself is free. If you get into making, converting and adapting PDFs, obviously you want more, in which case go here: http://www.foxitsoftware.com/products/ ... and even though you'll have to pay some money, it's about 5% of the price you could expect to pay for Adobe products.
I took this for a test drive this morning, and was delighted -- except for the bloody little toolbar it installed in my browser. Hence the mini-rant, and the gleeful chuckles as the DreamCraft guru clicked me out of that particular wood ... like this:
[The following paragraph is for the cybernetically handicapped. If you and your computer speak the same language, enjoy the same sports and are cultivating romance, feel free to skip ahead]
Forget about searching the copious menus of the Foxit toolbar for some way, any way, to turn the damned thing off from within its own mechanism -- you're wasting your time here. You RIGHT click on the gray area to the right of all these accumulating toolbars, and you get a popup menu. Then, you take the trouble to notice something that always blew by me. There's a listing for UNLOCK TOOLBAR. Uh huh. Click to unlock it ... click to un-select all the things you don't want plugging up your browser window ... they vanish one by one ... and then LOCK the toolbar again.
No prizes will be awarded for observation! I never even saw the "unlock toolbar" thing. I'd be prepared to swear it wasn't even there until somebody who knew what it was looked for it. Then it spontaneously appeared. Anyway: Foxit Reader comes on high recommendation, and you don't even have to put up with its toolbar.
The other freebie that's impressing me greatly is Notepad++, which is the souped-up programmer's version of the Windows Notepad. This will save your life when you start to muck about with the "css" gibberish which makes the Blogger templates do what they do. Get into the code for these pages to make they do something special, and you see this:
And that stuff goes on for page after page. Notepad++ makes it halfway possible to wrangle this gibberish by numbering every line -- which your browser won't do, even though it will display an xml file. Also, like your browser, Notepad++ color-codes certain kinds of gibberish, which helps sort out the categories. I like the numbered lines a lot. It's the first time I've seen them since I messed about with Basic back in the early 1980s.
So, if you're thinking about trying to have a fiddle with the css gibberish behind your blog page, get Notepad++ to give you a bit of an advantage. Go here: http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/download.php
Ciao for now,
MK
Friday, December 19, 2008
Is good health a right or a privilege?!
Very occasionally, there's a cast-iron reason for having a rant ... and this is one of them.
Personally, I don't smoke. I've never smoked. I watched my father take 18 years to die of lung and brain cancer caused by smoking, so I count myself a specialist in the consequences, while not suffering them myself. Who was it said, 'Only an idiot has to learn by his own mistakes.'
So far, so good: at least I'm qualified to indulge myself in a rant! So, here we go:
It's a bloody outrage when you can't have your cup of tea (or coffee) in your own backyard, without being subjected to the secondhand smoke of the (bleep)ing chainsmokers who live on the other side of the fence, and who smoke like (bleep)ing chimneys all morning. Secondhand smoke is a lot more dangerous than the garbage these morons are dragging into their own lungs, because at least they have benefit of the (bleep)ing filter. So, there's Keegan, sitting in a patch of shade on a glorious summer morning, cup of ooling in the hand, thinking about the day's work to be done, and --
Suddenly I'm coughing on someone else's (bleep)ing smoke. I'm inhaling carcinogenic compounds. My eyes are watering on the toxic fallout that's been EXHALED from the diseased lungs of the geriatric pea-brains who live over the fence. They rent. The rules are clear -- they're central to the Residential Tenancies Act: you do NOT smoke in a rental house. So what do these octogenarian cretins do? They go stand on the back step and force-feed the neighbors with the 4,000 artificial substances which are added to the tobacco to make it smolder for a long time rather than burning straight out.
I have no desire to have 4,000 chemicals force-fed into my lungs, and follow my father down an 18-year path that led to places you don't even want to know about. But apparently I don't have any rights to assert. It's their right to smoke on their doorstep and gas me with their toxic fallout. I have no right to ask them (much less tell them) to bugger off and poison themselves somewhere else, where they're not poisoning me too.
The worst part of all this is that when lifelong smokers get into middle age and older, the vaster majority of them get sick. My dad was one. There are hundreds of thousands like him, and they suck the Medicare system dry ... after having shot themselves deliberately in both feet. It's getting on towards half a century since the Surgeon General's report was published. Everyone has known for that long, that smoking causes cancers all over your body, plus peripheral circulation failure, heart disease, arterial disease --
In fact, the only thing it doesn't seem to cause is broken noses ... because if someone like myself, a non-smoker, were to ask these people to stop or go away, they'd get nasty ... it could turn into a big fight ... the fight could get physically violent ... someone's nose gets punched in the furore ... and it's the non-smoker who started it, by trying to save his own life from cancers and cardiac diseases that will eventually kill him! We call it self-bloody-preservation -- and it'll get us hauled up in front of a magistrate, with a huge fine to pay, or we'll go to jail, thirty or sixty days for aggravated assault. And when the non-smoker gets out of jail, what's to say the situation won't happen again? Because apparently smokers have every right to pollute the airspace of non-smokers with the rancid fallout from their diseased lungs.
There. I feel much better now. So, you want to look at ways to get people to quit?
Frankly, I don't think it's every likely to happen. I'm so certain than a majority of people will always smoke that even the characters in some of my novels -- Jarrat and Stone, Marin and Travers -- smoke the occasional cigarette. But, what are they smoking?! It sure as hell ain't the vile kind of crap people are smoking today. I called it kipgrass: a naturally occuring plant that only smolders, won't burn properly -- like the fibers of the Tasmanian white pine -- is then enhanced with mild euphorics, given a pleasant aroma by being scented with citrus, roses, whatever, and then rolled into a cigarette and sold by the 25 pack.
In other words, the smoke is harmless, smells okay, and isn't addictive. Fat chance of this happening outside a science fiction novel!
In the real world, people will always smoke and the tobacco companies control everything that isn't controlled by the oil companies, the drug companies, and the cosmetics industry.
Personally, I don't smoke. I've never smoked. I watched my father take 18 years to die of lung and brain cancer caused by smoking, so I count myself a specialist in the consequences, while not suffering them myself. Who was it said, 'Only an idiot has to learn by his own mistakes.'
So far, so good: at least I'm qualified to indulge myself in a rant! So, here we go:
It's a bloody outrage when you can't have your cup of tea (or coffee) in your own backyard, without being subjected to the secondhand smoke of the (bleep)ing chainsmokers who live on the other side of the fence, and who smoke like (bleep)ing chimneys all morning. Secondhand smoke is a lot more dangerous than the garbage these morons are dragging into their own lungs, because at least they have benefit of the (bleep)ing filter. So, there's Keegan, sitting in a patch of shade on a glorious summer morning, cup of ooling in the hand, thinking about the day's work to be done, and --Suddenly I'm coughing on someone else's (bleep)ing smoke. I'm inhaling carcinogenic compounds. My eyes are watering on the toxic fallout that's been EXHALED from the diseased lungs of the geriatric pea-brains who live over the fence. They rent. The rules are clear -- they're central to the Residential Tenancies Act: you do NOT smoke in a rental house. So what do these octogenarian cretins do? They go stand on the back step and force-feed the neighbors with the 4,000 artificial substances which are added to the tobacco to make it smolder for a long time rather than burning straight out.
I have no desire to have 4,000 chemicals force-fed into my lungs, and follow my father down an 18-year path that led to places you don't even want to know about. But apparently I don't have any rights to assert. It's their right to smoke on their doorstep and gas me with their toxic fallout. I have no right to ask them (much less tell them) to bugger off and poison themselves somewhere else, where they're not poisoning me too.The worst part of all this is that when lifelong smokers get into middle age and older, the vaster majority of them get sick. My dad was one. There are hundreds of thousands like him, and they suck the Medicare system dry ... after having shot themselves deliberately in both feet. It's getting on towards half a century since the Surgeon General's report was published. Everyone has known for that long, that smoking causes cancers all over your body, plus peripheral circulation failure, heart disease, arterial disease --
In fact, the only thing it doesn't seem to cause is broken noses ... because if someone like myself, a non-smoker, were to ask these people to stop or go away, they'd get nasty ... it could turn into a big fight ... the fight could get physically violent ... someone's nose gets punched in the furore ... and it's the non-smoker who started it, by trying to save his own life from cancers and cardiac diseases that will eventually kill him! We call it self-bloody-preservation -- and it'll get us hauled up in front of a magistrate, with a huge fine to pay, or we'll go to jail, thirty or sixty days for aggravated assault. And when the non-smoker gets out of jail, what's to say the situation won't happen again? Because apparently smokers have every right to pollute the airspace of non-smokers with the rancid fallout from their diseased lungs.
There. I feel much better now. So, you want to look at ways to get people to quit?
Frankly, I don't think it's every likely to happen. I'm so certain than a majority of people will always smoke that even the characters in some of my novels -- Jarrat and Stone, Marin and Travers -- smoke the occasional cigarette. But, what are they smoking?! It sure as hell ain't the vile kind of crap people are smoking today. I called it kipgrass: a naturally occuring plant that only smolders, won't burn properly -- like the fibers of the Tasmanian white pine -- is then enhanced with mild euphorics, given a pleasant aroma by being scented with citrus, roses, whatever, and then rolled into a cigarette and sold by the 25 pack.
In other words, the smoke is harmless, smells okay, and isn't addictive. Fat chance of this happening outside a science fiction novel!
In the real world, people will always smoke and the tobacco companies control everything that isn't controlled by the oil companies, the drug companies, and the cosmetics industry.
So what can be done to alleviate the problem? Try this:
Recognize that smoking is a harmful, often lethal activity, that also stinks to high heaven. Make people -- and especially kids just starting -- hyper-aware of this, by making it illegal to buy cigarettes unless you are a licensed smoker. Issue smoker's licences, the same way driver's licenses are issued. You have to be 18 to get one, and it costs $100 per year to keep it current. You produce your license every time you buy a packet of smokes. The license is barcoded ... the machine reads the barcode, tracks you as you puff ... and updates your account. The tax on cigarettes is raised to 100% (ie., a $10 pack is now $20), and this amount is stashed in your account, accruing all the time -- to pay for your hospitalization, surgery, chemo and radiotherapy when you get sick. Because the illness you're giving yourself is self-inflicted, and you acknowledge that when you're 50 or 60 or whatever, you're going to be sucking Medicare dry. You pay in advance for your medical care.
It's not a bad idea, surely. A license, and a medicare levy. What's wrong with that? The added expense of puffing away might even cause some of the more intelligent people to quit. For the rest of us, the so-called "fresh air fascists," the fewer smokers there are in the community, the better we like it. Also, since these cretins are now paying for their own medical treatment in advance, the hospital systems will improve vastly for the rest of us.
It's a win-win situation. Licensed, legal smokers who are determined get to keep on puffing, the hospital system benefits, the government gets extra revenue, underage kids find it harder to get supply, more people quit to save money so the air quality improves, and in our old age, the rest of us non-smokers get better medical care, because the people who're inflicting their own terminal disease have prepaid for their care, rather than being utterly self-indulgent for decades and then hogging the lion's share of Medicare as well. The government would have to love this: it's political manna. The technology is easily available to manage this system. And it'd be difficult for the tobacco companies to find an argument...
Uh ... just a thought, guys.
Ciao for now,
MK
It's a win-win situation. Licensed, legal smokers who are determined get to keep on puffing, the hospital system benefits, the government gets extra revenue, underage kids find it harder to get supply, more people quit to save money so the air quality improves, and in our old age, the rest of us non-smokers get better medical care, because the people who're inflicting their own terminal disease have prepaid for their care, rather than being utterly self-indulgent for decades and then hogging the lion's share of Medicare as well. The government would have to love this: it's political manna. The technology is easily available to manage this system. And it'd be difficult for the tobacco companies to find an argument...
Uh ... just a thought, guys.
Ciao for now,
MK
If you found this post interesting or useful, please email the url to your friends! Google still has my page rankings zeroed out, so I can't win a Google search or blog search, no matter how well my posts are crafted. I'm in contact with the company, but it's a long, slow process to find a resolution. How can you help?! By email the urls of useful posts! Thank you kindly.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Writers beware: it's just another scam
Everyone has a pet peeve, so it's no surprise MK should have one too. They're more ubiquitous than poodles, cost less to feed than gerbils and don't bite the way hamsters are inclined to. So, naturally, everybody has at least one pet peeve; some folks have several. I have ... a few, I admit; but the one I want to talk about today lives in the closet like Binkley's Giant Purple Snorklewacker, and periodically beats on the door and demands to be let out in broad daylight.Like today.
And here it is: it's the "I can teach you how to be a successful writer in 12 easy lessons, no matter if you've never put pen to paper before, and instantly you'll be a successful, published, paid writer. All you gotta do is pay me US$49.95, and you can start living the life of your dreams."
There are SCORES of these offers on the Internet at any one time, and HUNDREDS of them cycling through in any two-year period. And one presumes that there enough takers out there, each with the IQ of linguine, for the publishers of these courses to make their hundred grand or quarter mill, and skeedaddle out of the field before rampaging armies of glazed-eyed, torch-wielding, would-be writers come storming up the driveway demanding their refund.
At this specific juncture in the unfolding of this particular universe, the whole industry is epitomized by one specific page, in which every single rotten, lousy stunt is pulled. I was sent the URL for it, and I am disgusted to the point where I'm extremely tempted to just paste in that URL and let you have the whole thing.
However, I fully expect to be sued if I did that, so ... taking a deep breath, we'll do it this way: I'm not going to name names, I'm not going to give any URLs. But I am going to tell you what to Google to pull up the page -- and probably 50 pages just like it.
Google something along the lines of "write for quick cash," and "write get published get cash" and "zero effort writing quick cash" ... and you'll find your way there. You'll know it when you see it. It's the one screaming this heading: "Earn BIG MONEY for 5 MINUTES of WRITING!"
Yeah, sure.
The above high-density keywords should speak volumes to you. Writing ... zero effort ... quick cash ... get published.
And here is my pet peeve: I've spent thirty years honing my skills. I'm editing my own latest novel right now, and after thirty years of experience, I'm still turning my work inside out in the editing to make it not just good, but as close to flawless as possible. After three decades of writing everything from poetry to film scripts, I can tell you that virtually everything on this entrepreneur's "squeeze page" (as they're called because they're designed to squeeze money out of you) is balloon juice.
One of this entrepreneur's "hot tips" is that you can make MOVIE PITCHES. "Write three lines" and get your name on the next blockbuster movie. Seriously -- I'm not having you on here, this is an actual "tip" on this squeeze page!
It might have been true forty years ago -- I doubt it. ("From an idea by" would have been your credit.) Here's the cold, hard facts: in today's Hollywood, YOU CAN NOT MAKE MOVIE PITCHES without having an "in" at a studio. You cannot make movie pitches even if you HAVE an "in," without being INVITED to make the pitch; and most producers and directors won't even look at a letter which doesn't come from a reputable agency.
How do I know this? Because I *do* make movie pitches. I've been making them for 15 YEARS. I'm part of a writing partnership that *has* a reputable agency and *is* invited to pitch. I've lost count of the number of scripts that have "done the rounds" in the last decade. If we'd sold something major, you'd know about it.
It's like selling a book to a major publisher. Your chances of breaking in and getting a sale worth significant money have recently been estimated at one in nine hundred thousand. It's that proverbial one in a million shot.
This entrepreneur spends considerable percentages of his "squeeze page" space talking about selling "letters to the editor." Such magazine inclusions routinely pay $5 to $50, if you're lucky ... 99% of magazines and newspapers pay nothing. Those that do pay are inundated.
The next recommendation is to look at writing jingles, little poems, for greetings cards -- Hallmark and John Sands, that kind of thing. However, these companies have STAFF WRITERS ... you'll find that you're selling your little verses to much lesser companies who will pay about $1 per line. A four line verse -- $4.
And as for the next tip, "writing captions for photographs" ... editors do this themselves, on the fly, when they're setting type. Next: writing captions for your own photos. Go right ahead ... and then climb aboard another treadmill -- now you're trying to sell your photos. Have you ever tried?! Have fun.
The steam really starts to explode out of my ears when this entrepreneur gets onto the subject of short story writing (not to mention articles and reviews), and then selling comedy to TV.
All I can say to you is, if you believe this spiel ("How you can turn your sense of humor into a STEADY STREAM of PAYCHECKS!"), then go ahead and try it. Take a shot at selling your comedy sketches to television or radio. You'll come back down to earth so hard, people have been known to break their legs.
And I'm going to close on something so stupid, I'm speechless: "A Web site where you can SUBMIT any number of MOVIE IDEAS for a modest one-time fee and get them pitched on your behalf to Hollywood producers."
Believe me (or not, if you don't consider thirty years in the business is enough to know what I'm talking about), Hollywood producers get pitched about 100 scripts PER DAY, via agencies who take them to lunch, to dinner, for drinks, on vacation ... via writers who have already sold movies and TV series, by directors who have STAFFS of writers online ... and by actors who own their own production companies (like Brad Pitt and his Plan B). Movie studios do not, nor have they ever, nor WILL they ever turn to amateur websites for movie ideas.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. Every writer gets 100 for every one we write; every producer sees 500 scripts for every one for which he bids for the rights. And very often, the producer, director and writer are the SAME PERSON.
What burns my cookies is that there are people out there in the world who work for the minimum wage (maybe $5 per hour), eat noodles for a month, and pay US$49.95 to an Internet entrepreneur for an ebook full of complete drivel, and then try their hearts out and maybe get $10 here for a published letter (where the bloody magazine cost them $11.95 to buy a copy, in order to get the submission info!!), and maybe $8 for a verse sold to a greetings card company -- where the cost of postage on the paperwork, and maybe an interstate phonecall to get the sale, exceeded the income.
There, I feel better now. Pardon me for letting off steam. You can tell this is something I feel very strongly about. Strongly enough to be thinking seriously about having a second blog -- an actual "writing blog" where the focus of the whole thing is ... writing. They do say that you oughtta blog about something over which you can get passionate.
[The cartoon is from the Bloom County comic anthology Penguin Dreams and Stranger Things, by Berke Breathed. All rights acknowledged to BB and Little, Brown.]
Ciao for now,
MK
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Mad Max, blog spam and Aussie movies on a hot morning
I'm not really having a "rant" this morning (for one thing, it's too hot! The temperature will be tickling 100 degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon, and by 8:00am it was uncomfortably hot sitting in the shade in the back yard), but ...
I do want to grumble a wee bit -- before I progress to much happier subjects! Bear with me.
It might be futile, but I'd like ask visitors not to spam this blog. 99% of users don't (and many thanks to all those who don't!), and I delete the spam fast, probably before it's even been seen, but ... still.
The spam I'm seeing is basically along the lines of 1) blatant commercial copy pasted in, or 2) some brief, inane statement of the utterly obvious, with a commercial link attached. Like this, which was blithely parked on http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/mel-at-movies-australia.html:
And yes, a commercial link was attached; and no, I'm not quoting the link -- I'm also not naming names, but -- if you're reading this, please don't park your advertising on my blog -- or, if you MUST do it, leave a proper comment, have something to say, and make sure your facts are correct. Then, I'll leave your advertisement up. We'll call it a trade.
My problems with the above comment are far too numerous for it to be taken seriously...
Mel Gibson is an actor ... Max Rockatansky was a character -- an absolute anti-hero, not a champion, in a 1978 Australian movie in which economic collapse, not nuclear war, is hinted at, on-screen in the original Mad Max, as having caused the wasteland scenario we see in Mad Max 2. (View the first movie, not the second, for the backstory and worldbuilding.) Everyone in the DVD-viewing world knows Gibson and Glover starred in Lethal Weapon -- but Glover's character, Sgt. Roger Murtaugh, was not a Vietnam veteran. Only Martin Riggs is described as having served in 'Nam. And is Lethal Weapon the "best pure action movie since Raiders of the Lost Ark?" First of all, learn to spell ARK, as in "of the bloody Covenant," not "a segment of the circumference of a circle."And then, be gracious enough to say, "imho" or similar, because with the above bald statement you're going to get a big fight from fans of virtually anything made by Arnie, Sly, Segal, van Damme, Peter Jackson, Jim Cameron, Gore Verbinski, Marvel Studios, and scores of others who are responsible for projects as diverse as Iron Man, The Mummy, Van Helsing, The Peacemaker, Terminator, Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean -- and many more action films that have been made in the two decades since the original Lethal Weapon movie was made. I would seriously counsel against making such a sweeping statement without the small, life-saving prefix, "imho."
I do want to grumble a wee bit -- before I progress to much happier subjects! Bear with me.
It might be futile, but I'd like ask visitors not to spam this blog. 99% of users don't (and many thanks to all those who don't!), and I delete the spam fast, probably before it's even been seen, but ... still.
The spam I'm seeing is basically along the lines of 1) blatant commercial copy pasted in, or 2) some brief, inane statement of the utterly obvious, with a commercial link attached. Like this, which was blithely parked on http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/11/mel-at-movies-australia.html:
Mel Gibson is mythic hero Mad Max, champion of post-nuclear survivors in an all-time-great action spectacular. He always looks like he's having fun up there on the screen. Mel Gibson and Danny Glover bust loose as Vietnam vets-turned-L.A. cops after heroin smugglers. The best pure action movie since Raiders of the Lost Arc.
And yes, a commercial link was attached; and no, I'm not quoting the link -- I'm also not naming names, but -- if you're reading this, please don't park your advertising on my blog -- or, if you MUST do it, leave a proper comment, have something to say, and make sure your facts are correct. Then, I'll leave your advertisement up. We'll call it a trade.
My problems with the above comment are far too numerous for it to be taken seriously...Mel Gibson is an actor ... Max Rockatansky was a character -- an absolute anti-hero, not a champion, in a 1978 Australian movie in which economic collapse, not nuclear war, is hinted at, on-screen in the original Mad Max, as having caused the wasteland scenario we see in Mad Max 2. (View the first movie, not the second, for the backstory and worldbuilding.) Everyone in the DVD-viewing world knows Gibson and Glover starred in Lethal Weapon -- but Glover's character, Sgt. Roger Murtaugh, was not a Vietnam veteran. Only Martin Riggs is described as having served in 'Nam. And is Lethal Weapon the "best pure action movie since Raiders of the Lost Ark?" First of all, learn to spell ARK, as in "of the bloody Covenant," not "a segment of the circumference of a circle."And then, be gracious enough to say, "imho" or similar, because with the above bald statement you're going to get a big fight from fans of virtually anything made by Arnie, Sly, Segal, van Damme, Peter Jackson, Jim Cameron, Gore Verbinski, Marvel Studios, and scores of others who are responsible for projects as diverse as Iron Man, The Mummy, Van Helsing, The Peacemaker, Terminator, Return of the King, Pirates of the Caribbean -- and many more action films that have been made in the two decades since the original Lethal Weapon movie was made. I would seriously counsel against making such a sweeping statement without the small, life-saving prefix, "imho."
Okay ... I'll stop grumbling now. But, I mean, really. And yes, I deleted the post as pure spam. And no, I don't at all mind you putting in a link to your own blog or page or site. Only, please -- have something to say, add something, and make sure your facts are right! A comment that adds value stays up -- trust me. I can smell pure spam from a mile away, and as soon as I notice it, sorry, but it gets deleted. The blog has been spammed by everything from glass manufacturers in India (!) to Internet marketers in heaven-knows-where. I try to be vigilant.
To clarify ... I'm not having a grumble about Raiders of the Lost Ark! It's one of my favorite movies, and highly recommended.
I also highly recommend the original Mad Max, which is very, very different from The Road Warrior. It's raw, and "honest," and doesn't have a particle of "hype" about it.
The movie was shot in Victoria, Australia in 1977 (!) and released in 1979, with a copyright date of '78, after being edited in the late Byron Kennedy's spare bedroom! Gibson was 21 ... and nope, it wasn't his first movie, either. He'd made SUMMER CITY the year earlier, while still studying at NIDA.
Of the three "Max" movies, which is the best? Depends what you're looking for. If you want "hype" then, the the third one, with Tina Turner, a bunch of cute little kids, and plenty of outrageous stunts. If you want "the kapow effect!" then you want the second, with an all-Aussie cast, and cinematography by Dean Semler, who went on to win the Oscar (T-bloody-M) for Dances with Wolves.
But if you want raw truth, total honesty, bleeding-wound emotion, with none of the Hollywood candy-coating ... watch the first one. It's not fun -- it's not about having fun. It cost A$150,000 to make, as an indie movie, and it earned over$125m at the box office -- in Japan it swiftly became a cult.
Of course, in the US is was difficult to exhibit; it had to be heavily censored ... because the violence is very realistic, and the injuries sustained by accident victims are also realistic; director and creator George Miller is a doctor ... and it also had to be overdubbed with heavy American accents, because in 1980, US audiences couldn't understand foreign accents!
[Left: the final shot of the first movie where Max, busted up and broken, takes the last of the v8 Interceptors and heads for the wasteland.]
The net effect is absolutely weird. Remember, all the cars are right hand drive, the landscape is Aussie, the cars are Australian makes and models! Yet you hear US accents issuing from Jim Goose, and Midge, The Feef and Jess, and -- Max. Yeek. I saw this cut of the movie on VHS when I was in the States a loooong time ago. Get the Australian original, uncut. The US has stopped overdubbing Aussie movies in the years since, but I imagine the old cut of Mad Max is still circulating somwehere. Avoid it, if you can.
Anyway -- there you are: Max Rockatansky, age 21 ... Mel Gibson when he was so young, you blink and shake your head. Was anyone ever that young?! Back in the days when he was as Aussie as the next cobber, before he went whacko, and ... the rest is history. (In fact, his looks still had to "settle in." He would acquire those drop-dead gorgeous characteristics in about another 4-5 years. He was a nice kid in Mad Max, though ... he was a superstar downunder when his face was still inclined to break out occasionally. Seriously. Some of us were there, and have good memories.
Right now, I'm going to close this post -- not because there isn't more to talk about (there is), but because it's getting way too hot. Both the PC and I need to cool down (and it's only 9:15am).
More later...
Ciao for now,
MK
Sunday, October 5, 2008
The Rich and The Bonkers
Being an ordinary working stiff, I tend to think of earning a hundred grand a year as being pretty good, and if you can earn one-fifty, you're doing great. Certainly, the federal Aussie government considers A$150,000 p.a. as the lower threshold of the super-tax bracket -- in other words, tickle that line, you're counted as RICH downunder, and they start to tax the bejesus out of you.
Now, if this sounds sane to you ... if your idea of the Holy Grail is still a million bucks ... if (like ordinary mortals) you count your pennies to make the mortgage payment and the car payment and pay the $1,683.47 power bill that just got dropped in your mailbox ... then, there is something you need to see:
http://fora.tv/2008/06/26/Billionaires_and_Their_Impact_The_Envy_Economy
I can't embed this, because it's not sourced from YouTube, but I urge you to click on this link and spend a wee while on FORA TV. The way you view rich people will promptly change. You might advocate reality therapy for these people: make them live for six months on the age pension, or unemployment (remember the movie, Trading Places ...?), or maybe send them to live on the seventeeth floor of a tenement in Queens, with a factory job to keep the rent paid and groceries on the table.
You might even advocate cutting to the chase, just straitjacketing them and getting them into a nice, safe little rubber room, surrounded by mattress wallpaper, where a keeper comes by every couple of hours and gives them a sedative shot.
How I got to this video, on FORA, I can't even remember. I tend to follow threads, and can end up in astonishing places without much idea how I got there. But for some reason I set it to play, and in five minutes or so I was so gobsmacked, I wound up watching the whole thing. Sweat through the intro, with the moderator; get into the first speaker...
...Robert Frank, author of Richistan. Frank is a commentator on ... the rich. The megarich. The stinking rich. The people whose personal fortunes are around US$1.2b, and who don't think they're rich because they're not stuck up, arrogant, conceited bast-folks. Others who only have $100,000,000 and are so envious of those with more that the jealousy is wrecking their poor little lives. Those with multiple billions, whose lower lips are trembling because (whimper) they have to wait three years to have their custom-built, hand-crafted ocean liner delivered. Awwww, does diddums need a nice, fresh handkie there? Folks who're weeping bitterly because there's a waiting list for that new Ferrari.
And why is there a waiting list? Because there are so many bloody billionaires in the world now, that the top-end luxury goods manufacturers can no longer accommodate them:
The Century FoundationNew York, NY, Jun 26th, 2008: This year Forbes magazine listed 1,125 billionaires in the world, compared to 946 in 2007 and a measly 140 billionaires in 1986, the first year of the publication's ranking. Clearly, the ranks of the billionaire class have swelled.
It's not only their ranks that have swelled. Their heads have, too: sounds like a case of water on the brain, to me. One struggles to grasp this kind of thing; the $300,000,000 impulse purchase, for example ... while at the same time charities are begging for nickles and dimes to irrigate Africa, stop the spread of HIV, get the child prostitutes off the Bangkok streets, fix the climate before we all choke, reverse global warming, restock our fished-empty seas, save the scraps that remain of our rainforest, and so many endangered species ...
And here's a billionaire, grief stricken, aggravated, STRESSED OUT, because his custom design ocean liner won't be delivered for a few years.
Send for the straitjackets. Get these people into institutions, where they belong. Hire a bunch of hypnotherapists to deprogram them, same as the survivors of radical cults are deprogramed. Because these people need it.
They need to be brought back down to earth, hard and fast, and maybe have some home truths about poverty stencilled on their dense little brains. Facts such as Haitian families living on $1 per day, and 30,000 kids every day dying "as a result of extreme poverty." No one needs me to go into the details ... we're all agonizingly aware of what's going on in the world, and if you're in any doubts, go here:
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/181
Did you read the last line there? The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (ie a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined. They would be the aforementioned Diddums and his two best mates, who're crying on each other's shoulders because they can't have a new Ferrari right now, today, this morning; because the guy who owns the $300,000,000 house just doesn't want to sell it this very instant.
Nostrakeeganus, he predicting a new boom indstry. Straitjackets. Because if these people are not "the first up against the wall when the revolution comes," it can only be because certain compassionate people got in fast, rescued them and got them safely locked up before the mob could get to them.
Sorry, folks: I know I'm back on the soapbox, but this one seemed to need someone, somewhere, to stand on it for a while!
Cheers, MK.
Now, if this sounds sane to you ... if your idea of the Holy Grail is still a million bucks ... if (like ordinary mortals) you count your pennies to make the mortgage payment and the car payment and pay the $1,683.47 power bill that just got dropped in your mailbox ... then, there is something you need to see:
http://fora.tv/2008/06/26/Billionaires_and_Their_Impact_The_Envy_Economy
I can't embed this, because it's not sourced from YouTube, but I urge you to click on this link and spend a wee while on FORA TV. The way you view rich people will promptly change. You might advocate reality therapy for these people: make them live for six months on the age pension, or unemployment (remember the movie, Trading Places ...?), or maybe send them to live on the seventeeth floor of a tenement in Queens, with a factory job to keep the rent paid and groceries on the table.
You might even advocate cutting to the chase, just straitjacketing them and getting them into a nice, safe little rubber room, surrounded by mattress wallpaper, where a keeper comes by every couple of hours and gives them a sedative shot.
How I got to this video, on FORA, I can't even remember. I tend to follow threads, and can end up in astonishing places without much idea how I got there. But for some reason I set it to play, and in five minutes or so I was so gobsmacked, I wound up watching the whole thing. Sweat through the intro, with the moderator; get into the first speaker...
...Robert Frank, author of Richistan. Frank is a commentator on ... the rich. The megarich. The stinking rich. The people whose personal fortunes are around US$1.2b, and who don't think they're rich because they're not stuck up, arrogant, conceited bast-folks. Others who only have $100,000,000 and are so envious of those with more that the jealousy is wrecking their poor little lives. Those with multiple billions, whose lower lips are trembling because (whimper) they have to wait three years to have their custom-built, hand-crafted ocean liner delivered. Awwww, does diddums need a nice, fresh handkie there? Folks who're weeping bitterly because there's a waiting list for that new Ferrari.
And why is there a waiting list? Because there are so many bloody billionaires in the world now, that the top-end luxury goods manufacturers can no longer accommodate them:
The Century FoundationNew York, NY, Jun 26th, 2008: This year Forbes magazine listed 1,125 billionaires in the world, compared to 946 in 2007 and a measly 140 billionaires in 1986, the first year of the publication's ranking. Clearly, the ranks of the billionaire class have swelled.
It's not only their ranks that have swelled. Their heads have, too: sounds like a case of water on the brain, to me. One struggles to grasp this kind of thing; the $300,000,000 impulse purchase, for example ... while at the same time charities are begging for nickles and dimes to irrigate Africa, stop the spread of HIV, get the child prostitutes off the Bangkok streets, fix the climate before we all choke, reverse global warming, restock our fished-empty seas, save the scraps that remain of our rainforest, and so many endangered species ...
And here's a billionaire, grief stricken, aggravated, STRESSED OUT, because his custom design ocean liner won't be delivered for a few years.
Send for the straitjackets. Get these people into institutions, where they belong. Hire a bunch of hypnotherapists to deprogram them, same as the survivors of radical cults are deprogramed. Because these people need it.
They need to be brought back down to earth, hard and fast, and maybe have some home truths about poverty stencilled on their dense little brains. Facts such as Haitian families living on $1 per day, and 30,000 kids every day dying "as a result of extreme poverty." No one needs me to go into the details ... we're all agonizingly aware of what's going on in the world, and if you're in any doubts, go here:
http://www.globaleducation.edna.edu.au/globaled/go/pid/181
- Outtake:
The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is 17 October.
Half the world's population, nearly three billion people, live on less than US$2 a day
Over 800 million people do not get enough food to meet their energy needs.
More than 840 million adults, of whom 538 million are women, are illiterate.
In developed countries more than 100 million people live below the poverty line, more than 5 million people are homeless and 37 million are jobless.
The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (ie a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined.
Did you read the last line there? The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (ie a quarter of the world's countries) is less than the wealth of the world's three richest people combined. They would be the aforementioned Diddums and his two best mates, who're crying on each other's shoulders because they can't have a new Ferrari right now, today, this morning; because the guy who owns the $300,000,000 house just doesn't want to sell it this very instant.
Nostrakeeganus, he predicting a new boom indstry. Straitjackets. Because if these people are not "the first up against the wall when the revolution comes," it can only be because certain compassionate people got in fast, rescued them and got them safely locked up before the mob could get to them.
Sorry, folks: I know I'm back on the soapbox, but this one seemed to need someone, somewhere, to stand on it for a while!
Cheers, MK.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
California marriage rights: gays and dinks don't count?!! Can we say "Human Rights Violation" --??
California wedding bells won't be ringing out for gay couples if Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse has anything to say about it; the problem is, boat loads of straight couples ought to find themselves in the same stew ... and if the law is going to be bent out of shape to keep heteros OUT of the stewpot, you've got a nice little human rights violation on your hands here. Marriage is a no-no for gays, Morse insists ... and in the same breath she assigns thousands of straights to, uh, living in sin!
Intrigued? Read on!
Firstly, I can hear the majority of people asking, "Who the hell is Jennifer Roback Morse, and who does she think she is, to tell me what I can, and can't, do with my life?"
Since that's an excellent question, we'll go there first. This is the entity in question:
The short answer is, she's a fundamentalist crackpot with a doctorate. The long answer is, she's she's a fundamentalist crackpot with a doctorate and a big following, and a loud voice in the Christain community, who's never slow to come out fighting on the battlefield of what's being called the Culture Wars. Oh...kay. Next question would have to be, "What the bloody hell are the Culture Wars, and why should I care?"
All right, let's hit Wikipedia for this one: "The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting values. The term frequently implies a conflict between values considered traditional or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. The "culture war" is sometimes traced to the 1960s and has taken various forms since then." Unquote. Omigods.
(There's a hell of lot more to it, of course; if you're interested, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war ... but if you've already heard enough, stay with me -- especially since Wikipedia has red flags up all over the aforelinked article, flags which say flat-out "The neutrality of this article is disputed, and other warnings about unverified claims." Cute.)
If you want to read some baffling and infuriating stuff, get onto Morse's blog, where she's posting piffle like this, from equally soft-headed contributors:
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality:
Research Provides Significant Evidence
by Trayce Hansen, Ph.D.
Notice, there's another bloody PhD. contributing to this archive of twaddle. Hansen is "a licensed clinical psychologist" (good grief, you mean there are unlicensed ones?!!) who, doctorate and all, has missed the point. Her beef with gay marriage rights runs along these greasy tracks:
...and having read that, it's no surprise to find such a major point-misser as Hansen amplifying the twaddle written and performed by Dr. Morse. The two of them are bookends, at least in ideology; it makes sense for them to be found propping up the same redundantly point-missing argument.
Here's Morse's "Mission Statement," quoted right off her page:
Both these people fall neatly into the category of "There you are, you see, you can be an idiot and still get a PhD, and when they have to call you "doctor," you can recite piffle and be listened to."
Holding a PhD is no guarantee against being dead wrong ... and missing the point, big time. The gist of Morse's protests against gay marriage rights, ably backed up by Hansen, is this little snippet, from KFWB NEWS 980:
Duh. Who ever said they were? Who would WANT them to be?
And since when did gay marriage rights pivot around children? The vast majority of gay couples don't have them ... and probably (if they told you the absolute and politically uncorrect truth), don't want them -- a quality they share with many, many heterosexual couples known commonly as DINKS.
Double income, no kids. No desire for kids. Have panic attacks at the mere thought of the wildest possibility of even running the risk of having kids, where did I put the condoms, for godsakes, I'll get dizzy again if we've run out, Jim, run to the store quick, before they close!!
Marriage is not ONLY about children. It's about FAMILY. And family is not ONLY about procreation. "Family" (look it up) can certainly mean kids, parents, babies, blood-ties, the whole kaboodle; but it also means: "a group of persons who form a household under one head, including parents, children, and servants." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/family). The key word there is including. In legal jargon they would say, "including but not limited to."
Family is about people meeting, sharing love and affection, becoming joined at the hip, and mutually dependent, being there for each other, sharing the intimacy of spouses, wanting to spend what remains of life with each other. That's family: gay couples and dink couples are equally well described by this definition.
There's no difference. They don't want kids. They just want to be espoused and live happy lives. Children are no part of this equation, any more than they're a part of the plans of hetero couples who marry later in life. Fall romances leading to wedding bells at age 65 or 70 certainly are not going to involve baby carriages and painting the back bedroom pale blue or pink.
So, if these air-head PhDs are right in their 'child centric marriage' ideology, ALL people who do not conform to the rule of what is permissible as a model for (Christian?) marriage, should not be granted the privilege of marriage. Not just some people who don't conform. All. Otherwise you've opened the door to simple, old fashioned discrimination.
If Morse and Hansen and their groupies -- who will be coming out of the woodwork in increasing numbers as the Californian ballot approaches -- are right in their beliefs ... and if we are going to avoid discrimination ... then dink couples should not be allowed to marry, since marriage is an institution designed for raising children, not qualifying for tax cuts and medical benefits! For the same reasons, nor should couples be allowed to marry where the woman is past reasonable child-bearing or adopting age. We'd have to put a "cut off line" on it. Say, somewhat arbitrarily, 65. Menopause is long over, but with hormones and IVF, a baby could happen (and you can always legally adopt -- if the authorities let you; they may not, if you're past retirement) ... even if the mother would be 86 by the time this hypothetical offspring is old enough to walk into a bar and buy a beer.
And if the California Supreme Court doesn't catch the dink couples and the older couples in the same net they used to catch same-sex couples ... I foresee acres of litigation. Square miles of it, in fact. A fecund vale of litigation the size of the Amazon rainforest. Because discrimination is one of the things nobody will tolerate in this day and age.
Or, at least, we say we don't tolerate discrimination.
Time for the people of California to speak with their voting powers. It's not gay rights on the line here. It's human rights. Scratch the surface of the argument made by Morse, and you'll find religion. Bible-babble is right there, confusing the issue yet again. She says in her mission statement, "The attacks on timeless values — including marriage, the two-parent family and religion — increase costs, undermine productivity and demoralize your work force." And the very statistics Morse loves so much say, this is dead wrong. Gays (and dinks) are over achievers. They make more money, spend more readily, and help to support the economic environment. And I can certainly see how it costs the country in dollars and cents, when people wake up and quit the religion habit!
Okay, nuff said: Keegan is now formally hopping down off the soapbox!
Intrigued? Read on!
Firstly, I can hear the majority of people asking, "Who the hell is Jennifer Roback Morse, and who does she think she is, to tell me what I can, and can't, do with my life?"
Since that's an excellent question, we'll go there first. This is the entity in question:
The short answer is, she's a fundamentalist crackpot with a doctorate. The long answer is, she's she's a fundamentalist crackpot with a doctorate and a big following, and a loud voice in the Christain community, who's never slow to come out fighting on the battlefield of what's being called the Culture Wars. Oh...kay. Next question would have to be, "What the bloody hell are the Culture Wars, and why should I care?"All right, let's hit Wikipedia for this one: "The culture war (or culture wars) in American usage is a metaphor used to claim that political conflict is based on sets of conflicting values. The term frequently implies a conflict between values considered traditional or conservative and those considered progressive or liberal. The "culture war" is sometimes traced to the 1960s and has taken various forms since then." Unquote. Omigods.
(There's a hell of lot more to it, of course; if you're interested, go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_war ... but if you've already heard enough, stay with me -- especially since Wikipedia has red flags up all over the aforelinked article, flags which say flat-out "The neutrality of this article is disputed, and other warnings about unverified claims." Cute.)
If you want to read some baffling and infuriating stuff, get onto Morse's blog, where she's posting piffle like this, from equally soft-headed contributors:
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality
Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage Will Increase Prevalence of Homosexuality:
Research Provides Significant Evidence
by Trayce Hansen, Ph.D.
Notice, there's another bloody PhD. contributing to this archive of twaddle. Hansen is "a licensed clinical psychologist" (good grief, you mean there are unlicensed ones?!!) who, doctorate and all, has missed the point. Her beef with gay marriage rights runs along these greasy tracks:
"Certainly homosexual couples can be just as loving as heterosexual couples, but children require more than love. They need the distinctive qualities and the complementary natures of a male and female parent.
The accumulated wisdom of over 2,000 years has concluded that the ideal marital and parental configuration is composed of one man and one woman. Arrogantly disregarding such time-tested wisdom, and using children as guinea pigs in a radical experiment, is risky at best, and cataclysmic at worst.
Same-sex marriage definitely isn’t in the best interest of children. And although we empathize with those homosexuals who long to be married and parent children, we mustn’t allow our compassion for them to trump our compassion for children. In a contest between the desires of some homosexuals and the needs of all children, we can’t allow the children to lose."
[Source: http://www.drtraycehansen.com/Pages/writings_samesex.html
...and having read that, it's no surprise to find such a major point-misser as Hansen amplifying the twaddle written and performed by Dr. Morse. The two of them are bookends, at least in ideology; it makes sense for them to be found propping up the same redundantly point-missing argument.Here's Morse's "Mission Statement," quoted right off her page:
Timeless values are the core of prosperity for business, families and society. The Culture Wars are bad for business. The attacks on timeless values— including marriage, the two-parent family and religion—increase costs, undermine productivity and demoralize your work force. As your Coach for the Culture Wars, Dr. Morse is prepared to defend against these attacks. Using economics, statistics and history, Dr. Morse will help you take ground and avoid losses in the Culture Wars.
[Source: http://www.jennifer-roback-morse.com/]
Both these people fall neatly into the category of "There you are, you see, you can be an idiot and still get a PhD, and when they have to call you "doctor," you can recite piffle and be listened to."
Holding a PhD is no guarantee against being dead wrong ... and missing the point, big time. The gist of Morse's protests against gay marriage rights, ably backed up by Hansen, is this little snippet, from KFWB NEWS 980:
LOS ANGELES - Advocates and opponents of gay marriage clashed Thursday at the only public hearing on a ballot initiative that would ban same-sex marriage.
The focus of the hearing by state lawmakers was Proposition 8, a measure on the Nov. 4 ballot backed by a coalition of religious groups and the California Republican Party.
Opponents include gay rights advocates, the American Civil Liberties Union, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and director Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw.
Among the first speakers was Jennifer Roback Morse, former president of a pro-family organization, who said same-sex marriages violate the "child-centered institution of marriage."
"Mothers and fathers are not interchangeable," she said.
[Source: http://www.kfwb.com/pages/3071653.php?contentType=4&contentId=2840070]
Duh. Who ever said they were? Who would WANT them to be?
And since when did gay marriage rights pivot around children? The vast majority of gay couples don't have them ... and probably (if they told you the absolute and politically uncorrect truth), don't want them -- a quality they share with many, many heterosexual couples known commonly as DINKS.
Double income, no kids. No desire for kids. Have panic attacks at the mere thought of the wildest possibility of even running the risk of having kids, where did I put the condoms, for godsakes, I'll get dizzy again if we've run out, Jim, run to the store quick, before they close!!
Marriage is not ONLY about children. It's about FAMILY. And family is not ONLY about procreation. "Family" (look it up) can certainly mean kids, parents, babies, blood-ties, the whole kaboodle; but it also means: "a group of persons who form a household under one head, including parents, children, and servants." (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/family). The key word there is including. In legal jargon they would say, "including but not limited to."
Family is about people meeting, sharing love and affection, becoming joined at the hip, and mutually dependent, being there for each other, sharing the intimacy of spouses, wanting to spend what remains of life with each other. That's family: gay couples and dink couples are equally well described by this definition.
There's no difference. They don't want kids. They just want to be espoused and live happy lives. Children are no part of this equation, any more than they're a part of the plans of hetero couples who marry later in life. Fall romances leading to wedding bells at age 65 or 70 certainly are not going to involve baby carriages and painting the back bedroom pale blue or pink.
So, if these air-head PhDs are right in their 'child centric marriage' ideology, ALL people who do not conform to the rule of what is permissible as a model for (Christian?) marriage, should not be granted the privilege of marriage. Not just some people who don't conform. All. Otherwise you've opened the door to simple, old fashioned discrimination.
If Morse and Hansen and their groupies -- who will be coming out of the woodwork in increasing numbers as the Californian ballot approaches -- are right in their beliefs ... and if we are going to avoid discrimination ... then dink couples should not be allowed to marry, since marriage is an institution designed for raising children, not qualifying for tax cuts and medical benefits! For the same reasons, nor should couples be allowed to marry where the woman is past reasonable child-bearing or adopting age. We'd have to put a "cut off line" on it. Say, somewhat arbitrarily, 65. Menopause is long over, but with hormones and IVF, a baby could happen (and you can always legally adopt -- if the authorities let you; they may not, if you're past retirement) ... even if the mother would be 86 by the time this hypothetical offspring is old enough to walk into a bar and buy a beer.
And if the California Supreme Court doesn't catch the dink couples and the older couples in the same net they used to catch same-sex couples ... I foresee acres of litigation. Square miles of it, in fact. A fecund vale of litigation the size of the Amazon rainforest. Because discrimination is one of the things nobody will tolerate in this day and age.
Or, at least, we say we don't tolerate discrimination.
Time for the people of California to speak with their voting powers. It's not gay rights on the line here. It's human rights. Scratch the surface of the argument made by Morse, and you'll find religion. Bible-babble is right there, confusing the issue yet again. She says in her mission statement, "The attacks on timeless values — including marriage, the two-parent family and religion — increase costs, undermine productivity and demoralize your work force." And the very statistics Morse loves so much say, this is dead wrong. Gays (and dinks) are over achievers. They make more money, spend more readily, and help to support the economic environment. And I can certainly see how it costs the country in dollars and cents, when people wake up and quit the religion habit!
Okay, nuff said: Keegan is now formally hopping down off the soapbox!
Saturday, September 20, 2008
See what you're up against?
Just a quickie here: this isn't today's post, but an "on the fly" commentary, because I have something to share ... because I just don't believe what I'm seeing. Ready for this? Yesterday's post was called "Gay wedding bells can be expensive." It was a yack-on about gay marriage rights in California, and how Brad Pitt just gave a hundred grand to fighting the opposition ... and I took a quick look at who the opposition IS, and where it's coming from.
You might not have believed me when I said it was coming from out-of-state Bible-thumpers who're pumping money into their ban-gay-marriage crusade. Well, here's your proof.
It will be costing them a fortune to do this all over the web, cuz they sure as heck didn't just target Keegan! But the nanosecond I talked about gay marriage rights in California, my Google ads did this:
Go on, click on it to see it at a readable size. It's a screen capture off the ads I saw when I took a look at my blog today. I mean, say what?!!
The coming of the Kingdom of God, and Can Jews be for Jesus, and Christians wanted?! The column ads, to the right of my body text, were just as bad. Learn Biblical Hebrew, can homosexuals be saved, and a whole bunch of TWADDLE.
Now, unless Google Adsense is giving away these bloody ads (and I don't even want to think about that...) this is costing big money. At a time when there are people starving in the world, and families living in Hooverville-style tent cities again in the US (don't know the reference? Give this a click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooverville and squirm), the best thing these good, God-fearing, church-going people can think of to spend their money on is bloody Google Ads aimed at social commentary blogs like Keegan, with the object in mind of taking YOUR human rights, YOUR freedoms, which ought to be constitutional, and destroying them.
For shame. Seriously, you church folks, for shame. Go feed a child. Go bail a starving, heterosexual American family with six kids out of their mortgage nightmare, get them out of a tent and back in a home. Get your heads out of other people's bedrooms and back into your church, where, if your pastor isn't telling you to do GOOD and RIGHTEOUS things for your own suffering, struggling, utterly innocent fellow Americans, you should give said pastor some funny looks, and seek your salvation elsewhere.
Okay, rant over. Soap box being put back in the cupboard. I'll be good now, I promise.
More soon -- this isn't today's post, as I said, just something that had to be shared, because maybe, like me, you won't believe what you're seeing.
TTFN, MK
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Do Aussies really eat this stuff?!
Parked to your left is an image borrowed from AOL Health ... the credit is hereby acknowledged, but someone, somewhere is probably going to file a hopping-mad law suit, though not at AOL! Regular readers might recall, a few days ago I was talking about "culture misappropriation," and this, to your left, is just about the worst case of it I've ever seen...In answer to the reader's question, "Do Aussies really eat this KRAPP?!!" (emphasis is the readers ... but heartily encored by yours truly), the answer is a resounding --
What?!!!!
This little beauty is described by AOL Health in the following terms: "Outback Steakhouse Aussie Cheese Fries with Ranch Dressing ; 2,900 calories 182 g fat 240 g carbs; Even if you split these "starters" with three friends, you'll have downed a dinner's worth of calories before your meal arrives."
Aussie What? Where? When? Okay, here's a little bit of clarification: Outback Steakhouse is NOT an Australian restaurant. There is no such restaurant down here. End of statement. Period. Even if there was an Outback Steakhouse down here, it would serve Australian-style food, or at least the Aussie "takes" on US meals.
So, don't be duped: Outback Steakhouse is an American restaurant, serving American food. (I mean, jeez, there isn't a smidgen of Vegemite, a lime Kool-ade, a Chicko Roll, a meat pie, a pasty, a lamington, a bit of damper, or a carbonized lamb chop anywhere in the building! Just joking, people. But, really.)
Fries, in the Antipodes, are known as CHIPS, for a start. They come on the side with battered, fried fish, as a rule, but will also be served with roast chicken, or burgers.
I had never seen cheese sauce poured over CHIPS before I went to the States in the late 90s. (In those days, nachos, tacos, and Mexican food as a species were virtually unknown here; even now, there's an Aussie spin on Mexican food in Antipodean restaurants ... it tends to be low fat, with human-sized portions, and they make the chili verde with green capsicums (known to North Americans as bell peppers).
And that's the other thing: even if they smothered CHIPS (okay, I'll stop being cute now) in cheese and ranch dressing down here (which they don't), the portion size would be about one fifth of what you'll see in the States.
So ... no, sorry to disillusion you. When you eat at Outback Steakhouse, you're not eating Aussie, and if the food gives you a cardiac arrest, you won't be able to blame it on the Aussies. ("Well, I don't know what could have gone wrong -- they eat this stuff downunder. Don't they?" No, sir, they don't.)
Which begs the question, what DO they eat downunder?!
Ethnic cuisine is very popular. Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Japanese, Indonesian, Indian. There's a couple of mid-eastern eateries. Italian and Greek are great favorites. You also get "combo" restaurants, like A Taste of Asia. And the "family" restaurants, which tend to be "all you can eat" places, like Charlie's and Fresh Choice. Charlie's is a chain; Fresh Choice might be local, not sure. There's a Mexican chain, Montezuma's ... but the food has an Aussie accent. There's a lot less fat, the portions are human-sized -- and, alas, some of the ingredients are not authentic. Tomatillas are very had to get down here. And if you've ever had a Margarita made with lemon juice ...! Fast food comes in loads of varieties, with fish and chips being the favorite across the board (again, human sized portions). The local fish are butterfish, gar, snook, flake, hoki (blue grenadier), hake, whiting, and so on. There's also KFC, Red Rooster and Pizza Hutt all fighting for market share ... the Aussie KFC is significantly different from the US variety (!), and the pizzas down here are SMALL by comparison with US pizzas. What we know as a family pizza is, apparently, known as a "personal" pizza up yonder. Red Rooster is not the same as the US Red Robin. They do chicken only. Subway is very popular, too; then you're onto things like Itami, if you want fast-food takeaway sushi, and Wok-in-a-Box, for takeaway Asian. There's also great places to get genuine Yiros ... then, a vast assortment of patisseries -- German, French, Italian, Australian, Swiss. lastly, there's McDonald's, and Hungry Jack's (ie, Burger King), if you're desperate for junk ... and even there, the menu is suspiciously Aussie and noticeably healthy, with fruit salad, green salad, yogurt and what have you, on the menu...
Food options are as cosmopolitan as the rest of the community, and incredibly varied. There's a lot less lethality to the local cuisine, and the most telling factor is the portion size. I was stunned by the amount of food they dish up in the States ... but of course the other side to this is, when Americans come down here on vacation they're shocked by the small amount of food they're handed as a portion. (I've seen US tourists get very annoyed and quite, uh, loud, about it. Solution: duh. Buy two or three portions if you want to eat more.)
I other words, there's two sides to every coin, and you get used to it, wherever you land. Eating out in the States, I used to ask for a box, and would wind up with lunch for a couple of days, in the refrigerator, from the leftovers of a restaurant meal. I mean, the solution was simple ... frankly, I can't see why people grumble when you can solve the problem of portion size with a box (or, if you want masses of food, buy two or three portions).
Ah, the joys of international travel!
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Scary movies: scammers or screamers?
And lest you think brain-rot is something quarantined in North America, have a look at this one:
This epic masterwork, recorded in ENGLAND, is potentially even scarier, because they've made the questions even easier: how many colors do you find on the Union Jack? How many colors do you find on a four-colored card? What's your own currency? Who's your own prime minister? Name a British car manufacturer.
Now, I would LOVE to see one of these movies made in Australia, and maybe also in New Zealand -- and Canada. Woah. These would be the stuff of which nightmares are made. Anyone game to go out and make one?!
It could be argued that these movies (which I call "Nightmare on Doom Street Part I, Part II" and so on ... scroll down to the previous post to see the American one) are all a complete set-up.
But, I put it to you: what kind of Americans or Brits would deliberately participate in something that will get their own people, brothers and sisters of their nation, viewed as complete morons?! I don't buy that solution to the problem. It would be traitorously un-American and un-British to do this; you couldn't get people to do it. Could you?! Or --
It could also be argued that there were loads of right answers to those simple quiz questions, and the right answers were edited out: that's much more proabable --
But here's your problem: those questions are so fundamental, ALL answers should be right; you should be weeding out the .05% wrong ones to make US'ns and their Brit cousins look faultlessly smart, not editing out the right ones to make 'em look, er, well, not quite so smart.
The questions fired at the American masterminds were incredibly simple, too: Name a country beginning with U. Find Korea on a map. What's the religion of Israel? What's the currency in the United Kingdom? Who's Tony Blair? How many kidneys does a person have? (Do you know what planet you're living on?)
(Don't get me wrong: most ordinary Americans (and English) in the street are the nicest people in the world -- some of them are in these movies. They're beautiful, beautiful people. I lived and worked in Alaska for 15 months and think of it as my second home; I have family in Texas, and in Alaska, and I was born in the UK ... in other words, I have a foot in both camps, as well as my third foot being planted in Australia (I'm a citizen). So I'm utterly impartial here. I'd be howling with laughter and in just as chill a sweat if the Aussie and Kiwi versions of these videos were to appear)
The problematical facet is this:
These beautiful people who identify Australia as North Korea (or Iran; change the printing on the map, and they zero in with unerring accuracy on what they can read), and believe Israelis are Islamic, and Kofi Annan is a hot beverage ... and there are five colors on the Union Jack, and George Bush is the English Prime Minister ... are the very same people who VOTE.
They're the folks who elect our jingoistic politicians, carefully install them at the pinnacle of the most powerful free-world governments, put them in charge of foreign policy, show them where the buttons are -- the nice, big red ones that launch the intercontinental ballistic missiles, place them officially in control of these buttons, and then ... go away and leave them to it.
They're also the self-same people who enlist in the armed forces, and follow orders to the letter.
"Yes sir, the Israelis are all Muslims, sir!" And what do we do with Muslims, these days? Omigods.
"Yes, sir, this bloody great island continent in the South Pacific [you know, the one with the koalas and the kangaroos skipping about, and the weird looking bridge on the harbor that looks like a coat hanger] is North Korea, sir!" And they're trouble, with their nuclear bombs and their missiles that can reach Anchorage, so we oughtta blast 'em. Well ... darn.
Now, if these movie are a scam (and ordinary, street-legal Americans and English folk were paid to act dumb for the cameras for five minutes), which I'm sure a lot of US'ns and UK'ns reading this will be praying -- the doodoo only gets deeper. From the American and English perspective, it reveals a traitorous element in the public that'll knife their own country in the back for a lousy few bucks or quid ... and look deeper. Take another look, from the cosmopolitan perspective.
Slap this on YouTube, and it will be seen in every corner of the world. It's being seen everywhere, right now. It's funny at first; then, when the questions put to these street-legal voters turn to who should be nuked, one stops laughing.Here's the stinger: the American one has been seen sixteen and a half MILLION times already. The English one has "only" been seen about a million times.
Don't ask yourself what regular Americans and English folks think about the videos. Rather, wonder what people in Korea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan ... the target nations, most likely to be nuked, are thinking? Feeling.
I'll tell you what they're feeling: dread. Fear. Anxiety.
Now, Americans and British are certainly going to take umbrage at being depicted as chronic morons (in fact, if you go to YouTube to view these movies, the comments are mostly from irate nationalistic viewers who are claiming the whole thing was set up. Certainly, I wish I could believe they were set up ... but I have this sneaking, crawling squirming feeling, the videos are absolutely genuine.
And it's not the fundamental stupidity of people that bothers me; it's the fact that these folks are not only allowed to vote, they're actually encouraged to.
I think people should be made to take a test before they qualify for voting privileges. I think it should be a 10-point quiz, that goes like this:
Award yourself one point for each correct answer.
What's more, I'd make a rule that if anyone scored less that 3 points in the above quiz, they're not allowed to bloody vote!
AND I'd make wannabe politicians take the damn' test, and if they scored less than 5 points, they not allowed to run for bloody office!
AND I'd use the test results (computer collated, analyzed to death by Zogby International, with a resulting 800pp document detailing why this planet is more than likely doomed to a lingering demise, death by sheer stupidity) to dismantle every bomb and warhead, nuclear, biological, chemical or explosive, on the planet. Because nobody, nowhere, no how, is qualified to be in charge of the buttons!
There. I feel much better now. The ocean is calm and blue ... calm and blue ... caaaaaalm and blooooooooo ...
This epic masterwork, recorded in ENGLAND, is potentially even scarier, because they've made the questions even easier: how many colors do you find on the Union Jack? How many colors do you find on a four-colored card? What's your own currency? Who's your own prime minister? Name a British car manufacturer.
Now, I would LOVE to see one of these movies made in Australia, and maybe also in New Zealand -- and Canada. Woah. These would be the stuff of which nightmares are made. Anyone game to go out and make one?!
It could be argued that these movies (which I call "Nightmare on Doom Street Part I, Part II" and so on ... scroll down to the previous post to see the American one) are all a complete set-up.
But, I put it to you: what kind of Americans or Brits would deliberately participate in something that will get their own people, brothers and sisters of their nation, viewed as complete morons?! I don't buy that solution to the problem. It would be traitorously un-American and un-British to do this; you couldn't get people to do it. Could you?! Or --
It could also be argued that there were loads of right answers to those simple quiz questions, and the right answers were edited out: that's much more proabable --
But here's your problem: those questions are so fundamental, ALL answers should be right; you should be weeding out the .05% wrong ones to make US'ns and their Brit cousins look faultlessly smart, not editing out the right ones to make 'em look, er, well, not quite so smart.
The questions fired at the American masterminds were incredibly simple, too: Name a country beginning with U. Find Korea on a map. What's the religion of Israel? What's the currency in the United Kingdom? Who's Tony Blair? How many kidneys does a person have? (Do you know what planet you're living on?)
(Don't get me wrong: most ordinary Americans (and English) in the street are the nicest people in the world -- some of them are in these movies. They're beautiful, beautiful people. I lived and worked in Alaska for 15 months and think of it as my second home; I have family in Texas, and in Alaska, and I was born in the UK ... in other words, I have a foot in both camps, as well as my third foot being planted in Australia (I'm a citizen). So I'm utterly impartial here. I'd be howling with laughter and in just as chill a sweat if the Aussie and Kiwi versions of these videos were to appear)
The problematical facet is this:
These beautiful people who identify Australia as North Korea (or Iran; change the printing on the map, and they zero in with unerring accuracy on what they can read), and believe Israelis are Islamic, and Kofi Annan is a hot beverage ... and there are five colors on the Union Jack, and George Bush is the English Prime Minister ... are the very same people who VOTE.
They're the folks who elect our jingoistic politicians, carefully install them at the pinnacle of the most powerful free-world governments, put them in charge of foreign policy, show them where the buttons are -- the nice, big red ones that launch the intercontinental ballistic missiles, place them officially in control of these buttons, and then ... go away and leave them to it.
They're also the self-same people who enlist in the armed forces, and follow orders to the letter.
"Yes sir, the Israelis are all Muslims, sir!" And what do we do with Muslims, these days? Omigods.
"Yes, sir, this bloody great island continent in the South Pacific [you know, the one with the koalas and the kangaroos skipping about, and the weird looking bridge on the harbor that looks like a coat hanger] is North Korea, sir!" And they're trouble, with their nuclear bombs and their missiles that can reach Anchorage, so we oughtta blast 'em. Well ... darn.
Now, if these movie are a scam (and ordinary, street-legal Americans and English folk were paid to act dumb for the cameras for five minutes), which I'm sure a lot of US'ns and UK'ns reading this will be praying -- the doodoo only gets deeper. From the American and English perspective, it reveals a traitorous element in the public that'll knife their own country in the back for a lousy few bucks or quid ... and look deeper. Take another look, from the cosmopolitan perspective.
Slap this on YouTube, and it will be seen in every corner of the world. It's being seen everywhere, right now. It's funny at first; then, when the questions put to these street-legal voters turn to who should be nuked, one stops laughing.Here's the stinger: the American one has been seen sixteen and a half MILLION times already. The English one has "only" been seen about a million times.
Don't ask yourself what regular Americans and English folks think about the videos. Rather, wonder what people in Korea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan ... the target nations, most likely to be nuked, are thinking? Feeling.
I'll tell you what they're feeling: dread. Fear. Anxiety.
Now, Americans and British are certainly going to take umbrage at being depicted as chronic morons (in fact, if you go to YouTube to view these movies, the comments are mostly from irate nationalistic viewers who are claiming the whole thing was set up. Certainly, I wish I could believe they were set up ... but I have this sneaking, crawling squirming feeling, the videos are absolutely genuine.
And it's not the fundamental stupidity of people that bothers me; it's the fact that these folks are not only allowed to vote, they're actually encouraged to.
I think people should be made to take a test before they qualify for voting privileges. I think it should be a 10-point quiz, that goes like this:
1) Who wrote Beethoven's Fifth?
2) Luke Skywalker's father is: a) Princess Leia b) Ben Kenobi c) a Jawa?
3) What color is the Red Baron?
4) How many college grads does it take to strike a match?
5) Doctor Who was recently elected president of which small African nation?
6) How many sharp points does a carving knife have?
7) If you use scissors to cut a sheet of paper in two, have many pieces do you have?
8) What is the Pope's religion?
9) What is the capital of Los Angeles?
10) Butter is made from a) cocoa b) Vaseline c) olive oil?
Award yourself one point for each correct answer.
What's more, I'd make a rule that if anyone scored less that 3 points in the above quiz, they're not allowed to bloody vote!
AND I'd make wannabe politicians take the damn' test, and if they scored less than 5 points, they not allowed to run for bloody office!
AND I'd use the test results (computer collated, analyzed to death by Zogby International, with a resulting 800pp document detailing why this planet is more than likely doomed to a lingering demise, death by sheer stupidity) to dismantle every bomb and warhead, nuclear, biological, chemical or explosive, on the planet. Because nobody, nowhere, no how, is qualified to be in charge of the buttons!
There. I feel much better now. The ocean is calm and blue ... calm and blue ... caaaaaalm and blooooooooo ...
Monday, September 1, 2008
Back again, with these few words...
Second post for today, and just a quickie, because this is so dumb, it has to be shared. Take a gander at this (click for a bigger view):
Apparently, this poor whiddle blog is rated R. Now, I suppose I don't mind being rated R. But I'd like to be rated R for something real, not for the words 'death' 'dead' 'hell' and 'queer,' which are perfectly normal words in the bloody damned English language!
I mean, just look at this R-rated sentence, for which Keegan will no doubt be hung, drawn and quartered: "It's been a queer old day. Caught my death of cold in the rain at the bus stop, the laser printer died, stone dead, and I thought, "Ah, the hell with it, why get it fixed, I'll buy a new one. Darn it all, these printers'll be the death of me yet, and look at the blue ink on my photo printer -- dead as a doornail, and y'know what they cost? A hell of a lot more than they would, if I were in charge!"
There. That was certainly Rated R. Look at that content. Absolutely shocking. I'm horrified. What if sixteen year olds, a week prior to their seventeenth birthdays, read this???!!!
Well, dash it all. Wash my mouth out with soap,
Rather have a gin and tonic...
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