Sicko.

At the moment I'm getting over a weeklong bout of what I can only assume was the pneumonic plague. I seem to be recovering quite nicely, though, so maybe I'm related to those folks in Eyam, England. Eyam was a village that, during an outbreak in the 1600's quarantined itself for over a year. When people first ventured into the village, expecting a ghost town, they found over half of the population alive. This was during a time when the plague killed up to 95% of all infected. Scientist's have determined a genetic mutation(dubbed Delta 32) was responsible for the immunity, and that roughly 14% of the descendants of that village also have the mutation. In a lucky side effect, those people also seem to be immune to HIV, as multiple lab tests on various blood samples were never able to cause infection.

Earlier this week the Today show had a story about a new danger coming from your cell phone. I watched it, expecting new clinical studies proving a link between cell phones and brain tumors, and instead we were shown a probably redundant story dealing with how the technological gadgets you use everyday are just COVERED in germs, and apparently that's a HUGE problem.

Except it really isn't. Germs are everywhere, we all know this, but we keep getting sensationalistic news stories about the unseen threat around us. First off, germs really aren't the problem, viruses are, and viruses need an organic host to survive. The chances of catching anything REALLY bad from something like a cell phone, keyboard, or even hotel bed are pretty slim.

Consider this: 12 years ago on the Mir space station a Russian astronaut discovered a growth of mold that had been brought from earth. It was growing on one of the windows, and due to the confines and conditions of living in space, the mold had adapted to not eat organic materials, but inorganics such as glass, plastic and silicone. It was also nearly impossible to kill. That was one fo the reasons the aging space station was always falling apart. Can you imagine the repercussions of something like that reaching earth? An unkillable mold that eats plastics and silicone? Our entire society would be in jeopardy, and I don't think that's just hyperbole.

All told, I still think we all need to be a little less germophobic. Everytime I see one of those lysol ads claiming to kill 99.9% of germs, all I can think of is how dangerous that .1% is. Imagine it, thats .1% that remains on your toilet seat, immune to disinfectants. Every future generation stemming from that .1% will also be largely immune to disinfectant. Keep this up and it's gonna come back to bite us in the ass.

That's why so many diseases we once had under control are becoming threats again, that's why antibiotics are failing us, because we rely on them over our own immune systems. We've tried to circumvent the whole 'what does not kill us' idea only to find out it was pretty damn true.

Don't get me wrong, I wash my hands my hands nearly a dozen times a day, but that's because I work retail and am constantly handling money, which is the dirtiest stuff on the planet. But when I get a cold? I don't replace my toothbrush, nor do I take great pains to sanitize the environment around me. I keep clean, make sure I keep my phlegm to myself, but other than that I let nature take it's course. Besides, once your body recovers from any particular virus, your more or less immune to that particular strain. We only get colds and flus so often because they mutate from person to person.

It's like that old star trek episode, where the Enterprise picks up some space hippies on their way to some planetary Eden in the hopes of leaving behind the cold sterile federation(one of the characters actually has an incurable disease caused by the sterile conditions of a germ free life), only to find, once they get there, that paradise is poison to them.

Local Interest

Just over a month ago the Alaska inter-tribal council, representing the several hundred different tribes we have in Alaska, along with a similar group in Hawaii, announced it's plans to take the US government before the UN and argue that the purchase of Alaska from the Russians was illegal, since Russia had no legal claim on this land. Effectively this means the tribal council is suing the United States with the goal that Alaska and Hawaii will become sovereign nations under the various indigenous tribes that live there. It was an announcement under-reported over the last month(I saw one small local mention, and nothing in the nationals), but in fact the process is already under way, with the UN Human Rights committee scheduled to hear the case in July. You can read all about it by going here, and here. I have to admit that they're fairly lengthy, and I haven't had an opportunity to read through it all, so if I discover something new, expect an update.

Now, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that every single Alaskan has daydreamed about becoming a sovereign nation at one time or another. We are a land full of independent people with a deep and sometimes frightening distrust and paranoia when it comes to our government, and a predilection towards shooting things. Hell, even I've thought about how great it would be to be our own nation, to have a chance to do things right, but I'm still a bit wary, not only because it's a really bad idea(which I'll get to in a moment), but because it could do a lot of harm even if nothing comes of this.

You see, every city has it's own regional form of racism. Of course, black people have it tough all over, but go to south Florida and you'll find a lot of animosity towards Cubans. In the southwest Mexicans are fairly unpopular, and in many fishing villages you'll find anger towards the Vietnamese or other Asian cultures who are seen as taking fishing jobs away from the locals. Most racism is a mixture of disgust at one thought of as worse off, and fear that the roles could easily be switched. Even more evidence that the division in this country isn't between black and white, but between rich and poor. In Alaska(at least in the larger cities), that regional racism is aimed towards natives. It doesn't matter which tribe, the blanket term 'natives' pretty much conveys what I'm getting at. The news of this event, at least to the few people I informed of it, were shocked, amused, and a little upset at the 'native population' in general.

That's the first problem, and it dawned on me as I watched the small soundbite on TV where a professional looking middle aged woman spoke on TV of the tribal council's plans for what to do if they were to achieve their goals. She assured all listening that natives would not begin pushing non-natives out of the state, or relocating them, but she did leave open the possibility for large scale reclaiming of properties. It occurred to me that the main problem that could occur due to this, as the inter-tribal council goes tilting at windmills(it should not be gathered from my language that I hold any real animosity or anger towards this idea, as much as I disagree I find myself applauding the gesture), is that this may serve, even in defeat, to only increase the perceived rift between natives and non-natives.

My other problem with this is a bit more abstract, and may seem a bit un-PC, but I'll just have to put it bluntly. We, as a society, have got to stop apologizing for the sins of our forefathers. You know what, it sucks that two more technologically advanced civilizations came in and divvied up your homeland and treated you like dirt, that really is awful. But guess what... Every civilization throughout the history of human existence has done the exact same thing. The only way we can make it better doesn't involve turning back the clocks and trying to bend over backwards to atone for past mistakes. In fact, once we can't get past our history, that's when we stop moving forward. The best way that society as a whole can move forward and heal those old wounds is by making sure it never happens again. Once we stop that, well, we've got no point to our entire existence.

But let's imagine that the UN agrees with the inter-tribal council, and the US suddenly begins caring what the UN thinks, and control of Alaska and Hawaii(and, I just discovered, Puerto Rico) is handed back to the indigenous peoples of those lands, what then? Well, goodbye all forms of public assistance. Time to start thinking about trade agreements with the US(and you thought getting your groceries was expensive now), how we're going to go about public assistance and welfare programs, and a whole slew of problems people may not be ready for. Also, do we really want to be a foreign country with large oil reserves that has just recently embarrassed the United States? Think that will turn out well? Ah well, at least we could count on the French to come to our aid, they're all about sticking it to the man.

Of course, this will probably just all blow over, and I'm probably being a bit alarmist about this, but sometimes it's fun to carry ideas through to their worst possible conclusion. At the very least we'll find out this summer. The sessions will be held from the 10th to the 28th of July.

Solidarity

Myspace has been making a lot of headlines lately, and not just for criminal cases involving shady get togethers. No, Myspace is the current hot-site for all hipster internet surfers, undiscovered artists seeking to peddle their wares, and just about anyone interested in telling complete strangers the random mundane details of their lives. By now roughly half the population of the planet has a blog on myspace, creating an instant, imaginary community that includes your closest friends and everyone else they've ever bumped into on a chatroom. In today's onslaught of information, data and entertainment, it's the perfect place to start a grassroots campaign for your own uniqueness. Or so I've heard.

You see, I've so far resisted the urge to migrate to myspace. When these cultural focus points come into existence, it gets to a point where I avoid them out of sheer stubborn-ness. I won't allow myself to join the herd and do whatever everyone else is doing. Yes, I realize that means my life is STILL being dictated by the herd, but you obviously missed the part where I called myself stubborn.

Still, it was brought to my attention earlier this month, in a thought echoing one I've had many times, that in this day and age, when there are more websites to visit than their are people online at any given moment, that all this great work I'm doing here may be in vain. How is word going to get out there to the masses who are suffering in ignorance of my great works? Well, I have not yet found a logical response to that, but in an act of solidarity with my fellow outsiders to the herd of myspace, I've decided to plug a couple of blogs I think everyone reading my blog will enjoy. Maybe this will get them a little bit more recognition, because in both cases I think they might deserve it even more than I do. I know, I know, impossible, right?

So first off, I have to give credit where credit is due to Rick, the maestro of Cinema4Pylon, a wonderful film review blog, and Cinema4CelBloc, an animation blog. Without him, my blog wouldn't even exist. All hate mail can be directed towards his sites. Rick is basically the type of being I want to be when I grow up, which is to say, not very grown up at all. Cinema4Pylon is probably the easiest to get into, although it's about as frequently updated as mine. Cinema4CelBloc is amazingly informative, and exhaustively produced daily(!), and if you have even a passing interest in animation, well worth the read.

The second blog I'll promote today belongs to my Kung Fu brother Eric, over at TrajectoryCruise. As of this writing it's only got the one post, but Eric is one of the smartest people I know, and despite his pessimism(which seems to be receding), always entertaining in his delivery. I'll also forgive him this once for stealing some of my zombie thunder from an upcoming post to my site.

So there, three sites by two talented individuals who deserve the attention, and have chosen to subbornly stake their claims outside of the myspace network. Hopefully this word of mouth helps.

Everybody Out Of The Pool!

Spent some time surfing the net today, and decided to check up on a group of people I haven't thought much about since college; the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, or VHEMT(pronounced Vehement). When I first stumbled upon their home page a few years back, I was amused and took it for a joke, but in actuality they seem like intelligent, nice enough people. They just dont want humans around, and have banded together to find like minded people willing to vow never to breed. It's a cause I can relate to.
Now, that probably sounded callous, seeing as how I have a lovely two year old daughter, and just because I can relate doesn't mean I wish I had never had kids. Far from it, my daughter is the most important thing in the world to me, and the time I spend at home with her is always the highlight of my day. And I don't really want the human race to become extinct, I don't think that's going to solve anything any more than the path we're going on. That being said, I just want other people to stop having kids. Seriously, enough already.
According to the International Programs Center of the US Census Bureau, there's an estimated 6,506,534,698 people living today, with another 6 million being added each month(yes, that factors in mortality). Compare that to the figures for 1930 which figured the world population to be only 2 billion. That means that in 76 years, well within the average lifetime, the human population has more than tripled. In the entire 100 years before the population had only doubled, which means as more people are born, our rate of reproduction increases. You hear figures like that, and you begin to wonder if it's too late to turn around all the damage we've done to this planet. I don't want to hear any whining about not being able to prove global warming; of course we can! 6 and a half billion people on the world, and look at how much trash YOU alone throw out in one week.
Now, I've never been one to believe that the world is going to end in one fiery ball of nuclear radiation. I may be proven wrong, but I think the changes will be more gradual than that, which only makes them more dangerous. If we're not being slapped in the face immediately with the repercussions of our actions, than we tend to forget about them. Which is why my daughter is going to be inheriting a world that I can't help but believe will be more difficult than mine.

SO STOP HAVING KIDS!

The reason I like the VHEMT, I think, is that all important V in the front. Voluntary. I don't condone mandatory birth control, or any of those dystopian ideas, instead I'd like everyone to think about it. I know everyone wants pride in continuing their genetic line, but really, whats the point? Just go ahead and adopt if you really want kids, their just going to rebel and become your opposite anyway.
And so, I support the VHEMT, and although I've already broken their one and only rule, I raise my voice with theirs: May we live long and die out!

Or at least slow down.

Random Musings

So I'm short on time today, and this bastard library computer's space bar is broken, so this is going to be very short. Basically I'm forcing you to read through me keeping my fingers limber.

As you've seen through the past couple posts, I'm trying to shift the format of this blog to a quicker, shorter stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. I started this blog as an outlet for all these little thoughts and ideas I find no use for in the real world, and mainly as a way to sharpen my writing skills. Time was, I used to fancy myself a pretty good writer. Well, a couple years of neglecting that talent have left it rusty and covered in cobwebs. I tried initially writing long expository posts, things that had "messages", and I've discovered that doesn't quite work for me. I was always a bit underwhelmed by the results, my frustration increasing because of the amount of work I put into a lackluster result. And so, I've decided not to overthink things, just let fly with whatever I want to talk about.
You can thank one person in particular for this change; Warren Ellis. Observant readers will notice I've included his website on my links list. He's a comics writer I'm becoming quite a fan of, but he's also one of the most prolific guys out there. I think only Brian Michael Bendis would challenge him in the contest of who's writing the most current comic books, and his aren't nearly as good. Bendis is more consistent, but he never gets close to the sheer insanity and genius put into every panel of a Warren Ellis book. It struck me after reading a few of Ellis' books, and reading his email column for a couple weeks, that he has no filter. Not that he's vulgar or offensive(although he is, often), but that he doesn't filter anything that he puts on page. If he has an idea, he writes it down and puts it out there. This leads to some interesting stuff, but also has a few problems. Sometimes he has a great idea, but doesn't take the time to explore it, and sometimes he has a bad idea and doesn't think about tossing it aside. I'm pretty sure that if he doesn't have a keyboard in his hands he'd be holding a gun and using that just as often.
For those of you unfamiliar with his work, it should be pretty easy to track down. His most famous series, Transmetropolitan, is available in paperback form, and at most libraries. It's pretty good, even if the main character is obviously Hunter S. Thompson blasted a few hundred years into the future.
Fell is currently ongoing, up to issue 4, and conveniently priced at 1.99 for those not able to buy lots of expensive comics. Each issue is a self contained story, free of advertisements. A bit shorter than most mass market comics, but very dense, giving you a sense of a complete world. It's apparently sold out, but entering second printings. It shouldn't be too hard to find, and the shop I work at still has a few copies of each issue hanging around.
He's also writing some more mainstream comics over at Marvel. The Ultimate Galactus trilogy is amazing, but probably not so interesting to people who don't normally read comics(true fanboys will already know what the story entails by the title). Nextwave, though, is a comic with so many D-List characters that it should only be funny to truly hardcore fanboys, but it's amazingly accessible. The humor might not be for everyone, but I urge everyone reading this who likes comics to go out and buy it. It's up to issue 3, and completely entertaining. It's amazing to me how much Ellis is able to get away with at Marvel. None his titles are too out there, but they do head farther away from the superhero stereotypes than the company usually goes.

So that's it for me. Thanks for reading through another meaningless message. I promise to balance my timewasting with actual informative stuff. Also, I've noticed a real lack of response to these things. I've had one or two responses, but I'm not even sure if outside those 2 people anyone is reading this. So, drop me a line sometime, either personal or on the comments section.

American Wasteland

I was channel surfing the other night and stumbled across the forbidden channel; Fox. Not for any puritanical reasons is it forbidden, but because every brilliant show they produce gets cancelled for more reality tv knockoffs. After King of the Hill got cancelled I decidedI really didn't need to see anything on Fox anymore. Anyway, Fox caught my eye, and it was American Idol that was on. It's a show I'm familiar enough with, but have absolutely no feelings towards. All in all I'm pretty ambivalent to entertainment I might find offensive. I mean, I don't have to watch it, do I?

Normally I would have skipped right on by, but I recognized the song that they were practising and wanted to see what happened to it. I was awestruck; after some generic reality TV confessionals of childhood dreams and inspirations, I was rewarded with a full blown, balls-to-the-wall suckass rendition of Not Fade Away by Buddy Holly, all under the watchful eye of Barry Manilow. Stephen Hawkings voice box would have done the job just as well. Hitting all the right words but missing the emotion completely.

I thought I was immune to it, this great race to mediocrity in pop culture. In a society where a song about cocaine addiction is used to sell family vacations, Jimmy Page sells his soul to P. Diddy for a spot on the Godzilla soundtrack, and Roger Daltry of the Who(The WHO, GODAMMIT!) shills time life record collections on cheesy half hour infomercials. I mean, after that, what more could happen, right? Wrong. The sight of prime time TV sucking the life out a truly great song(and musician) bothered me more than I thought it would after all the heresies that came before.

And so, for all you stuid Gen-X, hipster losers out there: Stop it! Enough with the ironic patronizing of crap media. Do what you love, read what you love, listen to what you love, and watch what you love. Don't sponsor these crap shows just so you can fell superior because no one else 'gets it' the way you do, your only adding to the problem.

Remember, the beast doesn't care if you love it, only that you keep feeding it.

Gods of Hollywood

It occured to me the other day that Josh Lucas is like the cosmos' response to the wasted celebrity of Matthew McConaughey. Like when the movie Powder failed to make any money, so the Gods of Hollywood got John Travolta and tried again with Phenomenon. A duplicate that seems less like crass marketing, and more like some karmic second attempt. Remember when McConaughay seemed like he could be the next big thing? He started off with some fun roles in low profile movies, and then seemed poised to break big with A Time to Kill, but then squandered it with cheesy, sub Meg Ryan dramedies and brainless action flicks. The best thing he's done since A Time to Kill was an absolutely gonzo performance in the otherwise useless Reign of Fire(watch it again, I think he actually BELIEVED he was fighting dragons). And so the cosmos got Josh Lucas, who has everything that McConaughey has except for the oily creepiness. He's been garnering some attention, appearing in a string of movies scientifically formulated to be as inoffensive as green peppers. Even if you don't like it, it's not about to leave a lasting negative impression.

The same thing happened about ten years ago when it seemed Johnny Depp would languish in the world of high quality/low profile films. Remember Skeet Ulrich? Any time Johnny Depp had a headache, Skeet Ulrich took an aspirin. But then, Johnny Depp started to rise in popularity, and now Skeet Ulrich is chained up in Jack Valenti's attic, eating a steady diet of fish heads and moldy bread.