Letter to the Editor (USA Today)

From: James Deagle
Subject: Letter to the Editor
To: letters@usatoday.com
Received: Sunday, January 1, 2012, 10:13 AM

Dear Editor:

Just today I was reading Anick Jesdanun's article on your website (How to get your Facebook in order), and wanted to leave a comment advising people about the pitfalls of Facebook, and why they'd be better off simply deactivating their account. You can imagine my dismay when I finished rattling off a quick paragraph's worth of my two cents and realized that the only way to leave a comment is to log in through a Facebook profile.

I find it troubling that you limit your online conversation to Facebook members, as there are plenty of us out there who have either not signed up or have deactivated our accounts on a matter of serious principle due to ongoing (and unresolved) privacy concerns. Additionally, many of us refuse to provide a map of our social life and consumer preferences to an organization that has yet to prove itself a trustworthy guardian of that information.

By allowing your online conversation to be 'branded' by Facebook, can we as readers trust that USA Today will also provide objective news coverage of Facebook when privacy, copyright and other legal issues arise, and perhaps even dare to publish editorials critical of it when warranted? By allowing Facebook to own and control your online forums, you allow a shadow of doubt to be cast over said objectivity, and as such I am less inclined to count myself among your readership.

James Deagle
Ottawa,Canada

Breaking the seal

This post constitutes a desperate effort to end a two-month literary drought. If I just start typing, perhaps something akin to writing may emerge, despite the objections of my inner Truman Capote.

It's not that I've had nothing to say, and it isn't that I haven't been bursting with the urge and intent to write...no, the problem has been at the bio-chemical level. The act of writing for me has usually been an act of capturing, harnessing and transcribing into words my mind's equivalent of fleeting musical notes -- all I've had to work with these days, however, is my mind's equivalent of a steady dial tone. O distant uncooperative muse...

There are times, however, when the only way to break the seal is to smash the bottle. This is one of those times.

Don't take the above as griping, however. The reason for my recent inability to focus on writing is that my energies and emotions have been drastically redirected due to the recent birth of my son. Those who already have kids need no further explanation, and for those without kids...there is no amount of explaining that can do the experience justice. With blogging being a solipsistic activity to begin with, I can only convey my own perspective on being a new dad.

For starters, it is like nothing I ever could have imagined. Being there with my wife through labor and delivery, going respectively from a sense of fear and helplessness to a sudden mind-shattering endorphin spike, and losing my heart to this new little person at first sight, represented a cataclysmic shift in my internal universe. I'm still the same ol' me, just an upgraded, massively sleep-deprived, and less trivial version. (Retro geeks can download an iso CD image of the previous me via a torrent at www.thepiratebay.org.)

So there you have it. A blog post from this keyboard after weeks of the author fearing it would never happen, hopefully followed by more of a less navel-gazing nature. Watch your step...those shards of glass can hurt.


______


Acknowledgement


This post did not occur in a vacuum. I had no idea of what to write about until after talking on the phone to Peter, comparing notes about writing as well as new fatherhood. Some of the material above came about verbally during the give-and-take of that conversation. Additionally, communing with a kindred literary spirit in of itself is always good for stimulating the writing gland.

Review - Kung Fu, the Invisible Fist (1972)

Plot: Lee Chang is a police captain sent to Shanghai (with his second-in-command, Su Dong) to investigate Lin, an underworld figure running a white slavery racket. Meanwhile, this same racket has also been infiltrated by Jian Tai, a Japanese operative (nicknamed "The Hungry Tiger") who is using his newfound position as a henchman of Lin's as a base from which to relay maps and information regarding Chinese naval bases to his superiors back home. Tensions mount as Lee Chang and Jian Tai begin to suspect each other, leading to an inevitable showdown.

If you watch enough old chop socky flicks - especially those from Hong Kong (HK) - you learn to hope for the best and brace for the worst. So much of the 1970s HK output was a blur of muddled and incoherent storylines, unimaginative fight choreography (from the Jump In Front of the Camera and Wave Your Arms Around school), and a seeming attitude of total indifference towards the audience. In short, even the most ardent kung fu maniac often reaches a point where they ask themselves: "Why do I watch this shit?"

Thankfully, a movie like Kung Fu, The Invisible Fist comes along to restore your faith. While nothing earth-shattering, it nevertheless comes across as a solid and sincere attempt at being an all-around good movie, while also delivering the genre goods. In a field marked by stylistic excess at the expense of substance, this one has everything the average viewer should expect in the right proportions.

Although Lee Chang is the hero in this tale, his sidekick Su Dong provides the heart, as he shows compassion for the story's marginalized figures. (He frees Anna, a white slave girl from Russia, and makes himself a friend and guardian of the lowly dock workers employed by Lin.) While Lee Chang becomes increasingly concerned with national security, Su Dong acts with an obvious concern for social justice. Because he truly cares about the people in this movie, so does the viewer.

Because of the above, the inevitable elements of kung fu cheesiness and unintended laughs are welcome - even endearing - rather than irritating. Witness the following snatches of ludicrous dialogue:

Su Dong: He was bragging about his karate. It's no good. I can't stand it!

Or, as hero and villain square off just as the climactic fight gets underway, some down 'n dirty trash talk, HK-style:

Jian Tai: You know, in Japan, what they call me there? It's "The Hungry Tiger".

Lee Chang: Oh really? I have a nickname too, "The Crazy Dragon".

And while I'm not one to find mirth in human trafficking, a scene where struggling slave girls are being forcefully stuffed into wooden crates comes across momentarily as an oversized game of Whac-A-Mole as they randomly stand up only to be shoved back down. Guilty snickers, indeed.

All-in-all, a well-made and engaging film with a welcome dose of humanity and competence.

A skeleton picked clean by the vultures of neglect

The following is cross-posted from this blog's secret twin over at wordpress.com, James Deagle's Great Big Blog, a neglected little creature that has been sitting idle for quite some time. Ergo, the post below is simply a message for any lost souls who end up there by mistake.

Yes, those are tumbleweeds you see rolling by, and yes that is a lonesome wind whistling through the weathered wooden boards of this ghost town’s abandoned remains. This blog is a skeleton picked clean by the vultures of neglect.

Or maybe not so much neglect as distraction. The real fun — if you can call it that — is happening at what has become my primary blog, www.jamesdeagle.blogspot.com, established in 2009 as a political/social commentary blog. Before long it veered wildly off course and turned mainly into a creative writing venue.

Meanwhile, my woefully-indecisive mind is agonizing over what to do with the blog you're reading now. Do I simplify things and pull the plug altogether, or do I set it aside for some specific purpose? Such as political/social commentary? Ack!! I feel like I’ve been down this road before!

In any case, I think I’ll hang onto it for now, if only to maintain ownership of “jamesdeagle.wordpress.com”, as I’m hardly the only James Deagle on the web. Those running around with my name include:

• a new media designer,
• an English boxer (who after a recent victory over Bakhtiyar Artayev quipped “with the skill I’ve got, I should beat him every day”),
• a singer (Chaos in the Elementary Classroom),
• a Google+ member who looks like he hears something upstairs,
• a guy with a goatee, and
• a deceased fisherman.
  

With competition like that, this piece of real estate needs to be fiercely guarded.

Oy Klezmer!

Today I've been finding respite from the bottleneck of professional and personal deadlines in klezmer music, of all things. This was unintentional, of course. I was just looking for something different in the way of sounds to carry me through the morning as I pushed through reports and emails, and was wholly expecting it to be a passing fancy before reverting to something more familiar.

Instead, I was stopped in my tracks by Yiddish musicians performing melodic and rhythmic cartwheels, and by instruments that are doubled over in laughter one song, and then choked with tears the next. If given a chance, this is music that enters your bloodstream and then demands to be expressed by its host through tapping feet, flailing limbs and someone's grandmother hoisted above the crowd, chair and all.

I'm not musically-astute enough to identify the scales or time signatures, and I don't understand anything they're saying beyond the occasional shout of "Oy!", but that hardly seems to matter. While some may say that music is a drug, I can tell you more specifically, with a smile of amusement and gratitude, that it can also be medicine.

The Case for Mythical Ostriches

One of the great misconceptions of our time is that ostriches bury their heads in the sand. This is quite untrue, contrary to what we’ve been led to believe. This myth has been promulgated by way of the figure of speech it inspired. (Or did the figure of speech inspire the myth? We’ll put this one on hold until there’s consensus on the chicken-egg causality dilemma.)

Nevertheless, I think we ought to keep at least one mythical ostrich on the farm who will perform this head-burying act from time to time in order to keep the figure of speech alive and well. (Its mythical nature, of course, would allow us to happily forgo whatever chores are involved with keeping ostriches. I for one am quite content to avoid vacuuming sand and grit from its body every morning.)

Having said that, however, I think there’s room to redefine what burying one’s head in the sand is supposed to mean. We currently understand it to signify someone hiding from ‘the world’, or from ‘reality’. In light of an ostrich’s natural tendency to attack you if you watch it while it’s eating, it seems odd that it would choose to hide from the world, as if it had Avoidant Personality Disorder. Heck, I’ve even read about an ostrich attacking a bus full of tourists by clinging to the side and smashing the windows apart with its beak. These birds take shit from nobody.

Therefore, it seems there should be other possibilities.

As ugly-tempered as they are, perhaps ostriches have religion. Yes, this sounds outlandish, but many believe that elephants are religious, or at least spiritual and altruistic, as evidenced by their ritual of burying their dead, or even the dead of other species, including humans. (In that regard, elephants are religious but non-denominational.) Why can’t birds be capable of such traits?

Now consider that when our mythical (and theoretically-religious) ostrich buries his or her head in the sand, perhaps they’re not hiding from the world, they’re praying for it.

Save the humans – disavow all violence

"It seems that the deeds I have complained of have been done in an organized manner. There seems to be a definite design about them, and I am sure that there must be some educated and clever man or men behind them. They may be educated, but their education has not enlightened them. You have been misled into doing these deeds by such people."

--Mahatma Ghandi, from "Ahmedabad Speech", April 14, 1919

As United Nations negotiators continued to discuss climate change at the Copenhagen Climate Conference this weekend, protestors worldwide expressed their impatience with the pace of change on environmental issues. For the most part, the protests were peaceful and, in some cases, wildly creative. Some examples included:

- a group of activists dressed as penguins holding signs emblazoned with "Save the Humans!",

- curtains in an office tower in Nantes, France arranged on all four sides to read "WE CAN ACT NOW", and

- in London's Trafalgar Square a polar bear carved in ice that will slowly melt as the conference proceeds, which of course is designed to represent the plight of animals in a region where the effects of global warming are (for now) being felt more directly than anywhere else.

All three of the above are evidence of deeply passionate people looking to advance their cause in ways that are by turns silly, artistic and deeply haunting. Even for those who may disagree with the message, this type of expression should be celebrated and encouraged.

As with any large enough party, however, a few knuckleheads marred the spirit of the protest with violence and vandalism. As reported by Reuters:

"Riot police detained more than 900 people around the Danish capital after black-clad activists threw bottles and smashed windows. A police spokeswoman said the number had climbed to 968 shortly after 10 p.m.

"Police said four cars were set on fire during the evening. One policeman was hurt by a stone and a Swedish man injured by a firework."

At best, this sort of mob activity prevents the climate change debate from rising above a moronic "us versus them" simplicity. The worst case scenario, and the more likely one to me, is that violence in and of itself is its own message, and it is this message that overtakes the public's perception of the protests. That's the problem with these lunatic fringe groups -- they prevent the intellectual and creative aspect of the environmental and anti-globalization movements from resonating with the public at large. The narrative is lost to burning cars, smashed windows and injured bystanders.

Any movement claiming to work for the betterment of humanity and the environment should disavow all violence and vandalism supposedly committed in their name. Otherwise, silence implies consent.