:: The Blurst of Times ::

:: 10.31.2004 ::

Suck-nology

If I see another Sprint, Nextell, AT&T, T-Mobile, IPod, Dell, IBM, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard, Phillips, Hummer, GM, ADT, Ford, or UPS commercial or ad again, I’m gonna puke. Alright, I’m bluffing, I won’t really puke, but I should. Commercials make me sick. They make me more than sick, they make me almost irate because they are such blatant lies and so many people are completely unable to see through the bullshit and understand the forces really at work. But I could go on for days about how much commercials suck and how ridiculous they are, but I guess we can just chalk that up to super-companies being super-companies. No, what really gets to me is all the problems that these companies cause and force the common consumer to live with.

For a company, obviously, it’s all about making money. Duh. Fine, whatever, that’s their right. But no one is even trying to make money in the honest way anymore. It's all about coming up with the next big thing just as fast as we can, to get as many impatient consumers to buy as many as they can as fast as they can, and bailing adn coming up with something “even newer and greater.” We're moving so fast and trying so hard that we never stop to fix the bugs that were in the original version. Which would be fine if we were throwing out the old and replacing it with the new, but we're not, we're building the new right on top of the old.

Example: You are going to build a house, so you start with the foundation. The foundation is on weak soil and when cold season comes around that soil will heave and the foundation will crack itself apart. But people are starting to pay attention to this house. They want one, too. So you tell them you'll build them one. Then you frame up the walls. More people are noticing. You get more requests to build houses. You put on the roof, the sheet rock, the trim, the shingles, etc. You're trying to build this house so fast (to show everyone you can do it, or to sell it quicker, or more likely, to sell as many as you possibly can), you never go back to correct the mistakes you made. Well, winter rolls in, everyone is snug as a bug in a rug in their new custom home, when they start noticing that their doors don't shut right - some too tight, some too loose, some swing. They call you up: "Hey Buddy, house is great, but the doors don't shut right." You know what's wrong; but you say "Loosen the hinges, straighten the door in the frame, tighten the hinges." Easy-peasy-japanesey. Until their paint starts to chip, their drywall cracks, their cabinet drawers don't shut right, and come about springtime there's kind of a funky smell coming from the basement rec room. You say "Paint it up, patch it up, tighten it up, and get a fan to move that air around." They do it and ignore it for another year. Maybe two or three. Now the house is falling apart - walls warping, visible rot in the basement, floors are uneven. People are unhappy. They complain "Hey Buddy, this house sucks." You say "Yeah, you know, that's just the best we can do with the technology we have. I can't control mother nature, it's going to frost and heave." Now they're going to get pissed, so you scramble "Hey Pal, how about I get you a sweet deal on this new house we’re building over yonder. It's better than that old dump - look we've got walkout basements, granite countertops, a whirlpool in the bathroom. Plus one more bedroom than your last place. Whaddaya say, man, you're buyin up!" And what do they say? "Heck yeah, sounds like a great deal." Never think about how you're going to cut the same corners from one house to the next. Plus, they don’t need all that extra shit, and they still aren’t going to have a house that can shelter them properly.

Okay, that was a long example, and everyone who didn’t make it all the way through the example is exactly the kind of consumer these companies want - no time to read all the details make it work fast and now and I’m off at a million miles an hour again no time to think no time to worry about stuff working no time for quality or a job well done because I got places to go man I’m multinational...

Quality never improves because it never has to. We accept the idea that as long as we can have a hundred of them cheap, then who cares if they work or not. And if we can't have a hundred of them then they'd sure as hell better be multifunctional. If I can't get service in my house, well, I can at least take pictures, check my email, send text messages, play games, check my stocks, and download a million and six different rings tones that turn out to be all the exact same amount of annoying when your phone rings on the bus. We choose (as a society) to continue to purchase items even after we don't like them anymore. Pissed because your phone won't work? Switch companies, switch phones, chuck the cell and get a land line. Don't like buying CDs with so much anti-piracy shit on them that you can't make a simple mix tape anymore? Stop buying CDs, stop buying albums, wait for a bit. The consumer can almost always outwait the supplier. They need our money to keep alive - music isn't going to die when sony records goes bankrupt.

Maybe I’m just fed up by losing phone conversations with people when both of us are just sitting in our respective living rooms. Maybe I’m tired of trying to watch movies on DVD and being unable to finish it because the damn thing skips out and won’t go back to where I had it. Maybe I’m just really really really fucking tired of hearing all these phone companies tell me how much shit I can get for just “$39.99*” when * equals only a million fucking service charges, surcharges, taxes, fees, rate hikes, blackout hours, waivers, tithes, patronages, bribes, firstborns, plus there is no fucking service in your living room.

“Once there were parking lots, now it’s a peaceful oasis...”

:: Freddy F. at 7:01 PM [+] ::
:: (0) comments ::

Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I was literally threatened into buying the new Green Day album. That being said, I would have bought it eventually. It was on my list. This just raised the urgency on it. So I got it. And I listened to it. Seven times in the first weekend. It’s good. Very rocking. Very much a departure from standard Green Day fare. It seems like it could be the rock opera, though I’m not sure it entirely qualifies for that title. I would definitely say that the album as a whole has a sound of being ‘crafted.’ It doesn’t sound like each song was written from experiences that may or may not overlap. It feels like the album came together as a whole as parts were deliberately written as parts of larger piece.

As evidence, I’ll walk you through it. Begin with the simple, anthemic title track. Catchy, single, intro credits, good hook. Song two makes the stand, illustrates the topic of discussion, a very holistic piece with depth and explanation not found in a single song. The middle tracks all follow the same kinds of themes, like sub-stories along a single plot line. The best part about the middle is the pacing. Some songs fast, others slow, like a story paces itself. But all the songs work together (again, the idea of being written at once instead of in pieces then assembled), constantly refer back to each other, and do a good job of building a united front toward the climax. Which comes in song(s) twelve as the other bookend to song two. This song is probably the greatest tribute to Dark Side..., Rocky Horror, Tommy, and other rock operas in it’s formatting. There’s a fast paced back and forth between song styles, background yelling, tympanis, driving drum lines, and further reference to the first bookend and the subsequent middle songs. It is the essence of the hero throwing every last bit of his soul into vanquishing the enemy. Then, the closer, the final song, feeling as outside the album as the first. While the title track feels like we’re seeing this life full of energy and everything is good on the surface, the album as a whole drags us through the soul of the protagonist, the final song is his eulogy, sung from the outside, about the past, just a touch of sadness and of life moving on [tear].

I might be quoting someone when I say this, but I don’t remember reading it: It sounds like that album you never knew you had but have been listening to for years. This is to Dookie what The Decline was to Punk in Drublic. It does what Warning tried to do, but was just far too whiny to accomplish. This album is Green Day facing the problem as a rational being and saying “Fuck it, no more compromise; we’re burning this place to the ground.”

[I have deliberately withheld any comment I had about the ad that fell out of the CD when I opened it that told me where I could go online to get “Six new Green Day ringtones!” As I write this non-paragraph, I can feel my heart rate increasing and the blood rising behind my eyes. Suffice to say, I am blaming the record label and not the band, because to think the band would have put that in there, well, that would erase everything I just wrote about them and throw them back to the level of Blink 182: a good body, but no brains.]

“Subliminal mind-fuck America...”

:: Freddy F. at 10:00 PM [+] ::
:: (1) comments ::

And In All the News That Matters:

Yeah.

Also see the November 1 Time Magazine for a good synopsis of why this could be a watershed year in American elections.

"Four more years of pay-to-play politics, power and influence... of legalized bribery and served corporate interests..."

:: Freddy F. at 8:33 PM [+] ::
:: (0) comments ::

June 16, 1904

I am now over halfway done with Ulysses. It has taken me a long time. To understand why it has taken me a long time, let’s review a couple sample sentences [p 383]:

Universally that person’s acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind’s ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipolent nature’s incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary anyone so is there inilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature’s boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be that to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution’s menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?

No. Bullshit. You didn’t really read that. You skipped over it because it was so long and it doesn’t make sense. Go back to the top and read, really really read each and every word. Copy it and paste it, print it out, I don’t care, read it. It’s two sentences from the beginning of a section, the least you can do it read it. You hear me, Newsie? Read that fucking paragraph and suffer with me!!

Okay, you get it? Me neither. Fortunately, the whole book isn’t that tough. Some parts are very literal, some parts are references to mythology, history, and literature that I get - others I don’t. A lot of things are in other languages, mostly Latin, French, and some Italian. Sometimes I can piece the references together by the narrative, sometimes I can’t. You kind of have to move through the whole piece trying to grab the gist of what’s going on, rather than follow every bit of dialogue or (as is often the case with Mr. James Joyce) every thought. Also, he doesn’t really use punctuation or any other form of written language that writers usually use to convey information. I guess this makes him cool, I don’t know.

Here’s what I do know: The story takes place in Dublin, Ireland and is a modern retelling of Homer’s Odyssey. The main character is Leopold Bloom. He has a wife named Molly who has large breasts. He has a daughter named Millie who is just coming to suitors’ age. He has a son, Rudy, who died at childbirth - this seems to lend itself to a lot of pain that Bloom keeps within. Bloom is Jewish and devoted to the free Ireland cause. He works writing and selling ads to newspapers, I have a feeling he’s also into some crooked stuff, but it could just be a sense of suspicion from others because he’s Jewish. His wife is an opera singer. Bloom loves to eat kidneys and have sex with lots and lots of young women. He spends the first part of his day running some errands and going to Paddy Dignam’s funeral. Then he spends the afternoon running errands and going to pubs and talking to people. There are a lot of conversations going on, many which are incomplete and have sometime to do with people fucking around. There’s also lots of talk about Ireland’s sovereignty. Other important (recurring) characters include Simon Dedalus (name is itself a Greek mythologic reference) as a friend of Bloom’s, Stephen Dedalus as the son of Simon and an aspiring writer (and, I’ve heard, as the persona of the author in the novel), and Buck Mulligan as a friend of Stephen’s. And a number of other people, here and there. Currently, I think Bloom is with Stephen and a couple other guys in a whore house with girls named Zoe, Florry, and Kitty. There was a very surreal confrontation between Bloom and the head mistress (head whore?). I think he is starting to figure out the true cost of all his philandering, in the same way the suitors threatened Odysseus’ home. But I’m a little shady about all that because the last fifty pages appear to be visioning a dreamlike hallucination through Bloom’s mind’s eye, and the last hundred pages have been written in a style of some kind of play.

So now I know he’s just fuckin with me.

“It’s been so long, man, I wanna go home...”

:: Freddy F. at 8:31 PM [+] ::
:: (1) comments ::

Foodage

Frozen dinners are the worst food in the world. People eat them all the time for lunches at work. There is an entire aisle dedicated to them at the grocery store. There must be about a dozen well-known brands out there and each on has about thirty choices. This would lead you to think that there is a market for frozen dinners out there, which in turn would lead you to believe that they are actually a decent purchase. No. Much like the reality TV phenomenon that is [still] enthralling America, mass consumption does not correlate to quality.

Falling sucker to this seeming logic of demand, I bought a bunch of frozen dinners. A week or so ago, I had the veal parmesan. I like veal, I like spaghetti, I like green beans. I like putting something in the oven and having a hot meal forty minutes later. I took a bit of the spaghetti - not bad, not Prego and certainly not homemade, but definitely going to do the job. Green beans - acceptable, a little pepper, a little Tabasco, we were rollin. I tried the veal - wretched. Absolutely horrible. Couldn’t swallow the bite. Ate everything but it and threw it out. And I don’t throw out food, but I don’t believe that qualified.

Couple days later, tried another. Disgusting. Aside from yams, the worst ‘food’ I have ever put in my mouth. How do people eat these? I don’t consider myself a food snob, or even all that picky (fall of 1999, yeah, I was pretty picky - by the spring of 2000, I would eat about anything - reason for the change? Dorm hotdogs, if you can eat those, you can stomach about anything), but this was just undoable. It didn’t help matters that I was forced to eat this beef stroganoff frozen dinner with chopsticks as all my forks were in the dishwasher. But now I have four more frozen dinners in my freezer. What do I do with them? Cook them and eat around the meat? Throw them out? Donate them to the homeless (if I do this should I also donate a microwave)? Dig a hole and bury them in my backyard? Mail them to you? I’m the kind of person who can’t justify buying more food until I have eaten what I already have. So until these four little green boxes are out of my freezer, I’m not going grocery shopping. Damn you Healthy Choice - damn you and your 1800 mg of sodium per serving.

And speaking of relatively disgusting, I’ve eaten Doritos my whole life and only now am catching on to the fact that there are only two flavors: cheese and cool ranch. Every other flavor they tell you about is simply a combination of these two original flavors. Think of them as the colors red and blue, and all other Doritos as shades of purple. I tried a bag of Pepper Jack Flavored Doritos, thinking that this would be a nice spicy choice. Not really. I would say three parts cool ranch, one part nacho cheese, then add twice the amount of flavoring as you would to a normal bag. It truly is a wonder that we live in an obese society because all the food we are surrounded by for the most part is just shit.

“I like food; food is good. Juicy burgers, greasy fries, turkey legs, and raw fish eyes...”

:: Freddy F. at 5:00 PM [+] ::
:: (2) comments ::

Red Sox, United Way, God, and the Future

1. The Boston Red Sox. First let me begin with a little status update. I’ve been doing a bad job of getting my necessary base-function sleep the last ten days. A hard weekend, followed by a hard week left me ailing come Friday night. I opted to resuscitate myself over the weekend instead of doing anything more major than keeping up with my chosen sports teams. I got a good amount of sleep, got some stuff done around here, set myself up for breaking into the new week strong and refreshed. Until about 11pm on Sunday when I decided I would stay up for the ALCS game. Two and half hours later, I was finally shutting off the tv to retire. Subsequent games (and my desire to support a team that has the opportunity to beat my most loathed team) have prevented me from catching back up on sleep, thus I am still sick. But. I have watched all the games, and been elated when the Sox pick up the win. If you ask me the only thing worse than being swept 4-0 is being bitch-swept 4-3. Kind of like the only thing worse being a Yankee is being Derek Jeter.

All that being said, I have some suggestions for the Red Sox, if they are looking to trim some of the fat this offseason and put together a team that only needs 9 (not 14) innings to win a game:

1. Johnny “BA .013” Damon - technically only counts as a half, as his defense is solid. But if you gotta keep him around, you might as well put the pitchers in to hit, and put the DH in for him.
2. Manny “Which side’s left field again, coach?’ Ramirez - THE most overrated player since John Rocker. Granted, he makes a good play now and again, but that’s only when he doesn’t get confused running after a ball and chewing gum.
3. Pedro “The Beantown Chokester” Martinez - Someone should notify this guy that while it’s alright for a closer to only pitch one inning, the starter should be able to go more than 3 outs before giving up runs.

But in the end “GO SOX! BEAT THE FUKCING YANKEES!” Then, if it’s Sox/Cards... well, let’s just say I can’t pick friends over friends.

2. The United Way. We’re doing a pledge drive at work. I’d like to pledge - unfortunately, I’m in this grey area where I’m not sure how much I can afford to give. I can’t even make an accurate budget because there are enough hidden expenses in the next year (read: uncertain pay, taxes, student loans, etc) so that if I come up short, I’m in serious trouble. But, to me that sounds like an excuse for not giving to a reputable charity, so I feel bad. Will someone please tell me whether it’s okay to postpone social tithing until I’ve worked for a year, or if I need to just stop bitching and give.

3. God. Time Magazine had an excellent article on the existence of God this week. Excellent. I hate to say that my ecumenical resource is Time, but that’s the facts. Actually, what makes the whole package really good is the story about the Shiite leader in Iraq preceding the cover story and the story regarding dinosaurs (and evolution) on the other end. If you get this magazine, make sure you read this article. If you don’t get this magazine, I suggest you read it at some sort of literary repository or via your local computer screen. Don’t make me threaten you all with Purgatory.

4. The Future. To keep you all in suspense: I will soon write about the existence of God, autumn, green day, work, and Doritos.

I can’t wait. Can you?

“Are we, we are; are we, we are; we are the waiting...”

:: Freddy F. at 11:04 PM [+] ::
:: (4) comments ::

No, You Can’t

But maybe you don’t want to. Maybe I’ve tried so hard to relive the better times that I’ve forgotten about the times I have now. Maybe you do have to start over. That’s hard. I have to meet old friends; they all play different roles now. But I do too, and maybe that’s what I’ve forgotten the most. No one’s left me - I’ve left them. It shouldn’t sound so deliberate, but I was the one who chose the outbound train. We all did. I don’t regret it. But I never notice how I’ve changed; I only see it in others. It’s me too. Maybe it’s me most of all.

This kind of brings me back to square-one. It’s a process, no? If we can define anything, we have to define everything, so I must redefine. And re-emerge.

“And in the darkest night, if my memory serves me right, I’ll never turn back time: Forgetting you, but not the time...”

:: Freddy F. at 8:40 PM [+] ::
:: (6) comments ::

You Can’t Go Back

That’s what they say. I tried. It didn’t work.

The jury’s still out on why, exactly. All I know is that I don’t know much of anything right now, but I’m certainly thankful that my friends are still my friends. And I think this new Green Day album is fucking with my emotions like a bad acid trip.

“The innocent can never last... twenty years has gone so fast...”

:: Freddy F. at 2:36 PM [+] ::
:: (1) comments ::

'T' minus twenty hours

Let the chaos ensue...

'Bllleeeeaaauurrrrgghh!"
:: Freddy F. at 10:36 PM [+] ::
:: (2) comments ::

Nostra-Flex-us

I’m telling you people, we’re in over our heads. We’ve all been stirring this bucket of shit for way too long now, and it’s starting to splash. For a thousand years we have played the Mosaic role of users and abusers of the earth and its natural resources. We have wrecked a havoc in those thousand years that can only be matched by geologic processes over millennia. Now, it’s all coming back around. We see more hurricanes in six weeks than have ever battered the Southeast seaboard in that period before; earthquakes and volcanoes are threatening the other side of the continent, harmless as of yet, but proving to be increasing in magnitude; glaciers are sloughing off into the seas around the Antarctic, raising global sea levels, causing further climate shifts and temperature fluxes throughout the world.

Without wanting to sound too grim or laugh too wickedly (this is a family program, I’d like to keep the kids involved), I’ll say I wouldn’t be too surprised to see these natural disasters continue to escalate in the coming years with little decline. We are going to have to change the way we think about living in places like Florida, California, and the Coasts. No longer will we be able to say that preparing for the proverbial hundred year flood is enough - we must realize the hundred year flood is going to become the fifty or the twenty year flood and we’re going to have to reshape our processes for dealing with this situation.

“Some say a comet will fall from the sky, followed my meteor showers and tidal waves, followed by fault lines that cannot sit still, followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits... One great big festering neon distraction, I’ve a suggestion to keep you all occupied: learn to swim...”

:: Freddy F. at 9:43 PM [+] ::
:: (1) comments ::