The Garage Sale Blog Network

Mel Gibson: Illusions of Grandeur?

I watched Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" today and I think it merits a blog entry. Instead of concentrating on the movie's polemical side I would like to compare Passion with Gibson's hit "Braveheart". I noticed some blatant similarities between the two movies, but I'm a "Braveheart" nut and watching it over a thousand times gives me an inside advantage. After noticing the correlations between the two movies I was thinking Gibson either has some illusions of grandeur or a longstanding movie martyr complex.

Braveheart: (William Wallace) Common man--> eminence transformation with a loyal following by fighting an established powerhouse nation and in the end betrayal leads to his capture. Subsequently he is led through a mob of people who spit and throw objects at his body and face. He then undergoes a horrendous procession of torture displayed in front of the mob. To the surprise of his captors, the crowd, and the two or three William Wallace loyalists hiding in the crowd, Wallace displays his unyielding conviction for his cause by yelling "Freedom" at the top of his lungs amidst being disemboweled. The body is not buried and his quest for freedom is carried on by his loyal followers.

Passion: (Jesus) Common man-->eminence transformation with a loyal following due to acts of kindness with poor and performance of miracles while claiming he is the messiah. He threatens an established religion (Judaism) and in the end betrayal leads to his capture and subsequently he is led through a mob of people, mostly in agreement with his torture, while being badly beaten along the way. He undergoes an ugly sequence of torturous acts while walking to the site of his crucifiction. In a brilliant display of tolerance and conviction Jesus surprises his persecutors when he says "Father forgive them for they do not know what they do". He is crucified and not buried while his followers and beliefs only gain steam.

So what? Well if you find yourself in a discussion gone surly concerning the more controversial issues in Passion, I've provided for you a one way ticket on the train to a more casual conversation.

Underground Ambivalence

As is readily apparent in my blog picture here I am deep rooted in the underground hip hop culture. I suppose that is a bit hyperbolic, but believe it or not I do freestyle (For those of you who don't know what this is, its producing lyrics in an improvisational style) and keep informed of the ongoings in the culture. My buddy and I rap about socially conscious material ranging from anti-bush content to our ambivalence with the hip hop underground.

Let me first explain why I love the culture. Where else do you get a music culture so politically and socially vociferous? Where else do you have such raw talent metrics as freestyle, where your weapon, your instrument isn't carried in a case but in your mind and produced through words? Believe me there is no puppeteering with groups and individuals such as Immortal Technique , Dead Prez and Jedi Mind Tricks.

Now I must say up front my views don't coalesce entirely with these groups or individuals and I don't always agree with their militant-like antics, but their lyrics carry passion. This passion imparts value as crowds or listeners of their music start to think about political and social issues.

On the flip side of the coin, a large part of the culture does not foster growth. For example check out lyrics such as those in Raw is War by Jedi Mind Trick (Sorry you might have to download it because I couldn't find a lyrics page). They challenge people to try and battle them predicting defeat (battling is going face to face with someone freestyling with content centralized around dissing the other rapper). Lyrics like these are ubiquitous in the culture. In this respect they do a disservice and they stunt the growth of their potential value.

My buddy and I have a goal of doing an open mic this year. Hopefully creating a positive vibe that fosters value growth will give us a much needed niche after the being born in brooklyn one isn't available.

Clever title goes here

I'm not so concerned with the echo chamber effect rendering communal censorship with content. I almost think the opposite is true; the pressure seems to centralize on producing new and divergent ideas. However I see a paradox with blogspace theory and execution. The echo chamber is bouncing structure memes from side to side, and this is an impediment for blogspace to really work its potential and decentralize information sources. Essentially I feel people don't necessarily want to conform to the prevalent blog structure evident in many of the most distributed blogs: clever title goes here, problem here and lets top it off with a solution grounded by esoteric strategies.

Some people just want to start by writing about nothing and this can evolve into a writer that feels progressively more comfortable with topic expansion which in turn can provide an atmosphere where value can be added to blogspace. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of frivolous content laden blogs out there, but for these guys to add value in a sphere where there is an audience they may need the enouragement of seeing a blog where profound thought, insight and the frivolous intersect. I know not everyone needs to blog but the more bloggers the more diversification and that makes me happy.

So in accordance with what I call the blogspace norm structure I see in many circles, you may be wondering "well what is your solution to this problem?" I'm not calling for a revolution of blog structure but it would be refreshing to read a recreational blog entry from time to time. So maybe to support my ploy I'll write about my trip to safeway in a couple of hours, but probably not. It should be noted however that a barrier for diversification is paying to publish thoughts to an audience that isn't there. I feel even with possible blog media concentration, entry and expansion in blog world will minimally change without additional tinkering.

Wary of too much binary

Okay I'm getting to have more and more faith in convenience as a by-product of software, as evident by my increasing allotment of luxury time to the social software enterprise, blogs, learning html and so forth. But personal competency measured in megahertz to me seems like its going overboard.

For example who is to say because Billy's heartrate is up and is perspiring more than Suzy he may work better under these conditions? Specific to me, I for one don't feel that vital signs are all that vital in predicting my performance. I also would question the authority of a computer over my own gut instinct. The residual effect would be that the employee might start believing that excessive sweating and heart palpitations equates to a compromise of competence.

However I think I wouldn't mind having a personal detector as a means of gauging specific physical characteristics with competency outcome.

Bank of America evaluations

My roomate came into the room the other day and asked me what I would rank my banking experience as he is a teller at Bank of America. Feeling discouraged after I told him maybe an "8", which paralleled so many other customer's responses, he asked me what they could do to improve this. He told me upper management wanted the evaluations to be "10's" and there was nothing he could do about it.

I told him banking needed to change. Nobody ranks their experience at the a 10 because they associate the whole experience as being an inconvenience. You might on the other hand rank your experience with Dell or something a 10 because you wanted the labtop but never wanted to go to the bank and pay a overdraft fee after waiting in line for three minutes.

I don't know about you but just knowing that the smiles at BoA will be a bit more fake now trying for those 10's doesn't get me going either.

I encouraged him to talk to a manager to suggest a more transparent site where customers could voice their concerns and have real employees respond. But you view your bank experience as an inconvenience and probably dont want to allocate more time to it than required.

Blogger's Lull

I took a short hiatus from the Blogger's world. I was at first withdrawn from blogging after feeling it was an arcane world with little supporters in my demographic profile. I have returned after being an avid reader of so many blogs I feel like I should do something to encourage others who were feeling like me at first. So this is my declaration of being back, cheers!