10) For
all webpage developers: No more massive click-thrus on your websites!
If I go to your site because it has something cool on it, I want to see that
cool thing right away. I don’t want to
get carpal tunnel syndrome by having to click through page after page where I
see just one picture and two sentences per webpage before having to click on
the next page and wait for it to load. For
instance, this site ( http://liveiseedeadpeoples.tumblr.com/ ) has an interesting idea- pictures of classic album covers with the
deceased artists removed from the covers.
It is an unusual artistic statement that makes you reconsider the album
in a whole new perspective. When I go
there though, there is no description as to what the page is about nor do I
have any idea about how many pages there might be or even if there are any more
examples of the concept. Then I suddenly
come to an end and think “That was neat, but kind of irritating to get
through. And where was the Traveling
Wilbury’s revamped album cover?”
Then I go to another site,
like this one ( http://www.spin.com/articles/spins-50-best-albums-2011
) which has Spin Magazine’s listing of their 50 best albums of 2011. Since I’m
a music junkie and they are a professional music magazine, I want to see what
they thought was the year’s best stuff.
So I click on the link and it takes me to several pictures of covers from
albums like Britney Spears and The Foo Fighters along with some text talking
about what made that particular album great. So I scan through that page and
then click to go to the next page. It
takes 20 or 30 seconds to load up and then I have 5 more albums displayed. This means if I want to see all 50, I’ll have
to click on ten different pages and wait 30 seconds per page just for it to
load before I can start reading. After
the third page, I figured my time was better spent on doing something else so I
abandoned the website.So that’s why this resolution is needed. Just show me the whole list at once! If I wanted to click a lot of things repeatedly, I’d be playing a video game. Put everything on the same page. That’s actually part of what makes it a list. If you spread it out over lots of pages, it becomes a book. If I can actually read a physical book or magazine quicker than the electronic version, what is my benefit for investing the time in the electronic version? Plus, if it is displayed all on one page, I can start reading the top part while the remainder of the page loads.
9) To all
marketing departments and/or entertainment media outlets: Stop hyping mediocre stuff!
Just because a book or a movie doesn’t suck doesn’t mean it is
fantastic. It just means it doesn’t
suck. Something that is well-made and
entertaining is not a masterpiece so stop pretending it is and stop trying to
convince me that I must buy, watch, hear or consume this product. For example, the movie “Drive” had Ryan
Gosling playing a professional stunt driver who moonlights as a wheel man for
criminals in need of a driver. In his
down time, he tinkers with weapons and falls in love with the neighbor in the
next apartment. Of course, things go
wrong and his life gets upended. It’s a
decent movie, characterized by good performances and solid directing but it is
still just a high-end, artsy rehash of “The Transporter”. I cannot fathom how critics are pushing it as
“Oscar-worthy” or as one of the best pictures of the year. It is a yeomen accomplishment.
Yes, Albert
Brooks has a nice lively turn as a villain, but Ryan Gosling is in his usual
half-asleep mode and Carey Mulligan remains as talented and unsexy as
ever. The violent scenes are well
executed but predictable along with the rest of the script. So I watched and
liked the movie but it is nowhere near my top 20 for the year. Critics- please stop falling all over
yourself just because you came across something that didn’t suck for once. That is supposed to be the norm. There are enough good things out there to
push on people so don’t test their patience with stuff like Drive, Jesse J, Skrillex,
the Hollywood remake of Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, any book in the Twilight series
and so on and on.
8) Banks-
Don’t charge me for the privilege of accessing my own money.
I have money. Not loads of it,
but enough that I can’t keep it all in my wallet, not even if it was all in
hundreds (unless by wallet I meant purse.)
I have to put some of it in the bank.
I have been conditioned by society and my parents and force of habit to
stash it there. When you get money, you
are taught to put it in the bank, to save it and invest it. Supposedly I will earn interest on my money
by doing so and it is safer in a bank than it is in a can in the freezer. Maybe I could put it in a book in my house
since no one reads books these days and crooks probably wouldn’t bother to look
through them, but I feel better with it behind big, heavy vault doors. Yeah, I know nowadays it isn’t actually in
the safe but being in the financial “cloud” is just as good- someone else is
responsible for it and crooks can’t touch it.
Unless those crooks also own the bank, which could never happen, right?
The problem
though is that I now have to pay the bank to be able to use my own money. Let’s say I’m going out to dinner with
friends and I want some cash. If I go to
the ATM, I have to pay a service fee to get my own money from the bank. You might say there is only a fee if I don’t
use my own bank’s ATM but why should that matter? My money is in the cloud. It’s not like the money is being shipped back
and forth between the banks. Why should
it cost money to access it at a different bank?
The cost for them to maintain their ATM is the same as my bank’s ATM
costs and it isn’t really determined by the incremental cost. The people who use my bank should offset the
times when I use their bank and have a net zero usage effect. Plus, even if I only use my bank branches
exclusively, it still costs me because the bank charges a $1 a month fee for a
check/ATM card.
In the olden
days (the 1980’s and earlier, i.e. pre-Madonna), when my money was sitting in a
bank, the bank gave me interest for it.
They would loan it out to people so those people could buy a car or a
house or start a business. My money was
backed by tangible assets so the bank had low risk and they were happy to share
their success with me. I got a decent
interest rate, something with a number in front of the decimal point instead of
behind it. As banks were deregulated,
they started moving into other financial areas, ones that came with a bit more
risk because what they were investing my money in was an intangible product. Because of that extra risk and the danger of
losing my money, the banks could no longer afford to give me much interest
because that would cut into their profits.
Instead, I had to give them my money and only expect to get back
basically that same amount. I guess that
is still okay, because isn’t there that saying “Higher risk means lower
return”?
Besides,
it’s not like the banking and financial industries are posting record profits
so why would I expect to get anything back for letting them use my money to
generate income for themselves? Goldman
Sachs is struggling to make enough money to cover their annual bonuses. (Yes, I’m being facetious because I think the
banking industry is almost as big of a scam as the catering industry.) On top of that, if I don’t have enough money
in the bank, I might have to pay an under-the-minimum- balance fee. Who determines how much money is too
little? I didn’t realize it wasn’t worth
the bank’s time and energy to have people give them money. I would be thrilled if people walked up to me
and said “Here’s some money. Can you
hang on to this for me for a couple years, interest free?”
7) Stop
giving away the secrets, surprises and twist endings of things. I used to think that everyone loved a
surprise. Isn’t that why you jump out of
hiding and yell “Surprise” when the birthday boy walks in to a surprise
party? I thought the whole reason for
wrapping Christmas presents before putting them under the tree was so people
didn’t know what they were getting for their gifts. They would get a (hopefully) pleasant
surprise when they gently unwrapped and/or tore off the paper to see what was
underneath. The reason I’m saying these
things in the past tense is because all the evidence seem to point to the
contrary, like I need to change this mindset.
These days, when I’m at the theatre seeing a movie and a preview comes
on for an upcoming movie, after those two preview minutes I know the whole plot
of the upcoming movie. If it is a
mystery, thriller or drama I know all twist endings and surprising
revelations. If it is a comedy, I have
heard all the really good jokes. If it
is an action movie, I’ve seen all the fight scenes and explosions from multiple
angles, plus I’ve heard the “hoping to become a pop-culture catchphrase” at
least twice.
I want to be
entertained and part of that requires that I don’t know exactly what will
happen. I almost never flip to the end
of a book to see what happens. The only
time I do so is when I’m worried my favorite character is about to die. Would you pay $100 to go to a football game
if you knew the final score ahead of time, and you had already seen all the
highlights and big plays on ESPN? Would you even watch it on TV for free? Probably not.
The whole fun of sporting events is that anything can happen. The Giants can improbably, impossibly, win
the Super Bowl against the Patriots on an unbelievable drive in the final
seconds of the game. Then they can do it
once again three years later against the still-favored Patriots. D.C. United can win the first MLS
championship game on a wild overtime goal.
Michael Jordan can push off from Bryon Russell of the Utah Jazz to hit a
three-pointer that wins the Bulls another championship. You want to see these things happen. You don’t want to know the outcome ahead of
time.
So why do
television shows end an episode with a cliffhanger, like someone getting shot
or some other dramatic turn of events, and then thirty seconds later show
scenes from next week’s episode that makes it clear that everything worked out
fine? You’ve just deflated my dramatic
tension. Instead of being on pins and
needles until next week to see if Rick Castle got back together with his
ex-wife or if Kate Beckett really is dead, I immediately see a scene of them
laughing over a joke while investigating next week’s murder. The suspense and gravitas is gone. Back in the old days, although I always knew
Jack Bauer wouldn’t be killed, at least not until the final season, I didn’t know
how he would escape his captors or what unhinged torture scheme or daring plan
he had in mind. I was surprised!
This next
paragraph gives away a vital plot point so skip this if you don’t want to see a
spoiler for The Hunger Games books. I
was enthralled with the book, a supposedly young adult mélange of the
television show “Survivor” and the short story “The Most Dangerous Game”, where
kids are forced to fight and kill each other to become the sole survivor of
that year’s game. (Have you noticed how
the most entertaining books these days are Y.A. books?) About halfway through the book, I knew I
would want to read the next one in the trilogy.
I was pretty sure that the heroine, Katniss, would win because she
appears in all three books but I couldn’t figure out how she could kill Peeta,
the boy from her town who helped her family survive after Katniss’ father
died. As I’m reserving the second book
from the library, I see a blurb about it that starts with this sentence “After
winning the Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta…”.
What the hell? They both
win? You just ruined a heck of a lot of
the story’s dramatic arc! Now I know a
lot of her angst in the last half of the book is unfounded and the plot twists
have been deflated. I didn’t need to
know that Peeta lived as well. When I reserved the third book, Mockingjay, I
made sure to hold my hand up in front of the description part in case the
library tried to ruin it for me again.
I’m actually one of the few people I know who likes having movie adaptions
of books take small liberties with the plot because it means I will get some
surprises from the movie even though I’ve already read the book.
6) Everything
in life is NOT free so start paying for things! Let me tell you a little parable. There is this kid who is good at playing
guitar and writing songs so he decides he wants to be a musician when he grows
up. During high school, he plays in the
school band to practice his musical skills.
On the weekends he jams with his bandmates, sometimes getting lucky and
having the chance to play some gigs at local clubs where they earn $50 each for
the show. After graduating, the kid
works as a bartender so he can play shows at night and still have a regular
job. In order to generate some buzz for
the band, he records a couple of his original songs on his computer and posts
them to his website. One of the band’s
fans makes a video of one of their shows and posts it on YouTube. Several thousand people download the songs
and watch the videos and they post really positive comments on the band’s
website. Their shows generate a small but loyal
following so they have a steady gig on Wednesday and Thursday nights at a local
club and they now earn $100 each.
Occasionally, they play shows in other cities but it is tough moving
around all the gear and coordinating the band member’s schedules and the cost
of gas and lodging can eat into their earnings.
They decide to sell t-shirts at their show to up their revenue at each
show so they pay a guy $3,000 to produce their shirts.
Because of
the economy, the guy’s business tanks and he can’t pay them back their
money. About the same time, the kid’s
girlfriend gets pregnant. He’s happy
about this because he’d always wanted to be a father. The problem is that it will take a lot more
money to properly take care of the baby.
The couple can’t afford day care so the mom will have to stay home and
take care of the baby. The kid, now an
adult father, wants to keep playing and being a musician but he also wants to
take care of his baby and have a place to live and save some money for the
future. How will he do this? He doesn’t get paid by people downloading his
songs for free from his website. YouTube
doesn’t pay him anything either. It
generates publicity but not enough to get a record deal; besides, record
companies are on the way out. Musicians
are now expected to everything on their own.
D.I.Y. and all that.
The club
shows don’t pay enough to do more than cover rent and food and their fan base
isn’t big enough to beat out the more famous acts when trying to book shows at
the better venues. He is going to have
to invest some money to get the band to the next level but he never made enough
money to be able to do that. There is no
way a bank will loan money to someone who’s business plan is “to be a rock star”. The audition line at American Idol is
impossibly wrong. So how long do you
think this guy will keep trying to make a living as a musician? Probably not very long. At some point in the equation, money needs to
come into play.
That’s what
record companies used to be able to do- spend money on long shots because the
ones that succeed will pay for the failures.
That’s how you end up with Modest Mouse and Skinny Puppy. Britney Spears, Miley Cyrus, Justin Beiber
and all those other mass consumption pop acts fund the misfits, the fringe acts
and all the really good bands that don’t find their groove until their third or
fourth album. When the record label
model collapses, musicians will be left to their own devices. Not everyone will survive long enough to get
the attention and money they need to produce the songs you love. Less good music will get made and you will
have a harder time finding it.
You need to
start paying for what you like.
Downloading and file sharing will not put money in a musician’s pocket
and he will soon cease to be a musician.
He’ll become an accountant or an RV salesman. Haven’t you ever seen an episode of Behind
The Music or Bands Reunited? People stop
playing music because they stop getting paid for it. It is not because they don’t like doing it
anymore. They need to eat. I love Pandora but I have a hard time seeing
how anyone other than the big name acts can make money from it. The one that really scares me though is
Spotify. It is an incredible site- I can
play millions of songs whenever I like.
It’s like having a radio that I can program myself so I hear exactly
what I want whenever I want. Best of
all, it is free to do this! Now if I can
hear whatever I want whenever I want, why would I need to buy it? Digitally or otherwise?
It is just as easy to click on my Kylie
Minogue playlist on Spotify as it is to pull up the tracks I bought digitally
from Amazon. The ease of use is the same
but one costs me money so why would I pick the one that I have to pay for? If everyone starts using it, then Lana Del
Ray will never get rich because people will do what I did this afternoon-
listen to the “album” and see if it lives up to the hype/backlash/additional
hype (since no one has yet read resolution # 9 ). Outcome- I like it but don’t think I will buy
it, so she gets no money from me. Multiply
that by the entire world, and Lana needs to find some other way to pay her
rent. Maybe modeling, since she is
absolutely gorgeous. That’s one of the
reasons I still buy actual, physical CDs- I know that it puts money in the
pockets of my favorite artists and they can continue making music I want to
hear without having to resort to licensing songs to Katherine Hiegl movies.
This is the
same thing that is happening in the newspaper and magazine industry. All the content is online now for free so no
one wants to buy a physical version.
Although I kind of disagree with that thought process, I certainly
understand it. The problem is that
someone has to generate that content.
Someone has to write it; occasionally someone edits and proofreads it
before it gets posted to a website that an IT person maintains. Another person sells ad space on the website
and collects the money for that and a purchasing department buys new computers servers
and security software when the site needs to be upgraded. I guarantee you that the people at Huffington
Post are not volunteering their time and efforts for free. They are getting paid for it and in a lot of
cases, they might be making more than the originators of the content they
repost. If you are going to argue that
advertising covers the expenses, then tell me what are the last five ads you
clicked on when checking out a website?
You don’t
know because you don’t click on sidebar ads and you hardly glance at banner ads
or pop-ups. You delete emails that you think are spam and you have stopped
subscribing to Groupon and Living Social because they send you too many
things. If you don’t check out ads, then
advertisers will stop paying to display their ads. Without ads, how will websites generate enough
money to pay for content? How will
television programs keep getting made if you watch shows commercial free on your
DVR or Hulu and you no longer buy the shows on DVD? Are the actors and cameramen going to work
for free? No. Movie studios will have to stop making movies
because people are not going to movie theatres as much. They are staying home to stream them from
Netflix instead and they make their own popcorn too. The money Netflix pays studios can’t possible
cover the billions of dollars they are used to making from movie theatres. You only want to pay $12 a month to Netflix (remember
how you got really irate when they hiked prices up to $16?) but do you think
that will be enough to cover the $200 million (yes, $200 MILLION) budget for
Transformers 4? I don’t think so. And that is just one movie. No one wants to watch Transformers 4 once,
much less over and over and over. You
have to make more movies so you need to spend another $150 million for Men In
Black 3, $250 million for Avatar 2 and $75 million for Hangover 3 and so on and
so on. (Sequels are the most likely movies
to turn a profit so that is what studios will produce.) Do you think Netflix and iTunes and cable’s
OnDemand programs can cover those costs?
Nope, not if you expect to pay next to nothing for the content, so movie
studios will close up shop rather than lose money. Count on it.
Now let’s
step away from the entertainment industry for a minute in case you are thinking
they are just greedy moneygrubbers.
Let’s look at a different industry instead- the restaurant business. You know how you criticize chain restaurants
for being predictable and cookie cutter?
Well, they do that because it
keeps costs down and allows for economies of scale. That family run restaurant down the street
that you like so much? It shut down last
month because you only went there twice a year, on special occasions. It costs too much to buy food and maintain a
staff for a place that only gets visited twice a year. If it tries to reduce expenses by joining a
food buying conglomerate and standardizing advertising and payroll processes
and so forth, then they become a chain and you don’t even go there twice a year. That’s why people need to start paying for
things they like. Yes, free is nicer but
if it is free for too long, eventually it won’t exist anymore. Buy music, books and magazines. Eat out, attend live theatre and
concerts. Buy concessions at the movie
theatre. Donate to the library. Vote for your taxes to go to charities and
arts programs and school systems. Do it
before it is too late.
5) Stop
writing checks in the grocery store!
If you want to talk about an archaic system that should actually
disappear, look at the check book. Why
do you need to write a check? Use your
check card. It has all the same
advantages of making out a check (direct withdrawal of funds, no high interest
rates, late payment fees or credit limits) and none of the limitations (time
spent writing checks, logging the checks, balancing your account, carrying
around a checkbook). Or if that is too
complicated for you to wrap your mind around, then at the very least start
making out the check while the cashier is scanning your stuff. You don’t need to wait to hear the total for
the sale before getting started on this laborious process. Is the date going to change between now and
the time the cashier is finished? Is the
name of the store going to change?
No! Just fill that stuff out now,
sign your name and when the 16-year old kid tells you the balance due, write it
in the dollar field and hand him the check along with your identification that
you have already retrieved from your wallet.
Don’t you dare wait until the cashier is all done before you drag out a
ratty checkbook and start looking for a pen.
And for heaven’s sake, hold out your food stamps ahead of time so I know
not to get in your line.
4) Synchronize! Originally, this one was going to be “Use
your signal when driving!” but I know you all are likely tired of hearing me
rant about people who don’t know their cars come equipped with a method of
letting me know when they are going to swerve suddenly into my lane. Or make a turn at a four-way intersection or when
cutting in front of me to make a right turn from the left lane. So I won’t talk about these things
anymore. Instead, I will ask the
faceless, data-mining, privacy-invading Big Brother that people are so paranoid
about to get finally get its act together and create some convergence. So far I haven’t seen much of anything to prove
this fear is a reality and I have actually been wanting this to happen. I don’t mind having my consumer habits and
personal information in some central database if it means it will make things less
annoying for me.
I want
Amazon to know that I already bought the Party Down DVDs from Best Buy and to
please stop recommending them to me just because I bought Veronica Mars DVDs
from them. I want Facebook to know that
although I love played Zynga Poker and Words With Friends, I don’t want to play
Cityville or Hangman. They can remove
that prompt from my notifications and suggested sites. I like Lawrence Block, Steve Martin and
Martha Grimes books and I want their publishers to notify every time they put out
a new one. I don’t want to have to troll
a website or read a review to know that it has come out. I will buy it regardless- just tell me it
exists. In the past, I have actually
signed up at an artist’s website or on a retailer’s alert system for the
express purpose of being informed when there is a new product they can ask me
to buy. Only once have I gotten an email
telling me I should go purchase this item that is hot off the presses. Juliana Hatfield is the only one to keep me
in the loop about what she is selling and she is the sole employee of her
business. How can multi-billion dollar
companies not manage their potential customer database better than one
anti-social indie songwriter?
This is why
I don’t buy into the hysteria about the government tracking my every move. No one is matching my library book rental
patterns against my grocery store purchases and my cell phone location to see
if I am a terrorist threat. Big
businesses are not buying my purchasing data to compile a profile of what I
respond to. If they were, they would
know I’m not interested in growing my penis size, buying a Ford truck or seeing
the latest Tyler Perry movie. I would
not get flyers in the mail for storm drain cleaning, church announcements or
day care services. TV shows would only
run ads for things that appeal to me because the “black box” would know what I
like. There would be no ads for tampons
because the box would know that my grocery buying has never contained such a
purchase. I would not see any ads for diapers
because I have no kids. I wouldn’t see
class action lawsuit ads because they would know I was never prescribed the
medication they are filing a lawsuit over.
I would see
the e-Trade baby ads though because those are hilarious and I do like to make
sure my money is secure. I would see the
iPhone ads because I’ve bought songs featured in the ads (Grouplove’s Tongue
Tied even made it on my 2011 Year In Review mix CD) and I also would see ads
for movies similar to those I’ve watched before. The online editions of USA Today and the
Washington Post would know which articles to display for me and the comics section
would only that show those cartoons that are funny- so yes to Dilbert, Speed
Bumps, Pearls Before Swine and Non Sequitur and no to Mutts, Doonesbury and Six
Chix. It would make my life so much
easier if corporate America really did know everything about me.
Assuming
that this won’t suddenly happen, the least they could do is give me portability
of the things I actually am buying from them.
For instance, I subscribe to cable television. I watch quite a few shows but I can’t watch
them simultaneously. Some things need to
be time-shifted. My cable system lets me
watch some shows on demand the next day but only some shows. The service is only available for NBC and ABC
so I can catch up on Community or Cougar Town if I don’t happen to be home or
am watching something else during that time slot. I can’t see Fox or CBS though which is why
I’m no longer a viewer of NCIS: LA or American Idol. Maybe I could watch them on Hulu or Netflix
or Fox’s website but why would I want to watch something on my computers
12-inch screen when I’m used to looking at it on a 32-inch television
screen? Plus if I’m paying for cable and
could have watched the show that way, why do I need to also pay for Netflix
streaming services if I want to watch it later on? I paid for a delivery system for the shows so
I should be able to watch them when I want to, on the system I prefer. If you force me to choose, then I will choose
and your audience will shrink.
I have
bought a lot of CDs but when I want to listen to them, I might not be at
home. Why do I need to rip them to my
computer so I can upload them to iTunes so I can sync them to my phone? One purchase should carry across all
mediums. If I buy a book, I should be
able to look at it on my phone, on my computer and on my television
screen. A picture should be viewable
within any program and a song should be playable on any console- I shouldn’t
have to figure out whether something is a jpeg, a bitmap, a gif, wav or an mp3
file. They should all be the same. Yes, I know why they aren’t- different
companies developed them and they are proprietary products- but with any
technology, people should get together and come up with standards. Make the same power plug for Android and
iPhones and Kindles and Nooks. Don’t
sell me different plugs for each device.
Make the memory cards for cameras work with any company’s camera. Imagine how complicated life would be if
electrical sockets all had different prongs.
If your hair dryer was a four-flat-prong plug and your computer was a
two-round-prong plug and your vacuum cleaner used a 3 square pegs to plug
in? Every house could have different
outlets and when you moved you would have to buy all new appliances or adaptor
plugs for everything. That would be a
mess, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t happen
though because electrical outlets are standardized. If it can be done for that, why not other
things? Facebook would integrate all
things I want a social media site to do.
No mucking about with MySpace or Friendster or Salmon or Google Plus. Flickr and Snapfish and Shutterfly wouldn’t
exist as a stand-alone entity. They’d be
a part of the giant social site that did everything. There should never have been a Beta versus
VHS stand-off. No Mac versus PC or CD
versus DAT. One thing to rule them all.
3) Come
up with an actual agenda for Occupy Wall Street, Occupy DC, Occupy The
Highway, and Occupy Denver/Atlanta/Las Vegas/Portland/Richmond/ Philadelphia/Nashville/Seattle/Anchorage
(Really, Anchorage? Why?) so I can
decide whether to care about your “movement.”
I too am against corporate greed, political corruption, high
unemployment and the growing gap between the rich and the rest of us 99% but
what is your solution? How should we fix
things? You have no agenda that presents
a way to address these problems. If a
building is on fire, you don’t hold a protest in front of the burning building
because you are deeply concerned about the fact that it is on fire and people’s
lives and property are in danger. You
send over a freaking fire truck to put out the fire!
What should
we be doing to fix these issues? Have
you created a grass roots voter campaign to urge voters to pressure their
Congressional representatives to enact specific laws to remedy these
situations? Have you asked the 1%
celebrities that stop by the camps to use the media to address your
concerns? Have you sent newspapers and
other media outlets some kind of manifesto or a list of actions you are
taking? No. Right now you are just annoying me,
inconveniencing me and wasting my tax dollars by requiring extra police
presence and sanitation efforts. In some
instances, you have even broken the law and performed terrorist acts, like
throwing smoke bombs at the White House.
That’s the way to get yourself shot, not to engender sympathy and
support. And stop with the ridiculous
hand gestures. If you want to vote on
something, raise your hand either for or against it. Better yet, count paper ballots. That’s how a democracy works. Wiggling your fingers is not voting. It’s how fish swim around in the ocean.
2) Give
me real discourse and real solutions this election cycle. I want to know about the issues and how you
plan to fix things, in detail. I don’t
want sound bites. Nein Nein Nein to
sound bites and generalities. Educate
me! I too am worried about the collapse
of our economy, the global financial meltdown, the resurrection of Russia,
terrorism, disappearing retirement benefits and pension plans, healthcare
costs, unemployment, government corruption, the influence of lobbying, national
debt, engaging in multiple foreign wars, pollution, dependency on foreign oil
supplies, etc…etc… etc…. And don’t let
me hear the words “change”, “hope” or “liberal/conservative” this time
around. Let me hear facts and
information and solutions instead of platitudes. The personal attacks can stop too. I don’t care if so and so cheated on their
wife. How is their fiscal policy? As long as they haven’t done anything illegal
(like dodging taxes, taking bribes, suppressing evidence, lying to Congress), I
don’t care who they screw or who donates to their campaign.
Limiting the
viable candidates only to people who were never divorced, never made a mistake,
never changed their mind, aren’t too rich or too poor, aren’t overly passionate
and excited (a la’ Howard Dean), follow the “proper” religion and so forth is
the same as limiting the election to those who prove their soundness to vote by
passing a literacy test, own land and are white men. Elections need to be about the issues and
finding solutions to the problems, not about pointing fingers at who did what
and who mangled a sentence in a hilarious and embarrassing way. Some people feel Barack Obama is doing a
great job and he is a rich, black, Muslim lawyer who held his first elective
office for 100 days before running for president and he is friends with acknowledged
radicalists (i.e. domestic terrorists).
He won the election because he convinced voters that he had a better
grasp of the issues than his opponent did (and because he used the word “Hope”
a lot.) Take a lesson from that
victory. Solutions should lead the
campaigns and I want to hear what those solutions are, in terms of real actions
rather than generalities. For instance, I
want to know why Ron Paul thinks we should readopt the gold standard. That will inform my decision a lot more than
knowing he smoked pot in college.
1) A final
resolution, meant for everyone- Be nice to people!
Yeah, maybe that sounds a bit Bill & Ted-ish (“Be excellent to one
another!”) but why not do it? Do you
know how many problems would disappear if people just acted nicer to each
other? First of all, there would be no more
murder or war because homicide is the most complete opposite of being nice. Then, stepping down a few levels in intensity,
you would reduce greed and corruption because being nice to someone implies
that you won’t steal their life’s savings in a pyramid scheme or embezzle company
assets from stockholders. You wouldn’t
need the FDA or EPA because companies would take it upon themselves not to do
anything to harm consumers or the environment.
There would be fewer traffic accidents because people wouldn’t cut off
other drivers or drive in a reckless fashion (Yeah, I managed to get in a dig
about traffic!)
Hot girls
would shoot down ugly people and geeks like me gently, saying something like, “That
is so sweet of you. I’m sorry that I
don’t reciprocate your interest but it’s nice of you to flatter me with your
attention. I want to buy you a drink so
we can talk for a few minutes before I go home with that handsome
jock/underwear model over there.” In
stores and public areas, people would be alert to and considerate of the others
around them, rather than stopping at the top of escalators, cutting to the front
of bathroom lines and letting their kid tear apart the store. They would not create a bright light in a
dark theatre by text messaging and distracting everyone sitting near them,
ruining the fantasy being spun onscreen.
They would not slack off at work and make others cover for them. They would not have their boyfriend kneecap
an opponent before a big skating competition.
There would never be a
hit-and-run accident. No one would abuse
a pet.
Don’t all
these things sound wonderful? Imagine if
they really happened. It’s possible, but
it all starts with you. Yes, and me too
although I think you are more of the problem then me. I’m not a rich lobbyist trying to get
Congress to approve legislation allowing corporations to dump toxic waste in
the last refuge of the sparkly-eyed newt in a pond next to the house of a poor
factory worker who was laid off because the CEO of his company embezzled all
the money in the pension fund and then sold the company to a pharmacology
conglomerate who bought it just so they could get the patents to a
technological breakthrough that they’ll exploit to decimate their competition
and create a monopoly that charges exorbitant prices for a life-saving
drug. So there you have it. Some suggestions for people to follow in order to start the new year off on the right foot. That doesn’t sound too complicated, does it? New Year’s resolutions always turn out really well and make a world of difference pretty quickly. If you promise to do your part, I’ll get to work on mine. Since they are obviously so easy to accomplish, maybe I’ll even add some more, like learn to play guitar, grow hair, become a professional writer, marry Marisa Tomei and start a company that turns plastic and Styrofoam into grass seed. That sounds like a great plan. This is going to be a great year!
