IF YOU DON'T READ MY BLOG YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!!! SERIOUSLY!!!

I've noticed, over the years, that there are lot of emails out there where people get very bossy and demanding. Not only do they want you're undivided attention, they want the undivided attention of the entire universe. if you don't open the email you're part of the problem. if you don't read the email you're contributing to the collapse of socieity. if you don't agree with the email after reading it, it must be supposed that something is horribly wrong with you. and, finally, if you don't forward the email to everybody you've ever met or thought about meeting then you're complicit with the entire universe imploding in on itself and ceasing to exist.

I've included a few specimens to help clarify the issue. none of this stuff, to my knowledge, is copyrighted. I'm posting them here for the fair usage of ridiculing the self-importance of such emails.

for your reading enjoyment:

"Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. So, extend yourself a bit and send this on and on and on! Let us hope that thousands, world wide, read this and think about it, and send it on - before it's too late."

" DO NOT DELETE WITHOUT READING ! "

"Read This - Important and if it gets your goat, kill the goat!"

"If this doesn't bother you then just delete the message. If, on theother hand, if it does raise the hair on the back of your neck, I hope youforward it to every legal resident in the country including every representative inWashington, D.C. - five times a week for as long as it takes to restoresome semblance of intelligence in our policies and enforcement thereof...."

"if you agree with this then pass it on"

"Now don't delete this message, because it comes from a veryspecial angel SOMEBODY NEEDS YOU TO SEND THIS TO THEM"

"Please don't delete this until you send it on. Everyone on the planet needs to read this."

"Think about this: If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone -- YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM! It is Time for America to Speak up. If you agree -- pass this along, if you don't agree --- delete it!"

"AND NOW A LITTLE FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY: We all send thousands of jokes through the e-mail without a second thought, but when it comes to sending messages about life choices, people hesitate. The crude, vulgar, and often obscene pass freely through cyber space, but public discussion about decency is too often suppressed in our schools and workplaces."


and, if you slackers didn't read this far... you guessed it...
YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM! :P

"9"

so, I watched this film with Jeremiah this morning.

it LOOKED nice. I enjoyed the character designs, which have oft been described as "stitch-punk", which I guess makes an allusion to "steam-punk" or something.

but the writing was sloppy-- only the most thread-bare attempt at describing how humanity was overthrown by machines was explained. that still does absolutely nothing to explain why all of the machines are based on animals and use an odd mixture of cloth, metal, and animal parts.

the plot, if there IS one, involved rediscovering a magical artifact that will solve everything. the characters are fairly one-dimensional-- although the acting was passably good for such thinly written characters.

it was hard to care about any of the characters. this story has been done over and over again a thousand times before-- and there's nothing to make this post-apocalyptic 'survivor' movie interesting apart from it's CGI animated aesthetics. the machine has no motivation at all, other than to erradicate everything that moves apart from itself. at least with "WALL-E" we could see that the movie's main antagonist was acting in accordance with its programming and directives. it wasn't trying to be an evil monster-- it was simply acting in the only logical way it could-- within it's limited pre-programmed understanding. I must follow orders, and my primary order is to keep everybody away from Earth.

"9" doesn't really have any of that. you can't call it a voyage of self-discovery--because the main character learns almost nothing about himself or the others. this movie should have been much better than it was-- but the ideas were so pedestrian that it needed to be rescued by great artwork and animation-- and it just wasn't that fantastic. not good enough to justify watching this movie ever again.

it was frustratingly dull in the same way that "Terminator Salvation" was dull-- this was like "Terminator Salvation" with half-stitched muppets. you'd think that "Terminator" meets Muppets would be awesome--but no such luck!

oh well, at least it was only a matinee price.

Snoopy and the Red Baron

so, out of nostalgia I ordered a copy of this book online. got it in the mail yesterday. it's not a great book, by any means. it doesn't have a plot--it's mostly a series of vignettes or episodes strung together in a hap-hazzardly "chronological" manner. I read through the whole thing (for the hundredth time, probably) in about three minutes. but it's still fun.

I forgot about the colored pages... which at first I wasn't so sure of, but I remembered that the book I read as a child also had black line-work and lettering on variously colored pages.

it's kinda funny. when I was a kid I absolutely loathed nostalgia. the idea of fondly remembering time pasts always seemed to be associated with this romantic notion of the past being inherently glorious and wonderful than the present. the idea of "the old days were better than these" seemed a foolish and destructive way of thinking. it also seemed to be wholly irrational and sentimental in nature.

so, here I am, purchasing a copy of a book that I loved as a child. and while it retains the shadow of it's former charm--it clearly does not enthrall me in the way that it once did. it is now not so "awesome" as it is "charming" or "cute"... perhap even "quaint".

but it's also worth remembering that Charles Schultz was something of a revolutionary in the sphere of comics in that he even granted a dog the liberty of having an imagination! that a ordinary, if you could dare to call Snoopy that much, dog could have wild and bizarre fantasies of being a romantic warrior-knight of the air.

Schultz was obviously influenced by the plethora of purple prose narratives and novels released during the Inter-War period. oddly enough, this book had no impact on my choosing the path of an amateur WWI aviation 'historian' (for lack of a better word, I like to research this historical stuff for fun).

nah, the main influence towards me pursuing this path was a video game released way back called "Red Baron" that got the ball rolling.

but... more on this kinda stuff later

what I'm reading right now:

"Pride and Prejudice"
this book is a lot of fun. it's hard to wrap my head around the language at times, but I can infer what is being said after reading through things twice.

"Pride and Prejudice and Zombies"
not quite as fun as the original--but still pretty entertaining. the original Jane Austen is actually more amusing for me. in spite of the claims to the contrary on the back of this book!

"All Quiet on the Western Front"
this is supposedly the greatest novel about WWI ever written (I'll get to some of the others later)... and while I'm enjoying this book a great deal... I find myself at odds with some of the rather vacant theories being put forth by the narrator! the idea that somehow one generation is intrinsically more trustworthy and honest than another is something that only a foolish and ridiculous young man or women could come up with. even when I was in the midst of puberty and all-knowingness I never once imagined that my generation was somehow wiser and superior to all preceeding generations-- but, this appears to be a fairly common assumption on the part of some young people in every generation.

I'm not much of a blogger--and I'm never going to be one of those thorough and systematic philosophers.  I'm too busy working my day job or creating stuff to be a good scholar.

I look at myself now and see a second rate artist, third rate composer, and a fourth rate scholar-- I'm am amateur at everything... and I guess I don't feel especially bad about it.  I use amateur in the best possible sense of that word, knowing that it has terrible connotations as well.

finished working 12 days in a row this last Friday--and I'm STILL pretty tired!  I think Friday ended up being 13 consecutive hours of labor punctuated by a 15  minute break and a 40 minute lunch.  I can't even remember if we took the last break or not.  it doesn't bother me either way-- we got the job done.  that's the important thing.

I don't see my job as just some mundane or boring thing-- I feel as though it's important to do things well.  I've always tried approaching work as though there's no such thing as an unimportant or worthless task.  if you're there to work, do it well, even if you don't like it.  don't just stand there if you've finished one task, try to go out and find something else--  if there's really THAT little to be done at work I usually head straight for home and work on some music or artwork.

I find myself torn between two desires this weekend-- to start working on some more personal creative projects, or to just bum around the house and sleep!

Phyrric Victory

oh yeah, I ordered a book called "Phyrric Victory:  French Strategy and Operations in the Great War"

most histories of World War One (aka "the Great War") focus almost exclusively on the British.  there are some books that cover the United States and it's delayed involvement in the war--but the vast preponderance of literature is Anglo-centric.  we can't ignore the new influx of German-based books in the English language (Jack Sheldon is probably the leading exponent of improving WWI scholarship in English on this matter)... but the French have been largely ignored.

it's a shame, really, because the French sacrificed more than any other Allied nation during WWI.  certainly it made far more of a contribution than the British or the Americans--and yet, most histories in English act as though it was the British and the Americans that won the war.

the Germans get mentioned, but frequently so as to point out how glorious the Allied victory was.  

the French have generally been cast in a VERY POOR light in modern military history-- but part of the problem with that is that they couldn't have won the war without outside help.  truth be told, NONE of the Allied nations could have done it alone.  England certainly couldn't defeated Germany alone--not when it was being sent supplies and technology from American and France!

I'm rambling--but I'm looking forward to learning more about the French contribution to the Great War.  too much time has been spent rehashing the British and American perspectives at the great expense of the French, Italians, and Russians.

Military History Journal Spring-2009

there's an article called "Lashing Back" by Benny Morris that got me thinking.

it's about the 1947-1948 war between the formative Israeli state and their Palestinian/Arab counterparts.

without delving into the article too deeply there were a few points that stand out:

1.  the Israelis were immigransts.  many of them were urban and educated.  they had a defining 'national' identity.  although many of them spoke different languages and probably had special little 'cliques' or enclaves to seperate them somewhat--they were also 'united' in their sense of "Jewishness" whether they actually practiced the faith or not.

2.  the immigrants had a powerful motive to find a new safe haven, a place to call their own.  they feared (and rightly so) a second Holocaust unless they could secure a land for themselves.  Stalin had already begun purging Jews in Russia--so their fears about the local Arabs and Palestinians was well founded.

3.  the Arab world, although united in their contempt for the Jews (which I use in the most general sense--as surely many of these 'culturally Jewish' people were probably atheists by now) were NOT united together.  which is a significant detail.  sure, they had a common enemy, but many of them also hated each other.  while the Arabs might pledge loyalty to their clan, tribe, or warlord they had no greater sense of community or 'national' identity in the same (albeit artificial) sense that the Jews had.

4.  war is a viciously unpleasant business.  one must create an artificial and even exaggerated conflict of "us against them".  one of the big problems that the Arabs and Palestinians had was that, for lack of a better way of putting it, there was no "us against them" so much as "THEM".  while the Israelis had managed to organize themselves for war--the Arabs could not unite themselves against their enemy.  there was still too much of the rural mentality, I suppose.

I guess what I'm driving at, is comparing the recent elections in America to the Israeli Palestinian conflict-- I see a common thread.  urban vs rural conflict.  however, the comparison obviously fails because all rural Americans still acknowledge that they're part of one nation-state:  the United States of America.  

I was thinking about large cities--where you have millions of people who don't know each other, and really couldn't care less about one another--but they can be unified by this artificial sense of "togetherness" when called upon by the city-state.

they have a larger, artificially-instilled sense of community that goes far beyond mere neighborhoods, or place of employment.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the Israelis were able to win because they were better organized, they had a stronger sense of national identity, and were willing to put aside their internal differences to win the war.  I've noticed in my various readings that the Palestinians and Arabs were unwilling to, or incapable of, doing the same thing.

the Arab leadership, although no less self-interested than their Israeli adversaries, apparently couldn't set aside their own sense of benefit and self-preservation.

it's worth pointing out that Benny Morris is a prof at Ben-Gurion University--so he's naturally a bit biased.    still, it's an interesting read.  I could draw this out longer... but that seems rather unreasonable at this point.