Journalism and Me

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Occasionally I wonder why I never got into proper journalism, and even if it’d be too late for me to do so. I mean, I like the writing that I do and you certainly don’t have to sell me on the value of entertainment and humor in society, but there’s still a part of me that wonders if I could be doing more if I had chosen to pursue a role in the media, as it were…

I think a lot of this comes about because I see so many flaws around us today that are based on misinformation, even though I’m honestly not sure if I could do it any better or if I would even know how to do so. Kind of piggybacking off of my post earlier this evening about overcoming divides, it’s clear that a lot of people align themselves with either conservative media or liberal media … and I guess the tricky part is that the devil on my shoulder isn’t sure that even if people had a better choice down the middle for their information, if they’d really be interested in that in the world which we live in today.

When I used to watch the Aaron Sorkin show The Newsroom over the last couple of years, to me it was a great fictional depiction of what the news ought to be – professionals passionate about getting the story right and not just pursuing leads for sensationalism, standing up for integrity in the fourth estate and particularly pushing back when it came to politicians not giving actual answers and trying to pull the wool over on people’s eyes.

And of course, I’m sure it might be said that I enjoyed that show because I’m a liberal and the whole show was created to make conservative newscasters look stupid, though my simple rebuttal would be that conservative newscasters make themselves look stupid by the ways that they distort and sensationalize the things that they broadcast. The truth is really that both sides exhibit the same problem in different areas, yet in a society today where it’s so easy to pick the news source that makes you feel good by reinforcing the chanting already going on inside your own head, would anybody even pay attention to that alternative news option???

One that I think is actually doing a really good job at producing this type of non-partisan, honest news that I’m talking about right now is VICE. You kind of have to sift through their website to find the really good stories from the same kind of weird clickbait that you find on Salon and Buzzfeed and HuffPost, but their big stories via VICE News – and particularly the ones that go into their series on HBO – feature some pretty nice investigative reporting that exposes issues on a larger scale that are impacting real people all over the world.

For instance, last night I stayed up way too late watching a special feature they did about America’s prison system that included some interviews that President Obama did with inmates at a federal penitentiary. It particularly focused on The War on Drugs and the consequences that have resulted from putting so many people in prison for non-violent offenses – it definitely made you take a second look at a complicated problem in that thirty years ago the edict was simply “Drugs are bad – we can’t be hard enough on criminals!” to now we’re really seeing the effects of those programs decades later and people like Bill Clinton, who played a big role in cracking down on drug offenders, is now admitting that he was wrong and he helped to create an entirely new set of problems that we now have to solve instead.

That’s the kind of journalism that I like to see – not 30-45 second sound bites that grab your attention and flare up the political base, but hands on, gritty research that peels back the layers and gives people a different way of looking at a problem. I’d like to see that same kind of technique applied to other areas – I think the political sphere is ripe for fact-checking because politicians and BS go hand in hand … I just don’t know how it would be received.

Still, there’s a great quote from The Newsroom that rings a certain truth in this regard:

“People will want the news if you give it to them with integrity. Not everybody, not even a lot of people – 5%. And 5% more of anything is what makes the difference in this country…”

How do you bridge the divide…?

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Whether it’s conservative/liberal, young/old, religious/atheist, black/white, or any combination thereof, we’re as divided of a society as we’ve ever been and any random look at comments on Facebook hints that the situation if anything is certainly getting worse, not better.

No doubt the issue will be front and center like it usually is at Thanksgiving dinner tables around the country here in a couple weeks, and I don’t know about you but believe it or not, I don’t want to fight with my family! I want us all to laugh and eat and talk about interesting things and challenge each other with new ways of thinking but without calling names … so how do we actually bridge that divide?

I admittedly don’t have the answer to this, but I think part of it starts in trying to understand where the other side is coming from. Of course, this too can be hard because my explanation for why someone might think the way they do might make sense to me, though it isn’t necessarily a settling one for the other party…

For example, I sincerely believe for better and for worse that a lot of the differences between me and my relatives back home stems simply from population and exposure – it’s hard for some people to really get their arms around the problems that black people face in America today when they live in a small town that’s less than 1% black. Nobody wants to be told that they’re racist, but when you make a joke about hanging a black man from a Christmas tree because you honestly don’t understand how absolutely horrible of a “joke” that really is, limited exposure to people who are different than you is one way that helps to explain why you might think the way that you do.

I think the real challenge here, however, is then breaking out of that mold to widen one’s own world view – even if it’s merely around the turkey-laden dinner table – because we’re all guilty of settling in with those who think and act the same ways that we do. It makes sense because it’s safer, but when people who only subscribe to one political party’s mentalities only interact with each other and don’t co-mingle with the other side of the coin, it just builds those walls up higher and stronger and the divide seemingly becomes even further ingrained.

People get defensive because they’re so used to only talking to other people that agree with them that an opposing opinion suddenly comes off as hostile, to the point where actually hostile comments start to get lost in the crossfire, and from there an honest debate seems pretty much impossible.

Several things really need to happen…

  • Both sides need to be willing to come to the table.
  • Both sides need to be open for debate and to legitimately hear the other side’s opinions.
  • Likewise, both sides also really need to understand their own opinions so that they can articulate them to the other side without resorting to ad hominem attacks.

I don’t even think that both sides need to be willing to change their opinions, although it certainly makes intellectual discourse easier, but hearing and acknowledging the other side is critical to actually having a discussion where both people can walk away feeling good at the end of it all.

There are some things that two sides will never see eye to eye on – take homosexuality, for example. I myself stand very firmly in the realm of equal rights as an extension of civil rights, whereas I know people who draw their lines based on their religious beliefs, and some more that are in between on the various nuances that make up just this one complex issue. And that’s ok, at least between two people, though it gets muddier when we have to look at the larger picture and how society is going to treat homosexuals in the 21st century.

But that’s how we get there is by sitting down and spelling out the differences, and figuring out where we disagree and where we surprisingly might actually agree a little after all.

And it’s hard, and all of those divisors give us plenty of fuel to not make that effort and to instead bunker down and fling poo over the wall at the crazies on the other side … which can be amusing for a little while, but ultimately isn’t very productive because it’s hard to walk away from the table feeling good about yourself when either one of you is covered in poo. And not everyone is going to feel like it’s worth the effort, and some people will make you wish that you’d never even tried, but you have to try anyways because division is bad and in the end we all have a lot that we can learn from each other.

Sometimes it just takes shutting up for a while to stop and hear what the other person has to say…

…even though occasionally it may turn out that the other person is just a crazy racist Donald Trump supporter… 😉

Anduril, Flame of the West – forged from the shards of Narsil…

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I think this is my all-time favorite story arc from the Lord of the Rings movies – following Aragorn’s acceptance of his lineage to eventually rise to become the new King of Gondor. I love the music, love the dialog between him and Arwen, her and her father, and finally Elrond and Aragorn as he brings hope to men with the famed sword itself….

And I have no idea how I never watched this video before, but here’s a sweet look at a smithy actually making the sword that was broken! This would be so cool to have up on the wall … at least once we get past the toddler years and I don’t have to worry about a kid stabbing his brother or sister with it, mind you. 😀

Are you sure you don’t want a banana???

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I was singing the chorus to this old classic from Tally Hall to the kid while we were walking through Walmart earlier this evening … decided to show him the video before bed and forgot how extraordinarily creepy the actual video for the song really was!

Needless to say, I had to summon the aid of one C. Monster to help bring things back to his level… 😉

movie thoughts … Pixels

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pixels_movieOh man – was this thing horrible.

I mean, seriously – how did Adam Sandler basically become the Dane Cook of comedy movie producers where he used to be funny, yet somehow now literally every single thing that the man touches … including apparently my childhood love of video games … just turns to complete and total garbage?!

So where do I start?

“Arcader” – not a term that anyone who’s ever actually cared about video games has ever used. Sounded incrementally more utterly stupid with every utterance … why they didn’t just go with “gamer” makes this a hideous first strike in my book.

The opening plot for this movie with the world championships and the time capsule felt like what the guys who had been tasked to write a movie script about Battleship first came up with before they scrapped it and said, “Come on – we can do better than this…”

The “pixelation” … which apparently became a coined term within hours of the alien invasion that caused it … made about as much sense as Battleship pegs falling out of the sky. It would make sense that the aliens would be all pixelated when they’re destroyed, but why would our stuff do the same???

Kevin James can’t be President … at least not of the United States. Maybe of the PTA or the neighborhood homeowner’s association, but not the whole United States.

The nod to Pac-Man creator Toru Iwatani was neat, but it would’ve been cooler if they actually would’ve had him play himself in the movie! Instead he only made a non-speaking cameo while another actor played him during his brief battle with his creation.

Also, the “cheat codes” plot device doesn’t really make sense when not only are the heroes driving cars instead of joysticks, but the cheat codes would’ve been for Pac-Man, not the freaking ghosts!!!

Come to think of it – how do the aliens even know all of the rules of these games??? They were sent a VHS tape of the competition, not the source code to all of the arcade games!

…anyways…

Lady Lisa becomes unpixelated for inexplicable reasons, save for that she’s hot and Gad’s character wants her.

Sandler worked way too hard to kill Donkey Kong because all he had to do was climb the last ladder. You don’t kill Donkey Kong by throwing the hammer at him. That’s not how Donkey Kong works.

In the finale, our pseudo-president talks about “negotiating a truce” with the aliens, which we never saw because Sandler just beat Donkey Kong and disappeared. Nonetheless, everyone else apparently wins, too, as every possible conflict gets nicely tied up into a bow in roughly 30 seconds before the credits roll. Even Toru Iwatani’s stunt double sees his hand grow back – seriously, all that’s missing is the group high-five…

Also, apparently after the movie is over, I guess that Josh Gad fucks Q*bert or something.

Better Video Game Movies From the Last Few Years to Watch Instead of Pixels:

  • Wreck-It Ralph
  • Tron: Legacy
  • Scott Pilgrim vs the World (I didn’t even like this movie, but at least the video game effects were legit)

new website – Scott’s Thoughts!

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You know what they say – any day that you launch a new website is a good day… 😉

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This is one that I actually started kicking ideas around for earlier this year, but didn’t really have the time/content/procrastination for another project at the time to drive me there. I had a very brief mockup of what you see above running on a test site, but apparently today was the day that I actually mustered up the effort to both write the first post about the recent presidential debate as well as work out the kinks for the site design itself.

…although admittedly it wasn’t necessarily in that order! 😛

Anyways, the intent of this site – whether I managed to do it justice with the first post or not – is to give me a place to write in more depth about editorial-type topics that would normally otherwise be ranty-type posts on my regular blog. Kind of along the lines of some of the better quality posts you might find on a Medium or something of that nature, I was originally thinking about trying to host them there, but the whole huge audience/no pay thing is a problem for me and doing it myself gives me the control that I like to maintain with publishing my writing online nonetheless.

The plan isn’t really to post super-frequently – maybe one article a month, at best – but I really don’t want to force it just for the sake of keeping a writing schedule. Instead I want Scott’s Thoughts to be a place where I can elaborate on topics in a manner that feels a bit more professional so that there’s really a focus on the content itself rather than tying in my humor and other writing that might be seen on my blog as more of a distraction.

You’ll also see that I ended up pulling in a small handful of really old, but somewhat related articles that I wrote in this same vein more than a decade ago. Back when Comedic-Genius.com was my primary writing site, I had a bunch of different columns that I was writing – one of which was an editorial piece called Against the Grain… In truth there were upwards of 50 columns in the series before I ended it, but upon further review there simply weren’t nearly as many worth preserving from ten years later as I would’ve thought!

Hopefully the new series will fare a bit better, though I would argue that maybe that’s just another factor of getting older that one simply needs to get used to… 😉

* * * * * * * * * *

In geek news, this site is also my official foray into WordPress multisite-ing!

My testing earlier this summer was pretty unsuccessful, but before I let myself delete the install altogether, I tried one last test creating a new multisite environment with this blog and the new editorial subdomain, and it actually worked so I just decided to keep it. 😀

My multisite network currently consists of 4 sites total – the two previously mentioned and then two more test sites for more ideas that I haven’t gotten off the ground yet. For simplicity’s sake, I decided to only worry about sites that are actually subdomains of scottsevener.com right now, so humor and mouse and Just Laugh will all stay where they are … I’ve heard horror stories about trying to un-co-mingle sites once you go multisite, so no sense in adding new stress there!

Still lots to learn – the only real big dumb thing I’ve come across so far is the difference between Network Activating Plugins vs Network Enabling Themes because apparently doing the first forces activation of plugins network-wide (which is a neat feature for the ones I use everywhere) but the second simply makes themes available to activate on a given site … terms are just a little too close for my comfort, really.

I’m curious to see how performance ranks in comparison to the individual installs, but for now at least I was able to drop my install count down to under 20!!! 😯

Why does Verizon FiOS value potential new customers over its existing ones?

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I’m really frustrated with Verizon right now, which is tough because I’m absolutely a huge fan of my FiOS Internet service.

We’ve been customers since 2012 and without a doubt they provide the best Internet service available in the Tampa Bay area. I’ve done the research, I’ve priced out the competition, but between their pricing and the symmetrical download & upload speeds that are pretty much unheard of elsewhere, Verizon FiOS is the best.

So why have I spent the last couple of weeks feeling like an inferior customer over one that they could have sometime in the future???

I’ve talked a lot about upgrading my Internet speed lately – right now I’m at 75 Mbps, but I’ve really been eyeing their 150 Mbps package … it’s just that until recently, it was a bit out of my reach at an extra $50/month. So needless to say, I was really excited when I noticed one day when browsing my upgrade options and saw that they had a new promotion where I could not only go from 75 to 150 Mbps for only an extra $20/month, but they’d also throw in the $200 router upgrade for free!!!

It sounds too good to be true, and apparently it was because a couple of weeks ago when I was finally ready to pull the trigger, the 150 Mbps tier was mysteriously nowhere to be found…

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My first instinct was understanding enough – there must just be something wrong with Verizon’s website, so I got on the phone and called to place the order manually instead, but the rep who answered my call saw the same thing and was pretty clueless as to why there was a hole in my tiers where the missing 150 Mbps option used to be! It was frustrating to hear her shrug it off, not even giving me an option to escalate the issue for someone else to take another look.

It just wasn’t there, and she was ready to move on to her next call, but that’s not even where the story takes a dark turn.

So I hung up and instead tried reaching out via Twitter, where I got a slightly different, but equally misleading explanation…

This time they told me it was a “technical limitation” and that the tier must simply be “filled up,” so it was no longer available. Here I started to call bullshit because things really weren’t adding up … namely, they had the capacity to upgrade me to 4x or 6.5x my 75 Mbps speed, but not to only 2x my speed! 

And granted, I’m not a fiber technician, but I know a little about how math works – I even gave them the benefit of the doubt here and asked if it was really a technical limitation or if Verizon was artificially limiting availability of certain tiers to encourage the higher sales, but from there the tech just doubled down on that speed is popular, so it fills up and isn’t available anymore.

That didn’t make any sense, but in between waiting for responses I did a little more research and found what I thought was the missing key that would finally make somebody say, “Crap – that’s not right! We need to look into that!!!”

Opening up a separate browser and going to getfios.com, I was able to bring up a brand new order – even at this same address – for a new bundle including 150 Mbps Internet service…

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Huh???

So clearly there must be something wrong with their ordering system if a new order will offer me that tier, but when logged into my Verizon account it was nowhere to be found!

Well, after waiting a couple of days for a response from the social media team that never came, I decided to send an email to customer service to see what answer they’d be able to come up with for my issue. And at first it seemed promising because I was told that they needed to research it more before they could respond, but eventually they sent me this…

Thank you for choosing Verizon. I have received your email dated 10/29/2015 regarding that  want to know why a new customer would be able to get Fios Internet speeds of 100 and/or 150 Mbps while existing customers can not. I apologize for any frustration or inconvenience this has caused. My name is Karen, and I will be happy to assist you. I will also review the account to make sure you are getting the best value.

Thank ou [sic] for your interest in our products and service.

We apologize for the delay in our response and regret any inconvenience to you.

Unfortunately the connection speeds of 100 and 150 Mbps are not availble [sic] to you.

The decision to only offer the connection speeds of 100 and 150 Mbps was made at corporate management level. Unfortunately it has not been advised to us of why the decision was made to only offer the 100/150 Mbps to new customers and not to existing customers other than that there is technical limitation of upgrading the equipment for existing customers who already have Fios working at their location.

I’m very sorry for the inconvenience and frustration this will cause you and your family.

This after Verizon “added more versatility to its industry-leading service” by apparently adding a 100 Mbps tier in between 75 and 150 Mbps, according to this swell press release boasting about their latest promotions in my specific market a month before I was unable to order them myself!

According to this release, “Verizon is the only communications provider to offer a symmetrical speed tier of 100/100 Mbps, or any Internet services offering the same fast download and upload speeds, in the Florida market” … but only if you’re a brand new customer for them because if you’ve already got an account, your business isn’t worth the effort.

Seriously, how insulting is that?!

Here I am, a long-standing customer and very much a fan of the service, and I want to give Verizon more money, and if I had submitted my order two weeks earlier before this asinine decision was made, I could’ve! But now my extra $20/month isn’t good enough for Verizon. They’d be happy to sell me 300 Mbps service at an additional $110/month, but sorry, the next logical upgrade that makes sense for my account isn’t available because they’ve arbitrarily dog-eared that speed for new customers only.

What sense does that make? My next door neighbor could call and get 150 Mbps service installed tomorrow, or hell, my wife could call and apparently get it installed at our same address … as long as she sets up a new account because this account – the one that’s 3 years old and has earned Verizon upwards of $7,000 over the life of our service – isn’t eligible for an upgrade.

Sorry / not sorry.

You wouldn’t do that with HBO or Cinemax – “I’m sorry, I know that you’ve had an account for 3 years, but we’ve reserved those premium movie channels to entice potential sales from our new customers only. We regret any inconvenience that this causes you…”

Traditionally it’s a poor business practice when one of your loyal customers wants to give you more money and you arbitrarily refuse to take it, but apparently a fiber customer in the hand isn’t worth two in the bush when you’re Verizon.

But it’s not too hard to fix this! We schedule an appointment, you send out the technician who makes my dog bark for hours on end while he tinkers around outside, he installs a new ONT on the side of my house and gives me my sweet, new Quantum router, I start paying you an extra $20/month for the service I’ve quite literally been salivating for all summer long, and in the end we all win!

You get some extra money without having to sell me on the upgrade I already want and I get an even faster Internet speed to rub in the faces of everyone I know who isn’t lucky enough to live in a FiOS market … which admittedly is almost everybody I know.

Verizon, I love FiOS and I don’t want to fight with you. I just think it’s bullshit that you’re offering better deals to the new customers you don’t even have yet than you’ll give me who’s been here this whole time. I’ve come to accept that your best promotional pricing is for new customers and my bill jumped up a ways after my contract renewed, but this is service – to tell me that I can have one Internet speed but not another is just cruel. 

We can get through this, you and me, but honey, right now you’re being kind of an asshole. Please call me when you’re ready to grow up.

Bamboo Closure (with Pics!)

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I wrote about my ongoing battles with bamboo in this week’s humor column, but for a bit of added closure I wanted to share some photos that I took throughout the process. You know what they say, a picture’s worth a thousand stalks of bamboo… 😛

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All in all I think I spent between 6 -8 hours across about 4 days gutting this crap out of my backyard – you can see in the first picture how it was so bad when I started that you literally couldn’t get around the corner unless you were a koala or perhaps one of the tiny lizards that we see scurrying about here in Florida!

Apparently whenever you plant bamboo, you’re supposed to put in some sort of barrier to make sure that it stays within the area that you want it … and even then I guess a lot of the time it just manages to poke right on through anyways. 

If I had a backyard that was bigger than, oh say, a sidewalk, it’s actually a pretty neat plant and would be neat to see grow into a natural privacy wall over the course of a couple of years, but when you can literally stand in between my pool cage and the fence and touch both of them at the same time, it’s just too small for such an invasive, wild plant to grow.

Also, would you believe that months earlier I first actually tried my hand at cutting this stuff down with a regular hand saw?!?!?!

This stuff is crazy, and the next time I see it coming up underneath my side of the fence, I’m poisoning the entire thing. Sorry, neighbor, but know what in the hell you’re getting into before you plant such an insane plant/tree/shrub/grass right next to your neighbor’s fence… 🙁

Parenting Inspiration, Revisited and Evolved

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“There are days where it’s tough, and there are days where it’s incredible … and you’re like, how could I have ever thought that this wouldn’t be amazing?” – Mike Krahulik, on fatherhood

I found myself re-watching this video quite late last night, somewhat ironically because no more than two hours later I was back up begging Christopher to go back to sleep with little hope in sight!

Truth be told, watching this episode of Penny Arcade: The Series back when it first came out (circa 2010) played a pretty big role in helping me to come to terms with the idea of parenting and actually becoming a father. I mean, it’s always been something that I knew I wanted to happen – off in the distance – but it was still equally terrifying to sit down with my wife and seriously talk about making it happen … and this was even before all of the infertility stuff really came to light! 😯

Now having about a year and a half under my belt as I re-watched this tome of parenting inspiration, it was kind of rewarding to see their words click with me on an entirely new level, both quite specifically through Mike’s quote above as well as this great quote of perspective from Jerry…

“The idea that parenting is built up of these major moments when they’re all completely suspended in hundreds and thousands of individual experiences that have tremendous value.” – Jerry Holkins, on parenting

As we find ourselves inching closer to the infamous terrible twos, we’ve definitely been experiencing more outbursts and tantrums and generic crying recently than the previous few months have bestowed upon us, and some of them in the last week in particular have been very trying,  to say the least. I told Sara just today that it often feels like my world is a light switch, and one minute it’s awesome and then the next minute it’s suddenly shit again, and throughout the course of the last couple of days it’s like somebody’s just been flipping that thing on and off like a son of a bitch.

But I try to remember the other moments – the ones that admittedly are just as frequent, yet tend to get easily washed out by the chaotic ones – where Christopher is making me laugh out loud as we’re walking around Walmart at midnight to get him milk, or when he’s cuddled up on my lap watching Sesame Street videos on YouTube, or when he brings one of his books over for me to read to him.

It can be so tough to conjure them up in the moment because sometimes those toddler tantrums can just be brutal to a grown man’s psyche, and yet afterwards once the dust has had a chance to settle and we’ve drifted back down to earth, it’s those silly moments … those giggly moments … those moments packed with so much tenderness it just about makes you sick – those are the things that make you take a time out to remind yourself, “Yeah, this IS pretty amazing.”