geardrops [blog]

Excuse me while I get political. I avoid this sort of thing, typically, but I want to say this. And well, it’s my blog.

It’s likely this post isn’t going where you think it’s going.

Last night was a victory, and not just because the candidate I preferred won. Last night, we saw history made.

People have spoken about the election of a black man into the highest office of our country as a real step forward in civil rights. But we also need to remember that this is a step forward in the American dream. For the entirety of our nation’s history, the seat of presidency has remained in a ‘tell’ state, with little ’show.’ Writers understand what I mean. “Keep working, and maybe someday you can be president!” This mantra is oft-repeated, and time and again a white protestant male above 40 is elected. But last night, that changed. Last night, the guy who did keep working, against odds, was named the next president.

This was the first election I remember where people were voting for who they liked, not against who they hated. We are living in times of hate and fear, strict polarization between the “us” and the “they.” Fear, warmongering, and economic collapse are the legacy of the Bush administration, and I have spent the past eight years unable to be political, for the sheer fact that I get so emotionally hurt by this great nation tearing itself apart.

And the youth vote turned out. Finally. Finally, the youth vote turned out. And look at what it required. We can argue whether or not it was Obama’s voracious courting of the internet, youtube, twitter, that clinched the election. What I saw from my friends, from the friends I have who are still in college, is for once they felt they could make a change. For once, we felt we were important, our voices mattered. For once, we felt as though our government was of-by-and-for us.

But it’s not over. Not by a long shot. Obama won the presidency, but he does not have an easy path before him. None of us do.

When the problems we’re currently facing are listed, it seems far too much for one man to solve. We’re tangled in a war in the middle east that we should never have started, and history has never smiled on a two-font war. The financial crisis is only now a spectre in the distance soon to be a real problem, when this next quarter shows economic decline, when companies realize there isn’t money to keep them afloat and affluent, when jobs are not lost by the hundreds but by the hundred-thousands. The planet is sagging under the weight of our overproduction and hyperconsumerism, and clean fuel is only the start of the solution. America, a former leader in science and technology, has slipped behind in basic literacy and mathematical competency.

And there is a large part of our country that believes this man to be a terrorist, that believes he is a Muslim and therefore on the path to destroy us all.

Obama must simultaneously make the sweeping changes required to resolve the above-listed crises, as well as maintain enough status quo to appease the dissenters. And there will always be people who hate him, simply because of his skin.

Why did I vote for Obama? Because I believe he has the intellect to guide us through these intricate problems, the temperament to handle the delicate and highly volatile international situation, and the self-awareness to surround himself by those more experienced than he.

Our nation was born from intelligent discourse, from the papers written by our founders and framers, and somewhere along the way we forgot that. I long to see that nation in my lifetime, an America made sovereign by its intellect.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=iO0LYcCoeJY]

As you can see above it’s obviously beautifully filmed. Doing a little research, I found that this was an intense labor of love on Tarsem’s part, self-funded and piggybacking off of commercial shoots for locations. Sure. This kind of thing wouldn’t be openly funded by any studio.

The story itself is one of–you guessed it–a fall and redemption. Angry, suicidal man saved by a little girl. I want to say I felt that the “message” of the movie was unabashedly overt, to the point of clubbing me over the head; but I may just be smart.

Hear me out on that one.

As I left the movie, I heard three girls who utterly missed the point. It’s as if we weren’t watching the same movie. The content of their conversation reveals major plot points, and is also absolutely laughable; I’ll spare you. But being that this film was not widely advertised, I would have assumed the audience was slightly more incisive in their analysis of story than the average moviegoer. Lo, I stand corrected.

My friend argued that the point was to be overt, as it is seen through the eyes of a child; the world she lives in is in fact very dark yet she cannot understand it. I saw what she meant, but I think that it would be better if they actually took into account their audience. You can write through the eyes of an “idiot”–Faulkner pulled it off. But it’s a filter better suited for written form, I feel.

But can you hate any movie where one of the characters is Charles Darwin? I mean, honestly? And there was a monkey. A monkey. His name was Wallace.

I want to say this movie was pretentious, but I think it was more like a child with a poorly-guarded secret that it cherished as its own. Ostentatious, but doing it wrong. Still, I enjoyed the message enough–it’s the sort of intellectual wankery that I go in for.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, the music used in the trailer is Beethoven’s 7th (second movement). Though this is probably one of the few instances where Mozart’s Lacrymosa could actually be legitimately used, I think the use of Beethoven was probably for the best.

Two posts in one day. I’m a maniac.

I’m currently reading Literature and Existentialism by Jean-Paul Sartre, which thus far is very good. I’ve read part one. It is a topic that may seem useless now (”Why do you write? For whom?”) but so far it’s proven to be something that more writers should think about, and it gives a bit of insight to me - an uneducated engineer - on the whole beast of writing.

But there was a quote I had to share.

God knows whether cemeteries are peaceful; none of them are more cheerful than a library. The dead are there; the only thing they have done is write. They have long since been washed clean of the sin of living, and besides, their lives are known only through other books which other dead men have written about them. … The trouble makers have disappeared; all that remains are the little coffins that are stacked on the shelves along the walls like urns in a columbarium.

Great imagery for a philosophical text.

I have this thing. This condition. It has to do with quantum theory, relativity, and the probabilistic model of the universe, and the fact that the further I move in the state of inebriation, the more likely I am to discuss any of these topics. There is a constant likelihood of their being mentioned, even if I am stone cold sober. But if I’m drunk, and the conversation veers anywhere series, these topics will come out. You’d be surprised.

I have been thanked many times for my ability to explain these difficult concepts with relative ease. Especially relativity. I was in a philosophy discussion, and relativity came up, and I thought of a good example of how to explain it using Star Wars as an example. Well, how to explain the lack of absolute time on a macroscopic scale. My professor told me to fire away.

Before I launch into this, let me explain this professor. A PhD in philosophy and on her way to a tenure position, sharp as a Ginsu knife, utterly composed and distractingly intelligent. I was extremely intimidated by her and so did everything in my pathetic little undergraduate power to win her esteem. In the end I feel like I failed, but well, these things happen.

We began our ascent from the basement of Graham. “Well, there are three versions of the movies currently, right? The original, the 1997 VHS re-release, and the new DVDs. And there is one key event in A New Hope that has been changed. Who shot first: Greedo or Han?

“You see,” I continued, now halfway up the stairs, “in the original, Han shoots first. In the 1997 VHS they made it so that Greedo shot first. In the DVDs, they tried to make it seem as if they shot at the same time. Which one is right?”

“Han shot first.” The authority in her voice was overwhelming and I peed a little in fear. “There’s no other way about it.”

“Woah.” I raised my hands to ward off any potential blows. It was a palpable moment of fear: she had one of my grades in her hands. I didn’t want to argue with her for two reasons: one, Han did, in fact, shoot first and that pathetic CGI head-twitch to try to soften his character was just awful in every capacity; two, I really look more to the Jedi bits and find myself overall uninterested in the goings on of bounty hunters.

“And don’t even get me started on that scream they added when Luke fell in Bespin. They took a heart-wrenchingly heroic moment and made him into a little bitch.”