I Hope This Helps

When did body issues start? Perhaps the dawn of the printing press. I'm sure Johann Gutenberg had a notion of what his invention meant and what it would do. Mass-produced media. Mass-produced ideas. Mass-produced ideals . Mass production of anything has the potential to effect people's perspective. I wonder, as I do, if people who didn't match their mass produced ideals of their day felt self-conscience. Did Greek culture, with it's artistic preference for smaller genitals on men, cause men with bodies outside the ideal to feel inadequate? Surely. Perhaps less due to less saturation, since producing the fine art that constituted the mass media of the day took much more effort. Perhaps it was the Victorian era, however, where mass-produced forms of the both men and women came into their own. Not only were pictures of what men and women should look like printed (should look like according to god knows who, really), but products for reaching those physical ideals were adve...

The iphone is being advertised an awful lot. I don't own a cellphone because I don't like them. The iphone freaks me out. My stance on cell phones is this: you pay money so that you have no solitude. You're never alone when you have a cell phone, which I'm sure is a comfort to some but not to me, since I don't substitute comm-tech for actual human interaction. Cybernetics, as you can guess from previous posts, freak me out. The concept freaks me out. I'm not entirely comfortable relying on a car for transport, but I deal with it. The iphone, by design, appears to demand human manipulation to a greater extent than any other device of its kind. Now, I made a post before about the marketing of products and how most advertising's only real point is to make want things you don't need. As electronics become more and more personalized to their user, and these devices become more and more complex (the iphone knows how you are holding it) how long do you thi...

Mr. Brooks , while sometimes a messy convolution of plots and ideas, has a very interesting theme. Naturally, spoilers are ahead. The character Earl Brooks, portrayed by Kevin Costner, has an addiction: killing people. A destructive habit that is clearly parallel with alcoholism. In fact, Brooks attends AA meetings and confesses to being an "addict" rather than saying "Alcoholic." The habit itself is a phantasm that goes by Marshall, played with glee by William Hurt as a hallucinatory manifestation of Brooks's impulses and more or less his dialogue with himself. Brooks clearly derives a great of pleasure, perhaps even beyond sexual, from killing and Marshall only encourages him and reminds him of the rules that have prevented Brooks from being caught for years. This dynamic fascinates most during a key scene where, in a truly interesting twist, Brooks finds his daughter is suspected of murder. Brooks is visibly shaking after the police leave. Marshall asserts th...

As diffusion of information has increased by leaps and bounds, people may have begun to take it for granted. The trouble with this is it's possible people begin to believe their innermost thoughts and fears and ideals are readily known and apparent and that, in turn, gives people clearance to feel slighted when someone doesn't know something random about them, like red shoe laces offend them. I will make this more clear using a classic example of young male interaction: The Yo' Momma joke. The Yo' Momma joke is a classic excercise in quick wit, hyperbole and of course, insult. It's purpose is usally good natured ribbing and hoping to elicit laughter from friends. Every so often, you would run across the guy who's mother had died. Usually, he would say "Yo, that's not cool yo, my momma dead." and it would illicit grim sighs and head shaking from the crowd and apology from the guy who "went there." These days, things are different. People w...

"An essential characteristic of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero, and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When he wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic that Superman stands alone. Superman did not become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses, the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race." ...

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." - - George Orwell "I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy." -- Steve Martin I don't think it's outrageous to say that not everyone is cut out to be a soldier. In much the same sense, not everyone is cut out to be a prostitute. Killers and whores, regardless of gender, have many, many things in common in western/westernized culture. A soldier in the United States is not free. There are contracts that are signed, papers are pushed and rights are relinquished. It's perhaps true that many members of many militaries come to accept that in their sacrifice of certain safeties and comforts comes a steady paycheck and more often a sense of purpose. I dare say many people these days lack anything that even looks good near a sense of purpose. A prostitute is much the same. The contract is more a s...

We come from people who brought us up to believe that life is a struggle and if you should ever feel really happy, be patient: this will pass. -Garrison Keillor