Facebook -- pure evil, or what?

Is Facebook pure unadulterated evil, sorta like that swirling green cylinder of Satan-in-a-Can in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness?

The jury of my mind is still out. Partly, because I’m predisposed to hate Facebook. I’m a writer/cartoonist. I’m not a people person. I’m not chatty. I crawl in my cave, enter a trance, laugh insanely at my own jokes, then emerge with something to show the tribe. It’s how I’m wired.

Facebook is chatty by design. It’s a people-place for people-people to meet people. It resembles nothing so much as a high school cafeteria where the guys and gals are filling the echoing walls with oh did you hear about saundra I think she’s pregnant no she’s just fat stop what’d you think of true grit god my dad likes that that’s like for old people oh my god that looks like puke I’m not going to eat something that looks like puke already stop poking me god no I don’t want to be your friend like what part of fuck off do you not understand

Any content you introduce in this Babel is a rock dropped in a bottomless well of chat that quickly sinks out of sight.

So, the words you put into Facebook are probably wasted. FB will probably lay waste to the words outside of it as well.

So, when I finally emerge from my cave with something for people to read, I suspect they’ll either be on FB or have the attention span of a hummingbird with ADD and not want to read in their spare time anyway.

Being a cranky writer, that’s what I’m predisposed to think.

Or maybe not.

To quote Fugate's Law of Media: Each new wave of media is followed by a reactionary anti-wave of media critics claiming the new media is turning people into idiots and anti-social bastards.

Corollary: Like stopped clocks, reactionary media critics are sometimes right.

Music videos, comic books, rock and roll, radio, television, movies, jazz music, the Wizard of Oz books, the telephone and the printing press were all blamed for the decline and fall of everything. As McLuhan points out, even literacy itself was accused of destroying oral memory and poetry in ancient Greece. But the "stopped clock" argument remains. TV, for example, really did turn people into idiots. Facebook may very well accelerate the process. Soon, we will all be devo.

The jury is still out.

Additional musings:

Fugate's 39th Law

A socialist government that owns all the businesses is functionally no different than a oligarchy of big businesses that own the government.

Peace in Our Time

They awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize today. The prize was delivered by a Terminator robot from the future. "We are giving him this award for something he hasn't accomplished yet," said the robot. "But in the next few decades, he will."

Public Service Announcement

Across America, cops are cracking down. We’d like to say come to a complete stop, use your seat belt obey the speed limit and don’t drink and drive, but it won’t do you any good. The economy sucks and the government needs the money. You’re going to get a ticket whether you’re guilty or not. Especially if you’re black.

Science fiction dream

All right, gang. Here's the dream that flashed through me head last night. More accurately, it's a crude pencil sketch of a dream I dimly remember. The outlines. The blurry afterimage turning to dead whiteness in the light of day.

There's a man. Or someone who used to be a man. He's sent back into the past with a mission. It's not clear if he's actually going back into time or merely changing people's memories. This may be reality; it may be virtual reality. It isn't spelled out.

Whoever he is. Whatever he's doing. Whoever's in charge ...

In comes down to the same thing.

He makes the crooked paths straight. He unlocks the doors.

He sets frustrated artists on the right path, as opposed to the paths they took that fucked up their careers. He finds lovers who murdered each other and rewinds their lives to the exact word that started the fight that led to blood, and then unspeaks that word. He re-edits the life-or-death moments of parents when the right eye contact or precise nod of understanding tilts the balance between one day of suicide and many days of freedom for their child. He nudges, he whispers, he hints, he shapes.

He turns death into life.

And, yes, that sounds like Mr. Jesus Christ. But our hero isn't Jesus Christ. His motives are good, but they aren't entirely unselfish and pure.

Someone, something, it isn't clear -- aliens? angels? -- made him a promise.

Let's spell it out, OK?

There's a quid pro quo. There's a deal.

If our hero Photoshops the past, in exchange, they'll give him a future.

They'll give him a world he can shape to his own imagining.

His own future.

A blank slate.

Yeah. You know what I'm talking about.

Tohu wa bohu.

Exactly. An emptiness of pure potentiality he can make his own. Not in the sense of sweeping up road apples and broken glass and gluing and mending and patching the fragments of centuries and centuries of fuck-ups until it seems like something more-or-less OK, OK? Something new.

He won't be editing. He won't be patching.

He'll be creating something new.

Like, for want of a better term, God.

That's the deal.

And that, my friends, is the reason our hero has endured thousands and thousands of year of shit. Years and years and years of losers and whiners and liars. Of walking corpses who don't appreciate the fact they're breathing. Of chucklehead fuckers who assume they can can stumble through life and phone in their parts and fuck up every possible moment of grace because, like Superman, like Underdog, at the last possible moment, a Savior will appear and turn their F- into an A+.

He is that Savior.

You think it's fun? You think it's easy?

Yeah, you may think being the Savior is a simple matter of changing grades on report cards. It's not like that. Each life is a string of moments. To change even one life, you have to get into those moments. One at a time. From beginning to end. And you can't speed it up. No. You know what it's like when some boring motherfucker is telling you about the taxi ride from the airport in Berlin that went to the wrong place and you don't fucking care? It's like that. You have to listen to the asshole, listen very carefully. Again and again. Each word, each inflection. Again and again. You have to listen. And then listen to every possible permutation of the same conversation. Again and again and again and again. You have to listen very carefully. Then, after many centuries, when you finally understand, you go back to the airport, back to the exact moment when everything went wrong, then make him take the right taxi. That's what he does.

Again and again.

He's the Savior. It's a shitty job.

And, as you've probably already guessed ...

The angels or the aliens or somebody are fucking him over.

Up in the clouds or dimension X-N, they're watching him. Shining beings, but bastards nonetheless. They're using him. That's what they do.

One of them says ...

"We're fucking him over."

"Yeah, I know," says the other one.

"We get what we want. He goes through centuries and centuries of shit. And he doesn't get shit. He's not going to get his glorious future."

"No he's not," says the other one. After a long pause, the shining bastard says: "I think he knows."

He knows.

War, hugghhh

Apparently, we're still fighting in Afghanistan. No, seriously. We are. How freaking bizarre. It's like The Simpsons. You figure the show would've been cancelled a long time ago. But no. It just keeps going on and on.

War's a lot like a bad relationship. Lot easier getting into one than getting out.

Today, Obama's trying to get out of Afghanistan.

It ain't that easy.

Obama is basically in the position of Nixon in 1969.

History, like Fate, is not without a sense of irony.

Here’s a little history:

Starting January 20, 1969, President Nixon inherited Lyndon Johnson's war in Vietnam. As some of you may know, Nixon sailed into office with the promise of a “secret plan” to end that war. Yeah, right. Short of nuking North Vietnam, there was no way to end the Vietnam War. The VC wanted us out – and most of the Vietnamese people agreed. The VC had a supply chain from the Soviet Union and China. They were more willing to die than we were. We could fight forever. But we couldn’t win.

Hey, that didn’t mean we had to lose.

The Vietnam war wasn’t exactly unwinable. It wasn’t exactly a war. If America had said, "This is a police action. We're the planetary cops. We'll send our troops to get killed -- forever," the South Vietnamese government would probably still be going strong. But Nixon knew the commitment of the American people wasn't infinite. America was willing to shed blood. But not forever, as various riots and demonstrations had proved. So, Nixon -- and his advisors -- came up with a crackerjack idea called Vietnamization.

Which was a fancy way of saying: “Our war. Is now your war. See you later.”

Nixon’s secret plan amounted to a hand-off.

Strictly speaking: We bomb the crap out of Cambodia and North Vietnam. While the VC is picking its ass off the ground, we hand the war to South Vietnam – and split.

Cynics have suggested Nixon being Nixon, QED, Vietnamization was a scam from the gitgo. I don’t think so.

And, yeah, I know that Nixon is on the record that, “I will not be the first goddamn American President to lose a goddamn war.” No, he didn’t. But I think there’s more to it than that.

Nixon being Nixon, didn’t want to lose.

I think Nixon’s reasoning was: We’re propping up a corrupt government. The South Vietnamese won’t clean up its act because they know Uncle Sam sweeps up their road apples. On the other hand, if they know we’re definitely gone, Nguyen Cao Ky and his cronies just might step up to the plate. Challenge and response. Shit or get off the pot. I’ll take the fucking gamble.


Nixon’s only other choice was:

A) A forever war.

B) Telling the American people, “The Vietnam War was a bad idea. Yeah, I know I told you I had a secret plan, but that’s bullshit. We can’t win. We’re withdrawing all our troops now.”

Vietnamization was a gamble. Nixon lost. We assume it’s a historical inevitability. But maybe not.

Today, Obama is in the same position.

Like South Vietnam, the current Afghanistan government is a malignant, festering mass of corruption. Screw the rule of law. It’s all about the payoff today! They can afford to screw around – because they know Uncle Sam will sweep up their road apples. Like the South Vietnamese, they figure we need them, and will pay any price to keep them in power.

The corruption of the Hamid Karzai government is the fuel that keeps the resurgent Taliban going. But that corruption depends on the assumption of infinite American support. Like Nixon, Obama demolishes that assumption.

Obama says, “We’re leaving in ten months.” That tells Karzai and his cronies they can’t rely on us forever. Either they clean up their act. Or they’re screwed.

Obama's gamble is Nixon’s gamble. It has nothing to do with domestic politics.

Other than the fact that Obama knows the American people won't keep sending our troops to die forever in a war we can't win.

If McCain was President, he'd be in the same position.

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino does it again. Cool movie.

In terms of verisimilitude, it's right up there with Hogan's Heroes.

I mean. Come on ...

Plot Thread #A: The Nazis cook up with a propaganda film called Stolz der Nation. True story about a Nazi Sergeant York -- a crack German sniper who mows down a human meat mountain of American GIs who try to storm his position in a tower. Said sniper plays himself in the movie, with that wacky auteur, Joseph Goebbels, directing. OK. So, gee, where should we premiere this movie? Hmmm ...

Well, why not Paris? You know, that city with that funny tower over in Vichy France. We could have Hitler, Goebbels, Goering -- hell, the entire German High Command could attend the premiere! Hey it's spring of 1944, the Allies haven't invaded yet, why not?

Naturally, we wouldn't need to bother with setting up troops in a security perimeter in the streets outside the cinema or cordoning off the city blocks around it. For that matter, who needs guards in the lobby? It'll be fun! What could happen? It's not like the smoking hot theater owner is secretly Jewish with a burning heart for revenge or something.

Plot Thread #B
The OSS drops a team of stone-cold killers into occupied France. Eight of 'em, all Jewish, led by Brad Pitt. (That wacky "Wild" Bill Donovan. Sure lives up to his name.) Anyway. Their mission: rip-off The Dirty Dozen. Well, more specifically, to inflict Apache-style torture and humiliation on the Nazis to demoralize the ranks. Eight guys, one with a baseball bat. Should be enough.

OK. Captain Obvious says ...

Faults with Plot Thread #A
The Nazis were evil, but they weren't stupid. They'd have !@# guards around the cinema and a ten-block radius of the city around it -- and clear out all the civilians for good measure. They'd inspect every square inch of the cinema. They'd pack every square inch of the cinema with human pit bulls from the SS. And have their own dudes running the projector and working the popcorn machine. Or they would if they decided to hold the premiere there. But they wouldn't. No way in hell. It'd open in Berlin.

Faults with Plot Thread #B
If a team of pseudo-Apaches from the Bronx were scalping and mutilating the Nazis, the Nazis would, of course, respond. They'd divide occupied France into a grid and begin a systematic, scorched-earth campaign, laying waste to Square G-7, Square G-8, etc. -- working square by square until they wiped out the team. But they wouldn't stop there.

The Nazis, would begin reprisals against the civilian population of occupied France -- and probably American POWS -- since the "Basterds" were, after all, violating the Geneva Convention.

The Nazis were in the habit of wiping out villages as reprisals for resistance. (Maillé, Lidice, a long bloody list) They'd do worse in this humiliating scenario. Say ...

A ratio of 10 dead French civilians for every German solider the Basterds killed. Or 100-1. 1,000-1. (Not only killing them. Probably replicating any torture the German soldiers received.) The Nazis would do whatever it takes, until the Basterds (or their superiors) couldn't stomach the collateral damage.

Over in China, the Japanese massacred 250,000 Chinese civilians for helping surviving airmen from the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo escape. Something like that.

And, as Sun Tzu pointed out in The Art of War, the Nazis would never surrender to the Basterds if they knew they'd be tortured, killed and mutilated. As Tzu noted, torture is a lousy strategy. You don't demoralize the enemy. You put 'em in a frame of mind where they'll fight to the death and never give up. The Apaches lost, remember?

OK, I had to vent. All that said, I don't have a problem with QT's wild violations of plausibility and logic.

His movies (especially the recent ones) are more like dreams than realistic narratives. Like dreams, they're a mix of granular realism and loopy violations of logic.

So, in Kill Bill, The Bride boards a plane to Tokyo, and they let her take her Samurai sword on board? It's hanging off her freaking hip while she's looking out the window?

Stuff like that.

Inglourious Basterds mixes its violations of logic with extremely believable stuff. The "Jew Hunter's" interrogation of the French farmer hiding a Jewish family under his house at the beginning of the movie, for example. It's not that QT can't do realism. He does, when he wants to -- and does it very well. But he doesn't always want to.

Inglorious Basterds is a dream -- more specifically, a revenge fantasy. The Jews Strike Back. They kill Hitler. Wouldn't it be pretty to think so?

Hitler gets shot full of holes and blown to pieces in 1944. For once, WWII has a happy ending. I know how the real story ended.

But I like this movie better.