Saturday, July 30, 2016

JULY - EPISODE VII: SUMMER 2016


WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE VII: SUMMER 2016
Hello People of the World;

Here we are, beyond the mid-point of the year. Are you still writing “2015” on everything? So many people are already giving up on our society because are not getting the things we want. Suck it up.

Let’s get this month’s edition started, shall we?

1:[ I do not know what is worse, every artist ironically covering Miley Cyrus' "Wrecking Ball" or stupid John Mayer Trying-to-be's covering it un-ironically….

2:[ I read this story about how a black woman was comforted by a policeman after the Dallas Cop shootings, saying "it's a tough time to be either of us". Sorry, but it's not. When cops are killed, the entire nation searches for justice. When a black person killed by police, without reason, the entire nation searches for justification.

Also, stop sending thoughts and prayers. Your thoughts and prayer do nothing. Not, unless your thoughts and prayers are "I hope the police keep killing black people."

Let’s get real: if you are posting or supporting “ALL LIVES MATTER” shouldn’t you be out there with the protestors too? Because when All Lives Matter, that means Black Lives Matter too….

3:[ The whole Presidential Election debacle is the primary reason I became apolitical. No matter how much you espouse a revolutionary epistemology, you will always sell-out your core beliefs and your followers to maintain a status quo, all because you think you made “small gains”….

4:[ Neil Postman references Aldous Huxley in the Forward to his great work, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”; “As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions".”

We now live in a world where we are chained to our cell phones in almost every capacity. We attack those who do not have the latest versions of this technology and we attack those who do not share in the enjoyments they bring. I am reminded of George Lucas’ most overlooked and underrated work “THX-1138” about a dystopian future where mankind only exists to produce to consume. They work hard to earn credits to purchase thing like the new Orange Geometric Sphere. Even reproduction is used to produce more workers and consumers. It is revealing in how long-sighted Lucas was.

Which brings me to the Hypocrisy of defending Pokemon Go: "At least it makes kids go outside" has been the rallying cry and is such a lazy argument. If it takes a phone game to get your child outside, then you are a shitty parent to begin with. Beside, almost all of the players I have seen thus far have been THE parents.

Funny, (not funny) story; I was on a CTA bus where every single person was on their phones, playing the game. There was a mother who was on her phone the whole time. When her daughter asked to play, she was shushed and told her, "It's not for you."

Instead, the child got wiggly and looked out the window remarking to her mom and pointing out all she saw. Then, "Mommy, I think that man is being hurt by that other man."

I looked and there was a fight going on, but it looked like many people where trying to stop it and calling 911. The mom just shushed her again, without looking up, swiped her phone and said, "gotcha."

Then, told her child to sit still.

On the way here to this coffee shop where I type this, I ran across a mother dragging her son through the streets. All the kid wanted was to go to the playground and climb and play and be a kid. But no. "We have to go over here first!"

I love seeing these folk pat themselves on the back like they are doing something revolutionary, when they just sold out more of their autonomy to their cell phones. I love seeing people defend their brainwashed enthrallment to a phone device that schedules their lives. I love how divisive it gets when other people simply do not like the same shitty things YOU like….

5:[ My Thoughts on The New Ghostbusters Movie: I honestly have no clue as to why this received the vehemence it did. We all screamed “not another remake” and “has Hollywood run out of idea?” Yet, we are on the cusp of a huge wake of remakes and reboot, yet now that this movie opened and did okay, we are not screaming but those things any more.

Let’s face it. This was never going to be a well regarded as the original. I hate defenders of the sequel, as if that was a good movie. The original is a lot like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” in that you cannot recreate the conditions to keep making sequels with the same feel and success of the original. You cannot bring the cast, many of which REFUSED to do any more Ghostbusters movies, back to make a third film that would somehow magically be unlike every other late-coming sequel. You just cannot.

So, I agree with Mike Stolaska of Redletter Media when he said that you can only change the gender. While he ended up hating this movie, he is correct. Is doing this a gimmick? Well, it is not a gimmick to the women actors taking part, it's another big project they are included on. I mean, right now there are two John Carpenter remakes in the works - "Big Trouble in Little China" with The Rock, which every one seems okay with, and "Escape from New York" which everyone states "Could be good in the right hands". Which prompts me to ask, Why are we not as outraged about THESE REMAKES as we were about "Ghostbusters"?

Why did we dig in on this one, why this one movie in particular?

6:[ Why Boycotts NEVER work: Someone will always break the boycott…

And Walk Out Protests never work because, aren’t you just getting rid of the problem for them? Out of sight, out of mind…?

That is it for this month. As always, I invite you to comment, correct, or contradict anything I write here. I am open to a critical debate. Thanks for taking the time to check out what I write here and I will see you in a month.

Until next time, remember “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”


2016 Ernest M Whiteman III