Racist Aliens
Well we’ve just added another color to the racism spectrum; blue. Why? you might ask…
Because of a movie (Avatar) about a fictional race on a distant moon who encounters human beings attempting to mine a substance called “Unobtainium” for profit to be made back on Earth.
How is this movie being perceived as racist?
The “hero” is white. And he’s not even much of a hero, in my eyes at least. He was a crippled ex-marine of average intelligence with simple, borderline crass, communication skills who relied heavily upon the deeds of the supporting members of the cast to be propelled into the “white messiah” status he’s being given. Pardon me for being different, but if that’s what we’re calling a hero, then I’d much rather be in the supporting cast. The kick-ass, helicopter pilot; the dedicated scientists/researchers (who, by the way, make every effort to do no harm to any living being or thing), the Na’vi high priestess/shaman to name a few examples. Heck, I’d rather be one of the flying creatures, or a tree than the actual “hero”.
To circle back around to the topic of this entry, I just didn’t get racism from this movie. It may have been there, but far more apparent to me was the humans’ destruction of the fantastical natural environment and their complete lack of concern for it. Instead of taking time to research and study the native environment and cultures, they stopped once they found one thing of value and completely fixated on it with no regard to what was destroyed in the process. Hasn’t THIS theme been repeated over and over again on various regions of our own planet? Does this not still continue to this day? I’m sorry to those this may offend, but racism takes a backseat to the loss of that which sustains life of all races; our natural resources.
So what did I take away from this film? What was most sad to me (and I hope others)? That even with the amazing advancements to technology that are going to surface in the future that will enable the human race to explore other planets, will also come the rape and destruction of those planets and their life-systems.
Oooh Me So Spammy!
“I am very beautiful girl to chat with you and come to your home tonight”
“I am online. Click here to chat or sex with me”
Hey, why was that SPAM? I will sex with beautiful girl! NOW!
So, I never even got to that caffeine. Not sure if that’s worse or better. Now I’m getting delirious from the stress of the rest of the week. Getting excited as I see the light start to shine through from the top of the snowpack.
Ryan! Ryan! I’m digging my way out! Mmmmpffmmfffmppp…mmmmphf…
Project for this weekend: Find Spammer e-mail. Sext them deeply. Aaaaaw…yeeeaahhhh!
Evil has arrived, and it’s blonde!
“Spam Spam Spam Spam,
Spam Spam Spam Spam,
Spammity Spam!
Spammity Spam!
Spam Spam Spam Spam,
Spam Spam Spam Spam…”-Monty Python
Welcome to Friday in all its magnificent, caffeine infused glory! Hope you all had your delicious morning Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam, Eggs, Spam and Spam. Ryan is currently in class for the next couple hours, so I am commencing takeover. I’m Noelle, bytheway, Ryan’s girlfriend and torturer. He has reached a level of crazy sufficient to allow me blog priveleges on his web site, and now I’ve come to abuse them. Now the question is, can the Internet be abused? Bring us your tails of Internet abuse! Not to be confused with self-abuse, mind you. Some things should be kept to one’s self… Anyhow, off to chug more caffeinated beverages.
Use Bookmarklets Faster
Tech savvy people probably have bookmarklets to add content to their blogs and other social sites. You see link shorteners in nearly every other tweet. Usually what happens is you click on a bookmark in your toolbar, and depending the site you will have to log in, fill out details or verify to save it. Depending on your computer habits, you will be hopping between the keyboard and the mouse multiple times.
Anybody who knows about usability, this hopping back and forth between the mouse and keyboard slows a person down no matter how fast they think they are. Staying on one device will be faster. One of the things you can do to speed up your bookmarklet speed is to give them keywords. Depending on your browser, determines how you do it.
- Firefox – v 3.5.5 – After putting the button/bookmarklet in your toolbar, right click it, and choose properties. You should see a field labeled keyword, put whatever word/phrase you please and hit ok.
- Internet Explorer – 7 & 8 – There is a shortcut key field after getting into the bookmark properties like described for Firefox. I recommend that you do not use this tip in IE because setting a shortcut key only just launches a new window/tab in your default browser using that link.
- Opera – v 9.5+ – Once in the properties window, there willl be a nickname field. Input whatever nickname you desire.
Now since you have a keyword/nickname/whatever, you can just type that into the address bar and automatically be sent there. The most speed that will be gained is when people use URL shortners, over things like blog pings. I have tried a handful of shorteners, and the best so far is: is.gd. The way I have mine set up is I have the is.gd keyword set to is. So I browse to a long URL site, press <CTRL> + <L> and it jumps to is.gd’s shortened version. Since is.gd puts the new url into a text input box with the text selected, I can copy the url without pressing anymore than the copy hotkey. Then I am set to go.
A lot of people like the bit.ly service. I don’t exactly want to use that as my update platform. Since bit.ly is designed to be namely a status updater with links, their shortened url is in an HTML textarea element. So you have to highlight it if you are not planning to use it in a status update.