The Shiny Teeth Win The Race

Hollywood = Entertainment

I have always rejected the most obvious and apparent realities on the grounds of them being obvious and apparent. Entertainment designed to entertain me immediately inclines me to not be entertained. I've always, for some unholy reason, preferred metaphysical rumination to unmitigated entertainment. This does not mean I don't like to enjoy myself; rather, I am extremely skeptical of institutionalization and industry, i.e. of predefined modes of communication, or more accurately, entertainment, which is really just the facilitation of self-communication with your desires.

Professional Sports = Politics

In high school I had a reputation as a fierce debater as well as a dedicated athlete. Competitiveness was (and still is) in my blood. This is why in the year 2000, as many of us were, I was completely crestfallen when Bush won. I wanted my side, the Democrats, to win. But we didn't. C'est la vie.
But is it really? I only see the simplicity of the race in retrospect; at the time, I didn't just want us to win, I thought we HAD to win, that we were right and they were wrong. The realization I had that the righteousness I felt was so completely subjective caused my interest in party politics to completely disintegrate. Interestingly enough, around the same time, my once-intense interest in pro sports (NHL included) began deteriorating.

So what is the relationship between professional sports, politics, Hollywood, and entertainment?

Dolla dolla bills, y'all. Each industry proudly functions competely (yes, competely) detached from the harsh realities of sustenance living and resource scarcity that the majority of the world faces. These enormous industries seek only to communicate with our desires. In doing so, they have contributed to an atrociously gross inflation of the global economy while simultaneously inundating the world with unbelievably influential aesthetic modes of desire-fulfillment and identification. But this is the beauty of such a system; they are not accountable! The humans who "run" the industries are midwives at best. The consumer/voter/movie-goer is the true architect. We certainly decide what they feed us, Coke or Pepsi, but what if we don't want either? The simple libertarian answer is, "don't like it, don't buy it." But other people are, and it's an issue of principle, not of choice (which is informed, ideally, by principle). The imperative to consume, to slake, to satisfy, to choose, is what drives today's economy. This makes everyone from an ontological standpoint primarily a consumer. Looking at this fact from an ethical standpoint, there are two reactions one can have: resignation and outrage. The former entails drinking Coke while spouting some anti-corporate rhetoric while outrage is punching (or wanting to punch) anyone you see holding a Coke bottle. This creates a continuum of ethical disposition. Very often I tell myself that I should be outrage and only outrage, but the human in me is always asking, "what's the point?"

Desire Can Be Disgusting

I have very little faith in the integrity of the majority of my desires, thus I feel sick that essentially the same structure of desire-communication seems to inhere in all Western industries and institutions. It's contingent, as opposed to necessary (read: Communism), collectivist thinking. What "sells" is king. It is self-imposed oppression. It is your civic duty, your Existential responsibility even, to identify as a chooser, thus a consumer. The complete appropriation of all vital resources on this earth make rejecting this responsibility basically an impossibility, so DRINK UP!

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Television is a totally wasted resource.

In other news, Al Gore dares all the assholes in the world to stop being assholes: What A Bloody Communist

East Is West and West Is East

Because the company I work for imports its products from China, the Chinese economy is of utmost interest to us.
Incidentally, I've become very familiar with its economy of words, better known as Chinglish.
Some examples:


Here is an article that makes some sense of this phenomenon:

deformed man lavatory

The Olympics are upon us. Brush up on your Chinglish.