GUEST BLOG! Media: When is Enough, Enough?

The following is a Guest Blog by Jason, a "regular" at the BOTG bar.

Lady Gaga--"Paparazzi (Mathias Mental Remix)" (mp3)
Green Day--"American Idiot" (mp3)

As I was brainstorming through various topics to write about for BOTG blog, I came to two conclusions. I have a lot of topics which I would love to write about passionately, but the one topic that I kept on coming back to was my general dismay with today’s media.

As a person who is on the cusp of being labeled a Generation Y child, depending on what year you believe the beginning of Generation Y starts, I am sometimes disturbed by my personal views on media. I think of myself as being a pretty positive person. Yet, I look at all of the examples around me, and I see a general tabloidization and double standards of our media which sickens me.

I know that as a member of Generation Y, I am supposed to be hip with today’s gadgets, instant news, IM, video cameras, and ‘smartphones’. I think I am, but only to an extent. Maybe it is the fringe Generation X in me that prevents me from being fully integrated.

All facets of our society are touched by this media imprudence. The shift in what is really a story in today’s society has deteriorated. Do you really think that President Kennedy’s security advisers were thinking to themselves when America was going through the Cuban Missile Crisis that they couldn’t trust President Kennedy to make the right decisions to steward the country through one of the scariest events of the 20th century because he wasn’t a moral person? Did sleeping with a blond bombshell the night before have a detrimental effect on his judgment in what to do with Khrushchev?

What would have happened if Cheney or Rumsfeld had been president in ’62 instead of Kennedy? In 1988, a sex scandal brought down Gary Hart’s nomination bid for the presidency. 14 years ago, the Congressional process against a former president almost led to his impeachment because he lied about getting oral sex from the wrong woman. I am petrified to think what would happen nowadays. 20 days of Tiger Woods on the cover of the New York Post will do that to you.

Today we are inundated with stories about single and married athlete’s romps in Las Vegas, which has been going on for years. TMZ drops scoops on these kind of events like the US destroyed Iraqi tanks in the first Gulf War. Brittany Spears not wearing panties is unimportant, no matter how attractive she might have once been.

We see video clips on ESPN of NFL sports owners who are drunk and loose with their tongues having a discussion which they clearly don’t know is being videotaped. This is the same ESPN that dedicated almost 24 hours straight to the Terrell Owens suicide watch for a guy that, trust me, loves himself way too much to want to kill himself. On the other hand, this is the same ESPN that dropped a highly successful series, Playmakers, because the NFL wanted it killed as it was too realistic in its interpretation of professional football player’s lives. This is the ESPN who sat on the first allegations sexual assault against Ben Roethlisberger for over two days, an eternity in today’s instant media world, yet had a legal analyst discussing OJ’s cases in his burglary/armed robbery case in Nevada. OJ is extremely insignificant in today’s world, he is so 1994. Why cover the case at all?

Discussing Eastern Hemisphere media groups is even more irritating. Apple recently introduced their iPhone to many Asian countries, including South Korea, where the ‘chaebol’ companies (easiest translation for chaebol is ‘old money’) have a complete stranglehold on most of the consumer products in Korea. It is not good enough that these companies are allowed to go to North America, Europe and most of Asia and compete on fair grounds for their products, but they refuse to allow the government to bring in competition.

When the iPhone was finally allowed into Korea, there were many stories with quotes from anonymous sources in various media outlets who said that it would not succeed there. When the iPhone became a huge success, quickly outselling all other national brands these old money companies ostracized the company that brought in the iPhone, and have not allowed any other new products to go to that company. Do the media in Korea investigate this? Do they apologize for the irresponsible reporting in the first place?

No, the bias in stories continually sides with the person or company who is willing to put the most money into an envelope. They fail to report that the business plans of companies here failed in that they focused on hardware instead of software which is why Apple is so successful and Samsung and LG haven’t been. Now they report that the Android operating system will crush Apple’s iPhones. Maybe they will, I am not a consumer products analyst for Goldman Sachs, but you can bet that if the media in South Korea are wrong again, Samsung, LG and SKT won’t let the truth come out.

I realize that there is a double edged sword in a lot that I am talking about. Today’s instant media society with street and handheld camera’s everywhere probably would allow us to know definitively what really happened on November 22nd, 1963. Maybe a cheating husband is not what the conservative Accenture signed up with Tiger Woods and therefore they are better off today. Maybe I am just becoming a little bit old fashioned before my time in thinking that the journalistic techniques of Woodward and Bernstein are used too infrequently; reporting on real human tragedies like war torn Africa, genocide in Darfur, human rights violations in various places around the world seem to be easily put on the backburner. I will even settle for more feel good humanitarian stories if that would mean less time hearing about ‘making it rain’ at a strip club.

Jason lives, works, and now blogs in Seoul, Korea.

Update: Acidanthera Bulbs and Sunflower Sprouts

Well, as of this morning this is what the sprouts look like for my jumbo Sunflower seeds and my Acidanthera flower bulbs..... Can't wait for the bloom!!!

The New Gang

Here are the new succulents and cacti that I bought at Home Depot yesterday.... Upon further inspecting the roots of the Haworthia below I think something is wrong with it. Granted, it looks perfectly healthy, but there are weird little light brown beads all over the roots (similar in appearance to Miracle Grow food), but it looks very abnormal. After searching through pictures and information on Mealy Bug and root rot I was unable to find anything that looked like it... As soon as I get home today I will take a picture and post so you all can see and possibly help identify. Regardless, I'm pretty sure I'm just going to return it for another instead of trying to treat it, I don't want to take the chance that whatever it is will infect all of my beloved plants! AHHHH! Anyway, check out my new gang.....

The Roughest 4-Letter Word

Hey! Elastica--"Party Games" (mp3)
Photons--"Where Were You Last Night" (mp3)

Imagine a word that is so foul, so virulent, that it leaves otherwise socially-engaged people stunned and silent. Or at least silent. Because when they see this word, many people don't know to respond. So they don't. It is almost like they are frozen, or in a trance, helpless to do even the smallest thing.

That word is......................................RSVP.

Heck, it's not even a word, really, especially if I'd put the periods in there where they're supposed to be. In fact, it's a bunch of French words. As I learned it, it is the acronym for "Respondez, s'il vous plait." Answer, if you please.

Except, it doesn't really mean that. It means, politely, "Please let me know if you are coming." It is how the host knows how much food to prepare, how much wine to order, how many seats to set at the table, how much dishware to rent. If we're talking about something major, like a wedding reception, those RSVPs become the head count that the caterer will use to determine the cost of the reception. And the caterer doesn't care whether people show or not, said they were coming but don't, didn't say that they were coming, but do.

People in the modern world are not good with the RSVP. And I don't really know why. I don't know if they mean to, then forget. I don't know if they don't know that they are supposed to. And I'm certainly not going to claim that this is another example of a society in decline and rave on about the good old days when people had manners.

And, I promise you, this is not a thinly-veiled attack on anyone reading this blog or not. It's not personal at all; it's pervasive. Ask the headmaster's secretary, ask the group of lawyers who throw the Christmas party downtown every year, the person running a book group, ask anyone who regularly entertains, large or small. It's just plain hard to get people to deal with the R-word. And not just socially. In the business setting, too.

Anyone proper will tell you that its cousin, "Regrets only," is not only improper, it's weak sauce. Especially in today's world. Because if people aren't going to RSVP, which would give a host an exact count of the number of people coming to an event, then putting "Regrets only" down at the bottom of an invite isn't going to tell a host a thing. Hosting has become a guessing game, which leaves the host with either too much or not enough, needless expense or social embarrassment.

Recently, I invited 55 people to a gathering for a retiring faculty member. I've only heard back from half. The event is a little over a week away.

I hesitate mentioning that, because it makes it sound like I have an ax to grind, that the only reason for this post is my frustration about next weekend. I promise you that is not the case. As a veteran party-giver, I have long since learned how to adapt to this situation, so can we use the situation as fodder for discussion?

At what point, in the time remaining, does an RSVP lose its value? I mean, if you call the day of the event and say that you're coming, does that help with the planning at all? If you haven't RSVP'ed at all, would the host rather that you came or didn't come? And if it's your party, how willing should you be to "beat the bushes?" Ask too many people "Hey, are you going to be able to come to...." and it sounds/feels like you're desperate.

Personally, I'd rather you came than didn't. If I invited you, that would mean I want you to come, above all considerations. But, sure, I'd rather know.

Once, I lost my composure, and I have regretted it ever since. I list it among the dark days when I know that I embarrassed myself, and no amount of self-rationalization can get me past it. It happened one time when a couple showed up to a party and we didn't know that they were coming because we never heard back from them. Usually, I try to maintain a graceful composure; this time, with an edge to my voice, I blurted out, "Oh, we didn't know you were coming." Well, when you say that kind of shitty thing, you put your guests on the defensive, force them to explain or apologize, something no guests should ever have to do.

Totally unnecessary, Bob. Totally unnecessary. So it isn't like I don't have some manner issues of my own.

P.S.......

I forgot to add these two pictures in the last post but then decided they deserved their own post because they are grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat! The image above features succulents in a wine glass and various other glass containers (almost all of which I have seen for a dollar at the Dollar Tree)! And by the way, after reading the article I mentioned in my previous post (Haworthias - Jewels of the Succulent World by Geoff Stein featured on Dave's Garden) I think I can confidently say most of those look like Haworthias! hehe...

As for the image below.... need I say anything!? MILK GLASS RULES!!!! I have a lot of it... now I know what to do with the awkward ones that don't serve a purpose. Beautiful idea no!?

(both images via Apartment Therapy)

Succulent induced happiness.... today during my lunch break, hehe

The Purple Aeonium

I just got back from my lunch break, and I was a very bad girl.... Well, bad in the sense that I bought more succulents and cacti! I couldn't help myself, you see every few days this little inner voice urges me to return to Home Depot and K-Mart to see if there are any new succulents/cacti! HAHA! Really, no lie... I must obey it, my inner voice is almost never wrong, and indeed it was spot on today!

Among my treasure are some Haworthias... After reading this wonderful article that my cousin Gina shared with me by Geoff Stein called Haworthias - The Jewels of the Succulent World I was compelled to go find some (more.... hehe, yes I have some already). The article is featured on the website Dave's Garden which in itself is a wealth of information about plants!! Great source... endless things to read and pictures to drool over.....

I was in too much of a rush to take pictures of everything that I bought (and everything else that I wanted to buy) and it's a shame because it's such a beautiful sunny day out and I could have done a post on the Home Depot garden section, hehe. At the moment I am brainstorming on my mother's day gifts, I plan to make my mom and my grandmother some amazing little mini succulent/cacti gardens in some planters I snatched up at Big Lots last week.... I can't wait to get home!! Stay tuned for pictures of the new gang just as soon as I get out to my balcony!

And because I just can't stand to post a pictureless blog, here are some images featured in a post by Apartment Therapy called 10 Best Succulents with their names and nicknames. Also, there are some images towards the bottom of succulent planters and unique ideas for planting succulents..... Enjoy!

I hope everyone is having a fabulous day!

Senecio Serpens or Blue Chalk Stick

Kalanchoe Thyrsiflora

(Mine doesn't look quite this attractive! hmmm)

Euphorbia Tirucalli or Fire Sticks

...and here are the Fire Sticks in a planter......

Echeveria Geranium Hen and Chicks

Echeveria Elegans or Mexican Snowball

Donkey's Tail/Burro's Tail

.....and here it is again because I LOVE IT! And I didn't know that it produced flowers!!!! I can't wait until mine gets that full!! ...gorgeous!



And here are some beautiful little succulent planters that I found on Apartment Therapy as well.... stunning!






And boy, do I wish I had some steps so I could do this!!!.... This is absolutely wonderful!....


This is a great idea for a small strip of soil and to add beauty to an otherwise dreary unused gap!..... WOW!


And last, but not least, this little masterpiece.... I found this for sale on Esty in a store called BecomingMrsFord. At eighty buckaroos this little (or shall I say big) number is quite pricey, however the image is enough to inspire a hunt for the perfect copper/brass bin for a DO-IT-YOURSELF project! I am in love with this....

Down On The Lot Of Ya

The View from the Afternoon - Arctic Monkeys (mp3)
Perpetual Motion Machine - Modest Mouse (mp3)

Want some fun numbers? Try these on for size.

• Fewer than 25% of people like Sarah Palin.
• The Tea Party gets 36% approval.
• Nancy Pelosi? 29%
• Harry Reid? 16%
• John Boehner? 12%
• 92% of Americans give the economy a bad rating.
• Obama's approval numbers are hovering in the high 40s.
• Democrats in general? 31% approval.
• Republicans in general? 25% approval.

I can't find the numbers on a general opinion of Wall Street, but I'm going out on a very large limb and saying the numbers aren't good. (Here and here are where I got the other numbers.)

Here's the general gist: The more you are in the public sphere, the more likely you are going to be despised. Now, more than ever.

This isn't just politics. We're seething at Wall Street and big greedy corporations. We despise unions protecting their chaff. We're tired of celebrities who won't shut up. We curse the talking heads on TV, and we are annoyed with athletes who can't seem to keep their private lives private. And the Pope? Are you kidding? Gozer the Destroyer has a higher approval rating.

We're sick of all of it. The bigger you are, the harder you've already fallen.

The level of vitriol and venom is rising from the Land of the Common Man and Woman.... and I've got this wild feeling, based on almost no true historical understanding, based on nothing but pure gut instinct.

We're on the verge of the next '60s.

Sure, it won't be exactly the same. We won't all wear tie-dye shirts and join cults. But that era was marked, above all, by an overwhelming distrust of authority, and we're headed that way again.

Today, different people of different persuasions -- cultural, political, socio-economical, racial -- distrust different groups more and less. However, the bottom line is that we as a nation are less eager to trust The Man, The System, The Church, The Celebrity, or The Big Business.

When's the last time America felt like it was overrun with riots and violence? When it seemed like our country, while not at Civil War, was busier fighting one another than we were fighting the enemies at our proverbial gates? The '60s and early '70s.

Whereas then it was led by restless youth, people of color fighting for equality and respect, and other variations on the "left" theme, the New '60s will be represented by people on both sides. Conservatives and liberals both carry their anti-authority torches and protest signs. Both sides are increasingly mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore.

As a relatively trusting soul, this coming era is going to be very uncomfortable for me. I'm not going to like it. It's already making me sad, how little we seem to like one another. But I keep telling myself this: Most of us ordinary people like one another just fine. We all mostly get along. We're just sick and tired, it seems, of people on big screens and with big microphones talking down to us like they know more or do more or are better-equipped than we are to know what's right and wrong, good and bad, just or unfair.

So I'm going to continue my trusting and optimistic ways by hoping that this coming era of anti-authoritarian animosity and distrust will be a healthy reality check for our country, and that we will emerge from this, perhaps 20 years from now, a better and more unified nation than we are today.

Either that, or we'll eventually break off into smaller Democratic nations like the Eastern Bloc has been doing for the last 20 years, with Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton all serving as presidents of 1/4 of what used to be the United States. (Oh c'mon, you just KNOW Clinton would find his way back into a seat of power...)

My point is, buckle up. The next 20 years are gonna be tense, occasionally violent, and full of suspicious citizens. But maybe we'll be more awake and alert, as a country. Since far too many of us have been sleepwalking like cokeheaded bums since Jack Tripper stumbled into his apartment with Janet and Chrissy, maybe this change won't be so bad. But it won't be pretty.

My Sunflowers Sprouted!!!!!!!

I am so amazed by how fast these sunflower seeds have sprouted, perhaps because the last time I planted a seed (other than the bulbs from my post yesterday) was in elementary school! Suffice it to say the feeling one gets from a sprouting seed at such a young age is nowhere near as meaningful and satisfying as it is now, as an adult. My mom gave me a packet of jumbo sunflower seeds on Easter and I finally planted two last week... I am rather impatient when it comes to waiting for things to grow and show signs of progress, fortunately I have lots of other things (and plants) to occupy my time with. Well, my patience has been rewarded quite soon...

As if I had sensed that yesterday was going to be a wild rainy day, I had gone out onto my balcony before work to move plants under chairs and off tables... and it's a good thing! As I mentioned in my post yesterday, the weather here in Miami was tornado like! Thank goodness I brought plants in and off tables because when I got home my balcony was a mess, yes, after all of that work over the weekend sweeping and rearranging! Plants were knocked over, wet dirt scattered everywhere... ugh. Anyway, as I stomped around picking stuff up and cursing I stopped dead in my tracks as I bent over to empty the water dishes of the pots with my sunflower seeds.... In the morning they were pots of dirt with a seed buried somewhere inside and by the afternoon, after tons of rain and the magic of nature, voila.............

This one is still hangin' on to the seed shell, too cute....

Now I'm a Library

M. Ward--"Green River" (mp3)
Steppenwolf--"Magic Carpet Ride" (mp3)

In 1971, when I was 14, my brother and I had about 15 or 20 albums in our record collection. If that. The standouts were pretty obvious--In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly, Green River by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Steppenwolf Live, and 4-Way Street by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. The latter was the soundtrack to our weightlifting evenings on the back porch. But mostly just the acoustic songs. We would play them over and over and over again to where, even today, I know the tuning of every guitar, the between-song banter, the vocal nuances. It was those few songs--"On The Way Home," "Cowgirl In The Sand," "Don't Let It Bring You Down"--that taught me to love Neil Young.

We didn't take particular care of our records. Instead, we played the shit out of them. If you had a stereo console like the kind my parents had in the living room, or even if you had some kind of stereo system of your own in those days, they were made to stack records so that one could play right after the other. And not just singles. LPs. There was no mix tape; the best you could hope for was a good mix of album sides.

The idea of playing individual songs from individual sides of individual records would have been cumbersome and ridiculous. Everyone would be sitting there waiting while 1) you manually lifted the needle, 2) removed the album from the spindle, 3) set one album down and picked up another, 4) put the new one on the spindle at the top, 5) pulled the start lever and waited while the automatic system took its own sweet time to lower the album and then place the needle at the start of the first song, 6) which you would then have to lift manually and try to find the start of the individual track you wanted, each miss a jarring blast of mid-song, contextless noise.

So we listened to whole album sides, every single song, and usually other sides after that. Even listening to both sides of the same album back-to-back was a concerted listening experience. Of course, we knew what to avoid. We'd listen to "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" straight through, but we'd never listen to the other side, because every song was crap. And with only 15 or 20 albums, we not only knew all the songs, we knew all of the skips and scratches.

Today, I carry in my pocket a library of music that contains (at present) 8, 138 songs.

If plugged into a wall and allowed to play uninterrupted, the Ipod would play for over 23 entire days without repeating a song. If purchased as 1970's-style record albums, the songs would represent a collection of some 814 albums, probably more, since some songs on the Ipod are quite long and would consume an entire side.

I look at this circumstance in two ways--either I've become an obsessive collector of music, a prime citizen in a highly-acquisitive culture, or these stacks of songs are the natural outcome of listening to (mostly) popular music for the last 45 years. Probably, both are true.

Yes, I do feel a certain anxiety if music that I want is not immediately available to me when I want it. And, that means it has to be on the Ipod. Without a radio, I must become the radio. And, sometimes, when there is a song or a CD that I want but don't have, the entire list of songs and artists that I scroll through seems dull.

But, at the same time, that collection of over 8000 songs breaks down into only about 200 songs or 20 albums (and even fewer cds) each year. That's far less than 1 album's worth a music per week.

The problem I see is that, despite the incredible accessibility of music today, the value of the individual song has been greatly diminished, at least for me. I don't learn all the words anymore, I probably don't know who wrote it or who plays on it, and, if someone is presenting it to me, there's a pretty good chance they won't even play the entire song. Instead of the plodding, first song followed by the second song down to the end method of album listening, I am trying to out-Ipod my Ipod on shuffle, and once I get that first song started, I'm already thinking about what I can follow it up with.

So where is that one song, that one set of songs, that I will play over and over and over until it/they become a part of me, that will take hold of my consciousness both now and later? Does that song even have a chance to become that kind of classic, before it's pushed aside in favor of another one?

But is that a problem? I really enjoy the massive range of artists and songs available to me; I'm adding to their ranks all the time. But, now, I'm a library, a library with only one patron who can't possibly do justice to the collection before him. And, that, believe it or not, is its own source of anxiety.

MoreMono Photo Experiments....

Over the weekend I was overdosing on iPhone applications, mostly travel related ones that will be useful on my upcoming trip to Europe... As I perused the camera apps I came across one called MoreMono (Red Edition), it converts photos to monotone and preserves the red, oh, and it's free! I messed around with it and here are the results.... Pretty cool!

Be Pro-CACAH!

America (Fuck Yeah!) -Team America (mp3)

Trey Parker and Matt Stone are responsible for a lot of twisted shit. In fact, they have proven to me time and again that they go 11, and my tolerance for calloused satire only goes to 10. Some examples:

• When Satan has intercourse with Saddam Hussein;
• When Cartman contracts AIDS and injects Kyle with it;
• When they kill Strawberry Shortcake; and
• When they wrote and filmed 90% of Team America:World Police.

To be sure, nary a celebrity, cause, political stance or religious belief has been spared from their merciless magnifying glass. But until last week, never once had they dared to cross the line of Muslim extremists.

That's right. Last week, the prophet Muhammed appeared on their show.

Granted, he was dressed completely in a bear suit. But he was there, because he announces himself as such in the show.

Except that Comedy Central bleeped the muther-bleeping bleep out of the episode becuase a group of Muslim extremists began making threats on Parker + Stone's lives if they dared go where only slain Danish cartoonists have dared to go.

Although I'm no prude by any stretch, much of what these two guys do offends me. Half the time I keep watching anyway, and half the time I just avoid it because I feel better about myself when I make the effort to avoid pointlessly cruel mockery.

But now we have a moment where I'm forced to take their side and support them.

It's one thing to be offended. It's one thing to protest, or to enact laws, or to call the po-po. But when a group of wacked-out fundamentalists decide that God or Allah has enabled them the right to be judge, jury and executioner on the lives of people guilty only of drawing, on a fucking computer, a bear, and adding a voice-over of someone claiming to be Muhammed from inside that bear costume? Well, that kinda pushes me into the South Park Support Network.

Or, as hilarious columnist Dan Savage decided to call it, the "Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor (CACAH, pronounced ca-ca)".

Savage has declared May 20, 2010, as the first-annual Everybody Draw Muhammed Day:

In light of recent "veiled" (ha!) threats aimed at the creators of the television show South park (for depicting the prophet Mohammed in a bear suit) by bloggers on Revolution Muslim's website, we hearby (sic) deem May 20, 2010 as the first annual Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.

Do your part to both water down the pool of targets and, yeah, defend a little something our country is famous for (but maybe not for long? Comedy Central cooperated with the terrorists and pulled the episode): the First Ammendment

Unless I fear for my employment -- which, ironically, is a bigger concern than the fear for my very life -- I will participate in EDM Day. I will draw something and add myself to the untold number of people who stand up to this kind of crap.

Here in the 21st Century, in a culture where few things seem worth fighting for anymore, there's a little something known as freedom of speech, and we can make a pretty powerful collective statement defending it by doing nothing more than spending a few minutes of time in our own homes and posting pictures like this.

And here's what I guarantee you: even if Dan Savage was kidding about that day (which he wasn't, I don't think), and even if only a few thousand people participate (the numbers will be much higher, I think), it will be an awe-inspiring moment for the rights of offensive and tasteless comedy over the forces of thought-control and extremism.

And if they come kill me? Screw 'em. It's after the series finale of LOST, so I can die a happy man anyway.

Or I'll just lie and say Bob did it.

Please note that I'm still trying to figure out which of the five ways I've seen it is the most acceptable way to spell the name of the prophet in question. I can't tell whether people intentionally misspell it to try and avoid extremist wrath and violence, or if there's multiple options, or if no one really knows how to spell it.