satellite

What I’m Doing

/ Shane / 4 Comments

What I’m Watching:

  1. The IBW, new episode premiering tomorrow! The old episodes are still available, so there is time to catch up!
  2. District 9

I hadn’t heard hardly anything about this movie at all. Occasionally I would hear somebody say, “That movie is really, really good” but that was about it. Then, it was nominated for a Best Picture Academy award and I was like, “Say what now?” But everybody I had ever heard talk about it universally liked it. I have to say, this movie totally lived up to the hype! It was really good.

Even when I started watching it, I had no idea what it was about. Based on the logo (above) I had the vague idea it was a cartoon or something, which it is not. In fact, on the contrary, it has really good special effects. This movie had that rare quality of really good sci-fi, where it can be both entertaining as an action movie, and simultaneously be a commentary on our culture. Also, I would say that it is pretty much universally appealing, even to non-sci-fi fans.

I think my comment at the end of the movie was, “Wow, I have a lot to think about now.” Highly recommended.

What I’m Listening To:

Satellite by Lena (Germany)

I love it. (Told you I liked it Meg!) This song was this year’s winner of the Eurovision awards. The Eurovision awards are kind of hard to explain. It’s like combining the craziness of American Idol with the fanatical patriotism of the Olympics. Basically, different European countries pitch their best (?) musical acts against each other, and the results are voted on.

Sometimes Europe is a strange place to us Americans, and Eurovision really highlights this. You can see some examples here. All the bad European stereotypes seem to come out of the woodwork. To an extent, I think this is somewhat intentional, because countries want to highlight something unique about their culture, such as a particular folk music sound or costume.

Anyway, the cream does tend to rise to the top and I think Satellite proves this. I probably listen to it several times a week.

What I’m Reading:

The Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Vol. 1

I have mentioned before being pleasantly surprised with the stories of Philip K. Dick, so I thought I’d give him another go around (actually two more, since I also have volume 2). Sure enough, the stories are pretty good.

However, when reading these sort of “golden age” sci-fi stories, you always have to look at them through the lens of time a little bit. I don’t know when these particular stories were written, but they have a very 1950’s feel to them. I’m not just picking on Dick here either, the same is true of a lot of older sci-fi, specifically from people like Heinlein. It’s probably true of literature as a whole, but I think sci-fi really highlights it, because of the advanced technology.

For example, in these particular Dick stories, you have people living on the moon and Mars, living in totalitarian futures, fighting robots, time traveling, etc. and yet, there is no such thing as a cell phone. In one story, we have the technology to time travel, and yet the guy has to pull over into a gas station and use a pay phone. Almost inevitably, the foe or competitor is the Soviet Union. It’s like they could imagine some things in the future, but everything else is still locked into the time period in which they were writing.

My personal favorite is when something is set in the far off future, which is already in the past to us. One story was set in the far off future of 1992, where robots could pass as humans, but still bragged about getting 22 stations on their cathode tube televisions. Did I mention that these amazing robots ran on punch tape, not hard drives?

It’s not just technology either, it’s social aspects as well. Like a character describing how amazing it is to have a woman driving a car, how it makes him feel like a king. Or a building in the future being described as, “full of well-to-do Negroes”. Well, there’s a phrase you don’t hear every day! Many of the sci-fi stories from this era feature the traditional strong male. Anything done by a woman is greeted with this sort of attitude like, “Well, look at that! From a woman! Amazing! Isn’t the future just grand folks?”

The scary part about all of that, is that I think these people were really trying. But, because of the culture of the time, they simply could not imagine some of these things. But they were trying, and that was more than a lot of people were doing at the time. Certainly, the literature of today is probably going to look just as bad to people reading it 50 years from now.

And, despite all of that, I’m glad they didn’t update the stories. I’d rather see where we’ve been and why we got where we are now, then sweep it all under the rug and forget. I’m glad we’ve gotten to the point that well-to-do Negroes and women drivers are too common to be worth mentioning. And if you can get past all of these funny little extra pieces, there are some pretty fine stories underneath too.

Living off the Grid

/ Shane / 6 Comments

We did it. We made the leap. We got rid of our satellite dish.

It all started when I was reading an article at my mom’s house, I believe it was in Newsweek, about a guy who had decided to cancel his cable television. His main point was basically that most shows are online, or on Netflix, or some other medium. Of course, not all shows were, but for the money he was paying for cable, it would be worth it to miss those shows.

This really resonated with me. Most of the shows we watch are on network television. Yes, there are a few shows that aren’t available online and aren’t on network television that I will miss. But are those few shows worth the money we pay? If someone came up to me on the street and said, “Hey, if you stop watching show X, I’ll give you $500 a year.” I would take it so fast the guy’s head would spin.

There were a few other factors as well that affected our decision. First off, as you probably know, we don’t watch t.v. with Evie. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no t.v. before the age of two. But of course, after two years of not watching t.v. with her, there didn’t seem to be much point in starting when she turned two. We have plenty to do in a day. So the t.v. doesn’t come on at all until she is in bed. Depending on how tired we are, we can probably watch (at most) two shows. So we’ve already weaned ourself down quite a bit, to where the t.v. isn’t on all day.

Second off, if t.v. is so bad for kids, is it really so great for adults? Don’t get me wrong, we still watch plenty of t.v., but I’ve been making an effort to watch left. Honestly, I feel like I never have enough time for my hobbies as it is, and I’d really rather be doing them than watching t.v. in most cases.

For me personally, there was a third factor to consider. We have had our Tivo for years now. It worked great when we just had regular cable. But with any sort of box, satellite in our case, but also digital cable, etc., the Tivo has some trouble. Most people rent a box with a DVR included in it, so they don’t have these sorts of troubles. But it didn’t make sense to pay extra for that when we already had something. Anyway, long story short, but if we didn’t remember to “fix the t.v.”, the Tivo would blindly record an hour of satellite screen saver. This happened constantly, meaning we were missing shows left and right. And if we were gone for a weekend or something, forget it.

Okay, so, the short version is, for whatever reason, we don’t watch much t.v. anymore, and we decided it wasn’t worth it. So I got a digital converter box for my birthday and decided to give it a whirl. After a short trip to Best Buy for a $13 antenna, we’re in business.

I have to tell you, I couldn’t feel better about this. Basically, the downside is missing a few shows I used to watch (and I basically only mean The Soup and Robot Chicken, maybe the occasional football game). The upside is saving about $500 a year and not missing shows from when the Tivo / satellite connection messes up.

And let’s be clear, this isn’t exactly like going down to 4 channels, like when I was a kid. The combination of digital signals adding sub-channels, and maybe the fact that I live in Chicago now, I receive a full 39 channels. That’s like how many basic cable used to give you.

So anyway, I dumped all of those horrible monopolistic television providers, and I have a new lease on life.  A spring in my step. And I recommend to all of you to do the same.

One funny anecdote about the whole thing. When I went in to Best Buy, the checkout lady tried to get me to get a credit card. She asked me, “Did you get everything you wanted for Christmas? We have no interest right now, you could get that big t.v. you always wanted.” I looked at her and said, “Are you seriously trying to sell a big screen high def t.v. to the guy who just bought the cheapest pair of rabbit ears he could find?” She repeated about the no interest, and I just laughed and left.