iam100k

i know it’s been a long time since i’ve posted here and there are good reasons for that: i’ve been writing on our production company blog instead and doing really ridiculous things like starting stupid new websites for no particular reason and of course making movies and one-man shows and crap. so … whatevs, but it is the silly season! tomorrow night is the first general election Presidential debate and though i’ll be busy screaming out names of short film scripts every 8-10 minutes in the Valley, i’ll be thinking about the debates and pouring over the videos in the days afterwards. now if you know me, you know i’m a political junkie. a complete news addict who watches hours and hours of news shows every single week – many of them multiple times.

but actually the truth is, it’s not even news or politics that i’m into per se. it’s history. i love the crap out of history. i’ve loved it ever since high school when i read Orson Scott Cards’ “Red Prophet“. Mr Card brought real historical figures into the story, the Shawnee warrior Tecumseh and his brother the prophet Tenskwatawa and while reading the book i found myself with my speech class in the library. we were supposed to be doing research for some upcoming speech (yes, this was before Google), but i had just hit a really climactic point in the book right before class and couldn’t think of anything else. then it hit me: i could actually research what happened in real life to the REAL Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa. so i cracked open an encylopedia and in about 3 minutes, depressed the crap outta myself. later that night (SPOILER ALERT! skip the rest of this paragraph and the next paragraph as well if you plan on reading this book and don’t want to know details about how it ends.) i finished the book and Card apparently decided to change what happened! i couldn’t believe it! it really threw me for a loop.

two people named ‘Tecumseh’ and ‘Tenskwatawa’ did exist in the real world, but they were very different than these characters. they probably never met a young boy of European descent with extremely powerful magical abilities for instance. and yet i was so pleased that the lives of these fictional characters worked out so much better than those of their real counterparts – not because the fiction was better, but because the fiction had been a possibility … minus the magic parts of course. Tecumseh might have been successful – perhaps not in the long run, but if just a couple of things had happened differently – if Tenskwatawa had been less proud and hungry for glory, Tecumseh might have had a few successes, perhaps even paved the way for fairer treatment of later tribes and nations. and it was that simple distinction that got me hooked on history. i realized in that moment – and everything i’ve read or seen since continues to prove it to me – that everything that has ever happened … almost didn’t.

news and politics are just tomorrow’s history unfolding before our eyes, and that’s exciting to me. as i research what has happened before, and then compare that to what is happening around us today, i try to feel the ebbs and flows of political movements; of ideals and collective visions for the future; concepts of what is considered acceptable or commonplace from generation to generation. the fact that substantial portions of both societies considered the world’s first Democracies – the early US and the Ancient Greeks – allowed for slavery, while owning human beings as property was considered barbaric in many European Aristocratic societies during the early US years – this fact is a fascinating dichotomy. how could so many of our deeply humanistic forefathers be so blind to the deep contradictions of their lives?

and yet i’m seeing similar contradictions alive and well today. why for instance do these billionaires, like Leon Cooperman, feel so abused? they’re already billionaires, for craps sake! what do they have to complain about? i mean honestly, talk about First World Problems!

when did capitalism become synonymous with Democracy? and when did ‘fairness’ become a dirty word? can’t these guys see that they’re actually part of a society? that they actually live amongst other human beings? and that the very models of more and more of the businesses they fund are actually meant to financially entrap people? to feed off their overdraft fees and late payments and usurious interest rates? are we supposed to just sit back and let them game systems and markets and lobby to loosen regulations until the divide between the rich and the poor becomes insurmountable?

yes, i know that many of them have worked their asses off over their lives to get where they are, but they seem to believe that the accumulation of wealth is the ONLY worthwhile goal in life – or at least the only life choice worthy of compensation. they act as if people who devote their lives to educating, protecting and enriching the lives of others in a variety of different ways – besides you know, buying them crap because you’re so effing rich – that anybody who devotes their lives to “pointless” things like that should just get used to the idea of living hand-to-mouth every day? you want to be a teacher in these United States? prepare to die poor.

they just seem entirely ignorant of the myriad ways we’ve turned our great nation into a massive trickle-up economic paradise for the ultra-wealthy. i imagine they deride countries like Germany, Canada & the UK for finding ways to protect their middle classes from utter debt slavery. i just don’t understand what the Leon Coopermans of the world want. to be treated by everyone at every moment like the gods into which the money they’ve already acquired makes them? i just don’t understand what they want. a freaking parade? they got Citizens United – making it a legal fact that they have more of a right to free speech than the rest of us by virtue of all the money they have.

as fellow members of this great nation, we have every right to shape our society any way we want. they’ve had their trickle-up economy for thirteen years now – since the ouster of Brooksley Born and the repeal of Glass-Steagall. i think it’s time less ideological hands had a turn at the wheel. what’s absolutely disgusting however is that thanks to the filibuster and this two-party trap our oldest democracy has set itself, something far more game-changing has to occur than a Democratic Congress, but those are all issues for another day. the first few hurdles are purely philosophical. like in Alcoholics Anonymous, we need to first recognize that there IS a problem, and that more of the same is NOT the solution.

we need to see that Democracies CAN have Socialistic qualities as well as Capitalistic, and that perhaps a good balance of both (ala Germany – they seem to be doing okay, don’t they?) is the key to a happy and healthy Democracy in this day and age. you could argue about what the founding fathers would or would not have wanted until you’re blue in the face, but i for one think they’d agree with me on this – or at least my hero Ben Franklin would. Franklin would also fight against the Leon Coopermans of the world like he fought against the Penns – the ridiculously pretend-aggrieved ultra-wealthy of his time.

this is totally Kendall’s idea btw. more will be coming.

so i’ve recently discovered a new way to pass the time – it only takes me about 5 minutes or so every day or two and gives me hours of lulz. my fun new pastime is messing with email scammers, half-heartedly making them think i’m falling for their bit. truth is, i’m not really trying that hard. it’s more fun if i try to make it as obvious as possible. i just want to see if they’ll keep going with it. my new game has only two rules: never give them a penny and always answer their emails.

below is the most developed interaction i’ve had so far – i’ve flipped the correspondence so it can be read in order and sadly they haven’t contacted me since my last email, but i really hope they get back to me. i’m having too much fun.

… but i can’t help but love them.

did you know that the two leads of Die Antwoord are married and have a daughter named “Sixteen”? interesting, huh?

3 days and counting. EEEEEK!

so holy … wow.

i just spent a completely unjustifiable amount of time on a web site called “Above The Law” pounding my head over and over into a wall of trolls. the subject is my homey to the left who (yes) is a convicted felon named Bruce Reilly. Bruce was convicted of murder roughly 18 years ago and served (i believe) ten or eleven years in the Rhode Island penal system. i corresponded with him the whole time even as i watched most of our mutual friends abandon him. there’s a lot i can say about Bruce and why i chose to remain his friend. there’s even more i could say about how i saw in him – particularly once i knew more about the incident that got him incarcerated – a version of me that somehow didn’t get some of the lucky breaks that i did.

the article in general – though a bit more dramatic than necessary, particularly for a law blog – is interesting. it tells a bit about Bruce, how he got accepted into Tulane – even though an ex-con – and how there’s apparently a movement of his fellow law students trying to get him ejected from school! what drives me completely bonkers is the ridiculousness and stupidity of the vast majority of the comments! i NEVER get wrapped up these kinds of things because trolls are IMHO the scum of the earth and every moment of my life that i waste exposing myself to their stupidity is a moment i’ll never get back again – a moment i’ll never be able to claim i did something useful.

anyway, peruse the article itself if you like, but don’t waste your time on the comments. my “final” comment below will give you a far less painful general understanding of the mob mind at it’s worst and my last attempt to reach out to any actual human being who might be skimming through.

alright. whenever i do this sort of thing, i start to lose all faith in humanity and today sadly is no different. this is my final statement to which there will be (from me at least) no reply: 

- to any of you here calling Bruce a psychopath or a sociopath, you’ve either never met the guy of you’ve never met an actual sociopath. i’ve met both and Bruce is no sociopath. he’s ambitious and hard-working and caring and busts his ass for his friends and family. the man i knew 18 years ago was already on the path of turning it all around – he was on the lam though i didn’t know it right away, but he was just another theatre student (yes! the horror!) at Emerson College as far as i knew. then after he was caught, we somehow continued to correspond and i was always impressed by how always seemed so positive and productive. the drawings and poetry that he’d share was always so incredible and full of emotion and always made me wonder if i would be behind bars instead of him if just one or two things different had happened in our lives. i don’t care what anybody else thinks they know about the guy. my old business partner was a true sociopath and Bruce has nothing in common with that guy.

- to all of you who think he never should have been accepted to Tulane or never should have been given a scholarship simply because he’ll “never pass a character or fitness test”, i honestly have no argument because i know nothing about law or bar exams or whatever, but i will say this: if the volume of advocacy and service and over-all hard-work he’s given to the down-and-out and the unfortunate of Rhode Island doesn’t help him pass such an exam, than that exam is flawed IMHO. and if Bruce were somehow able to pass this test somewhere, the law industry wherever he is – particularly the down-trodden and poor of that area – would definitely be better for it. 

- and to all of you trolls and idiots and morons who just get a kick out of saying hurtful, ridiculous or stupid things just to get a rise out of people: thanks for doing your part to lower and worsen the level of dialogue in the world. i hope you get mouth cancer and die (not really, but you get my point –> STFU).

and scene!
=ck

this little side note: Kendall and i have been IMing about this the whole time – just disgusted by the Tools and Hacks that are commenting on that article and she just said something really funny:

If anything itʻs Bruce who should be scared of going to college with them

so great news, kids! all our superfreako sites (including lastdaysjournal & even a number of our clients’ sites – sorry, guys!) are down apparently due to hacker attacks. my normally awesome hosting company (1and1.com) decided to shut all those sites down and then send the team that manages those kinds of things home for the weekend. uh … yeah, i wasn’t too happy to hear that, so i made a stink and hopefully we’ll be able to get this all straightened out quickly.

in the meantime, enjoy this oldie but goodie.

funny stuff. a ‘Beat it’ spoof in which the pantless knights pits iPhones against iPads. enjoy!