Katy Perry, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus. I’m sure there are others whose names I don’t know. They all sound the same! Do they roll one off of a factory every year?
More importantly, do we really need to keep perpetuating their popularity?
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Can we all agree that the market for female pop singers is oversaturated? On the rare occasions that I turn on the radio, I inevitably I hear one of these femme bots. I can’t tell the difference; I would be surprised if many people could in a double blind test.
Katy Perry, Pink, Kelly Clarkson, Miley Cyrus. I’m sure there are others whose names I don’t know. They all sound the same! Do they roll one off of a factory every year? More importantly, do we really need to keep perpetuating their popularity?
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I don’t buy into the belief that there is just “one special person” out there for everyone. While there are great choices and not-so-great choices, searching for one’s “soul mate” seems to imply that we should spend our time looking for the perfect match.
Unfortunately, we’re all broken and fallible. Perfect matches only exist in fiction. In fact, believing in the soul mate myth is easy justification for people to give up on a relationship simply because they’ve determined that their current partner is not “the one.” Instead of the soul mate philosophy, I ascribe to a “best fit” mentality. Look for the person who makes you feel complete, and decide that whenever things get tough, you will fight to do whatever you can to make it work. Most stories about time travel rely on the “butterfly effect,” the concept that making a minor and seemingly insignificant change in the past can have drastic consequences for the present and future. The problem with the butterfly effect is that it creates a paradox when the altered future removes the incentive or opportunity for the time traveler to go back in time in the first place.
There are two other theories on time travel that I find more plausible. The first is the concept that everything is happening at the same time, which does not allow for events to be changed. The best example of this is seen near the end of the third Harry Potter movie (Prisoner of Azkaban). This theory makes the most sense because it avoids paradoxes, yet introduces the new complication of “fate,” the concept we cannot alter our destinies. The second theory allows for changing the past, but only in the most dramatic ways. I call this the“rut theory.” Picture time as a small stream travelling through a deep rut. Minor changes to the rut would have little effect on the stream: assassinating Gutenberg’s mother before he was conceived would only delay the printing press by a few years until someone else invented it. Rather, only the most severe modifications could impact the stream’s direction: England winning the American Revolution, the U.S. and Soviets launching nuclear attacks during the cold war, or Genghis Kahn conquering Europe. Humans are terrible at assessing risk. One of the most sobering examples is the aftermath of September 11th, but
not in the way you’d think. “An intriguing paper by three Cornell researchers...found that thousands of Americans may have died since the September 11 attacks because they were afraid to fly. We will never know the true risks associated with terrorism; we do know that driving is dangerous. When more Americans opted to drive rather than to fly after 9/11, there were an estimated 344 additional traffic deaths per month in October, November, and December of 2001 (taking into account the average number of fatalities and other factors that typically contribute to road accidents, such as weather). This effect dissipated over time, presumably as the fear of terrorism diminished, but the authors of the study estimate that the September 11 attacks may have caused more than 2,000 driving deaths.” * Don’t let irrational fears control you. *Wheelan, Charles. Naked Statistics. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2013. Pages 72-73. There is no doubt that I view the world through the rose colored glasses of a straight white male, certainly the most privileged class in the last thousand years. As such, it is easy for me to forget that marginalization of others still occurs today, despite the great progress we’ve made toward human equality.
This video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6p5AZp7r_Q) made me look at the typical “damsel in distress” in a new light. I never before realized how prevalent this trope was in video games. While there are some games that champion strong female protagonists, those are few and far between. At best, the overuse of the “damsel in distress” is lazy story-telling. At worst, it perpetuates the marginalization of women. I recognize that video games are predominantly created by men and for men, but game creators could certainly do a better job of writing more compelling stories by empowering their female characters. Because the vast majority of games feature a male protagonist, I typically opt to play as a female character when given the choice to create my own hero in role-playing games like Mass Effect and Fallout 3. I also figure that if I have to look at a character’s backside for thirty-plus hours, I may as well find it appealing. Again...straight white male. I have been disappointed one too many times by garage sales where I hoped to find something worth purchasing, only to discover that the sellers should have moved their wares a little further down the driveway to the curbside. On trash day.
The problem is that there are so many ways to sell second-hand valuables: consignment shops, antique stores, and flea markets abound, not to mention websites like Amazon and eBay that let you sell stuff without ever leaving your home. So I’ve found that garage sales are truly the bottom of the barrel; it’s junk that people couldn’t sell anywhere else and would probably throw away if they can’t get fifty cents for it. Which is why I’ve given up on finding anything good at garage sales anymore. One of the problems with most stories in any medium is that they always feel “safe” for the main characters. Any life-threatening injury or illness will almost assuredly be overcome. Even when a main character dies, the plot devises any contrivance to bring him back to life or show how the audience was “tricked,” and the hero was never really dead in the first place (think Dark Knight Returns and Star Trek: Into Darkness). The subconscious knowledge of knowing that the main characters will never die (and even when they do, we can totally see it coming) makes it difficult for me to buy into the suspense that the film, book, or television show is trying to create.
However, there is one series that comes to mind which completely ignores this unspoken rule: A Game of Thrones. The HBO show is fantastic, and I am told that the books follow the show fairly accurately (which I am currently confirming). One of the most suspenseful elements of the show is that no character is safe. It does not matter how crucial to the story the character is or how popular the actor is. I wish more stories would follow this model, putting all characters “at risk.” Especially when it comes to a story with battles, gun fights, or swordplay. Removing all characters' indestructibility will add immensely to the excitement of the story. One of my favorite sub-genres of science fiction literature is the dystopian future. They all share the similar theme of an individual’s struggle to resist the oppressive government. And all the good ones have a unique twist: Fahrenheit 451 has the book burning motif, Brave New World has its caste system. My favorite is probably Anthem by Ayn Rand. It was short, sweet, and concise. I fully empathized with the protagonist on his journey of self-discovery.
And I love the nickname he gives his woman. This phrase has always bothered me. It demonstrates a blatant lack of empathy, and always comes off as dismissive. Just because something isn’t important to you and is not as horrific as the end of the world, doesn’t make my concern invalid.
One could use this phrase for just about anything. “Oh, you lost your job? Well, at least it’s not the end of the world!” Even if the person saying it is trying to help put things in perspective, it just doesn’t. On the other hand, I do enjoy using the phrase, “First world problems.” This phrase is designed to be dismissive and remind ourselves that what we consider “problems” are just minor inconveniences. An appropriate time to use this phrase would be when a friend complains about a vending machine being out of diet soda. My preference of one phrase over the other may be a little contradictory. But at least I’m open about it! Many DVDs seem cheap, in that they only include the movie, with virtually no other bonus features. On the other end of the spectrum, there are DVDs that include every possible extra they could think of: director’s commentary (sometimes multiple versions), deleted scenes, behind the scenes, commercial spots, the list goes on! If it takes longer to watch the bonus features then it does to watch the actual movie, that’s where I draw the line.
I remember when I first started collecting DVDs, I would intentionally watch all the bonus features, especially the deleted scenes. But it quickly became apparent that those scenes were deleted from the movie for a reason! They were boring, unnecessary, or just plain bad. I have since learned to avoid deleted scenes at all costs. Also, when a DVD proclaims itself as “unrated” or “uncut,” marketers are using ploys to get consumers to conclude it is the “genuine”version of the film that was too shocking to show in theaters I've found that the only differences between these versions and the theatrical version is that there are simply a few deleted scenes crammed into it. Next time you have both versions available, check the difference in running time, it’s usually only a minute or two. In other words, they are misleadingly literal when they say“unrated” (this version was not reviewed by the MPAA) or “uncut” (not all the lousy scenes were removed). Thanks, but I’ll just stick with the theatrical (read: “better”) version. |