76) Symbolic Computers

Having been preoccupied with the stresses of AP coursework with little time for fun, it's hard to take time out of the day for mind exercises. Exercises like imagining worst case scenarios.

Sometimes it's slight, just you missing the bus and having to walk five miles home. Other times, it's finding out your dog has died or that you didn't hit save when the power cut out in the middle of typing up your English final. It's nice to think about these situations to prepare for them, so you'll know what to do if it happens.

My worst case scenario was having my shiny new computer break down on me. It was the infamous Blue Screen of Death, they call it, indication of the failed processes of an economic giant that has so thoroughly embraced capitalism. It's my firm belief that Microsoft and it's new Windows 7 is just a placeholder for the next product that comes out and soaks up billions of dollars. That next product will become another placeholder, and so on.

The important thing to understand about any company is that with size comes responsibility. Whatever service, whatever product you're trying to sell, is not necessarily purposed to help your customers; it's purposed to help you gain wealth. But I'm not here to speculate on the psychological and sociological reasons for starting a business. I'm here to tell you how such a business can explode into something so helplessly loathed by many.

When a company gets big enough, it hits what I call the "care factor". Basically, at this point, the company is perverted from it's original purpose, regardless of what it was, to serve no other interests but it's own through any means necessary. Most of the time, it just means that they sacrifice quality over quantity to gain the most profit. Other times, it's them buying out competitors and laying off people.

Don't get me wrong; I don't think this happens to every large company that exists, but the evidence is there to prove how products have degraded over time due to this care factor. It affects almost every American sector out there: electronics, food, clothing, etc.

So when I flipped through the motherboard manual for my computer to troubleshoot the problem, it wasn't a surprise to see how Microsoft products would cause such a disaster, since it outsources technical support for "cost", builds crappy and buggy operating systems for "cost", just so that by the time you get around to fixing it, you're already being forced to buy the next product down the line.

It's why I think Apple products are so popular. People are just so fed up with Microsoft, a company that seems to go out of its way to exploit customers by forcing them to buy products that they can't seem to avoid. And that's the cold, hard fact: you can't avoid Microsoft Windows. It constitutes a very large majority of the computer industry, and at least one computer you use in this lifetime will contain Windows. You know it, and Microsoft knows it, so they can use whatever tactics they want to earn money at your expense. It's almost a sick form of control that they know you can't break.

Apple, after they exploded with their fanbase, has also crossed the care factor. They come out with newer products in the same line every single year, setting the stage for consumerism peer pressure. If you don't get the new one, you're not up to date and are part of the old breed. It doesn't matter if you only use this new product for only six months, because by then you'll be holding the next product down the line.

And so, my friends, this is how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Everyone has the insinuation that American capitalism is the best thing in the world. It's fair, orderly, and allows the basic person to live and survive for the effort they put in.

And yet, the income brackets are highly polarized, your background and race quantify where you get hired, and there will always be homeless wandering the streets a few blocks from the city center.

American capitalism is idolized like it's some holy messiah that can't be brought down by anything. Maybe it can't. But most people never consider that other countries have children begging for food while your neighbor complains that the line at Starbucks is too damned long. Not everyone has your type of capitalism.

Can you blame anyone? Maybe not. But the quantified greed that exists makes the entire concept of capitalism a horrid oxymoron. Americans are indoctrinated to ignore this, treading down a preconceived road that has only the illusion of free will. You are born, your are taught, you work, and you die. Nothing more, nothing less. Every once in a while they'll let a select group break out of this path, and even then they only exist to embody the next generation of workers.

If this is the society that we are treading downward, then it is in fact a very bleak future. Americans can hardly believe that money isn't everything. It's what makes a film like Fight Club a cult classic; it's an indication that we believe everything is meaningless and trivial, that we have to hurt ourselves to feel something, anything.

All the while, I'm still trying to fix my stupid computer, wondering what I'm supposed to tell future generations about how to live in America. Maybe I'll save the old computer to show them one day, just so I can tell them: "This is the embodiment of everything you will do. You will work and then you will die. If you falter off course, you will be forgotten and discarded."

"You will obey the master system. You will be controlled. You are soulless automatons. Your conceptions of free will are illusions. You have no say over your own destiny."

47) Scr(ew)ooge's Paradise

By nature, America is always economically associated with capitalism. Everyone knows that the biggest manufacturers will sell there, eager to make a quick penny over the most devoted of consumers. No product is too ridiculous, for someone, somewhere, will buy it.

Capitalism and consumerism is such a vital core of American life that it controls everything, from food to clothing. Starbucks, McDonald's and Nike are some example brands alot of people cannot live without. Most people can't realize just how valuable and nostalgic local businesses are these days.

The American dollar holds such value that it cannot be labeled unnecessary. As the United States grew, not only did we lose the concept of "money isn't everything", but we also lost the value of what money means to a human being. A government gets to decide that value.

It's logical to assume that the American lack of frugality is founded in the deep nationalism set by Uncle Sam. Spending defines alot of what it means to be an American, provided that you don't immediately go bankrupt afterward. After World War Two, what else could suburbia do?

This is all further reinforced by a natural hate of socialism and communism by America at large, who have an ironic audacity to complain about civil rights. Not the same you say? In America, what would you rather take: A million dollars, or fair treatment?

Truth is, you'd want both, and that's why consumerism is smiling at you. Granted, not everyone is driven by blind greed, but often there is a consensus of "more is better". Can't say the death of Crassus is something to be admired.

Charities try to upset the sad imbalance for the poor, giving money to those who can't make it on their own. It is a glimmer of hope that requires a sympathy and guilt shock when humanitarian agencies have to advertise images of dying children to get your attention.

So think, my friend, the next time you are stuck in a precarious situation of greed, given the American status quo. Which is more important to you: money or ethics?

And no, you can't have both.

41) Summer of Dance

A summer starting YOMcast about the Gulf of Mexico's hazardous oil spill, with a link for a live video of the leaky pipe, the Obama administration's questionable response, first day of FIFA South Africa, the cliche surge of movies, and a hat tip to Mr. Sutherland and his first podcast.