inherently different

Archive for December, 2005

I was going to post a video journal, but for some reason, it craps out in the middle… just when I’m explaining how my video would be better than limey’s because I, unlike him, have mastered the English language. I’m trying to work it out so please be patient.

On a more successful note, I’ve built three new players. I intend to customize these players so that they’ll fit any blog color scheme and layout. For right now, the players are about 200 pixels wide which means that anyone with the standard sidebar width of 200 pixels in a three column layout will experience problems. If your sidebar is wider than 200 pixels, no worries. I’m still playing with the player layout and I’m sure I can fit all the various pieces into a 150 pixel wide layout.

NOTE: I’ve revised the players and now you can have your choice between a skinny, healthy player of only 150 pixels in width which is just perfect for those who prefer 3 column blog designs (you know who you are). For a limited time, I will create a custom player skin for you featuring your blogs colors and any artwork you want featured…

Here are the new player options…

Black w/ Green Accents:

Blue with Dark Blue Accents

and Pink with Magenta Accents:

As stated previously, I’ve created a mp3 music player that you can use on your blogs. Implementation is a bit tricky and until I have a few hours to customize the player in different colors, you can play with this one. If you aren’t familiar with the upload file feature on your typepad blog, shoot an email over to me at monkeydiarist at gmail dot com (remove the spaces and replace at and dot with symbols) and I’ll walk you through the process via IM.

If you use a blogger blog, you can still use this player… you just have to find a host for your files.

This could very well deteriorate into a chicken vs egg argument, but Laura (daxahol) made some rather interesting points in her comments to my Useful Idiot post. The big question is: Does the print media control the broadcast media or is the broadcast media controlling the print media… Even if we had an answer to this we could continue arguing the merits of historical and cultural shifts in the idea of attraction and beauty. But as my favorite general, Sun Tzu, once said, "Wage war with one enemy at a time lest your enemies gang up on you and kick you in the crotch!" I’m paraphrasing.

I mean, should we begin our discussion with media (art really) in the early 1500s when Sandro Botticelli was painting pictures of women with "child bearing" hips? Should we move forward to the late 1500s and early 1600s when Peter Paul Rubens was painting larger women and single-handedly gave millions of out of shape women in the future the ability to write RUBENESQUE in their Match.com profiles with a straight face?

The idea that media controls male perceptions of beauty is flawed for the simple reason that men don’t really care. They like what they like. Otherwise you wouldn’t have groups on the Interweb solely devoted to BBW or as some prefer to call them, plumpers.

Women are infinitely more concerned with their weight than men are. So long as you have big breasts and a firm (notice I didn’t say small) ass, you’re golden. Granted, most men want their women to be happy and healthy… but supermodel thin? Doubtful.

But for the sake of argument, lets explore some possible causes for unrealistic perception of women in the media. I could point out that the "ideal" weight isn’t generated by the media as much as it is created by lazy fashion mass merchandisers. I mean, it is much easier to set a standard (such as they are) that is general (size 0, size 1, size 2, size 3, etc) and hope that a majority of women fall into the pre-sized standards. Once the sizes became relatively standard, then the merchandisers saw that certain sizes sold better than others. With that data in hand, they ordered more "small" sizes. This information is shared with fashion magazine editors who in turn extrapolate that the major portion of the female population can be readily placed in the "smaller" size category.

Does this explain it? Hardly.

You then have to take in the very real idea of female vanity. Women don’t want to walk into a shop and buy a size 15… so they’ll buy a size 10 with the idea of dropping some weight and fitting into the new fashion item. Of course, this once again pads the numbers for merchandisers who order more size 10s and less size 15s. It is a vicious cylce of self-loathing. Women don’t want to admit they are bigger than they’d like so they buy smaller sizes in order to motivate themselves into losing weight.

This is an issue of both cultural and economic supply and demand.

Now, Maxim and Stuff and whatever other magazines do publish pictures of highly airbrushed women. But can they be blamed for perpetuating the myth of the female form? Once again it is a chicken egg argument. Are we responding (we as in Men) to an inherent attraction to skinnier women or are we responding to the available media perception? Its hard to say, but I do know that subconciously (and instinctually), the alpha male is more attracted to women with wider/child bearing hips. Historically, men have always liked larger women up until the late 50s and early 60s… guess what happened during that time? Women started controlling fashion magazines rather than just controlling editorial.

Want to blame someone for the start of female objectification and the beginning of the unrealistic interpretation of the general female form? In 1965 Helen Gurley Brown remade Cosmopolitan after the success of her bestseller Sex and the Single Girl.

Overnight millions of fashion mags started to innundate us with incredibly skinny girls who looked "healthier and more vibrant" than the normal housewife.

Am I saying that it is all your fault ladies? Yeah. I am. So long as you keep buying magazines (and fashions) that perpetuate the unrealistic image of women, you have no one else to blame but yourselves.

You’ll notice that almost immediately upon load, music starts playing. The most current working version of the monkey music radio player is on your left. I’m just learning to work with actionscripting so, be gentle with your critique. I know, the other one was nifty, but it was cumbersome to change music. This new one uses an XML play list. Now instead of having to update the FLA, I can just update the XML file and voila! She is done! Anyway, hold your horses and soon I’ll deliver a post (in fact, a video post to rival limey’s christmas post) that will knock your boots off.

And as far as the music player is concerned, here is my christmas gift to each of you… If you want one of your very own, I can customize one for you that you can put up on your own blog. The only thing you would need to do is have some server space available to you… if you’re on typepad, you have plenty of room to both store it and stream the content. I can help you with it if you’re remotely interested.

My Top 5 Films of 2005

05. The Wedding Crashers
04. Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire
03. History of Violence
02. Crash
01. King Kong

Discuss?

There are two stories that I have always been fascinated by. The first is the history of the aztecs and maya. The second is the history of king kamehameha.

While Duane “the rock” Johnson is awaiting a viable script to play the title role in Kamehameha, Mel Gibson has satisfied (at least theoretically) my request for a maya/azteca epic. Apocalypto looks like it might be exactly what I’ve been wishing for.

There are a couple of things wrong with this news story. The first is that any time I hear women complain that media is responsible for creating unrealistic perceptions of the female form, I have to mention that most of the fashion media is directed by women. In fact, the most influential fashion media, women’s magazines, are all directed (at least editorially) by women. So, I think it would be much more truthful to say that women are responsible for creating an unrealistic perception of the female form.

Secondly, I find the research that young girls mutilating a Barbie doll and claiming that they regarded it as an unwelcome reminder of their childhood just the biggest crock of shit ever. Barbie is a fucking doll and if you’re a big enough idiot to believe that she is the "ideal" then you’ve got way more problems than can be singled out by some research team in the UK. If this leap of logic by the researchers (ie, children mutilating their toys is equal to children despising their childhood) is true, what does that say about every single child to ever walk god’s green earth? I blew up most of my toys with explosives, but not because I despised my childhood… it was because I liked blowing shit up. It was cool to blow shit up when I was a kid. In fact, I don’t know any kids that cruised through childhood without destroying a majority of their toys… only anal retentive, obessive compulsives still have the toys they played with as children once they reach adulthood… I would go out on a limb and say that if you still have childhood toys in relatively good shape, you didn’t play with them much.

On a similar note, can I just say that I am aghast at the number of seemingly intelligent adults who blame the media for their problems? I don’t mean to belittle you if you’re one of the tens of millions of people who blame the media for: your obesity, your anorexia, your lack of emotions, your overly aggressive tendencies, your lack of education, your sexual proclivities, your inability to reason like a FUCKING FUNCTIONING ADULT… or whatever the "cry-me-a-river" flaw de jour might be. Fucking take responsibility for your own failures and inadequacies! You’re a loser because for one of two reasons: it is either genetics or somewhere along the way you got lazy and then you couldn’t even be bothered to come up with an original excuse for your ineptitude and you picked the media! It wasn’t TV or magazines that made you that way… no matter how many fucktards in white coats with government grants say that it was.

It’s almost the end of the year. I’ve composed a list of things I want to do. This isn’t a Resolutions type list because lets face it, resolutions are made to be broken and I have no intention of resolving to do these things… I just wish to do them at some point.

I have no illusions and firmly accept that some of these things won’t likely happen without a lot of luck and a great deal of motivation on my part. Others on my list are as simple as making them happen for myself. This year, I’m gonna publish my dreams for 2006 here and hope you all do the same for your dreams on your own blogs.

E’s 20 dreams for 06 in no particular order:

Sell one of my two scripts.
Write more, edit less.
Take more pictures.
Smile more.
Laugh more.
Explore every inch of this island with the Red Queen.
Say Yes more often.
Connect more with people.
Surf more.
Take advantage of my natural abilities.
Finish my novel.
Eat better, but eat less.
Get a job on a golf course.
Become less addicted to my computer.
Read more non-fiction.
Stop cursing like a fucking sailor.
Travel to Europe.
Learn to speak a foreign language (other than spanish… again)
Meet some fellow bloggers.
Put more of my work out for public consumption.

In a few hours, convicted murderer Stanley "tookie" Williams will be executed in California’s San Quentin prison. His execution has been the cause de jour for bleeding hearts all over the US for the last year. It’s funny how the smallest group (anti-death penalty zealots number less than 20% of the overall population) can influence media the way it does.

I know one of the many arguments that anti-death penalty zealots often use is the idea that the death penalty isn’t a deterent to violent crime. I was completely unaware it was supposed to be… I mean, theoretically anyone who murders other people tends to have a very low regard for human life and I doubt very many things could deter them from their chosen path. I tend to look at the death penalty the way I look at cancer.

I mean cancer is something that doesn’t just get better if you ignore it. Quite the contrary, it gets worse. If you want to survive, you have to address it agressively. You excise it from your body. There is no guarantee that this will cure you, but you stand a better chance of surviving if you take it out. The same thing goes with someone who has proven through action to have little regard for the laws of that society. If you want to use the argument that the death penalty isn’t a deterent to violent crime, you also have to admit that incarceration isn’t a deterent either. All things being equal, i’d rather just get rid of your ass permanently.

While we’re on the subject, modern prisons are little more than criminal universities. If you go to prison, you’re not a good criminal (well, cause you got caught, right). Prison actually is where bad criminals (bad as in not good at their chosen craft) learn to be better criminals. Only the dumbest criminals go back to prison for the same offenses. Which means that the streets are full of the best criminals who have learned, through trial, error, and education, to excel at their chosen profession.

I think the utopia people wish our world to be is impossible without realizing that crime can’t be eliminated through incarceration and behavior modification. The only way to stop crime is to eliminate criminals. Make crime, all crime, an untenable position to hold. If you just kill criminals, all criminals (i’m not talking jay walkers here, I’m talking muggers, thieves, murderers, drug dealers, rapists, pedophiles, etc), eventually there won’t be anyone who is willing to commit crimes.

Don’t even get me started on the justice system in this country…

There have been numerous times throughout my life that I have heard the word “Angry” to describe who I am. When someone, fresh from some pop psychology experience (reading books or worse, watching oprah or her moronic minion, Dr. Phil) tells me that they know who I am and what I need, I tend to do something that many people may find appalling. I tell them exactly what I think about them.

In most cases, this includes pointing out all their flaws and what exactly is their root cause. This tends to take the focus off of me, an uncomfortable subject for everyone involved, and brings it back to the real reason they’ve decided to “help” me become self-actualized.

The problem with the rather simplistic “angry” label is that it immediately discounts both my experiences and my intellect from the equation. It basically says volumes about the person who makes the accusation because it lets me know they can’t see beyond the surface of a given situation. I discount these people on merit, but I usually can’t just chalk it up to ignorance. I find it necessary to destroy that little piece of them that feels compelled to “help” other people.

I had a friend who watched Oprah daily, subscribed to her magazine, and basically got sucked in by the marketing machine that created her. One day, after some show that featured Dr. Phil opening up a can of misguided whoopass on some young teenager having problems, she called me and told me that the kid reminded her of me and that the advice Dr. Phil gave him and his parents would help me stop the cycle of anger that I tended to function around.

Now, this friend was many things, but what she wasn’t was without fault. Her sins, those of narcissm, materialism, jealousy, pettiness, and ignorance I always accepted as part of her personality. Accepting her and all her flaws was the price I had to pay to be friends with her. I was prepared to accept it until the cows flew, which is to say I was prepared to accept it indefinitely. Of course, her attempt to point out what she thought was wrong with me did little more than acknowledge that fact that she was a dumb, ignorant, fucktard. One that needed a swift kick in the proverbial teeth.

I laid it out. Simply, succinctly, and completely without the normal gentleness with which I would dance around her flaws even while she was clearly flaunting them in front of me. What happened after I finished speaking wasn’t a surprise… she cried. A lot. Hysterically.

Immediately after she finished crying she hung up on me and didn’t attempt to speak to me for six months or more. I can’t remember how long actually because I put the matter out of my mind. Not because I didn’t care, but because I couldn’t be bothered to worry about whether or not I had ended a friendship that i clearly didn’t need.

I said a lot of horrible things. Things that could have remained unsaid for eternity and neither of us would have ever acknowledged. I told her that since she was so concerned about me and my well-being, I owed her a similar concern and as with such concern, I should immediately attempt to “help” her as she had done for me. Of course, nothing I told her that afternoon was a lie. It was all, unfortunately for her, true. Every flaw, every sin, all of it irrevocably true. And there in lies the heart of most relationship problems. No one is completely honest with the one’s they allegedly “love.”

Brutal honesty has always been much more important to me than gentle lies. Sometimes the truth hurts, but a lie is like a cancer. It grows, it festers, and it tends to do so uncontrollably. You might be reading this and think there are times when a small, white innocent lie told in good conscience is preferable to the temporary pain caused by the truth. I disagree. I disagree because people need the truth in order to make good decisions. Without adequate, reliable information, how can we maneuver through the rather complicated, perilous paths we must take as adults? The terrible lie is one told for all the wrong reasons… for love. If you love someone, you owe them the truth even though it might hurt them.

I don’t lie to people. Ever. If they ask me something, regardless how trivial, they will get the truth. I don’t lie to preserve anyone’s feelings because to be honest, I don’t think I should have any responsibility for how someone feels. I can’t MAKE someone feel anything. People will feel whichever way they choose to feel regardless of what I do or say and that simple fact sets me free to be completely honest with people. I wish more people would do that, but they don’t. Not because they can’t, but because you have to be courageous to tell people the truth. You have to come to terms that some people may take offense, and leave you or end the relationship because they mistake your honesty for cruelty.

I am not a cruel person. I don’t enjoy hurting people. I have left people broken in my wake… but one thing has prevented me from changing… all these people? They all come back. They all come back to me and acknowledge that I did the one thing most people around them fail to do… tell them the truth.

My friend? The Oprah addict? She came back. She apologized for a number of things she has said, and done. She promised to be a better friend and to this day she is still among the few people I value. She changed and all because someone told her the truth. She’s happier now than she’s ever been… thats something years of Oprah and Dr. Phil could never bring her. The truth. It is that simple.