People of the World: Please Stop

June 10, 2008 – 4:18 pm

Yesterday I found myself explaining a curious thing to my son. He was wondering why H.P. Lovecraft wasn’t the most famous horror-writer

Abandon All Hope
Abandon All Hope
ever, and I explained that he was a little too “out there” to ever garner a larger readership, until recently (admittedly, I suspect his readership is still not huge, but it’s growing). My son asked me why more people were reading him now. And so I told the tale of How Geeks Took Over The World.

Long ago, I told my son, when I was growing up, Geeks were forced to desperately cling to the lowest rung of the social strata.  “Really?” my son asked, horror showing plainly on his face.   Yes my love, I told him, it was a very hard time to be a Geek.  And I reminded him of several nightmarish episodes from my youth.  I then proceeded to explain to him how we took over.  How, with the advent of the Internet and computer games, suddenly we were the ones holding the keys to the kingdom.  You see, I continued, no one but the Geeks had ever bothered to learn how to write computer programs or play with hardware.  And so they found themselves coming to Us.

After that, I went on, it wasn’t long before it was “cool” to be a Geek.  And then the ex-jocks and cheerleaders and prom queens and kings and all their minions traded in their jerseys for some plaid, button-up shirts and Chucks and started talking about sci-fi and roleplaying games and comic books and physics.  And some of them even started reading H.P. Lovecraft.

My little son’s faced glowed as he gazed adoringly upon the mother who had fought so hard to bring the world to what it is today (or at least, I like to remember it that way).  But then his little brow crinkled, and he asked in a worried voice,” But Mommy, how do we tell the Real Geeks from the Fake Geeks, now?”

Simple, I replied.  Real Geeks would never use Internet Explorer.

And that, my dear readers, is what I have come to you to say today.  Please, please, for the love of all that is holy, do not use Internet Explorer.  It’s not cool.  The Real Geeks laugh at you behind your back for using it, when they are not cursing you for making their day jobs as programmers ten thousand times more difficult.

If browsers were cars, IE would be a moped.  If browsers were wine, IE would be Night Train.  If browsers were hot dates, IE has herpes.  If browsers were…well, you get the idea.

So there’s the tip of the day from one who knows.  If you want to be one of the “in-crowd”, ditch that lousy-ass browser.  You’ll be glad you did, and so will we.

By celestina | | Comments (3)

A Quick Word On Burkhas

May 16, 2008 – 10:09 pm

OK…so I’m a bit drunk. But tonight’s surfing brought me to a story of some girl who got arrested for her “too revealing” prom dress, and then an assortment of Hollywood “gaffes” wherein some starlet or other showed too much nipple, and finally I was compelled to do a search for “men burkhas” which, I can tell you, turned up no men in burkhas. So I just wonder:

1) How come it’s crazy when Middle Eastern religions say women have to cover up, but it’s OK when we do it here? It’s because it’s different bits, isn’t it?
2) How come Western culture is so sexually promiscuous, and yet a nipple is still headlining news?
3) How come anyone still cares about Britney Spears? [Note: you must follow above pattern of searches to understand this question]
4)Why does a search for men in burkhas turn up mostly naked women?

Perhaps they are not deep questions, but I sort of think they are.

By celestina | | Comments (5)

Sex Education Should Begin At Birth

April 28, 2008 – 10:34 am

One might think that in an evolved, educated, first-world nation, the issue of “sex ed” would have been settled long ago. After all, what could be more important than teaching children about their own bodies, and encouraging each individual to make responsible choices when it comes to reproduction? And yet, the debate continues to rage, in our homes and schools and on the national stage. How much information is too much? Does sex ed encourage children to have sex? Should we teach them about birth control? And recently the debate has extended to include the question “When do we start?”
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By celestina | | Comments (2)

Elevenish Ways To Kill A Peep

March 22, 2008 – 11:25 pm

So, it’s Easter/Ostara/Spring Equinox/whateveryoucallit, and as usual the stores are full of symbolic representations of our gratitude for new life. Pastels, chocolate eggs, and the persistent Peeps. Yes, the gooey marshmallow “treats” which line up in their neat little rows behind their cellophane windows to peer blankly out into the world through their vacant eyes. They practically beg to be abused, with their conformist attitudes, insubstantial nature, and misprinted features. And, inspired by this effort, my family and I decided to accommodate their blatantly masochistic inclinations. Thus, the afternoon before Easter, we invested $2 in two packs of the “bunny” variety of Peeps, and proceeded to destroy them in the most creative ways we could imagine. What follows is a record of our efforts.

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By celestina | | Comments (8)

Bringing Back the Stocks

February 25, 2008 – 11:49 am

Here in Asheville, NC, the police department is updating an ages-old concept in their attempts to discourage unwanted behaviour: public humiliation. As was recently announced, Asheville police have begun posting on their website and on the local television channel names and photographs of individuals charged with prostitution or soliciting for prostitution.

Now read that again, carefully: charged with

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By celestina | | Comments (1)

Hillary’s “Significance”

February 14, 2008 – 12:08 pm

Just who is significant? Photo by highkey11, creative commons license
Just who is significant? Photo by highkey11, creative commons license
I’m pretty sure I want Barack Obama for President, but I could still change my mind. Granted, in order for that to happen Obama would have to do something which demonstrated that he does not intend to carry through with the promises in his proposed policy. If I were to switch my support to Hillary Clinton, however, something even more surprising would have to happen: she would have to demonstrate some sort of consistent dedication to something besides satisfying her own ambition. Every time I read the news, no matter how hard I try to give her the benefit of the doubt, I wind up irritated and confused by her latest shenanigans. Take, for example, this little quote from her Chief Strategist Mark Penn:

Could we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the significant states — outside of Illinois? That raises some serious questions about Sen. Obama.

This is a campaign which has stated its determination to fight for Michigan and Florida being included in the DNC because “every vote should count”, but all those votes in all the 21 states aside from Illinois which Obama won…are insignificant? Perhaps what Senator Clinton’s campaign is trying to say is that they care about the voters in Michigan and Florida because those states are significant. I guess I can see it from her perspective.

But then there’s how she claims she really cares about the middle class, the “everyman”, if you will. And yet, she rents out her donor lists cheap to a megacorporation whose CEO has helped her out in the past. It’s just weird, and I can’t quite get my head around it. Somehow her populist message isn’t sounding very populist. Perhaps corporate friends are more significant than mere citizens.

So, we’re on to talking about Texas and Ohio, two states which are significant and in which by all accounts Senator Clinton must win big if she is to continue to be significant herself. She is counting on the support of the Hispanic community (commonly ignored as insignificant, but not in election season), particularly as she seems to be losing ground with the (also normally insignificant) black and women demographics. Somehow, though, despite the recent change in staffing for her campaign and her declarations that she’s not done, yet, I don’t feel like Hillary is getting it. This whole grass-roots support concept that Obama has so successfully built his campaign upon is not trouncing her because their stated intentions are so very far apart. It’s because Obama makes each one of us feel significant.

By celestina | | Comments (2)

Off The Cuff: The New Frontier

February 8, 2008 – 3:30 pm

Presenting The Case
Presenting The Case
For two days I have been writing about the concept of Revolution. I have mused on the general concept, and I have talked about what the first step in overhauling the current system has to be. If we are going to try for real change, however, we also have to agree upon what it is that needs changing and how we want it changed.

As I have stated previously, democracy is not a bad concept for a governing system, but it simply doesn’t work if the people stop having input into the system. The concepts sort of cancel each other out like that. So the real problem in this country, the problem underneath all the other problems, is that the people no longer have any real input. We can vote, but the election system is now so vulnerable that it cannot be trusted to supply a valid result. Even if it could, we live in a nation where the vote of the people can, and has been in the past, overridden by “more powerful” people in a system designed to keep those “in the know” able to direct our elections “for our best interests”. Even apart from that, we only have elections every couple of years, and that leaves a lot of time in between for our representatives to spin their more dubious actions in a better light. And even worse, most of their dubious actions happen behind closed doors, out of sight of the people, and are rarely reported.

If we are going to take back control of our country from the corporate interests currently running it, we need transparency. We need video and audio recordings of every single committee and conference meeting in which our government officials take part. We need to either outlaw federal lobbyists, or we need a set time and place where they can present their cases to our representatives (read: us), which must also be open and documented. Every person in the United States is not going to care about every issue, but each person must be able to follow all actions related to any issue they choose to investigate. All these recordings should be available to anyone seeking them.

All pending legislation must be made available online for all Americans to read, at least two days prior to it being voted into law. This legislation should be hyper-linked to any previous legislation which it references. All representatives must have a means for their constituents to send commentary on the legislation readily available, and staff whose job is to read the comments and convey them to the representative.

We must divest corporations of their illegitimate legal status as “people”, and begin holding them accountable to the actual people. Our media organizations must begin actually investigating the events happening in both our nation and others and reporting accurately and without bias. Our school systems must teach each child the actual structure of government, and must attempt to teach history and current events as accurately and broadly as possible. We the people must have the right to question everything, and must remember to do so.

If we can implement these few things, we can have our country back. Granted, it will be a long and arduous path getting there. We will have to fight like hell to make these things happen. But that, after all, is what a revolution is all about.

By celestina | | Comments (0)

Off The Cuff: A Wave of Information

February 7, 2008 – 12:06 pm

Presenting The Case
Presenting The Case
Yesterday, I was thinking about Revolution in general terms: what it means, what might be the goal of a modern revolution, what tools we have to hand. Today I am thinking we need to break it down a little smaller. Recently, I was arguing with a friend about whether ideology or action are more important in implementing change. His contention was that it is always an event which galvanizes the people and sets them in motion. My point was that while there is always a particular event to spark things off, those events could come and go unnoticed if there were not already an ideology in place which has a significant portion of the people at a mental tipping point. As I said to him, Rosa Parks did not just get on a bus one day and start the civil rights movement. Enough people were already caught up in the idea that classifying people according to the color of their skin is unjust that her simple action touched off massive change.

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By celestina | | Comments (1)