Howdy Howitzers, welcome to the sixty-ninth magazine of HACK. If you’ve made it this far, it’s time to lock and load.
There’s been a lot of talk about guns lately. Frankly, I never cared for the things. READ MORE »
Posts in category Opinion
My Substantial Affair With Life: The Sweeping Present
A day of true winter has been bestowed upon many of us like a sacred gift from up above for that I curl in the cradle of Mother Nature as she thrives as her free Self.
Forgiving is like having your cataracts removed.
Less blur and more clarity. READ MORE »
HACK № 63: It Doesn’t Matter Whether Or Not Voting Matters
Howdy Constituents, welcome to the sixty-third electorate of HACK. If you’ve made it this far, always let your conscience be your guide.
Due to Hurricane Sandy I’ve been off from work for 11 days now. Unfortunately, where I once could sleep 12 – 15 hours straight, my career consciousness is programmed to wake up early with the usual vague sense of anxiety.
What better way to cleanse that anxiety than with clear, focused hate? That’s why I started watching Fox News in the morning. It’s the perfect form of hatertainment . Previously, the only time I watched Fox News was when it was on in a waiting room, or cafe, or when The Daily Show with John Stewart dutifully and mercilessly exposes that network’s entrenched narrative of fear and deception. READ MORE »
I Don’t Belong Here: Still More Batman Villains I’d Like To See More Of
I have a few more relevant things to write about that I haven’t yet. The once-promised “I’m Done With Presidents.” That’ll probably be next week. A few others I won’t mention in case I never do them. In the meantime, here’s yet another look at some more obscure Batman villains I think deserve some more shine.
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I Don’t Belong Here: Fuck Pinktober
Well it’s October again. Which means, like every year, that it’s time for BREAST CANCER AWARENESS FEVER! Pinktober, y’all! Buy special pink versions of household products and GIVE TO THE CURE. And, it’s October again, so it’s time again for me to be the lone voice from the wilderness reminding everyone that other cancers exist, and it’s a little ridiculous how much hype breast cancer gets. It’s not the most deadly. It’s not the most common. It’s not the hardest to treat. It’s not even the only one with a special “awareness month.” And yet, Breast Cancer Awareness Month (which for retailers seems to run between September and November, if not just year-round) just keeps getting bigger and bigger every year.
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I Don’t Belong Here: Mysterio Kind Of Sucks
It’s a tough call, but Mysterio might be Spider-Man’s lamest well-known villain. I specify “well-known” because a decades-old hero like Spider-Man has accumulated SO MANY lame villains over the years that you could argue over who’s the lamest and come up with dozens if not hundreds of names and still not get anywhere near Mysterio. But of all the “classic” Spidey foes, the ones that got established in the first year or so of Amazing Spider-Man and a few of the more recent ones (like Venom, mostly) who have earned that status since then, Mysterio’s got to be the lamest. There’s nothing to the guy, except a faintly ridiculous outfit punctuated by a goddamn fishbowl.
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I Don’t Belong Here: Bread, Circuses And Mirror-Shades
(I Don’t Belong Here, The Lost Month concludes with this review I wrote of The Matrix Reloaded, basically right upon leaving the theater, May 15, 2003. Remember The Matrix? Me neither.)
Let’s be honest. The first Matrix was a smart movie for dumb people. While it deserves kudos for its groundbreaking special effects (copied in every action movie since 1999) and its attempt to marry existential philosophy, cyberpunk aesthetics and kung fu, let’s not blow things out of proportion. It raised many interesting questions about the nature of reality, provided that you’ve never taken a PHI 101 course, and then managed to ignore or insufficiently deal with all of them. It had great fight scenes, but murdered itself in the third act with the hokiest declaration of love since, well, basically since ever. I like to say that The Matrix was a metaphor for itself— while it can dazzle the eye and confound the senses, right below the surface the machinery of age-old plot devices and clichés grinds away.
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I Don’t Belong Here: Patch-et Job
(The Lost Month continues with this angry essay I wrote in January of 1999, within hours of paying money to see the festering bull-turd called Patch Adams.)
Friends and family members, people whose opinions I value, told me I should see the movie “Patch Adams,” the true story of one man’s unconventional battle to return humanity to the medical industry. And, after returning from this movie, I am convinced of one thing: these friends and family members are part of a COMMUNIST PLOT TO SEPARATE ME FROM MY EIGHT BUCKS. Why else would these intelligent, reasonable people with good taste, all of whom have a pretty good idea of my tastes as well, recommend this turkey to me?
I mean, what can you say about a movie so shamelessly emotionally exploitative, it makes “Titanic” seem subtle and restrained in comparison? A movie so determined to stack the cinematic deck in favor of Adams’ theories of medicine that it makes “JFK” look unbiased and balanced? What can you say about a movie that was sad when it tried to be funny, and funny when it tried to be sad? Well, I can say a lot, I guess.
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I Don’t Belong Here: Coming Home To Roost
(This week’s I Don’t Belong Here was written 11 years ago on September 14th, 2001. It is not necessarily to be taken as the author’s current opinion on the attacks of 9-11-01. That can be found here.)
September 11, 2001. It’s noon, I’m sleeping late again. Someone is knocking, pounding, on my front door, pausing only to frantically ring the doorbell. “Please don’t let it be our landlord,” I mumble as I get dressed, find my glasses and stumble downstairs. (It’s a well-kept secret from my super-clean landlords that my house is a total pigsty, the unpacking still incomplete six months into my lease.) Instead, it’s Tom, my brother-in-law, neighbor, and former employer, not necessarily in that order.
“Don’t you ever answer your phone?” He asks, in that what-fools-these-mortals-be tone he adopts only most of the time.
“I was sleeping. Didn’t hear it.” Half-truth. I heard it a few times during the morning, opting each time to go back to sleep. Usually it’s a telemarketer, or worse, the Baltimore Sun.
“Terrorists crashed jet airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The World Trade Center is totally destroyed.”
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I Don’t Belong Here: The Time Thieves
Here’s a view you don’t hear often. The slow, useless, incompetent people that are seemingly everywhere these days — and by “these days” I mean probably “always” but I can only speak for the time I’ve personally seen — they steal your time, my time, and we’re not getting it back. And it’s not right. Society isn’t structured with the view that time is a commodity with value, which is crazy because time is the only thing that there is a natural limit to. Benjamin Franklin said the only sure things were death and taxes. Except taxes are a human innovation, while death is an integral part of life. You can skip out on your taxes if you’re clever or really rich. You can’t skip out on death. Not yet. Maybe never. You’ve got a finite amount of time. You don’t get it back. It’s not like taxes. When I die, I don’t get some time refund check in the mail. It’s not like there’s St. Peter up in the Pearly Gates with an adding machine.
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HACK № 58: Bromidic
Bromidic
You can’t find a moment alone. No matter where you go they find you. Cameras and eyes. Try to disappear and you sacrifice more than should be necessary. Privacy is no longer a right, it’s a luxury. Can you afford to avoid the dynamic shift in consciousness occurring all around you, throughout this entire planet?
I know it hurts. READ MORE »
I Don’t Belong Here: Causality, Morality, Batman
Bear with me. I know this seems like another one about Batman but it’s deeper. I’m trying to say something important. A carpenter views everything in terms of nails, so… Batman.
