Entries Tagged 'Incidental Elitism' ↓

Film #2 of siff was a disappointment.

Dream Boy is billed as a “coming of age story” involving two gay adolescents who wrestle with their feelings, etc etc. Instead, it is a crybaby story of a miserable teen who is incapable of growing a spine and dealing with his various issues — particularly being molested (at 15-16..) by his father. Instead, he runs to his own demise. He doesn’t “come of age” — he doesn’t grow as a person, he learns nothing and is not a better person at the end of the movie than he is at the start.

I don’t want any gay teenagers to see this movie and think that it is uplifting or in any way a representation of how they should react to pressures and obstacles in their lives. You fight, you don’t flee with your wrists open. You stomp on the faces of people who wrong you, you don’t whimper and cower to them while they rape and beat you to death.

Horrible characters aside, the acting was bad, and the music was awful and overpowering (though perhaps that is more the fault of the weak film than the music, as likely any music would overpower it..)

I rate Dreamboy 1 out of 4 QQs.

UPDATE: I just read The Stranger’s review, which is on-target:

To reduce coming-of-age drama Dream Boy to its base parts: Shy Boy meets Country Boy. They make out. Then they go camping with Country Boy’s homophobic friends. Surprise! The friends are only homophobic because they’re self-hating gays, and secretly also want to have sex with Country Boy. Then there’s violence, and the movie is over. Shy Boy is Nathan (Stephan Bender), who spends the film staring at his shoes and wandering through endless montages involving cottonwood trees and alt-country banjo numbers. Country Boy is Roy (Max Roeg), who spends the film saying folksy words like “yonder” and looking conflicted about liking guys. Clumsy and clichéd from start to finish, this is one to miss.

Paul Waldman had an interesting post on Code Pink which was linked by Andrew Sullivan:

…this week, which will see the fifth anniversary of the start of the war, Code Pink plans to “step up the pressure,” as its leader Medea Benjamin said. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Code Pink has a full roster of activities planned for the week, including: yoga every morning at 8:30; organic potlucks every noon; nightly movies and popcorn; a bike ride around Berkeley on Tuesday; an open-mike musical jam on Wednesday; and a ’send-off’ to the Marines on Friday, when protesters will bring suitcases and pink berets for traveling.” How the Bush administration will be able to resist is anyone’s guess.

Any effective political movement has to engage its participants in a way that makes them feel their contributions are meaningful and redefines their sense of self. But if those contributions aren’t actually meaningful, if they amount to an extended series of circle jerks that accomplish nothing, then the movement will inevitably be confined to a small group of self-deluding members with a lot of time on their hands. There are tens of millions of Americans who want to end the war in Iraq. But how many of them see something like Code Pink protesting a Marine recruiting station and say to themselves, “I want to be a part of that”?

Ridiculous, pointless nonsense can in fact do more harm than good, and more harm than nothing would do. It can create sites like this that attempt to intentionally reverse the original pointless stupidity with more pointless stupidity. Occasionally it is countered as Berkeley’s marine recruiter debacle was, with stripping of federal funding, resulting in the City Council backing down in response.

We see the cry for “something, anything!” often when there is a tragedy of any scale. School shooting? We must do “something, anything!” to fix it by banning Doom and Marilyn Manson. One deranged individual shooting up a college campus does not require a response, and certainly not an ill-reasoned “something, anything!!1!” response.

If you want to feel good about yourself by flailing your arms about so that mass-media will see you, at least be willing to put your money where your mouth is.

Every so often, in order to justify horrific abuses of power and destruction of civil liberties, the term “moral authority” is thrown around. It is the duty of the United States as a “moral authority” to have gone into Iraq, for instance.

What?

What moral high-ground do we have as a nation when we are invading sovereign nations on false pretenses? Much less any beyond-imagined authority to do so. Crackpot defenses like “moral authority” are used to subjugate, enslave, and persecute people. They are not used to create freedom or extend liberty.

The United States has no business policing the affairs of the world, just as the Vatican has no business policing what is on our televisions. If you find yourself about to speak those two words, “moral authority,” stop yourself and rather than to pretend to believe it, simply admit to yourself that you want to control people by force. You want to force someone to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do, because you think it is right for them but they shouldn’t be able to decide for themselves. Just admit it: you’re a fascist, not a freedom-loving American.

We would all be a lot better off if everyone just minded their own fucking business. We wouldn’t be as comfortable, but we would be significantly more free and that is what really matters.

Eric linked me this fascinating read which has several interesting bits about bisexuality specifically, and the potential evolution of human sexuality as a whole.

The possibility that everyone is born with the potential to experience both same-sex and opposite-sex attraction is borne out by the anthropologists Clelland Ford and Frank Beach in their pioneering study, Patterns Of Sexual Behaviour (1965). They examined dozens of tribal-based societies all over the world, including many where homosexual relations were common and accepted. In some, all young men went through a period of homosexuality as part of their rite of passage to manhood, and then later switched to heterosexuality and got married. Ford and Beach concluded that human sexuality was predisposed to bisexuality and that a person’s subsequent sexual orientation was largely the product of social learning and expectation: “Men and women who are totally lacking in any conscious homosexual leanings are as much a product of cultural conditioning as are the exclusive homosexuals who find heterosexual relations distasteful and unsatisfying. Both extremes represent movement away from the original, intermediate condition which includes the capacity for both forms of sexual expression”.

..thus reinforcing the idea that sexuality is in fact not binary, and that it is perfectly natural for a majority of people to engage in various sexual activities with the same gender — diluting the impact of the gay stereotype in association with homosexual behavior.

These insights suggest that if society ended its favouritism towards straightness and its chastisement of gayness, same-sex desire would, since it is an intrinsic human potentiality, be much more widespread. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a higher proportion of the population would be lesbian and gay. More likely, bisexuality would become the norm, and the prevalence of both exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality would diminish.

I see this as a good thing. Call me a homophobe if you wish, but I do not find stereotypical gay men in any way appealing, sexually or otherwise. This distaste is not borne of any self-hatred, but of contempt for those who let themselves be so easily defined by others. As I told John, I try not to be definable with a single word — be it “fag”, “geek”, “emo” or what have you. To consider oneself gay or bisexual does not necessitate that you adhere to the applicable stereotypes. Though many people do, even if only subconsciously, and that irritates me greatly.

Adherence to negative stereotypes helps to perpetuate them and give them value. It doesn’t make me a homophobe to look down upon homosexuals (declared or otherwise) who are walking manifestations of a negative stereotype. By not adhering to it myself, I am helping to defeat it as an inaccurate label of homosexuals, whereas they are proponents of it and make it more difficult for me to fight it.

Patrick says..

dude

people should just be who they are

and not worry about stereotypes

for the realz

..which I am afraid is a bit silly. “Who they are” is imaginary. Our self is not determined in the womb, it is a culmination of our upbringing and interactions with society. We do have free will to determine who we become (as inferred by “interactions with society.”) Part of this interaction involves stereotypes — either learning from them in attempts to defeat them, or adhering to and propagating them.

With the latest in the “avoiding the cult” series (I, II) I want to keep you all up-to-date on the MacBook Air.

ArsTechnica has published a review of the SSD version of the MacBook Air. The question they ask is, “is it worth another $1300?” Without even having to read it, you can safely assume “no.”

However, after reading the comparison, complete with benchmarks galore, it is very easy to see just how pointless it is to get an Air. The battery life is weak, it is slow, and doesn’t begin to stack up to a MacBook or MacBook Pro, even though it is between two and three times more expensive than the former, and more expensive than the latter with a SSD.

Near the end of the article, I noticed something funny (not ha-ha-funny):

The $1,300 question is whether the SSD is worth the extra cash. The answer seems to be no. I experienced only moderate gains in battery life and not very noticeable speed differences. The one major benefit of the SSD model is that it doesn’t cause the same types of slowdowns as the HDD model during times of high disk activity, and that’s certainly a huge plus. Speedy read times are great, too, but they are balanced out by pokey write times.

Still, even if it’s more usable, it’s hard to justify the huge price difference for the SSD model. If you’ve got an extra $1,300 to blow and, for some reason, haven’t just bought a second computer with it, perhaps the SSD model is for you. For anyone else looking to buy an Air, the HDD model appears to provide the most bang for the buck.

Um.

How about the fact that the HDD version is not worth $1,800? I imagine that if someone is stupid enough to throw away $1,800 on a “thin” poorly performing version of a MacBook that they would be stupid enough to throw away another $1,300 to get a SSD regardless of any concern for “most bang for the buck.” You heard it here folks: if you want the most bang for your buck, fuck the MacBook Air and just get a vanilla MacBook instead. Get two of them. If you want to throw away $3,100 get three and give two away to people who need them.

The MacBook Air is not marketed to people with common sense, it is marketed to people — no, idiots — who have no idea of the worth or value of a computer. It is marketed to mindless Apple fanbois with a home-made rubber replica of Steve Jobs’s junk in their mouths.

At my prodding (surely..), Macworld has done some less starry-eyed reporting on the MacBook Air and compared it to previous Mac models.

Yes, it is in every way, the slowest Intel Mac ever released.

Of course, the MacBook Air’s appeal is not about blazing speeds, but about small size and weight. However, these tests do give some indication about what level of performance users will have to give up if they’ve decided to forego a MacBook or MacBook Pro for the thin embrace of the MacBook Air.

After revealing the expected results of their testing, Macworld sputtered about how “b..b..but.. people expect portability from the m..m..MacBook Air, not performance!!1″ and failed to mention that the MacBook Air is not more portable than the vanilla MacBook, simply thinner. It will take up just as much room when you attempt to use it on an airplane in coach. It is only thinner. But, for those of you especially eager to enjoy UT2004 (p.s. it is now the year 2008) at under 20 FPS, the MBA is only $1800!

Oh, and it’s thin.

The “Cult of Mac” is a group of Apple fanbois that refuse to acknowledge downsides to Apple products. While I own a MacBook Pro, use a MacBook at work, and talk/listen/play on my iPhone, I am not a member of that cult. To be a member of the Cult of Mac, one needs to be able to ignore the shortcomings of Apple products while blindly praising those same faults or flaws as “innovative design.”

Case in point, the MacBook Air. It has worse specs than a vanilla MacBook, costs nearly twice as much, has only one USB port, no RJ45, no firewire, no optical drive, a slow-ass 4200 rpm harddrive, and a user-non-replaceable battery. Look at everything that you don’t get for $1800! Oh, but it’s thin. The only up-side is that it is the first MacBook available with a solid-state harddrive. Unfortunately, that would bring the cost up to over $3,100. At that price you could get a 17″ MacBook Pro with FAR better specs, ports, massive fast harddrive, superdrive, and an iPhone. Or, you can get something that’s really thin.

…

Nevertheless, the Apple fanbois eat this shit up. “It’s clearly for on-the-go businesspeople who don’t need cables!!1″ they say, nevermind that businesspeople who are on the go and stay at hotels which provide ethernet access but charge extra for wireless. Nevermind that they are still shackled to the wall since users cannot replace their own batteries, and so must charge up a single battery over and over again until someone from an Apple store replaces it for you — likely having to ship it to California first to do so.

The next most popular theory is that it is for use as a “second Mac” — clearly not as a primary machine! What, exactly, is the benefit of it as a second Mac when compared to a MacBook? The MacBook is nearly as small, faster, has firewire for direct-connecting to another Mac, video out, ethernet, an optical drive, etc. The only thing that the Air has going for it is that it is thin, and unless you routinely need to shove laptops into inter-office envelopes, that is a completely useless trait when compared to the perfectly acceptable thickness of the MacBook and MacBook Pro lines.

And now, I move on to OS X. Touting it as the “World’s Most Advanced Operating System” is abso-fucking-lutely retarded. All it is, is a lovely front-end for a *nix system and that is why I use it. There is one application which makes OS X worthwhile, and one only — Terminal. If Terminal were removed in a patch, OS X would become completely useless for anyone who desires to do something beyond reading their email and browsing websites in Safari. Terminal grants you access to all of the functionality which all UNIX/BSD-derivatives have but which the front-end in OS X refuses to let you even see. Perhaps OS X will be able to legitimately claim to be the “World’s Most Advanced Operating System” when they start enabling power-users to utilize the full functionality of the underlying operating system without having to rely on Terminal to do so. Instead, we get a fucking 3D dock with window contents reflecting off of it. Wow. Windows XP Pro is more “advanced” than OS X when it comes to features an average user has access to.

Today I went out to see Sweeney Todd at the local suburban Minnesota theater — a Carmike Cinemas theater. The showing was at 4:05pm, so I arrived at 4:00 on the dot, moments before they began seating. I chose a seat, sat down, and waited. The fat cunts behind me talked obnoxiously-loudly about a friend of theirs getting suspended from school. They appeared to be at the movie with their illegitimate father, or perhaps the high school janitor that they exchange favors with for tickets to an R-rated movie on Christmas eve.

Anyhow, one of the trailers caught my attention. A band named “Three Doors Down” apparently shot a music video for a song of theirs, “Citizen Soldier” for the National Guard. It was three minutes of doom-and-gloom, with hilarious comparisons of National Guardsmen in Iraq with Minutemen fighting the British during the American Revolution. I am sorry, but being led into war with our President’s father’s old buddy is not the same as earning our nation’s independence from the British. How fucking tasteless and, frankly, pathetic. Is scouring high schools around the US for drop-outs no longer sufficient?

Thankfully, there was justice-poetic, as one of the next trailers was one for Stop Loss. I imagine that the rest of the theater, including the twitching jackasses behind me, didn’t appreciate the irony. Their loss.

So, 31 minutes later, at 4:36, the movie FINALLY started. I had lost count of how many trailers I’d seen — only the one for Stop Loss looked any good. Over all, it is a pretty gruesome flick. There is a lot of throat slitting, and it’s all very.. gushy. I’ve seen reviewers recommend that those who enjoy the SAW movies go see Sweeney Todd, but I disagree. I don’t think that they would be able to sit through the introductory song, much less all the ones that follow, and the plot would escape the average SAW-enthusiast. If you don’t mind a musical, like Johnny Depp, enjoy a good revenge movie and can stomach a bit of gore, I highly recommend that you go see it. I give Sweeney Todd 4.5 out of 5 buckets of mystery-meat.

The very idea of “affordable housing” (with quotes) is nonsensical. It circumvents market forces to offer rental property to people at half the actual price, but with a renter-salary cap. When I was planning my move to Seattle I encountered several nice apartments (such as a little studio in Pioneer Square) which I was unable to move into because I didn’t make low-enough of a salary. That’s idiotic. If I move to New York City and want to live downtown but make only $40,000 / year, I shouldn’t live downtown.

There is already affordable housing — without the quotes. It exists in the suburbs. If you don’t make enough money to be able to afford living downtown, live in the suburbs and commute until you can afford living in the city. If you think you will never be able to afford it, you need to take a moment to consider exactly why that is.

Everyone should have a five-year plan which includes improving their financial situation. Accepting undeserved hand-outs should never be a part of that plan. For the record, making minimum wage (or less) does not make someone any more deserving than does being related to a dead rich white guy. The “lack” of “affordable housing” is not an issue. The lack of forethought / planning and intelligent decisions on the part of people in the market to rent, is. Rather than bribing developers like Vulcan with “affordable housing” requirements, educate the renting masses in how best to plan their lives and let the housing market take care of the housing market.

Today I was asked how much I would have to be paid in order to become black. After some head-scratching the terms were laid out: reality would be magically altered, and nothing else would change, I’d just be black. I didn’t bother asking if I would have a larger penis.

My response was a bit of a puzzled “nothing?” as I feel the question is disingenuous. What the question-poser really wanted to know was why being black would be more or less desirable than my current skin-tone. Why dance around that question by attempting to pose a less sincere version of it in hopes of tricking someone to answer “correctly?”

The answer is that it really doesn’t matter on any level. My maternal grandfather was Mexican. Two of my grandmothers were Native American (different tribes.) My mixed ethnicity means nothing to me until I fill out government-required forms, and even then it means trying to figure out what box(es) to check. Due to the racist nature of these questions I never answer caucasian, even though that would be the largest piece of my ethnicity-pie. Beyond checking boxes, it means nothing to me. I don’t consider myself Catholic, nor do I actively identify with either Native American tribe. My identity is not dependent on my parents or my grandparents or my great-grandparents. No ones should be, but sadly, that’s rarely the case.

Some people give up because they grew up “on the streets” and don’t seek anything beyond that existence. Some allow themselves to be defined by the religion they were raised with. Others become willing slaves of the dollars they throw around. Whether they are the loud black homeless addicts that live in the park outside my apartment, or obnoxious drunken white frat-boys, their existence is equally inconvenient for me. Since I don’t live in the U district I have less exposure to the latter than the former, but know with confidence that I feel contempt for both groups equally. In both cases basic decency is ignored in favor of adherence to negative stereotypes.