Alan David Doane's Blog

Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith.

The Dystopian Reader is my new blog documenting the ongoing collapse of the economy, climate, culture, infrastructure and energy supply. I began posting earlier this week, and plan to feature a daily links roundup, essays, interviews and other original content. Please visit the site, follow TDR’s Facebook page and let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.

Originally written ten years ago this week, on July 12th,
2006. At the time I was working as copywriter/production director for an
upstate New York radio station cluster.

Yesterday was a pretty unusual day for me, as I was asked to take part
in a local educational initiative inspired by The Apprentice TV show.
Two groups of kids between 10 and 15 are competing to create a radio
advertisement for a local car dealer, and I was called in to help them
tweak the scripts they came up with, then record their commercials with a
portable digital recorder, and finally bring them back to the radio
station to produce the final commercials.

Amusingly, the scene of
the recording session was the local community college, not only the
college I attended 20 years ago, but we were in (I’m 90 percent sure)
the actual room of the Mass Media course I took twice a week back then.
The two groups, with six or so kids in each, were interested, excited
and fully engaged in their project, creating a car commercial for a
local dealership. I found it a great experience to go over the work they
had done and show them where and how it could be slightly better. Both
scripts were fine starting points – God knows I’ve been handed worse by
professional agencies working out of major cities – but each had
places where they could be made better, and as I proposed each change, I
made sure each of the kids understood my point and had no major
disagreements.

The tweaked points ranged from the bizarre – I
removed the term “suicide doors” from one of the car ads, thinking
“suicide” is not a word I would want to associate with a motor vehicle
–  to the mundane, as in my suggestion that a character in a brief
three-person skit be named something other than “Mrs. Smith.” I tried to
convey that it’s good to use a more realistic name, and even conceded
that there are Smiths not that far back in my family tree, but something
a little more unusual but real would bring the listener that much
further in the story. I suggested “Pulaski” as one possibility, but the
kids settled on “Mrs. Loomis,” and that was good enough for me.

I
tried to talk as much as possible about the rationale I had for every
point I brought up as we went over their scripts, and the only point
where any argument came up was when I pointed out that the possessive
“its” in their script mistakenly had an apostrophe in it. That led into a
brief debate over the spelling of that contentious word, but I finally
(gently and in good humor) put my foot down on the issue. One of the
kids asked “Are you really good at English?” I kind of threw up my hands
in resignation and said “Apparently so!” That got a good laugh, and we
moved on.

The actual recording went very quickly with both sets
of kids; there were a few fluffed lines here and there that needed
re-recording (nothing us pros don’t have to do every time out, too), and
one brief bit that required a change of voice talent when the group
agreed that the needed enthusiasm was just not coming through. In all,
though, I was amazed and gratified to see how immersed these kids were
in their project. There was a real sense of teamwork among both groups,
and if one was a bit more competitive within its own ranks (arguing over
whether Harry Potter can really be killed off, for example – I pointed
out that it happened to Sherlock Holmes and Superman, too, and did
neither any real long-term harm as cultural archetypes), each member of
both groups clearly worked hard to do their part and contribute to the
process.

Back at the station, it took me about an hour and a half
to get both commercials fully produced and burned onto CD. The kids
will hear the spots at today’s session, and while I won’t be there, I am
seeing the guy who oversees the project later today when he comes in to
record his own weekly radio show, and I am anxious to hear what the
kids think about how their commercials turned out. For me, it was an
unusual application of twenty years of radio experience and a chance to
share that experience with young people interested in what I had to say.
Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

I have too much stuff. Our current rental apartment is
half a three story home near downtown, but the third floor is unusable,
as it was left unfinished for some reason. The cats have both figured out how
to get up there, and I am told they do no (further) damage, but I don’t
trust the rickety looking stairs enough to ever go up there myself.

Even utilizing only two floors, I think we still have more
square footage than we did in the house we last lived in. But it’s still not enough space for all my stuff,
including a few thousand comics and maybe three hundred books. Five
years ago I probably had close to ten times that many books, but sold
off any I didn’t ever plan to read again or that had no sentimental or
utilitarian value. (You’ll have to pry my copy of The Elements of Style
from my cold, dead hands.)

I also have a large collection of action figures that
remind me pleasantly of my childhood, and about 400 of those are packed
away in boxes; nowhere to display them. I do have a couple dozen on
display in my room, and maybe a dozen adorning my desk at work, where we
can express ourselves in how we adorn our cubicles.

My collection of stuff is not just physical. My MP3 collection is currently approaching 20,000 files
taking up nearly 200GB. I have them on my laptop and backed up on an
external hard drive, with about 10GB of faves on my phone, which I
listen to at work when there’s nothing on SiriusXM that I am interested
in. The music that resonates most with me these days is melancholy and
alienated. Make of that what you will.

Those 20,000 MP3s represent about 15 years of
effort in finding the music I love in the highest quality files I can
find. So there is probably about 20 percent of it that are duplicates,
which I am sure I will never find the time to delete. I have way too
much stuff, and way too little time. I have become keenly – almost
painfully – aware of the passing of time, in the past few years. Every
day goes by so quickly now and almost always I can look back and wonder
why I wasted this hour or that doing something that was a waste of however much time I have left. Weekends that used to seem to last a month now seem to whiz in an hour. The great chef Marco Pierre White says about cooking, “Time
is not your friend.” I suspect he is not just talking about cooking,
though. (He also likes to say “Fingers are for burning.” I think that one is just about cooking.)

What I wouldn’t give to have back even a fraction of the
time I wasted from my teens through my 40s. Here at 50, I finally know what
it is worth, and I feel like I have almost depleted my stock of it just
as I realize for the first time how valuable it is. I’d risk a trip up the stairs to
the third floor, if I thought I could find an extra hour or two up there.

A new report published in Nature shows it’s already too late to prevent a catastrophic rise in the temperature of the planet. This will result in a twenty-foot rise in sea levels within the next century or so.

On The KunstlerCast this week, James Howard Kunstler talked about the coming end of the oil age with Alice Friedemann. It’s an hour-long discussion filled with solid information about how, despite the illusion of stability fostered by low oil prices (which has nothing to do with oil supply, crucially), we are still running out of oil. The interview addresses the possibility of maintaining our current way of life utilizing alternative energy sources like solar, wind and nuclear power. Spoiler alert: It literally is not possible.

The good news for the ammosexuals who populate America like fleas populate a rabid dog is that there are still plenty of guns, and they are buying the shit out of them. Any kid can grow up to have one, if he doesn’t shoot himself in the face a few months after getting out of diapers, that is.

I mentioned above how oil has been pretty cheap recently; the American reaction to that is sadly predictable: Sales of gas-guzzling vehicles are, like global water levels, on the rise. Which means more carbon will be spewed into the atmosphere. Which means, like Jon Snow, we know nothing. The truth is, really, we do know. But like Janice in accounting, we just don’t give a fuck.

But there is good news. The ozone hole over Antarctica is starting to heal. Of course, it’s pretty chilly down there even with global warming. Perhaps you’d prefer a swim in the warm pool? It’s getting plenty larger, so grab your suit. You’re gonna need it.

When you are safe and in the majority, you should be more humble than proud.

Today on Twitter I spotted the hashtag #HeterosexualPrideDay and threw up in my mouth a little. Thankfully it quickly became clear more people were mocking it than seriously trying to show pride in their struggle for heterosexual equality. This ridiculous need of those safely in the majority to co-opt movements and slogans of oppressed and attacked minorities is really gross and displays a unique blend of arrogance, ignorance, passive-aggressive assholishness and insensitivity to the legitimate struggles of people far less privileged.

If you’re straight and somehow feel threatened by LBGTQ Pride events and sentiments, you really need to look at what is really motivating you. Because it isn’t pride in being heterosexual, it’s a curious kind of insecurity at best and outright bigotry at worst.

Also? Go fuck yourself.

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is confused by a new poll showing Trump and Clinton pretty much tied in the race for US President. I am not confused by this at all.

Trump appeals to a wide swath of people, from the disenfranchised to racists and xenophobes. Clinton has done nothing but bash him, which has zero impact on his supporters. Her only hope is to lead and inspire. Act instead of react. Don’t talk about Trump, talk about how you will correct the course of this nation, create jobs, raise wages for all and ensure equality and safety for communities that have been under attack by increasingly militaristic and at times outright murderous police, bigots, ammosexuals and domestic (mostly white, supposedly Christian) terrorists.

If that doesn’t happen, if Clinton doesn’t take charge of her own campaign and convince people she is the only choice on election day, for the right reasons, not by insulting Trump and his legions of supporters, then she is handing the White House to him.