NDAA research copied from Facebook

I wrote and investigated this as a response to something a friend from Facebook pointed out: there's a provision in the bill in D.1032.b.1 that says explicitly that American citizens are exempt from this bill that would, supposedly, allow the US military to indefinitely hold American citizens without trial. There are a couple of different factors happening here, some of which are irrationality and ignorance.

My personal opinion (not culled from research) is that the US government has shown how much they care about our right (of the press) to free speech with how they've reacted since 9/11 and with press at all the Occupy sites. In short: not very much. Therefore a bill that allows indefinite imprisonment without a trial (even though it specifies it's non-applicability to US citizens) that uses the military as a police force sounds like a bad idea that could be easily fudged to support the agenda of the government.

Having said that, there are some problems with the way in which this bill was initially drafted (in secret by McCain and Levin). This guy (who's as crazy as a site named "Texas GOP Vote" can possibly be) initially reacts to the fact that the bill was written in secret. He doesn't mention it here, but the bill was passed without a single hearing, and the media has blacked out coverage on this story (link). So, the secrecy of what's happening borders on illegal while the media blackout is scary given that the majority of citizens still get their news from major media outlets. At least those people that didn't grow up with a computer in their living room. Either way, it's a frightening proposition that a significant portion of the population that doesn't read news on the internet or from alternative sources could be so terrifyingly ignorant of what's happening. But not because they don't read the news, but because they get it from a major source.

The next thing is that apparently during the debate itself over the bill, senators disagreed as to whether or not it would apply to American citizens. After all, There's a prevision (D.1031.a) that gives the president the right to "use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war." Later on in the bill is a section saying (D.1032.a.4), "The Secretary of Defense may, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, waive the requirement of paragraph (1) if the Secretary submits to Congress a certification in writing that such a waiver is in the national security interests of the United States." Paragraph 1 is all about the military holding people until "disposition under the law of war." If I read this correctly, this is essentially the basis for secret and indefinite arrest. But the most concerning is the part where the President gets to do whatever's necessary to protect America's interest. It wouldn't be difficult for the president to decide that this particular American is a big enough threat that D.1032.b.1 can be waived.

As I said, even the senators disagree. Once again in this article (link), Graham says that it absolutely applies to citizens and turns the homeland into the battlefield. The Russians have the motherland, the Germans get the fatherland, we get the homeland. The situation with this guy is that he could just be wrong. He could be so ridiculously wrong about the super super obvious - the bill doesn't apply to American citizens - but the fact that he even wants it to apply to citizens shows that there is a wide margin for abuse. The same article describes that anyone who provides aid or information to a terrorist qualifies as a terrorist under the Patriot Act, thus the NDAA potentially opens the door even wider to allow for people's actions to be interpreted as terrorist aid.

But the most worrisome element of all is precedent. There is already precedent for American citizens being denied fair trial in the interest of "national security." There is Anwar al-Akwali who was the guy on YouTube who preached in favor of Al Qaeda. The situation here is a lot of speculation, but General Dunlap said that he views American citizens overseas speaking against America as enemy combatants. Al-Akwali was an American citizen, so theoretically, he should have been put in custody and taken back here for a proper trial. This blog discusses that in the first draft of the bill, it absolutely would/could apply to citizens, but in the new bill, the provision was stuck in. He isn't very convinced that it still won't apply to citizens, and he also quotes General Dunlap saying that the Authorization of Use of Military Force Resolution of 2002 (look this sucker up on Wikipedia. The author at Lawfare Blog doesn't cite this specifically, but I looked and found what the AUMF was, and what he was talking about) classifies Americans overseas as possible combatants.

A lot of what's happening, both in the senate chambers and the news sphere, is uncertain speculation and a little bit of fear mongering. But ultimately, there is strong precedence set forth in which 1. our rights have been ignored (both now and in the past: Japanese internment camps; McCarthy hearings; repeated denial of the press); 2. Americans have been and could be detained or executed without a trial; 3. the government has shown intention of extending the war to its citizens (in both the former form of the bill in which McCain wanted to be able to pursue American citizens directly, and the AUMF).

In thinking about the bill and the fact that 93/100 voting senators passed it, I can only come to the conclusion that there are two types of people voting in favor of it: 1. The exceptionally terrified senator that thinks either the Devil or Osama is hiding under every rock, or 2. The senator that has been bought and sold. There's a lot of money to be made in both war and detention.

Added note 12/15: this thing passed yesterday 283 to 136. That is very sad.

Thinking Through Definitions: SOPA

If anyone here (all both of you) pays attention to my F'book page, you'll see that I haven't shut up about SOPA since I first learned about it. Everyday I read through all the SOPA headlines looking for new information, or even new takes on old information. This morning, The Washington Post had two articles that caught my eye, primarily because they had comments from proponents of the bill. These comments bring up interesting definitional issues that I doubt will ever be discussed by our legislators, and might even be a little bit too difficult of a topic than most of them are willing to engage in. Especially because this legislation has the stink of corporate wealth on it.

SOPA Opposition Goes Viral

The first, as you can see, talks about how companies like Tumblr, Reddit, and Mozilla were able to successfully bring their userbase around to this issue while the major media companies failed, despite having used "The Twitter." Anyone who has spent any time floating around the internet could have told these companies it would fail. Hard. The internet has a keen nose for rooting out insincerity, and this measure is Insincere of The First Order. Remember when Sony made that fake PSP blog? No one bought it. Or more recently, how about this? PROTIP: I linked to the Google search page because I can't bring myself to support this site. Even with only my clicks. The reason these folks (Reddit, Mozzila et al) were able to rally the support is that the user base feels like these sites really get what they want. And they do. The media companies only, always have and always will, try to convince us what they want. They're just mad now because for the first time in 80 or so years, a large portion of the consumers have become immunized.

Opposition to the bill is growing from the technology world. On Tuesday, the Business Software Alliance, which represents Microsoft, Intel, Adobe and Apple, pulled its support of the legislation, saying that it “needs work” and that some “valid and important questions” have been raised.

It's about time these companies stepped up in support. Microsoft, Intel, and Apple might all ride the big media line, but ultimately they recognize who uses their junk.

Legislative pushes for the bill in both chambers highlight a consensus among lawmakers and some businesses that online piracy and counterfeiting has become a rampant problem that has drained the pockets of media firms, authors, software and filmmakers who are seeing their goods exchanged for free on the Internet.

This is just false. On two accounts: 1. Any study worth its salt shows that piracy doesn't hurt media companies. Like this one, or this one showing that, quite possibly, so-called pirates are your best customers. There are also questionable studies that are probably fake. Or very flawed. Or the product of fevered imagination. The point is that companies that say they hurt haven't been paying attention. My favorite is the one that analyzes what media companies believe the purchasing power of the public to be.

Yet while they agree with the spirit of the bill, many technology firms are opposed to the measure as it stands.

I wonder how true this is. Perhaps some companies, Microsoft and Apple for instance, would definitely be opposed to piracy, but others, like Google, Facebook, Tumblr, and even Yahoo (though they might deny it), definitely benefit. I feel certain that these companies only dance along so as not to later become suspects in whatever iteration of SOPA or PIPA emerge.

But the bill’s proponents — which include the Motion Picture Association of America — say that concerns that the bill would damage Internet culture, promote government censorship or encroach on the First Amendment are overblown. Michael O’Leary, the MPAA’s senior executive vice president for global policy and external affairs, said rhetoric comparing provisions in SOPA to Web censorship are “laughable.”

“This bill has due process,” he said. “It covers activities that are, under federal law, illegal, and requires that any order issued is public and transparent.”

This makes me wonder what he would consider censorship. Moreover, this would definitely damage internet culture. The internet's culture depends irrevocably on the ability to freely share any kind of information. Furthermore, I'm certain there's a fallacy of argumentation that says something about how if a party has a vested interest in the debate's outcome, then that person's input is suspect. Of course he's going to say it won't hurt the internet because he benefits the most if it passes.

SOPA Goes for House Debate:

“The bill provides effective due process to the parties involved. A federal judge must first agree that the website in question is dedicated to illegal and infringing activity,” Smith said recently in a statement. “Only then will a court order be issued directing companies to sever ties with the illegal website. Legitimate websites have nothing to worry about under this bill.”

This one is out of chronological order, and from the first article, but it's my favorite and forms the center of what's really going on here. Best for last and so forth.

It comes from the silliest Republican on the planet (who isn't currently a woman running for president), Rep. Lamar Smith:

“Claims that this bill will ‘break’ the Internet are unfounded. When one-quarter of Internet traffic is infringing, something is already in need of repair,” he said, adding that “over-the-top rhetoric intended to excite opposition” is clouding the underlying problem of online piracy.

This is the most fascinating because, if true, it indicates a distinct shift in cultural thought that is being entirely ignored. If one full quarter of the entire world wide web is being used for "infringing," then that indicates to me a growing trend in the world outlook concerning copyright is greatly changing. And this is, I think, the unaddressed crux of the argument.

The capstone of any republic or democracy today is the idea that it's the rule of the people. By the people, for the people. If 1/4 of all internet traffic is used just for infringement, as Smith claims, then there is at least 1/4 of the world internet using population that thinks copyright as it stands is insufficient in some way. And I bet that number is low. If a friend burns a CD for you, gives you a tape of last night's Community (because no one wants to use Hulu, with its inane commercials squaking at you every seven minutes), throws an audiobook on your iPod, makes a mixtape for your wedding, or shows a movie at a neighborhood block party, then you're an infringer too. The law has become so tight, that it's too easy to become a criminal without even realizing it. And now the media companies want to make it tighter.

My point is that an increasing number of people worldwide are violating copyright in such a way that it should be obvious that copyright is what needs changing. By the people, for the people. And as the Public Domain Manifesto states: "Having a healthy and thriving Public Domain is essential to the social and economic well-being of our societies." So much of what the internet does is convert the copyright into a public domain, repurposing extant works to new ends.

However, you should never take credit for something you didn't create (something the internet by and large excels at), and you should never make money off of something you didn't make (something flea markets do not excel at).

Blogging Through a (Comic) Book: Bad Island pt. 3: The Final Word

This book was actually really good. Way better than Doug's last five I want to say. Still not Jacobus good in terms of realized story telling and art, and not Gears good in terms of bizarre and funny, but it's up there. I'd say maybe top five.

I realize that some of my running commentary sounded maybe snarky and perhaps small minded or vindictive, but you probably didn't read Ghostopolis or Flink or Monster Zoo, so you don't know the kind of expectations I had walking into the joint. A lot of my negativity was not deserved.

I think the biggest difference between this and Ghostopolis (the other TenNapel joint I reviewed) is that Ghostopolis was plagued with things so heavy handed and obvious that I frequently got embarrassment goosebumps. Tuskegee Joe is the most ready example. I think this overwhelming obviousness stemmed from the fact that Ghostopolis, for whatever reason, was overly burdened with providing metaphors for Christianity, but metaphors that didn't even work or make sense. There was also the art. Ghost gave the sense that Doug didn't really understand how to work Photoshop, or Illustrator, or Painter, or whatever digital program he was using.

There was also the profusion of loose ends that got tied in Ghostopolis. The ending felt a lot like the end to Return of The King when you're certain Frodo and Sam are about to make out, and that's during the third of maybe five-ish endings. Ghostopolis was too neat.

But let me talk about Bad Island. The art is so much better. I still wish the art was black and white brush work of the Doug of yore, but barring that, I still wish it was an old fashion brush instead of digital. And the color. Doug has admitted before that he's not a strong colorist, and that shows in the Saturday-morning-cartoon kind of way that the book's colored. When you read a book like Jacobus or Creature Tech, you are absolutely not imagining coloring like you'd see on Dora The Explorer (Doug does use more muted colors than that, but exclusively uses the two-tone style of shading). If Doug wants to color his books now, something I'd try to persuade him against, I'd recommend something more abstract or experimental. The monster designs in this book are pretty interesting. I think my favorite are the muppet looking aliens that live on the backs of the rock giants.

From a story perspective, it's much leaner than Ghostopolis, and half of it feels similar to the Gear story. I don't want to spoil too much, but without any exposition, the story communicates that the massive stone deities have been battling these insect and gray alien looking monsters for thousands of years. The monsters have been trying to enslave the small muppet creatures while the stone deities depend on the creatures to run certain parts of them almost like robots. Very cool.

The story was much closer to an ensemble story than anything else Doug's done. It's not quite wholly an ensemble story as only one character experiences change, and really only two of them get developed. I'm not sure why the wife and daughter were even necessary characters. The wife's knowledge proved to be necessary, but not her character.

The family's story is so run of the mill that it's forgettable. I feel like they're all stock characters, and I always felt a little disappointed every time I turned the page to see that they were still the focus of the story. In a 218 page story, that's lots of tiny disappointments.

The father/son backstory seems to have all this import, but nothing really happens with it. You find that the son almost suffocated to death on his mucus when he was a baby, and the dad was all shaken. But that's sort of it. The son had planned to run away before the trip, but it's never revealed why, nor are there any textual clues beyond the fact that he's just a rebellious teenager. You never learn more than a single thing about the mother or the daughter: mom's a botanist, daughter collects animals. Mostly, they're just plant and payoff characters. All the humans felt really insubstantial. I know Doug's method of storytelling is to tell a story in such a way that it's constantly getting pushed forward: every picture and word should reveal plot or character or both, and I appreciate that. I strive for that in my own writing. But these characters are all so one note that I feel cheated that the climax of the story is their reunion and safety. The aliens were so much more interesting.

Which brings me to the things that were unresolved. I complained about Ghostopolis' almost compulsive need to tie things up, but I feel like some large things involving the deities go unaddressed. The king, when he thinks his son has been killed, surrenders, and the muppets ask him if they are to be slaves again. He responds that he would do anything to save them, including his own death, but he can't handle the death of his son. So, at the end of a book is a single frame showing the deity father and son's reunion. And that's it? What about the slavery issue? That's way more interesting than if the stock Disney Channel family gets home in time to see Friends.

There's also a single panel in the book that shows the son deity eating a bunch of monsters. Alive. Apparently this is how the creatures get their energy to do battle. That one panel showed more promise for the direction of the story than almost any other panel in the book. Creatures that eat other living creatures wholesale like that brings up interesting ethical problems. Are they really as good as they say they are? Is it OK to eat these small monsters if we assume they're evil? Does this slaughter have anything to do with the war in outerspace?

Mainly, Doug made the mistake of making his support characters (in this instance, they're almost props) way more interesting than his main characters. I feel like this is a pretty constant problem, however, when your main characters have been normal humans for the last 5 or 6 books. It was a problem with Ghost too. The world is more fascinating than the characters. There was a time when Doug's characters were outright weird. This time might have been in a minority of his books, but Gear doesn't even have humans in it. Creature Tech is a human being almost-possessed by an alien symbiote. Jacobus focused on two regular humans, but one came from a very weird place through very weird means, and the other one had to try to comprehend him directly. I guess with Ghost and Bad Island, Doug just juxtaposes the human and the weird, but has stopped them from directly acting with each other. In an odd way, this sort of dehumanizes the stories. Instead of seeing how humanity acts when confronted with the bizarre, humanity only gets to indirectly participate in it, and therefore their reactions are much more muted.

One thing that was really effective is that there isn't a hidden Evangelical element. You could argue there's one with the prince deity, but if there is, it's so subtle that it doesn't break the story. Several of Doug's stories have a witnessing element that's so shoved in, it makes the story difficult to accept. I think it was Tolkien that said good Christian writing should first and foremost be good writing, and then Christian. That might have also been CS Lewis, and if it's neither of those guys, then I made it up. But if it was those two guys, then you'll notice that Lord of The Rings and Until We Have Faces are both totally void of any overt-punching-you-in-the-ding-ding Christian references. But Bad Island doesn't have any bad or overt religious references, and I think it's a better book for it.

I liken the shoe horning of the gospel message into fiction by Christians to the ubiquity of the Dreamworks face in Dreamworks cartoons, or the moment of internal defeat in Pixar cartoons. Everyone knows about dreamworks face. But the Moment of Internal Doubt in Pixar cartoons is always the final moment of the second act. It's when the hero sighs meaningfully and looks longingly at his hands before he makes a pronouncement about how he can't do it. In the Incredibles, it's the moment in the plane across the ocean when Mr. Incredible sighs, looks down at his hands, shrugs, and says how he can't do it if he thinks his family isn't safe. That's the clearest example.

Would I buy Bad Island? Probably not. Maybe if you're a hardcore TenNapel fan. While it is so much better than Ghostopolis (and Flink, and Monster Zoo, and Black Cherry, and Power-Up), it's still not quite Jacobus, or Gear, or Creature Tech. Or even Iron West (and that was the first Doug book I felt iffy about after I bought it. I even lied on an Amazon review because I kind of thought of Doug as a friend.). I would recommend that you read Bad Island. It's worth reading. And if you like it, then pick up Jacobus. Buy it for full price. It's that good. Then buy Gear. You'll laugh yourself stupid.

Blogging through a (comic) book: Bad Island pt. 2: My Reaction

So last post I gave some background on who Doug is and some of his work. Now I'm just going to go through the book and comment on the things I see. This is probably only interesting to people who've read it, or have a vested interest in Doug's work.

Bad Island - Doug TenNapel.

Ok, right off the bat I have a gaggy problem. His last book, Ghostopolis, while not his worst is in the running for the worst, was the first to make use of an entirely digital process: digital inks, digital colors, digital pencils. Some artists can pull this off, but that talent is so rare that I can't think of one off the top of my head. Ashley Wood? Close enough.

The problem is that so much of the force behind the ink is lost when you go digital. In Jacobus, two strokes convey an entire mood. In this, it takes all the ink, the color, and then the dialog before I really get the mood. It's so much less powerful and meaningful.

And then the color's flat. Just do black and white.

And now I'll actually read words from this book.

The robot designs are cool. Very Gear. The dialog is iffy. So far it's just a stream of madeup words. That's something I can do without. The scientists look like knockoff muppets, but it works.

Even though this book is all digital like his last one, the inking looks way better than Ghostopolis. Ghost's inking reminded me of me at first year art school trying to figure out photoshop. Dead Island is much more sophisticated. There's that.

I'm not far in (this blog while you read thing is taxing), but so far it's a story about a race of marklar who recently got free from another race of enemy marklar. The marklar need to get some marklar from some marklars to power their giant robot marklar. While doing this, evil marklar swoop in and there's violence. The other story is a family getting ready for a trip to Florida, or something (who voluntarily goes to Florida that isn't full of arthritis?). The kids are stereotypes - sullen untrustable teenage son that doesn't want to go, and oblivious daughter obsessed with her snake - and generally, I have more empathy for the scientist marklars. I have no idea who the main character is. Probably Reese because he has to learn a lesson about responsibility. And then welcome Jaysus in his heart.

Also I can't find a reference for Florida. I think I made that up. But it still stands: Florida is awful.

Page 22: sad Dreamworks face.

Only on page 27, but I just realized a lot of Doug's work (in fact, maybe all except Gears and Creature Tech) rely heavily on character's with father issues. I both like this and think it's a crutch. Like: because most heroes do have father problems stretching all the way back to ancient mythology through modern day. Crutch: because EVERY one of his protagonists is a dude with father issues. There's no variety there at all.

P. 33: the issue of the main character is further confused by the fact that the mother has a vision of marklar scientists forced into slave labor. Maybe Doug's going for an ensemble story? That would be new.

P. 37: girl asks if her dead snake went to heaven. Maybe kids ask that. Maybe severely churched kids ask that. By the time I was severely churched, I was too old for that question. Instead I asked the abstracted: do animals go to heaven. Just curious, but does anyone know a kid that asked that?

Scratch that: my wife did ask that. Apparently it's a real question. Good to know. I figured it was a TV trope that people bandy about and eventually it becomes a real thing by the ubiquity of its presence on TV.

P. 40: God's balls. Their boat just got destroyed and the family's reaction is sarcastic quips. This rips me up and down both sides. I understand that fiction isn't reality, and in fact, I would vehemently argue against the validity of realism, but it's absolutely meaningless to make all the characters that respond to devastation to do so with flippancy.

P. 44: No grown man is that inept with matches. Humor fail.

P. 48: A plant from the first 10 pages of the story about the mom being a botanist pays off. She has a greenhouse. Similarly, there was a plant from the beginning from the mom about how no one, "wants to go on this stupid trip." In time, dad's father issues will be revealed.

Doug's creature designs in this one are pretty cool. They just saw this pink 3 eyed naked crow looking thing. Very Neverhood-esque.

P. 82: Somehow the guy who can't manage to work a matchbook managed to rig up a trap sophisticated enough to catch an alien looking monster.

P. 83: Apparently the alien feels scaly, like, "Reese's athlete's foot times ten!" Oh lols. Oh wait. The opposite of lol. How about we just say it's like a lizard, eh?

I want to linger on this point for a second. It's a common misconception in writing to think that if you make up a bizarre analogy ("like my athlete's foot times ten!") that it creates a more vivid image than saying what it's actually like. This abstraction is neither vivid or funny. In descriptions, be concrete and specific to be effective.

p. 84: Reese's reaction to an anthropomorphic tree grabbing his leg is, "out of my pants, creep." No one in this story has funny reactions, or even ones that make sense.

P. 86: Reese cuts off one of the trees arms. The dad says, "Cutting the vines only makes it stronger." How does he know this? This is the first limb of the story to get chopped.

P. 89: The little girl slept through the tree and alien attack. Dad says, "She's got the right idea." None of that makes sense. Maybe it's supposed to be commentary about the faith of a child or something, but I reiterate that it doesn't really make sense.

P. 98: The giant robot battle marklars from the first page are actually some sort of ancient alien gods with the tiny muppet marklars living in small societies on their backs. That's actually a really cool setup. Wouldn't ya know... the oldest marklar deity has a son, and that son's angsty too! And everyone knows that ancient alien city gods don't use contractions.

P. 100: The robot gods eat monstrous animals for energy. This is a really cool idea with some very profound implications. I'm interested see how it pans out.

P. 158: The plant with the little girl's proclivity for animal collection paid off in the form of an alien armadillo that shoots barbs when it sneezes. That sentence got away from me. The plant paid off when the mother of this pup frees the family from certain doom. Nevermind that the brother kicked the creature into the forest. This feels a little deus ex machina.

P. 160: Well, at least the large mother creature only rescued the family from doom so that it could murder the son. That's good.

P. 180: There it is. Dad trusts son now.

P. 188: I figured out the plot. But I'm not telling. Also, I'm 30 pages from the end. Not that impressive.

P. 189: Balls. The plot I just figured out means that the son alien deity is a metaphor for Jesus, on account of the Father (to keep his people from being enslaved) says, "don't ask me to sacrifice my son."

P. 218: Huh. That metaphor didn't get anymore complex than, "Please don't make me murder my kid." I'm glad.

Blogging Through a (Comic) Book: Bad Island pt. 1: A Preface

I just picked up Bad Island by Doug TenNapel. If you've heard of Doug, it's because you've met me, played Earthworm Jim, or (more unlikely) played The NeverHood. It's probably only the best computer game to have ever been made, and almost no one played it.

So, here's the thing: Doug is a gifted artist, at least with a brush. And I've bought almost everyone of his graphic novels. Gear (his first), and Earthboy Jacobus are my absolute favorites. At some point, however, the comics just became not worth buying. There came a point where it seemed like the stories weren't quite justifying their ticket prices of 10, 15, or 20 dollars. Which is a shame. I really like supporting art that I can really get behind, and Doug's art is there. If the man released a limited edition hard bound art book, I would save up and buy it. Seriously: he's a monster with an inking brush.

At first I figured it was just diversifying taste that did it. I went through some pretty profound personal changes, and my tastes in other areas changed, so why not this one? But I noticed that all his books contained the same arch: lazy layabout learns responsibility; saves day. Next I noticed it was the clumsy way in which he implemented religion into his books. I'm not at all opposed to the (smart) integration of religion into art. In fact, I often think the best art is in some way religious. Two of my favorite authors (Grant Morrison and Alan Moore) have often talked about how their fiction is a way to communicate their "religions" (quotes were used because they don't have formal codified religions, but do have a particular way of viewing the world that they want to show others). The way CS Lewis wove religion into his Silent Planet Trilogy and Until We Have Faces? Profound. Profound while being blatantly Christian (at least in the Planet Trilogy). The Fountain is my favorite movie, and that's Aaronofsky essentially laying out his view of how reality works. Or should.

But Doug's stuff is clumsy. I never open a book from Doug and wonder if the protagonist will convert to some version of Christianity by the end. It's a no-brainer in a way that kills any would-have-been-well-implemeneted religious tension. But even that could be easily looked over. It definitely weakens a story to have an alien promoting communion (but not an alien version of communion. No - an alien confirming our very human idea of communion, as if Jesus might only save them if they can come to him on human terms), or a man that tries to pass off the traditional Christian creation story as some kind of indecipherable myth (spoiler alert: it's not), but these things don't kill a story. No, in the end, what made it so hard for me to justify throwing down that hard earned dough is the disneyfication of his stories.

By disneyfication I mean the tendency of movies made for family (or mass) consumption to throw out a cacophony of loose threads and subplots into the central narrative, many not actually adding substance to the work as a whole, just for the sake of having a long form 3rd act resolution. Not only does Jeff win the skating championship, but he gets a contract with the skating company, so now he has enough money to pay all of his mom's medical bills and get his little brother out of debtor's prison. His dad may not come back from the dead, but his dad's ghost does appear to say, "Hey, your stepdad might not be me, but he's a good guy, and you should give him a chance. Also, there was no magic in those shoes: the magic was in you the whole time." He also gets the girl and his lost dog comes back. And his stepdad gets his job back at the dirt factory. With a promotion. Endings that are so relentingly saccharine, there's no freedom for you as the viewer to interpret or even have your own reaction. It's too airtight and spelled out, and that's what killed it for me.

After that long intro (in which I can't emphasize enough how great of an artist Doug is [if he'd kick that horrible digital habit], and how great Earthboy Jacobus and Gear are. Seriously. Stop reading this, get those, then come back here), I started this entry to say that I just picked up his newest book (from the library. Like I said: I'd love to buy a new TenNapel joint, but I can't justify bad art) and I want to blog through my reactions as I read it. And here we go... on the next post.

Sumsum about piracy

Piracy is something that's always on my mind: how it seems to be something that companies fear and revile and the average internet user is gravitating towards. Piracy is becoming simple enough that you could teach grandma how to find every episode of Mattlock online in one exasperating afternoon. Perhaps not quite, but it's getting there. At the very least you'd need several exasperating follow up appointments in which grandma asks you what the start button is.

But it's gotten to the point that I know that I could find pretty much anything I want online. Often I don't even have to download it, just have to have the patience to comb through links. As a defense, companies continually offer up arcane practices that just make it more difficult for the person willing to spend the money to want to spend the money. Ask any PC gamer about the hassle of DRM. Some practices veer into the bizarre and incomprehensible. Have you ever tried to watch an imported movie on your Mac? You can't.

The fear for the companies is the loss of revenue (which light research will show that fear to be invalid). Understandable, though all signs seem to indicate that he who steals the most also buys the most. This must mean that there's a discrepancy in the way a company perceives piracy and the way an active pirate practices piracy. To the company: I'm stealing something. I want, for free, that which costs money. To the pirate, there are vast objective realities to contend with which the modern company ignores or does not perceive.

1. The pirate isn't actually taking anything of value. Anyone who has dealt with computers for any period of time recognizes that the material value of the things on their hard drive is almost nill. The physical value of my hard drive is a couple pounds (maybe) of metal and plastic. Like 2 dollars of physical material. This document that I'm typing up right now will be represented as a magnetic blip on a plate of aluminum (aluminum, right?) somewhere on Blogger's server. The actual value of this is nothing. It's made of almost-nothing. That Transformers 3 movie you (hopefully mistakenly) pirated? The same value of this document, except it's magnetic blip is bigger. Every pirate knows that these things don't actually have a value attached to them, and “stealing” them doesn't rob the object of its value. Rather, that null-value is doubled and spread. TF3, as terrible of an idea as it is to take up hard drive space with that movie, has more value if you and I have a copy as opposed to just me. Moreover, if you, I, and a guy in Liberia all have a copy, it's worth that much more.

2. Companies make it too damn difficult to figure out how much you like their crap. ITunes (how the balls do you capitalize that for initial sentence position?) has finally caught onto this, at least a little bit, by offering a minute and a half long sample of their music. Which really does go along way. Instead of spending 5 minutes, at the longest, sampling an album to figure out how badly I want to throw my money at it, now it's at least a 15 minute process. And it has won me over a few times. They still insist on a 30 second preview of movies, which makes no sense. If a song get's almost 2 minutes, shouldn't a movie get a 10 or 20 minute preview? Especially for TV shows where all they show you is the intro. Blah blah blah. Like I said – companies make it too difficult to figure out how much I might like their crap. HBO is perhaps the most sterling example of this. Their stuff (I guess for reasons that make sense to content providers like Comcast) is totally exclusive to satellite and cable companies. When my wife and I were trying to figure out if Deadwood was a show worth buying, what recourse did we have but to find a 3rd party site that streams Deadwood without HBO's permission? Piracy is a great way to figure out what you want to spend your money on. This has the added benefit of survival of the strongest: the best stuff continues to thrive while the forgettable stuff will get forgotten. If it wasn't for someone hosting that first Cloud Cult album on their site for free, I wouldn't have bought the other seven or eight. Because of that one act of piracy, Cloud Cult has made far more off of me than they could have hoped to otherwise.

3. I already briefly mentioned this, but piracy acts as a way to make sure the good stuff gets out there and gets supported. There is an avalanche of evidence to support this. An independent report in Australia found that those that pirate the most music also buy the most, which means that when the industry institutes psychotic measures to protect their property, they only effect those that are buying the least. By not catering to a pirate's mindset, they're only hurting themselves. In almost every venue that I could find, this is true.

There are problems, and I do want to talk about those, particularly with our culture's newest fetish for digitizing non-digital formats (like books and comics). If I get to it, that could be next post, because that's where I think things get interesting.

But for the sake of the now, what are things companies could do to thrive? Well, first off is the mistaken notion that people don't want to pay. Not so. Most people, probably everyone except for that malicious minority that view stealing as holy writ, start at the legal venues and work down from there. For example, The Wind, a super obscure silent film, was my wife and I's first date. I wanted to buy it, so I check Amazon, eBay, and even Best Buy (though anyone who still buys from Best Buy should be put down. As a mercy) to no avail. I genuinely wanted to pay money for this thing, but it simply wasn't out there. But I found some 3rd party site hosting it. A movie that I bet one in 300,000 people haven't seen, and this website was hosting it.

That said, companies should make everything they have available for as cheap as possible. I'm not talking like iTunes cheap, because for seriously: most of that music isn't emotionally worth ten bucks. All their crap should be treated as a massive 24 hour clearing house: everything priced to move. I'm not talking renting a movie from YouTube for 4 bucks (way to sellout, Google. Oh, and we still get ads before our videos? Fantastic.), I'm talking about buying a video for 4 bucks. You want the newest Lady Gaga joint? 2 bucks. The biggest hurdle for many pirates is availability, the second pricing. Make the “legal” choice so free and easy that going to The Pirate Bay feels like a hassle.

You know all those TV shows you totally love? Like Malcolm in The Middle (get real. I'm the only one who likes that show) or Pirates of Dark Water? Or even the stuff you kind of want to forget about, like Skeleton Warriors or that stupid sitcom about cavemen. It's all sitting on some harddrive in some studio taking up space. What about all those amazing soundtracks you heard play in movies, like The Neverending Story or Sunshine or Return to Oz (you can tell what kind of consumer I am)? They're also collecting theoretical dust on some guy's hard drive. All this stuff should be out there for cheap. If the average consumer went to Amazon or iTunes and saw that with that 20 dollars they planned to spend on Transformers 3: The Criterion Collection, they could walk away with four soundtracks, a whole TV show, and a download of Inception, I guarantee that person'd spend 40. Good luck trying to convince that person to spend 40 (and only get 2 things, if they're lucky) where they had only planned to spend 20 (and get one thing).

I dunno. I got more to this. But I need food. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow and talk about how stupid it is to create physical items like they're supposed to be digital.

3. I already briefly mentioned this, but piracy acts as a way to make sure the good stuff gets out there and gets supported. There is an avalanche of evidence to support this. An independent report in Australia found that those that pirate the most music also buy the most, which means that when the industry institutes psychotic measures to protect their property, they only effect those that are buying the least. By not catering to a pirate's mindset, they're only hurting themselves. In almost every venue that I could find, this is true.

There are problems, and I do want to talk about those, particularly with our culture's newest fetish for digitizing non-digital formats (like books and comics). If I get to it, that could be next post, because that's where I think things get interesting.

But for the sake of the now, what are things companies could do to thrive? Well, first off is the mistaken notion that people don't want to pay. Not so. Most people, probably everyone except for that malicious minority that view stealing as holy writ, start at the legal venues and work down from there. For example, The Wind, a super obscure silent film, was my wife and I's first date. I wanted to buy it, so I check Amazon, eBay, and even Best Buy (though anyone who still buys from Best Buy should be put down. As a mercy) to no avail. I genuinely wanted to pay money for this thing, but it simply wasn't out there. But I found some 3rd party site hosting it. A movie that I bet one in 300,000 people haven't seen, and this website was hosting it.

That said, companies should make everything they have available for as cheap as possible. I'm not talking like iTunes cheap, because for seriously: most of that music isn't emotionally worth ten bucks. All their crap should be treated as a massive 24 hour clearing house: everything priced to move. I'm not talking renting a movie from YouTube for 4 bucks (way to sellout, Google. Oh, and we still get ads before our videos? Fantastic.), I'm talking about buying a video for 4 bucks. You want the newest Lady Gaga joint? 2 bucks. The biggest hurdle for many pirates is availability, the second pricing. Make the “legal” choice so free and easy that going to The Pirate Bay feels like a hassle.

You know all those TV shows you totally love? Like Malcolm in The Middle (get real. I'm the only one who likes that show) or Pirates of Dark Water? Or even the stuff you kind of want to forget about, like Skeleton Warriors or that stupid sitcom about cavemen. It's all sitting on some harddrive in some studio taking up space. What about all those amazing soundtracks you heard play in movies, like The Neverending Story or Sunshine or Return to Oz (you can tell what kind of consumer I am)? They're also collecting theoretical dust on some guy's hard drive. All this stuff should be out there for cheap. If the average consumer went to Amazon or iTunes and saw that with that 20 dollars they planned to spend on Transformers 3: The Criterion Collection, they could walk away with four soundtracks, a whole TV show, and a download of Inception, I guarantee that person'd spend 40. Good luck trying to convince that person to spend 40 (and only get 2 things, if they're lucky) where they had only planned to spend 20 (and get one thing).

I dunno. I got more to this. But I need food. Maybe I'll come back tomorrow and talk about how stupid it is to create physical items like they're supposed to be digital.

No more Looney Tunes

I really wanted to blog each episode of the Looney Tunes show. I really did. The problem(s) is(are) that 1. The show is so keenly unmemorable that it was difficult for me to hold the show in my head long enough to blog about. I haven't even watched the last three or four episodes – I'm not sure how many they're up to – but I have difficulty remembering the three I did see. You know why it's hard? Because nothing says funny quite like Yosemite Sam not firing a gun and being an irritating house guest. And something about a bitchy she rabbit. Speaking of which, did you see Bugs cross dress? Horrifying. Horrifying in the original? Not at all. In this one it is, but why? Namely it's because Bugs has been relegated to the position of your uncle, and not the creepy one. When your creepy uncle cross dresses, it's not that bad because he's already creepy, but when the uncle you like cross dresses you're forced to reassess the entire nature of you in relation to him. And it's not pretty. They made Bugs so humdrum and vanilla that anything just outside of normal is vastly unsettling. This would be like Roseanne doing anything.

2. The second reason I didn't/couldn't/wouldn't keep up with it is that I don't particularly enjoy reviewers who make their name reviewing crappy stuff. And there are a ton out there. And it's always the same with these guys: they act like they've been put on by an unkind universe or a sadistic boss and reviewing is the only recourse in life, so, “I'll do it, but I won't enjoy it.” And then they're snarky and it's a linguistic arms race as each reviewer races to come up with the best insult or colorful metaphor to describe how terrible their topic is, and by extension, their life. It's a tired routine, and I can't wait until the internet gets over it.

The point is that reviewing something you know is bad and then telling people why it's bad feels unnecessary. The real trick is reviewing something people assume is good (anything by Michael Bay or James Cameron of late) and telling them why, actually, it sucks. Perhaps there's some element of that in The Looney Tunes Show. There are people who labor under the mistaken notion that it's good, but I don't feel like the numbers justify it. I would be surprised if the show is still around in the fall.

The Looney Tunes Show

The problem with The Looney Tunes show is that it's exactly as awful as you'd expect. It's so exactly awful, that it's actually really difficult to remember. I watched the premier this morning, and I know I watched it, but I can't tell you what it was about. I remember the plot: Bugs and Daffy are apparently closeted gay lovers (can't admit it to each other yet). Done. Oh wait, they also go on a game show called Besties, and I pretty much don't have to tell you the plot of the show. If you do, you're stupid and I hate you. They lose. Bugs has a gayfit because Daffy blah blah blah BOATS blah blah blah GAY GOPHERS blah blah blah MEXICAN MOUSE.

Jesus. The show's so damn predictable that I lose interest trying to tell someone else about it. There are just so many terrible flaws. The voices, the art, the animation, the music (my god. The music), the stories. It's overwhelming to know where to begin. Because this show is such a cluster, I think I'll talk about the problem with the concept.

Daffy and Bugs lop of their wangs and trade it for something that's the total opposite of genitals. What would that be, like, some kind of pottery? They've lopped off their junk and replaced it with the Pottery Barn. The thing about the Looney Tunes of yore is that they're elemental. They're not human: they're more like gods or archetypes. They descend into the world and screw it up. They don't get a house in the suburbs and order chinese, they descend into the suburbs and rip the shroud off, showing the flaccid beating heart of that world! By boxing the characters, you ruin them.

The producer says that his team distilled the characters into their core elements (apparently Bugs is a sensitive prima donna, and Daffy's just a dick bag) and inserted them into a “relevant” setting. Hup. There's that word. Whenever someone tells you he's making something relevant, punch him in the dingding, because what that really means is that he's going to sterilize and take away all the magic. Sure you could maybe say that the Looney Tunes crew has central characteristics – Bugs is crafty and Daffy is reactionary – but the second you try to make those characteristics relevant, you cut the nuts off. Sometimes Bugs is the aggressor, sometimes he's the victim, and sometimes he fuXX0rs with people just for the lulz. Same can be said for Daffy. He's not always the one doing the picking on, but he's always reactionary. But it doesn't always look the same. Remember that time Bugs got trapped in that Frankenstein castle? He was crafty in that he never quite got caught, and he always had a crack, but he didn't lay out some masterful plan.

I'm getting derailed. In the new cartoon, crafty for Bugs amounts to sitting around feeling superior, and then getting his feelings hurt when someone doesn't care about him. Reactionary for Daffy? He's just a bastard. And not even a funny one. The best part? The climax of the episode is a nice serious talk about our relationship. I wish I was fuckin' with ya. No. The Looney Tunes (whose prior involvement with feelings could be described as, “fuck feelings”) has Bugs tell Daffy, “I don't know why, but you're my best friend.” Schmaltzy music. If it were recorded before a live studio audience, they'd go “Awww,” Daffy says something snarky (and so rememberable that I totally forgot), and the audience would get in one last good guffaw.

Of course the animation is nothing less than sheer disappointment. I don't understand the purpose of the redesigns, especially since Bugs seems to be the only person affected. The voices are abysmal, except for possibly Daffy. Whoever's doing him really nailed it. They're all too deep, and the gay gophers, the two that used to argue about who gets to go first, are both too British and too deep. But seriously: the art is terrible. Remember that period in the early 90s when everything was excessively flat? That's this show's art. No more subtle coloring and painterly effects. There isn't even a single fast motion blur.

And the music. It's full of suck. Elmer Fudd sings a song about how bad he wants to bang a grill cheese sandwich.

Like, honestly, I wish I could keep talking about this show, but it's making me feel sick. Also, I'm having a hard time remembering it. But, in the future, when someone asks me, “Where were you when they killed art?” I can totally say, “Living room. The Looney Tunes show.”

A Slight Change

As much as I wish I blogged as much as I used to, the fact is that I don't think I ever will unless there is serious external motivation, whether that be money or community or free sandwiches. But I do wish I blogged more. To that end, I'm not going to keep track of my hours anymore on this blog. While it's not the hardest thing I've ever had to do, it was just enough work that it was just enough discouragement to prevent me from blogging. I'll still call the blog 10,000 hours, and I still plan on publishing some finished, or approximately finished stuff, I just have to figure out how I want to do that. Should I promise to publish X amount of things in X amount of time to create false obligation so that way I'll (probably) actually do it? And what kind of stuff should I publish?

And that's what I got for right now.

A Love for The Awful

This started out as an email to the author of an article I read on io9.com, being this one specifically: http://io9.com/5735228/we-are-in-a-golden-age-of-awful-television . At some point I figured I would be better off making huge rambling thing an actual blog entry and just emailing him the link. Much interest would be for him to respond, but I'm certain that anyone who contributes to a major blog gets so many useless spam and flame emails that their blood pumps binary.

first is that as surely as there is a golden age of TV, so also do TV and movies go hand in hand. the theatre seems interminably split between artistic, intellectual, thought provoking and moving and the mentally retarded. Few summers have there been where i could walk into the theater to see Where The Wild Things Are, and then walk out to buy a ticket to Transformers 2, Avatar (on rerelease), The Hangover, or any number of aborted attempts at quality movie making like Prince of Persia, Clash of the Titans. I mean, you know this list. But crappy movies (and TV) have all existed, and it's not like this is really a new phenomena; Hollywood being built on the backs of terrible movies either suffocating good movies, or sometimes rarely helping a quality movie float to the top.

But here's what I don't get, the comment that made me want to email, and the true crime of the exchange between movie maker and movie goer: "Goofily enjoyable in a Hasselhoff-y type of way, maybe. But actually good? Not a chance." Why is it as consumers of entertainment we feel vindicated in watching terrible terrible entertainment, that we would readily admit is terrible, as long as we "didn't expect it to be good"? This is a phenomena I can't wrap my head around. My family loved Transformers 2, and in unflagging pavlovian fashion, they are the litmus for good movies: a "positive" result (they like it) means a terrible movie; a "negative" result means a good movie, and thus we see the purpose of the quotation's ironic use. Knowing it was bad (because I saw the first one, and moreover it's Michael Bay) I never saw it until Rifftrax put it in its proper place, and the magnitude of TF2's sin was staggering. So I started asking my friends who saw the movie, who willingly went to the theater, put down a crisp tenner (or more if you saw it in 3D) and was not embarrassed to say, "One for Transformers 2: Revenge of The Fallen at 11:30 please!" I was shocked to see how many people had! And these are educated people: engineers, artists, teachers, filmmakers and accountants and students. Some have children, so I can't fault them necessarily. But on more than one occasion I heard the following rationale: "Well, I wasn't anticipating Citizen Kane. I got what I expected and wasn't let down." As if there's a continuity of film: Citizen Kane at 10, and Michael Bay movies as some negative number in which it no longer looks like a number, and the only sin is indulging in anything between the extremes with one important caveat: that the offending movie be bad as you expected it. So at which point did this become a good rationale? 10 dollars is more than most people make per hour, and yet it's totally defensible to throw 10 dollars at something you find fulsome, as long as fulsome you expected.

It's not as if these movies are necessarily being watched ironically either. It's not us watching Adam West's Batman and taking a shot every time Robin says, "Holy (something) Batman!" or like we're watching Catwomen of Mars and making fun of it. No! This is us purposefully paying to see something we know isn't good, and then genuinely enjoying it because it isn't good, just like we predicted! Hooray! In other elements, this makes no sense. Are we going to buy and then subsequently enjoy Fred (from YouTube) Covers Big Mama Thornton and enjoy it because it's bad; not because we want to make fun of it, or because we want to own a piece of kitsch, but because we fully expect it to be bad and then will enjoy the experience because it was bad like we thought? Are we going to buy a bucket of questionable fried chicken from the local chicken joint, y'know, the one that's famous for giving people the runs, and then enjoy eating that chicken because it gave us the runs like we thought it would? Of course not. Now, food is a false corollary, but the point is that only with movies do we readily indulge in a subpar experience and then enjoy it because it turned out like we thought.

One excuse I often here, at least concerning TF2 (and other equally terrible movies have their equal defenses) is, "Well, all I wanted to see were giant robots fighting, and that's what I got, so I'm happy," which on its surface holds water. At the risk of sounding like judgmental buttmunch, however, I would have to say that this reasoning can only possibly hold for people who fall on a continuum of below average to average, at best. Or ideally it should. Consider the following: Mortal Kombat was a fantastic awful movie. Why? Because it stuck to the premise of the video game being, "An excuse for a bunch of weirdos to get together and beat the shit out of each other." The movie delivered on the weirdos, violence, and didn't alter the concept. A genuine ABC experience that's easy to summarize. Compared to TF2, things get weird. TF2 has the facade of being a movie about robots that beat each other up, but it quickly falls apart when you stop to consider that really only one of the robots has any kind of reliable characterization, the badguys are a blur of sameness, and then the movie aspires to something grand: an interstellar plot of ancient gods and ancient technology (and robot testicles). But the plot gets so muddy that things make no sense. Why Egypt exactly? How do we get to DC and then back again? Did Optimus just die three times in two movies? Did that robot just shit itself? Who the fuck is that? What am I seeing: knives in a blender? DID OPTIMUS JUST STRAIGHT MURDER ANOTHER ROBOT? I THINK I SEE THE SPASMODIC ENDING OF MY CHILDHOOD IN SPURTS GASHES AND GASPS!

My point is that MK succeeds because it has a paper thin conceit, but man does it stick to it like a kid covered in boogers sticks to a cartoon dog. Transformers flails all over employing the shotgun method to storywriting. In the minds of the viewer who "just wanted to see giant robots" story is meaningless. This means we have a medium based on story being allowed to succeed without story. TF2 isn't the only one: I saw those Twilight movies (RiffeTrax'd, as any good American should); Avatar had some pretty frown inducing plot holes; Clash of the Titans had a drive through in the back. A medium based on story being allowed to succeed by violating that simple dictate, and people are glad to hand their money over to encourage more awful storytelling to pass through their eyes.

Special effects does have a lot to do with it, but what about those people I mentioned before? Engineers working for Ball and animators at even a small animation firm aren't gobsmacked by simple FX; people who read Dovstoyesky for fun shouldn't be enthralled with such inept storytelling. Even people in the prime SFX demographic (like my family) who even admit that the 3D gives them headaches and that the fight scenes were impossible to decipher still think these shambling Frankenstein's monster style movies are passable, or even "The greatest incarnation of the Transformers to ever happen!"

I don't get it: why are so many people so predisposed to liking something awful? And it's not dumb people like I would have expected, but it's the artists and the engineers, the people who read Dovstoyesky and the people who struggle with the back of the cereal box.