Category: Ponderings

Don’t run

I mentioned in my previous post that I’ve always had a problem properly pacing myself. Here’s a little story that illustrates that fact pretty well.

My first trip to Japan in 2001 was not a leisurely excursion. We were constantly on the move and we were always walking, whether it was to explore a certain area or just to get to our next destination.

In Kyoto, we spent a day wandering through the sprawling temples and shrines of Mt. Hiei. It was long day of hiking through the mountains.

Towards the end of the day we were headed back the way we came, so we could get to a trolley that would take us back down the mountain. We came to a temple at the foot of a long flight of wide stone stairs. I was feeling good. I’d made it through the long day and felt energetic enough to tackle those steps. And so I started briskly jogging up, to make the trip to the top shorter.

Our instructor Todd and my classmate Jason, both experienced hikers, immediately yelled at me, “No! Don’t run!” Startled, I slowed down as they explained: running up the stairs would take more energy than walking up them, and I’d wear myself out for the rest of the trip back.

I wasn’t sure I believed this was true. At least if I ran I could get it over with, and I might even enjoy it. Plodding up the stairs seemed like a neverending trial.

Still, I did as they suggested. It turned out that after that we had longer to go to the trolley than I’d thought. By the end of our hike my legs were only moving through the sheer force of my will. The trolley ride was but a brief respite, and soon we were trudging through the streets of Kyoto. When finally we stopped at a restaurant for a meal, I was so exhausted that all I could manage to eat was a bowl of white rice.

I wondered how it would have been if I had gone ahead and run the stairs. Would I have even made it to the trolley?

I realized even then that this story was a metaphor for life, but until yesterday I hadn’t applied it to my work. Now I see that I’ve been trying to run from 10 in the morning until 7 at night. Some days I’ve managed it. Some days I’ve stumbled. And some days I’ve been numb while I recovered. The end result? I’ve managed to excel at work, but pretty much everything else has fallen to the wayside.

I want to do more. I don’t want to pass out before I even get to the trolley.

I’ll just have to remember, when the urge to plow into a project consumes me, the lesson I learned on that historic mountain.

Don’t run.

A nice community

I really like where we live. It’s very convenient to all the west Augusta amenities, but because it’s back away from main roads, it feels secluded and private, and people here are typically friendly. I’m not sure I know of any other community like this in the area. There are nice, quiet places on the outskirts, of course, but none so convenient to everything that I can think of.

At one time I was convinced that I wanted to move, but I’ve made the apartment more homey since then and I really can’t think of anywhere else I would want to live at the moment. Even North Augusta, where I have wanted to live for some time, can’t really offer me the privacy and convenience that this place can.

That said, I do wish our community had sidewalks…and bike trails would be awesome. I would also like it if there was a grocery store within walking or biking distance. Technically Kroger is not all that far, but I’m not sure I would feel safe biking on skinny Flowing Wells Road.

I have an idea for an ideal community that someday, when I have money to invest, I’d like to develop.

Unfinished thoughts

My interactions with a new employee here at work have been infinitely intriguing to me. I can’t figure out if they are actually a change from how I used to be or not.

I’ve always been shy. In recent years I’ve been better and better about meeting new people and not being anxious about talking to strangers on the phone. Really, right now I can’t think of any reason why I would avoid talking to someone on the phone, other than being too busy to talk, and that’s a far cry from just a few years ago, when I was so afraid to call a stranger about a subject I hadn’t handled before that I literally ran away.

Similarly, I used to be very nervous when meeting people, never knowing what to say and making my escape as soon as humanly possible.

I feel dumb.

I don’t understand this. The animation is pretty cool, and the sculpture is beautiful, but I don’t get the whole fourth dimension thing. I always thought the fourth dimension was time. Can anybody explain this concept to me? Specifically, I don’t get this:

In the three-dimensional world, there are five regular solids — tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron — whose faces are composed of triangles, squares or pentagons. In four dimensions, there are six regular solids, which can be built based on the symmetries of the three-dimensional solids. Unfortunately, humans cannot process information in four dimensions directly because we don’t see the universe that way. Although mathematicians can work with a fourth dimension abstractly by adding a fourth coordinate to the three that we use to describe a point in space, a fourth spatial dimension is difficult to visualize. For that, models are needed.

In my head, when I put those three-dimensional shapes together, I just get another three-dimensional shape. Like building with blocks. What, exactly, is being built? Does each three-dimensional shape represent a world or dimension or moment in time?

I remember doing arrays back in high school computer science. Mrs. Murphy told us to think of fourth dimensional arrays as putting a “pocket” into the third dimension. I always hated that, because I didn’t think that was accurate, and I didn’t want to base my understanding on a fallacy. I didn’t want to skip the difficult part so I could get my work done. I wanted to understand it.

Am I capable of that?

Memory

I’m notorious in my family for having a bad memory. I “remember” things that apparently didn’t happen, and I don’t remember a lot of things that did. The first can be attributed to my healthy imagination–I have always made up stories about people or played out scenarios in my head over and over. I’m not sure what causes the latter.

I think it’s because of my “Swiss cheese brain” that I turned into such a compulsive archivist. I logged pretty much every single Internet chat I ever had. Even with people I later blocked. Even if it was just a one or two line conversation.

And I would go back and read logs occasionally, and I was almost always surprised every time I did. I would not remember having the conversation. I would believe it happened, and I would understand my frame of mind, but I wouldn’t remember the conversation itself.

I had a somewhat heated discussion with someone the day before the fire. I’ve thought back on it several times since. It wasn’t a bad conversation, but I expressed my feelings fairly strongly, and I remember having a profound reaction to the person I was talking to. This is the sort of thing you’d think you’d be able to remember.

But of all the chats I’ve had in the past almost ten years now, there are only one or two that I can remember with any clarity…and even then I remember feelings more than substance. I’m going to forget this chat too, I think…I’m going to forget how and why I was so fired up. And now I won’t even have my logs to go back to.

My memory has been a good thing, in a sense. It’s helped me to forgive many people. Things that made me horribly angry in the past are wiped out, so I can move on.

But I’m uncomfortable with that. I’m unhappy that I literally have to forget in order to forgive…and I’m unhappy that I forget so easily in the first place.

Kinda mean, kinda true

I hit up “The Artistic History of Webcomics” at the Webcomics Examiner today (via Gabe). The article is basically a group of comics-knowledgeables discussing some of the most artistically influential webcomics. There’s some interesting stuff there, but one comment really struck me.

In the part about Fred Gallagher and Megatokyo, Shaenon Garrity writes the following:

And, yes, I’m a little baffled by its popularity. […]

The best explanation I can give is that Gallagher has tapped into things that a lot of American manga fans like about manga, and they’re not necessarily the same things that make manga popular in Japan. For a lot of Western otaku, Japan fills the same function as Middle-Earth or Starfleet or twelfth-century England does for other flavors of geek: it’s a fantasy world where everything is attuned to their desires and, if they could magically get there, they wouldn’t feel like outsiders anymore. In this Japan, nerds are the ruling class, video games and comic books abound, cutting-edge high-tech toys flood the streets, and everyone dresses in cool, crazy fashions. And, of course, hot teenage girls fight each other for the right to hook up with introverted geeks. This fantasy version of Japan is seductive to a certain young, tech-saavy, socially awkward but culturally aware type — the type that increasingly dominates the Internet. Megatokyo delivers the fantasy in full: it’s about two American fanboys who move to Japan and, aside from some early fish-out-of-water difficulties, discover that it’s exactly the way it’s depicted in manga.

She has a point.

There are a lot of people who say they want to live in Japan…and yet have never set foot in the country. And I don’t mean they say it theoretically, like, “Oh, it’d be nice to live there.” I mean they go so far as to make serious plans–and if they find themselves unable to make the move, to sigh wistfully about it all the freaking time. (While I am guilty of the latter, at least I have actually been to Japan.)

It scares me that people seem to think they understand Japan because they watch anime, read manga, and listen to the music.

I’ve noticed myself making assumptions about culture or language based on input from those media, and I always have to stop myself and put a little disclaimer tag on the thought in my brain: This is not fact. This is a guess, based not on actual experience but on observing a stylized product.

Not only that, but I’ve picked up quite a few phrases from anime that I surely shouldn’t use in polite company. In fact, I seriously wonder whether anyone would ever really say the things you hear in anime at all.

One of my Japanese language or culture professors at UK (sadly, I can’t remember if it was Inoue-sensei or Slaymaker-sensei) explained once that written works in Japanese are done in plain form, for efficiency if I’m remembering correctly. There are two main forms of the language, plain and polite. As you can guess, plain is more abrupt and familiar and is considered quite rude if used in the wrong context. Polite is typically more extended. Newspapers, novels, manga, and even anime (a visual art, but still one that is initially written) are therefore all done primarily in plain form.

In other words, the way an anime character says something may not be the way you want to say it, and if you base your understanding of the language solely on anime, you may be in for some problems. Or, as I put it to my friends once, “I’m going to get to Japan and start having conversations, and they’re going to think Why does she talk like a rude twelve-year-old boy?”

It’s hard not to romanticize Japan, or certain aspects of the Japanese experience. I find myself very strongly attached to high school anime. Sports, dramas, shoujo romances, you name it…if it’s got seishun, I’m there. Sometimes it’s almost painful to remind myself that even if I do move to Japan, I’m not going to have that experience. I’m not going to be a Japanese high school student, and I will never be able to truly relate to those who have been. And, to be perfectly honest, high school life couldn’t possibly be as wonderful as it’s portrayed in anime.

The most dramatic example of the idealized high school experience that I’ve seen is a tragic series called Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. The series actually moves past high school and into an adult life that seems more like a trap than anything else. While it’s true that the central tragedy of the series is a large reason behind the dark tone of the characters’ adult lives, it’s also true that the characters’ situations would not have changed much if the tragedy hadn’t occurred. Once high school was over, the adventure would have been over too. The characters might have been happy, or happier at least, but Takayuki probably still would have gone on to a job in the same town, and Mitsuki would have had to give up swimming eventually and become an O.L. just like she did in the anime. The two both gave up college due to the tragedy, but even if they had gone I got the feeling that they would only have been delaying the inevitable: entrance into the workforce, and acceptance of drudgery for the rest of their days. Compared to that, their time in high school, with the excitement of dating and tests and after-school activities and the promise of an open future waiting for them to write their names on it…well, there really is no comparison. Kimi ga Nozomu Eien is about loss of innocence, and what better way to analogize than to present that stereotypical seishun and then snatch it away?

I feel, therefore, that anime invokes a good deal of nostalgia when presenting high school life (and life in general), and that this can (and does) give misguided impressions to people from other countries. This is, of course, not anime’s fault. Anime is an art form, not a cultural primer. And that’s what people, the people Shaenon Garrity’s talking about (and me), need to remember.

The society of bribes

Whether it’s with a well-timed handful of Cheetos before a devastating [D&D] battle or a well-timed kick into the rough so your boss can win the golf game, it’s important to know how to handle yourself in a greed-based economy.

From “My son becomes a man, gets +2 STR, +1 DEX“.

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An experiment, and a discussion question

Okay, I’m going to have a little experiment here for my readers. First, I’d like you all to read this paragraph:

I saw someone today while I was out shopping. This person was tall, with brown hair, and was carrying a sack. I really liked the red shirt the person was wearing.

Okay, now that you’ve read the paragraph, the experiment is to think about the person the narrator saw. Try to imagine the person. Get a good picture of the person in your head.

Now, apply the following statements to the person you’ve imagined:

This person is overweight.
This person is black.
This person is female.

Did any of those statements surprise you?

One of the annoying things about language is that implied meanings can work against openmindedness.

Don’t get me wrong–I think implicature is great, and loads of fun. But sometimes when we say things, there are underlying assumptions that are unfair, and often accepted unconsciously as normal.

For example, when I say “a man flirted with me,” and give no further information, what do you imagine? I have realized that I automatically imagine a white person.

It happens that I have been flirted with by two black men in recent months. The first time was in December, and the second time was today.

The first guy in that story from December–the one who just rode by after exchanging normal pleasantries–was white, and the second guy–the one who hit on me–was black. I realized as I was framing the story that if I stated that, I would be inadvertently making some sort of statement. So I chose not to state their races at all.

This morning’s story is much the same. What is the point of saying that the older gentleman–with a winning smile, twinkling eyes, and a salt-and-pepper patchy beard–happened to have dark skin?

Bringing it up now seems to imply something about me and black men, too, which is unfair.

But it bothers me that these men lose their identities if I don’t identify them as being black. How many of my readers share my unconscious prejudice? How many will see “a man” and think “a white man” without realizing it?

There seems to be no ideal solution to this. It occurred to me that rather than omitting race information completely, I could simply add it for everyone. However, I can’t just go along and say stuff like “my white friend, Brooke” and “my Puerto Rican friend, Mari”, because that is just inherently racist-sounding. It’s like I’m labeling everyone so that the readers will know which set of preconceptions to use when thinking about the people I write about. :P A better way might simply be to describe people physically–for example, the man this morning would become “an older gentleman, his smile a flash of white and gold in a dark, lined face”. That’s harder to do, and it still doesn’t completely escape the race labeling, but it might be the best option.

What does everyone else think? Is race information part of a person’s identity? Think back to the experiment at the beginning of this post. Do most people have a “base template” for “a person”, which is then modified by extra information? Do you have one? My base template, I’m coming to realize, is a white male at a healthy weight, with a full head of hair. What’s yours?

I realize that this is a touchy subject, so it might be embarrassing to share your preconceptions. Please don’t feel obligated to respond at all. But I really am interested in hearing some other opinions on this.

Megatokyo frenzy!

Today, Scott Kurtz posts a reaction to the Internet furor over his snipe at Megatokyo (quoted here).

Mega-blow up

It looks like there’s been a lot of fall out from the stupid joke I cracked this weekend about the parting of Megatokyo founders Rodney Caston and Fred Gallagher. First, Fred vomited up this big “confessional”, followed by a sort of apology for over reacting. Then Rodney’s blog got slammed by Fred haters and my inbox got flooded with people who wanted me to do everything from issue a written apology to prepare for a lawsuit over my “slanderous actions.”

The internet means never having to forget what highschool was like.

I have to tell you, I think Kurtz is hilarious. He is almost an Internet badass.

I say “almost” because (at least, according to this guy) he removed his original post about MT. A real badass would, like Eric Burns, stand by his words, whatever they were. This has the bonus effect of making you, perhaps, think before speaking.

I have personally decided never to delete anything off my site, though my reasons are more egotistical than anything. Basically, I love myself, and I want to share all my thoughts with the world. All of them. Even the ones that would hurt people. Which is why I didn’t delete this post, or this one, or this one, even though I hurt people’s feelings with them. Ultimately, I’m leaving them there for history, so that my biographers will have a complete picture of what kind of person I was.

(Please don’t call the guys in white coats on me for expecting to have biographers. It’s my happy ego-dream.)

Since those three posts I have been more careful about what I write here, thinking long and hard before mentioning someone by name. That’s a part of who I am, too; while I’m not fond of censoring myself, I realize that this journal isn’t just for me and my biographers. It’s read by people right now, and I have to respect those people.

How far can you go? That’s a question I’ve struggled with; the line is being constantly negotiated by every single person who self-publishes on the Internet. But to me, making a hurtful post is less of an offense than deleting a post. The first is excusable (and even funny, like Kurtz’s rants), but the second just seems like lying, or covering up the evidence. Once something’s been published, you can’t ever take it back. Not in the Information Age. Trying to do so only makes you seem untrustworthy.

So that, my friends, is my one and only beef with Scott Kurtz’s rants.

Art, and remakes and revisions thereof

I started this as a response to Hai’s comment to my previous post, but it got long-winded so I decided to put it here.

Regarding the third Harry Potter movie: they did rearrange stuff, and leave a lot out (I was really looking forward to seeing Snape hover unconscious with his head lolling to the side…and they never explained how Lupin knew about the map, or about Prongs! Plus the movie ended early, etc…). As I was telling Brooke the other day, though, I guess I don’t see movies as “adaptations to a different format” so much as I see them as “retellings”. You know how several different people can see the same movie, but they’ll all talk about it differently? Or how the same event can happen to two people, but they’ll both give two different accounts? That’s how I see “remakes”–movie versions of books, anime versions of manga, etc. (This doesn’t typically apply to book versions of movies; I haven’t come across many book retellings that were all that great, because I think they try too hard to bring out the feel of the movie, instead of trying to be good literature.)

So I guess if someone’s complaint is that a movie didn’t include everything from the book it was based on, or if a movie rearranged things to make for a better movie, then I can’t agree that those are good enough reasons to dislike the movie. I feel that movies should be judged as movies, not as “moving picture forms of books”. The media are completely different; it is impossible to make a direct translation.

I think there is a sense in the US that the first version of something is automatically the best version, and everything else must be judged based on the first version. I get the feeling that later versions are supposed to present the perfection of the first version to new audiences, and when this is “unsuccessful” or when the new version goes in a different direction, those who were fans of the original don’t say “wow, that’s interesting”, they say “I want to rip out the entrails of anyone involved in the making of this garbage!” There is a keen sense of betrayal that I think can shoot any chance of good, collaborative, community storytelling right in the foot. Originality, in this particular genre, is not seen as a good thing.

People who know of my disdain for the Star Wars Special Eds (they ride the short bus) may think that I am being hypocritical here. Far from it. I would have no problem with George Lucas making new movies, and reinterpreting what he set down in the originals. My problem comes when he takes the originals and changes them fundamentally. You can’t disagree that the stories were changed. This is, I feel, more of a slap in the face to the integrity of the original work than would be making an entirely new version of it.

I have a strong sense of history in the arts. I feel that any piece that has been published should be allowed to remain available to the public. By revising and revising and then only releasing the revised versions on DVD, George Lucas is sweeping his original Trilogy under the rug. I’m lucky enough to have a set of laserdiscs, but I don’t have a laserdisc player, and my tapes won’t last forever.

A remake, on the other hand, does not in any way “undo” what has come before. It’s just a different version; a retelling from another point of view. Anyone who has studied history even a little should know that we never know the whole truth. Everything is shaded by bias and by the scope of perspective of the observer(s). Only by getting multiple perspectives can we even begin to approach “what really happened”.

I used to be really, really anal about “canon”. Basically, I wanted everything to fit, to be internally consistent, and to recognize that there was only one real “truth”. This gave me plenty of headaches on the AMRN, because we were constantly revising history in order to explain away GM or player disappearances, or to add in new Macross information. It drove me nuts. I felt that the integrity of the game was demolished every time it happened.

I think this mindset came from my childhood, when I believed that everything I read or saw on TV was real, out there somewhere in another dimension that I couldn’t reach. I was comforted by the fact that I could at least watch what was going on. Many times I would pray that God would send me and my family into one of the universes I loved. Back then, when I encountered a remake–like the Popeye movie–I had to explain it to myself as “pretend”, and later as simply more alternate dimensions.

But as an adult, I started to watch more anime, seeing how different stories have been made and remade and accepted not with cynicism and judging but with open-armed excitement at seeing an old story in a fresh, new light. And I slowly began to change my mind. New versions of something do not negate or invalidate the old. They’re all the same story, but told through different eyes. (And if that’s too difficult to grok, then the alternate universe theory should placate you.)

Media bias; plus, what I’m up to

I love it when Den Beste points these things out. What you see or read on the news really is just a matter of how the news organization wants to frame the information they’ve received.

I finished off Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with time to spare before seeing the movie last night. I must say, it’s my favorite book so far. That may have tempered my opinion of the movie, too, because I came away from it feeling like it was the best of the three, while Kelly was far less impressed.

Regardless of whether or not the movie is actually good, I stand by my opinion that the soundtrack is the best of the Harry Potter music, and is indeed the best from John Williams that I’ve heard in awhile. The man is my idol, musically, but of late he has taken to essentially plagiarizing himself. (For example, of all the music in The Phantom Menace, the only truly unique theme was “Duel of the Fates”. For a more relevant example, the main theme we hear when a Harry Potter movie opens or is advertised is almost exactly the same as a spooky, magical little melody from Hook.)

Having blown through three Harry Potter novels, I’m starting to feel like a real reader again. In fact, tonight I finally started reading The Time Traveler’s Wife…and it is really, really good. I’ve missed being a reader; I haven’t been voracious about it since sometime in high school. The only thing I don’t really like about reading is having to handle the books. There is no comfortable way to read. I have three typical positions, which I switch off as I get uncomfortable: on my back, holding the book over my face; on my stomach, with the book resting on my pillow; and sitting cross-legged, leaning down towards the book. Depending on the size and weight of the book, lying on my back, which is otherwise the most comfortable position, can be a true hassle.

I don’t particularly like reading things of novel length on my computer, because I have no real way of stopping. It’s not like I can put a bookmark in exactly where I want to (although I don’t know about ebook software, and whether or not this is possible with that). I have read in the La-Z-Boy we got from Sean’s parents, and it works out okay: I can prop my elbows on the armrests, which is something of a relief to my arms. Maybe with a pillow in my lap it would work out…

It might be fun to take a book over to the workout room at the apartment clubhouse and read while walking on a treadmill. I may try that at some point; more exercise would definitely be a good thing.

Work has been much better than it was on Monday and last week. I’m not sure what my problem was, but at least part of it can be attributed to hormones and lack of sleep. Yesterday I had something of a bad experience on a call, but I refused to let it bother me. I was pretty impressed with myself afterwards. If it had happened on Monday, I’m not sure what would have happened.

Mari and Brooke and I were supposed to bellydance today, but things didn’t work out. Hopefully we will be bike-riding tomorrow, and maybe we can squeeze in some bellydance too. I would like to get myself on a regimen of going through all the basic bellydance motions, several times each, every day. I got the idea from Mari; it would be a fantastic aerobic/muscular workout. Now I just need to figure out what time of day I want to do it. I would have time in the morning if I got up at 5 (like I usually try to), but I would also have time right after work, in the “dead” time between then and when I have to start making dinner. I suppose I could just dedicate myself to doing it during one of those two times.

I need to go grocery shopping and pick up some meat for the week, and vegetables. Perishable food is the bane of my existence…I have trouble actually using it up before it goes bad. At the same time, though, I really want to start eating fresh foods, and stop using packaged/processed products.

As a final note…I found a couple new blogs to read recently. One belongs to a 17 year old and the other belongs to a 73 year old. I found them through Blogger’s new profile feature…I have “emotion” listed as one of my interests, and out of curiosity I clicked it to see if anyone else had used that word too. Interestingly, only a handful of people came up. Of those, I found myself drawn to these two: goei and rare.

rare has a sort of rambling, stream-of-consciousness, yet somehow practiced and beautiful flow to his writing, and yesterday he wrote something that really touched me, so I would like to share it.

A little more on advertising

I’m going to eat dinner here in a bit, and then I’m going bike riding, but before I go I wanted to mention something AJ reminded me of in his comment to my previous post.

Psychographics is information about customers that is used to market to those customers things that they are specifically interested in. Giving a smoker a coupon to buy more cigarettes is an example of the most direct way to cash in on this sort of thing. You have the customer already; now it’s just a matter of persuading him to continue using your product.

(By the way, still quitting on your birthday, AJ?)

Another way to do this is to put similar items that a customer might be interested in the vicinity of an item you already know they are interested in. An excellent (and rather innovative) example of this is Google’s AdWords. Affiliate advertising on websites also tends to do this sort of thing. I’m sure this also happens in more traditional media, like television or newspapers, but to be honest I haven’t watched TV commercials or read a real newspaper in something like 10 years. (Go go Gadget VCR…)

I think my problem with traditional advertising is that it is static and passive and therefore obtrusive, out of place. Targeted advertising using psychographics is much better, assuming it’s done right, because it is at least relevant.

Many people have problems with targeted advertising because of how the targeting is done. Companies collect information from their customers, either through a direct poll or indirectly by watching what they purchase, what websites they go to, etc. Amazon.com’s website is fantastic at this. I’ve never seen another site that so perfectly advertises at every turn. Sure, they get a few things wrong, but in the long run I appreciate the “suggestions” their algorithms come up with for me. Not only do they track what I’m looking at and what I’ve bought, but they keep statistics across the board, to show me that since I like this thing a bunch of other people like, I may also like this other thing that people seem to like.

But of course, the issue for those concerned about privacy is the fact that tracking occurs at all. The idea that browsing habits might be stored somewhere and analyzed is terrifying to some, and others find it offensive that science be used to “target” them with popular products…it’s an affront to individuality and a nod to peer pressure.

Companies that use psychographics have to toe the line, making sure not to use the information they’ve gleaned for a sinister purpose while still cashing in on it.

I don’t really have a problem with my browsing habits being monitored. I’m not fearful that some big corporation is going to know my deepest, darkest secrets. Who cares if they know? (I doubt they even care.) And I certainly don’t think this sort of knowledge will enable them–or anyone else–to control me. Sway me with pleasant, similar items I could buy, maybe. But nothing that’s being done in terms of targeted advertising is denying me my freedom to choose for myself–as long, of course, that I can opt out of any mailings.

Amazon.com does do some annoying “fly overtop the content to get your attention” ads sometimes. I like targeted advertising, but I don’t like advertising that covers up what I’m trying to read. It’s worse than a popup ad because I can’t easily get rid of it. (Those ads on MSN are the worst–sometimes it takes several seconds to find the X, and sometimes there isn’t an X until the ad is over.)

The best sort of ad, I think, is the kind that is unobtrusive, relevant, and informative. I like Google AdWords because they meet these criteria. I do not, however, like it when people use AdWords (or something similar) without denoting them as ads. I don’t want to be tricked into thinking an advertisement is legitimate content.

In my ideal world, advertising would be just like any other Internet content: available when I want to look at it, avoidable when I don’t, and interesting to at least some of the people who come across it. Graphical ads on pages with mainly textual content would not exist. Ads would match their surroundings, fit in as part of the page. As far as mailings go, e- or otherwise, I would only receive mailings that I had chosen to receive, and I would be able to turn them off at any time.

Affiliate programs and AdWords are a step in the right direction. However, it’s difficult to implement these paradigms in traditional media. As the television and the computer grow into one creature, though, I expect that TV commercials will begin to change. We’ll just have to wait and see what they change into.

Journalism, and how to fund things without advertising

Interestingly enough, Den Beste recently wrote about the decay of journalism in the United States…I just read his piece.

I don’t know how I would solve the problem either, but I think turning all news organizations into nonprofits would be a good start. Of course, I’m not sure how this would be accomplished while allowing the organizations access to the technology and travel they need to get the story. I hesitate to say that they should be government subsidized, but I’m not sure that advertisers would approach them in the same way if they were nonprofit…and to be honest, I don’t think the news should have advertisements, and this change would certainly destroy their budgets.

It’s gotten to the point where I really just hate advertisements of all kinds. With the Internet, I can pretty much find whatever I need, via informative websites or word-of-mouth on forums or from friends. I can’t actually remember ever seeing an ad, thinking “Hey, I could use that!” and then buying something.

Most of the time I ignore ads completely. I throw away the coupon books and flyers we get in the mail, too. Coupons are a huge scam; they give you discounts on things you didn’t want in the first place. You’re not saving money, you’re wasting it on stuff that clutters up your house, or food that will sit and rot in the fridge because “it was such a great deal!” and yet no one wants to eat it.

I don’t need to even start on how annoying pop-up ads and spam are.

For some time now I’ve been thinking that advertising needs to be eliminated, or at the very least transformed. But I’m not entirely sure how, and that is why I can’t solidly recommend a way to take advertising out of the news.

I’ll probably post more about this later, but my lunch break is over now, so…ta-ta!