Category Archives: Culture

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what if the force is not with you?

I find it hard to get excited over movies now.  Everything kind of blends together.  It’s all kind of the same, nothing’s really unique.

Even stuff I’ve loved for decades, like the James Bond series, has become tired.  I should have known better, but I actually got really excited for Spectre, and it wasn’t all that good.  I was genuinely bored watching Spectre.  Even during the mind melting action scenes with planes and cars and speed and action?  If I had a wristwatch, I’d have looked at it repeatedly.  Don’t get me wrong, Spectre isn’t awful, but there’s just nothing exciting about it.

I have the same feeling with Star Wars.  I think I’d walk out of the theater and be like, “Eh, that was okay, I guess.”  Part of the problem is I feel like I already know what the plot of the movie is seeing as how we’ve all been bombarded by trailers and merchandise ads for like seventeen months.  And now that I know the plot, I’m kind of already bored with it:

Rebel spy meets little girl who find Han and the Falcon, get attacked, we eventually see the Rebels (Not Rebels) again and there are X-Wings and another Death Star (checks watch) and a whole bunch of lightsaber fights (checks watch) and a big battle at the end.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it won’t be awful, but there’s just nothing exciting about it to me.

It’s like they’re just going through the motions.  Probably because JJ Abrams is just going through the motions.  It’s the safe bet.  This movie will make over $2B provided JJ just feeds a serviceable movie to the viewing public.  As long as he totally doesn’t screw it up, they’ll do alright.  It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, it just has to not be bad.  After the total disaster that was the prequels, folks will be glad to settle for decent, I assure you.

But what if the force is not with you?  It’s not really with me, so I’m not even sure if I’ll see it in the theaters.  I probably will, but I guess I’m just not feeling excited about it.  That’s a bummer.  Oh well.

jj-abrams-shows-off-first-footage-of-x-wing-in-star-wars-episode-viiMy the cash be with you.

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want to understand why Trump is winning? see LA schools closure

Any Republican / Democrat paid party politician, operative, or acolyte will be happy to kindly inform you why Trump and Sanders are a joke, fad, or a circus.  The British or French paid party politician, operative, or acolyte will tell you the same thing about Corbyn, Farage, or Le Pen.

You’ll hear random things along the lines of: “Well, Trump is supported by the 23% of Republicans who actually vote in the primary which means only 8% of America’s total population actually backs him.”

Or: “Corbyn got elected party leader by a bunch of radical young supporters who flooded the Labour Party who then won’t actually be around for the next election in 2020.”

Eh, maybe.

Though Farage took only one seat at Britain’s last election, he still picked up 13% of the vote.  Le Pen just won over 50% in multiple districts before the mainstream parties ganged up and utterly destroyed her folks in the second round.  The point has been made in multiple circles that if America’s presidential election cycle had a parliamentary timeline, as in it lasted say eight weeks instead of two freaking years, that Trump might have had a legit shot at the big chair.  In one month Corbyn added more party members than all the other parties total size, combined.  Only one American presidential candidate has consistently filled whole stadiums, Sanders, and increasingly now, Trump too.

Put another way, folks on the left and right of modern Western democracies are pissed off.  Put another way, everybody’s  really pissed off.

Why?  The answers are legendarily complex.  But I’ll give a simple reason right now:

See LA schools closure.

Basically what’s happened today is unelectable bureaucrats decided to detonate the lives of millions of people over a supposed bomb threat.  It shows a ruling structure that values safety over reality; risk aversion over problem solving; cowardice over measured action.  Nobody will ever be held accountable over it.  Nobody will be fired.  And so this behavior will be left to fester and grow inside the bureaucratic mentality nationwide.

I bet the man / woman / people who made this call today don’t even have their kids in LA’s schools.  Instead, I’m sure they all live in gated communities, and their kids go to private schools, and are thus not effected by their decisions.  After all, better safe than sorry.  We wouldn’t want to take the chance that the twelve-year-old-ISIS-mimic on the e-mail was actually a liar, would we?

How would I have wanted them to respond?  Go look at what New York City did.  They gave the ISIS-mimic e-mails the finger, and carried on with their day.  This behavior is to be applauded.  But unfortunately, NYC has the NYPD, which thanks to 2001 is essentially its own standing army / intelligence service.  The NYPD is unique, and gives NYC’s leaders a lot more flexibility to take risks that I think all of America’s leaders are not willing to take.

Thus, the LA school system is showing everybody what it takes to cripple most of America’s governing institutions nowadays.  ISIS/ISIL/morons can just set up a phone bank in Raqqah and call in several hundred bomb threats to America on the same day, and bring the country to its knees.  And so, in today’s modern culture, a terrorist phone bank is an effective weapon of mass destruction.

The problems resident in today’s Western democracies are massive.  But the people (you, I hope) are starting to discover that the party politician, operative, or acolyte who’s supposedly there to solve these problems, are in fact so useless that they throw their cards on the table at the first hint of danger from [insert pathetic hack entity’s name here].

If the LA school system’s / police leaders can’t function under these circumstances, what chance do they have of solving chronic student underachievement or massive crime?  Or what example are they showing their students / citizens on what it takes to survive in a modern, ever-changing, dynamic, dangerous world?  I don’t have to go down this stupid “it’s cold out” school closure road again?  Do I:

https://arcturusproject.com/2014/01/08/88/

Ask yourself, if Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Farage, or Le Pen had answered the phone and fielded the bomb threat, what would have happened?  Would they have folded too?  Would they have told the caller to “get fucked”?  Would their answer have depended on whether the person answering was from the left or right?  As in, maybe Trump would tell the ISIS-mimic to “get fucked” and Corbyn would have just folded too.  Eh, maybe, but I tell you what, I’m not sure I’d want to get in a bar fight with Jeremy Corbyn, dude’s probably cracked his fair share of skulls with a vacant bitters bottle like four decades ago.

I don’t know?  I truly don’t.  But the bottom line is, I think that the answer would at least have been different.  And when the leaders of government of both the left and right are failing, the people will search for just that:

Something different.

There’s a reason people have more trust in the local dry cleaner than the government today.  It’s because I think more and more, the system is not a reflection of its people, but a reflection of the desires of a secluded-hypocritical-risk-adverse-self-serving elite.  Trump, Sanders, Corbyn, Farage, and Le Pen are all in play for this reason.

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Chicago – again & again & again & a t-rex

All your carefully laid life plans are worthless.  The universe is driving, you’re just in the backseat.  Sometimes you’re screaming, other times you’re back there giggling.  It’s all good.  As long as somebody decent like Santa Claus is driving, and not some type of coked-out-Aztec-death-god, you’re probably doing okay.

Last year I got it in my head to travel to Chicago for the first time in some sort of joyful ride to stave of mental insanity.  It was a highly successful journey.  And I wondered when I’d be back in Chicago.  I figured many, many years.

No, one year.  For work decided my new travel location would shift from Texas to Chicago.  So whereas a trip to Chicago was so very, very unique, now I’ll be there all the time.

This is of course a very good thing, I hope.  Hopefully work doesn’t detonate my view of the cooler things in life I experienced there.  But I did try and start things off on the right foot.

I got to Chicago a day early, before work, to avoid any difficulties in getting there on time for the first day.  So I took that early day and went back downtown.  I visited some of the restaurants I went to the last time, because I’m a big loser and wasn’t willing to risk a new place just yet.

But the one difference was I went to the Field Museum.  They have a ton of stuff there, most of it great, and I might write about some of the exhibits later.  They also have a t-rex.  They named it Sue after the lady who found it.

Sue

It’s the largest, best preserved t-rex bone pile on the planet.  The Field Museum paid nearly $8M to take it off the hands of the dude who’s land Sue found it on.  When you read about the legal drama that unfolded to bring this skeleton to Chicago, it’s enough to make you yearn for the scene in Jurassic Park where the lawyer gets eaten whilst he was seated upon the can.

This was the only photo I took at Field, but the shot doesn’t do it justice.  It’s a huge creature, but yet at the time I still remarked to my lunatic brain, “Wow, I thought it’d be bigger.”  I truly did.  So this of course does further confirm that I’m an idiot, as this is a seven-ton monster.

An interesting note is that’s not Sue’s actual skull.  The real skull is on the second floor in a glass box.  It’s simply too heavy to put on the actual skeleton without running a pole to the chin, which was probably a wise aesthetic choice.  They figure Sue was about 28 years old when he or she checked out to Dino Valhalla in a dry stream bed, bound for history.

It would have been quite the view if you could actually see one of these dino dudes for real.  So I have this idea, to bring the dinosaurs to life.  We’d probably need to clone them or something.  So I figure we can get their DNA from some Dominican amber.  We grab the dino DNA from the blood inside the mosquito inside the amber.  Then we get some geneticists to do their thing.  And when I have their results, I use their complex data to build a big robot dinosaur.  What am I supposed to do, breed a live one?  Do you have any idea how high that food bill would be?  Sue would eat, like, four or five cows a day, probably?  And think of how much beer Sue would drink, and I’d have to buy it, because I can’t say no to a seven ton monster.  Who’s got the cash for all that?  Not me.

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were it not for Duracell; Obi-Wan would have slain Vader

Somebody who’s actually seen the newest Hunger Games or has read the books is going to have to tell me if they have Dodge cars and trucks in there. As in, do the stormtrooper-based Hunger Games goons drive around in Dodge trucks? Or does Jennifer Lawrence lead her militant-teenage-love-army into battle in a Dodge Challenger? I ask this most important of questions because I saw this ad where they show various Hunger Games trailer shots alongside Dodge cars.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Dodge isn’t in there. So then why exactly does Dodge desire to be associated with a story that has among other things genocide, starvation, murder, and other lightweight topics that typically encourage people to go joyfully buy cars?

I don’t know what they call these things? Joint ads? Dual commercials? Future obliterated Earth tutorial?

The first one of these I saw was in 2009 when all of a sudden they shoehorned in an ad for Avatar interspersed with clips of the World Series. Joe Buck got tasked to narrate the thing. It literally broke my brain. I was like, “Eh, is there a baseball league on this mysterious alien world? Did Joe Buck misplace his brain medicine? Should I stop drinking now?” The commercial was almost entirely over before I figured out it was a deliberate dual ad.

So this is the way it’s supposed to work, I guess:

1) You like The Hunger Games

2) You see an ad of The Hunger Games alongside Dodge

3) So you like Dodge now

4) You go get your $

5) You use $ to go buy a Dodge vehicle

Or, simply replace the words Dodge and The Hunger Games to have the opposite reaction.

This is the most basic and simplistic advertising campaign imaginable. It basically devalues the audience (you) into nothing more than a partial-corporeal-ape-like-creature. How did this juvenile campaign work in 2009 and Avatar? Well, the success of that simplistic ad helped equal $2.79B. So I guess it works? I think?

So now it’s all over the place. They’re doing it for Star Wars too! Gaze upon this disgrace to humanity, only this time it’s Fiat.

I have it in my mind that they need to go back in time to 1977 and redo all the trailers for the original.

They can show Obi-Wan and Vader dueling, and Obi-Wan’s kicking Vader’s ass. Vader’s lightsaber keeps malfunctioning, and Obi-Wan’s just toying with him. Instead of finishing him off, Obi-Wan keeps kicking Vader in the shins and smacking him in the face, laughing. But then Vader has an ah-ha moment, whips out some Duracell batteries, puts them into his lightsaber while epic music plays, Vader viciously slays Obi-Wan, and then looks directly at the camera with Obi-Wan’s mangled corpse behind him: “The Force is no match for the power of the Copper Top!”

But of course this didn’t happen, for Star Wars 1977 was before the time where everybody was a sell out. A simple, glorious time when movies were still pure. And so you see, and, oh, oh no, please no.

vader

“You don’t know the true power of The Dark Side, only Duracell does.”

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Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto, and that one great shot

If you want to discover what really matters to a cubicle goon of the modern era, gaze kindly upon whatever framed pictures they possess inside their hovels.  This impact is magnified where I work, for we have no windows.  It could be 70, sunny, with a bird, squirrel, and komodo dragon frolicking playfully together outside in the grass.  But inside for us, it’s the same stale air, harsh light, and incessant office sounds.

A lot of people put pictures of their family there.  I’m a weirdo who lives alone with his dogs, but I suppose I could put pictures of them in there, or of my Parents, Brothers, and Sisters.  But I guess I’m too much of a closed book for that kind of public display.  So instead I’ve got two pictures in there, the first a few folks may have seen me post a while back, which is essentially my Parents’ backyard.

The second photo is of Kiyomizu-dera.

 

Kiyomizu-dera2

 

I breathe every part of this photo: the forest, the winter haze, the isolation, the distant pagoda (Koyasu Pagoda).  This is Kyoto in February.  This is Japan.

The dirty little secret of this shot is that to my left, right, and behind me is a sea of humanity.  My Parents had come out to visit me for my birthday that year.  And I took them to Kyoto and Nara, because it had to be done.  I haven’t gotten into it at all on this blog, but I lived in Japan for three years.  I guess it’s just too close to the heart to write about much, or something strange like that.

Anyways, I’d been to Kyoto before and so we visited some of my favorites, but Kiyomizu-dera was new for all three of us.  We’d visited Chion-in that morning, for that was the one place in all of Japan I wanted to show my Dad (more on that later, eh, maybe).  Then we cabbed it south to Kiyomizu-dera probably after just randomly picking it off a map.  The place was mobbed, almost subway style.

 

Kiyomizu-dera6

Looking back west toward Kyoto

 

Started in 778, the main temple buildings date from the early Edo period, about 1630.  Elaborate temples and a return to emphasis on traditional Japanese religion were among the Shogunate’s many methods to get out of the business of perpetual civil war.  It’s awfully hard to be in the sword killing trade when Shogun needs that seven year temple building project completed in three years.  And you don’t want to disappoint Shogun, do you?

Translated as “Pure Water Temple” it sits atop of mountain waterfall that you can still drink from in various attempts to cheat the Gods / Nature out of the path they’ve set for you.  What do those dudes know anyways?  All they do is make all the rules of the universe.  And rules are meant to be broken, right?  [shakes fist at sky]

My memory is truly horrible (photographs help save me), so I’m not sure where we went next.  But given the time of day, we probably went back downtown for dinner.  Which knowing Kyoto, it was undoubtedly unspeakably awesome.

 

Kiyomizu-dera5

Kiyomizu-dera Main Hall; this was taken after the crowds had begun to thin out

 

 

Kiyomizu-dera1

looking east up the mountain you really get a good idea of how perched the temple is upon the heights

 

Kiyomizu-dera8

looking up from the base of the Main Hail through the branches of a random unrelated species of Japanese tree; these pillars stand as is despite the fact that they didn’t use a single nail in the construction

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Halloween costumes – when did this go off the rails?

When I was a young useless lad, mine own dear Mother made me and my Brothers into orange Crayola crayons by hand. These costumes undoubtedly took her hours to make, but probably cost $8 in material. And nobody’s ever forgotten them. But now this quaint, wholesome activity has been conquered by, by what?

First off, let’s start with a little history. Halloween is a cult Pagan festival honoring the dead; likely in a creepy grinding ritual that back in 553 BC probably involved a pile of bones, human sacrifice (which seems to defeat the purpose), or at the very least a bunch of club beatings.  They probably did this for three days straight, because what the hell else was there to do back then?

In order to quickly attract converts, the Catholic Church allowed the adoption of Pagan rituals into the Christian calendar. Depending on how you count, this emerged as All Hallows or All Saint’s Day around 1400 years ago. Thus the original purpose of involving the dead, leads us down the road of horror, vampires, fear, boy bands, gargoyles, Miley Cyrus, etc.

But this costume thing is only about 150 years old. And it always seems to have taken on a rather tame tact that gives one the impression that the culture mostly left to whole violent death concept behind. Here’s a photograph from 1924, not too many decapitated horror movie themes going on here:

1924

In my youth days, I remember the parents walking around in street clothes. All the kids wore either homemade or rather bland costumes which were actually street clothes just slightly altered. Maybe other kids wore ridiculously elaborate costumes back then and I just never saw it? I’m not sure, we didn’t exactly live in a rich neighborhood and so who knows what folks were wearing on the Giant Octopus mansion street.  Maybe those kids went around in $600 Monopoly Man costumes?

The Monopoly Man

“Terribly sorry Sir, but my Father is very wealthy, as the saying goes, and states that if you peasants do not provide me with the very best candy I am to slice you.”

 

But as to my home,  I just remember loving the simplicity of it all.  The family and neighborhood flavor of it.  When you’re wearing a homemade crayon around, your expectations of life are formed accordingly.  And I’m the better for it.  So are my Brothers.

Well, that was fun, for those days are over.  When did this go off the rails?

Culturally the planet’s gone from:

 

Pagan death ritual => Catholic soul day => wholesome costume culture / candy day => what?

 

What’s it now? Well, here’s a pair of screenshots that I think answer’s that question. And I hate the answer.

amazon

walmart

1) sex

2) sex

3) Diz-Nee

4) Mon-Nee

5) Other generic Giant Octopus product

6) Mon-Nee

7) sex

 

Uh, [shakes head], I want my crayon costume back.

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I know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms

I don’t know what’s in Tut’s new tomb rooms.  Nobody does.  But hey, you never know where life’s going to take you.  There are all kinds of things that could be in there, including nothing.  So why not gamble away recklessly in the hopes we can guess it right?  After all, my Guests possess the most unbridled surveillance resources imaginable, so certainly I can figure this out.  Except that they’re usually too drunk to use them; and I also happen to be an idiot.

– Tut’s genuine Mommy in Nefertiti is in there and it’s the archeological discovery of the century

– Tut’s new tomb rooms don’t exist

– Tut’s 2011 Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen TDI with the 2.0L 4-cylinder diesel is parked in there pending investigations by the Egyptian Ministry of Transportation

– They break it open but instead of Nefertiti or Tut, it’s just Khufu sitting there in a lawn chair downing a highball glass of barley wine, and he’s like, “Fools!  I’ve stolen all of Nefertiti’s treasure and added to my stash.  You were only four-thousand years behind the power curve.  You’re fucked!  Ahahahahahahahaha!”  And then he re-ascends to Valhalla in the blink of an eye; and all they get is the lawn chair

– Tut added six-thousand amphora filled with booze in there to ensure he could get ripped in the afterlife with abandon; but then he ran out in 1134 AD and he’s been sad ever since.  The archeologists could try adding more booze filled amphorae to the stash to hook Tut up, but I don’t think it works that way

– They find completely empty rooms because they buried Tut in a hurry, after the murder and all

– Zahi Hawass shows up wielding a pair of old Yugoslavian machine pistols and holds everybody hostage, shouting at the top of his lungs to the Geraldo cameras, “Sign up for my newsletter to be first to here about my upcoming lectures and books!”  Poor, poor Zahi, dude you supported the wrong dictator, you should try and get in good with Sisi to get back in the game; you were a hoot to watch

king tut

give up your secrets ya bastard

 

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we nitpick the worst trailer in screen history

If it is indeed true that all good things must come to an end, then it’s assuredly also true that all bad things never seem to end, or that things that were once good, but became bad, must last forever.

Were you once a young-degenerate-loser too?  I sure was (past tense, I swear).  Remember when this show was actually good?  I bet you don’t.  For if you saw the last few seasons / movie you undoubtedly came to the realization that when a show doesn’t end at the right time, it becomes horrible.

I’m not quite sure what Fox is thinking, other than that they’re banking on many degenerate-losers at least viewing it for nostalgia sake.  But the last movie was awful and made no money.

If they want more money, they sure got off to a bad start.  With the most boring trailer I’ve seen in a long time.  Even the music sounds like it was written by a failed engineering student turned high-art-musician.

Eh, whatever, let’s have at it!

 

why the name

Why do they have to show her holding the phone with his name on it?  Can’t they just have her answer and we hear his voice?  Then we know it’s Mulder, without actually seeing the text.  Do they think we forgot his name?  Are they trying to trigger the part of our brains that’s activated by textual memories in addition to visual memories?  Get outta my head, Fox!

 

he's right there

But this is all besides the point because in fact, he’s standing right there!  He’s thirty feet in front of her!  Why is he even calling?  He could just tap on the glass.  If you rewind, you see from the aspect of her eyes that he is clearly inside the 45 degree arc that enables most humans to notice when another human is creepily standing in front of a glass door without knocking.  What’s going on here?  We haven’t even started and already I have no idea what’s going on again.

 

evil drone

Evil!  Drones are so evil.  They’re the new black unmarked helicopters.  Do you get it?  Evil!

 

then do something about it mulder

“Then do something about it, Mulder?”  Uh, hey Mitch, you’re like the Assistant Director of the freaking F.B.I.  Why don’t you do something about it for a change?  Don’t you have like 3K goons on speed dial?  How about you take care of this one instead of outsourcing the planet’s problems to a vicious-boring-sex-addict?

 

'splosions!

‘Splosions!  I’m so excited.  Nobody has ‘splosions on screen anymore.

 

boring mulder

“You don’t understand Scully, since the last time we slept together, I’ve become a vicious-boring-sex-addict.”  Hey speaking of that relationship, what ever happened to their kid?  Wouldn’t that, like, be kind of important to these two?  Seeing as how it’s been like a decade, they should probably go check up on him, maybe baby needs a new trike?  Seriously.

 

roswell

Roswell!  1950s!  Black suits and top hats!  Aliens!  [wipes brow; breathes heavily]  Oh, thank god, I was really worried they’d go with something actually interesting and original.
[smoking man

[unintelligible profanity]  You, have, got, to be… [unintelligible profanity]  What kind of c-grade nonsense is this?  When we last saw this dude, he was getting his corporeal form incinerated by helicopter gunship rocket fire.  How exactly do they plan to talk themselves out of this one?  Time travel?  Alien teleportation?  Intervention by the Divine Almighty?  Eh, whatever, I won’t be around to find out.

 

no, please no

no, please no

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Seville Cathedral – building upon history while not detonating the human race

This Francis guy seems like a big deal right now, so we thought we’d venture back into a past journey that carried a bit of a Catholic flavor. Seville was a day trip, in the sense that me and my fellow drones woke up late, and had to work in the evening. But we had a day to kill.

Our first idea was to see a bullfight somewhere. But it was not the season locally. So we got the idea (with the zero research that made the pre-smartphone era more entertaining) that if we went to Seville, surely they’d have a bullfight, right?

Well, no, of course not. The bullfight season is the season. So instead, we ate lunch and decided to tour the cathedral. Then we had to rush back to work via the train. The sidewalk cafe lunch remains the best paella I’ve ever had. And of course the cathedral was quite the wonderful memory.

Depending on how you count, it took about a thousand years of building, destruction, re-building, and on and on until the cathedral took it’s current completed form. It started as a mosque in 1184 under the Moors. It was not to last, for in 1248 the city surrendered to Ferdinand III of Castile.

Parts of the mosque were left intact, and this became the basis of the cathedral’s design. But construction was slow. It didn’t help that the dome kept collapsing, or that eventually all that Spanish gold and effort would go into conquering half the planet instead of building at home.

One of the old mosque’s structures, the minaret, was built upon rather than destroyed. It became the cathedral’s tower. Thus, one of the most beautiful structures of human history in La Giralda was created on the wisdom, beauty, and humanity of two religions.

 

La Giralda

La Giralda

 

We’d never see this happen today. The political, religious, and social media goons wouldn’t allow it. There’d be too many people offended by such an action. Too many folks trying to blow it up. And yet somehow the Castilians and the Moors are supposedly the barbarians? Eh, whatever. I’d rather drink with those dudes. They were more tolerant than us.

Everybody’s so self-righteous today, like they walk on water. So Francis will make Junipero Serra into a saint but there are people using this as a reason to purge history of him. They literally want to bring down statues of the guy. Well, if you ask me, there is no benefit to humanity from destroying, ignoring, or otherwise purging history.

Junipero Serra was a good guy and a bad guy. Unless your name is Lincoln, Jesus, or that Buddha dude, guess what, you’re going to be the same. So calm down, and put down that stone.

Instead, we need to be like La Giralda, and build upon our history rather than detonating the human race along with it. All the good and bad, embrace it, breathe it in, and admire the beauty so we can appreciate it and learn from it.

 

Seville bullring

Seville – from La Giralda looking toward the Seville bullring or Plaza de toros de la Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla

 

Door of Conception

the side of the cathedral at the Door of Conception

 

Door of the Prince

Door of the Prince – inside this door lies the bones of some guy named Columbus; another dude who did much good and much bad

 

orange tree courtyard

Patio de los Naranjos – it is said these trees date back to the Moor mosque; who knows if it’s true; but for certain they add some color and life to what is a truly beautiful but still bland color of the cathedral’s exterior

 

cathedral side

just a random side of the cathedral that undoubtedly took years to carve

 

Archivo General de Indias

looking down at a cathedral chapel; the rectangular building in the background is the Archivo General de Indias; or the archive of much of the Spanish Empire; given my love of history I will likely never allow myself to walk in there; as once I go in, I might never come out

 

cathedral center

looking down from La Giralda to the cathedral’s center dome; note the exquisite work on the multiple contoured roofs; nobody would do this today because it would add 0.45% to the cost of a building on some spreadsheet; which is one of the reasons I find modern architecture so boring and soulless

 

Seville

thank you Seville, for inspiring a young drone with your beauty to travel more

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Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand how the Internets works

Great news, haters! Facebook has decided to finally allow the dislike button. Soon, your rage, outrage, and uncontrollable rage will have an extra outlet as you share you hatred of all humanity with even your own closest friends and family.

Now, Zuckerberg says he hopes folks will use the dislike button to express empathy; as in times where using the like button would not be appropriate. For instance, if you post that your kitty died, folks can click dislike to show they are sad with you.

Or try these on for size, here are two other appropriate times you could use the dislike button to express empathy with a poor unfortunate soul:

TAP Facebook 1

TAP Facebook

Unfortunately, I fear Zuckerberg doesn’t seem to understand how the Internets works. A significant, in fact alarming, amount of the Internets is fueled by hate. Things you would never say or do to any face-to-face human being are common. We’ve certainly had our fair share unhinged, immature, or alarmingly hateful rage moments on this blog. Sometimes I look back, and I’m like: Uh, not cool dude. Why did you write that?

Or think of all your Facebook friends who do nothing but post brutally on politics. I’m sure the dislike button will go swimmingly with those folks and their opposing sides.

I guess my thing is the absence of a dislike button was one of those last uncharted territories of the Internets where you couldn’t mindlessly share your hate. I mean, you could, in the comments box, but that’s different. Using a comment requires you to actually type. Now you’ll just be able to click without any reasonable coherent thought at all.

See a political view you don’t agree with: dislike

See a story about a celebrity you can’t stand: dislike

See your friend post a positive comment about the Steelers: dislike

See your 23 year old friend post a photo of him wearing a hat, drinking PBR, and watching a VCR: dislike

Oh, wait, okay that one would be legit. And maybe the third one too.

dislike

don’t do it Mark! dislike