Happy 30th Star Wars!

With this the 30th b-day of the series that took us to a galaxy far, far away I thought I'd present my mini biography of this beloved and often misunderstood film series.

May 25, 1977 - A star is born and like a certain messiah, it's birth is celebrated, but far from world famous. It begins its life in a few theaters but word of the power quickly starts to grow. By the end of this momentous summer everyone would be talking about this prodigy, this wunderkind. Word of mouth made this little cult flick in to a world wide phenomenon. How would this ever top the success it had early on in its life?

May 21, 1980 - The next chapter is released on the world to all the fanfare that the first one lacked. Funny thing is? It's better than the original. It managed to do the impossible, it improved upon itself. The legend had truly arrived as was foretold in the prophecies of hollywoodland. Star Wars mania was in full effect. There was merchandising like which the world had never seen before. Sure there was some from the start, but this was different. This was everywhere. You could hardly blink without seeing a lightsaber or Yoda.

May 25, 1983 - The "final" chapter of the trilogy is released to the biggest release of them all. People lined up for pre-release screening. When it was over Star Wars, for the most part, disappeared from the public eye, but never the public consciousness. Like Elvis before it, it had left the building.

Throughout the later years it would be bought, re-bought and in some cases re-re-re-re-bought on various home media mediums. There was beta, vhs, laserdisc, etc etc. But we were basically worshiping something that had made nothing new since the summer of '83. Then 14 years later, on the 20th anniversary of the original, we were told we would again be able to relive the magic in the theaters with shiny new effects and digital sound and all the toys that make us pocket protector types drool. We would receive the "Special Editions" homogenized, pasteurized, drip dried and ready to show. It was like a second coming.

So off to the theaters we went in the fall of '97 to see our baby reborn, so to speak. We'd spent so many years watching and loving this child that this was practically the prom or graduation or who knows. Here we were again sharing what we'd kept like Gollum in our caves for so long. And out walks this tarted up version of our baby. Needless to say we were offended. Nay, we were outraged. You changed it?! We wanted more, but you changed it? Greedo shoots first?? @$#%#$%#!!!1!! In retrospect, and I'm not by any means defending these changes, but this really was our baby after a nose job. She didn't look the same and we didn't like it because of that. Unfortunately this began the turncoating. We began to turn our backs on our baby. Perhaps it was finally leaving the nest, or maybe it had just found someone better and younger. The story could end here, but this was just midpoint.

So by now we knew that a whole new trilogy was coming. We had but wait a mere two years from this "special" re-release to be treated to a truly original tale in our fabled galaxy far (sigh) far away. Past bruises were forgiven, a blank slate created and all forgiven. We were ready to love this quasi sibling to our original child...

May 19, 1999 - The lines are truly drawn now. There is the whole new generation who sees no fault in this newest incarnation. There is the old generation who sees red at the mere mention. In what can only be described as a true love it or hate it, it is what it is. This, in my mind, is the first time our baby got arrested. We were supremely disappointed but in the end we will try and view this as a misstep.

May 16, 2002 - This is better, but the detractors are still voicing their disgust. It's as if millions of nerds went online and were suddenly heard forever. With the global voice now able to fully express its collective opinion, you can't help but hear the boos. I was proud of my baby's ability to bounce back since the arrest. It showed that it's still not perfect, but that it still has some life left in it.

May 19, 2005 - What is being called the true final chapter in this story though perhaps not the yada yada galaxy. Naysayers be damned I am proud as ever in my baby. For a 28 year old once child prodigy, I think it's still pretty impressive. Sure it's made some changes and it isn't the same fresh faced genius we once knew, but that's what love is. Love is sticking by someone no matter what path they go in life. Love is accepting that things may not go the way you plan them in your mind and learning to accept the changes. Love is Star Wars. Happy 30th you big crazy, new nose baby. We still love you.

Internet killed the radio star?

So the RIAA have found another way to shoot themselves in the foot. What with DRM that is constantly broken and now the increasing pressure put on radio both streaming and terrestrial, they are going to end up promoting piracy. I will fully admit that I have stolen music off the Internet. Who of us that knows how hasn't at some point? Have I stopped buying music legitimately? Not at all. I would, in fact, buy more if there was an option to buy digital music sans DRM. The main reason I don't buy music as much any more is the quality of the music itself. I know that there are good independent artists out there, but I have a constant battle to find new music. I've basically given up at this point. I've accepted that I'm old and have more or less locked in to the bands and music that I grew up with.

I was all over the service Pandora. I admit I didn't use it as much as I'd like because most of my sit in front of the computer time is either at work or while gaming at home and streaming wouldn't work either way. When I could use it I did discover new music. This is what promotes growth and sales. I don't, and haven't, listened to standard radio in years. If television is hard to suffer through commercials, radio is a thousand times worse. They talk over music, play annoying locally produced commercials and lastly the quality is less then ideal. Pandora allows you to start with something you like and listen to similarly themed music. A brilliant idea and very well executed. The quality was also superb for a streaming music system. This new legislation could put Pandora and similar services out of business.

The recording industry has made their fortune off of re-selling you music you've previously purchased for years. First you had it on LP, then 8-track, then cassette and finally CD. You may have even been conned in to the mostly failed mediums of SACD or DVD-Audio. Now we're looking at taking our music digital. CD was digital but it was still fallible. You could scratch a CD, lose it or any number of other problems. Assuming you make multiple copies of a digital file (MP3 or otherwise) that file will always play the same no matter how many times you play it. I think the RIAA is scared. This may the format that actually has a shelf life. You could (in theory) never need to buy your music ever again. So I believe that instead of accepting this they are inventing ways to destroy this medium. There will always be new music and people to consume it, but I think that they have become so used to selling the same albums so many times the thought of selling one copy to one person one time is terrifying them.

I think what's more scary is how powerful the RIAA actually is. They have so much money and influence that they have consistently put lobbyists in Washington and have pushed policies through. The DMCA was/is asinine in many ways and it looks like we're poised to further these corporate greed laws even more.

I'm All Out

So one of my weekly rituals for the last year or so was to play in a poker game. It started out as just a group of friends but has gradually gotten bigger and bigger. We play for $20 a game where first place takes most of the pot and second gets their 20 back and half of any buy ins. You can win a decent amount here and there, but it's really just for fun because eventually you break even. I always just saw it as something to do and good practice for someone who usually plays online only.

We started off with one guy who would talk a lot of trash. We got used to him because he'd act like a poker guru and then proceed to lose just as much as anyone else. You smack talk doesn't count for much if you don't actually have the chops to back it up. Even still the true pros just sit back and rake in the chips. I say let your actions dictate not your mouth (you hear that Hellmuth?). He was an acquired taste, but we just learned to accept it, ignore it and he'd usually shut up eventually when we didn't respond to his antics.

Now we have a lot of new blood. The original talker is gone and like some sort of evil hydra a new even more obnoxious head has sprung from the severed wound. I realized something this last weekend that my friendly game that I used to look forward to and was with from the very beginning is not the same game anymore. The stakes haven't changed but the attitude has. Last time, before I got there, I was in one of the best moods I can remember being in for a very long time. Then I get to the game, play the way I always do and leave pissed off and in a terrible mood. It's then that I realized it's time to cut my losses and move on.

Sure you can talk to somebody and ask them to change the way they behave, but you're always going to have that hanging over you. You're not going to forget it and they certainly won't. In the end it just isn't really worth it. There are some weeks I didn't want to go because I'd rather just take a precious weekend day off and relax. Others I knew I didn't feel like putting up with the BS involved with the entire scene. Now I feel justified to just walk away altogether.

This really is all just backstory to say what I really feel about the whole thing. I hate trash talking. I'm all for friendly ribbing and everything but the people who don't know where to draw the line and have actual venom behind their remarks have something loose in their noggins. Not to get all psychological on the subject, but I really feel that the people who come off the loudest actually have very tiny egos. They're insecure and they feel like if they make enough noise then people won't notice how scared they are. It's like turning up the amp really loud to cover the fact that you really can't play guitar. Most people who are secure with themselves and their abilities don't feel the need to broadcast it to everyone around them. This is why you'll hear plenty of times when Phil Hellmuth is walking away from a table after losing how he is "the best player in the game." Well Phil, the best player who can do no wrong would be at the final table every single time. You might as well call yourself an expert dice thrower because poker is both a game of luck and skill. You may be good, but you can't control luck.

Can't Sleep Clowns Will Eat Me..

Well I had one of those nights where you just can't shut your brain off last night. I don't get major insomnia that often but it hit me with a vengeance last night. Sat in bed just thinking of ridiculous things for hours. I'd try and clear my mind and next thing you know I'm thinking about the plot from last week's Entourage or some crap like that. Then I'm thinking of elaborate pranks I would like to pull on people. It was absolutely bizarre. I didn't want to be thinking of these incoherent things I was trying to get a good nights sleep.

I eventually just got up and went to sit at my computer for about half an hour. I'm such a geek that I was googling ways to help yourself sleep. I even tried the Dream Machine in your web browser but that had no effect on me. I then sat reading about the difference between Alpha, Delta and Theta waves and the relaxation effects of them. Eventually I wandered over to some site selling sleep enhancing ambient music with all the various waves. It was like $2 for a CDs worth of music so I picked one (appropriately named Insomnia I believe) and payed the piper. I was desperate. So I cranked on the "music" which was pretty much just several notes played over and over and eventually drifted off to slumberland not an hour or three too late.

The only explanation that I can come up with is something I realized today. I screwed up at work yesterday and didn't really realize it till today. While working on a computer I accidentally forgot to grab some files that were supposed to be backed up and then proceeded to re-image the machine. Thus I had killed any reasonable chance to retrieve these files. I didn't consciously realize this until this morning when I went to return the machine. Makes you wonder if there is some part of your brain that keeps a total log of a day's events and this was the freaky bouncing apple update telling me that I had forgotten to do something important. All I'm hoping is that next time the signs are a bit clearer cause god knows I need my beauty sleep. After all I'll take all the help I can get with that.

The decline of Western Civilization...

...has already happened. This is not to say that we aren't better off now then any other time in recorded history, but we are not at the standards that we should be. Sure we have medicine, sanitation, available housing for the masses, but does this make us civilized? To me it is more than a simple equation of technology. In a sense there were times that we were more civilized than modern times.

There used to be simple things like courtesy and decency that have gone the way of the dodo for the most part. Don't believe me? Do something simple like drive down a highway and see how people behave. Driving is, for most people, a simple act that requires little cognitive brain function. It's like walking. You don't consciously think about every step you take, you just do it. Now it seems that people are so distracted with their own petty lives to even let a moments thought for others enter their crowded minds. Try to merge. You have to fight your way over most of the time. I know there are times when we've all been in a hurry and for a brief moment you prioritize yourself over others on the road. This happens. This isn't all the time. Everyone needs to step back and realize that the world does not revolve around you. Sure we can all be guilty of this behavior from time to time, but now it seems to be a constant. A complete lack of courtesy for anyone other then oneself.

There is the saying that there is honor even among thieves. This may have been true at one time, but not anymore. About the only example of this you'll see these days is that even inmates in a maximum security prison who themselves have done the most horrific of things don't tolerate violence on children. A typical child molester or murderer will be done in by their fellow inmates long before our snails pace justice system can be burdened to do it themselves. Is this justice? Abso-posi-lutely. There is no excuse for defiling innocence. Someone who can consciously do this doesn't have it all going on upstairs if you know what I mean. They will probably never be made better through rehabilitation. Sometimes we have to understand that not everything that is broken can be fixed. I would describe myself as a fairly liberal person, but in terms of certain things I have no patience for the so called bleeding hearts. It's not that crime is a new thing, it's the levels that it's reached. It was commonplace for a murder to occur in the past, but now it's a step further and it's in our faces 24 hours a day through the globally connected media networks. It's almost as though these broken people are trying to "outdo" each others exploits to gain at the very least notoriety. I'm not saying we should report the horrific news along with the good, but I think it's wrong for it to pervade our airwaves and print media to the extinct that it does. This only encourages the criminal mind to become a media star through something they were probably going to do anyway. Only now they have to outdo the last wacko.

I know that I present a lot of negative here, but this is to be my dumping ground for all things that make me sick. I really am an optimistic person and it's that optimism that makes me that much more sick when I see what we are becoming as a society. We have the technology, we have the resources, we must rebuild our consciousness now. Call it the $6 million psychology session. Do something with your life that is beyond you. Care about someone. Not a non-corporeal figure you see on the television, somebody you will never meet and will never know your name. Not a celebrity or star of infamy. Give a damn about things close to you wherever you go. This will go a long way in making the world a better place. We'll work on the rest later.