Greetings everyone! I will not be blogging over the weekend, so today looks like the perfect time to roll out the first of two Top Ten lists that I have written for 2009.
I deliberately blur the lines of media content in this post because the entertainment delivery conduits of today have, in my opinion, completed what 1990s pundits called "convergence." A cellular telephone can be simultaneously an iPod, a video game console, and an internet-connected computer. A television set can be simultaneously a media reader, online media streamer, and multi-device display. Even books have not been left out of the convergence vacuum: one can read them digitally on a Kindle or Nook e-reader or a BlackBerry smartphone. In essence, it has all become one unified torrent (pun intended) of content for our consumption, and I think the sooner we recognize it as such, the sooner we can sort through the obfuscating nature of a given media's capabilities and deficiencies to truly appreciate the best content that has been delivered to us this year.
Without further ado, then!
Honorable mentions:
The Amazing Race: Season 14 (TV show)
Avatar (film) -- on its technical merit, not its storyline
Black Clouds & Silver Linings (music CD) by Dream Theater
Flight 666 World Tour (live performance) by Iron Maiden
Hoarders (TV show)
Survivor: Samoa (TV show)
And the TOP TEN Media Content of 2009...
10. Best. Concert. Ever. (live DVD/CD) by Jonathan Coulton
The definitive nerdcore experience distilled to its essence of one man and one guitar. (Okay, so two other guys come on stage a few times to sing backing vocals.) I discovered Coulton's work in its entirety in 2009, though I had already heard his folk cover of Sir Mix-a-lot's Baby Got Back some time ago. Best. Concert. Ever. hits all the high marks and does so in front of a passionate, energetic crowd. The Future Soon, Ikea, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Baby, Still Alive, Mandelbrot Set, Skullcrusher Mountain, RE: Your Brains, and of course First of May feature on a live release that is a fantastic, entertaining listen.
9. Pirate Latitudes (novel) by Michael Crichton
The wife of the late author discovered two finished manuscripts among Crichton's files: this one and another that will see release in 2011. Latitudes is a thrilling tale of action on the high seas, intrigue in Caribbean port towns, and survival among the remote reefs and islands. Latitudes is an exception to Crichton's usual cutting-edge-technology-based fare, and I suspect that Crichton wrote this a few years ago and "sandbagged" it in case he ran into a span of a few years with nothing interesting in the technology world happening upon which he could base a story. Regardless of what Crichton's ultimate plans were for the book, Latitudes shows the tradecraft of a writer absolutely in his expert prime, with beautifully compact and vivid prose spinning a fast-paced yarn that builds from exciting confrontation to exciting confrontation and ends in a cascade of Crowning Moments of Awesome that put a smile my face and left me wanting more.
8. The 2009 World Series of Poker (game tournament)
As a media event, the annual World Series of Poker has truly come into its own. The reality of an interested audience following Chris Moneymaker's improbable 2003 win has prompted ESPN to reinvent and redefine the way game tournaments are broadcast. This year's event was impeccably handled, from the sharp editing highlighting every exciting hand the film crew could reasonably capture to the November Nine broadcast that maintained suspense about the event outcome without futilely attempting to prevent spoiler leaks. Joe Cada's comeback against Darvin Moon after being down to only 1% of the chips at the final table was the equivalent of the Buffalo Bills coming back from 32 points behind the Houston Oilers to win the 1993 AFC Wild Card Game... if it had happened in the Super Bowl instead, and Buffalo quarterback Frank Reich had been a blind paraplegic.
7. Windows 7 (software)
It is difficult for a Mac fan like me to give props to a Windows operating system, especially in a year when we fruitnerds received our own fantastic OS upgrade, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. But Snow Leopard was mostly an under-the-hood upgrade that presaged big things to come in the future of Apple computers moreso than in the present. Windows 7 was the Next Great Step Forward for PCs, which are still the prevailing computing standard. After spending almost four years refusing to upgrade from the stable Windows XP to the sluggish, error-ridden, cumbersome Windows Vista, PC stalwarts everywhere predicted more of the same for Windows 7 and a sea change toward Linux or Macs or who knows where. Instead, Windows 7 is the fastest, most secure, easiest to use, and best-looking Windows operating system ever. Microsoft hit it out of the park. There is no more ignominious discussion of "downgrading" a new PC to a previous incarnation of its OS. The question now is not whether a PC user will upgrade to Windows 7, but when. Owners of older PCs are probably better off financially if they hold off on upgrading and just get Windows 7 for free when they buy their next computer. I run Windows 7 in a Bootcamp partition on my iMac and it practically sings.
6. The Toddler Manifesto (poem/ballad) by Michael Bahr
You had better believe I went there. No, in fact, I do not think it is inappropriate to select one of my own creative works for my year-end Top Ten list. Plus, come on, read it yourself and tell me that isn't a perfect slice-of-parental-life in six stanzas.
5. The Office (TV show)
The year 2009 featured the second half of the fifth Office season and the first half of the sixth, and the show is firing on all cylinders even better than it did when it Grew the Beard back in the late second and early third seasons. This year's Office featured moments truly hilarious, awesome, and cringeworthy. Guest star Idris Elba's manager "Charles" provided the series with a genuine villain and set up the Michael Scott Paper Company plot arc, which ended in Michael's brilliant and triumphant staredown of David Wallace. Michael facing the delivery of his promise to pay for college for all of "Scott's Tots" had me squirming as the awkwardness unfolded. The "Co-managers" plot arc is still only halfway home, but so far is shaping up strong. Best of all, along the way there are brilliant subtle turns to enjoy. Ryan's strange evil streak, complete with mysterious daily hat changes. Dwight's obsession with undermining Jim going into overdrive. Michael's explicit toast at Jim and Pam's wedding, followed by his affair with Pam's mother. Meredith abusing Casual Friday. And an episode so surreal I only need mention the title: "The Duel." Behind the camera, Jenna Fischer and Ed Helms both Took a Level in good acting this year, possibly feeling their professional sea legs after successful movie turns in Walk Hard and The Hangover. Speaking of which...
4. The Hangover (film)
The two best films of 2009 came out within a week of one another in June, each targeting a very different audience in a very different way but both succeeding. The Hangover is brilliantly written and delivers on every level. The story follows the adventures of four members of a Five Man Band (Heather Graham's stripper Jade is the band's "pretty one") as they frantically scour Las Vegas for clues to the whereabouts of their fifth band member Doug, whose wedding in California is mere hours away. Thanks to a mishap with some drinks, the Hero (Stu), Lancer (Phil), and Cloudcuckoolander (Alan) cannot remember anything they did at Doug's bachelor party the night before, and must learn, among other things, how Phil ended up wearing a hospital bracelet, what happened to Doug's father-in-law's Mercedes convertible, why Chinese gangsters keep attacking them, and why there is a tiger in their hotel suite's bathroom. See my article from last week for more on the comedic brilliance of the film. Most of all, though, just make sure you go see The Hangover. It is absolutely worth it.
3. The Gathering Storm (novel) by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson
See my review published right here on this blog.
2. Up (film)
What can I tell you about Up that has not already been said? This mesmerizing, moving, inspiring, thrilling, touching film is one for the ages, and one that anyone anywhere should be able to enjoy in its full emotional bandwidth. From an opening sequence that practically brought me to tears without a single line of dialogue to a hilarious dog riffing one-liners that will be quoted for years, Up exudes a sense of brilliance, evoking a Pixar production team putting in long hours, days, and weeks until they were sure they had crafted the film to the absolute utmost limit of what was possible. If you watch Up and are unable to appreciate it on some level, there is something seriously wrong with you.
1. Magic: the Gathering -- Zendikar "Hidden Treasures" (card game promotion)
When Oscar season rolls around, typically the hardware ends up going predominantly to "art-house" or "independent" films that were seemingly made purely as award bait. The films are predominantly miserably negative character studies or slice-of-life plotless exercises that serve to tickle the white-guilt bones of predominantly altruist, collectivist, miserable Oscar voters. This would be good and fine, except that the Academy Awards are supposed to represent the best movies of the year, or so the Academy maintains. And the one objective metric by which a movie can be measured that no amount of lobbying or studio connections or industry-insider press can overturn is the bottom line: net box-office receipts. The Oscars need to present an award to the most successful movie every year. That movie is usually a crowd-pleasing adventure tale full of white-hat heroes and black-hat villains, and those miserable Oscar voters can barely stand to be reflected in the light of such morally assertive romantic storytelling. (That is, "romantic" in literary terms, not necessarily meaning the movie is a romance or rom-com. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and virtually every Disney movie are all "romantic" in the literary sense.) The best-earning film of the year is sometimes a brainless popcorner that landed in a good release slot, but those are the exceptions that prove the rule -- the best-earning film each year generally earns that distinction fair and square.
What does this have to do with my #1 pick, the Zendikar "Hidden Treasures" promotion? My pick is the absolute box-office champion of the year, and it turned the entire gaming industry on its ear besides. Based on an assortment of data culled from Hasbro's financial filings, gaming industry wholesale product pricing and allocations, and the pricing behavior of listing closes on eBay, it is possible to hazard a guess as to the kind of gross revenue each Magic: the Gathering product earns during its three-month release window. Zendikar blew every previous release out of the park, and the "Hidden Treasures" promotion sealed the deal.
The first two MtG products of the year, Conflux and Alara Reborn, were received relatively well by the playing public, but owing to the weak economy and based on secondary-market data, probably only grossed $70-90 million each. (These are all domestic figures.) Then, the Magic 2010 Core Set was released in July and unexpectedly sold out! Wizards of the Coast had been stoking the "blue ocean" of new and returning players for the better part of two years, laying out bait to catch fresh faces and largely ignoring their hardcore adherents. Magic 2010 returned the series to iconic fantasy tropes and a look-and-feel that had been missing from the game for over a decade, and the market responded by growing the player base significantly. Market estimates show that Magic 2010, which sold through multiple print runs due to high demand, probably grossed $250-280 million. Magic 2010 increased sales of previous releases by stoking demand from the expanded player base, so the year's earlier sets added to their $70-90 million tally well after their respective three-month release windows had ended.
Even the runaway success of Magic 2010 did not prepare the gaming industry for the tidal wave that was to come with Zendikar. The set was well-marketed and well-advertised, pushing a theme of adventuring, deadly perils, hidden treasure, and an overall Indiana Jones motif set on a remote and mysterious world that eerily resembles Pandora from the movie Avatar (despite Avatar not appearing until months later). Then, word leaked that Zendikar would feature the completion of one of the most popular and powerful rare land cycles in the game of Magic: the fetchlands. Allied-color fetchlands appeared in Onslaught back in 2003, and enemy-color fetchlands appeared in Zendikar. These cards were critical to the mana bases of tournament decks in every format in which they were legal. Pre-orders for Zendikar immediately went off the charts, and I made sure to pay for my seven cases up front so I wouldn't miss out like the latecomers of the summer did with the previous set. Sure enough, the initial print run of Zendikar sold out, despite being printed in much greater quantities than Magic 2010! Then came the surprise.
At the Zendikar pre-release events around the world, strange reports emerged of people opening rare, valuable cards from Magic's history, including "Power Nine" and classic dual lands, at a rate of about one every 500 booster packs. Without telling anyone in advance, Wizards of the Coast had slowly and subtly bought up huge amounts of vintage cards on the secondary market and inserted them into Zendikar boosters. This "Hidden Treasures" promotion was a riff on something Topps and Upper Deck had done with baseball cards years earlier, buying up vintage rookie cards from decades ago and mixing them in every so many packs with current product. Kids who had barely played ten games of Magic were opening Black Lotuses, Moxes, and rare Arabian Nights and Legends cards. The price of boxes of Zendikar on the secondary market spiked to well above retail, something that had not happened since 1994. Wizards immediately announced additional print runs for allocation to game stores through their distribution chain. Pre-orders of the subsequent print runs sold out before delivery. High-volume retailers reported sell-through in quantities multiple times greater than their previous best-selling sets. It was absolute madness.
Based on the best information out there, estimates of Zendikar's gross earnings from late September through the end of the year (projected for the final several weeks) place the number above half a billion dollars, most likely in the $550-600 million range. The highest-grossing movie of 2008, The Dark Knight, was only the second film after Titanic to cross the $500 million threshold. No movie or book in 2009 is even close. Brick-and-mortar game shops are only now starting to sustain product availability enough for booster drafts, and Wizards of the Coast is printing Zendikar and its February 2010 sequel, Worldwake, at the limit of their production capacity.
Between the product launch, the marketing, its effect on the industry, and its success with the playing public, no media content of 2009 has done what Zendikar has done, and in a depressed economy to boot. Accordingly, the Zendikar "Hidden Treasures" promotion earns the #1 ranking in my Top Ten Media Content of 2009.
Agree? Disagree? Just want to expound? The comments are open...
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Nothing More than Feelings
Happy Winter Solstice! No, I haven't suddenly turned pagan on you. In a completely secular way, I celebrate the winter solstice for the simple reason that it means the days are now going to be getting longer again, leading eventually into summer. I am a native Arizonan and overwhelmingly prefer the torching heat of summer to the numbing chill of winter. Of course, I'm a bigger fan of the spring/autumn patio-dining-weather cycle over either option, but for those times when the weather can't be awesome, I would prefer that it at least be warm.
The 19th season of Survivor, "Survivor Samoa," concluded last night, and coattail-rider Natalie White beat evil mastermind Russell Hantz and friendly doctor Mick Trimming by a jury vote count of 7-2-0. The entire jury, save one, was made up of the Galu tribe as it existed at the time of the merge. Galu entered the merge with a staggering numerical advantage. Up eight to four, there is really no excuse for the scathing bitterness they showed toward Russell, the architect of their demise. All they had to do was be smart enough to play the game and they would have known to eliminate Russell early on and then easily Pagong away the remaining three of the four Foa Foa tribe members who made the merge. But the Galu players failed to parlay their advantage into victory and, instead of accepting that they were beat by a master, chose to throw tantrums and withhold the victory from Russell out of spite. Rather than being mature adults and having the sportsmanlike integrity to congratulate a victorious opponent, they voted for Natalie, who was basically the friendliest toward them out of the final three contestants and who "did the least" in terms of eliminating them from the game. I hate seeing poor play rewarded.
I would suggest that the Galu tribe should now be synonymous with losing despite tremendous advantage, displacing Rarotonga from the Cook Islands season, who were beaten by the Aitutaki Four and who had the maturity to be a sportsmanlike jury for the final three of Yul Kwon, Ozzy Lusth, and Becky Lee. Raro got their asses handed to them in the game, but they redeemed themselves by participating with class in the end. Galu did no such thing in Samoa.
The other tribe names that became synonymous with part of the game remain in place: Pagong, for the tribe that was picked off one-by-one by Richard Hatch's first-ever in-game innovation back in season one: the Alliance; and Ulong, the Palau tribe that was swept in immunity challenges and lost its way down to a single member, who then "merged" into the superior tribe, Koror, instead of having a third merge tribe appear. The latter has never happened again in the game, though it appeared in Samoa that Galu could have done it, having lost only two members to that point -- one to a double-boot, and one to medical evacuation. We now know Galu probably would have botched it anyway.
I preemptively reject the argument that Russell failed "the social game" in terms of winning jury votes. Russell ran the table in the social game. He chose who to boot and when to boot them. Only Brett's late immunity run disrupted his plans to any degree, and the only boot he had no part in arranging (but that fit his plans perfectly anyway) was that of Erik after the merge. Russell didn't win a single individual immunity until the one he absolutely had to win to advance: the last one. Nobody executes Russell's kind of game-long plan without winning immunities unless that person's social game is top-notch. He even explained it as such, matter-of-factly, to the jury, telling Laura that he realized she had a strong alliance with Kelly and Brett that he would have to break to win. Laura's response? Eye-rolling and weird facial contortions (I am not making this up) and a spite vote for Natalie because she was butt-hurt that Russell played her game better than she herself did.
Occasional jury idiocy is probably the one remaining weakness in Survivor as a game. Among all reality shows, the reason Survivor has gone 20 seasons and is still strong is because the underlying game is the most skill-testing overall. And in most seasons, the jury does get it right. They were right when Richard Hatch won the first million, because he broke the first strategic threshold in the game by inventing the alliance. They were right when Earl Cole prevailed over Dreamz Herd, despite Dre being unemployed and certainly "needing" the money much more than Earl did. They were right with Tom Westman, whose physical game is the pinnacle of Survivor the way Russell's social game was this season. Only one (decidedly un-physically-talented) juror was bitter that Tom outhustled him. The rest gave Tom props, and their votes.
The jury was right with Danni Boatwright, Yul Kwon, Bob the science teacher, and Todd Herzog. They were guaranteed to be right when Amber and Boston Rob were the final two of season 8, because Amber and Rob broke the strategic threshold of having a perfect small modular alliance that switched blocs as needed to eliminate crafty opponents. And they were very, very right to pick Chris Daugherty for surviving an alliance of six women who openly tried to turn Vanuatu into an all-lesbian affair. The jury whiffed by crowning Aras, Parvati, Jerri, and now Natalie, among others.
Contrast this with The Amazing Race, the second-best reality show still running. Setting aside the occasional arbitrariness and luck factor in some detours and roadblocks, The Amazing Race's best team simply crosses the finish line first. Love them or hate them, they got there ahead of the other guys, and you can't argue with that or nullify it in any way. To the Victor (and Tammy, in the 2008 season) go the spoils.
Survivor 20, "Heroes vs. Villains," looks to be an interesting deconstruction of some of the history of the show with some returning players that might really set things right -- or make things so very, very wrong. I am excited already: the cast members known from freeze-framing the promo clip are as follows:
Heroes: Amanda, Courtney, Tom Westman, JT, Cirie, Stephenie, James the Gravedigger
Villains: Parvati, Russell, Boston Rob, Sandra, Coach, Danielle D (from Exile Island), Tyson, Sugar
No doubt there are a few more players I missed, and my apologies if any of that is in error. The thing that bodes best about another "true" all-stars season is that everyone in the game has played before and thus nobody should be incapable of detachment. That jury should, should, be able to look at the way the final three played the game and make a legitimate call as to who deserves the victory. Feelings will likely be a much less important factor. And for that reason, I am looking forward to Survivor 20 with great anticipation.
The 19th season of Survivor, "Survivor Samoa," concluded last night, and coattail-rider Natalie White beat evil mastermind Russell Hantz and friendly doctor Mick Trimming by a jury vote count of 7-2-0. The entire jury, save one, was made up of the Galu tribe as it existed at the time of the merge. Galu entered the merge with a staggering numerical advantage. Up eight to four, there is really no excuse for the scathing bitterness they showed toward Russell, the architect of their demise. All they had to do was be smart enough to play the game and they would have known to eliminate Russell early on and then easily Pagong away the remaining three of the four Foa Foa tribe members who made the merge. But the Galu players failed to parlay their advantage into victory and, instead of accepting that they were beat by a master, chose to throw tantrums and withhold the victory from Russell out of spite. Rather than being mature adults and having the sportsmanlike integrity to congratulate a victorious opponent, they voted for Natalie, who was basically the friendliest toward them out of the final three contestants and who "did the least" in terms of eliminating them from the game. I hate seeing poor play rewarded.
I would suggest that the Galu tribe should now be synonymous with losing despite tremendous advantage, displacing Rarotonga from the Cook Islands season, who were beaten by the Aitutaki Four and who had the maturity to be a sportsmanlike jury for the final three of Yul Kwon, Ozzy Lusth, and Becky Lee. Raro got their asses handed to them in the game, but they redeemed themselves by participating with class in the end. Galu did no such thing in Samoa.
The other tribe names that became synonymous with part of the game remain in place: Pagong, for the tribe that was picked off one-by-one by Richard Hatch's first-ever in-game innovation back in season one: the Alliance; and Ulong, the Palau tribe that was swept in immunity challenges and lost its way down to a single member, who then "merged" into the superior tribe, Koror, instead of having a third merge tribe appear. The latter has never happened again in the game, though it appeared in Samoa that Galu could have done it, having lost only two members to that point -- one to a double-boot, and one to medical evacuation. We now know Galu probably would have botched it anyway.
I preemptively reject the argument that Russell failed "the social game" in terms of winning jury votes. Russell ran the table in the social game. He chose who to boot and when to boot them. Only Brett's late immunity run disrupted his plans to any degree, and the only boot he had no part in arranging (but that fit his plans perfectly anyway) was that of Erik after the merge. Russell didn't win a single individual immunity until the one he absolutely had to win to advance: the last one. Nobody executes Russell's kind of game-long plan without winning immunities unless that person's social game is top-notch. He even explained it as such, matter-of-factly, to the jury, telling Laura that he realized she had a strong alliance with Kelly and Brett that he would have to break to win. Laura's response? Eye-rolling and weird facial contortions (I am not making this up) and a spite vote for Natalie because she was butt-hurt that Russell played her game better than she herself did.
Occasional jury idiocy is probably the one remaining weakness in Survivor as a game. Among all reality shows, the reason Survivor has gone 20 seasons and is still strong is because the underlying game is the most skill-testing overall. And in most seasons, the jury does get it right. They were right when Richard Hatch won the first million, because he broke the first strategic threshold in the game by inventing the alliance. They were right when Earl Cole prevailed over Dreamz Herd, despite Dre being unemployed and certainly "needing" the money much more than Earl did. They were right with Tom Westman, whose physical game is the pinnacle of Survivor the way Russell's social game was this season. Only one (decidedly un-physically-talented) juror was bitter that Tom outhustled him. The rest gave Tom props, and their votes.
The jury was right with Danni Boatwright, Yul Kwon, Bob the science teacher, and Todd Herzog. They were guaranteed to be right when Amber and Boston Rob were the final two of season 8, because Amber and Rob broke the strategic threshold of having a perfect small modular alliance that switched blocs as needed to eliminate crafty opponents. And they were very, very right to pick Chris Daugherty for surviving an alliance of six women who openly tried to turn Vanuatu into an all-lesbian affair. The jury whiffed by crowning Aras, Parvati, Jerri, and now Natalie, among others.
Contrast this with The Amazing Race, the second-best reality show still running. Setting aside the occasional arbitrariness and luck factor in some detours and roadblocks, The Amazing Race's best team simply crosses the finish line first. Love them or hate them, they got there ahead of the other guys, and you can't argue with that or nullify it in any way. To the Victor (and Tammy, in the 2008 season) go the spoils.
Survivor 20, "Heroes vs. Villains," looks to be an interesting deconstruction of some of the history of the show with some returning players that might really set things right -- or make things so very, very wrong. I am excited already: the cast members known from freeze-framing the promo clip are as follows:
Heroes: Amanda, Courtney, Tom Westman, JT, Cirie, Stephenie, James the Gravedigger
Villains: Parvati, Russell, Boston Rob, Sandra, Coach, Danielle D (from Exile Island), Tyson, Sugar
No doubt there are a few more players I missed, and my apologies if any of that is in error. The thing that bodes best about another "true" all-stars season is that everyone in the game has played before and thus nobody should be incapable of detachment. That jury should, should, be able to look at the way the final three played the game and make a legitimate call as to who deserves the victory. Feelings will likely be a much less important factor. And for that reason, I am looking forward to Survivor 20 with great anticipation.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Situational Comedy As It Should Be
[This is a spoiler-free article.]
Steph and I picked up the blu-ray of The Hangover, released yesterday, and enjoyed a little mommy-daddy movie night with the bawdy and hilarious film. The story of four men who storm Las Vegas over a weekend to enjoy a bachelor party and wake up with no memory of what happened is truly a worthwhile watch, and is probably the second best movie of 2009 after Pixar's Up. There are a great many f-bombs, sexual dialogue, and brief breast nudity in The Hangover, so it is certainly not a movie you would want to freely show the young'uns, but mature (relatively speaking) teenagers can probably handle it. If you haven't yet seen, I strongly recommend.
The typical Hollywood comedy delivers its laughs by having the characters tell jokes or zing one-liners at each other and/or by employing slapstick or bathroom humor. This is forced and more like the performance of a skit or stand-up routine. The audience can laugh at it the first time around, but the comedic impact diminishes after that. (In some cases, it diminishes a great deal after that.) It is no accident that many actors in that kind of movie are former comedians. They are simply doing what they know. Hollywood has figured out how to execute such films and make them profitable, and there is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying a chuckle or two at American Pie or Deuce Bigalow. But those never become truly timeless movies that can be watched again and again. After a few slices of Pie... you're basically full.
Part of what made The Hangover great, aside from excellent casting and pacing, is that it followed the comedic principle that the context has to create the premises for the humor. This kind of comedy is in evidence also in film such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Big Lebowski. None of the characters "tell jokes" or "zing one-liners" at one another, and physical comedy is generally developed instead of being slapstick. The comedy is delivered by the characters' actions and reactions to the context of the story developing around them. Usually, this is accomplished by writing a character to have certain attributes and history, and then straining at the edges of that characterization and testing the limits of what the character might do if he were pushed just a bit too far.
For example, it's audacious, cringeworthy, and brilliantly funny to watch Ed Helms' cuckolded dentist Stu in The Hangover desperately trying to convince his friends that his girlfriend's illicit affair with a bartender was nothing to be concerned about. (Not a spoiler; this happens during exposition.) Watching, we laugh at Stu's explicit take on the physical implications of the act, cringe at how pathetic and wussy Stu's rationalization makes him seem, and feel a twinge of pity for Stu as we begin to understand his underlying naivete and good-heartedness. At no time did Helms crack a joke -- all we viewers needed to laugh was to see in context Stu's completely believable dialogue with his buddies Doug and Phil. Royal's audacious hospital set-up in Tenenbaums and the Dude's pining to the policemen for his Creedence tapes in Lebowski are perfect examples of this kind of comedy.
With a sufficiently well-developed context and plotline, a comedy like The Hangover has the freedom to engage in absurdist humor without having it fall flat or look forced. When Our Heroes wake up after the party (again, not a spoiler; this happens during exposition) and see their hotel room in shambles, there are some "unexpected guests" that are completely over-the-top, but since the movie earns it by expositing realistically and confining the comedy to action/reaction and not jokes, the "unexpected guests" are funny to the point of sideache. The punchlines later in the film when their presence is explained gain additional impact and reach almost legendary status -- and that is how a "classic scene" is born. Our Heroes return at one point to their hotel room to hear Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight playing over the room's sound system, and a Crowning Moment of Awesome ensues. Tenenbaums and Lebowski earned and cashed in on absurdist scenes as well, from Walter Sobchak's amazing "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!" scene (citing the television-edited dialogue), to the scene in which Royal takes his grandsons Ari and Uzi out for a night on the town.
Despite the clear effectiveness of following the contextual, situational comedic method, writing for actual so-called "situation comedies" or "sitcoms" remains generally of the jokes-and-one-liners variety. In some respects, this is an artifact of the necessity of fitting a plot into a 21-minute skit with two intermissions breaking continuity. However, it is telling that some of the most successful sitcoms of the modern day were the ones that took the time and effort to develop context and deliver comedy from action and reaction instead. Great examples of this are Seinfeld, Friends, and That '70s Show, and it is no accident that all three cashed in on contextual development with brilliant absurdist turns. Cue Joey's matter-of-fact explanation that he did, in fact, mean that something was "a moo point," not "a moot point": "You know, it's like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter. It's moo." Or perhaps Red Forman rescinding half of Eric's punishment when he learns that Eric sneaked out on the town in his Corvette "in order to impress... this... girl." In full absurdist regalia, we have the hilarious "Reefer Madness" spoof that started That '70s Show's third season and the early concession of Seinfeld's Kramer from the wager to see who could be Master of (his or her) Domain. If you know anything about the characters, you can appreciate why those scenes were funny... but neither is ever as funny in the abstract as it is when you see it delivered while watching the entire episode.
Come to think of it, I hypothesize that the reason The Simpsons has never been as good in recent seasons as it was in seasons three through eight is because the writers largely abandoned contextual humor for, yep, jokes and zingers and farts and Homer getting beaten up a different contrived way every other week.
I have my doubts that any of this will change in practice anytime soon -- it takes more time and better writing skills to deliver contextual comedy, and Hollywood already knows how to profit just fine off the other, cheaper, faster kind. Still, if we as consumers understand the difference, we will be in a better position to gauge from the promotional material whether a comedy movie or TV show is worth our time and money, and perhaps will experience more "hits" and fewer "misses" in the future.
Steph and I picked up the blu-ray of The Hangover, released yesterday, and enjoyed a little mommy-daddy movie night with the bawdy and hilarious film. The story of four men who storm Las Vegas over a weekend to enjoy a bachelor party and wake up with no memory of what happened is truly a worthwhile watch, and is probably the second best movie of 2009 after Pixar's Up. There are a great many f-bombs, sexual dialogue, and brief breast nudity in The Hangover, so it is certainly not a movie you would want to freely show the young'uns, but mature (relatively speaking) teenagers can probably handle it. If you haven't yet seen, I strongly recommend.
The typical Hollywood comedy delivers its laughs by having the characters tell jokes or zing one-liners at each other and/or by employing slapstick or bathroom humor. This is forced and more like the performance of a skit or stand-up routine. The audience can laugh at it the first time around, but the comedic impact diminishes after that. (In some cases, it diminishes a great deal after that.) It is no accident that many actors in that kind of movie are former comedians. They are simply doing what they know. Hollywood has figured out how to execute such films and make them profitable, and there is certainly nothing wrong with enjoying a chuckle or two at American Pie or Deuce Bigalow. But those never become truly timeless movies that can be watched again and again. After a few slices of Pie... you're basically full.
Part of what made The Hangover great, aside from excellent casting and pacing, is that it followed the comedic principle that the context has to create the premises for the humor. This kind of comedy is in evidence also in film such as The Royal Tenenbaums and The Big Lebowski. None of the characters "tell jokes" or "zing one-liners" at one another, and physical comedy is generally developed instead of being slapstick. The comedy is delivered by the characters' actions and reactions to the context of the story developing around them. Usually, this is accomplished by writing a character to have certain attributes and history, and then straining at the edges of that characterization and testing the limits of what the character might do if he were pushed just a bit too far.
For example, it's audacious, cringeworthy, and brilliantly funny to watch Ed Helms' cuckolded dentist Stu in The Hangover desperately trying to convince his friends that his girlfriend's illicit affair with a bartender was nothing to be concerned about. (Not a spoiler; this happens during exposition.) Watching, we laugh at Stu's explicit take on the physical implications of the act, cringe at how pathetic and wussy Stu's rationalization makes him seem, and feel a twinge of pity for Stu as we begin to understand his underlying naivete and good-heartedness. At no time did Helms crack a joke -- all we viewers needed to laugh was to see in context Stu's completely believable dialogue with his buddies Doug and Phil. Royal's audacious hospital set-up in Tenenbaums and the Dude's pining to the policemen for his Creedence tapes in Lebowski are perfect examples of this kind of comedy.
With a sufficiently well-developed context and plotline, a comedy like The Hangover has the freedom to engage in absurdist humor without having it fall flat or look forced. When Our Heroes wake up after the party (again, not a spoiler; this happens during exposition) and see their hotel room in shambles, there are some "unexpected guests" that are completely over-the-top, but since the movie earns it by expositing realistically and confining the comedy to action/reaction and not jokes, the "unexpected guests" are funny to the point of sideache. The punchlines later in the film when their presence is explained gain additional impact and reach almost legendary status -- and that is how a "classic scene" is born. Our Heroes return at one point to their hotel room to hear Phil Collins' In the Air Tonight playing over the room's sound system, and a Crowning Moment of Awesome ensues. Tenenbaums and Lebowski earned and cashed in on absurdist scenes as well, from Walter Sobchak's amazing "This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!" scene (citing the television-edited dialogue), to the scene in which Royal takes his grandsons Ari and Uzi out for a night on the town.
Despite the clear effectiveness of following the contextual, situational comedic method, writing for actual so-called "situation comedies" or "sitcoms" remains generally of the jokes-and-one-liners variety. In some respects, this is an artifact of the necessity of fitting a plot into a 21-minute skit with two intermissions breaking continuity. However, it is telling that some of the most successful sitcoms of the modern day were the ones that took the time and effort to develop context and deliver comedy from action and reaction instead. Great examples of this are Seinfeld, Friends, and That '70s Show, and it is no accident that all three cashed in on contextual development with brilliant absurdist turns. Cue Joey's matter-of-fact explanation that he did, in fact, mean that something was "a moo point," not "a moot point": "You know, it's like a cow's opinion. It doesn't matter. It's moo." Or perhaps Red Forman rescinding half of Eric's punishment when he learns that Eric sneaked out on the town in his Corvette "in order to impress... this... girl." In full absurdist regalia, we have the hilarious "Reefer Madness" spoof that started That '70s Show's third season and the early concession of Seinfeld's Kramer from the wager to see who could be Master of (his or her) Domain. If you know anything about the characters, you can appreciate why those scenes were funny... but neither is ever as funny in the abstract as it is when you see it delivered while watching the entire episode.
Come to think of it, I hypothesize that the reason The Simpsons has never been as good in recent seasons as it was in seasons three through eight is because the writers largely abandoned contextual humor for, yep, jokes and zingers and farts and Homer getting beaten up a different contrived way every other week.
I have my doubts that any of this will change in practice anytime soon -- it takes more time and better writing skills to deliver contextual comedy, and Hollywood already knows how to profit just fine off the other, cheaper, faster kind. Still, if we as consumers understand the difference, we will be in a better position to gauge from the promotional material whether a comedy movie or TV show is worth our time and money, and perhaps will experience more "hits" and fewer "misses" in the future.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Origin: The Earliest Writings
I did some personal literary archaeology and uncovered the oldest surviving published writing that I have done, The Original Dream Theater FAQ & Discography from 1993. My writing skills in that document are what I would charitably characterize as "subpar," but I am nonetheless excited to have found published work of my own from almost two decades ago!
In this article, I will provide some context for my earliest material, and then present some synopses of the very oldest material I can remember in hope that it might be recognized if it is ever recovered.
The 1993 DT FAQ will likely stand permanently as my oldest surviving nonfiction publication. Sometime around 1992, I wrote a nonfiction article called "Properties of American Money" for the hacking e-zine "FBI," fairly typical "underground" juvenilia edited by a hacker named Garbled User, whose real name was Tim R. and who was actually a very cool guy to hang around. Properties was not a counterfeiting guide, but instead a primer on the security devices used in paper currency at the time. However, concededly, the article's appearance in a hacking e-zine like "FBI" was no accident, and I did not expect Tim's readers to have a purely academic interest in its contents. In 1993, I turned my back on the hacking community forever, a rare good decision at a time when I was making too many bad ones. As Properties is dated information and contained nothing you couldn't just learn from Wikipedia today -- and because I don't think it's prudent to reproduce the context of the e-zine in any event -- I am not going to be seeking to recover that article. It is lost to time; it can stay that way.
Fiction is another matter. My oldest surviving fiction document files right now are sitting on my hard drive at home -- but those files are not the oldest fiction I have actually published! As early as 1992, I was already writing short stories and flash fiction, and had written half of a novella. My earliest fiction work is of abysmal quality, but I would still like to recover it if possible just for its historical value to me. Come to think of it, the history of how I lost those stories is a story in itself:
From the first time I ever had a computer in high school in 1988 until early 1999, I frequently had catastrophic data loss. Back then, backing up data was a technologically immature process. Floppy discs, the primary backup media, failed or became corrupted often. Worse, early applications did not always use standard data formats, so one's saved letters or budget records could turn up unreadable after only a year or so of archiving. I exacerbated the issue by being a tinkerer with my computers. This meant I spent years using a series of Frankenstein's-Monster-esque PCs built of cast-off components and held together with string and prayers. Hard drive failures were the norm, not the exception.
Since I knew my ability to keep my data safe was suspect, I kept my writings and most other data of consequence on 3.5" floppy discs stored in a dark, dry, robust metal box. I was still at risk of data corruption, but I accepted that possibility. Alas, verily, it came to pass. When I finally discarded my last patchwork computer and bought a decent system to run my card business at Arizona Gamer, I copied my floppies onto the hard drive. I recovered perhaps half of the contents of those discs, and found that the rest had deteriorated to unreadability. After desperate attempts to save my fiction on the (A)bort (R)etry (Q)uit carousel, I threw in the towel and pitched the media. I knew nothing about forensic data restoration, but I was too poor to afford it then and expected never to need that material anymore anyway. I was partly right: other than the fiction, I have not missed anything else that was lost.
Since I do still have all my files since 1999, all my old Word documents from stories I have worked on since then are now residing in one of two folders: the one full of material I am continuing to develop, and the "boneyard" full of fragments that I abandoned after finding them unworkable. There might be a few circa-1999-to-2001 nuggets that I could post that are of parseable quality and that are not going to get released as parts of finished stories in the future. I will look into that. My science fiction epic, the working title of which is still "Space Dudes," has changed and morphed and mutated so many times I'm sure I can find some "deleted scenes" that I can share. That will be for another article.
I wrote my earliest fiction in 1992 when I was 17 to 18 years old. Most of this was published in ROCK/MAX Magazine, an e-zine released by an art group called "[mAx]"
Anyway, I was the literary editor for R/M, covering "Fiction stories" and "Humorous satire," so I had only my own editorial standards to meet, and whaddya know -- somehow my own literary slush always made the grade! What a surprise! I did have some nice verbal nuggets in the 1993 mAx art pack, such as noting that our content, however subpar, was "better than picking your ass with a basketball." Ah, to be 19 again.
R/M featured the following stories and more that are since forgotten:
1. Souljumper (short story/flash fiction)
2. The Vampire's Curse (short story/flash fiction)
3. The Space Hunter (short story/flash fiction)4. Misdirection/The Catalyst (short story/flash fiction)
5. Beyond Mortal (The Luminous Children) (novella, first half)
Souljumper (1992)
To this day, I absolutely love that title. I am definitely going to use that again at some point, and probably for a better-developed story based on the same concept.
In Souljumper, Our Hero is a hopelessly dorky high-school sophomore nerd (What? Author avatar? I don't know what you're talking about!) who builds grand inventions in his garage workshop while dreaming of romance with Popular Pretty Girl from school, the beauty queen who won't even talk to him. OH gets help in his tinkering from Nerd Girl Of Inner Beauty, but is oblivious to her feelings for him as he pines for PPG. On a dark and stormy night (Wait! Stop laughing! It's not just prose, but a necessary plot point. Read on!) OH invents what he calls a "thinking cap" that will grant him greatly-expanded photographic memory; reasoning that brain activity is made up of electrical signals, OH's cap converts static electricity in the air into additional electrical current in the wearer's brain. OH tries it out and is amazed at how well it works, and learns that, thanks to a tweak suggested by NGOIB with a jaunty wink, once a person has worn the cap, his or her brain permanently adapts to the higher memory level and the cap is no longer required. OH and NGOIB spend a few hours experimenting with memorization puzzles and it goes great. Excited at the discovery, OH and NGOIB call it a day.
The next morning, OH wakes up but finds that his consciousness is in the body of one of his classmates. At first, there is some fear and the exultation of discovery as OH stumbles his way through his morning and goes to school. He meets with NGOIB and explains the situation; the two reason that the cap permanently opens a conduit for electrical brain activity to travel through the medium of static electricity on the air, and if he isn't careful, he could end up brain-dead. (Plot hole: OH's parents would certainly have discovered his inert body, not waking, and thought him to be in a coma or brain-dead or something. Ah well. The things you notice 18 years later.) OH and NGOIB figure out that the only time there is enough static electricity in the air for a "soul" to "jump" to a new brain is during a lightning storm, like the one from the dark and stormy night when OH invented the cap! (See, I told you I actually used that howler to good effect!)
NGOIB figures out from OH's explanation, but OH doesn't realize yet, that the reason he "jumped" to his classmate is because he had remembered just before going to sleep that he had to bring his math notes to lend to that classmate, who had been sick, and that the soul jumped there because it was the last person OH was thinking about before losing consciousness. (Giant plot hole, of course, in that the soul has no way to navigate the stormy seas of static electricity on the air, and thus the science here takes on an unfortunate "it's magic, okay?" aspect.)
But OH won't realize all that until later. First, there is another storm after a couple of nights. OH falls asleep pining for PPG, and -- you guessed it -- wakes up with his consciousness in the body of PPG! (This kind of body-swap fiction is pretty common at the slush level. As this was my first-published-story-of-any-kind-period-full-stop, I can live with that.) After a morning of fairly tingly reader-wish-fulfillment revelations and experimentation, much of it in front of a mirror, OH dresses his sluttiest, goes to school, and is amazed at how reverently he/she is treated by everyone, especially the difference with the teachers's attitudes toward him/her. OH finds NGOIB and tells her who he is, and NGOIB runs away crying without explanation. OH finds his other classmate alive and well, with amnesia as to what he did the last few days. (Plot hole: still no word on the presumably rotting corpse of OH's original brain-dead body back at home.)
It all goes horribly wrong, of course, when a monsoon torrential thunderstorm comes in just as the school is beset by a vanload of escaped convicts. (Man, I hate it when that happens!) They hold one of the sophomore classes hostage -- OH's/PPG's/NGOIB's class, natch -- and one of the crooks holds OH (as PPG) at gunpoint while making his demands of the police outside. OH hears the click of the gun's hammer and passes out in fright, and rides a lightning strike into the brain of the Head Crook Guy! OH quickly panics and tries to find a way to end the hostage crisis as HCG without getting killed or "stuck" in HCG's brain first. OH's first attempt to foil his own crime fails, and Criminal Sidekick Tough Guy subdues him and puts him in a sleeper hold. (Yes, all plot-driven hackneys; you expected Tolstoy?) OH rides the lightning to CSTG and manages to successfully take out some of the criminals, but not before one of them appears to shoot NGOIB in the stomach for trying to escape. Tear gas comes in the window, and as OH passes out once more he rides the lightning to...
Waking up in a hospital in the body of NGOIB, OH discovers that he/she survived the bullet wound because it lodged in his/her appendix, and he realizes that his only thoughts as he passed out were fear that NGOIB had been injured or killed. That's how OH connects the dots and realizes how his soul jump destination is determined, and all of the jumping around during the hostage crisis makes sense to him now. During convalescence, NGOIB's parents bring her backpack to the hospital so she can stay current on her school assignments. OH reads NGOIB's notebook and sees an entry for the day he came to school as PPG: "I'll never get OH to love me! He falls asleep dreaming about PPG -- he admitted it without even realizing what he was saying! What chance do I have?" OH realizes that NGOIB figured out how the soul jump worked before he did. OH reads more of her notebook and discovers for the first time how much NGOIB really cares about him. OH decides he has feelings for NGOIB too, and so as to preserve the relationship and out of respect for her privacy, he keeps his eyes closed whenever he engages in any girl-parts-related hygiene while in NGOIB's body. (This is what passes for "heartwarming" in the body-swap slush world.)
A few days later, an early autumn storm arrives and OH rides the lightning back to his own body, which of course is exactly as he left it like a month ago, despite not having eaten or moved or had any brain activity whatsoever. (Yup!) A weekend passes with rain and lightning aplenty. OH goes to school the next Monday and looks for NGOIB to tell her his true feelings for her, but she is nowhere to be found. Soon, PPG approaches OH and gives him a jaunty wink -- and he realizes it's NGOIB, who wore the cap and rode the lightning to PPG in order to win his love. OH tells NGOIB that he likes her the same no matter what body she wears. NGOIB is happy and says she will return to her normal body on the next storm, and she gets in one last dig at the real PPG (who, presumably, did not treat NGOIB very well throughout the years) by giving the super-nerdy OH a huge, sloppy kiss right in front of the entire class at lunch, causing all the other popular kids to think OH must not be such a social reject after all if he can win the attentions of PPG. And, curtain.
Hmmm. Come to think of it, I think I did better with that story than I realized. Either that, or it was even worse than I remember it and the rosy fog of nostalgia is making me conflate it with a bunch of better and more recent work or influences (or both). This is far from a stroke of brilliant originality -- a clumsy version of this tale appears to be something developed in parallel by many a neophyte writer, especially those of the teenaged-boy-with-hormones variety. See this link (probably not work safe) for a somewhat crude specimen written in "choose your own adventure" form by a person who is apparently borderline illiterate; I am confident I at least did better than that. Despite all the shortcomings of my first published work, I think its underlying concept still has life. I may remake it at some point.
The Vampire's Curse (1992)
You see, I spent all of 11th grade playing video games, except for that week when my eyes started to bleed. And that meant that the iconic stories of my teenaged years generally involved characters that did the bidding of my control pad in a fight against the "Nintendo Hard" repetitive-action villain du jour. As such, my second early foray into fiction told the story of a man attempting to whip his way through a medieval castle, facing the Grim Reaper and a Mummy along the way, and finally defeating a vampire. To paraphrase the Munchkins from Futurama's send-up of Oz, my story and characters "resembled, but are legally distinct," from those of the Konami video game Castlevania. Which, of course, itself borrowed from much existing horror folklore and literature, especially of the "originating before 1923 and thus now in the public domain" sort. I won't be revisiting this story, obviously.
The Space Hunter (1992)
My third attempt at fiction was much like my second. This story and its characters resembled, but were legally distinct (wink wink), from those of the Nintendo video game Metroid. A beautiful but deadly bounty hunter in a powered spacesuit became stranded on a distant planet thriving with malevolent creatures and, well, "Space Buccaneers." Do I even have to tell you that they are controlled by a single brain-like alien, or what Our Heroine does to that alien in the thrilling final battle?
What can I say? The earliest stage of the development of a creative mind involves copying the work of one's betters in an attempt to learn their chops. As you might imagine, I won't be revisiting this story either.
Misdirection/The Catalyst (1992)
Unfortunately, memory is failing on me for the original version of this story because I did actually manage to get into a comprehensive rewrite of it around 2003 at novel length, and the time I spent developing that treatment completely wiped out everything I remember about the original short story. The novel treatment is called "Misdirection" and is "a story from The Catalyst Saga." (I'll explain that below.) The original short was titled either Misdirection or The Catalyst; I cannot be sure which.
Right now the file is in the boneyard because I need more practice mastering my tropes in order to make the plot work as intended. The current story sets up all the premises and prepares a few twists, but I never figured out a way to develop them toward the resolution. I did have the final battle and denouement written. It was the bulk of Act II that eluded me.
In Misdirection, set "twenty minutes into the future" in San Diego, three prominent biotech professors disappear without a trace at about the same time that a mysterious serial killer frustrates police with her striking appearance, brazen murders, and seeming invincibility. Our Hero, a police detective, discovers evidence of missing material from the professors' computer records and academic papers, and after some forensic work and an anonymous tip learns that it has something to do with a machine called the "Catalyst." OH traps the serial killer, who protests that she is innocent; while she is in custody, cameras record the same serial killer committing more murders in public. The killer in custody is actually our Hidden Monarch of the story, and she explains to OH that the Catalyst can take a person's body, "save" the mind to a hard drive of sorts, and rebuild (fabricate) the body molecule by molecule into a perfect form, which in turn is loaded with the mind and off you go. The commercial potential of such a machine is off the charts, of course. Everything from curing disabilities and disease to simple vanity refabs.
Turns out plenty of other parties have an interest in keeping that machine off the market, including the HM's nemesis, one of the vanished professors, who used the Catalyst to turn into the serial killer and is the Big Bad of the story. Both of them used the only Model Body that had been created in the Catalyst machine, a "perfect female" with regenerative biology and enhanced strength and senses by virtue of being built not of DNA strands, but of DNA sheets. Hence the "evil twin." OH soon realizes that HM is the first vanished professor, and that BB is the second who in turn murdered the third. (The third professor was the progenitor of the Catalyst itself).
In what I think was one of my better turns of "characters following their motives and driving the plot properly," OH realizes that HM is most concerned with "getting the science right" behind the Catalyst, while BB is more concerned with selling the rights to the machine, and that any technology so cutting-edge will have severe risks and flaws and BB wouldn't be paying attention to that. Indeed it comes to pass. HM goes back to the Catalyst to get a corrective refab, since the integrity of the fabricated body isn't completely solid and HM knows she'll disintegrate if she doesn't patch it up. (And she can't go back to her original body because the Catalyst still hasn't completely rendered it in memory from when she initially transformed from it. The process takes months. That's why they only had one Model Body ready.) Meanwhile, BB didn't do his homework, so when he ambushes OH and HM at the lab, he loses nail-biter Final Fight with HM when his molecular structure discombobulates. The Final Fight itself is a wicked, kinetic martial-arts throwdown right out of The Matrix, because both combatants are identically strong, flexible, and fast -- and just as BB is about to win, his fab corrupts and his strength ebbs, and HM leaves him no room to recover. Anyway, OH/HM win and, in a twist, fix their romantic relationships with their significant others (problems that recurred throughout the story) instead of getting together. And, curtain.
The 2003 rewrite of Misdirection was, I thought at the time, the perfect first story in The Catalyst Saga, a connected series of novels taking place in the same universe, a la Heinlein's Future History or Clancy's Ryanverse. The Catalyst Saga has genuine potential and I think I'll definitely be back when I improve my craft.
It occurs to me writing this article that all three of the non-video game stories I started off with all have the common theme of the transformation of the body in some form. I think the notion of the "sanctity of the body" is at odds with the raw technological capability for people to realize the ultra-libertarian reality of a future market with body parts as a commodity. (Regardless of whether you think you'd ever sell, the implications alone are sobering.) Moreso than that, fiction only really works if it's about sex or death, and the human body is, uh, intimately entwined with both. I would not be surprised to look back decades from now and realize that riffs on the theme of the "sanctity of the body" feature in virtually all my fiction writing.
Beyond Mortal (The Luminous Children) (part 1) (1993)
I wrote a more detailed article on this story, including context and the last surviving fragments of a 2001 rewrite attempt: The Luminous Children: Prologue.
Well, there they are! That's as much information as I have on hand of the very first, oldest, most raw and unpolished fiction I have ever written. Perhaps some of it will live again in a more functional "written on a readable level" form. If anyone finds any of my old material in the ol' textfiles where it was last seen, please to get in touch with me. Your round of drinks will be on me, and I'll certainly be happy to credit you here for your archaeological contribution if you like.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Naked Power-Grabbing by the Obama Administration
Imagine you read the following article in the news:
Right?
Wrong. That article was real. Or very nearly so. The only thing I did to create my semi-fictitious example was change the agency name from the EPA to the FCC, change "carbon emissions" to "freedom of speech" and change references of physical health to mental health. I didn't even change the name of the agency administrator. The subject matter is slightly different, but the type of naked power grab described in the article has in fact occurred this very week.
This is an executive agency audaciously asserting power, and it seems there is little but a whimper and apathy from the public in return. Most people don't even know that this happened. The EPA just up and asserted power over carbon emissions, basically taking control over the totality of industry and the economy to the extent that they want to regulate. The extent to which the EPA can, if unchallenged on its prerogative, extend its controls into the daily lives of citizens is staggering. Virtually everything people do in their daily lives creates a "carbon footprint." Be sure you understand this: The EPA can now regulate whether and how you go to the bathroom.
And this was done by an executive agency, which means the top of the chain of command is none other than President Barack Obama. You can bet the farm that he personally ordered this move. You can also bet the farm that, if and only if public outcry somehow emerges, he will deny ever having knowledge of it, and offer up Lisa Jackson's head on a platter as a scapegoat. Oh, don't cry for her. She knew the score when she accepted the job -- and the job's pay and perks more than account for the risks, let me assure you.
Even if you're a left-liberal, you should be worried because what Obama has just done is a gross violation of constitutional separation of powers against your Democratic Congress. Only the Congress has the authority to legislate. Under the Admistrative Procedure Act, executive agencies are supposed to be able to regulate only under the authorization of narrow organic statutes clearly delineating the metes and bounds of the agency's authority and specific implementing statutes clearly defining the program or niche to be regulated and the manner in which the agency may do so.
Of course, it was known as far back as the Depression era that the executive agencies would nakedly assert authority beyond those bounds, and so there has been the progression of administrative law cases from Youngstown Steel to Chevron spanning most of the last century to curtail that expansion. Notwithstanding the limits placed on executive agency power by those rulings, limits meant to prevent agencies from acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner as the EPA has done this week, the agencies still increase their footprint like a cancer upon the government, contributing thousands upon thousands of pages of rules to the federal register every year.
It is no different at the state level: Arizona state agencies produced an Arizona Administrative Register 4,970 pages long in 2008. The 2009 edition is blessedly shorter, mainly owing to a rulemaking moratorium imposed in January by Governor Jan Brewer -- but still almost half as long even with sharply reduced rulemaking activity across the board. Yep, even where Republicans are in charge, the runaway growth of government through administrative regulation continues... if somewhat more slowly.
This state of affairs will continue and will worsen until citizens demand (and vote in) a government that will do nothing beyond its legitimate purpose of protecting individual life, liberty, and property. Few executive agencies will be required in such a framework. Until citizens wake up and learn the proper scope of government based on a philosophy of reason, the pragmatists will succeed in asserting more and more power and entrenching it as time goes on.
EPILOGUE: Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post wrote an editorial so similar to my post that I'm surprised he did not quote me outright! Calling the EPA's overreach a "naked assertion of vast executive power" much as I did, Krauthammer characterizes the power-grab in virtually identical terms to mine:
FCC chief: US will regulate free speech with common senseOK, sounds like pure fantasy, right? No executive agency would ever make such an audacious power grab. There would be rioting in the streets. It would be shotgun-and-barbed-wire time from coast to coast.
(AP) -- December 9, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission says she will take common-sense steps to regulate freedom of speech to protect the mental health of Americans.
FCC Administrator Lisa Jackson said her newly declared power to regulate freedom of speech will be used to complement legislation pending in Congress, not replace it.
The FCC declared Monday that freedom of speech could endanger mental health and would be subject to federal regulation.
Right?
Wrong. That article was real. Or very nearly so. The only thing I did to create my semi-fictitious example was change the agency name from the EPA to the FCC, change "carbon emissions" to "freedom of speech" and change references of physical health to mental health. I didn't even change the name of the agency administrator. The subject matter is slightly different, but the type of naked power grab described in the article has in fact occurred this very week.
This is an executive agency audaciously asserting power, and it seems there is little but a whimper and apathy from the public in return. Most people don't even know that this happened. The EPA just up and asserted power over carbon emissions, basically taking control over the totality of industry and the economy to the extent that they want to regulate. The extent to which the EPA can, if unchallenged on its prerogative, extend its controls into the daily lives of citizens is staggering. Virtually everything people do in their daily lives creates a "carbon footprint." Be sure you understand this: The EPA can now regulate whether and how you go to the bathroom.
And this was done by an executive agency, which means the top of the chain of command is none other than President Barack Obama. You can bet the farm that he personally ordered this move. You can also bet the farm that, if and only if public outcry somehow emerges, he will deny ever having knowledge of it, and offer up Lisa Jackson's head on a platter as a scapegoat. Oh, don't cry for her. She knew the score when she accepted the job -- and the job's pay and perks more than account for the risks, let me assure you.
Even if you're a left-liberal, you should be worried because what Obama has just done is a gross violation of constitutional separation of powers against your Democratic Congress. Only the Congress has the authority to legislate. Under the Admistrative Procedure Act, executive agencies are supposed to be able to regulate only under the authorization of narrow organic statutes clearly delineating the metes and bounds of the agency's authority and specific implementing statutes clearly defining the program or niche to be regulated and the manner in which the agency may do so.
Of course, it was known as far back as the Depression era that the executive agencies would nakedly assert authority beyond those bounds, and so there has been the progression of administrative law cases from Youngstown Steel to Chevron spanning most of the last century to curtail that expansion. Notwithstanding the limits placed on executive agency power by those rulings, limits meant to prevent agencies from acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner as the EPA has done this week, the agencies still increase their footprint like a cancer upon the government, contributing thousands upon thousands of pages of rules to the federal register every year.
It is no different at the state level: Arizona state agencies produced an Arizona Administrative Register 4,970 pages long in 2008. The 2009 edition is blessedly shorter, mainly owing to a rulemaking moratorium imposed in January by Governor Jan Brewer -- but still almost half as long even with sharply reduced rulemaking activity across the board. Yep, even where Republicans are in charge, the runaway growth of government through administrative regulation continues... if somewhat more slowly.
This state of affairs will continue and will worsen until citizens demand (and vote in) a government that will do nothing beyond its legitimate purpose of protecting individual life, liberty, and property. Few executive agencies will be required in such a framework. Until citizens wake up and learn the proper scope of government based on a philosophy of reason, the pragmatists will succeed in asserting more and more power and entrenching it as time goes on.
EPILOGUE: Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post wrote an editorial so similar to my post that I'm surprised he did not quote me outright! Calling the EPA's overreach a "naked assertion of vast executive power" much as I did, Krauthammer characterizes the power-grab in virtually identical terms to mine:
"Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. [...] Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life."As a postscript, I never really considered journalism, as I prefer to write the more deeply-developed material typically found in books. In this modern era of weblog-scale publishing, however, the categories blur, and perhaps I should be more attentive to that. As the head of Omni Consumer Products says in Robocop, "Good business is where you find it." Definitely food for thought.
Monday, December 07, 2009
Winners Focus; Losers Spray
I have mentioned this principle before on this blog, and it is one of the themes I will consistently revisit because it serves as a good reminder to naturally "entrepreneurial" people that it's impossible for a single person to do all that is necessary to make a bunch of unrelated projects run well. Further than that, even within the scope of a single project, anything that you're doing that is not part of the core mission of either further developing your product or service or better monetizing your product or service is distracting from your focus and taking attention away from the critical path.
This article talks about two companies that mastered the art of focus and succeeded by keeping their attention where it did the most good. Thanks to Matt at 37 Signals for the post. I have never been to Pinkberry, but I have been to Chipotle plenty of times, and the article's analysis hits the spot. Chipotle only really makes variants of one type of food item, but the whole reason you go there is to get that item. Being an Asperger's kid as I am, once I find a menu item I like best at a given eatery, that's all I ever order there anyway. Though Chipotle's approach works in a general sense as well, they couldn't have hit the target better for customers like me.
Simplicity, as touted in the Chipotle/Pinkberry model, is not as important in my opinion as focus. As a commenter noted in that link, Starbucks and Mini (automobiles) offer a staggering array of options for the customer and both are highly successful at selling what they sell. Simplicity they did not embrace. Focus, however, they did. Starbucks focused on coffee. They can make it a different way for you every day of the year and you won't drink the same cup twice -- but it's still coffee.
A very obvious example of focus belying simplicity would be Apple. There is simplicity in that Apple's product lines are highly convergent into a few core models, but each model can be configured to a customer's unique specifications, so it's far from being a genuine "small menu." Apple's focus, however, is on its primary product: delivery of the Mac software experience to users. It is irrelevant to them which specific slab of plastic and silicon is used to accomplish that goal, as long as that hardware has been designed to integrate with the Mac software experience for which it serves as the delivery medium. Thus, Apple must control the hardware, and that means they must design it -- but they only design and produce whatever is necessary to serve as the platform for their primary product.
I am finally finished selling Magic cards, and if I have my way about it, this will be a permanent state of affairs. I have some miscellaneous eBaying to do around the house to turn clutter into extra Christmas cash, but once that's done, an entire monetization focus area that has been a tremendous distraction to me can finally be permanently discarded. I'm excited about that. It means I will be able to devote greater focus to other things -- specifically, writing. Hopefully, that greater focus will pay dividends in the quality of the finished product.
This article talks about two companies that mastered the art of focus and succeeded by keeping their attention where it did the most good. Thanks to Matt at 37 Signals for the post. I have never been to Pinkberry, but I have been to Chipotle plenty of times, and the article's analysis hits the spot. Chipotle only really makes variants of one type of food item, but the whole reason you go there is to get that item. Being an Asperger's kid as I am, once I find a menu item I like best at a given eatery, that's all I ever order there anyway. Though Chipotle's approach works in a general sense as well, they couldn't have hit the target better for customers like me.
Simplicity, as touted in the Chipotle/Pinkberry model, is not as important in my opinion as focus. As a commenter noted in that link, Starbucks and Mini (automobiles) offer a staggering array of options for the customer and both are highly successful at selling what they sell. Simplicity they did not embrace. Focus, however, they did. Starbucks focused on coffee. They can make it a different way for you every day of the year and you won't drink the same cup twice -- but it's still coffee.
A very obvious example of focus belying simplicity would be Apple. There is simplicity in that Apple's product lines are highly convergent into a few core models, but each model can be configured to a customer's unique specifications, so it's far from being a genuine "small menu." Apple's focus, however, is on its primary product: delivery of the Mac software experience to users. It is irrelevant to them which specific slab of plastic and silicon is used to accomplish that goal, as long as that hardware has been designed to integrate with the Mac software experience for which it serves as the delivery medium. Thus, Apple must control the hardware, and that means they must design it -- but they only design and produce whatever is necessary to serve as the platform for their primary product.
I am finally finished selling Magic cards, and if I have my way about it, this will be a permanent state of affairs. I have some miscellaneous eBaying to do around the house to turn clutter into extra Christmas cash, but once that's done, an entire monetization focus area that has been a tremendous distraction to me can finally be permanently discarded. I'm excited about that. It means I will be able to devote greater focus to other things -- specifically, writing. Hopefully, that greater focus will pay dividends in the quality of the finished product.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Secrets from the Future of Today
Imagine receiving the following e-mail:
From: Alexandra Bahr (tornadoallie-*-gmail_com)
To: Michael and Stephanie Bahr (bahr-*-exuberancepress_com)
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2024 08:45:04 -0700
Subject: Please put your survival plan into greater effect ASAP
Dear Mom and Dad,
I hope this e-mail reaches you. I had to pay many Euros for it to be sent through the Lithuanian quantum-time-regression tunnel. It had to be done quietly, because I am breaking the most critical law of all by revealing to you information about events that are yet to come in your timeline. Things have become so bad here in my timeline that it has become worth the risk. What a terrible thing to realize!
I'm about to turn 17, though in your time I am only a toddler. There is so much I want to say and ask about your lives and mine, but I have too little time -- I must finish this and return to a checkpoint before they send a scout after me. Were it not for your foresight in keeping that busted-up old Accord for me to drive, I wouldn't even be able to send this. Cars made after the 2018 model year will only go on approved magtrack routes. The hidden laboratory I am typing in right now is most definitely off the beaten path.
Dad, you used to talk about stockpiling durable goods and precious metals instead of keeping all our savings in dollars. I wish you had spent more time on your plan before -- well, it's best I don't tell you, but let's just say your work went unfinished because more immediate, emergent things required your attention. I'm glad you stowed as much as you did, though, because the Euros I used to send this message were bought with some of that silver, and soon we'll need to do the same thing for food. It's not safe to carry the actual silver or gold anywhere that isn't covered by the skycams, like the lab I am in now. I could have been waylaid by bandits. They wouldn't mean to kill me specifically -- they are merely starving -- but I would be just as dead.
I wish I understood how this all started, but the wheels were in motion when I was just a child, and even before that. I remember when the first big inflationary wave hit not long ago. Dad, I remember you laughing sardonically because you were able to pay off our entire mortgage with only a few months' salary in dollars. You and Mom were right: there would be consequences. The inflation kept going up and up. Your celebration was short-lived; you could have paid off the house with a trip to the ATM if you had waited another year, if the bank would still have been around to honor the contract. And then, before people could do anything with their illusory "fortunes," the government took it all away.
President Clinton (the daughter of the President Clinton from your time) ruled to revalue the currency last week. Right now, all the legal stores are closed down until Monday, and you can't buy anything except on the black market with Euros. After I finish this letter, I need to meet some contacts just to buy enough food to make it through the week, and I'll be happy to take the worst canned crap they have rather than risk coming back empty-handed. Clinton is having everyone trade in $100,000 old dollar notes for $10 new dollar notes. The only problem is that $100k doesn't buy anything, and that was the limit. I couldn't even buy food for a day on the black market for $100k -- and the food they have in the government stores that have to accept dollars, is food you don't want. There were riots back East -- I heard over 20,000 people died in Philadelphia -- so they increased the limit on the trade-in to $150k in cash and $300k in savings.
The rest of everyone's savings -- meaning effectively all of it, since $300k won't even pay rent for a month -- is wiped out now. The only thing you two still have in the safe is the silver and gold coins and bullion you bought, and some old guns without nearly enough bullets. If things go in Phoenix the way they went in Baltimore, I don't even want to think about what might happen. Thank you both for teaching me how to use those things. I hope I never have to put that knowledge to the test. Fortunately, right now one's neighbors are becoming a lot more neighborly. I guess it's like Nana and Papa used to say: towns used to stay small so that everybody knew everybody else. Right now, if someone that nobody knew came into our neighborhood looking suspicious, I don't think he would make it back out.
Oh, President Clinton and her cronies aren't suffering with us. No, they're still living in comfort and paying for everything in Euros or hard currency. The news stopped showing stories of their daily lives because people were getting too angry and starting fights and disturbances. And they have all the conveniences and medicines and everything they need. The state clinic shut down a month ago for the rest of us. Right now, we're just hoping we'll find a doctor who will accept payment out of pocket. I laugh sometimes at the tales Nana used to spin of being a nurse in a clean, bright, busy hospital. That has to be fiction -- nothing like that has ever existed as far as I've known. But at least we had the clinic... until recently. We used to have a lot of things. It's almost like this disaster crept up on us so slowly that nobody knew there was a problem until all of a sudden babies and grandparents were starving to death in the slums... and then in the projects... and then in the lower-middle-class neighborhoods. It's kind of funny: in all the old photos of us, we're all very much overweight. That has stopped being a problem lately.
The government store is expected to run out of food by March. My black-market contacts can't say how much longer they can hold out after that... they haven't been able to get in touch with their suppliers in Oklahoma and Nebraska for a couple of months now. How long until we're in a free-for-all? I don't know. And that's the point of this letter. Whatever food you're stockpiling, you need to double it. Whatever gold and silver you're buying, you need to triple it. And buy ten times the ammo you think you will need, because there are more of us here to help hold the line, but not enough tools for us to do it with. And please keep trying to teach people the philosophy of reason. If more people had learned that, we might not be in this mess. We might have elected leaders that would have steered us 180 degrees the other way.
We keep wondering what China is going to do. They had more dollars than anyone, and the revalue is going to wipe out their entire treasury. They were raising all kinds of hell at President Clinton for months, but then -- silence. They're being very quiet now. Nobody is really sure what that means.
Please give the toddler Allie of your time a hug for me, and tell Evey I love her -- and when the time comes, give my love to the others as well. Oh, and by the way, congratulations in advance on the Cardinals repeating as Super Bowl champions. If a certain grade-school-aged daughter of yours should happen to accidentally knock the satellite dish off the roof during the 4th quarter, please be assured she didn't mean to make you miss the end of the game. She was just reaching for a handhold and it got away from her. Besides, London had no chance to come back after trailing by four touchdowns. So take it easy on the girl, all right?
With all love,
Allie
-=-=-=-=-
Before you go thinking that the scenario from that letter can't happen, here's news: It's happening right now, as I type this, in North Korea. Here are some pertinent links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/01/AR2009120101841.html?hpid=moreheadlines
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6940482.ece
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-koreans-dare-to-protest-as-devaluation-wipes-out-savings-1833156.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_won
This is what happens when a statist government is allowed to do whatever it wants with fiat currency. We have a government that has become increasingly statist since the 1930s, but has gone into veritable overdrive in the last two decades, and hyperdrive in the last year. Our government is overtly manipulating fiat currency and printing money to pay for pie-in-the-sky social programs that will cost infinity dollars plus one.
Venezuela is probably next. At the rate we're going, how long until it is our turn?
From: Alexandra Bahr (tornadoallie-*-gmail_com)
To: Michael and Stephanie Bahr (bahr-*-exuberancepress_com)
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2024 08:45:04 -0700
Subject: Please put your survival plan into greater effect ASAP
Dear Mom and Dad,
I hope this e-mail reaches you. I had to pay many Euros for it to be sent through the Lithuanian quantum-time-regression tunnel. It had to be done quietly, because I am breaking the most critical law of all by revealing to you information about events that are yet to come in your timeline. Things have become so bad here in my timeline that it has become worth the risk. What a terrible thing to realize!
I'm about to turn 17, though in your time I am only a toddler. There is so much I want to say and ask about your lives and mine, but I have too little time -- I must finish this and return to a checkpoint before they send a scout after me. Were it not for your foresight in keeping that busted-up old Accord for me to drive, I wouldn't even be able to send this. Cars made after the 2018 model year will only go on approved magtrack routes. The hidden laboratory I am typing in right now is most definitely off the beaten path.
Dad, you used to talk about stockpiling durable goods and precious metals instead of keeping all our savings in dollars. I wish you had spent more time on your plan before -- well, it's best I don't tell you, but let's just say your work went unfinished because more immediate, emergent things required your attention. I'm glad you stowed as much as you did, though, because the Euros I used to send this message were bought with some of that silver, and soon we'll need to do the same thing for food. It's not safe to carry the actual silver or gold anywhere that isn't covered by the skycams, like the lab I am in now. I could have been waylaid by bandits. They wouldn't mean to kill me specifically -- they are merely starving -- but I would be just as dead.
I wish I understood how this all started, but the wheels were in motion when I was just a child, and even before that. I remember when the first big inflationary wave hit not long ago. Dad, I remember you laughing sardonically because you were able to pay off our entire mortgage with only a few months' salary in dollars. You and Mom were right: there would be consequences. The inflation kept going up and up. Your celebration was short-lived; you could have paid off the house with a trip to the ATM if you had waited another year, if the bank would still have been around to honor the contract. And then, before people could do anything with their illusory "fortunes," the government took it all away.
President Clinton (the daughter of the President Clinton from your time) ruled to revalue the currency last week. Right now, all the legal stores are closed down until Monday, and you can't buy anything except on the black market with Euros. After I finish this letter, I need to meet some contacts just to buy enough food to make it through the week, and I'll be happy to take the worst canned crap they have rather than risk coming back empty-handed. Clinton is having everyone trade in $100,000 old dollar notes for $10 new dollar notes. The only problem is that $100k doesn't buy anything, and that was the limit. I couldn't even buy food for a day on the black market for $100k -- and the food they have in the government stores that have to accept dollars, is food you don't want. There were riots back East -- I heard over 20,000 people died in Philadelphia -- so they increased the limit on the trade-in to $150k in cash and $300k in savings.
The rest of everyone's savings -- meaning effectively all of it, since $300k won't even pay rent for a month -- is wiped out now. The only thing you two still have in the safe is the silver and gold coins and bullion you bought, and some old guns without nearly enough bullets. If things go in Phoenix the way they went in Baltimore, I don't even want to think about what might happen. Thank you both for teaching me how to use those things. I hope I never have to put that knowledge to the test. Fortunately, right now one's neighbors are becoming a lot more neighborly. I guess it's like Nana and Papa used to say: towns used to stay small so that everybody knew everybody else. Right now, if someone that nobody knew came into our neighborhood looking suspicious, I don't think he would make it back out.
Oh, President Clinton and her cronies aren't suffering with us. No, they're still living in comfort and paying for everything in Euros or hard currency. The news stopped showing stories of their daily lives because people were getting too angry and starting fights and disturbances. And they have all the conveniences and medicines and everything they need. The state clinic shut down a month ago for the rest of us. Right now, we're just hoping we'll find a doctor who will accept payment out of pocket. I laugh sometimes at the tales Nana used to spin of being a nurse in a clean, bright, busy hospital. That has to be fiction -- nothing like that has ever existed as far as I've known. But at least we had the clinic... until recently. We used to have a lot of things. It's almost like this disaster crept up on us so slowly that nobody knew there was a problem until all of a sudden babies and grandparents were starving to death in the slums... and then in the projects... and then in the lower-middle-class neighborhoods. It's kind of funny: in all the old photos of us, we're all very much overweight. That has stopped being a problem lately.
The government store is expected to run out of food by March. My black-market contacts can't say how much longer they can hold out after that... they haven't been able to get in touch with their suppliers in Oklahoma and Nebraska for a couple of months now. How long until we're in a free-for-all? I don't know. And that's the point of this letter. Whatever food you're stockpiling, you need to double it. Whatever gold and silver you're buying, you need to triple it. And buy ten times the ammo you think you will need, because there are more of us here to help hold the line, but not enough tools for us to do it with. And please keep trying to teach people the philosophy of reason. If more people had learned that, we might not be in this mess. We might have elected leaders that would have steered us 180 degrees the other way.
We keep wondering what China is going to do. They had more dollars than anyone, and the revalue is going to wipe out their entire treasury. They were raising all kinds of hell at President Clinton for months, but then -- silence. They're being very quiet now. Nobody is really sure what that means.
Please give the toddler Allie of your time a hug for me, and tell Evey I love her -- and when the time comes, give my love to the others as well. Oh, and by the way, congratulations in advance on the Cardinals repeating as Super Bowl champions. If a certain grade-school-aged daughter of yours should happen to accidentally knock the satellite dish off the roof during the 4th quarter, please be assured she didn't mean to make you miss the end of the game. She was just reaching for a handhold and it got away from her. Besides, London had no chance to come back after trailing by four touchdowns. So take it easy on the girl, all right?
With all love,
Allie
-=-=-=-=-
Before you go thinking that the scenario from that letter can't happen, here's news: It's happening right now, as I type this, in North Korea. Here are some pertinent links:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/01/AR2009120101841.html?hpid=moreheadlines
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6940482.ece
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/north-koreans-dare-to-protest-as-devaluation-wipes-out-savings-1833156.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_won
This is what happens when a statist government is allowed to do whatever it wants with fiat currency. We have a government that has become increasingly statist since the 1930s, but has gone into veritable overdrive in the last two decades, and hyperdrive in the last year. Our government is overtly manipulating fiat currency and printing money to pay for pie-in-the-sky social programs that will cost infinity dollars plus one.
Venezuela is probably next. At the rate we're going, how long until it is our turn?
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