Apple Watch

I have a very ambivalent relationship to technology. When I was a teenager, I wanted to live in a Star Trek world of plastic and glass, where everything was done in-doors at a touch of the button, the solemn promise of every electronic convenience. Now as I get older, just like everyone else, I’m deeply entrenched with technology, whether I want to, or not.  I’m a little wary (and weary) of all these portable supercomputers we’re engaging with.

The new Apple Watch seems like an ugly and crazy expensive piece of tack. For awhile, until I accidentally drowned it in the washing machine, I was wearing a FitBit, which tracked my movements, and measured how many steps I took each day. This slightly influenced my behavior to walk more, and most people would agree that’s a good thing. The Apple Watch is going to do the same thing, and it may influence behavior in unexpected ways, but it will also measure something a bit more intimate, your heartbeat.

I can already see a meeting of marketers, their own hearts racing at the implications of this new device. It is totally in the realm of possibility to measure wearer’s heart rates with other biometric data, and compare that biodata in relation to commercials viewed. So in other words, someone is going to pitch the idea of looking into increased heart rates and tie that to interest in a commercial or web banner while it’s being viewed. The tried and true way to make people click on things is to entice them with sex or fear, but people get jaded. Click-through rates keep dropping. Ask yourself when was the last time you clicked on something that said, “You won’t believe what shocking thing she did!” 

In desperation, I foresee a future where advertisements in all media forms will start putting sudden loud noises in everything to try induce a sudden spike in people’s heart rates, just so advertisers can tell their customers that the commercials are working. “We have shown that Apple Watch biometric data have sharply risen when we put loud unexpected and annoying fireworks in our fabric softener commercial. Can I also say, please don’t fire me, I have a second mortgage now, and a young son.”

A Commercial and an Infomercial

Yesterday, I helped with a commercial, so I’m going to be an extra. 

I mention this, because in our culture, being on tv, even briefly, is still something people are willing to debase themselves to do. American Idol’s first few episodes are full of people willing to destroy their lives belting out off-key versions of Mariah Carey. “I was on tv! Simon Cowell hissed at me. Now I can die knowing I mattered in this cruel cruel world.”  

At the same time as our commercial, I helped out on a Spanish Infomerical at the same car dealership. 

I had one job, and at first, I kind of messed it up. I was supposed to drive used cars up to the presenters who would comment on the vehicle. Being a relic from another era, I didn’t know how these new-fangled vehicles work. To let you know who you’re dealing with, I have to point out that I’m not sure I even know how my phone works, and it is still difficult for me to answer it when it’s ringing. So, as a transplant from a time where vehicles were started with brass and wood clockwork machines, I now live in a Jetson’s future where there are no car keys. I had to ask how that worked, “How do I start this here contraption?” My Amish ignorance irritated the other Infomercial car drivers, who considered me an annoying luddite. 

I don’t speak a word of Spanish, so I drove up to the commentators, paused briefly, and then promptly drove off again. The director raised his hands in the air and made some sounds like the Sand Person who attacks Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. I sheepishly backed the car up, trying to concentrate and not run over the presenters, and they had to do the take again. 

Hating myself, I raced around the dealership, found the next vehicle, and did the process again, but this time hit my marks perfectly. I got the hang of it. Each time, the beautiful girl opened up the car door and there I am smiling for the entire Hispanic community of DFW to see. I politely smiled and subtly nodded in seeming comprehension at what they were saying, and drove off when the director pointed. Each of these times, wondering if the intended audience would consider me a “White Mexican”, like Guillermo Del Toro. This was done over and over.

The Lonely Existentialist Crisis of Super Mario.

Last week, German researchers announced a self-aware Super Mario that made decisions in the game by emotional reasoning. If Mario felt hungry, then he would try to get coins, and Mario could explore his world based on what he wanted to do. I find the idea of this experiment unspeakably cruel. Mario wakes up over and over, sort of like the movie ‘Memento’, and in his world, he jumps on mushrooms and tries to rescue Princess Peach from Koopa. Now imagine telling Mario he isn’t real, neither are his pals and enemies, but just constructions in a computer.

“No! It’s-a-me! Mario! It’s-a-me.”

This is inducing an existentialist crisis in the candy-colored world of Super Mario Brothers. Luigi would suffer a worse fate, as he isn’t even the main character and would have to deal with that.

I don’t like to really think about this, but some theorists have put forth the idea that we, you and I, are in a computer construction. It kind of makes sense. Just like pixels, if you go small enough down on a quantum level, reality itself breaks down as there is nothing for reality to be anymore. The 13.8 billion years universe might really only be a few minutes of time to whoever (or whatever) is playing the game. I suspect they let it run for a few minutes, while they’re stepping away, making a snack. Ask yourself what’s more absurd, the motivations of Donkey Kong, or the motivations of ISIS.

In such a simulation, the observable universe would be like the game Asteroids, in that if you travelled long enough in a straight line, trillions of years later you would wind up in the same spot, or if you like, on the other side of the screen again. If we start seeing repeating star patterns then we would really have to take this idea seriously.

But even if we are in a big Super Mario Brothers game, that doesn’t mean our own lives have to be meaningless. Even if the fabric of reality ripped open and two giant Beavis and Butthead types revealed themselves saying, “Huh huh huh. It’s fun to watch you fight. Huh huh huh.”

“We’re playing a game! Fire! Fire!”

We can still hold our heads high with dignity if we choose to, even in such absurdity.

Children Holding Glass Tablets.

Last night, I was driving slowly through a parking lot, waiting for pedestrians to cross. A child was holding the hand of a parent, and in the darkness I could see that they had a glowing screen under their other arm. Perhaps that’s just the same as carrying a storybook. Perhaps not.

When I was younger, I couldn’t wait for the future to be here. Now that I’m here, I’m discontented at how artificial and simulated everything is. Staring at glass screens every waking moment wasn’t my intention. I long for the earthy rootedness of my childhood, which was one of blazing trails with my bike in empty undeveloped fields. Instead of an intimate knowledge of cyberspace and knowledge of what click-bait ads to avoid, I had firsthand knowledge of the landscape around my neighborhood. I knew where to find crawdads, dirt mounds from constructions projects to ride my bike on, and which neighbor’s yards I could trespass.

Which isn’t to say that my childhood was entirely Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine. There was a ton of simulation in front of the television. But if it wasn’t Star Trek, Night Gallery, The Twilight Zone, or monster movies on an UHF station, I don’t recall being that interested. My father was horrified and embarrassed at my lack of interest in sports, or anything else a normal kid was into, and couldn’t understand why I wanted to read so much. I was checked out on a kind of vicarious experience.

I wonder what kind of person I would have evolved into with all the answers given, but without any reflection. I see myself turning into a relic from another era as I experience the present, and I’m no longer excited, but disturbed.

Nightbreed

"Nightbreedposter". Via Wikipedia.

I just saw that next month, they’re finally releasing the restored ‘Nightbreed’ to Blu-Ray. 

I always thought that Nightbreed was the best of Clive Barker’s movies, and even though I’m aware that the ‘suits’ made changes to the theatrical release, and butchered it in editing, I still think it’s a cool creature feature, where the monsters get to be the good guys. Now with the discovery of the missing film footage, we’re going to get the real Nightbreed that Clive Barker wanted. 

I hate to go all full-on horror movie hipster, but I think people who never watched Nightbreed the first time, or rolled their collective eyes at it as being beneath them, should be BANNED from ever getting the chance to watch it. Considering that Nightbreed was something of a flop, that would mean most of you.

Dracula

We’re getting near Halloween, which always reminds me of the historical Dracula, Vlad Tepes. I asked my Romanian friend what modern Romanians think of Dracula, and he sounded almost wistfully nostalgic. “He was very tough and protected the country.”

I’m always searching for kooky things to watch on tv, and whenever there’s a show about vampires, the producers of these shows always find someone that claims to be the reincarnation of Vlad Dracula Tepes. Turns out Dracula is alive and well, and in multiple bodies. The form he seems to like the most is “gothic” people in Victorian frocks and top hats.  I don’t know why anyone would want to be Dracula, there doesn’t seem much romantic about him, other than his ferocity.

There is another Eastern European noble, of Transylvanian and Hungarian heritage, who might not have killed as many people as Dracula, but was stone-cold evil, and maybe one of the worst women to ever live. Hungary’s Countess Elizabeth Báthory gets my vote as the closest thing to a “real” vampire the world has ever seen. Through her own records, it is believed she killed well over six hundred girls and bathed in their blood. Before killing them, she did things that are best not discussed. I believe that the similar charges against France’s Gilles De Rais, an ally of Joan of Arc, were all crap. He wasn’t really an evil satanic devil worshipper and child killer, those were confessions under torture. When Countess Báthory was arrested, she was unrepentant. * She felt entitled, in a sort of psychopathic Caligula way, to do whatever she wanted.

*Regarding her behavior on arrest.The source of this is from my own memory of a book I can't name that I read when I was in fourth grade. So don't quote me!

Lemongrab

"Adventure Time cast". Via Wikipedia
Of all the villains in Cartoon Network’s brilliant Adventure Time, Lemongrab might be my favorite. His origin story is very similar to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but where we might feel some sympathy toward Frankenstein’s monster, Lemongrab is so wretchedly awful, that we want only the worst for him. 

Princess Bubblegum, who eschews the common-place magic of the land of Ooo, and instead navigates her world through science, creates sentient candy people in her lab. One of her failed experiments is Lemongrab. Lemongrab is somehow incomplete and different; he has a kind of psychopathy characterized by extreme selfishness and violence, and has to be banished from the realm. In his isolation and alienation, he becomes so despondent, and even weirder, that PB creates a second cloned Lemongrab as a companion. This agrees with Lemongrab’s narcissism. Then things get very awful indeed.

The two Lemongrabs start taking the lifetime of candy that PB has left them and using the formulas of her candy science, they create more lemon people. But they’re not very good at it. The Lemon people that they create are twitching and malformed things, actually scary and uncanny in a Jacob’s Ladder sort of way. Lemongrab's kingdom soon runs out of food. Every one is starving except the original Lemongrab has become morbidly obese with a penchant for cannibalism, and has apparently taken a bite out of the head of the cloned Lemongrab, who also fears him. The kingdom has become a totalitarian prison state, full of starving, unhappy lemon people. As a satire, he is more Kim Jong Un than Ubu Roi.

It is at this point one has to be reminded that this is ostensibly a children’s program.