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August 31, 2004Sheep people make me mad...
Everybody's always grousing about how politicians lie. About how they're two-faced. About how they'll say whatever they think they need to say to get elected and stay elected.
You know what, folks? That old saying about people getting the politicians they deserve is as true now as ever it was. We have nobody to blame for their behavior but ourselves.
Last Monday, during an appearance on the "Today" show, Dubya was asked whether the war on terror would ever be won, to which he replied, "I don't think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world."
A good answer, I think. Accurate, qualified, honest without being pessimistic—Dubya operated under the assumption that he was speaking to a nation of rational adults. Admittedly, this was not the sort of thing I would have ever expected Dubya to say. Well, I won't worry my pretty little head about it, because he'll never be that honest again. Everybody jumped on him over his comment, including John Kerry, who used Dubya's rare candor as a chance to score a few points in the war of the soundbytes.
The very next day, Dubya revises his answer to the much more popular: "In this different kind of war, we may never sit down at a peace table. But make no mistake about it, we are winning, and we will win."
And the crowd goes wild.
Politicians lie and distort the truth because we demand it of them. We don't ask them to do what's best for us. We passively plead for them to take the reins and lead us wherever they'd like, so long as we can remain in our anesthetized daydreams. And no unpleasant truths—which, for America, means any situation (financial, moral, military, etc.) in which we're not guaranteed absolute, uncontested and painless victory. Just ask Walter Mondale, who sealed the coffin of his own presidential aspirations in 1984 when he said the following in his debate with Reagan: "Let's tell the truth. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did."
Mondale's electoral votes, come Election Day: 13.
Reagan’s electoral votes: 525.
Posted by patrick at 10:28 PM | Comments (3)
August 30, 2004
Sound like anything we've seen lately?
From Lin Yutang’s The Importance of Living, published in 1937:
Knowing then our human frailties, we have the more reason to hate the despicable wretch who in demagogue fashion makes use of our human foibles to hound us into another world war; who inculcates hatred, of which we already have too much; who glorifies self-aggrandizement and self-interest, of which there is no lack; who appeals to our animal bigotry and racial prejudice; who deletes the fifth commandment in the training of youth and encourages killing and war as noble, as if we were not already warlike enough creature; and who whips up and stirs our mortal passions, as if we were not already very near the beast….The gracious spirit of wisdom is tired down to a beast or a demon in us, which by this time we have come to understand is nothing but our animal heritage, or rather it ties this demon down by an old and worn leash and holds it but in temporary submission. At any time the leash may snap, and the demon be unleashed, and amidst hosannas the car of Juggernaut will ride roughshod over us, just to remind us once more how terribly near the savage we have been all this time, and how superficial is our civilization. Civilization will then be turned into a magnificent stage, on which Moors will kill Christians and Christians kill Moors…
Posted by patrick at 09:33 PM | Comments (0)
This is why so many teachers smoke...
From an article on how many teachers are using purple pens in grading, as red has been vilified as being too aggressive:
A mix of red and blue, the color purple embodies red's sense of authority but also blue's association with serenity, making it a less negative and more constructive color for correcting student papers, color psychologists said. Purple calls attention to itself without being too aggressive. And because the color is linked to creativity and royalty, it is also more encouraging to students.
Color psychologists? And might the color psychologists be stuffing totally subjective meanings into colors in order to defend the existence of their jobs? Do the students in question even know that purple is linked to creativity and royalty? And why do we want some kid with a half-assed essay covered in purple comments and corrections sauntering around feeling like Louis XIV in the first place?
"The concept of purple as a replacement for red is a pretty good idea," said Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute in Carlstadt, N.J., and author of five books on color. "You soften the blow of red. Red is a bit over-the-top in its aggression."
The article goes on, and is an interesting read, but I don’t want to repost it here in its entirety. Suffice it to say that a first/second-grade teacher states, "Red is definitely a no-no. But I don't know if purple is in," and a second/third-grade teacher opines, "Red has a negative connotation, and we want to promote self-confidence. I like purple. I use purple a lot."
Although a high-school teacher and an adult student do get a chance to defend the use of red pens near the end of the article, the general vibe of the article is that, just like corporal punishment before it, red ink is being tossed into the pedagogical dustbin of history. We don’t care if students learn anything, but we’re going to coddle and coo and spin-doctor their weaknesses until they’re walking around feeling like demi-gods, dammit!
I’m only half-kidding when I predict the next trend in grading papers will be refraining from writing comments on the essays themselves, lest the students’ soap-bubble egos pop at the sight of such vandalism on their alabaster-pure masterpieces. Teachers will put the comments on a separate piece of paper, which the students won’t bother to read, so the teachers will phase those out, too. Fast-forward ten years, and essays will be handed back looking as they did when they were turned in. Everybody will know they received an A because it’ll be the only grade possible, so long as you tried (fogged the mirror, cut-and-pasted from the internet, scribbled something onto a napkin, etc.).
Somebody get me a red pen, immediately! And cut me a switch, as long as you’re up. I’m taking back public education!
Posted by patrick at 12:34 AM | Comments (2)
August 28, 2004
The itsy-bitsy spider's gunning for you as we speak...
According to this article, you're always within three feet of a spider. Or, if you prefer, there's always a spider within three feet of you--especially when you're asleep, at which point they all congregate to dance the watusi perilously close to your open, unconscious mouth.
We now return to your regularly scheduled phobias...
Posted by patrick at 08:39 AM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2004
Just kick 'em in the Qin!
I bought a secondhand copy of "Prince of Qin" at EB Games yesterday afternoon—a fitting choice, albeit coincidental, seeing as how I caught a screening of "Hero" this morning (which concerns the same approximate era of Chinese history). I've been downloading the 23-MEG patch for the last hour or so. It will fix all manner of bugs and glitches. What it won't fix, unfortunately, is the hideous voice-acting—easily the worst I've ever encountered in a computer game.
At one end of the spectrum, you have the neglected gem, "Torment". It had a mix of celebrity actors and relative unknowns, but everybody did a damn fine job. At the other end, you have "Prince of Qin". All of the text in the game has been translated from Chinese, but poorly. Somewhere along the line, somebody either didn't feel up to the Herculean task of fixing it or else they just didn't care.
Bad writing is a problem, of course, but it's not insurmountable. That’s when good actors shine the brightest—when they take bad (or even just mediocre) copy and turn it into something greater than the sum of its written parts. Did the "Prince of Qin" developers take their reams and reams of "All your base are belong to us"-caliber game copy and have the good sense to hand it over to actual voice actors? Oh, no. Instead, it sounds for all the world as if they just pulled in Bill from accounting and Sally from the QA testers pool and maybe even Henry the night janitor, handed them a script, and told them to have at it. A few of them get the bright idea to recite their lines with a half-assed British accent—y'know, because that's how folks would have sounded in China over 2,000 years ago. Not everybody, though. Just a random sampling.
Voice acting in video games isn't just window dressing anymore. Anybody who played "Warcraft II" for any amount of time has their favorite repeated-click soundbytes, and anyone I've asked about "Baldur's Gate" remembers Minsk's sayings fondly—and often verbatim. Even the bits of voice acting in "Prince of Persia," although scarce, added to its aesthetic appeal. Heck, even the Elmer Fudd-sounding "Wise from you gwave!" intro in "Altered Beast" on the Sega Genesis all those years ago puts "Prince of Qin" to shame. Voice acting aside, though, it’s a fair enough "Diablo" clone. And for $4.50 used, I can hardly knock the price.
Happily, "Hero" more than redeemed my overall Qin-era experience this morning. This is definitely a film I'll want to see in the theater more than once, and I'm not one to want a second helping of just any old movie on the big screen; usually I can wait for DVD easily enough.
You might not believe it, given my "Prince of Qin" rant here and the Paul Hamm rant below, but I've been in a pretty mellow mood lately. I got my new glasses, I have a TAship this upcoming school year, the voiceover work is going well, and life is good. To read this and the entry below, you'd think I've been stomping around, grumbling about everything in my path.
Posted by patrick at 08:11 PM | Comments (1)
Can that Hamm!
Without a TV of my own, I've seen only a tiny sliver of the 2004 Olympics. Still, it would seem that the Paul Hamm medal controversy is a big enough deal to have even penetrated the relative media blackout that has passed for my day-to-day life for the last year.
The latest development involves the International Gymnastics Federation suggesting that Hamm hand over his gold medal to Yang Tae-young, the South Korean gymnast who rightfully deserves it—and who would have won it, had it not been for a scoring error on the part of the judges. They're invoking the spirit of fair play and sportsmanship, but the U.S. Olympic Committee is basically of the opinion that they can stick fair play and sportsmanship where even a gymnast would be hard-pressed to place them.
Here’s my two cents' worth on the subject. Although it's unfortunate that a scoring error resulted in Hamm receiving an undeserved gold medal, and although that error was in no way Hamm's fault, he should relinquish the medal—in fact, he should have done it long before now, back when it still could have appeared that his decision was being made for the right reasons. Even if he hands it over now, I think folks will have a tough time believing he did it to be magnanimous; most will probably just assume he capitulated under the pressure and the attention.
Let’s say Hamm and Tae-young are both in the check-out aisle at the supermarket, one right behind the other. Somehow, the clerk makes a mistake and one of Tae-young's items ends up bagged with Hamm's groceries. Is it right that Tae-young has paid for the item, but not received it? Is it right that Hamm gets that item free of charge? Neither Tae-young nor Hamm are to blame for the grocery snafu, sure, but that doesn’t change the fact that Hamm unfairly prospered off of Tae-young's misfortune.
What's more, an Olympic medal isn't a mere commodity, like an extra box of Cheese Nips or one more carton of Tropicana. You can say it's purchased by the athlete's hard work, but there's still that irreplaceable element of having deserved it. Why would Hamm—whose standing in the competition jumped from twelfth place to first place, thanks to the scoring error—want to hang onto a medal that he received by mistake, and that he neither earned nor deserves? He's said he'll relinquish it if the International Gymnastics Federation orders him to do so, which makes him sound even more unreasonable and petulant: "Yeah, I'll do the right thing, but only if I feel that my hand is forced." Good job, Hamm—if you hand over the medal, at least you've made it very clear that you're not doing it because it's the right thing to do.
Gymnasts aren't a tall bunch to begin with, and Paul Hamm's becoming a smaller man with each passing day. Better an honest twelfth place than an undeserved gold medal, I say.
Posted by patrick at 06:04 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2004
Texhnolyze, now with lenticular Onishi goodness...
I picked up the third Texhnolyze DVD at Suncoast today—and made an important discovery about anime at Suncoast in the process. Apparently, all of their anime is on sale for the first two weeks they offer it, regardless of the sticker price! Thus, I shelled out $19.99 for what was marked as a $29.99 title. That ten dollars I saved made me feel a little less guilty about picking up the third issue of the Hellsing manga. Armed with this new knowledge, I asked if Ikki Tousen was still on sale, but alas, it had reverted to its normal $29.99 price. Still with new Texhnolyze, R.O.D. the TV, and Ikki Tousen DVDs and the first Paranoia Agent DVD coming out in the next few months, Suncoast's anime policy is very good information to have!
Of course, once it's back up to normal price, you might as well buy it via my Amazon links, hint hint…
In buying the Texhnolyze DVD today, I finally realized my narcissistic ambition of picking up some anime swag with one of my VO characters on it. Onishi is on the cover of this volume, which rocks in and of itself, but I also snagged one of the copies that comes with the lenticular panel of the cover art. Am I tickled by this? Oh, don’t you know it…
Posted by patrick at 07:25 PM | Comments (3)
August 22, 2004
Don't underestimate the significance of a good title...
I was reading Philip K. Dick's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch last night, and it occurred to me how a well-chosen title for a short story or novel can really resonate with a reader. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman," for instance, or "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" (both by Harlan Ellison). Or Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?--better known as the Harrison Ford film "Blade Runner". Especially arresting is Philip Jose Farmer's To Your Scattered Bodies Go. If you go with the usual sentence construction and shift that "go" from the end of the title to the beginning--Go to Your Scattered Bodies--it's still a command, but the inherent poetry is gone. A title doesn't have to be complicated or employ exotic words to stay with you, though, as Richard Matheson demonstrated with his iconic vampire novella, "I Am Legend".
Do book/story titles resonate with you? If so, which in particular?
Posted by patrick at 10:39 PM | Comments (1)
Women's Olympic beach volleyball--a study in spectatorial inadequacy...
I was watching women's Olympic beach volleyball while I did my half-hour on the treadmill at the gym this afternoon, and it made for an interesting distraction. When I'm on the exercise bike, I can read whatever book I’ve brought along (today, "The Mind Parasites") to keep my mind off the inherent unpleasantness of the task at hand, but when I'm on the treadmill, I'm at the mercy of whatever's playing on the TVs—"Pimp My Ride" or some MTV non-music-video inanity, more often than not.
As interesting as the beach volleyball was, it's really humbling to be huffing and puffing away on that treadmill, realizing that you're possessed of a higher percentage of body fat than all four of the competitors on the court combined. They're really ripped, so you don't exactly have to be Orson Welles for that statement to be true, but still.
Posted by patrick at 04:31 PM | Comments (1)
August 21, 2004
"It was (going to be) a very good year..."
I got some very good news a few days ago--namely, that I'll be TAing a class all three quarters this upcoming school year. It will be a nice experiential addition to my high school teaching experience, the steady paycheck will mean that I'm eating mac and cheese all the time because I can't cook (and not because I'm too poor to diversify my menu), and let's not forget the tuition waiver.
This news came at a particularly opportune time, as I've been fretting over the next quarter's worth of tuition--due in no later than the 15th of next month. I'd been girding my financial loins to cough up an amount that represented a goodly chunk of my current savings. Instead, I now have the wiggle room to spend about a third of that amount into preventative repairs on my Saturn. I hate tossing down X number of dollars to maintain a car the Blue Book value of which is roughly equal to X, but it sure beats buying something else.
Apropos of nothing, I was scrolling through the new TA handbook (a PDF file) yesterday when I happened to notice a familiar name on the credits page. It seems the handbook had been edited and overseen by Melinda Messineo, an acquaintance of mine from back in my undergrad Chamber Singers days who's now teaching sociology at Ball State University (to my knowledge).
It's a small world after all; it's a small, small world. Hey, that's catchy...
Posted by patrick at 10:43 PM | Comments (0)
In the land of the blind, Patrick Seitz is king
I'm getting mighty tired of living sans glasses, as I have for the last week now. I'm hoping to get my replacement specs on Monday, but there's no guarantee. The folks at the optometrist's realize I don't have a back-up pair to wear in the meantime, but that doesn't mean a thing to the folks on the UCR side of things who have to approve the paperwork, read the entrails, roll the I Ching, etc. before I can return to the land of the sighted.
I keep clipping things as I walk, which would be really embarrassing if it weren't so much like what happens when I can see just fine, too.
I'm a bit ashamed of myself. A week into this, and only now did it occur to me that this would be a capital time to wear a pirate-style eye-patch. I mean, hey...as long as I can't see anyway, I can do any damn thing with my eyes that i want. Walk around with a welder's maks? Or swim goggles? I could tie a rag around my eyes and pretend to manipulate reality, a la Neo in the last "Matrix" film.
Maybe I'll go looking for an eye-patch tomorrow, if I wake up early enough to run that errand before hanging out with my friend Karen, who's driving into town especially to see...not me. But, as she was going to be around anyway, we decided to hang out before she hooks up with her friend who prompted her drive in the first place.
My eyes are too taxed to look over this for typos. We'll just pretend there aren't any. Yeah, that's the ticket...
Posted by patrick at 02:53 AM | Comments (7)
August 16, 2004
This has been my first
This has been my first summer Olympics without access to TV, and it’s amazing how easy it is to forget the Games are even taking place. Aside from a few moments of women’s swimming semifinals, I haven’t seen any of it this time around.
My taste in Olympic events is pretty specific, and never really changes too much from time to time. My favorites are the swimming events, the women’s gymnastics, and the diving. The track-and-field events don’t hold my interest. The Greco-Roman wrestling can be pretty interesting, but I’d never go looking for it. If I stumbled across it while channel-surfing, okay. If not, no dice.
I remember Matt Ghaffari from the 1996 Olympics. He was the best America had to offer, but he’d never been able to beat Russian wrestler Alexandre Karelin, who was so good that he was hardly even human.
Anyhow, it came down to the two of them for the gold and silver medal, and Karelin obliterated the guy, as usual. It was either a picture or the video clip of the medals presentation, and Ghaffari—a beefy, strong guy, and the second-best Greco-Roman wrestler in the world, so no 90-pound wimp—was just bawling. He’d been put in his place by a man whose strength was so peerless as to almost be allegorical, and he knew—he knew—there was no way he could defeat him. He was later quotes as saying, “I looked up and saw my flag. But I didn't hear my anthem.”
Karelin won the gold medal for Greco-Roman wrestling at three consecutive Olympic Games—1988, 1992, and 1996. Nobody defeated him in a match from 1987 through 2000, when American Rulon Gardner pulled an out-of-nowhere upset on him and earned the match’s only point. It was the first time Karelin had been scored on in a decade. It was four years too late for Ghaffari, though.
* * * * *
And while we’re on the topic of the Olympics, whose bright idea was it to leave the question of mascot design to a bunch of academics? Consider Phevos and Athena, the widely reviled twin mascots of the 2004 Athens Games. Yeah, they’re based on ancient Greek terra-cotta dolls. Sure, they’re named after Greek gods. And of course, their creators are touting them as being “full of vitality and creativity, perhaps mischievous and hence lovable." The fact that the world at large seems unable to appreciate these qualities unasserted doesn’t speak too highly of ol’ Phevos and Butthead. They are, to use official Olympic mascot jargon, damned goofy-looking. Damned goofy-looking, I say—and with more than a passing resemblance to Matt Groening’s Akbar and Jeff.
There’s been a lot of that sort of thing going on, though. Consider Izzy, the ever-mutating mascot of the 1996 Atlanta Games.
I’d like to propose a possible mascot for the New York Games, if they’re lucky enough to land them for 2012: Kirby, of Nintendo fame.
His popularity has already been proven, having appeared in some 20 games. Kirby’s a fat little guy, and with obesity rates skyrocketing in America with no end in sight, that makes him a very timely choice. Besides, his signature attack is to suck up his enemies and steal their powers. What’s more American than that, folks?
I planned on discussing the Olympics in greater detail, but this whole lack of glasses is a real pain—literally. I’ll get them in about a week, at best. In the meantime, I’m really going to have to try to avoid looking at the monitor for any length of time when I can possibly avoid it.
Posted by patrick at 11:48 PM | Comments (2)
My eyes...the goggles do nothing!
I just got back into Riverside about half an hour ago, returned from a five-day trip I took up to Northern California to do a little rafting and see my relatives.
Suffice it to say that the American River, for all its patriotic nomenclature, is a harsh mistress. It takes its toll on you. Nobody travels its waters without paying the price--physical, emotional, spiritual, et cetera. For me, the price was my glasses, which now reside somewhere in Davy Jones's locker.
I always wear my glasses, so the last two days have been an interesting, headachy experience. The drive back was tough, but at least it was straightforward; after a bit of surface-street action and NorCal freeways, all I had to do was barrel down the I-5 for about 350 miles--looking like some sort of squinty pirate wannabe all the while, I'm sure.
I lucked out and managed to get an optometrist appointment for this afternoon, as somebody cancelled at the last minute. If it hadn't been for that sudden opening, I would have had to wait another week or nine days. I was ready to throw in the towel and zip on down to LensCrafters.
I'll put up more about my trip later. Y'know...when I can actually see.
Posted by patrick at 02:24 PM | Comments (1)
August 06, 2004
A cinema vignette...
As I was coming out of CinemaStar when "Collateral" let out about half an hour ago, I heard a woman in the parking lot ranting to her boyfriend as they walked back to their car:
"They stole twelve dollars from me!" she fumed.
"You didn’t happen to come out of 'The Village' just now, did you?" I asked.
"Yeah. How’d you know?"
"When I heard you mention getting robbed for twelve bucks, I assumed."
Posted by patrick at 06:52 PM | Comments (3)
August 01, 2004
Too many damn wires!
One new surge protector multi-outlet, one new RCA audio-video cord, and much sweat later, I seem to have brought my TV, VCR, DVD player and PS2 to an uneasy peace. Nothing routes through anything, even though I seem to remember having the DVD player wired to the TV via the VCR originally. It doesn’t matter. They don’t all work simultaneously, but I’d never have need to use more than one device with the TV at any given time, anyway. And with the addition of the multi-outlet surge protector, I don’t have to unplug the VCR to juice up the DVD player (and vice-versa). Even more importantly, the DVD player’s power cord is no longer pulled taut like a tripwire across empty space a foot-and-a-half off the ground to reach the more remote outlet.
I’m sure my departed father, who majored in physics and worked as an engineer for Bourns for most of his adult life, is shaking his head in the afterlife right now.
Then again, my mom is confounded by all manner of electronics (computers, cell phones, TV remotes--you name it).
Technologically speaking, I guess that makes me the missing link.
Posted by patrick at 11:25 AM | Comments (0)