Mass Media and Youth

Now I may be ignorant of current affairs, but someone posted on Facebook that Stephen King will have his own left-wing radio show.  It is to counter all the right-wing radio shows.

Now what I want to know is where in the political schema has Stephen King become an authority, who can speak on behalf of the “left-wing.”  I suppose someone could point the finger at my zany essays and say what gives you the right?  But I write this down, I don’t take callers and expound on green living.  I don’t see PhD of Political Affairs next to Stephen King’s name. I see a horror writer who’s a juggernaut of a star.  What that picture of Stephen King and few lines about right-wing v left wing was really was a promotional deal.  And it did make headlines.  And people think things like that make a difference.

Current affairs are in motion and history tells its truth.  We can look at this or that President now, but in hindsight, we can see the truth or falsity of their Presidency.  So many people get caught up in current affairs that they forget to do anything about them, except write a bitchy line or two.  To do something is uncool and you’re defeated even if you think about it.

See, the promotional tactics automatically will never get people really moving.  I’ve never walked out of a documentary and seen people picket the White House.  Who does that?  That’s because you can tell a salesman a mile away.  They are selling Stephen King to you.

In the 1950s, as we all know, the advertising groups decided that they would target a new market: teenagers.  It was a new concept.  Instead of a woman showing off a washer and dryer or the latest gizmo, commercials on TV would show teenagers riding in cars, hitting the malt shop, and doing 50 teenager-type things.  Teenagers not only had cars, but they had money.  And eventually they had credit cards.  This is critical, if you didn’t know this.  Because, ever since then, all advertising is really aimed at the 13-20 crowd or some age range like that.

This is why, by the 1980s, you have John Hughes as King of Hollywood, influencing the minds of teenagers all across America.  But it doesn’t even stop in the 80s.  The 1990s had a Reality Bites-type of MTV, with glorified videos.  And we all grew up with this and we all ate it up, so much so, that there are so many sublevels of irony and mimicked films, directors now can’t even make an original teen movie or horror film.

This is the current affair—Teenage Wasteland.  And while the US teenager and the immigrant teenager who wants the credit card as well, you have “adults” making decisions.

You know who I really respect, not Bob Dylan, Jim Morrison, or the Beatles, but those gray haired reporters who asked them rather insightful questions.   Who were those men, I wonder?  What are their life stories?  They were the old guard that saw these young artists as punks.  And in actuality, they were.  Worshipped punks.  For example, one reporter said that John Lennon said he was shy.  Then he showed the picture of Yoko and John naked on the cover of The Plastic Ono Band.  John still denied and said he was shy.  It was bald face lying to the reporter.

Those gray-haired thick-rimmed anti-rock ‘n roller reporters will always go down in history as a mystery to me.  They wanted clarity, but the new vanguard and their worshipped youth could say the sky was a microphone and it was legit.  While we don’t have a Jim Morrison any more, we are left with derivative rock, fourth generation Doors.  And it is about time advertising and journalism divorce and go their merry ways.  For the secrets aren’t in Stephen King or Rush Limbaugh or anyone who runs his mouth till its dry, and does aside commercials for gold or solar panels to keep the radio going.

In fact, what I want to see is the real thoughts behind the journalist, in essay form, analyzing all there is to be seen.  Why doesn’t a journalist just come out and say, this isn’t the news, this is dead-on promotion.  I guarantee that over half of the news is promoting something.  Britney Spears just cut a new single.  Michelle Obama’s new clothes were designed by so-and-so.

I’m not saying I am the ultimate authority on media.  I’m saying that a hardcore revision needs to overhaul the Mass Media.          

More Mediums: Youtube

http://www.youtube.com/user/vcaruso1980?feature=mhee

The Birthright of RoadGhost

This link will take you to the Other Side of me.  It's only about 6 or 7 minutes long, so you won't have the opera like you did before.

Register, Please

“Hey there sexy, you’re just what I’ve been looking for NSA :) if you know what I meen, but in order for us to chat I need you IM.  It’s the hottest new dating service in town.”

Now this may be an obvious ploy, but how many websites need you to subscribe, need your information, or your credit card and cvv numbers now?  Every single one.  There must be a server out there with my name on it.  I can’t eve LIST all the websites that take down my information, so I can create a username and password.

From your bank, to Facebook, to Twitter, to emails, iTunes, to real dating websites—it seems that everywhere I turn I either get some kind of free trial, with limited access, or must pay for the complete subscription—hell, even this free blogger website I needed to use my information.

I remember a few years ago musicians were complaining about their intellectual property and copyrights and their theft.  No longer do I feel this way.  I think everything on the Internet should be without usernames and passwords and credit card entries.  Jesus!

I mean, I know I’m bitching, but, if I want to build a website, they have to know who my great grandfather was. If I want to go to a poetry website or submit poetry, I have to name my first born son.

So why all these little *s that ask private questions like “what was the first concert you went to?”

Privacy—because there are little 14 year old hackers, who are way savvier at finding out your identity,   that want your information.  But in the process of filling out your information, I am giving license to Zoosk or whatever, every time there’s some news you don’t care about.  Half of my email is “news” I wish would go away.  And that’s even if I check the box not to get newsletters.

The worst are toolbars.  Every program tries to slide in an already checked toolbar.  If I didn’t pay attention, half your browser would be toolbars all doing virtually nothing, but selling shit.

So not only are businesses, programs, and even this Word program trying to figure out ways to take my information, but they want me to be totally consumed by them.  They want me to download them and throw every hook at me.  It’s like some kind of video game, dodging the information attacks.

And in the end, while the 14 year olds can junk up the junk mail, the businesses and programs I choose can junk up my mail as well.  Maybe I’m not smart, maybe I should unsubscribe every new program or business.  Maybe I should be a hacker and hack programs—wouldn’t that be the ultimate privacy, no username, no password, no filling in credit card information.

Or rather, why not like literary magazines, have one program you fill out—and the businesses go to it.  Think about it.  How many usernames and passwords and credit card information are out in some server just waiting for the right hacker?  Make it the Fort Knox of Internet Information.  And it has a list of every business and program I bought or subscribed to.           

http://vcaruso35.podomatic.com/

This link will take you to FOLK, a podcast, blending Brian Wilson's Smile and my poetry, with Sunny Day Real Estate as interludes.

The Power of Boobs

Easily $10,000 for breast implants.  A woman I knew once pointed to each breast and said, this is Mastercard and this is Visa.  Now why, I wonder, would a woman pay to have unnatural silicone things put into her breasts, usually to make them larger?  Perhaps, it’s the power of boobs.

I’ll admit it, I love them and ogle them like a creep.  The truth for most guys is, boobs are the Siren Call of women.  They are the Eyes of Oedipus and his complex.  Breasts have royal power, and if a man sees them naked, in person or on film, a sort of dumbing and blotting out of everything happens.

Is this right to have a breast fetish or to enlarge your breasts?  Does it concentrate too much on the physical and not enough on the mental, emotional, and spiritual?  Well, it does ignore the latter three.  However, any woman who wants attention from men will say she emotionally feels happy, because of her augmented charms.  And to stand up for her, men, wouldn’t you feel better if you got noticed for having a better body, such as if you worked out at the gym, with Sisyphus diligence?  Suddenly your arms are stronger.  You have a washboard abdomen, and gluteal muscles are nickel bounce-worthy.  Attention is everywhere, except on what your profound wisdom is saying.  Do you care?  No.

Is this right?  In a real sense, yes.  In a rational sense, no.  In a rational way, we should be beings who care less about our bodies’ image and more about healthy bodies, in which our healthy minds inhabit.  Choosing a girlfriend or boyfriend, because they are compatible and real—these are the rational ways to go.  And usually the fatter, uglier, those who wear thick, thick, glasses, and the poor—walk the rational path.  (I know that’s mean).

In the Real World, if you are pretty and have money, it is right to pump your breasts so large that eyes, even women’s, will bulge.  And I’m not saying this because I have a fetish for them.  I am saying this because there is an eternal power struggle between men and women.  That’s the rub.

The power of boobs isn’t just the Siren Call or the Milf Fantasy.  It is a weeding out of beta males.  But breasts aren’t the only way.  There are so many ways in which women and men use sex, use the mind, use the kitchen sink, to control one another—and if you think this is my family or my relationship.  Guess again.  Power is about control.  Whoever can control the other Wins.  And in our culture, Winning is a good pursuit.

For example, with one couple, they cooperate.  However, power subverts cooperation.  We can say that this couple is functional and cooperative.  Both husband and wife earn their daily bread.  He’s a shoe salesman, managerial.  She’s a graphic designer.  Now they both have a joint account.  It all looks cooperative, until one day, he decides to add a second account, a savings account for a house, new car, whatever.  Who has made this decision?  He has.  And so they fight over the idea, whether it’s good or bad.  In the end, she opens up her own savings account too.  Who won?  He did.  He made a decision without her, thereby causing the fight and her to start her own account.  But is there such thing as winning in the household?  Not exactly.  But there always will be between men and women.

Whether it’s a peek at nipples or savings accounts, there is and always will be a power struggle between men and women.

Someone I know says, “Women use sex to get love, and men use love to get sex.”  This is the game, the game so many people talk about.  This is the American way of saying—eternal struggle between men and women for power over one another.  And this game is in our DNA as a form of competition.

Female poets rarely spend time writing about their bosom.  Many write more about their Vagina.  That’s the sacred pleasure zone of the goddess.  Its power is life.  But it does not war.  It is peace.  It is birth and the pain of birth.  And men give it pleasure.  Boobs, although for breastfeeding, are eye candies.  And hence, in the power struggle between men and women, beauty and prettiness are not only blinding to the witness, but dumbing as well. 

It is the losing man who continues to stare at cleavage till his death.                

The Job Identity

My job is to provoke thought, in the face of such a mindless Media, or maybe that’s what I profess, at the moment.  Now maybe I won’t do a good job, but I will TRY to.   And as you see, it can’t be a job, because that would entail money.

Education is a job, or is it?  See, all my life, I was under the impression that Education was work and a job.  And yet, I wasn’t being paid, or even when I was being paid to go to school, there was some other title than “student.”  The student is not a profession I later learned.  It is an apprentice to the System.  So what do you do? I’m a doctor; I’m a lawyer; I’m a student…record skips.  That’s not a profession like the others.  You’re a kid.  You have chalk marks on your hands.  You carry a book bag, not a briefcase.  You are not an Adult with a Job.

So what does this “Adult with a Job” mean?  It means paying bills, so you can afford shelter, food, more often than not, some kind of transportation (car, bus, train, etc.) and taxes.  It can also be elaborated on to include a partner and kids or pets or both.  Affording all this takes something and being a student ain’t it.  So unless you’re administering tests or asking Compare and Contrast essays, you, student, are just a peon, in the eyes of the System.  You are Potential for the System

The Job is the cog in the wheel of the System.  So fringe cultures that are in school, in communes, in monasteries, on welfare, etc., are like chipped cogs that slow the wheel.  Ideally, students should have a Job outside the school to be truly cogs.  Otherwise, the System of Commerce and Economy slows, and Dads pull their hair out as to why sons and daughters aren’t working, and welfare is taking over.

So, naturally, the motivation to have and do a Job is of the utmost importance from society’s perspective.  There must be classes for which you are motivated and trained to do your Job.  And anyone who doesn’t have a work ethic that is politically required is either shunned or secretly dismissed.  For example, they will say he’s a nice guy, but isn’t as productive as he should be.  No gold star and bonus for him.   And carrots-on-sticks are everywhere in the Job World: Christmas bonuses, monthly bonuses, bonuses for customer service.  And they really do work.  People will sell time, holiday-time, vacation-time, time with family, time with friends, pet-feeding time, for bonuses.

                                                                          

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I may be just the rebellious sort with all this.  But I think the very most difficult thing to swallow about Jobs and Job Markets and the System are the direct relation between Identity and Job.  When the major questions come, such as: Who are you?  Some people, like Adam Sandler in “Anger Management,” fidget and raise their voice a little.  This is not a standard: “What do you do?” or “How are you?”  It asks one to strip away their job, family, shelter, food, transportation, Things and Self-Defining Things.  It asks you philosophically: Are you a being in this world without these things or are you not?  And this is its conundrum.  Anyone who says, I know who I am, either has a self-awareness of Dalai Lama status, or simply has a running narrative of their life.

However, the major problem with these answers is that they ignore nature and nurture.  I don’t know my Identity.  I think he’s somewhere among family, Socrates, Dylan Thomas, and Stanley Kubrick, with a little Jesus thrown in.  And that’s the best way I know how to describe my Identity.  By influences.  Not Writer/Poet.  Those labels are what I do for work.  And taken seriously (at least now I d not) by most.  And they aren’t really Who I Am.  My Job is not my Identity.  But for many, their business cards cost their souls.  Director of Sales—ABC, always be closing, sealing the deal.  The sales director will target people as a potential sale, and will pretend to like them only for that sale and connection: which translates to money and potential money and more money, until that target is but a cog in the system of the sales person.  Sales wasn’t always viewed this way, although Chaucer may disagree.  They cared, and knew what the person wanted, and knew when to quit.  Now all that is feigned, phony.  Just like a politician wanting your vote.  They perfect their smiles to make you feel good about yourself.  Although, if you’ve read my previous blog, election’s a show in itself.

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And so we have the Job, the common denominator, among people.  And if you are unemployed in any way, you better understand an obvious something: that a job is where you earn.  And this idea of earning is crucial to the value system.  If I won the lotto and had dinosaur eggs for breakfast and bald eagle coats—not only would archeologists and PETA raise arms and people want my money—, but, I guarantee, I would be looked at as someone not earning the right to have my Corvette.  So many would say luck, not that he EARNED it.  And earning implies a work ethic that the more you work your job, the more money you get, and the more you save and invest, then you are an Adult with a Job who REALLY owns that Corvette.  And if you built that Corvette from scratch, you’re a guru of earning. You are an Adult. You are pronounced able to sit at the adult table and talk about politics and religion.   What would you know about those types of Adulthood concepts, even if you spent 7 years studying them in undergrad and graduate school, you didn’t pay for your roof or the food on the table.  Your note-taking and reading didn’t feed the System at that hippie college.

And so what happens is: the more you identify with your job, the more you earn, and the more people can label you that Job ID, and you become X-the Dishwasher, while he is X-the Doctor.  Which one do I respect more, which one do I want to date, which one has a better car, which one, etc.?  However elegant you are, and however great your personality is, they are just WORDS and MEANINGLESS, if your Job ID is subpar or you’re unemployed.  But that saleswoman can say anything and be a snake, because her business and bank account are growing.  Let’s listen to her.  It’s like the Bill Hick’s old bit: we have the greatest minds of all time, making music, now, but let’s shine that camera on that little 13 year old singer and see what his lyrics mean.    

But what about the poor scholarly boy, in the back of the library, studying mathematics: he won’t pay for the roof or food, and feed the System, until way down the road.  And when he goes around saying his major—which in higher education is like describing your status and job title—mathematics, people will ask Systemic questions of him: “What can you do with that major?” or “What’s the use of the that major?”–tone, annoyingly flagrant.  And few will understand that the history of mathematics is arguably the history of music, architecture, science, and even possibly it is a form of religion.  The knowledge that scholarly boy will gain will surpass any Job Skills and Job Markets and Cogs in the Wheel.  He will look at the System and calculate improvements and chaos.  And he will say: “I guess I’ll teach, I don’t know.” 

How refreshing is this “I don’t know.”  The Job Identity undecided, and, thus, he is a dork and on the fringe culture of the Job System.  And who needs Calculus anyway?