Fight the power... but...

I know we need to keep resisting this buffoon who is currently in the Oval Office and his ridiculous cabinet and his poorly considered policies, and certainly we should, but just in case that doesn't work out I have this humble request:

If it looks like we're all going to succumb to despair, all I ask is that someone give me a heads-up as early as possible so I can do it without just seeming like I'm jumping on the bandwagon.

Thank you.

Not that we needed further proof that I am old but...

Chris Rock has a good routine about how a father's only job is to keep his daughter "off the pole" (that is, to prevent her from becoming a stripper). Having unintentionally seen a few minutes of a new MTV reality show called BUCKWILD (yes, apparently in all caps like that), which appears to be a cross between Jackass (as they do stupid stunts) and Jersey Shore (in that it's a group of regulars getting drunk and hooking up)--two shows I only unintentionally saw bits of--but set somewhere in West Virginia, I have a new standard for parenting excellence: Having one's children not end up on a show like BUCKWILD.

At least strippers can claim to be doing it to put themselves through college.

For all the West Virginian parents whose young adult offspring are not on that show, please accept my sincere congratulations.

Hello Internet: The Simpsons do not live in Oregon

So Simpsons creator Matt Groening admitted in an interview that the inspiration for the name of the town where the fictional family came from the town of Springfield in his home state of Oregon. Given that he named the family on the show after his real life family, it's not surprising he didn't stretch that far for the moniker of the place where they live.

The name.

However, then the internet went apeshit claiming that Groening had revealed the Simpsons lived in Oregon, rather than merely that he came up with the name from the location in the Pacific Northwest.

In praise of stupidity

There's long been rhetoric in politics and society in general about the importance of education, but let's face facts: No matter how much we lead a horse to a book we cannot make it learn. No matter the opportunity presented some will be disinclined to integrate knowledge.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting we give up on our public education system. It's far from perfect but it's still important that we offer it so all children (and heck, adults) get a chance to develop their minds.

But for those who won't, let's acknowledge that they provide society with an important function as well.

Minute To Ogle It

A view from this evening's episode of the no-longer-having-anything-to-do-with-its-titled Minute To Win It:

(Women in workout attire bending over to try flipping a spoon into a glass.)

MTWI: Now for people who are too ashamed to get the "Girls Gone Wild" videos.

Ah, yes. Summer TV is here.

Getting nowhere fast

People who jaywalk by crossing the street at an intersection against the traffic light but stroll lazily as they do so prove a fascinating contradiction; their action suggests an urgency that cannot wait for the light to change, but their gait clearly indicates they're not in any real hurry to get somewhere.

They seem to forget there used to be contraption on the front of locomotives called cow catchers that were specifically intended to push the slow-moving bovines off the tracks without the train having to slow down. And that interaction was not particularly beneficial for the cows.

~

Having been critical of certain pedestrians, let's turn this around and point the spotlight on certain motorists.

The power of Stupid

If only the stupid people would stop screwing up things—politics, religion, entertainment, etc.—that likely would improve the world, but undoubtedly would make for a really boring internet.

~

We need to figure out a way to stop the stupid people from standing out so obviously. Ah, but they're so easy to mock and make the rest of us feel better about ourselves, and like anyone doing anything smart would catch on and "go viral" in other than a freak novelty once every decade or so.

Eh, but stupidity keeps the stupid occupied, so it's not all bad for the rest of us.

Dummy Sanchez

When I read about Rick Sanchez getting fired from CNN for some remarks the host made on a satellite radio show I must admit I was shocked.

I wasn't shocked that Sanchez would put his foot in his mouth so deeply, nor was I shocked that he'd be canned for saying what he did.

I was shocked that CNN was still on the air, much less that such a moron had still been employed on it.

~

I think that CNN fired him not so much for calling Jon Stewart a "bigot," but because he didn't know how to use "bigot" correctly. It's not a demand for political correctness; it's a demand for rudimentary grasp of vocabulary.

Fahrenheit Four-Fifty-Whaaa

It's too late for this latest incident, but for future reference: Perhaps the best way to stop bigoted idiots from burning books (or merely threatening to do so) is to ignore them, rather than turn their ploy into a national media event (which presumably is exactly what they want).

Oh, who am I kidding? With multiple 24-hour cable news networks and the entire blogosphere out there these days just waiting to be baited by such egregious attention grabs and those outlets having nothing but time to fill, they're just primed to keep being manipulated, which will only cause these stunts to continue.

Eventually only the morons will be heard.

("Eventually"?)

Yahoo!, I give up

Last month I offered this post about a blurb on the Yahoo! home page where they didn't seem to grasp what "ironic" meant.

Today there was this front-page story regarding the Miss Universe pageant:

Zooming in you can see the final link noting the response of Miss Philippines that may have cost her the crown as being "ironic":

That link takes you to their recurrent web series, Prime Time in No Time, a snarky recap of the previous night's TV. In that video we see her answer to the question (from judge Billy Baldwin--seriously) where she claims to never have made a "major, major" mistake in her life (and it's speculated that is where the judges turned on her)

Note that In the actual content there's no allusion to that potentially ruinous remark as being "ironic"; it's only in that blurb on the home page that the term is employed.

So, fine, Yahoo! front page blurb writer: You win. "Ironic" is now beyond how the Alanis Morissette song would have it be defined; it is whatever you need it to mean. "Blithely stupid"? "Hideously off-putting"? Sure, why not?

Your persistence has worn me down past the point of caring. Heck, let's call that ironic. My astonishment that the Miss Universe pageant still exists? Ironic! That I continue to visit your site? Let's call that tragically ironic.

Tabloid fun: Brad Pitt stolen

Judging from the cover story on the latest Us Weekly—not that I've read it but while we were in the drug store over the weekend I saw the cover while in the checkout counter—it's pretty easy to see who the editors believe is their audience. The cover features side-by-side photos of Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston and the blurb: "How She Stole Brad."

They're coming down squarely on the side of the poor-Jen faction, who, by inference empathize with her girl-next-door image. She'd nabbed the sometime "sexiest man alive" and then the cool sexpot with brains (Jolie) came along and plucked him away.

Basically, it's appealing to the average woman's subconscious fear that her husband will leave her for someone hotter.

Because, of course, Brad Pitt (and by inference, all men) is a rube with no ability to exert any control over himself, and a perfectly happy marriage can be broken up with modest feminine wiles. It's just that simple.

(Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them.)

There's no way that a man would choose to stay with a woman with whom he is happy if someone who is prettier comes along and decides she wants him. I mean, duh.

Celebrities: They're just like us, and by implication we're just like them. Except unworthy of being on the cover of magazines, what with our marriages not being talked about by Billy Bush. How dull.

Facebook teaser

Yesterday evening when we got home and I turned on the TV in the bedroom (as I often do while changing out of my work clothes) it was on KTLA, the local station we sometimes watch in the morning for the news. Closing out a commercial break (for the syndicated Two and a Half Men) was a teaser for their upcoming 10:00 news broadcast. The teaser only ran about 10 seconds and multiple stories were mentioned, so each only got a headline-esque treatment. The final story included in this manner showed a tight shot of a computer monitor with Facebook up, and the voiceover alluded to how Facebook was "fueling" divorce.

Even only barely paying attention, and without actually having heard the report (as that wouldn't air for over two hours at that point), I could see through that provocative and egregious specious assertion. A social networking website does not make people get divorced; at worst it provides evidence to make those divorce proceedings worse for the party who was really stupid. That, however, is not the "fuel" for the dissolution of a marriage; the fuel is the cheating (implied in the story) or other suggested infidelity—which is itself fueled by the distinct likelihood that the individuals in question probably should not have been married in the first place.

But obviously they thought the best way to draw viewers was to suggest that Facebook was directly responsible.

Time out for Real Time

I'd watched Bill Maher for years, going back to when Politically Incorrect was on Comedy Central. When I've had HBO I've usually caught episodes of his current show, Real Time. For me it's nowhere near the neighborhood of cleverness that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report display four nights a week, but generally it still holds my interest to watch to the end of the show.

Unlike Maher, I would not consider myself an atheist. I don't have ties to a specific religion, but I do think it's unlikely the universe got to have this order by random chance. I don't attend church because my spirituality is something unique to me, not a general viewpoint that I imagine a room full of people share. However, I absolutely support that churches should exist, as there are many people who clearly do get something out of attending them.

That said, I am a strong proponent of the separation of church and state. One's religious views should dictate only how one lives one's life, not be the basis for political policy. Period.

So that brings me to last week's episode of Real Time, when again Bill went off how deluded are people who believe in God, or even have any view other than atheism, and indicate that all war and violence was done in the name of religion. Okay, the man is entitled to his opinion. However, when guest Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, tried to politely disagree—particularly about religion being the cause or justification for war—Bill would have none of it. Booker astutely called Maher on this, comparing his fervor with it to having the "zeal of a Baptist preacher about your atheism."

Hands off--the government gets involved

Three days ago I posted this piece about how the "hands free" cell phone law really wasn't addressing the problem.

Then today on the Yahoo home page I see this story about how the administration was looking into the "epidemic" of distracted driving (that term is in a quote attributed to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood) with a two-day meeting on the subject.

Coincidence? Or could it be that someone in Washington was keeping tabs on what Doug's little site is mentioning?

No, it's coincidence. They're apparently considering banning cell phone usage because it's distracting, when if they'd read my post they'd know the problem is not distractions. (Distractions are the symptoms of the problem.)

Until they develop a cure for stupidity, the only way to prevent distracted driving would be to ban driving. However, as that's unlikely to meet with much support we'll have to go in another direction: federally funded good luck charms.

See. Didn't take me two days. Not that anyone at the meeting will read this, but if you happen to have a line to this LaHood guy, feel free to pass this along. I'm not about the glory; I'm merely happy to contribute to the solution.

Hands off (III)

Over a year ago a California law went into effect wherein it became a punishable offense to talk on a cell phone while driving without a so-called "hands-free" device. (I mentioned it in this post last year.)  In other words, one was not permitted to hold a cell phone in one's hand while driving; one had to employ a Bluetooth earpiece or something that allowed one (in theory) to keep both hands on the wheel.

At the beginning of this year the law was extended (or maybe it was a separate but related law) to prevent texting while driving, which closed an obvious loophole with the first law.

In the months since the "hands-free" law went into effect I have witnessed many, many motorists blithely ignoring the law, with one hand pressed up to the side of the head while they breezed along streets and freeways.  I'm not sure whether they were somehow oblivious to the new rules or merely were unconcerned with the penalty; perhaps they doubted that the police would bother to enforce it (having much bigger problems here in the metropolitan L.A. area, or that it would be difficult for police to see definitively while traveling at high speeds, or that if they spotted a cop they could just hang up quickly and deny everything. 

The only certainty (from my extraordinarily limited and anecdotal research):  The law wasn't having much of an effect in changing the behavior in the minds of those who most needed to be affected. 

Presumably the idea behind the law was that holding a phone was distracting, but clearly these people didn't agree about that.

And to be fair, I must concur.  It's not holding a phone that's distracting.

Many years ago, long before the law was even under consideration, I had an incident where I was driving along a somewhat poorly lit side street and my cell phone rang.  I answered it because I figured it would be a short conversation, just to answer a question for the friend who called.  And although the call didn't last very long, I did realize at one point that I drove through a stop sign at an intersection.  This wasn't until I'd gone through it, of course, and there was no problem caused by this, as there was no car coming from the perpendicular street, but nonetheless I'd flat-out missed it.  I could argue that the intersection should have been better lit, but I can only blame myself for not paying better attention.

The thing is:  Having one hand off the wheel made no difference.  I was distracted by the act of talking to someone who was not in the car with me.  I could have taken both hands off the wheel and steered with my knees and still noticed the stop sign if I wasn't splitting my focus between the tasks of driving and conversing on the phone.

And since then I have held a strict policy of not using the phone while the car's moving.  I was lucky that time, and there's nothing I have to say to anyone that's important enough to have to test that luck again.

Maybe there are others who are better at such multi-tasking, but I think it's more a matter that there are many who simply have been lucky that others were paying attention.  As a pedestrian I've had several incidents where a driver on a phone came barreling out of a driveway and I've stayed out of the way, even though I had the right-of-way; being in the right doesn't do much good against several tons of steel and glass.

~

To be fair: I did once see someone get a citation for breaking this law.  The person was sitting at a stop light in downtown L.A., with the phone up to the ear nearest the window.  An officer on a motorcycle pulled up between lanes and tapped on the window and pointed to the curb.  I will admit that seeing that gave me a bit more pleasure in that moment than is justified, but looking back it was not so much a triumph of behavioral engineering but the ensnaring of an idiot.  The law got someone who was too stupid to be paying attention,  too stupid to think that putting the phone up to the ear toward the interior of the vehicle would at least be less obvious.

I'm sure it's possible that there have been other citations I haven't seen, and there may be some who are genuinely dissuaded from using their phones with the law in place, but the trouble is that the law doesn't address the real issue: some people are inconsiderate, crappy drivers; using a phone certainly exacerbates that, but it doesn't initiate what's wrong.

~

And of course, I know that the way the universe works, were I to make even a slight exception and use the phone for just a moment, I would be the one the cop would cite.

Maybe the key to avoiding getting caught breaking minor laws (such as the "hands-free" cell phone usage while driving) is to be unconcerned with getting caught.  One would not act suspiciously, and perhaps what draws attention from law enforcement most of all is the appearance of something to elicit suspicion.

If one cannot be genuinely oblivious, one should develop the ability to not give a crap.

~

In any case, the law cannot forbid what it needs to address—namely, that people are stupid.  It may not be that all people are stupid all the time, and it's likely that all people are stupid at least some of the time, but stupidity at the time is the key.  What we seek is a world without stupidity (in theory), but that's not going to happen.

What would we have to rant about then?

~

Clearly I am offering my own small contribution to the stupidity of the world with this little rant.

An iPhone app that would save lives

To those of you who design apps for iPhones or BlackBerrys or other mobile email/text messaging devices:

They are marvelous breakthroughs of technology, and can be captivating with their color displays, full keyboards, touchscreens, and whatnot.

Here's the thing: Of all the amazing things you have enabled those devices to do, you appear to have overlooked one thing that's not so appealing to those who have them, but would be really swell for the rest of us.

You see, because of their portability and speedy wireless connectivity, people using them are inclined to multi-task and read and/or compose messages while doing other activities. While combining them with some activities are obviously dangerous (such as operating a motor) and will dissuade at least some of the device users (and the threat of getting a citation and a fine may stop some of the rest), there are some other seemingly innocuous ones that need to be prevented, and clearly the users aren't going to stop on their own, so I must call upon your technical expertise.

Please drop everything and devote all efforts to creating an app that detects the user is walking down the sidewalk (presumably the cadence of the stride would register with the device's internal sensors) with activity on screen, reading or composing, and have a message pop up every few seconds that says:

"LOOK UP, YOU IDIOT! THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE WORLD! STOP ALMOST WALKING INTO THEM! THIS MESSAGE IS NOT THAT IMPORTANT!"

The recurrence of this message would cease as soon as the user stopped moving. There would be no other way to disable it.

Thus they'd learn to stand still while their attention was focused on the screen, and not try to walk-and-read like a pedestrian Flying Dutchman that forces other non-device-using humans to dive out of their way.

It's simple behavioral reinforcement that benefits us all. Non device-carrying pedestrians don't have to swerve around the inattentive device carriers, and the device carriers don't get their asses kicked.

So please develop this as soon as possible and just push it out to all devices. (We all know you can.)

Thank you.

~

Oh, and once you're done, you may as well get cracking on the next version, which will replace the message with an electric shock of mildly increasing intensity.

(It's not that I don't have that much confidence in this first plan, but it's best to be prepared in case it doesn't work.)

More fun with public transportation

Even after nine years of riding L.A.'s Blue Line (light rail), I still haven't seen it all.

One morning last week, at the next to last station along the ride into downtown, a middle-aged woman who had been sitting in a middle row of the car (and who had been speaking with quite vulgar language while talking with a man in another row) got up and walked to the front of the car as the train was coming to a stop. She didn't immediately get off. Just before the doors were to close she turned and spit at a man near the door, then she jumped off and high-tailed it down the platform as the doors shut.

The man had not, as far as I could tell, spoken with her at all.

And he was in a wheelchair.

Seriously. A wheelchair. (I didn't notice that at the time, since I was seated near the back of the car; I didn't spot that detail until we both got off at the last station, which gave the incident an even more bizarre tone that it had when I saw it happen.)

I wasn't paying attention to everything that happened during the 50-minute ride, but I got on before either of them, and had there been some altercation earlier (for which projecting spittle toward him was due payback) I have to imagine I would have noticed it. So, as far as I can tell, the man had said nor done anything to the woman. Perhaps he had glanced at her with a disapproving look, since she had (as I mentioned) been speaking loudly and including just about every profanity in the book.

I'm not sure whether she was racist (as the wheelchaired man was of a different race than she was) or prejudiced against the handicapped (because they get the good spots on the train?) or, my personal theory, she was kind of batshit crazy.

However, even that isn't entirely consistent; were she mentally impaired (let's put it that way), she wouldn't care about waiting until the last second and diving off as the doors shut so there was no possibility of pursuit (by anyone); that's conniving, and of course, cowardly, which are not traits I attribute to the even marginally insane. Thus, even that theory doesn't hold up. So, really, we'll never know.

Here's the thing: At no point did I notice the man make any attempt to wipe anything off his person or property. Therefore it appeared that despite whatever motivated the woman to launch the loogie at him she couldn't get enough distance or have sufficient aim to hit a man only four feet away.

So it boils down to this: If you're a loud, vulgar, inconsiderate, likely prejudiced, cowardly idiot who feels the need for very tepid vengeance toward a stranger, make sure you have sufficient saliva and practiced accuracy before attempting such a plan. Otherwise you'll not only look like an asshole, you'll also seem the fool.

What's your function?

Take the line "George W. Bush is an idiot" and precede it with the declaration of either "I am a Republican" or "I am a Democrat" to make a compound sentence. What conjunction would you choose to combine the clauses?

For the elephant, likely it would have to be "I am a Republican but George W. Bush is an idiot."
For the donkey, it might go "I am a Democrat and George W. Bush is an idiot."

(If you used "or" then you're just being silly.)

The conjunction does not merely put the two together; it suggests shame or glee. One little variation and the compound sentence takes on completely opposing tones.

Language is neat.

i-Gad

On Friday morning the new iPhone came out. And the producers of the local CW affiliate, the oldest LA station (KTLA), thought it would be good to send a reporter (sic) who had a ridiculously condescending attitude about technology down to cover people waiting in line for it.

The footage is available on the station's website (at the moment--on the News tab, scroll down to the "iPhone 3G Debuts - Eric Spillman" link), where our intrepid microphone-wielding bundle of abject journalistic integrity asks people waiting in line if they prefer gadgets to people, and (I am not making this up) if they have seen a woman naked.

At 3:55 in the video he gets called out by the guy to whom he asks the latter question, who quite accurately identifies it as "kind of Jackass." And the reporter (sic) accuses the man of lacking a sense of humor.

Were it me in that scenario and I had the inspiration to retort with what comes to mind now, I would have come back with: "I have a good sense of humor. And if you say or do anything humorous I'm sure it will let me know."

Boo-ya! (Of course, had I been there--not that I would have been there, but hey, it's their lives--it would not have come to me when the camera was on me. Such is the way these things go.)

A reporter (sic) for a local station assigned to cover the release of a new device really is in no position to consider himself superior to anyone, least of all people motivated enough to queue up overnight outside a store.

Mostly he should be happy nobody in line gave him the ass-kicking he most certainly deserved.

~

For those of you who live in other parts of the country: This is why you should hate L.A. It's not that we are destroying so-called traditional values with some "Hollywood agenda"; we're simply embarrassing ourselves with what we allow to be broadcast on our morning "news" programs.

~

Why do I not move away? 1) Because I was born here, and 2) I figure I need to stay to keep the percentage of non-morons from going any lower than it already is. I am holding back the storm of idiocy as much as I can. Which isn't much, I admit.

Guilt by sartorial association

Actual conversation Doug overheard last evening:

The place: Urban Outfitters store*, Burbank, California

The participants: A young couple (probably in their early 20s) standing near Doug

The scene: Included on a table of t-shirts are two with pseudo-political themed images on them. One reads "Barack and Roll" with a picture of Obama's face, with another next to it featuring a big cartoonish hand brass knuckles between the text "Obama Says Knock You Out." Doug is standing a few feet away as the couple looks at the shirts.


Young man (to his female companion): "Does Obama really think this will get him votes? Yeah, that's who I want running my country."

Doug's thought: Should I explain that the shirts clearly aren't endorsed by the Obama campaign but are just some fashion designer cashing in on the candidate's pop culture cachet?

[Doug then notices that the young man is dressed such that his jeans intentionally droop in the back, even though they are pulled up to the normal height in the front, revealing his striped briefs in public. (However, the stripes do match his shirt.)]

Doug's revised thought: I could go over and ask if the young man intends to vote in November. If he says "no" then I can say, "That's good," and if he says "yes" then I can simply grimace and walk away.

[Doug concludes that would be kind of dickish. Also, likely that is too subtle for the young man to grasp, and Doug walks away.]


* Not some place I go, um, hardly ever; I'm not saying I'm ashamed to have been there, I just feel compelled to note that in the interest of full disclosure. My fiancée had a gift card. Of course, if this young man is in any way representative of their customers, perhaps I should be kind of ashamed.