My Mind on Economy and Economy on My Mind

The economy is pretty bad right now, in fact it's the worst it has been in a very long time. What's up economy? What's your deal anyway?

My Economy Teacher

This is going to sound stupid, but my foremost understanding of the Economy is not from the Macro and Micro classes I took in school but from an old Super Nintendo game called Uncharted Waters 2: New Horizons. I used to play this addictive Koei game in my halcyon days as a human youth and I can straight up assure you that I learned more about how the global economy works from this game than I did from school. I played the game as a young Turk named Ali Vezas living in the 16th century, me and Ali bought a beat up ship with our best friend Salim and proceeded to sail around the world and become gazillionaires.

We talk about the term "globalization" as if it's something new, but the economy has been globalized since we invented ocean-faring vessels. We still to this day ship goods by boat, nothing has changed since the 16th century. The boats got bigger and faster, but aside from that nothing is different from the times when me and Ali conquered the world together.

Koei's simulation of the global economy of the era was quite interesting. To keep you a bit more on your toes they wrote an algorithm into the game which fluctuated the price index at all port cities, but not at random, it fluctuated by how much money was coming in and out of the port. So me and Ali came up with this great idea, what we did was:

1. We Bought all the goods at one port city (call it Port A) in order to put money into that port and strengthen its economy. Now, since more money was in the port (currency used in this era was silver ingots), naturally money was worth less at this port (experts call this "inflation").

2. So then we sold all that shit we bought in Port A into another port city (let's call it Port B) and we didn't even really care if we made a profit on it. All we cared about was that this city now has spent money to buy the goods and that its currency is now more scarce then it previously was (i.e. their money is worth more).

3. Now we kept doing this over and over ad nauseum until Port A's currency was rock bottom and Port B's currency was through the roof. Then we just bought all the cheap goods from Port B (who's money was still worth something and sold their goods cheap) and sold them to Port A (who's money was as plentiful as water and would pay through the teeth for goods because you can't eat/drink/do-anything with a stupid thing like money) and we made a KILLING!

Three easy steps to motherfuckin' success! Me and Ali were buying Art from the port in Athens and selling it to the port in Istanbul, then bought carpets with the profit and sold them into Athens' now saturated market. We were swimming in dough, it was really sweet!

So there we were bustin' around Istanbul flashing our coins around town and bragging about how we discovered Lake Titicaca, when the great Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, Mr. Suleiman himself, hears about how chill and rich we are and calls us up to this palace. He's all like:



Sultan: "Yo bros! You're stinking rich! That's sick son!

Us: "Ya guy! We're buying all this faggy Art shit from Greece and selling it to the hip cats here!

Sultan: Sick!

Us: Ya!

Sultan: But yo, check it. Why even buy that Art fag shit for? Why not just give Athens money for free!?

Us: What?

Sultan: Yo, they'll have so much money in the port that it won't be worth anything at some point.

Us: ?????

Sultan: Dude! If you just dump money into the port it'll completely saturate their economy, get it?


Us: That's a brilliant idea guy! Let's just give them money for free! Sick! Dude, you're the smartest guy.


Sultan: Straight up. Here take 100 silver ingots and go dump them in there and other ports. For real gangstas!


Us: Thanks man!

Over 2000!?

Why didn't we think of that? Our goal is just to drive down their currency, so why even bother buying their dumb art garbage for? Let's just throw money at them for free until their price index collapses and they start paying through the teeth for any commodity. Seriously, what are they gonna do with a bunch of money? You can't eat money or do anything with money. Plus, because we were giving these people money for free they loved us and even gave us tax free permits to trade with their port without even paying taxes to their local government.

At this point we were selling Athens (or you could do it with any two ports in the game really, Athens and Instanbul were just near where they start Ali Vezas) Carpets from Instanbul at insanely high mercantilistic prices. They had more money than water...the trouble is...it wasn't worth diddley squat.

Then we thought...why not do this all over the globe at every fucking port and just leave a few ports unsaturated to buy cheap goods from? Every port (except a select random few who's currency was kept strong so we could buy cheap goods) was saturated with currency overkill and would pay us insane sums of money for our cheap goods. Needless to say, me and Ali were literally gazillionaires.

I paid Luka 10 pennies per year

Then Ali's like, "yo, guy...what do we do with all this fucking money 'scro?". Good question, what do we do with a ridiculous amount of money like this? We can buy whatever cheap shit we need whenever we want because commodities are cheap. We can pay anybody we want to work for us for table scraps because many ports are so saturated that they'll work for anything (we were paying our crew in bread and water and our captains 10 gold pieces per year). I concluded that we should put all this money into a bank in one of the ports and let it grow interest so we can keep watching the numbers get higher and higher. Do you know how much interest 10% of a gazillion is?

Basically, we globally crashed the entire economy then took all the money back and let it sit in a bank just to watch it grow for no other reason than some sick numeric fetish to see how big the number could get.

To buy a bag of peanuts...

How 'Bout in Real Life?

Could something as deranged as that be occurring in real life? Currency is a human made invention and runs on algorithms just as the one used by Koei to simulate a world economy. Are real world humans trying desperately to find little loopholes in the system that will make them rich?

A great historic example (this one had no evil motive behind though) of a market being ruined simply by adding money to it is the case of King Mansa Musa of Mali. Old Mansy took a trip down to Mecca to get down with the Islam in 1324 and brought a few too many gifts from Mali with him,

Ingots

"Mansa Musa organized a massive pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. Included in his large entourage were hundreds of servants, thousands of soldiers, and eighty camels bearing twenty four thousand pounds of gold. Most of which he gave away to strangers in Mecca and Medina. In Cairo he gave every officer of the court a large amount of gold, causing acute inflation in the Cairo market. It took twelve years before the gold market recovered."

-http://www.kurahulanda.com/west-african-kingdoms/west-african


The currency system was designed to help people coexist, to improve the barter system and let people with different specialized jobs create something and then trade their extra stuff for other things from other folks with different specialized jobs. Has the currency system become nothing more than a giant mess of loopholes being exploited and then re-exploited for the sole reason of watching numbers get bigger in a bank account? Is most of the money that exists in the system (the life blood of the economy) sitting in some bank somewhere?

You ever looked at how the Commodity Exchange works? Basically,

1. A farmer makes a smooth batch of corn
2. Around 12 to 1000 people buy and sell this corn back-and-forth from their computer terminals
3. Finally the guy who really wants the corn to use it to make something purchases it and receives the corn.

The second step of the process is where guys like me and Ali pull all sorts of shtick and exploit so many silly loopholes in the system. It's completely unnecessary in the process but it gives people the chance to make a profit or at least saturate or de-saturate a market.

What about the stock markets? Well since they got them all over and in different time zones the traders can play the games 3 times in one day,


1. They open the NYSE in the morning and millions of traders buy low and sell high.
2. Then they open the LSE and the same money from the same traders is used over again for another round.
3. Next they open the Tokyo Stock Exchange and they play with the same money again.
4. When the millions of traders had enough they put that money back in its coffin...the limitless Swiss Bank Accounts in everyone's favorite "neutral" country...where it rests until the next day of trading.

It's not just one person exploiting the loopholes in the current system that causes all the problems in the world. There are millions of Ali Vezas's all over the globe in every city exploiting loopholes and together they literally ruin the world. I'd say 99.5% of people in the world today are Luka Ullmans, having to work all year for pennies just to buy overpriced goods they farmed/created/manufactured themselves to begin with.

Luka sailed through Africa and fought Moquele Mubembe with his bare hands to make 10 bones.

Is Moquele the myth? Or is "Economy" the REAL MYTH? Am I Right?

The Science behind Why Bad Movies are Good

Bad movies have a niche following, sometimes those followings are so large that a bad movie will make more money, be remembered longer, and have its lines used more often than good movies. I was wondering if there was some sort of tangible or even scientific reason as to why someone would enjoy watching horrible movies. The following are the three scientific factors which I believe are at play.

1. Pretentious Factor

Pretentious is defined by the internet as "attempting to impress by affecting greater importance, talent, culture, etc., than is actually possessed."

I think a lot of people are turned off by "good" movies because the industry takes itself a little too serious. Hollywood actors are basically the American equivalent of the British Royal Family, these actors are worshipped and given millions of dollars for simply looking well. It's hard for some to sit and watch Tom Cruise or one of those types and not feel angry or offended by his face or voice because we know how rich and terrible this person is behind the scenes of the film.

Phantom Menace (Q-P=E):  70 - 70 = 0

Directors can also display a level of pretentiousness that can make an audience not want anything to do with their movies.

A good example of what I am trying to say is that band Metallica. They make good music but if you ever go behind the scenes and know that these guys sued every small company who had Metallica in their name (even those well before the band existed) and bullied them with expensive lawyers just for a chance to make a few extra bucks, you might not like their music as much anymore. When you find out they sued Napster when it first came out even though they have millions of dollars in their pockets, again, you might be a little turned off by them and in turn turned off to their music.

Dolemite (Q - P = E):  70 - 0 = 70

The level of pretentiousness displayed by the actors and directors of the film have a negative impact on the final product. If the movie is good (say an 85/100 on the quality scale) but the level of pretentiousness displayed by the artists behind it is extreme (say 90/100 on the P scale) the enjoyableness of this film becomes -5.

Algorithm:  (Quality of Film) - (Level of Artists Pretentiousness) = Enjoyability Level

Take an awful film which the quality is about 30/100 yet say the pretentiousness of the actors and director involved is only 15/100, (30 - 15 = 15), the Enjoyabiliy Level of this film is 15. The lower quality movie may have a higher Enjoyability Level than a high quality film.

I think that's a big reason why many people prefer bad movies to good ones.

The Room (Q - P = E):  0 - 100 = -100

-EXCEPTION-

An exception to this is a film called The Room starring Tommy Wiseau. The Room is a terrible film made by a pretentious dude who wrote a story about how this great guy (played by himself) has an evil girlfriend who cheats on him but cries for him at the end when he kills himself. He threw in a few extended love scenes where he gets to feel up the lead actress and some filler and then released it.



On the EL algorithm (Q - P = E), The Room is (0 - 100 = -100). Statiscally, it is the least enjoyable film ever created which is a historical distinction in itself. The Room also suffers from disjointed sequencing and delivery as an added bonus.


2. Disjointed Sequencing and Delivery

Our brains have been wired up to sequence audio and language in a rhythmic and predictable fashion. Repetitive beats and sequences of audio rhythms are natural to the brain. Rhythmic sequence is present at every moment of your brain's life, it's intertwined with your memory and motor skills. An example from Daniel Levitin's piece "The World in Six Songs" may help explain this,

"Most North American children learn the alphabet by learning the letters set to the melody of 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' (the same melody as the beginning of 'Ba Ba Black Sheep'). The song has phrase boundaries because of its rhythmic structure, gaps between the letters g and h, k and l, p and q, s and t, and v and w, forming natural 'chunks':


abcd efg hijk lmnop qrs tuv wxyz


...most children don't memorize this all at one sitting, but rather they work their way up, memorizing these small units."

- Levitin, D. "The World in Six Songs" (p. 171)


Everything we do from talking, writing, dancing, and working has a rhythmic beat behind it. We can use this to predict sequence changes as well, which we do all the time. When a unit in a sequence is off we notice it and try to understand it.

An example everyone might know of is Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, in this film the beginning, middle, and end sequences are radomly inserted into the structure and it makes the film somewhat hard to follow. Is the disjointed sequencing of the film just a cute gimmick or something more? Did our brains take notice and try harder to piece the sequence together? Yes it did, it made you pay more attention and it gives the film originality. His "efg" was before his "abc" and his "lmnop" was after his "wxyz" to refer it to the previous example.

Disjointed rythms in music give the artist originality points as well. The Minutemen, Primus, Nomeansno, Fugazi, and others employ hard to follow disjointed rhythms in many of their songs which throw the brain off and make you focus a little harder.

As mentioned above, The Room has horribly disjointed sequencing and delivery to a point where you can't wait to hear Wiseau zombie-mumble out his next line because you have no idea what this fucking guy is going to say. Another example of this is the great film Samurai Cop where the delivery of every actor involved in the film is broken and disjointed to the point of insanity as evidenced in this following clip...

There is nothing normal or predictable about any of the lines delivered in that above clip. Even the laughs are so out of place and disjointed that they compliment the reaction shots perfectly and it ultimately leads up to the Samurai Cop's speech which is the coup de grace that puts all movies to shame. I love this effin' movie so bad.


3. Party Atmosphere Quotient

Cute Audience

At a football game you can be loud, drunk, and obnoxious and that's good. At a movie theatre you are removed if you speak which is good for some but kinda sucky for others. When people assemble to watch bad movies (old drive in movies, John Waters movies, Rocky Horror Picture Show..and surprisingly the modern day "The Room" has reached this level) the assembly of people is engaged and participates in the overall enjoyability level of the film. At screenings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" they dress as characters and sing along and drink and have fun, at "The Room" they drink and throw spoons and yell out the lines before the characters say them and it adds a level of audience participation to the screening. Honestly, do we go to football or movies to sit quietly and watch? Why not just watch in the comfort of your own home then? We go to these things to be around other humans and socialize and be together, it's counter intuitive to remain silent in my opinion.

I remember being at a screening of Shaolin Soccer (which has a very high EL) and because it was foreign, gimmicky, and people just had to read the subtitles and not hear the actors, everyone in the theatre was loud, fun, crazy, and having a good time. This was the first time I saw film goers act in this manner and I thought there was something downright correct about it. We don't mind if people talk during "bad" movies, in fact it is encouraged.

Joel Hodgson made a career out of talking during bad films when he created the cult-classic Mystery Science Theatre 3000...

To sum up...I guess it's possible that it's more fun to sit down and laugh with others at disjointed silliness than it is to sit down in a crowded theatre and look silently at pretentious moving pictures for 2 hours.

A Treatise on the Ways to Balance Yourself while You are Not in the Laying Down Position to Rest or Sleep

Balance

Our bodies evolved wrong and our spinal columns are not up to par by any means. That corkscrew of bone, marrow, and sinew has to support all your weight for crying out loud. I like to lie on my back and read or sleep but I have trouble sleeping and I only usually sleep for only 5 hours per cycle. For (24 - 5 = 19) about 19 hours per day you have to cope with your human spine and there are several ways you can balance your frame while you are up and about. The following are the methods of which you can balance yourself while you are not in the resting position which will be noted on a scale of 0 to 100.




Sitting

Cracking your neck ganglion is important

I lot of people speak highly of sitting and a lot of folks work at jobs where they sit all day. Personally, I am not that big on sitting. I have pains in my lower back when I sit for too long, I think it's from doing moving for a number of summers and pulling something of some sort in the lower back region, like a muscle or a wire or a connecting joint in there. When I sit, it's usually to chill, to eat, to drink, or to use the internet and I take breaks from sitting from time to time. If you don't take breaks your legs will atrophe and fall asleep. If your leg(s) succumb to paralysis you should swing your neck from side to side like Roberto Clemente, because all your nerves and ganglions connect in your neck and when you wiggle them around it restores feeling to your paralytic parts.

Sitting is fun sometimes

You must take into account that there are some activities you can do only when you sit. For instance to use a laptop computer you must have a "lap" and thusly you must be in the sitting position. Similarly, to get a lap dance you must also have a "lap" and thusly you must be in the sitting position (and you must have at least 10 dollars).

In most countries (excluding Japan) they use sitting as the standard balance position while taking a number 2 (or a 1 and a 2 if you are female) which is convenient because most toilets were designed to accommodate people who are in the sitting position. Be careful when sitting on public toilets because germs will get into any cuts you have on your butt...other people's poop is the worst thing to get inside your body and you have to avoid this at all times.

 Overall Score: 71 / 100

Kneeling

Try to avoid this...

Kneeling is the poorest option you can use in almost every plausible circumstance. Knees are the bane of the human body, they are just cartilage and cannot sustain any strenuous tasks or damage. I was standing on a chair once and I fell off and my left knee landed on the leg of another chair and it really hurt, and then the very next day I fell off a rolled up 14 foot carpet that I was balancing like a tightrope-walker on and landed on the same knee, and it hurt. Two months later I was running for the city bus and I slipped on some ice and the impact was mainly absorbed by the same left knee in question. Now, when I was younger I thought that I could strengthen the cartilage by repeatedly punching my knees and I thought it worked...but it didn't. You cannot make the cartilage tougher, all you can do is take all precautions to avoid strenuous pressure or direct impact to your knees.
 

Your knees are mainly for running

 A lot of people like to stump up stairs on their knees to show their devotion to their respective deity. This practice is a danger to you, and it is a danger to your knees. Your knees are just a joint that makes your legs bend so you can run and walk...they are not ever meant to be used in balancing your frame while you are not in the restive position. Expert runmen and runwomen never use their knees for anything other than the running, walking, or jogging process.

Pew Kneelers help you kneel.

Kneeling is used often (not by choice) while doing labor where you need to be at ground level but still need the use of your hands for the task you are attempting. For example, if you are changing floor tiles, it is likely that you would have to kneel and put all your stupid weight on your knees in order to accurately place the tile in the right location on the floor. Other "jobs" may also require kneeling.

Kneeling gets +5 bonus points because it gives some people employment. Manufacturers, repairers, and re-upholsterers of church pew kneelers benefit from kneeling.

Overall Score: 12 / 100

Squatting

Squatting is highly underrated. Like stated above, to use your hands at ground-level you might have to get down on your knees. With squatting you can reach ground level, retain the use of your hands, yet not damage your knees....which is a healthy alternative. 

Japanese toilets

To squat you must have strong haunches and ankles. Some people can squat with their feet completely on the ground while others squat on their toes and their heels stick up in the back...either way is okay.

In the Sitting section I mentioned that Japan does not have toilets that are convenient for sitting on, in its stead they have toilets designed for the squatting position. If you are in Japan you must be able to squat or you will have immense difficulty evacuating your bowels. The street toughs and common thugs in Japan also squat (even when not taking dumps). They squat to look tough so watch out if you see anyone squat in Japan because they are either going to evacuate a meat loaf or try and rob your traveler's cheques.

The only job I can think of which asks you to squat for extended periods of time is a baseball catcher. Catchers, such as Ron Karkovice pictured to the left, may be asked to squat for upwards of 5 to 30 minutes per half inning of play (9 or more innings * ~15 min. = ~135 minutes per baseball game).

To build ankle/haunches/calf muscles you should squat with weights or give piggy back rides to friendly people in your neighborhood.

Overall Score: 31 / 100

Standing Up

The human spine whilst in the upright position

I'm sure everyone is familiar with standing up because you do it often. People who work all day while standing in the same position (i.e. assembly line, etc.) should put a rubber mat under where they work to cushion the impact of the small movements your lower body makes throughout the day, you'd be surprised how much stress standing in the same spot puts on your bones and spine...and only employers who are cheap fucking assholes will not buy those fucking rubber mats. 

You should take time as often as possible to stretch your joints throughout the day and to crack and throw your neck around from side-to-side like Clemente or even press your palm or knuckle into the side of your neck (like Bruce Lee or Piccolo off of Dragon Balls does) until you hear that satisfying cracking sound to ensure optimum flexibility and elasticity of your neck's ganglion.

Standing is boring.

Overall Score: 33 / 100

Standing While on a Non-Flat Surface with an Inclined Angle

Oblique angles are pretty good.

This is hard. You will encounter this often if you are a mountain climber, a roofer, or someone who climbs up roofs at night to look at the world from different oblique angles. Looking at things you see at ground level all day from an alternate oblique angle is a great and fulfilling human activity but you must always exercise caution and safety while standing on angled surfaces (especially at great heights).

To stand on non-flat surfaces properly you must proportion the gravity and the angle with your body and be aware of what angle your body is on and mentally re-proportion yourself while you go up or down the incline or stand at different degrees on the angle. You must also remember to wear shoes which have soles with a good grip, or even take a staple gun and go inside your shoes and shoot staples through the inside of your shoe so the prongs of the staples stick out the soles of your shoes (but the latter is not necessarily unless the roof is really icy).

Overall Score: 57 / 100

Leaning on Something

Leaning on something is hands down the best method of balancing yourself while not laying down. What you are doing is standing but putting the gravity, and thusly the work, onto an inanimate object. The beauty of leaning on something is that you can lean on just about anything. For example, if you cannot find a seat on the bus you should lean on anything that is not a person.

"malacca" is Greek for "a nice guy."

A lot of old folks and flamboyant street hustlers these days carry an object around with them so they are never without something to lean on. These objects are "walkers" or "canes", which can differ in style from malacca to pimp varieties. They work as a third leg which offers you more resistance against the horrible force of gravity which pulls you towards the center of the earth as our planet shoots through space on an constant axis at nose bleed speed. You must fight gravity at all times while you are not in the standard resting position and tools such as these are valuable in this never ending battle between matter and anti-matter.

Leanin'

The best thing about leaning is that you look cool while you do it. Take the photo to our left of the Ramone brothers standing in their leathers up against a wall. They are battling the evil forces of gravity effortlessly thanks to the wall, yet they remain looking bad and tough in case a group of chicks walks by. 

The only downside to leaning is that some objects are dangerous to lean on. If you are on a hotel sky rise suite and are out on the balcony frying up some weenies you should inspect the guard rails prior to leaning on them.

Overall Score: 91 / 100

Conclusion:

Gravity keeps us stuck on our space rock as it hurdles through the universe, which is great, but it also keeps us down and we must counter act it by any means necessary. The best and most stylin' way (hands down) to deal with gravity is to lean on something. 

What should you lean on? Well, If you are an inner-city youth you should lean on J.L. Clark, if you are not strong then you should lean on Bill Withers. All in all, if you should find yourself feeling pain or spinal stress while up and about during your daily tasks just look to your left or right and I bet there will be an adequate object to lean on. 

....oh and remember to alternate your lead leanin' foot at times. Most people focus most of their weight on one foot while leanin'...but you must alternate your lead leanin' foot!

Obsessed with Artificial Crap

Whoa! Look! It's 13 tons of floating cosmetic products!

People love fake shit. Think about these ones:

1) When they made Orange Drink, the corn-syrup cheap replacement for orange juice, they made the orange color more visually pronounced and visually appealing through additives and food coloring chemicals. The color of real orange juice just was not orange enough for us.

2) Perfume is made from the sweat, tissue, and puke of sperm whales (ambergris). Females think it's a good idea to attract males by covering the natural odors of their bodies with the vomit of whales. Most males are attracted to women's smells not the smells of whale puke...it's actually kind of an offensive odor to be honest. Plus, nowadays they don't even use ambergris...they make synthetic ambergris which smells exactly like whale puke but it fortunately spares the whale. You womens are buying fake whale puke!

3) Auto-tune...why does every singer want to sacrafice originality to sound like they are talking in front of rotating fan? Every singer wants to sound like Soundwave from Transformers. This is silly.

4) Generic synthetic leather couches. Ikea, Brault & Martineaux, and all the other chain bigbox stores import these generic fake leather couches from China and everyone buys them. Leather has a smell, a feel, and a look to it that is indistinguishable. The synthetic leather does not feel, smell or even look like leather...it looks, feels and smells like vinyl. Everyone who has one of these in their home, always without fail, will brag to you that they have a leather couch.

"If a horse won't eat it, I don't want to play on it" - "Big" Dick Allen on artificial grass.

Corn syrup drinks, perfume/cologne, auto-tune, and synthetic fabrics are the norm now. This is what the consumer wants, it wants artificial products. This is what the audience for musicians want, it wants artificial music. People want artificial fabrics. The sellers are just giving the buyers what they ask for. Why do we want these things? Because that's what everyone else wants so it must be what I want.

We want to be saturated in reasonable fac similes of reality....but isn't reality refreshing sometimes? Aren't those strange things that don't seem to fit...a breath of fresh air? Take that show American Idol, where everyone is trying to achieve that level of reasonable fac simile and fit into the mold of what is "good" and what the audience wants. Why when William Hung came around did people take notice of him? Sure, many were laughing at him, but I think the main quality that propelled him to stardom was Hung's realness. The mold was diecast...yet he broke the mold.

Who set up what was right to be begin with? True musicians search for the the Perfect Beat...but is there even a Perfect Beat? If one person's trash is another person's treasure...then how can anything be perfect?

A term in linguistics called "Prescriptivism" applies to this situation, where some ruling power/authority prescribes a correct manner of speech and writing. How can there be a perfect or even right way of talking/writing in a world with a hundred thousand different dialects and languages? All us english speakers were prescribed what was "right" by the Victorian English Monarchy. It's right to pronounce a word in a certain way...but terribly wrong to pronounce it in another way. For all french speakers, the Académie Française (established in 1635) is the authority which governs proper pronunciations and, of course, decides whether a belt is male or female (a belt is a chick by the way).

Is what is "right" totally arbitrary? Yes, and that's why when a William Hung comes to town everyone takes notice. Because deep down inside we all crave for arbitrary rules to be broken. 

Take the greatest language, Mathematics, for instance now. Scientists have smashed apart the rules over and over again. When Einstein and others first started saying that the rules of math won't work in all cases and that there are certain special cases where the current set of rules would not apply...they called them crazy. Apparently, the story of Alice in Wonderland was written as a tongue-in-cheek bashing of the new math rules coming out in the mid 19th century. Lewis Carroll apparently was a mathematician and devout Victorian Rule-Lover who was enraged by the new concepts being proposed and made fun of them in his book...

By now, scholars had started routinely using seemingly nonsensical concepts such as imaginary numbers - the square root of a negative number - which don't represent physical quantities in the same way that whole numbers or fractions do. No Victorian embraced these new concepts wholeheartedly, and all struggled to find a philosophical framework that would accommodate them. But they gave mathematicians a freedom to explore new ideas, and some were prepared to go along with these strange concepts as long as they were manipulated using a consistent framework of operations. To [Carroll], though, the new mathematics was absurd...

-Melanie Bayley (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427391.600-alices-adventures-in-algebra-wonderland-solved.html?full=true)

Having said that, let's go back to music now. Knowing that the rules for what is "good" are arbitrary and that different things will please different folks, and that everyone basically wants crap. I think originality has a big place in music. You wouldn't have Rock and Roll if someone didn't get tired of playing what everyone else was playing, you wouldn't have rap if someone didn't get tired of playing what everyone else is playing (etc etc.).

One wikipedia entry I find very interesting is the one on Bavarian composer and music theorist N.Seneda. Seneda seemed to understand that the only way to break the current rules and create something new (and hopefully good...but not necessarily) was through, what he called, the "Theory of Obscurity." He believed that you had to disregard everything you heard and know from the music world around you to truly create something original (though not necessarily enjoyable to the listener mind you). Rumors say he would lock himself away in the wilderness, or some secret room, or Patmosian-esque cave for years to compose his great symphonies without being influenced from outside sources.

"...a man or woman moreso than this being can be called an artist, can only produce pure art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken into consideration." -N. Seneda

You gotta keep it real and original too....simply for the sake of breaking silly rules.

Um, I think you're "leather" chair looks kind of like plastic...no?

(spellcheck says I spelled "sacrafice" wrong...did you grammar red barons catch it?).

(Oh, and ponder this too...is that bum Tom Petty famous because he's on TV or is Tom Petty on TV because he's famous?)

6 Particularly Obscure Video Games that are Odd and Cool.

I am a big geek and sometimes I like to scour the internet for rare or obscure things. In the case of video games, there's some diamonds in the rough out there. Games that weren't released because they were so strange and odd and original that they were deemed bad. The following are a selection of truly odd (but good) games that not many folks (other than weird internet geeks know about).

1. Taito's Hit the Ice

 Roaming the wastelands lookin' fer beers eh!

Hit the Ice boggles my mind. It's basically what you'd get if you threw Ice Hockey, Dragon Quest, and Slapshot into a blender. You are a Canadian tough guy hockey player who is told by his coach to go out into the wastelands of Canada and win the VHL championship. As a Canadian, I'm interested in how a Japanese company would portray the great game of Hockey and also wonder how it would translate into an RPG genre of game. Basically, Japan perceived us Canadian types as neanderthal gorillas who wander around a giant wasteland searching for hamburgers, chicks, hockey games, and fistfights. I think they hit the nail right on the head with this one. 

All the elements of an RPG are there, you travel the worldmap getting into random encounters (except you don't fight gremlins and shit, instead you are attacked by rival hockey teams who you play 2-on-2 hockey matches against).The trick to winning these battles is to score one goal, then pick-a-fight and punch your opponent in the face until the clock runs out, then hot chicks come out and you celebrate gaining 5 EXP points.

Secret Tips:

1. Do not go into the arenas until you're good, the opposing teams are as fast as fuck and can literally uppercut you across the ice.

2. Eat Hamburgers all the time. Burgers give you vital nutrients and EXP points.

3. Watch out for rowdy arenas in opposing cities where rowdy rednecks will pelt you with beer bottles.

4. Cherry pick. There's no two-line passes or offsides so while your goalie holds the puck skate into the opposing zone then pass it across the entire ice surface and shoot.

5. Use "Dicky" Fontaine cause he has the best name in the game.

 

6. You can't swim so you have to buy an apple to give to an old man who has the life saving inner tube which you can use to cross rivers and streams at will!

2. Enix's Wonder Project 

Wonder Project was an SNES game that tells the story of a guy who makes a robot kid and introduces him into the world of humans. Blind to the ways of mankind this modern day Pinocchio must adjust to the world around him. You don't even control the character you just reward him and punish him depending on what he does. Each stage of the game has different situations and obstacles that require him to react in certain ways, and in order to get him to react in certain ways you must teach him through painstaking repetition and drills. 

For example for some levels of the game he needs to be nice and tame in order to help an old lady or something...while at other times in the game you have to beat the nice out of your son/robot in order to make him aggressive in order to compete in a fighting or athletics competition. It's a strange concept and you really have to play it to understand what I'm talking about. Some behaviors that you taught him at the start of the game have to be washed out of his mind to get him to interact with an object differently for a later stage in the game, it's really difficult to know what you have to do in a lot of cases. He has to be smart at times (make him read the encyclopedia all day), and other times really stupid (make him read comic books all day) in order to progress the game.

The ending is surprisingly terribly heartwrenchingly sad (unless you got 100% in each of the stages).

3. Tomcat's Photoboy 

Photoboy is the fucking best game, whoever made this is a great, reliable, and trustworthy member of the human race. You play as this deranged-faced golden haired youngster who's parents died in a horrible plane crash and now makes a living by taking pictures of fucked up shit for a local newspaper (whacky premise). The gameplay is really addictive and by the time you beat it...you'll look back and wonder what the heck just happened, but you'll know you are a better person for having played it. 

Secret tips: 

1. There's a really rare occurrence in each level that will net you a shitload of points, they are really brief and hard to capture but keep your eyes peeled for EXTRA insane nonsense going on around you (such as the Back to the Future Dolorean going back in time or the Terminator attacking some kid).

2. You can rapid fire at a lot of occurrences and catch them more than once, which is so cheap but once you master it the game is actually quite easy.

3. In the boss stage where your editor is popping up in random boxes and taunting you to take pictures of him you can cheat by clicking the button nonstop which slows the game down to a virtual halt.

Photoboy always reminds me of my childhood dog "Cubby". When I played the boss and didn't know about the slow down trick, I was going at such a pell-mell rate to keep up with the editor that I knocked a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch off the desk and all over the poor dog. He didn't consider either the milk or cereal as real food and didn't seem to care at all that he was covered in it.

4. Seta's Bio Force Ape

Bio Force Ape is quick little 3-level side scroller with slick animations and a great story. It's about this monkey who's friends get kidnapped so he drinks this solution that renders him into a testosterone-ridden, enhanced, super ape who suplexes the hell out of any anthropomorphic bee-humans or crocodile-legged sub-bosses that stand in his way. I love the way he tries to wrestle his way out of any elevator he accidentally goes in, and how he reverse face plants the dinosaur guys.

This game developed a myth around itself between collectors and NES folklorists who knew it existed and knew it was awesome. As questions of how cool it was grew and grew, someone fanned the flames tenfold by releasing ficticious photos of the game which painted it as being too awesome and too hilarious for it's own good.

Bio Force Ape is what Cheetamen 2 aspired to be but failed...the super-mammal side scroller of the ages.

5. Itoi's Mother ZERO

Shigesato Itoi's Mother series has developed a cult following over the years, the games are satirical of the RPG genre yet are very deep and very well written. It's as if the spoof is actually of higher quality than the spoofed you might say. The complete story of how this was ported and translated is available at lostlevels.org.

What makes the Mother series good? It's hard to say, the graphics suck, the gameplay of an RPG in general is repetitive and boring, it tries at times to be annoying on purpose, and the characters are bland. How is it good? It makes no sense...but it just is. 

Tim Rogers from Large Prime Numbers wrote the best review of Mother 2 that I've found and I think he may have figured out why this stupid nonsense is good. He states,

"Shigesato Itoi, producer of Mother 2 and two other games, says in a recent interview that videogames are, at their best, like prostitutes. A prostitute, he is quick to distinguish, is a lot like a lover, only that it requires no emotional input from its momentary significant other.

[Mother 2] is a prostitute that's missing one tooth somewhere you won't discover unless you look at her really hard, and she has this shitty grin on her face for some reason or another. She does nothing to provoke you to be cruel to her. And between the time she takes her stockings off and the time she puts them back on, she's going to tell you a story so creepy you will never be able to forget it. Your time with her will not be entirely comfortable, nor will it be entirely enjoyable." 

- Rogers, T. Literature of the Moment (a critique of Mother 2)

Video games are prostitutes? I think maybe what makes this series fascinating is that its creator is a very odd yet intelligent fellow himself and that his oddness and intelligence carries itself very well from his head into his work. I think Rogers may be right in his assessment of Mother 2, that quote might be the best way to describe the game.

Mother ZERO might fit that description even better, it is unique from start to finish. My favorite character in the game is a lonely soul who helps you out of your own mind as you finish up journeying through it. I don't know how he did it but with just two colors, a handful of pixels, and some words...Itoi managed to make me feel complete empathy for a character in a really silly video game. You can't escape your own mind unless you answer this guy's questions correctly and how are you supposed to know which answers are correct? I have to try and figure out what this guy wants? He wants me to ignore him? Okay, if it will let me get out of my own mind I will gladly ignore you I guess...jeez...what is this game up to? What kind of shtick is this Itoi brother pulling? The whole game is like this too. It's an interesting one that's for sure.

7. Square's Live A Live

Squaresoft used to make SNES games that were really good, it made one or two good Final Fantasy games (VI & VII) and that really great effin' game Chrono Trigger which has a well written story and beautiful music score. Right before they made Chrono Trigger they made a strange game called Live a Live which is sort of hard to describe. It tries to cover a lot of different genres, from western to sci-fi to kung fu...and it makes for an interesting thing. See this site for a more in depth summary.

The Western and Kung Fu chapters are particularly good, I think the key is that it doesn't take itself too seriously which has made recent Square games (anything past 1997) totally awful and dangerously emo.

If you make anything creative, whether it's a song, a story, a video game (etc.), you really have to make sure you don't take it too seriously. A video game is supposed to be fun above all other things. The games they make these days take themselves too serious.

Political Bunk 101

I took a political science class at school one time and received a grade of 17/100 in the class. I think some of the things I wrote about in the essay questions weren't that bad and I probably deserved at least a 30% grade if not a passing grade. The only question I remember getting right on the exam was the one that wasn't a flexible answer, the question was "what do the acronyms WMD and MAD stand for" (answer: Weapons of Mass Destruction and Mutually Assured Destruction). Every other question I got a smooth zero (0) on.

Words...on a line. Ok. There's a "Left" and a "Right" side...ok I see....I think?

The main point of contention that I had with the teacher was that Communism was not the opposite of Fascism. People seem to think in "political science" that these are polarized opposites but they are not. Here, let us count some of the ways that they are "different":

-In a communist society the government comes before the people while in a fascist society the government comes before the people.

-In a communist society the government owns all property and the citizens own nothing while in a fascist society the government owns everything and the people own nothing.
 
-In a communist society the head of state has total control while in a fascist society the head of state has total control.

Sarcasm aside, they are not very different at all. In fact to reduce it to it's simplest terms, I'd put it like this: "Communism" and "Fascism" are just fancy words to dress up your dictatorship to make it seem like it's some hip shit that's gonna be good for your and my future.

The two main historic examples that we can draw from are Stalin's USSR and Hitler's Nazi Germany...two of the worst dictatorships in history.

Nazi Germany is the one the stupidest things that ever happened in human history. Through extensive propaganda and nationalistic fervor, one of the most dangerous governments formed into existence. You really have to wonder how a whole society of people put up with this, not only put up with it mind you...but thought it was in their best wishes. Hitler convinced the people with very very little too. If you read his "work" Mein Kampf, right off the bat you can see how ridiculous it is...none of his proof for eugenics or any other bullshit he's trying to prove makes any sense at all.

Basically, Hitler read two books in his life I think (judging from the lameness of his shtick)...he read a book about the history and folklore of India and then he read the philosophy writings of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. I know he read about India because half of his shtick is ripped off from Indian culture, his dream of the "Aryan Race" is directly taken from theories of that era of how a group named the "Aryans" supposedly conquered Ancient Harappa India and ushered in a new period,

"The Aryans, or Vedic civilization were a new start in Indian culture. Harappa was more or less a dead end (at least as far as we know); the Aryans adopted almost nothing of Harappan culture. They built no cities, no states, no granaries, and used no writing. Instead they were a warlike people that organized themselves in individual tribal, kinship units, the jana. The jana was ruled over by a war-chief. These tribes spread quickly over northern India and the Deccan. In a process that we do not understand, the basic social unit of Aryan culture, the jana, slowly developed from an organization based on kinship to one based on geography. The jana became a janapada, or nation and the jana-rajya , or tribal kingdom, became the jana-rajyapada, or national kingdom. So powerfully ingrained into Indian culture is the jana-pada , that Indians still define themselves mainly by their territorial origins. All the major territories of modern India, with their separate cultures and separate languages, can be dated back to the early jana-padas of Vedic India."

-http://public.wsu.edu/~dee/ANCINDIA/ARYANS.HTM

So that fucking guy read about some lizard-brained mongoloid bullies who turned India into a wartorn dictatorship and thought it would be a good idea to try that in Europe. He stole the name "Aryan" and also the Four Sevens symbol (or swastika as the nazis called it) from Vedic India. Then he read Nietzsche's theory of Ubërmensche, completely missed the point, and used it to fuel a pseudo-scientific eugenic fervor...and that's all it took to win over the German people. Fuck. That's sad. You gotta keep your mind awake.

Stalin's USSR is one of the stupidest things that ever happened in human history. Through extensive propaganda and nationalistic fervor, one of the most dangerous governments formed into existence. You really have to wonder how a whole society of people put up with this, not only put up with it mind you...but thought it was in their best wishes. Stalin convinced the people of Russia with very little too. He simply took credit for a mass workers revolt (the real credit lies with the millions who took up arms against their oppressors), changed his name to "Iron" and then proclaimed himself leader. He only read one book, Karl Marx's "Das Kapital", totally missed the point of what Marx was trying to say, and used it to build his propaganda template. Oh, and he ordered the deaths of an estimated 20 million good folks too...which is not very polite.

Pretty similar I must say.

So what should be the "opposites" that we think about when it comes to politics? A good one proposed is Free Society vs. Totalitarian Society. A free society is where information is free to all people, and they are encouraged to think, invent, and create. While on the other end, the opposite of a free society would be a lizard brained mongoloid totalitarian dictatorship.

So if you are thinking that you should be "left wing" because it is the opposite of being "right wing" then please consider that communism and fascism are just words...and so are "left" and "right" for that matter.


After Thought (Jan. 19, 2012): I mentioned that Hitler likely learned of the "Aryan Race" from Indian History books, yet it appears he more likely found out about that silliness from the writings of the horrible woman, Madame Blavatsky, who wrote in her stupid books about this. She also used the 4-sevens symbol in her logo. The Nazi party in general were really into every kind of stupid and childish ways of thinking.

True, brother, true...

"You know, sometimes I get the feeling that, that, uh, accountants and lawyers are in cahoots with the devil, yee-ah, they're in cahoots with the devil to cover the Earth...cover the earth with this wretched swill. A swill of gutless, mediocre, middle of the road, sleep-inducin', homogenized pablum, background music for the slavery of daily drudgery. 


Sometimes I get that feeling...but I KNOW IT'S A LIE! I KNOW IT'S NOT TRUE! I know it's not true, and I'm talking to Arthur Conley now! Arthur Conley I'm talking to ya! I'm saying Arthur where are ya!? We need you to help us Arthur! We need ya to help us sing!!!!!!


Ya! We gotta-gotta-gotta-gotta-gotta-gotta-gotta HAVE MORE SOUL!"

-Mojo Nixon

I love this song. I keep it my phone and when I'm doing jobs that can be considered as slave-like, boring, even described as literal daily drudgery...I love it when this song pops into my ears. He sets it up so well...you're standing there doing some boring shit and Moj is all like "homogenized pablum! Sleep inducin'!" and I'm like "Ya! I know what you fucking mean brotha!!" and at that moment you are totally one hundred percent down with the notion that a person knows exactly how you feel. Then he switches gears and bursts right through the boring shittiness and tells you that "It's not TRUE!" that it's a fucking "LIE!" and you start feeling your shit brewing up in your soul and your soul is your friend...you gotta take care of your friends! Your soul is a cool guy/lady who digs sweet Soul Music...that good soul music! Your soul can really turn it out and turn it loose, and switch mic-holdin' hands with the greatest of human ease and with such seemless lateral movement! Then you heed his advice and look into to your heart and summon up the spirit of Arthur Conley and feel your heart and brain fill with adrenaline and then friday comes along and you punch out and you get a 12 pack of beers and call up all your fucking friends and go downtown and get down and feel alive and come home with two black eyes and you don't even remember or care how you got'em cause you know it was probably pretty fucking cool anyhow......YEAH! Life is a sweet fruit and life is an oyster! You know!?

......then monday comes.

Help me Moj! Help me Please!

Thinking about my brain...

I got to thinking about my brain today and I think that...

All visual memories are from how light hit your eyes at different shades/photon levels and then that light(s) are encoded by color and saved in very specific cells spread throughout varying areas of the brain (not one specific portion of the brain). These visual memories of varied light experiences then meld with your audio and tactile memories to form whole memories or "scenes" of your past.

I think there's a big part of your brain which is used to invision the world inside your own head, so you can draw up mental maps to recall locations or directions...but also to create situational circumstances to play out possible outcomes of everyday occurrences. This "invisioning" part is also where your imagination stems from...you can mix your memories with things that do not exist to invision strange and unreal locations/situations. The brain is constantly creating memories and plugging those memories into the "invisioning" portion in order to compare, contrast, and figure things out. You need to draw from all your experiences and memories to invision situations properly in order to know how to react when they become apparent in everyday life.

Unfortunately, the fact that your memories and imagination are so closely intertwined means that many people convulute and lie to themselves about the past, present and future.

I think a part of your brain releases endorphins as your personal painkiller and remembering stimulating scenes from your life is a very easy way to trigger these endorphins. For me the whole invisioning/re-creating/endorphin sector of the brain seems to be near the scalp at the back right portion of my head...I don't know if this is the same for everyone and I would think that since everyone is saving their incoming input data in the first available cell at the given time, then theoretically every brain could have been encoded differently over the rearing stages of life.

Probably not true...

I don't think there is any evidence for people who talk about being "Left" or "Right" brained...that is a really common theory but I don't think it's true...that noodle in yer skull is more complex then that. I'm not sure that neuroscientists who mapped out the brain using prods and "burned toast" sensations may have made conclusive findings.

Just some thoughts on the brain...you know. That's all. I don't know if I'm right or anything...just that's how mine feels I guess.