On Spoilers, Censorship, and the Joys of Piracy Wednesday, Dec 24 2008

SPOILER WARNING: Grey’s Anatomy Season 4 and House Season 5

See? That’s a spoiler warning. To me, it’s simple courtesy to include spoiler warnings in blog posts. Which means that the lack of spoiler warnings is simply rude.

Can’t see why some people find it so hard to get that spoilers suck. A film is made a certain way such that the audience finds out about the plot in a certain manner, which will shape said audience’s experience.

When I am spoiled, a great part of the pleasure of watching a film or reading a book is lost. It is an integral part of the experience, for me, and for many people as well. I am not the only one in this world who hate spoilers, and people who don’t mind spoilers should just get this: There are people who take spoilers very seriously, as they can seriously spoil what would otherwise be a pleasurable experience.

But okay, that’s just a short rant. Don’t really mean to talk about spoilers, just that I really really hate them and am annoyed when people don’t take spoilers seriously.

Anyway, my life has been about more relaxing, and I watched more House online as well as finished Grey’s 4 in a through-the-night marathon whereby I watched TV and guzzled coke (the drink, not the white stuff).

And I just discovered more pleasures of watching pirated stuff.

Once again, here’s a spoiler warning.

One of the great pleasures of watching pirated stuff is that you do not have to undergo the censorship of the Singapore government.

Seriously, put that on the list. How can one have an authentic film viewing experience when the State is busy nannying what you may or may not watch.

I mean, I’m a defender of Singapore’s system quite often, but I think such censorship is just plain stupid. Like seriously.

For instance, I wonder how the MDA’s going to deal with that episode with two gay soldiers in Grey’s 4. The kissing scene would most probably be cut out, though what about the whole “portraying homosexual lifestyle in a positive light” thing.

Even though it wasn’t really positive thing, since their story was supposed to be tragic, as the funny therapist in the show said.

And there’s that lesbian relationship developing in Grey’s, which is rather weird but I’m still okay with it. Haha, I guess. The thing about marathons is that they dull the sense abit so I’m still absorbing the revelation.

More importantly, if I weren’t watching House online, I would totally have missed the hot steamy lesbian sex Thirteen and the random girl were having. Which would have totally KILLED the plot for the episode, maybe even damaged the whole Thirteen spiralling into a degenerate lifestyle thing that has been going on throughout the season.

So my question is: what is MDA to do?

Seriously, they can’t afford to not allow Grey’s or House be shown on the air, can they? They’d lose political support at the drop of a hat, since they are such popular shows (I think).

Yet if they censor, they’d be destroying the show and fans will complain as well.

Which really, brings me to yet another point.

I generally like things lawful and orderly, but sometimes I see a good side to piracy.

Here, I’m the talking about the fact that piracy liberates us from draconian censorship laws.

The really anal part of me likes things to be orderly, everyone to obey the law, follow the rules, and these rules should be clear, properly enforced.

But the inner anarchist in me thinks that if the rules are stupid, they should be trashed, broken, torn apart, and disobeyed.

In such cases, piracy, blackmarkets, alternative power structures to the State, can actually promote freedom.

For instance, just imagine the huge blackmarket that would emerge if the government tried to ban the consumption of meat. I for one, would heartily partake in such a market as a consumer.

Or just look at Prohibtion in the USA, another huge blackmarket.

So things are never really as the propaganda videos say they are.

Piracy and the blackmarket for them, can sometimes liberate us from annoying bureaucrats who try to limit other people’s freedom.

2 Responses »

 

Leaving Facebook Causes Monday, Dec 22 2008

Facebook causes always have nice titles. They sound sane and sensible. Even so, I’ve always been careful not to join causes which I do not support. Things like animal rights etc.

So today, I went to check out my causes page. Turns out that I had only signed up for 2 causes whoses titles I agree with, since those titles are so broad and general as to render them appealing.

But when I went to click on the causes page, turns out that they have this bunch of  “stated positions” as well, which I just cannot agree with.

Hence, I left both causes.

Let’s see why.

The first cause that came to my attention was:

STOP caLLing MUSLIMS TERRORISTS !

Fine enough. After all, Muslims aren’t terrorists, though many terrorists are Muslims. But of course, most Muslims aren’t. Important to get one’s sets and subsets right before going around hurling abuse.

But then, I saw the Cause’s position, for the first time:

1. The majority Muslims are peace loving citizens and Islam is a beautiful harmonious faith which advocates peace.
2. Throughout history Muslims , like people from all faiths too have been victims of indiscriminate acts of terrorisms.
3. Islam condemns terrorism in all forms especially attacks on innocent women and children.
4. The Media is undoubtedly using Islam and Muslims as convenient guinea pigs for the sake of making headlines.
5. Terror has no faith.

Not much to disagree with on points 1 and 2, though 1 and 3 is somewhat debatable. After all, I have always been of the view that religious views are diverse, and the same text can have numerous interpretations, many of which have equal validity.

Unfortunately, I can’t agree with points 4 and 5. The media I come into contact with certainly does not “use Islam and Muslims as convenient guinea pigs”; if it is American media the guy is talking about then I am not a very good judge.

However, I judge from my own point of view, and point 4 is simply empirically false.

Point 5 is similarly empirically false. How can terror have no faith, when so many suicide bombers genuinely believe that they are doing God’s work? Clearly, terrorism thrives on religiosity, for it is religiosity that most easily throws away rational calculations that would normally deter an individual from becoming a terrorist by introducing the whole idea of a “better afterlife in heaven”.

Well, so that’s one cause gone.

The second cause I had signed up for and just left is:

Stop Global Warming

Sounds perfectly fine. Who wouldn’t want to stop global warming? The phenomena is well supported by science, and the consequences are grave for mankind.

But grave consequences does not mean we should go crazy and destroy everything we have built. Unfortunately, the cause seems to be that kind of crazy:

1. Repower America with 100% clean electricity within ten years
2. Promote global climate change awareness
3. Support government incentives for reducing energy dependence, cutting emissions and using renewable energy sources

Nothing wrong with 2 of course, but what on earth is point 1 about? Seriously, 100% clean electricity? In 10 years? What kind of unrealistic cause is this?

Not just that it cannot be achieved. Would it even be desirable to be achieved? 100% clean energy would be terribly costly, and there’s simply no way we can ween ourselves off fossil fules anytime soon.

And there’s that dubious “energy independence” concept there. The oil market is global, and whatever happens to the oil industry will affect the US economy whether or not it uses oil or not, since its trading partners still use oil. One wonders if “energy independence” is anything more than rhetoric.

So no. I can’t be in a cause on facebook, displayed so publicly, when I do not agree with a substantial bit of the cause’s positions.

So that leaves me with zero causes. Haha, does this mean that I’m apathetic?

UPDATE: Browsing through the causes just makes me puke. The cause “The Race to End Cancer” has $16 544 donated, the cause “Society Against Child Abuse” has $24 071 donated, while “Animal Rights” has $35 295 donated. What the fuck?

It seems to me that people have become so self centered that they would rather ignore cancer, which happens far away but on actual people, than ignore animal rights, which benefit animals who simply have the arbitrary privellege of being re-modelled into soft toys or cartoon characters, just to soothe their violated sense of cuteness.

My god, how selfish.

3 Responses »

 

Yay for Hedonism! Wednesday, Dec 17 2008

Well well, I know it’s been a really long time since the last post, so I decided to update a bit. Considering that I’ve no more excuse not to blog anymore, haha.

It really does feel like a long time cause wordpress made some changes since the last time I was here; the writing interface looks different. I think it looks quite nice, except that this writing box is a little small width-wise.

I guess I really like wordpress, and I can’t really see why anyone would prefer livejournal to wordpress (cough cough Cheryl). I mean, wordpress has a really orderly feel to it, with almost any function I could think of. Plus, free upload space is pretty good. Haha.

On the other hand, livejournal keeps lagging on my comp and refusing to load. Can’t even visit other people’s blog sometimes.

Okay, so that was the random rant on blog providers. Haha.

I guess the holidays so far has been great; I think there’s the right balance between going out with people and staying at home slacking. And the interesting cross that is slacking at other people’s house (free bowling at Sarah’s and wii at Margaret’s!) and slacking at home with other people (playing wei qi at home and getting trashed by Nick).

So yeah, great holiday so far.

Oh yeah, and of course my internship at Drew & Napier. Haha, I think my friends expected me to tell them more stuff, but I feel really constrained cause of that confidentiality thing I had to agree to. So, let’s just say it was a really eye opening experience. Haha.

Okay, this is such a random post, but I suppose I do kinda want to remember the last holiday before NS. So, the only way to remember for sure is to record down as much as possible! I shall hope to blog soon about some random thoughts I’ve been having, as opposed to this post being about random events.

So, have finally completed the Dune series, all freaking 14 books of them. Think I’m going to give the extras a miss. Brian Herbert and his friend doesn’t really cut it for me.

In particular, I did not like the way the last book went. I’ve always been tolerating the different (in my opinion inferior) writing styles of the non-originals, since the storyline’s pretty good. But the story rather fell flat for me in the last one.

Well, shan’t spoil anyone with details though it’s highly unlikely that anyone here reads Dune. Hahaha.

On another note, I love playing old comp games that I dig out from really long ago. They’re still great fun.

Plus, I hate internet TV. It sucks.

You know, I used to get annoyed at those anti-piracy ads which tell you not to tolerate bad quality. I think they’re pretty dumb since there are really really good quality pirated stuff out there and all those ads are doing is drawing attention to people that not all pirated stuff are bad quality.

But those on the internet certainly are. I mean, the lagging, the blurness, they really pain my eyes. Plus, I gave up watching Hana Kimi after the thing would only work sometimes. I need the certainty that if I plan to watch something I’d be able to, not rely my entire day’s happiness on the whim of my stupid clunking computer/IT technology in general.

Which just brings to mind how freaking lucky Americans are. They have Hulu, which means free shows on the internet which are of good quality (so I’ve heard on Techcrunch). And so many good shows are from America anyway, they probably easily get it on TV. Meanwhile, the Chinese are clamouring to get into this American world of entertainment, as shown by how so many of these video sites are Chinese. Some are pretty good, and some suck. But I’m just glad I know Chinese and can navigate around these sites, albeit quite slowly.

Unfortunately, internet TV is all I have if I want to squeeze all my shows before I go to NS.

So, what else.

Well, plans for the future are many, but I shall try to drag my ass to go to the library to return some overdue books plus borrow new ones on wei qi. Hopefully I will recover that strength I had six months ago when I could actually win Nick. Hahaha.

Anyone has great computer games to recommend? I’m playing Heroes of Might and Magic IV and Age of Empires II,  which are great fun. Wanted to play Civilization IV, but the clunking machine that is my computer can’t run it properly.

Ah well, I really don’t want this holiday to end so soon. So much fun to be had, so little time.

I think this is a great reminder that the only purpose of money is to be spent. No point having money if you don’t consume. No point working your ass off for loads of cash if you don’t enjoy yourself spending it.

In Mr Cook’s words, “a balance of payment surplus is not fun.” Producing output (hence earning income) is not fun. Consumption is fun. Standard of living = level of consumption.

Time to consume even more! Yay for hedonism!

12 Responses »