A.J. Race's Blog, page 22

What’s at Stake

his week the U.S. Supreme Court (or SCOTUS) is hearing two very important cases regarding the Constitutionality of the Prop 8 case in California which took away the rights of same sex couples to get married, as well as the Defense of Marriage Act (a.k.a. DOMA). The arguments have been presented by both sides, on both issues, and as of now, we’re mostly just waiting to see what SCOTUS decides, but while some would argue that there isn’t much riding on the Prop. 8 case as it relates to the country as a whole (as the ruling will likely only effect California), the DOMA case will very likely effect everyone, because it will either solidify the law’s statement that the marriages LGBT Americans will not be recognized federally under the law, or it will ensure that even though only a few states allow and recognize same-sex marriages, the federal government in fact would. It isn’t a lot, and honestly for those that were worried (because I know some people, who likely would never read this blog, are) it wouldn’t force every state to accept same-sex marriage (although that would be pretty awesome). I suspect, that unlike other civil rights issues, the matter will merely be left up to the state and so even when several decades from now most of the country allows it, certain states will always be against it and try to deny it. Of course as it happens, apparently even if the law did make it so that all states would have to accept it, certain states would work around it as they have been attempting to do with abortion laws in said states.

It saddens, and frankly troubles me, that given our current state of affairs we would rather take away people’s rights than deal with, oh I don’t know the sequester problem we have? Or properly dealing with the banks, or Wall Street or hell any of the massive problems we have. We’ve really complicated what should be simple issues. Some people want marriage to be like an exclusive country club, but not so exclusive that idiots who want to be married for five minutes can’t join. Seriously I live in Vegas, we perform about 120,000 marriages annually. We’re the biggest in the country and we’re not surprisingly also number one in divorce.

And because I know some people want to trivialize this, and say, well if you get all the same rights as marriage without the word, why do you need the word? A: Because actually in a lot of places you don’t get the same rights, and B: if it’s just a word, why are you protecting it like it’s the holy grail? Obviously you know as well as any one over the age of 2, words have meanings. We put meanings to words, and so when you act like a toddler with a stuffed animal and say, YOU CAN’T HAVE THIS WORD! IT’S MINE! obviously there’s a meaning to that word, so why should you have exclusivity to it?

Blog of the Week: Journey of Jordanna East

appy Wednesday Racers (or Hump Day if you’d prefer ;D) and Happy Blog of the Week Day. I thought long and hard about what day I should do the blog of the week posts and I figured that in order for it to be a full week, it would only be fair if I did it the same day as last week. (Only now do I realize that actually I wrote it on Wednesday but posted on Thursday… oh well). For this week’s Blog of the Week I’ve chosen my ever favorite, Journey of Jordanna East.

What can I say about Jordanna that hasn’t already been said? She’s sarcastic, witty, and her blog is ten kinds of fabulous, especially her Jerks and Irks column which is probably my favorite part of her blog, so much so that as of late I have sort of copied the idea with my Seriously?! posts. Jordanna was one of the first blogs to follow me, and the first author who agreed to let me interview her. She was also the first (and currently only) to provide a guest post though I’m still open to interview’s and guest posts if anyone’s interested. So admittedly given all of that it’s hard to write this without sounding a little biased (but then, if I wasn’t biased it wouldn’t be my personal blog where I’m currently discussing my favorite bloggers now would it?)

From her hilarious and often insightful posts into the life and journey of a writer, to her book reviews of books she’s read in bed, with animal ratings rather than the regular star system, Jordanna’s blog is a delight for writers and readers alike.

(Not) A Winner

 don’t really know if this is still a thing, but not long ago I had heard (and it’s been quite a joke on several television shows as of late) about certain sports teams giving everybody who participated an award, rather than just the winners of the game, so that nobody could feel left out.

As much as this sounds heartwarming, the reality is, it’s very dangerous, because it promotes the idea that a, everybody is always a winner, but b, that you don’t have to work for something you want. If everybody in the world got the same prize for doing something, what would be the point of trying to better yourself, you’ll get the same accolades, the same pay, the same everything, so why even bother working harder for the same pay off? Worse still, it furthers the idea that failure is somehow a bad thing.

We’ve fostered this idea in our children for decades now, that failing or being a failure is somehow the worst thing you can be. We blatantly ignore the fact that everybody fails and that isn’t a bad thing, because it encourages you to do better. Thomas Edison failed a thousand times to create a lightbulb before he created the lightbulb, that is virtually unchanged from his time ’til now. Failure is what we make of it. I must have created at least twelve blogs all of which were failures until I finally created this one and started to get followers and started to really get likes and comments, even books fail to go where we hope they will. Books published and self published, fail all the time, you know what doesn’t fail? Banks, because we’re too scared to find out what would happen if we let them. Everything else in life, fails, and you know what, it betters them. It makes them stronger, makes them do better, and eventually they will succeed.

Everybody can’t be a winner all the time, it just isn’t realistic, it isn’t fair to children to let them believe that they will never fail, when what we should be teaching them is to dust themselves off, and get back up on their feet when they do fail. To try harder, do better, and know that they will succeed, as long as they don’t give up. Because it’s only when we’re so terrified of failure that we don’t move, that we really fail on a massive scale. It is then that we are permanent failures. Otherwise, failure is temporary, and a necessary learning experience.

Smirk, Grin, or Smile

he English language is filled with multiple words that all mean about the same thing, but can’t quite be used interchangeably, and yet are used quite interchangeably nonetheless. Chief among these is the use of the word smirk instead of grin or smile by authors. Truthfully I had never quite seen the problem with this until a few months ago when I read an article by my favorite editor Jamie Chavez in which she expressed the fact that a smirk is sort of a sarcastic sort of smile, whereas a smile is… just that. A smile.

I think part of the problem is, as writers we have this desire to use other (sometimes more complex) words in an effort to both sound more intelligent, while simultaneously being less repetitive in the way we describe what our characters are doing. If a character is particularly happy and always smiling it might be nice to describe them as beaming from ear to ear rather than just simply smiling.

The great thing and sometimes the frustrating thing about English is that a lot of words mean virtually the same thing and a lot of readers probably won’t notice the subtly of it, but if they don’t know what a word means and were to look it up in the dictionary, occasionally you’ll come up with some interesting and perhaps unintentionally misleading results. Unless your character is (like Madam Schemptra) naturally sarcastic on a nearly constant basis, a smirk probably isn’t the same as the sort of beaming pride one might find at seeing their child for the first time. Or even, grinning like an idiot when in love. A smirk is just, slightly more snide, the look you might give someone when you’re trying very hard to come off agreeable when really you know the other person is an idiot.

At Least They’re Reading

‘ve been seeing a lot of posts across Facebook and Tumblr and the like about how writers in particular should be happy that people are reading, even if they are reading the likes of Twilight and Fifty Shades of Twilight… (I refuse to call it it’s proper name), and in a way yes, it’s great that people are reading, but let’s just for one moment ignore the horrible way in which the books are written themselves and consider the horrible message they’re sending. I mean that’s the issue here. Sure they aren’t well written, but hell I don’t necessarily think John Grisham is the best of writers, but as long as he isn’t writing a novel which basically tells teenaged girls it’s okay if your boyfriend is mentally and verbally abusive to you, as long as he’s gorgeous, and in the case of Fifty Shades of Twilight, physically abusive as well, because that isn’t how BDSM even remotely works folks. I mean are these really the lessons we want to be teaching people?

Granted in the case of Fifty Shades of Twilight, it’s older married mothers reading this, but I don’t believe for a second that teenaged girls and twenty somethings aren’t reading this, when their parents aren’t looking cause they’re too busy reading that book like there’s no tomorrow.

Whether we like it or not, we have to understand, books leave a lasting impact on the reader, sometimes we don’t think about it, because it’s not as obvious as maybe it would be with television or movies, but they most certainly have a lasting impact, and if we continuously say this is okay, we don’t care that we’re sending this horrible and frankly extremely sexist message, then we have to prepare to deal with the consequences of our actions. I’m happy people are reading, but if you need tawdry sex read Jackie Collins for goddess sake, or Danielle Steele (touche E.L. James) or even actual Twilight fanfiction that doesn’t suck (good luck there). But please… please for the love of all that sparkles (I borrowed that from Reasoning With Vampires), STOP THE INSANITY!

54 weeks on the best seller list are you joking?!

PS: And just in case you think I’m being unfair to Ms. James, I have quite a bit to say about The Casual Vacancy, but I think I’m saving that for Racewood Radio.

SERIOUSLY Screwed

or a few months now I’ve been following Upworthy, which is basically the social networking equivalent of activism, it’s not a blog per se, but they feature important things across the internet that they feel you should probably share with everyone you know. Generally speaking I share things with Twitter and Facebook, but this particular video I have to share with all of you because it really pisses me off.

In spite of my missed quarter, after nearly three years at the Art Institute I’m still slated for another year before I’m actually able to graduate (even though it’s generally supposed to be a three year deal), like most people it hasn’t exactly been something we could pay out of pocket so we were forced to take out student loans through the government, for an almost hundred thousand dollar program, that will ultimately probably end up costing about as much as it would for me to go to NYU (which I wanted to go to more by the way), with almost little to nothing to show for it in the end except a degree which I recently learned was pretty much next to useless.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME RIGHT NOW?! How is it that we are a nation that constantly goes on about how we’re the best, but we could give two shits about education? It’s the first thing we cut, yet we berate people for NOT having one. We tell people that they’re stupid and worthless if they don’t go to college, but aren’t willing to flip the bill for it like other countries are, forcing really 18-25 year olds to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary debt which will take them the better part of their lives to pay off, in the hopes that it will eventually end in them getting a job. But… here’s the kicker. Because the economy went to shit because of a whole lot of unregulated jackasses on Wall Street, and jobs went along with it, most of the people actually being hired currently are not the new to the job market group (eg: not fresh out of college students). So now you have all of these students with degrees, getting paid minimum wage (if they’re lucky) while their debt just grows and grows and grows like this gigantic money Godzilla until finally it explodes and swallows this person whole and wait… it gets better. Because of the way student loans are set up, you can’t bankrupt on them, so basically after a certain point they’ll just start garnishing you’re already measly wages, basically ensuring you might as well try and live with your parents or risk living in your car (if your fortunate enough to even have one).

What’s worse is that we lie to kids constantly telling them about all the great scholarships out there… there are maybe two or three that as long as you have fairly good grades you can get into, but when I was looking, I never found shit in the scholarship department. In spite of the fact that I was the child of a single parent who’s been working two jobs her entire life to help me pay for a degree in a program that I’ve had a love/hate relationship with my entire life in the hopes that maybe I can get a job doing something that any asshole with a bootleg copy of Photoshop thinks they can do, and will do. BECAUSE NOBODY CARES ABOUT QUALITY AS LONG AS IT’S CHEAP. Or at least not in the design world… and frankly because technology has made it so damn easy for anyone to make their own website or magazine, or podcast or indie film or even yes book, it’s somewhat screwed over the rest of us who wasted our time getting a degree when we could have been making actual money doing something useful like becoming a stripper!

It might have been ONE thing if I actually enjoyed this bullshit as much as I enjoy writing, but I DON’T. On it’s BEST day graphic design isn’t a tenth of what writing is on it’s WORST day, but hell I’ve invested three years into this and god knows I’ll have to pay back the money either way so I might as well finish this bullshit off.

I’ll eventually calm down enough to write something better tomorrow…. but SERIOUSLY! SERIOUSLY?! SERIOUSLY?!

TDR’s Blog of the Week: Diary of a Drag Queen Husband

f you’ve been on this site a while now, then you’ve probably already caught wind of the Blogs I Love page here on the Daily Racewood, but to me there’s a lot more blogs than even the ones I’ve mentioned there, because I literally find new blogs every week that for one reason or another I really enjoy checking out. So I decided to create The Daily Racewood’s Blog of the Week. Each week, I will feature a different blog as one of my favorites. Starting with: Diary of a Drag Queen Husband

If you know nothing else about me, know this, I absolutely lovvvee drag. My all time favorite show is a little gem called RuPaul’s Drag Race, but that’s a different story entirely.

Also a little something you should know, I’m actually a fairly frequent frequenter of the Huffington Post blog, so when I caught this little gem entitled: Ten Things I Learned Being Married to a Drag Queen, I knew this was going to be my new favorite blog. I also realized that it might be a good idea for future husband to get a read on this (but that’s a blogpost for another day). It’s a fascinating insight into the life of the husband of a drag queen, written from that perspective rather than from the queen herself (which believe me there are plenty of drag queen’s blogs I love. Hedda Lettuce and Lady Bunny‘s blogs come to mind right off the bat).

While I’ve only been following the blog for a short time (and I’ve been trying to play catch up with various posts) it’s quickly become my new favorite and I thank the Huffington Post gay voices blog for introducing me to this gem.

To Hell and Back

s most of you already know by now, I’ve found myself in a bit of a writers block as of late. Book 3 has been to say the least a thorn in my side, so when (while browsing Tumblr of all places) I came across this little gem, the New York Book Editors Map to Get out of Writers Block I must say, it couldn’t have come at a better time. I quickly saved it to my computer and changed it to be my desktop background so that I would always have to look at it. The problem of course is… I’m not entirely sure what the problem is, from a writing perspective anyway.

I do know that it isn’t necessarily a plot problem because I know where this is all going, it just seems to be getting there that’s the trick. Previously I didn’t think it was a character problem, but if not plot or character than what?

As I read over the suggestions one of them in particular with regards to character caught my eye:

Give them hell. What’s the worst thing that could possibly happen to this character? Watch it happen. That will show you who they are.

The problem is… I have, and in book 2 I literally gave Eric hell. Of course, he isn’t really the problem here, the problem is that what worked so well for me in book 1 is deciding not to work so well for the final book. It’s hard to say much more without giving away too much detail but maybe the problem is that I need to come at this from a different angle. Perhaps attempt to find another way to accomplish what I need to accomplish.

And I think I’ve got a plan….

my Windows Phone

The serious contender, you’ve never heard of.

 love my Windows Phone, but the problem is, Windows really sucks at advertising or at least when it comes to their phones. Ads for iPhone or iPad are everywhere. You can’t turn on the t.v. or load up Hulu without running into at least one. So where are all the Windows Phone ads? They’ve dumped all their eggs into the Surface/Windows 8 basket, and it almost feels like they’ve given up on the phone ads. There are three ads that I’ve seen total. Two celebrity ads, Gwen Stefani and Jessica Alba, and the All of Us ad which you almost never see anymore. Somewhere Android and iOS have been allowed to take over and convince the world that they’re the only smartphone makers out there. Blackberry might be making a comeback with the Z10, but let’s get real, if Windows can’t beat Blackberry in the advertising world, Windows Phone is going to go by way of the Zune. There’s a lesson to be learned here, though, a lesson from Apple as a matter of fact, because it proved you don’t have to be the first to do something, you just have to be the best. Technically the iPod was not the first MP3 player on the planet, however it was one of the best and it took off. They weren’t even the first in the computer world, but it took off and changed the face of computers forever. The Windows Phone is not the first smartphone, but it is actually a really great smartphone that if Microsoft took it a little more seriously could actually be a serious contender between iOS and Android.

Of course it’s not just the phone that’s struggling. From all I’ve read Windows 8 isn’t doing so hot either, for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is, for all the money Microsoft has, they can’t be bothered to actually work to sell anymore. Just because everybody knows your name doesn’t mean you don’t still have advertising to do. Coca Cola and Pepsi still advertise and everyone knows who they are, Apple still advertises, frankly anybody who cares at all about their business (and can afford to do so) advertises in some form or another.

Microsoft has seriously dropped the ball on all counts with both the Windows Phone 8 and the Windows 8 experience as far as how they’ve marketed the phone and advertised it.

Let me give you an example: The iPad is one of the best selling tablets of all time? Why? It isn’t exactly what one thinks about when they consider what a tablet should be, it can’t replace your desktop/laptop computer so why is it so popular? Great advertising and a loyal fan base.

The Surface Pro is arguably a better tablet (conceptually) because it probably could replace your desktop/laptop. The problem is, Microsoft doesn’t really tell you what it does. There’s no showing you cool apps or different features like how Apple continues to show off the iPad. In almost every ad for the Surface I’ve seen, all you see is (admittedly cool) dance moves with it. I don’t know about you, but I’m not about to go all Step Up 4 on my tablet. It doesn’t tell you what it’s about and frankly I’m not sure it’s helping sales all that much. When you’re already at a disadvantage by coming in late, why would you compound that by not showing off why your tablet is better than any other tablet on the market? It’s not as if Microsoft is without it’s loyal fan base, but apparently they have no idea how to use them in the same way Apple does, because it’s almost like they’ve given up in the face of Google’s Chromebooks and the like.

All that said, the point of this post was to be a review, and that’s what I’m going to do….

Nokia Lumia 920: One of the biggest complaints I’ve constantly heard about the phone (and part of the reason I’m writing this in the first place) is about how heavy the phone is. It’s a thicker phone than say the iPhone to be sure, but it’s also not trying to be an iPhone. While Windows is not ‘touting’ the Retina Display experience, the Lumia 920 has a greater pixel density than the current iPhone 5, at 332 pixels per inch on a 4.5 inch display. (Compare this to the iPhone 5′s 326 ppi on a 4 inch display). Truthfully almost no one would be able to tell the difference unless you’re really looking for it. The real cause for contention however hasn’t been the size, but the weight of the phone 185 grams. Not a pound as some people might have you believe (or several depending on the review you read). Coming off the iPhone 4 (which was admittedly only 137 grams, not including the case which oddly seemed to add more weight) I really couldn’t tell a difference in weight. It didn’t and doesn’t ever feel heavier. People really need to stop whinging about petty details and consider what it can do for 185 grams.

UI (User Interface): I’ve been in love with the ‘Metro’ UI since the moment I saw it. The live tiles experience is addictive, but there’s a downside, in that, a lot of the applications don’t use it at all or don’t know how to use it effectively. One of the best examples of an application that truly uses the experience effectively would be Microsoft’s built in music application Xbox Music. It’s dynamic, and beautiful. Another application would be Xbox Games, and to a lesser extent Facebook. A lot of the built in Windows Phone 8 applications use the live tile experience, the disconnect seems to be with 3rd party apps.

Apps: This is a sort of non-issue that everyone’s really blown out of proportion. Sure there are a lot of really good apps missing from the Windows Phone market but thankfully there are alternatives. And while it isn’t as impressive in size as iOS or Android I have to be honest I’m still downloading new apps that I don’t use.

Camera: Let’s be real, tech bloggers may be real people, but they judge the camera’s based on scientific testing compared to other camera’s in other phones. The truth about the Lumia 920′s camera is that like any other phone camera it has it’s good and bad points. It takes great photos, to me. It’s not a professional photographers camera and frankly if you were one, you’d go out and by a Canon XSI (it’s the one I use at school and it’s fabulous), not use your phone. To be honest, most users in spite of what Instagram might have you believe, aren’t going to be using this for anything but personal pictures, which it does really well.

NFC and Wireless Charging: Near Field Capability (basically the ability to use your phone to pay for something) has been a concept pleaded for by the iOS community since the iPhone 4S, and still has never come to fruition, at least, for them. For me at least, it’s one of those ideas that sounds good in theory but until it becomes something that more companies would actually accept it’s not exactly all that useful. Truthfully it’s not that difficult to pull a card out of your wallet and swipe it. Arguably one of the biggest problems I can imagine with NFC is that if someone has your card number, using your card without having to have the card there would be that much easier. Now wireless charging, that’s a feature that once you have it, you really can’t imagine living without it. It sounds silly, and maybe it is, but being able to just plop my phone down and have it charge (surprisingly quickly) without having to allocate a usb port in my laptop for it, is perhaps one of my favorite features of the Lumia 920. Most people are excited that you can use the touch with gloves on, but as I almost never wear gloves this isn’t something that’s ever mattered to me.

Sickening: Beautiful screen, 4.5 inch display and 8.7 megapixel camera. Great UI, fast, smart and fun.

Busted: The UI isn’t fully utilized by 3rd party apps, Microsoft doesn’t take it seriously causing others to not take it seriously either.

In the end it’s a great phone that maybe if Microsoft would get it together, could take away some of the thunder of iOS and Android, for now however, Google has only two native apps and no plans to add anything like Chrome or Google Drive to the phone forcing you to live with Bing and Internet Explorer.

Life with Mountain Lion (a Review)

What can I say about Mountain Lion that hasn’t already been said? Oh I know…

What the actual fuck happened here Apple?

y first Macbook came with OS 10.5- Tiger: That was a glorious little system. Then there was Leopard, a major improvement and one of my favorites. Then came Snow Leopard… then, the shit hit the fan when Apple released OS 10.7 Lion. I updated to Lion mostly because at the time I thought it would be worth it, the iOS additions seemed definitely worth it. But if the new Safari was anything to go by I should have known better when it came to Mountain Lion. Where do I even begin?

I’m not going to bitch about skeumorphism which has been a major point of contention for OSX users as of late. The fake leather on Address Book is frankly the least of Apple’s worries with ML. Let’s start with Safari. I love that the address bar at the search bar but I hate that now the Address bar and Bookmarks bar are two-toned and it all looks very weird, not to mention the fact that every ten seconds I have to force reload a page or Safari crashes. Constantly, for no reason. And actually it isn’t just Safari, it’s the whole damn system. Every so often every single application on my Macbook will read unresponsive.

Pardon? I was just using you like ten minutes ago. What the hell?!

There’s a reason Lion/Mountain Lion has been called Apple’s very own Vista, because like Vista and the very short lived Mojave rebranding of Vista, Lion and Mountain Lion have been kind of disastrous for Apple. Never in the almost seven years I’ve had Macbooks have I had to restart the Finder than I have with Mountain Lion. Literally the Finder the heart of the whole operation crashes on me constantly. For Windows reference, that would be like if the Start menu crashed. It shouldn’t happen and up until recently it didn’t.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of good points to Mountain Lion, although I’m not entirely a fan of some of the iOS apps being forced upon me. I haven’t ever used Game Center, nor do I intend too and frankly I never used the To-Do list app either. I still want to see iBooks for the computer (that’s something that really should have crossed over but didn’t and frankly I’m not interested in Maps or Siri on the computer. But that’s just me.

UPDATE: So this post was written way before my computer meltdown mishap and ironically deleting my entire hard drive and starting over from scratch on Mountain Lion has alleviated a bit of the aforementioned grievances. I don’t think I’ve had as many crashing issues as I previously had, so on the whole it’s a good thing, but I’m pretty sure nobody is going to want to delete their entire hard drive and start over just to update their system.