Budaeli

There’s a good argument for movies being the king of all forms of entertainment. There’s visuals, audio, stories and characters, and it all has to come together or the whole thing flops. No other form of expression has that: you’ve either got the words, or the sound, or the image. In a movie, you have it all. And unlike theater, the whole thing is preserved for posterity.

I have a pretty good idea of what makes a good movie, one that’s worth seeing a second time. Sure, my tastes are different than the next person. But to understand your own likes, it’s good to understand what other people prefer in movies.

My first favorite movies were science fiction and fantasy. I first obsessed over The Wizard of Oz, then the first Batman movie. I even marveled at 2001: A Space Odyssey before my voice changed. In high school, a friend made a list of movies for me to see, movies like Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, and The Producers – the good stuff. That list showed me movies that weren’t just fun to watch, they were of high quality. Then came Roger Ebert.

If you want an education of why some movies resonate better than others, read Ebert’s reviews. Everything I know about film I learned from reading his work. He also has a list of what he thinks are great movies. It isn’t what he thinks are the greatest films – there’s no such thing – but what he thinks are the best made that he’s seen. That means movies that are well made, but also movies he loves. La Dolce Vita is a mirror for his life, and Herzog’s metaphorical epics mirror his convictions, etc*. Citizen Kane, Solyaris, and the like are on his list – but they’re on every list of great movies. The reason why they’re there, and what everyone forgets is that at one time people were entertained by them, not just forced to watch them in film class.

Just because a movie is on one of these lists doesn’t mean it’s worth watching. So must we watch them? Yes.

Movies, good ones, are just like great literature, great music, or great theater: they reflect who we are and show us the truth in all its myriad contradictory explanations. Just like in Rashomon, where four descriptions of the same crime are wildly divergent. Every one is true. So a good shortcut in learning to live a full life is to be able to understand these art forms to learn from others who once lived what they learned about existence.

…this, of course, is a lofty ambition. In all honesty, I watch movies because it’s fun. I enjoy being wrapped in a story that requires more than one sensory input and has multiple parts to analyze. And by ‘fun’, I don’t just mean watching comedies. Think of ‘fun’ as wanting to watch the whole movie to find out how everything ends. Fun is working out why a character is acting the way they are. Fun is trying to guess why something happened and what might happen next, and being surprised when it turns out differently.

Stop watching movies if you aren’t having fun. Just because movie critics watch the entire movie (sometimes they don’t) doesn’t mean you have to – don’t think you have to finish Solyaris because is considered a great movie. I’m not quite sure how I finished it myself!

Finally, what makes a good movie.

This isn’t a list that I print out and check off for every movie I watch. Rather this is what I’ve gathered from the movies I’ve seen and why I liked one and didn’t like the other. Here’s what usually exists in a movie that I’d want to see more than once:

1. The movie is fun. (See above for what I mean by fun.) This rule trumps all others. If I’m bored or not wanting to pay attention, it isn’t worth the effort.
2. The characters behave like they really do in life. It’s not that the characters are behaving rationally (nobody does in real life anyway), but that there’s a cause-and-effect to what they do in the movie. This is easier to catch than to describe. If more than one character is doing or saying something that’s making you roll your eyes, especially if you’re by yourself, then something’s wrong. This also goes for characters that aren’t human or even alive: in Woody Allen’s Manhattan, New York is the main character, and she plays the part beautifully – I’ve never wanted to go anywhere after watching a movie as badly as I wanted to visit New York after seeing that movie.
3. The movie accomplishes what it sets out to present. Not every movie has a plot, or necessarily about humans, but every movie has a motive behind its creation. Maybe the movie is trying to show how a teenager thinks as he is working out his place in the world (Wild Tigers I Have Known), perhaps a movie is about man’s place in nature (Koyaanisqatsi), or maybe the film’s creator just wants to screw with his audience (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie). Did the movie make its point? Of the three I mentioned, only Koyaanisqatsi failed. Or take my favorite example: Big Trouble in Little China - the movie’s purpose is only to be quoted and referenced with your friends, and it accomplishes that superbly.
4. “Three great scenes and no bad ones.” Howard Hawks said that, but don’t take it literally. I think of it as, “If you can’t remember anything bad about it, then it works.”

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*If I’m mistaken, I apologize. I don’t really know him**.
**Only Roger Ebert is being mentioned as a movie critic because my tastes align more often with his reviews than any other critic. Exceptions include Fight Club and Solyaris.
*** An example of this in music is Michael Jackson’s Thriller - there are five lame, sappy songs on the album, but the other four are so good, it doesn’t matter.

Quick economics lesson on “opportunity cost.” This is quite possibly the most important, and most practical economic concept to understand. If you can grasp this and plan your life with it, you’re 80% of the way to understanding economics. And possibly have a more fulfilling life.

Opportunity cost is: what you give up to get something else. Every single thing we all have access to is limited: your time and money are the most important and the greatest limiting factors, but distance and accessible space are also important and very constrained. So you have to decide what to give up in order to do the things you need and want.

Time is the ultimate limited resource. You only have 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week, 365 days in a year, and then one day you’ll die. You need to sleep, so there’s 6-8 hours every day that’s given up – but you can sleep less to get more time in the day. But is it worth it? Also, you can have more money than anyone else, but you’re still constrained by how much time you have. Time can be spent, but it can’t be saved.

In exchange for working 40 hours a week, you get money from your employer – so you gave up your time to get money. That money can then be given up for other things like rent, utilities, groceries, drinking, etc. But you have to decide what’s important – do you save for a long-wanted vacation in Europe, or do you go to the bars every night?

Opportunity cost doesn’t just affect how you live your life, it also affects everything else. If we let the government spend its resources on bailing out large corporations and people with bad mortgages, that means less for responsible businesses and citizens who were smart and didn’t overextend themselves. A teacher must choose to spend time helping a single struggling student, or to teach the entire class and help more people who need less specific help.

This is a very simple concept and very logical, but most of the time there isn’t any overt warning signs that we’re allocating our resources incorrectly. That means it’s important to analyze the opportunity cost in every decision we make – OK, that’s hard to do and not always practical (or fun), but at least the most important decisions. My suggestion is to first figure out what you really want in life and what you can give up, and second analyze any decisions you make in whatever you do to earn money. Notice I didn’t say ‘job’ – because earning money is one of the most time-consuming activities, a good use of that time should be doing something that you enjoy and are happy to be doing.

So, what are you going to give up?

There is absolutely no reason for there to be a debate over gay marriage. This isn’t like abortion where the life of an unborn child is at stake*. This is about living in a land of freedoms open to all the citizens of America.

Christians have no right whatsoever to be against two women or two men who love each other to join together in holy matrimony. If you worship God and try to follow the teachings of Jesus, he would not be happy with your treatment of your fellow brothers and sisters; he would be sad because you have a choice to treat others as you want to be treated.

This is not just a religious thing, we must all treat others fairly. We live in a country founded by people who were pissed off because they were treated like children and given no rights. And when we grew up as a country and confronted our own hypocritical treatment of ethnic and racial minorities, we took it upon ourselves to be accepting of everyone.

When I moved to Massachusetts over three years ago, it wasn’t because I suddenly gained the right to marry whoever I wanted. But I don’t want it any other way; at least all loving adults are treated the same by law here. It should be that way anywhere else in the United States.

On Tuesday, California’s citizens will be voting to keep the rights given to them by courts earlier this year. Even though most of us don’t live there, we need them to have the right of open marriage for everyone. Why? Because the more states that are in step with the rights granted us by the Declaration of Independence, the more that will follow. We all have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” – that’s for everyone. In the end we’re all humans, and we’re all in this together.

Growing up in Iowa, I tried hard to surround myself with people who accepted me for who I am. People who I could tell that I was gay, and nothing would change. But there were always people who weren’t so accepting, because they didn’t know how to deal with it, or they were taught to hate. They may have treated me badly, but I forgive them. Acceptance takes time.

The treatment I received gave me a complex. I felt I had to bury my identity it to almost everyone for fear that things would change and I’d be treated differently. You had to either have known me for a long time, or be gay yourself to gain access to the knowledge. But fuck it. It’ll take time to be open but I’m not hiding anymore. You have no reason to hate me for being gay. You can hate me for not liking your favorite band or thinking you’re a prick, but you can’t hate me for something I have no control over.

It may be different for me because some day I may want to marry another man, but we all must stick up for each others rights. Boston is so diverse that nearly everyone I know is a minority of some sort. And it would hurt me for them to be treated differently. Some of their ancestors were unjustly persecuted and denied their rights, and I won’t let that happen again. It’s the same thing, though – do you really think we should be selective in treatment of law-abiding people who aren’t trying to hurt others? No.

Eight years of bigoted conservatism is more than enough.

It’s time for America to walk the walk.

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I guess this post was about more than just gay marriage. Surprise!

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*I was taught that as a man I have no say over abortion. It’s not my choice and never will be. Women are the only ones to make a decision on abortion, so I’m keeping my mouth shut!

Think of the recent volatility in the markets as an opportunity.

When the economy shrinks it’s really only resetting itself, getting rid of excess capacity. Because eventually the market will be up again. And while credit may be hard to get right now, there’s capital still sitting around wanting to be used: your labor is capital.

This is the perfect time to start a new business. You’ll have to be thrifty and thoughtful, but that makes good business sense even in a growth market. Scrape together some money with your friends and come up with a business plan to solve a problem. Trust me, when people are back to spending money again you’ll be well-positioned to make some real dough. Here in America, we may not have a physical frontier anymore where people can just pack up and get away from their past and start a new life, but being an entrepreneur is the next best thing: you can pack up and leave your past career and be in total control of your own destiny.

Hell, even buying a franchise is a good idea. Then you can buy a business model that’s already been worked out and get started now so that when people are no longer spooked by thoughts of a recession, you’ll be ready. I work for a franchising company that was started in the recession of 1990-91. The founders managed to build a successful, stable company – and people are still buying franchises.

Yet another option is going to work for a startup. New companies are starting all the time and they need good, cheap help. By going with a company at the beginning, you’ll be well positioned to get a payoff if you help make a successful company.

Keep in mind that recessions happen because people think there’s a recession. It’s all in your head.

The one time I ever really impressed a teacher was when my Junior year english teacher asked our class what freedom meant. My answer was the first thing that came to mind, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.” It’s a line from Janis Joplin’s song “Me and Bobby McGee.” Turns out, that’s exactly what he was thinking too.

There are very few people in America who really know what freedom means. Is it what Joplin sang? Perhaps. If movies, literature, and song have said many times, is that the people who really have the power to do whatever they want are those who have either escaped responsibility or have had it taken away. And yet, with a good job, a decent education, and hard work, we can try to get every material thing we want or any comfort money can buy.

But ask yourself: “What would I do if I had no job, no home, no possessions, no obligations, nothing but the clothes I’m wearing?” If you were in that situation, it’d probably take some thought. One thing would be true, though: you could do anything you want. Couldn’t start a family because you didn’t have any time outside of work? Haven’t done much traveling because you had chores to do and other things to save up for? Well you’ve got a lot of time to do some real living, here’s your chance!

I won’t be the first to point out that The Declaration of Independence – the document that created the United States of America, says that we have a right to “the pursuit of happiness.” It’s a funny phrase, if you think about it: if happiness is what we all want anyway, shouldn’t it be that we have a right to happiness? Trouble is, happiness – that feeling of being able to walk down the street and spontaneously break out into a grin if for no reason than the feeling of being alive – happiness is not something we all get to have. It’s something that requires an effort. Being happy doesn’t just come from nowhere, we must work for it. We must pursue it.  And somewhere, somehow, in the middle of chasing that happiness, occasionally that feeling just appears. Chances are you won’t notice it – but sometimes there is a realization that everything is all right. You may notice a grin on your face, or a sudden urge to dance. That’s happiness, the elusive goal.

The pursuit of happiness, that is the real freedom. All of those things in your life that you could lose, it may hurt for a while, but they can all be lost. That already makes you free. That’s the kind of thought that makes me smile.

I used to say that cheesy dance music was my guilty pleasure, as if it was something I wasn’t supposed to like. But that doesn’t make any sense: why should we have to present a different image of who we are to everyone else, one that is so different that we have to laugh off any incompatible interests and hobbies?

From now on I will tell people that I like cheesy dance music. I’m a sucker for a dance beat.

It’s not my favorite style of music. Far from it. I listen to a wide swath of styles and eras. If anything, my favorite would be either mid-60s pop music (see my three favorite songs) or 90s indie-alternative…or late-70s post-punk, it’s hard to pick a favorite. But if I’m feeling down or a little tired, all I need to do is put on XM radio’s BPM station or some dance songs from my library, and I usually feel much better.

Why must we call something we like our guilty pleasure?

Do we really need to impress others with only the aspects of our life that we think others will approve? Sometimes, it’s those quirky interests that define who we are: that I like dance music provides a clue as to who I am as a person. Rather, we should be as proud of these features as our more mainstream ones. It’s the odd bits that make someone interesting: think of all the people you admire in history, did they do crazy things without caring what others thought? Albert Einstein never dressed up regardless of the event, Nicola Tesla measured the cubic mass of his food before eating. And think of the quirky interests: Issac Newton was into alchemy; Charles Dickens was fascinated by morgues, cemeteries, and the dead; Quintin Tarantino loves bad action movies from the seventies. There’s better examples that I can’t think of, but you get the idea.

Instead of guilty pleasures we should embrace all of our interests. It’s okay to watch Saved by the Bell, collect war camp paper money, enjoy shopping at dollar stores, be a fan of some little-watched sport like diving, eat Haggis, or any of the millions of things people do that isn’t considered ‘normal’ by most people. We should not be afraid to let others listen to our music collection, or peruse our bookshelves, because these are the things that define us.

Arguing about where the last comma in a sentence is kind of thing people debate then they don’t have any real fears or pressing decisions in their life.

The serial comma, or the Oxford comma, is when you put a comma before the last item in a list in a sentence, usually before an ‘and’ or ‘or.’ For example, “I like apples, pears, and bananas.” The other way to write a list is to not have a comma for the last item in the list: “I like apples, pears and bananas.” This is supported by the AP style book, and thus my boss – so it comes up a lot at work.

The argument over proper usage get so heated, I’ve seen yelling matches and one of those pathetic wrestling matches between two overly-hip twentysomethings with no muscle mass. The band Vampire Weekend wrote a song about it (“Oxford Comma”) – even the Wikipedia article is overly complicated, though not as insane as the article for Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

The fact that people fight over this is insane. And yet I can’t help getting involved: I support the serial comma fervently, and back my point up with the fact that most people do anyways (and occasionally friends who are better at debating). Essentially by having a comma separating every item in a list, there is less confusion about the last item.

How does one decide which is the best way? Simple: look at what everyone else is doing. If most people – especially the trend-setting writers – are using the serial comma, then let’s just agree that it’s the right way. Language is fluid after all; and the general idea is that proper usage has more to do with being understood than following old rules.

Good. Now we can stop fighting over this and just use the serial comma. And argue about more important things, like the best movie of 1998, the coolest character in The Sopranos, or whether it’s OK to text message a breakup.

I’m not so much a news junkie as an information junkie. I need data, and massive amounts of it. And with the major news events over the weekend: hurricane Ike*, Lehman Brothers’ colapse*, the suicide of David Foster Wallace*, and Tina Fey impersonating Sarah Pailin impersonating Tina Fey – I kept myself on the bleeding edge of every development.

While weblogs are great for keeping track of cultural developments, tech news, and news analysis; getting ahold of the actual events still needs traditional media outlets. And let’s face it: print news is dead; getting updates through the internet is the best method. Updates come fast and strong. So keeping on top of events as they happen is easy now as you can check anytime, instead of waiting for the morning or evening editions. Plus it’s easier to find stories that may not have been considered highly newsworthy, but important nonetheless.

This post is a guide to how I get my news. My sources are a little intense and may be overkill as the same stories will get repeated over and over at each news source, but they all provide a unique enough perspective to cover all the bases and give a possible edge in knowing the whole story. In fact, one could read only a few of these sources and still be better informed than 95% of the population.

Each group is numbered by importance, meaning how frequently they are checked. Group one is for top stories and Group 2 is for business news. Group 3, which is international sites, is really only for additional coverage to catch any news that fell through the cracks at the other sites, and to get a better view of the world situation. Group 4 is some extra tools which can come in handy, and are fun.

Group 1: General News

BBC – The best source for general international news. The BBC is much less country-biased than any of the U.S. media sites and places emphasis on news that’s more important worldwide. Which made it very surprising to see my hometown mentioned as a top story when it was under water last June. If you can only check one site, make it the BBC. Here’s BBC’s mobile site.

CNN – You could switch CNN for MSNBC and get the same effect, but I prefer CNN’s video setup, so this is on the list. CNN is for national news; international news gets little play. Sure, they may put as a top story the goings-on of Britney Spears or some other crap, but you need a source for American news by Americans. Here’s CNN’s mobile site.

Yahoo! News – Yahoo News is arguably the best topical news site around. And with Yahoo’s troubles lately, I’m surprised they aren’t leveraging it more: this site is almost as good as BBC’s site, has great AP pictures, and blows the pants off of Google News.

The New York Times – All of the NY Times’ national and international news is repeated elsewhere, but what you get here is the depth of the story, and about everything. It’s hard to explain but it’s often more enjoyable to read articles from the Times, because they often cover stories in special ways. There’s a reason why the best bloggers link to Times articles.

Local news – Everyone needs to know what’s going on locally. Not only will it affect you faster than national or international events, you have a bigger role and can become more involved with local issues. I suggest finding a good TV station and the best local newspaper. Here in Boston, I check WBZ TV and The Boston Globe. In addition, I also check news from my hometown.

Group 2: Business News

The Wall Street Journal – Here are some reasons why you should keep up with business news: you have a job and work for a living, you are investing in financial tools for retirement or supplemental income, you like money. In other words, business news is important. And The Wall Street Journal is the source for finance, economic, and personal finance articles. They also provide good political coverage. One downside to the WSJ is that to get the best use out of it, you’ll need a subscription to access most of the articles. But it’s worth it if you want to really know what’s going on in the world of business and finance. WSJ also has great blogs with additional coverage.

Bloomberg - Think of Bloomberg as a supplement to The Wall Street Journal, with an emphasis on markets (and a stylish site design). Also, they tend to have the fastest updates on market news. I was getting updates on Lehman’s demise at Bloomberg’s site first.

The Economist – The Economist is the best-written news magazine. The analysis and opinion offered by The Economist is top-notch and well-informed. It may be off-putting to someone who doesn’t believe in open market capitalism, but that may require a deeper study of economics. It costs to access The Economist, but it’s absolutely worth it. Most people however may not get any use out of it, not to mention get bored by the articles; but it provides the best coverage of international business, finance, and politics anywhere.

Group 3: International News

Al Jazeera - Here in America, the name Al Jazeera conjures up images of Osama Bin Laden videotapes, grainy videos of executions, and anti-American bias. But in reality, Al Jazeera is an excellent news source. Their coverage places importance on events that hardly ever get covered in the U.S.

The Christian Science Monitor - Don’t be put off by the name, these guys are a great news source. In fact, since the Monitor is run by a non-profit, they can afford more international reporters than most other major news outlets.

Der Spiegel – Much like Al Jazeera, Der Spiegel has a different international slant on their news than what you normally get in the U.S.

Reuters – A quick scan of Reuters’ homepage will give you a good idea of what’s going on in the world at the moment.

The Guardian – A fiercely independent British newspaper.

The International Herald Tribune – Essentially international edition of The New York Times. So it’s good to see what’s more newsworthy elsewhere.

Group 4: Suppmlemental Sources
These are a few sites and tools I recommend in addition to the other sites.

The Big Picture blog – It started out as a side project by a web developer at the Boston Globe, and is now one of the most visited blogs. That’s because the large-size, stunning pictures are presented in a way not seen anywhere else.

Mobile News/Bloomberg iPhone apps – This is how you get news on your iPhone. Mobile News is from AP and Bloomberg is…well, Bloomberg.

The New York Times Twitter feed – The Times seems to have the only Twitter feed that gets regularly updated with important news i.e. stuff that’s worth getting quick updates.

Newser – I found this site only a few days ago, but it’s already a favorite. Newser is a news aggregator, but is so polished it’s the first one to actually be useful. First, articles are displayed with a large graphic, and as you scroll through the list of articles it gets longer so you don’t have to go to another page (like when going back through old blog posts). Next the linked articles are summarized so you can get the gist of the story without having to leave the site. So far, every summary is a great executive summary, to save time in case it’s not worth reading the actual article. If you’re content with having someone else picking the news for you, Newser may replace going to all the other sites (it won’t for me).

You may have noticed I haven’t mentioned anything about sports. Thats because I couldn’t care less about sports news, with the exception of the Olympics – and that’s over already. You’re on your own for that.

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* These articles are from yesterday, so they may already be out of date.

On Monday, United Airlines’ stock plummeted from around $12 to $3. At first glance it was perplexing because it just dropped and United’s holding company, UAL hadn’t announced anything big enough to cause a 75% drop in price. Well…they announced something that would have, in 2002.

Silicon Valley Insider has a great analysis of exactly what happened, so go read that and come back here.

Something about this story feels like a piece of luddite science fiction. Just because the Chicago Tribune didn’t put a dateline on a story in 2002 that a corporation with enough problems of its own gets its stock hammered because some software was doing exactly what it was designed: dishing up popular stories to people who want to read such things. Suddenly United’s stock is very cheap for no logical reason. So much for rational investing, no? Actually, it shows that markets move according to the best possible information. But when that information is dished out by inflexible software programs, how efficient is it really?

There is so much information available to any one person, and so much potentially useful information, that we need tools to help us sort through that information. We can no longer rely on individuals at newspapers to decide what’s newsworthy, because even they can’t sort through all the information. Instead, we must use tools that can remove the signal from the noise. To give us the information that we need, that’s important, that we need to know.

But every website, every company, every entity online has their own systems for managing this information. And even in a single organization there can be several to hundreds of different ways of sorting information: by topic, popularity, etc. These tools don’t exist in a vacuum – the internet has no dark matter. So when Google crawls a website at an ungodly hour when all two visitors happen to be reading the same old story, the page gets cached and changes Google’s search results. Later in the morning, when a reporter at Bloomberg sees the page pop up on their Google Alerts, the wrong story goes out on the wire all because of the randomness of human action interfered with logical code.

This kind of thing is an informational flaw, a data mutation. Kinda like a biological mutation. Only cooler, because it’s easier for us to toy with information than with living organisms. This could cause all kinds of mutations, from viral videos to bands becoming suddenly popular to a spontaneous political movement to leaps in technological advancement. All because of the interaction of automated systems.

I feel that I am qualified to write about motivation because most of the time, I don’t have any.

A reasonable thing to do would be to sell, donate, or just get rid of an old TV 15 months after the new one arrived; but my unused TV is sitting in a room filled with random possessions of two other people. It would also be reasonable, knowing plenty about economics and how credit cards work, to not screw oneself over by not paying credit card bills for a while, but that’s exactly what I did (they’re paid off now, thank you). I still haven’t called the gas and electric companies to switch the bills over to my name, don’t actively look for a date, didn’t renew my driver’s license for nine months until the day before I was supposed to fly home, don’t recycle pop bottles*, and probably won’t vote in the upcoming election because I’ve figured out that the cost to cast that vote isn’t worth it for me. That makes me one lazy man, and qualified to talk about the energy behind doing things.

If I’m so lazy, how do I get anything done? Because I figure out ways to do more in less time. Not to get more work done, but to have more time to slack off. The unfortunate side effect is that to most people, I don’t appear to do anything. Trust me, I’m powering up and winning the game. Just look at this blog.

Budaeli, what you’re reading, has been dormant for most of its existence. Currently, this is the longest stretch of continuous writing, beginning on July 31st. There are several very key reasons for this, all being motivation for me to keep writing, but none of them will be obvious. If I’m so goddamn lazy, what keeps me writing? My laziness knows no rational bounds. It can’t be for anything obvious, like money or vanity right?

Always remember that necessity is not the mother of invention; laziness is the mother of invention.

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*I leave them on top of my garbage bags so the scavengers get them and make some money on my behalf.