Secret Truth

You know what's great about democracies? Anyone who wants to vote has the right to.

You know what's not so great about them? A lot of people feel obligated to vote.

I'm just going to come right out and say it: the worst thing to happen to American democracy is the idea that everyone is obligated to vote. Really, those "Rock the Vote" ads represent so much that's wrong with our society. Because think about it, if somebody needs flashy commercials and peer pressure to convince them to vote for the future, should they really be voting in the first place?

Yeah, it's important that a good number of people vote. But not everyone has to vote. Quite frankly, only the passionate individuals who really care about governance should vote. Only the political junkies, or people with a solid enough understanding of America and its principles, should be allowed to vote.

Does that mean America would become an oligarchy? No. It'd simply mean that only those who care about government--those who invest time and energy into thinking about it--would vote. Only those who cared about the American government would try to influence it.

It'd certainly be better than people choosing our leaders based on looks, or who's on the ballot first.

Godzilla, A Review

As of late, I've found myself getting more and more captivated by two things: Asian culture and B-Horror films. The Asian culture thing isn't really all that surprising. I'm taking a course in Asian Studies, I'm reading Journey to the West (one of the Four Classic Novels of Chinese literature. I think I'll save discussion of that for another post), and in general anime has become quite the subject of discussion among my friend group. I suppose the B-Horror film thing isn't that difficult to figure out, either. Melodramatic cheese has pretty much always been up my alley, and I've always known I liked the genre ever since I saw The Blob in Middle School. Today, I finally watched the movie which manages to combine those two interests. For those among you who felt this post's title was a bit unclear, I watched Godzilla. And you know something, I really enjoyed it.

Basically, the plot of the film is that atomic testing has removed Godzilla from his underground lair. Therefore, he has begun to attack boats and generally prove to be a nuisance to maritime trade. It's not so bad until a storm comes and Godzilla is pushed out of the water, onto an island. People aren't quite sure, but a couple think they saw a monster of some sort. People are generally confused about what's going on, but the next day this scientist named Dr. Yamane goes to the scene and notices a giant footprint which suggests all the damage "caused by the storm" may in fact have been caused by something more... worrisome. Quickly thereafter, Godzilla appears again and everyone freaks out, understandably.

Though Yamane wants to learn about the creature, most everyone else wants to kill it. Underwater depth charges, electric fences, and the like prove futile and no one can figure out how to kill it. Dr. Yamane mopes around about how important a discovery the monster could be, while his daughter Emiko flirts with Ogata the sailor. Her love for Ogata makes her break it off with her fiance, a scientist named Serizawa.

But in abject truth, nobody is paying attention to any of that: the reason everyone's watching the movie is to see Godzilla break stuff. And break stuff he does. Angry about the underwater charges, he ends up making a wreck of Tokyo. Though the special effects are clearly a bit on the dated side, they're still a lot of fun to watch, if simply because they're a curiosity. Growing up in an animated, CGI sort of world, it's fun to watch Godzilla make an absolute mess of miniature models. Quite frankly, it's nothing you'd see in modern-day film-making.

But all good things must come to an end, so after Godzilla makes a mess of miniature-model Tokyo, people are understandably pissed. Emiko reveals to Ogata the sailor that Serizawa the scientist has created a device which could defeat Godzilla, but she was the only one he showed it to and he swore her to secrecy. The viewer flashes back to Serizawa's demonstration of his device--the Oxygen Destroyer--which essentially sucks all the oxygen out of water and asphyxiates the creature. It's a pretty cool device, though I admittedly have no idea how it works scientifically.

But that's alright, because I'm rather quickly distracted by the tension that ensues between Ogata and Serizawa. It's a battle of the wills as the sailor wants to use the device to destroy Godzilla, while Serizawa wants to keep the device secret, fearful of what people would do if they got their hands on such a cataclysmic device. Ogata wins in the end. However, Serizawa burns his notes and makes it explicitly clear that this is the only Oxygen Destroyer man has. Ogata thinks that's a good idea, so they go to the bottom of the ocean, carrying the only Oxygen Destroyer known to man. They set it off near Godzilla and Ogata leaves, being heralded as a hero. Serizawa, on the other hand, wishing to keep the Oxygen Destroyer as secret as possible, dies with Godzilla, thus assuring that no one has any knowledge of how the Destroyer was created.

Like I said before, it was a pretty good, enjoyable movie. Other than Godzilla smashing things, I think my favorite part might have been all of the mildly blatant symbolism going on in the movie. I walked in knowing that there was going to be some allegory for the way that the atom bomb changed so much about the human experience and the way that the monsters somehow reflected the fears of the people, but the execution of the symbolism actually surprised me.

Misconceptions being one of my favorite things to hold onto, I thought Godzilla was going to represent the nuclear bomb. However, as I watched the movie, it quickly became apparent that it was the Oxygen Destroyer which represented the nuclear bomb, while Godzilla actually represented the traditions of Japan. You see, early on in the movie, they're talking about how Godzilla was a myth among the older tribes of Japan. Therefore, whenever the fishing was bad, the fishermen would sacrifice a few girls and the fishing would get better again. Thus Godzilla, being an ancient creature and all, is a tie to Japan's past. In particular, it represents the ideal of putting the society before the individual.

Even as Godzilla ravages Tokyo, in my mind he is still connected to the ideals of the past: the Japanese ideal of fighting to the death was causing quite a few needless casualties in World War II, just like Godzilla is causing so many casualties in Tokyo. Therefore the question becomes, should a scientific, modern device be used to destroy those ideals? At what cost are those ideals being left behind?

In the end, I don't really know the answer to that question, but I've got to thank Godzilla for asking it.

Pepper and the Pied Pipers of Palestine

I'll admit it. I can be a pretty opinionated individual. Sometimes, I make up my mind too quickly and sometimes I don't wait to hear both sides of the story. I had been worried this is what had happened, when I went and decided that the Israelites were 100% correct in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "How could anyone else think otherwise?" I often thought to myself, bewildered that there was more than one opinion on the subject.

But I have a lot of Jewish friends and I live in the West, so I figured I was probably getting a biased view of the matter. Maybe the Palestinians really did deserve getting their land back. Maybe they really did have some point or other that I completely missed.

So I decided to go to the Hamas website. Maybe if I could see things from their perspective, the debate as a whole would become clearer to me. So I did. I went on the English version of their website. At first, all that really struck me was the loud chanting that was playing in the background. It was pretty obnoxious. However, it didn't necessarily mean they were wrong. It just meant they kinda weren't exactly the best singers on the planet.

So I went to the heart of the website and began looking at the various articles they had posted. "Settler Savagely attacks Seven Palestinian Farmers in Bethlehem." Alright, so it wasn't the most neutral website I could find. But I figured that was alright, because I had come here to get a perspective. I hadn't been looking for news. And besides, I can appreciate the alliteration. I like doing it, too. My alliteration is more along the lines of, "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," but the concept is still the same. Really, these guys don't seem so-

All of a sudden, the words flew at my eyes like a Boeing 767. My bottom jaw quickly disengaged itself from my upper-jaw and I re-read the headline, "Who Says There is No Jewish Nazism?"

Just for the record, I say there is no Jewish Nazism.

My Bad

Hey, all. Just wanted to let you know that the main reason for my lack of posting has been a growing interest in fiction writing. In fact, I've actually just started up a fiction blog called Bete Noire. And no, it doesn't really have anything to do with French people, but the name sure sounds cool, doesn't it?

Anyway, I'm basically going to be posting various serializations on my blog, which I hope you enjoy. My first serialization has long posts, but I think I'm going to do much shorter, internet-friendly posts from now on. So I hope you read and enjoy.

"Asassinate"

Sarah Palin, you're a really special individual. Whenever I've run out of cheap sex jokes or more sophisticated double entendres, I can always count on you to provide a good laugh.

Therefore, I thank you for mispronouncing words and then saying you're just making up new words, just like ol' Will Shakespeare.

In honor of how unique an individual you can be, I've come up with a new word, "asassinate." It's a combination of the words "asinine" and "assassinate." The word asinine is used just because of how applicable it is to this situation, while assassinate is used, because, William Shakespeare created it, and we all know how much you like him.

Definition of asassinate: To butcher a word so horrifically, you might say it's been assassinated. Then, to take that "interpretation" of the word and claim it's a completely new word.

As Elvis Rolls in his Grave...

I think I just gagged, because of this. "What is this?" those of you who don't feel like clicking on the link may ask. Basically, it's Hulu's new concept, a show called, If I Can Dream. It features five vapid individuals who move into a house that has a shiteload of cameras installed into it. Then anyone can go online and watch these five people 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These people are supposedly actors, musicians, etc. who will be attempting to launch a career.

They've branded it "post reality entertainment," but in reality (Did you notice that clever use of wordplay, there? Why the hell is it called "post reality," anyway? Is there a reality after reality? I digress...) it's really just a pathetic excuse for voyeurism. Hell, when I first saw the commercial for this show, I actually thought it was a joke.

But I really shouldn't be surprised this show is being made, because it seems to reflect the general direction our society has been moving in. During the 21st century, year by year, it seems to me that the individual has been steadily losing his privacy. The individuals featured on If I Can Dream are freely giving their privacy away, but recently, it seems like a torrent of encroachments on privacy have hit us in the face, without anyone actually asking for it.

There's the new Bing Map app, which is like Google Earth, except that it features a helluva lot more detail. There are certain areas you can look at as if you were walking down the street and get picture-perfect clarity. It's really cool, and I suggest that you try it out, but what does this mean for our privacy? People have always been able to watch you as you walked down the street, but they were never able to watch you from thousands of miles away. Now they can and that's kinda creepy. Even the sea isn't free from our curiousity: Google Earth now allows people to look under the water.

But is this necessarily a bad thing? It's not like Google and Bing are constantly taking pictures of the entire earth or anything. People can't watch you real-time. But the thing is, they're getting so close to that. If they can provide detailed pictures of all outdoor areas, and some indoor areas, through the Internet, isn't real-time video the next step? It's just weird.

But it's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people would probably think of this as Orwell's "Big Brother" dystopia coming to haunt us, but I can't bring myself to see it that way. In 1984, the government was always watching you. But this is simply two private corporations providing information to anyone with Internet access. So does it matter that our privacy is being taken away?

I don't think so. Though it's a bit creepy, this technology is like all technology: it has the capacity for both good and evil. Though there's a major creeper factor in the possibility for anyone to be watching you at anytime, think of the boon to law enforcement agencies. If Bing Map got real-time video, the cops could just watch the bank robbers leave the scene of the crime, virtually follow them to their hideout, and pick up the felons there. If someone was kidnapped, it would simply be a matter of following them on video from where they were last seen to wherever they were now.

So I really don't think we should worry about these new developments. We're steadily losing our privacy: it's a fact. But it's not really a bad fact. It's just a change; people usually fear change, but this technology actually has a lot of upside to it. We can now look at the world from our desktop. No matter the potential pitfalls, that's a development to welcome.

Clockwork Orange

If there's one thing I don't get, it's why some people prefer Anthony Burgess's Clockwork Orange to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of it. For the most part, I do tend to agree with the idea that the book is always better than the movie. But for this movie, I've really got to bend the rule and say that Kubrick pretty much outshone Burgess.

Because really, what does the book have that the movie doesn't? Most would probably point to the language of the book. But though I find Burgess creating a teenage dialect fascinating, we see plenty of that dialect in the movie. In fact, I like the way the movie uses its dialect better: because it's combined with visuals, the dialect is more easily understood in the movie than in the book. Also, I really felt like the accents of McDowell and his "droogs" really richen the language.

Then there are all the things Kubrick put into his film which weren't in the book, like that chilling scene where Alex was singing, "Singing in the Rain," while he commited a violent act.

Also, the reason why so many people liked the film was because of the beautiful visuals Kubrick is so well known for. Sure, the violence of the book was pretty gruesome, but I would say Kubrick's depiction of the violence was even more gruesome.

It must be said, Burgess's Clockwork Orange did come first and it therefore gets some credit. However, just because it came first doesn't mean it's better.* And it's not even like Burgess would defend his novel: he's blatantly stated that it's not his best work. He even said that he wrote the book in three weeks. So really, Kubrick actually spent more time in the creation of his Clockwork Orange than Burgess did.

And it shows. Kubrick's work is just more deeply thought out.

It showed in the scenery: who can forget that opening scene at the milk bar, with the nude female statues which spat out milk? Sure, it was strange and sexual, but that was what made the movie what it was.

Really I just don't get why some people prefer Burgess's book: Kubrick gives Orange so much more.

*If that rule were true, I guess Epic of Gilgamesh would be the greatest work of all time. Ummm...

No.