« October 2003 | December 2003 »
November 29, 2003Like lemmings to the sea...
Stuff like this is why I'm going to avoid the malls until January:
Woman Knocked Unconscious While Shopping
Only in America, folks.
Posted by patrick at 02:15 PM | Comments (3)
November 27, 2003
Political Correctness is a running wound upon our national psyche...
Here's a little pearl of inanity from a recent memo by Joe Sandoval, division manager of purchasing and contract services for Los Angeles County:
The County of Los Angeles actively promotes and is committed to ensure a work environment that is free from any discriminatory influence be it actual or perceived. As such, it is the County's expectation that our manufacturers, suppliers, and contractors make a concentrated effort to ensure that any equipment, supplies, or services that are provided to County departments do not possess or portray an image that may be construed as offensive or defamatory in nature.
One such recent example included the manufacturer's labeling of equipment where the words ''Master/Slave'' appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.
We would request that each manufacturer, supplier, and contractor review, identify, and remove/change any identification or labeling of equipment or components thereof that could be interpreted as discriminatory or offensive in nature before such equipment is sold or otherwise provided to any County department. Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance.
All this because some employee saw videotape machine parts labeled "master" and "slave," and filed a discrimination lawsuit with the county's Office of Affirmative Action Compliance. He was offended by the terms.
As long as we're clearing the air, I should mention that I'm offended, too.
I’m offended that white is a color of mourning in Japan.
I’m offended that white people get more skin cancer.
I’m offended that William Prescott told his soldiers not to shoot until they saw the whites of their foes’ eyes.
I'm offended by "White Men Can’t Jump".
I'm offended that the titular antagonists of both "Jaws" and "Moby Dick" are white animals.
I’m offended that the world’s only white gorilla was euthanized a few days ago due to his advanced skin cancer (again, no melanin).
I’m offended that whiteboards are less common than blackboards.
I’m offended that white bread is considered nutritionally deficient.
I’m offended that Great White burned down that nightclub in Rhode Island.
I’m offended that Jack Johnson defeated Jim Jeffries, the “Great White Hope”.
I’m offended that light meat costs more than dark meat.
I’m offended that Jack Black is much more popular right now than Betty White.
I’m offended that the third place winner always gets the white ribbon.
I’m offended by Ghostface Killah.
I’m offended by the name of White-Out.
I’m offended by the Fightin’ Whities.
I’m offended that “in the black” is a term of financial success.
I’m offended by whiteheads.
I’m offended that white zinfandel is so stigmatized.
I’m offended that white chocolate isn’t actually made of chocolate—it’s just sugar, milk, and cocoa butter.
I’m offended that Bing Crosby could only dream of a white Christmas.
I’m offended that White Russian is not a more popular flavor of ice cream.
I’m offended, not only that the white line separating the lanes is broken, but that it can be crossed with impunity.
I’m offended that white flags are used to surrender.
I’m offended that a disproportionate number of white blood cells are drafted to fight and die in the red blood cells’ wars.
I'm offended that this tempest in a teapot about the "master"/"slave" computer parts isn't considered as ludicrous as the points I just raised.
Posted by patrick at 03:13 AM | Comments (2)
November 26, 2003
When *I'm* in charge, things'll be different!
I was driving back to Riverside from Los Angeles this morning, as I often have reason to do. The drive was uneventful and I was making pretty good time, right up until an accident on the other side of the freeway slowed the traffic on my side.
How, you ask? How could it be that a car hitting the westbound side of the center divider would clog the progress of those going eastbound?
Rubbernecking.
Apparently, I was the only person driving out of Los Angeles this morning who had ever seen a fire truck, an ambulance, or a banged-up car. Everybody else had to slow down, gawk at the scene, then slowly regain awareness that they were on the freakin' freeway and pick it back up to a reasonable speed. Nothing was overturned. Nothing was on fire. It's not like a semi full of live turkeys had spilled its precious, tasty cargo onto the 60 East. It was just a fender-bender. Not nearly unusual enough to merit everybody staring like a bunch of mouth-breathers.
Let's put up billboards every four or five miles with a different auto accident on each one. Car versus Metrolink commuter train, say, or motorcycle versus pick-up truck (which I saw happen a few weeks back--when traffic was at a crawl, thankfully), or VW Beetle versus anything bigger than a puppy. That way, everybody can get their voyeuristic kicks without holding up the folks behind them.
Posted by patrick at 08:28 PM | Comments (2)
November 25, 2003
Adios, Snowflake...
It is with a heavy heart that I must report the death of Snowflake, the world’s oldest (and only known) albino gorilla. He was put down (and I don’t mean demeaned) after a two-year-long fight against skin cancer.
When I read the headline, I was hoping that it was some other albino gorilla who had gone to that banana buffet in the sky. Unfortunately, he was the only one. That was the disadvantage to his having been the world’s only albino ape—if one died, just by default, it had to be him.
I won’t say that I knew Snowflake. He was a gorilla of few words—a primate of many acquaintances and few close friends. However, I did meet him once, during a short trip through Europe the summer after my junior year of high school. We spent two days in Spain, the highlight of which was our trip to the Barcelona Zoo. It was the most ghetto zoo I’d ever seen. Between the empty exhibits, the sun-bleached and chipping paint, and the mossy puddles where the concrete had been poorly laid, we all wondered how the place managed to stay open, much less turn a peseta.
And then we arrived at Snowflake’s enclosure.
Covered as it was with white hair, his immense, pink body reminded me for all the world of Ernest Borgnine. He looked like he should be sitting in an open garage wearing a stained wifebeater and too-short shorts, like somebody’s pissed-off grandpa. Snowflake deigned to gaze upon us, but only, I’m sure, because we had stumbled into his previous field of vision and it was too damn troublesome to move.
We wanted to teach him to smoke cigarettes and flip off the zoo guests. We didn’t, but we wanted to. What’s more, he wanted us to. We could tell. You could see it in his eyes—this gorilla wanted to give people the bird and suck down Marlboroughs. His was the strongest, most human sense of disdain I’ve ever encountered from an animal, before or since.
I'm sure Snowflake is in a better place now. Of course, living as he did at the Barcelona Zoo, that's really not saying much.
Posted by patrick at 12:00 AM | Comments (0)
November 24, 2003
Khyber? I don't even *know* her!
From Thomas More’s "Utopia":
"…they make their chamber-pots and close-stools of gold and silver, and that not only in their public halls but in their private houses. Of the same metals they likewise make chains and fetters for their slaves, to some of which, as a badge of infamy, they hang an earring of gold, and make others wear a chain or a coronet of the same metal…"
It puts a whole new spin on the concept of bling-bling, eh?
* * * * *
I thought of a new word late last night. It has little to no practical applicability, but I’m excited about it nonetheless.
Khyberpunk: Any techno-dystopian novel or short story set in the mountain paths of Pakistan and Afghanistan’s shared border.
I don’t know what’s sadder—that I laughed myself stupid last night over how clever a term I coined, or that I hold out any hope of anybody else finding it even slightly amusing.
Posted by patrick at 04:53 PM | Comments (0)
My screenplay's done, and Eminem's the voice of reason? Goodness...
Just now—at two in the morning, on November 24, 2003—I finished the first draft of my screenplay.
And it’s wonderful.
No, actually, it’s horrible. It started out decently enough, if a little overwritten with regards to the descriptions. However, as its due date loomed larger and larger on the horizon, I felt the quality melt away—much like that last sliver of soap that always seems so mournful until it suddenly disappears mid-shower, and you have to wrap a towel around yourself and scare up another bar. By the end of the process, I was merrily cranking out up to 12 pages in a single day. The page count tore at quality’s soft underbelly like vultures having at a dead hyena.
However, seeing as how this is the single most labor-intensive bit of writing I’ve ever completed, I can’t face up to its crappiness. Not now, at least. Next quarter, when I’ll have a king’s ransom of ten weeks to revise it, sure. I’ll be the first to shout its deficiencies from the rooftops. But right now, I have to look at my little Quasimodo and squint just right until I’m looking at the prettiest tot in the universe.
Work with me, folks.
* * * * *
Oh no! Eminem’s reported to have made racist and/or misogynistic comments ten to fifteen years ago. Meanwhile, more pigmentally abundant rappers are given carte blanche to make similar comments every ten seconds or so without fear of censure.
Here’s a quote from one Ray Benzino, an owner of “The Source” magazine and unabashed Eminem enemy. I only wish I were making this up.
“Don't make this right now a double standard. We gotta treat this the same way you treat Mike Tyson, like you treat Kobe Bryant, like you treat R. Kelly, like you treat O.J. Simpson.”
Interesting comparison, Mr. Benzino. Let’s see how it holds up under further scrutiny.
Kobe Bryant: Alleged rapist.
R. Kelly: Alleged statutory rapist.
Mike Tyson: Ear-biting convicted rapist.
O.J. Simpson: Alleged wife-beater and murderer.
Eminem: Pissed-off teenager employing commonly-accepted vernacular within a specialized subculture.
How glad we all must be that Mr. Benzino spoke up when he did, freeing us of the race-related double-standard with which we were about to whitewash Eminem’s heinous crimes.
Posted by patrick at 03:09 AM | Comments (1)
November 21, 2003
Random thoughts, but better than nothing, right?
This has been quite the week. I think I’ve cranked out somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 pages’ worth of screenplay in the last seven days, with another 20 or 30 pages I’ll need to write by Tuesday morning. I had some assignments for my other two classes that needed doing, too, but the screenplay is—and has been—my focus this quarter. I don’t remember ever pouring so much time into a single piece of writing, or focusing on a single piece of writing so completely to the detriment of everything else in my life.
I’ll be taking screenwriting again next quarter, with the goal of revising my first draft. At this point, I’ll get the damn thing polished and sold for no other reason than pure force of will; if I don’t do anything with it, all the sleep I didn’t get and meals I didn’t eat will have been for naught.
The good news is that my stress level will go down significantly after this screenplay is turned in. Beyond that, all I have to do is write a few more fiction critiques and a large paper for my Early Japanese Literature class—and the paper isn’t due until December 10th, which means I won’t have to rush straight from the screenplay into it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about words lately—due in no small part to the fact that I’ve had to crank out so many of them, no doubt. I’ve especially been interested in the relationships between words whose similarities (and subsequent shared roots) have never garnered my notice before.
Consider the definitions of "ideal" and "idea," for example (both taken from "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition").
Ideal: "Existing as an archetype or pattern, especially as a Platonic idea or perception."
Idea: "In the philosophy of Plato, an archetype of which a corresponding being in phenomenal reality is an imperfect replica."
It makes perfect sense when you think about it, but even so, I’d never even consciously recognized the correlation. The same goes for "candid" and "candidate"—the latter of which, interestingly enough, comes from a Latin word for the white togas worn by Romans seeking office. "Candid" and "candidate" have little in common with each other nowadays, but they both possess a shared Latin heritage of purity.
Based on the Hilton heiress scandal, should we dub all future socialites who get caught on tape in compromising positions "Parisites"?
In other news, while I can’t exactly endorse his taste in women, I’ve got no beef with former President Clinton’s taste in books. He released a list of his 21 favorite books, two of which I’ve read, and one of which is also a favorite of mine. It seems that Clinton enjoys Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s "One Hundred Years of Solitude," a novel to which I subjected my seniors last year. He also lists William Styron’s "The Confessions of Nat Turner" as a favorite. I read it, and wouldn’t list it in my top 21, but I can think of plenty worse novels. "Dune," I’m sad to report, didn’t make the list.
And everyone’s favorite kitschy lawn ornaments have undergone a significant upgrade, just in time for the holiday season. Tom Darby, the maker of "Jardinains," has released a new level pack for the "Breakout" clone that ups the total number of unique levels from 50 up to a whopping 150. I haven’t even had a chance to explore the new stuff, but I know that a "Jardinains" with three times the levels can be nothing but good.
I’m long overdue in doing it, but I’ll announce the winner of the mullet contest in a few days.
Posted by patrick at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)
November 08, 2003
Craigslist.com ain't no place for love, ladies!
A female friend of mine recently met a fellow from a Craigslist.org personals ad. They e-mailed back and forth to one another for a little while, before having their first phone conversation--which totally freaked my friend out and put the kibosh on any further e-mailing between them or face-to-face meeting.
She sent me a picture of the guy, and the first thing I noticed (aside from his serial killer eyes) was the fact that his one visible ear (his head was at an angle) looked freakin' huge--and not unlike the continent of Africa. When I shared my feelings about his ear, she agreed that it does, indeed, look like Africa. The steak comparison was a later burst of associative genius.
Observe:
Posted by patrick at 08:54 AM | Comments (2)
November 02, 2003
Poor, poor Minnie Driver...
I had a really nice conversation with two of my former students at the Notre Dame Football Mexican Dinner yesterday evening. We must have chatted for about an hour. I know that being liked wasn't strictly essential to my job performance, but it's still gratifying to know that I was able to perform my duties as best I could and still not have these particular alumni loathe me.
* * * * *
While getting my daily internet news fix yesterday, I came across the following headline:
"Minnie Driver Said to Work in Sweatshop"
My heart immediately went out to her. I used to carry a celebrity torch for Ms. Driver, and it saddened me to think of her star having fallen so far to where she'd have to toil in a sweatshop just to make ends meet. Granted, after the likes of "High Heels and Low Lives" and "Beautiful," one could make the argument that earning cents on the dollar for stitching wallets together in Cambodia is entirely within the realm of what she now deserves.
I clicked on the link and read the article, only to discover that Minnie's going to work in the sweatshops to raise awareness of their plight, and not in response to her own.
"I will be working alongside other young women for as long as it takes for me to raise awareness of the fair trade issue," Driver is quoted as having said at the London premiere of "Seabiscuit".
The danger in making such a statement, of course, is in assuming that her presence will raise said awareness. The open-endedness of it doesn't help any. If she's not leaving the sweatshops until the world has sat up and taken notice, she might be in there for a long time.
But wait...Minnie Driver's life gets worse. When I just checked IMDB.com just now to look at her filmography, I read something among the celebrity news blurbs on the main page--a blurb that filled me with horror and brought the bile up thick in my throat. Apparently, the 37-year-old John Cusack is dating the 21-year-old Britney Spears.
That's right, Minnie. Not only have your recent movies bombed, not only have you decided to cloister yourself in a Cambodian sweatshop, but now one of your former flames is dating someone almost half his age whose disintegrating career is even more public than your own.
I didn't intend to drink so deeply from the font of celebrity schadenfreude just now, but they make it so damn easy. Now I have to find a German term that encapsulates my feelings on Nicole Kidman's reported engagement to bobble-headed musical hack Lenny Kravitz...
Posted by patrick at 11:52 AM | Comments (0)