Socialism!
When I awoke this morning, I crawled over to the computer to check the news. This has been my Saturday ritual for a long time now. So, when I opened up the old Huffington Post RSS feed and saw this fine bit of news, I finally saw the light!
All these years, I had been using the word “socialism” entirely incorrectly. I’d always thought that socialism meant, you know, “a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.” That’s what I get for using those faulty liberal dictionaries! It is indeed fortunate that we have people like Steve King who can come along and set the record straight on this word by illustrating its proper use, as a word to denote anything that is opposed to one’s own personal beliefs!
I did some more research on the matter and found this:
Given all this new information, I have decided to expand upon my definition of socialism in at least the following ways (more to come as I can think of them):
- When a vending machine takes your money and doesn’t give you anything, that is socialism. Obviously a redistribution of wealth going on there. No wonder Coca-Cola uses red for the color of their cans!
- When a person on the highway cuts you off or passes you on the shoulder of the road… socialism! Obviously a godless socialist afraid of being put in front of a death panel for being late for one of his godless socialist indoctrination meetings.
- When any person disagrees with you… obvious socialism. Rabble-rousers and dissenters are trying to fool the American people with their satanic “facts” and “textbook definitions” and other vile LIEberal dreck. As Stephen Colbert so elegantly put it: “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
- When any person agrees with you but doesn’t do so in a sentence that includes ACORN, SEIU, Ayers, Kenya, Marx, terrorists, birth certificates, the President hating the country he leads, the Antichrist, Hitler, Stalin, witch doctors, welfare queens, Rev. Wright, wives who hate the country their husbands lead, relatives who are illegal aliens, being friends with Ahmadinejad, being friends with Kim Jong-Il, being friends with Satan yet being atheist, and jack-booted thugs putting Grandma down when she stops contributing to society… if any of those elements are missing from the conversation, then, well… it’s not an automatic determination of socialism, but the person probably sympathizes with the left. At the very least, he’s a nigger-lover like Jimmy Carter.
- When a cashier gives you back incorrect change… socialism. That new liberal math will take away your hard-working white dollars and distribute it to LAZY PEOPLE, only LAZY PEOPLE, as anyone who doesn’t have the same job as you or the same lot in life as you is LAZY.
Thank you, Steve King, for showing me the error of my ways!
Dragon*Con 2009
Dragon*Con 2009. Whoo boy. Where to start.
For those who don’t know, Dragon*Con is an annual gathering of tens of thousands people in Atlanta to share their love of science fiction, fantasy, and other geeky endeavors. It is always over Labor Day weekend and it is always a spectacle to behold, as a good many of the attendees dress up as their favorite characters. There are lots of geek celebrities in attendance (like William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) and tons of events, including concerts, parties, discussion panels, movie marathons, gaming marathons, and vendors selling all kinds of strange and wonderful things. There is so much stuff to see and do that it is distributed across four hotels downtown. It is, in short, a freak show par excellence.
For one thing, I am still somewhat shocked that I took the advice of an extremely enthusiastic (and nerdy) gay couple that I only met a few months prior and attend one of the nation’s largest geek conventions with them. I mean, I don’t generally do things like this. Anyone who knows me knows that I generally don’t go out of my way to go to large gatherings of people… especially when it costs money. But, I think at some point this past spring, I realized that I’m not getting any older, and that it’s always better to regret things you’ve done than to regret things you didn’t do, and nothing ventured nothing gained, and maybe a handful of other cliches too. So, why not? I mean, the worst that could happen would be that someone mugs me and murders me in some back alley of Atlanta… and that’s not terrible in the grand scheme of things. What did I have to lose?
Fortunately for me, I was neither mugged nor murdered. As a matter of fact, I had a surprisingly enjoyable time, in the company of people whom I have come to consider real friends. I felt like I fit in there among the geeks and the weirdos–it was lovely. There is so much that could be said about the trip, but so much that should probably remain unsaid in case certain parties ever stumble across the blog. Let’s just say that most of us spent the weekend in a blissed-out, boozed-out, sex-fueled haze, punctuated with pirates, vampires, steampunks, goths, furries, gamers, zombies, ninjas, elves, faeries, and other things too numerous to list. And while the debauchery might have made me feel like I was in college again, the games and characters that I saw made me feel like I was back in high school. This was the very best kind of nostalgia, coupled with a wondrous assemblage of things and people never even dreamed of previously.
I’m very glad I went and I have now become something of a Dragon*Con evangelist. Knowing the tastes of my other friends, I know that they would have a blast, and I would very much like to show them the wonderful and strange place that is downtown Atlanta over Labor Day weekend.
I’ll leave you with a bit of music by the Crüxshadows, a goth/darkwave band that is a perennial favorite at the ‘Con. I heard this song throughout the weekend as we ventured through the lower reaches of the Atlanta Marriott, so in my mind it became the default theme song for my first ‘Con experience. And yes, I admit it: I think the lead singer Rogue is cute. I’ve always had a thing for the goth boys.
We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now
This video seemed somehow relevant to the political events of the last couple of days. (Well, if not the video, then at least the artist.)
Never really realized how attractive Mr. Biafra was.
Musings on Bruno
I finally went last night and watched Bruno. Being a casual fan of Sacha Baron Cohen and hearing the wide range of buzz the film was getting (both positive and negative), I felt I needed to check it out for myself and determine which buzz was more accurate.
In case you didn’t know, the gay community has been fairly polarized on the subject of Bruno. A fairly sizeable minority dislike the movie primarily because it reinforces common stereotypes about gay people. According to these people, when your average American straight who knows no openly gay people sees the bleach-blonde, leather-clad Bruno with various objects in his “arschenhaller”, it’s just going to confirm very negative views of gay people in their minds. Furthermore, some are saying the ignorant and petty Eurotrash with obsessions of sex, fashion, and fame is little more than a modern-day minstrel show, except now it’s “queerface” instead of blackface to ridicule the minority. The overall opinion of the movie’s naysayers is that Cohen doesn’t really care about any potential damage the movie does, as long as the movie rakes in the money.
On the other hand, there is another camp (no pun intended) that believes overall, Bruno will have a positive effect on the gay community. Sure it’s offensive, these people say–that’s Cohen’s schtick–but the movie hits homophobes hard, very hard. Many people may not realize the extent and depth of the homophobia in society at large, so in a way, this movie brings it to people’s attention where it can be exposed for all to see, a la that parable about sunlight being the best disinfectant. And by the way, homophobia isn’t the only topic of interest in Bruno–the movie utterly decimates in other areas also, highlighting ignorance, shallowness and hypocrisy on many fronts, regarding many topics. Furthermore, this movie works on two levels, because the people being targeted aren’t just the ones in the film. Like all of Cohen’s characters, Bruno is as much directed toward the audience as it is to the people Cohen is pranking, and with that, this film is bound to cause viewers to challenge their own views and question their own responses to what they’re seeing on the big screen.
Now, my two cents…
Having seen the film, I think both sides have it partially right. Overall I think Cohen is ridiculing both homophobia as well as some of the more vapid and shallow tendencies in a certain segment of gay culture. I do not think the film was made with any sort of humanitarian purpose in mind–Cohen plays both sides of the fence to make money. But this is to be expected, because his other characters all work the same way as Bruno. Consider a side-by-side comparison between the two characters.
| Borat | Bruno | |
| Non-American w. ridiculous accent? | Yes | Yes |
| Amalgamation of stereotypes? | Yes (the “ignorant backwoods foreigner”) | Yes (the “shallow, sex-obsessed queer”) |
| Plays on people’s prejudices? | Yes (xenophobia, etc.) | Yes (homophobia, etc.) |
| Exposes other kinds of ignorance? | Yes (racism, misogyny, etc.) | Yes (celebrity worship, ‘gay conversion’, etc.) |
| Uses crude humor to make people in the film uncomfortable? | Yes | Yes |
| Uses crude humor to make people in the audience uncomfortable? | Yes | Yes |
Finding so much similarity in Cohen’s general comedic approach, I feel fairly sure that this movie was not a jab at gays per se, just as Borat was not a jab at the real-life people of Kazakhstan. Rather, Cohen takes a sample from a culture unknown to many “mainstream” people in middle America, and uses their unfamiliarity with that culture for his comedic ends. The extent to which Cohen is ridiculing his own characters is debateable–I believe Cohen’s interest lies in the realm of perceptions and misperceptions, and I do not think Cohen focuses on any demographic defined by any physical characteristic. Via the presentation of his characters, it is clear that Cohen is opposed to the racist bigotry of Borat and the vapid trendiness of Bruno. But he is equally opposed to those ugly world views he draws out of people in response to his caricatures and contrived situations.
In the end, I can say that Bruno is probably the most intellectual movie I’ve ever seen that had full frontal nudity and unsimulated sex scenes. For that, I must recommend it. I’d also recommend seeing it with straight friends to see how they react. As my friend Matt remarked when we walked out of the theater, “it makes you think.”
Fairy Tales with Dennis Franz
Embarrassed to admit this made me laugh:
The Old Popularity Index
