Tell Microsoft I'm Not Speaking To It

For the last few months, I've been using Microsoft's brilliantly useful Windows Live Workspace. It allows me to open my Microsoft Word documents anywhere and edit them easily within the Word application. This has allowed me to write and edit my fiction from several different places, such as my home computer and the computers at work. So far, so good. Unfortunately, Microsoft has decided they're going to cancel Live Workspace and transfer everything to SkyDrive.

Any my version of Word doesn't support SkyDrive.

That leaves me with three equally unpalatable choices. One, go back to much less convenient work-arounds, such as emailing myself documents or using another, less integrated service. Two, use the crappy in-browser editor Microsoft gives you with SkyDrive, which is about equal to this cheapo text editor I'm using to write this blog. Three, buy a new version of Microsoft Office for around a hundred fifty bucks just so I can keep going with the service I've gotten used to.

I can shrug off most inconveniences, but I'm furious about people messing with my writing. You can't dangle this great service in front of me and then take it away from me if I don't pay you more money, Microsoft. That's just not right.

I can't help but think it wouldn't be difficult to continue to support Workspace. It gives me less storage space than SkyDrive, which is fine by me, since I'm only using it for text documents. If I chose to voluntarily keep using Workspace, I could save Microsoft some storage space. Yeah, storage is currently ridiculously cheap, and I'm sure it's assigning employees to keep the system running that's the issue, but that doesn't make me any happier. This just stinks of Microsoft wanting me to buy a new product just so I can keep doing something they offered me before with my old product.

I'm genuinely upset. I don't know what I'm going to do. I genuinely want to keep using this service, but I don't have that kind of money. To add insult to injury, Workspace still assures me it's in Beta. Does this mean there will never be a release version? Have I been teased this whole time? I'm so mad I can hardly even type. I'm so mad my skin's turning... kinda... green. I... can't... think straight. No... not again...! I........


RAAAAAAAAAAAAR! HULK SMASH!

The Web Ebb

I'm coining that, by the way. If this becomes a real thing, then I'm the first one who came up with it. Even if someone else has used it, I testify that I haven't heard of it, so I came up with it independently. Anyway, on with the show.

Lately, I've noticed that some of my friends are either thinking of leaving Facebook or outright leaving it. Most of my friends have either closed down their MySpace or at least stopped using it. Five years ago, I would have seen five to ten of my friends on instant messenger at any given time, and now I see maybe two or three.

I don't know whether this is a real trend or just something in my demographic. I know that my generation, the ones in their mid to late twenties, was the first to be immersed completely in the digital age. I was around eleven or twelve when I first really started getting into computers: the internet, email, that sort of thing. I remember when I fell for one of the first "Bill Gates will send you money if you forward this to all your friends" ploys. I remember the days I would type in a topic, add .com, and see what came up. Those were the days before Google, when WebCrawler, Lycos, and Excite were my main search engines. Within a few years, everyone I knew had instant messenging and email. And a few years after that, we started hearing about just how plugged in we are. I've heard it said that the computers have gone from another activity you do to the way we live.

But these days, it seems like that mad rush into the digital frontier, the topic of so many TV specials and documentary films, is slowing down. Maybe it's across the board and maybe it's just those of us who have been immersed in it for more than a decade, but it feels like people are starting to come up for a breath. I've heard it said many times that the internet age sneaked up on us, and we found ourselves plugged in without realizing how far in we'd gone, but I think that awareness is becoming more common. We've been jacked in for so long that we're starting to see the effects it's really had on our lives--and we're starting to pull back.

I won't claim that I'm starting to use the computer less, just that my desire to do so has waned. I still get anxious if I go more than a couple of hours without checking my email. I still check Facebook at least three times a day. But when I do so, I spend much less time on it. I visit my favorite sites out of habit, but I don't stay long. I've stopped playing massively multiplayer online games and online RPGs. I'm no longer really interested in having conversations with people I've never met. That novelty has long since worn off.

I noticed a smaller web ebb a few years ago when people stopped using MySpace and blogs quite as much. For a while out of high school and into college, it felt like a half dozen of my friends had regular blogs. These days, no one I know posts more than once a week. Sure, there are sites like Twitter, but I don't know anyone in my age range who's really jumped into that. In particular, I feel like we are less and less likely to all get excited about something new, getting on some new service or program.

It's possible the web has become just so integrated into our lives that it's no longer exciting, but I don't think that's it. I think we're genuinely starting to drift away from our computers. In some small way, I think the real world is starting to have that novelty effect that the digital world had for us fifteen years ago. We've gone so long plugged in that unplugging has become the new frontier.

Kleenex, Monasteries, and Vituperation

I was horrified to find the following message on the bottom of my box of Kleenex:
"Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip... [their ellipsis] Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike. Whoop it up! Laugh, scream, cry and holler! And when tons os stuff stuffs up your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud! Show your heart and show some tears... of joy and sorrow, in awe and pride. Just let it out!"

I don't want to believe that my Kleenex is telling me to behave like a simpleton and a lunatic, abandoning decency and decorum for the sake of becoming an emotional mess and a public nuisance, but I can't help but think that's exactly what my Kleenex is saying. To me, this speaks to a broader issue, one that continues to replace the educated gentleman of previous generations with the rude, ignorant, and utterly reprehensible self-absorbed man-child of the twenty-first century, the kind of willfully stupid Philistine who refers to a well-spoken man such as our president as a "snob," who dismisses the arts and history as "artsy", and who finds a purpose in television and sports.

Well, my friends, the raving populace has always been weak to bread and circus, but when I start to despair about the state of humanity in the modern day, I reflect that the world has always been filled with a cacophonous rabble who, among their more heinous offenses, belittle their betters for their knowledge and refinement. Not that I am particularly either, mind, but I do aspire to be. Not only has there always been this noisome crowd, there have always been refuges where proper sensibilities and learning are protected.

Even in the Middle Ages, when the majority of the world ran around burning witches, the wisdom of the ages was preserved in manuscripts copied in monasteries. While there will always be the threat of Dark Ages, whether through the collapse of civilization or, as we see today, through a purposeful preference towards ignorance and idiocy, there will always be a minority of people who stand up against this kind of barbarism and hold out.

Thank you, ancient monks. And thank you to you, too, if you are also someone who loves reading and writing, and all things worth preserving.

Sometimes I take myself much too seriously.

Strange Thought

It just occurred to me that I can't remember the last time someone tried to convince me to change my mind about something. It seems that people are just too eager to live and let live. Have we gotten to the point that we just don't care how other people see the world? Are we so diluted and soft that we don't care enough to separate right from wrong, to see that some choices are better than others?

Now, I'll admit that I don't know what to associate this trend with. Rather than just picking one out of a hat, as I would normally do, and rant against it, I thought I'd let you write your own rant! So, dear reader, what has caused us to stop trying to better our friends and fellow humans?

1) Hippies. The influence of dirty, unwashed liberalism in modern America has made all conservative values moot.
2) Anthropology. Cultural relativism has infected society in general.
3) Television. We see too much of everything, so it all seems familiar.
4) Urban life. The breakdown in traditional small-town connections and values leaves us without a basis for culture.
5) Space aliens. Divide and conquer!
6. Commies. Because they can't stand our red-blooded American ways!
7) The internet. Everything now has a forum and a support group, so it all seems normal.
8) Secularity. People no longer turn to religion for a grounding basis.
9) 4chan.
10) Loki. He's behind everything, isn't he?

Open Letter to Facebook

Dear Facebook,

We used to have so much fun together. You were a place to post funny or interesting links. I could share my pictures or look at other peoples' pictures. It was good times. Do you remember those times, Facebook?

Because then everyone started using games. Really crappy games. And you kept telling me about it. You kept telling me ALL about it. Then eventually you let me tell you to shut up about it, and it was good.

But then the status thing started getting worse. People started enjoying talking about themselves, and the 'like' button just fed their ego. The results? Chaos. Madness. Now I have friends who tell me half a dozen times a day that they're washing their car. Or going to the mall. Or watching TV.

Facebook, I feel dirty. I feel like I know way too much about the lives of people I don't know. I feel like I need help. I need a restraining order. I need the world to give itself a little more privacy.

Because if I really wanted to know, I could always, you know, ask.

Your friend,
bluefish

Truth in Writing

The students in English 1010 are working on their personal essays, which means personal essays are also constantly on my mind. I just had a conversation today in which I confessed that I believe that, in general, people are cruel, selfish, and petty. I wish it wasn't the case, but I have an unfortunate (and undoubtedly prideful) view that the average person is mediocre, and mediocrity breeds pettiness. People do not aspire to be great, to transcend this mortal coil, to create beauty and wisdom and fantastic thought, they....

But then something catches me off guard. It's a thought I hadn't expected, although I've heard it before. The thought is this: of all the essays I read, I can't help but feel for every single writer. I feel a connection, some slight touch, like the spark of electricity jumping between two wires. Even for the briefest moment, we touch, like strangers in a crowd who brush together and then feel our eyes meet. And for everyone, even for the kids who only want to write about how cool that game was, or for the ones who have to be there and can't be bothered to treat me like a person, I can't help but feel a little sympathy. A little compassion.

Writing is beautiful in that. More than any other medium, it transmits pure thought. It places me into the mind, the experience of the writer. Rather than capturing the objective truth, it captures one person's truth, one particular person's imperfect memory rather than a completely factual recollection of the past. And in that imperfect memory are housed all the fears, all the hopes of a real person. If a person misrepresents a situation, leaves out the things they fear or mourn, their own actions they wish they could forget, that is beautiful, because I can feel even in the absence that shame, that guilt, that grief. If the writer admits it, embraces it, presents it to me like a gift upon a cushion, it is beautiful, because, no matter what it is, it is so wrapped up in heartbreak and truth that I can't help but pity them. Even the ones who don't see how thoughtless, absurd, or even cruel they were implicitly admit their childishness, their lack of understanding, and I can't blame that, because they don't know what they did.

If we could all write and all read, all come to understand our own thoughts and the thoughts of all others, to live not in their shoes but in their minds and memories for the space of even a few brief pages, how could we ever have war? How could we allow poverty, misery, suffering?

(And then there are those who walk in and say, "I hate writing. It's so pointless." Bastards.)

Shitty One-Ply

I used to have a friend at Ithaca College who would go on about the sad unfairness of one-ply toilet paper. While all the student dorms and the bathrooms the students used were stocked with one-ply, dry and scratchy and irritating and easily ripped, all the bathrooms in faculty areas had soft two-ply toilet paper. He used to point out how very unfair and classist this is.

I'd like to go beyond this Marxist rhetoric and speak instead to an even wider problem: the very existence of one-ply toilet paper. Why in the world do we need this product? Is there anyone out there who prefers what is universally known as a genuinely inferior product? Of course not. The only conceivable reason anyone would buy one-ply is because it's cheap (and, in the case of universities, the people who buy it won't be forced to sandpaper their asses on it). Imagine if factories only produced acceptable classes of toilet paper. I would be willing to bet that the greater efficiency involved in having fewer choices would ensure that the decent two-ply would cost as much as one-ply does now. This leaves me with the conclusion that one-ply exists only to justify the existence--and higher cost--of a separate, BETTER variety in two-(and multi-) ply toilet paper. We don't have shitty one-ply so we'll actually buy and use it. We have it so two-ply costs more when we actually do buy it.

This theory extends to other products. Take, for instance, optional packages on automobiles. For instance, optional passenger airbags. How many people are going to say, "No, thank you. I feel pretty confident that I'm not going to get into an accident, and if I do, I don't like my passengers all that well anyway."? This also applies to just about everything we can buy, from video games to operating systems to razors. So many of them are genuinely inferior products that it doesn't make sense to me not to offer just one product that's the very best it can be. Instead of having a $1000 and $2000 version of a computer, for example, can't we just only offer the very best at, say, $1400? The efficiency of only having to make one model would make it all the more worthwhile. What's wrong with letting everyone enjoy the very best of things? And nobody would have to put up with shitty one-ply toilet paper anyway.

Yet Another Gripe: Writing Contest

Today's gripe is closer to home. At Utah State University, we have a writing contest every year. This year, they were supposed to announce the winners by March. It's April now, and I've only heard about the poetry winners, and that may be because I actually am one. I've heard from an anonymous source that there have been certain snags in getting the word out.

Let me just cut right to the chase. This is a giant steaming load of bull. I can't stand this kind of hypocrisy. It's one thing when a professor shows up late to class every now and then, because we're all human, but the fact that they were very strict about getting the entries in not only on time but in a certain format, and now they're assing around with making the announcement, is just ludicrous. This kind of doublethink in standards is completely unbecoming an academic institution. What the heck is so difficult about sending out an e-mail saying, "Congratulations to these people, who won the following places:"? I'm not saying we go out and grab out torches and pitchforks, but I'd like something like some action to be taken, even if it's just an announcement that the real announcement will be delayed. And I want it to be delivered to me written on the shaved back of a faculty member, so he has to take his shirt off and sing a song as he presents it. The song, of course, is just to show the level of apology we're dealing with.

grar.

In other news, I really don't know how tomorrow is going to go. I have my evaluations scheduled for that day, and I'm also presenting a paper at the local graduate student conference. When all is said and done, it should be a very eventful day. When it's all over, I expect to find a hot Asian hooker of indeterminate age at my front door so I can snort fine Columbian cocaine out of her navel. That should help with the stress.

Because I believe in the spirit of internationalism, and supporting the finest exports of foreign countries.

WTF

Fable 2 is going to be exclusively for the XBox 360. I really liked Fable for the PC, and I was looking forward to a new fable, one with multiplayer! That was the feature I missed most in the original game, and with it, I imagined Fable 2 would be simply breathtaking. Now I find out that Lionhead has crawled into Bill Gates's capacious pockets (finding a nice cozy place between money and more money).

Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Microsoft owns Windows as well. What the heck is going on?

On a more enlightened level... no, I can't. I'm blown away.

And yes, it's April 1st, but I only wish this wasn't true.

Griping

Netflix has once again changed its layout. I'm not going to care enough to discontinue my service, since it's still way too freaking convenient to get new movies in the mail whenever I really want them (okay, more like two days after I really wanted to watch them, possibly four days if there's a weekend involved). But I am going to gripe about two things. First, the recommendation system continues to be idiotic, like a dope fiend who just got done shoveling half his brain into a tupperware bowl to save for later. According to my front page, because I enjoyed the classic Japanese samurai film Sanjuro, I should enjoy the first two seasons of Homicide. WHAT?! So appreciating Akira Kurosawa's masterwork epic about a travelling samurai should make me like a police drama set in Baltimore? Yeah, I'm sure that's reasonable to a computer, but a real person with half a wit would never make a connection like that. Also, the qeue used to say whether the movie I have waiting is DVD or Blu-ray. I really appreciated knowing which format the movie was coming in, so I'd know whether I'd be playing it on my TV (Blu-ray) or my computer (DVD). Now, I guess I kind of have to remember which is which. Or maybe they've decided to just make them all DVD. That would be a hoot.

My other bitch is about blogs. Now, I remember the days a big fat wall of text from a blog was considered (at least by me) respectable. The word is the mind at play, and what have you. In any case, it's a wonderful medium. These days, blogs are all people's pictures of their crotches, or else other peoples' crotches, or else that fun Rock Band party they had with Larry, Susy, and Sasquatch. It'll do for dogs, but men should have more to say. Yadda yadda. I'm starting to bore even myself now.

Stay away from sharp objects.

Fanboys

I thought I'd weigh in on the "controversy" over the release of the Fanboys movie edited. Apparently, the movie was orinally about a guy who's dying of cancer, so his friends take him on a wild trip to Skywalker Ranch to get a copy of Star Wars Episode One before it's released so he can see it before he dies. The new version has no mention of the disease; the characters are just a bunch of geeks who want to see the film. The "controversy" (again, note the quotes) revolves around the fact that people who call themselves real Star Wars fans say the cut takes away the heart of the film and ends up making fun of the fans.

Here's a link to people bitching: http://stopdarthweinstein.chris-marquette.com/

First and foremost, this isn't an issue. No-one is clubbing baby seals. And hell, you have to club something small before you can graduate to something big like Scarren, so you might as well club baby seals, too. Second, and this goes back to the first thing and why I put quotes around controversy: nobody has heard of this. I would be very surprised if this movie saw wide release. It's probably going to show in three movie theaters and go to DVD in two weeks, where both versions will be available. Shouldn't these people be busier, I don't know, anticipating how awesome the new Clone Wars animated series is going to be? THAT's a good use of your time.

Bluefish signing off. Take care, my pot rosts.

Thoughts

I saw a commercial on TV for something that's "hand-blown." You really have to wonder how they can manage that. I know there's the guy in Pan's Labyrinth with eyes in his hands, but this takes it to a whole new level. Mouths in your hands? Does the esophagus run all the way up the hand?

Late-night G4 has commercials for hookup lines. One of the tag-lines was "Meet REAL girls!" I guess they know that their audience might have difficulty differentiating real girls from the other kind. Here's a hint, guys. The girl in math class? Real. Lara Croft? Not real. Angelina Jolie? Mostly real.

Being a geek always gets better. Video games are constantly becoming more beautiful, more interactive, more interesting, and just more engaging. Seriously, though, does anybody ever think of the one-handed geek? What about the blind geek? I can imagine that for the average guy, losing an arm doesn't take away his ability to watch football or hang around drinking beers. But for a geek, it's socially crippling. Not only does it halve one's talking speed (typing, of course), but it makes being a 1337 gamer virtually impossible.

I mean, sure, they had that program special about some blind kid who was really good at Soul Calibur 2, but one of the kids they had playing him on the show even said that he couldn't figure out how the kid kept pulling off those unblockable moves. What?! They had this kid playing n00bs who don't even know how to execute an unblockable? No wonder he kicked ass. If they would have given me a controller, I would have kicked his ass. Just keep walking around him until he loses track of your position, gets frustrated, and throws out a few attacks. Step in when he's vulnerable in the middle of a combo and lay on the hurt. Once you break his flow, he won't recover. Yes, I actually put thought into how to kick a blind kid's ass in SC2. What next?

People need to start coming to me for ideas about writing comics. I leaf through comics and say to myself that the stuff I come up with is much better. Yes, I'm probably the only one who thinks so. But if you're desperate for ideas, get in touch. I've got this one involving demons. You won't be disappointed. Or maybe you will, but if you're wondering where all that came from, it's really from my watching G4 and them talking about comics, but I'll pretend it's a built-up frustration from my constant effort to find someone to do the art for my webcomics ideas.

Here's an exchange of messages that happened a while back with the guy who promised to do a volume for me, but didn't do a single page. Not even a single frame.

Him: How's the comic going?
Me: I might ask you the same thing. Or are you asking whether I chose anyone else to do the art after I stopped hearing from you? I didn't.

And that was it. After half a year of not hearing from him, waiting for ages to see some sort of progress from him beyond basic head concept sketches, I got nothing. And I've still gotten nothing. Maybe I'll send him a message.

Okay, here's what I just emailed him:

Hi,
Did you ever get more work done on that comic we had planned? Or, even if not, are you working on anything comic-like? No hard feelings if you've decided to go back on making the comic, but I'd like to know if that's the case, so I can try to move on with the project.

Okay, so I lied about the no hard feelings thing, but I never tell people when I'm really pissed at them. Maybe I should. But enough people hate me as it is.

The unavoidable blog question, and others

One does have to wonder what they mean when they say things like "bloggers responded by... " and "the blog community...". Exactly who makes up these nebulous organizations? Who decides who is a worthy blogger, a fellow of note and repute, while the rest are more or less empty windbags? I ask you.

On a lighter note, the new Conan trade paperback by Dark Horse is coming out. It's well worth checking out, because this comic series actually takes the original work by Robert E. Howard and turns it into comics, rather than trying to tell new Conan stories. Of course, Howard only wrote one Conan novel, and many short stories that were hit or miss, but his writing is much better than that of any other Conan writer. Why? Because Howard told a story that was important to him with characters that he believed in; everyone else, to some degree, is just "doing Conan." And whether you know something about Conan or he's just a big muscly guy in a loincloth to you, it's never going to be the same as the complex, powerful individual Howard visualized and brought to life.

Writing continues to progress with difficulty. I think I have far too many projects open at once. It's time to wrap up a short story for my occult story collection and focus on the four other major projects I have right now: my thesis for grad school, my fantasy novel, my cyberpunk novel, and a new project. Why a new project, when all of that is already weighing on me? Because I'm constantly on the lookout for something new and exciting that gets my imagination going at critical mass and makes me feel like I'm creating a world that's really and deeply meaningful.

Maybe I'll talk more about how I intend to do that in a later blog.

Take care, my ugly ducklings.