Posted 11:16 PM by Col. Dubois

Oh-Dubois

I've decided I'm going to delete this stupid blog. But I'm going to re- start it so it should be ok. Did anyone ever actually read this? I thought not.

For my new hopefully better blog I'm going to write it a little better. I mean wiritng is supposed to be one of the few things I might actually be good at. Does this blug reflect this point? I don't think so.

Not to imply I'm surprised. I just wrote these stupid entries without even proofreading or pre-thinking anything. So it came out like this. And I'm still not going to read these entries. I know they're awful. My new blog I'm going to thinking a little about each entry. Proofread, do more than one draft, try to do some good writing.

Speaking of which writing really is one of the few things I'll actually tell someone "i'm good at that". I mean I realize you wouldn't have guessed by this blog thus far. But seriously. I even elected to take a writing class. It was called "Writing for Publication". I took only for credit/no credit because normally when I take an unneccesary elected class for a grade I end up with a bad one for lack of time spent on it. But this time I would have had an A had I taken it for a grade. Just my luck. But I don't even know how I would have had an A. I mean it didn't seem like I really fullfilled any of the requirements or assignments or whatever. I did opt to turn in my written assignments via a web page and give the teacher the URL address. I think he was impressed by that. Then, when it came time to come up with a title for this possible writing assignment to submit to a publication for possible publication for money I thought of the title "Shell If I Know". Which would make sense to you if you know what a shell was in the context of MS Windows. I'll cover that in my future blog :-) Anyway this pun-filled title apparently really impressed the teacher. That's possibly the only thing that would got me the A had I not told the college people about the mistake.Why'd I have to go and do that anyway? Stupid honesty.

Now i got big plans for the new blog. Good writing. See my personality. Maybe even exhibit a little talent. Meh. Well that's it. End of blog.

Posted 9:06 PM by Col. Dubois

"Hey! My taxes paid for that horn!"

( --Homer Simpson)

Anybody get the title? It's a Simpson's reference. Actually it's a Simpsons reference making a reference to something else entirely that I'm sure few to no one actually gets. But lets not go there.

I decided I'll cover a few more of my favorite TV shows. Guess I've been writing a lot lately. This is like the third day in a row I've posted something on this thing. Not like I'm getting writing stimulation from the "intermediate composition" class or anything. This week all we did for two class meetings is watch a movie. What a waste of time! Lets not go there either.

Tonight I'll cover the lesser serious favorite shows of mine. These shows include Whose Line is it Anyway?, The Simpsons, South Park, and an animated show few-to-no-one has heard of: Cowboy Bebop.

Whose Line Is It Anyway

First we'll cover Whose Line. Now, how many have heard of this one? No many I'm sure. It was pretty hot (i.e. good) for a couple seasons there. It's an "improve" show that is still on ABC staring Drew Carey (hosted actually) and filled with many friends of his (if you've seen his sit-com you'd recognize "the tall guy" Ryan Styles). As with Drew Carey's sit-com this show was the absolute best before his heart attack. Now it's still funny sometimes but not nearly as much. In it's hey day however it was one of the most cerebral "popular" type shows existing on TV. The actors have (supposedly) make up everthing off the top of their heads and come with skits and characters and whatever the cards call for.

One episode in particular, which I think is one of the more famous ones, two of the actors (who must be the favorites I would guess) do this parody of Mission Impossible entitled "Mission Improbable" in which the two actors are to act as if a normal everyday task is this real dangerous one. This time it was "the laundry" that was picked. The guy on the proverbial tape (everything's imaginary) gives the two main characters (Ryan Styles and Colin Mockery) the mission of going to the hotel of the (I know I'm going to butcher the spelling but bare with me) "Meier of Groofunkestan, a small middle-eastern nation" where they are to "clean a new burnoose for the Meier of grufunkestan".

Now right off the back the two of them kinda look at each other as if to say "I hope you know what that is?". But it was obvious from the start neither one of them knew. So the make a few jokes, realize they live right next to the hotel in question, try to decide how they'll get up to the Meier’s room. Now Colin is much shorter than Ryan and of course bald. All the cast members love ribbing him about this and it's always funny (he's Canadian too ^_^). So Colin says "Wait! Your hair!". Ryan yells "What?!". Colin replies "you know it's one long strand!". But this point either one of them could start bursting into laughter at any moment. Then Colin acts as if to grab part of Ryan's hair and throw it up like a grappling hook onto "the balcony". Colin says "real us up!" and there's some sort of weird innuendo you'd only get if you were a big fan.

Once they get up to this proverbial balcony Colin clears the hotel room by yelling "Fire!" and Ryan says "well, that was easy". They go in and finally "what are we looking for?" "A burnoose" "Any idea what it looks like?" "It looks like...a burnoose!" and they pretend to pick one up. Then they decide to try and was it in the bath tub but Colin yells "Wait! the faucet’s rigged!" Ryan says "what?!" And Colin repeats "it's rigged!" and Ryan says "in what way" to which Colin says "with explosives! how long have you been a spy?!". Now it's really getting out of control with hysterical laughter. But this isn't even the best part.

Ryan says "why don't we just take the faucet off and flush it? Woe boom! stand back...It's filled upt he tub"

"Perfect!" says Colin.

So now the decide they'll put some bars of soap in the water with this "burnoose" but "we need some way to agitate it!". So Ryan says "Gimmie the beans," acts as if swallowing a whole can full and bends over like he's passing gas into this imaginary bath tub. (I said this was cerebral, right?)

Now they need some way to dry it. Colin yells "The Cat!" prompting Ryan to look over that direction briefly. This continues on a while, with Colin repeating his solution of "The Cat!" every so often. Eventually Ryan just breaks completely down and is laughing uncontrollably.

So, since this is possibly the funniest show in TV history (that not very many people have even heard of) yes, this is one of my favorite shows. Of course it's no longer as funny as it once was. But the classics are still the best.

The Simpsons

Now, how do I explain why and how I love this show? I've been watching since 5th grade (I’m now 24). It just has so many memorable, clever lines. There's entire archives of famous quotes. The title of tonight's blog is one of my favorites but there's a about a hundred others I love as much. I mean it's been on 13 years! It has so many in jokes and references. And running jokes, damn the running jokes. No only that but new running jokes that are backwards compatible with previous running jokes.

Alright this coverage doesn't seem nearly as comprehensive as the coverage of Whose Line, but what else can be said anyway? I mean there's 10's of thousands (I think) fan sites out there. Although the number is shrinking. And a shrinking fanatic fan base. The episodes as of lately aren't all that good. Sure every so often there's a memorable line or something but it now really kind of sucks. But I still watch it. How many shows have 300 episodes? Modern ones that is.

South Park

Yes, I really like this show. Ok some episodes are "a little disturbing" to put it mildly. But the good ones are REALLY good. I really like the way it seems to have some conservative leanings every so often. I mean where on TV will you hear "no good dirty G**DAMN HIPPIES!!" or "Hippies are the same as terrorists". Or there's always that infamous rain forest episode.

Yes the satirical dripping-with-sarcasm rain forest episode. South park is good at those satire/parody things. It starts out in stereo-typical fashion. The children are flown to South America where they're introduced to the local dictator and taught the stereo typical "exploited-children- sing-save-rain-forest-song" bullshit. They're then taken into the rain forest where their lives are placed in danger and some weird jokes and references are made. Finally their saved by some workers with bulldozers who were clearing the rain forests. It all ends with the children singing a satirical make-fun-of-environmentalist song instead of the pre- programmed version. And at the end instead of the normal expected statistics about 100,000 football fields of forest cleared a day or whatever statistics for how many people die in the rain forest along with an encouragement to cut down the rain forests. Obviously designed simply to piss off the (what I would call) environmentalist nazis out there.

And who could dislike a show with an episode revolving around an "environmentalist brainwashing festival"? Every time this disturbing character Cartman says or does something like that I just laugh so freaking hard. But the show's disturbing in some ways and really really not recommended for children.

Cowboy Bebop

And lastly, but not leastly, Cowboy Bebop. I expect really few people have heard of this one. It's a Japanese Anime (is that pronounced "Ani-Mee" or "Ani-May"? I always thought "Ani-May" until we finally got the TechTV cable channel and heard it said differently. That's a great channel by the way!). Only 26 episodes were ever made but the story arc concluded and was still pretty good.

What really makes this show unique is the "artsy"ness and how sophisticated it really is. Very, very cerebral many of them. But not all of 'em.

And no, this is not in any way shape or form the slightest bit pornographic. Why do so many 30+ aged adults automatically assume anything that isn't a kids show and animated must be port?! This is not porn. But it's not for kids either. It's about as much for kids as say the classic movie Dr. Strangelove. In other words "not at all".

Cowboy Bebop can currently be seen at 1:30am on the Cartoon Network cable channel. Or you can rent the DVDs to see the 26 episodes. The cartoon network version is very very censored which is very annoying. I mean it's rated TV14, it's during a segment entitled "Adult Swim," there's this annoying voice that constantly says "this is not for children, parents beware" over, and over again. It's so annoying to have nudity and blood cleaned up the way it is. Is the "Adult" in "Adult Swim" referring to 14 year olds? Or what? Can't 18++ people handle a little gross violence?!

But I'm not complaining. Because I'm not going to be buying the DVDs any time soon. Fortunately I have a TV card with recording software. Every night that it's on my software fires up, records the episode that night and shuts itself off. When I wake up in the morning I load that episode into a really bad but still useful video edition program I have, cut out the commercials and tell the software to encode the episode and put it on a CD for me in "Super X Video CD" format. What does that mean? It means I can fit the one episode onto a CD in what I would call some where between VHS and DVD quality. Much closer to VHS though. The X part of the formula, that's some sort of "hack" to squeeze an extra bit of quality out the technology. So yes, I can watch these CDs in a normal home embedded device kind of DVD player on a TV.

But I'm getting off the subject. I love Cowboy Bebop for it's complexity. And a lot of that is through the fantastic sound track. It's just wonderful. Apparently not a lot Japanese pop contains American Jazz and blues references like Bebop. In fact, each episode is named after a Jazz song.

So what was the point of all this TV stuff?!

The great TV shows, the truly great ones, break the mold and have no readily recognizable pattern to them. Or they do have a pattern but each episode is made so well it doesn't matter and you don't eve notice. Alias and south park do sort of have recognizable patterns to them. And maybe The Shield does also. But you're so distracted by the controversy and sheer quality of the production it really isn't noticed all that much. And Bebop? No discernable patterns what so ever. Well each episode is more or less wrapped up at the end. But beyond that not really.

I hope everyone knows what I mean by a pattern. It's the sort of thing you recognize it when you see it. That or I watch way too much TV. If you watch one of those detective shows like Murder, She Wrote or Matlock you really see a pattern each episode follows. There's a murder at the beginning, some colorful witnesses or characters of some sort in the second segment, more revelations, a climax by the bottom of the hour, maybe a plot twist or two but quarter till the hour and finally the wrap up and arrest of the guilty party at the end. And every episode is in that exact same pattern. Very, very predictable. But not my favorite shows. I mean sure maybe 24 does kind of follow that. But what kind of pattern does a nuclear bomb going seem to follow? Not very predictable I think. This makes it more than worth watching.

Well I hope I made a little sense here. My favorite shows. Above and beyond the normal. Maybe tomorrow I can finally get into what I'm really interested in!

Posted 12:24 AM by Col. Dubois

That TV Thing, "Impressive"

Man. I don't want to re-read my previous posts. They kinda suck. But I hope I'm getting better at least. Heh.

There's only a couple shows left I can really stand to watch lately. And all for much different reasons also. So here they are, in more or less "impressive" order:

24

This has actually moved up the list. The depths of the guts of this show never cease to amaze me. For those who have never seen it or never bothered the show is about a special agent, Jack Baugher (spell?) who must save the USA and/or world for destruction. Each episode of the season takes place in one hour of the show's time line. In other words they found their plot device so they can make a cliff hanger at every episode.

What really impresses me is the GUTS of the creators and writers. There's terrorists this season. But they're actually middle eastern. Most pop-culture sources (*cough* sumofallfears *cough*) politically-correctize it but changing the terrorists to some fictional group of white guys, like Nazis. I mean I realize Nazis are bad but right now it's middle-eastern originating terrorists that are the bad guys. And 24 actually uses them as the bad guys.

Now this week, "11PM" I think it was called, the plot seems to be hitting it's climax. Up till now this second season has been the main character trying to find this nuclear bomb hidden somewhere in Los Angeles and going to go off "some time today". This is actually the main plot in a show with no less than 5 simultaneous plots going at once. Finally the bomb is found and is discovered that it can't be disarmed without detonating it, and it has less than a half hour before detonating. So after discussion the president decides detonation over the desert is the best course of action. But of course some one has to fly it to the right spot and take the plane into a dive. And of course Jack ends up with the job. As is would be expected a co-star character who was going to die from radiation poisoning anyway (one of those sub-plots I mentioned) ends up aboard and plane thereby allowing Jack to bail out just in time.

Now at this point I was still expecting the bomb would be a dud or some Middle Eastern leader would call at the last minute and tell the president how to disarm it or whatever. But to my utter shock

the Nuclear bomb actually goes off

Outside the city where few to no one is killed of course (except the pilot who was dieing anyway). I couldn't believe the special effect and the emotional effect it really had one me seeing something like that. I mean it hits so close to home with these latest alerts in reality about such a possibility as a nuc in a city. So seeing this realistic detonation of this bomb, I was impressed to say the least.

And I haven't even gone into the whole detail of it all. Apparently this whole plot of the bomb has been revealed to be fully funded and consciously planned by "three middle-eastern countries". Obviously even 24 isn't going to name specific middle- eastern countries but just saying that is like, WOW.

This is a VERY engaging TV show. Even if you don't like it just watching it for the guts and the incredible amount they seem to get away with is just so impressive. On to the next show...

The Shield

This seemingly little-known show is on the basic cable channel FX. It's first season started in March of 2002 and contained 13 episodes. Now it's in its' second season. Last fall there was an award show, forget which one (Emmys I think) in which the main star won the award for best actor. Not only that though. He won over famous actor Martin Sheen!!.

Basically this character in the show, "Mackey", does all the things we wish we could to the bad guys. This is a "gritty" cop show. Makes NYPD Blue look like some kinda kid show or somethin'. They can even say the word "shit" a couple times (not common on commercial basic cable channels). Mackey will basically help along the right thing that should happen. And maybe skim off some extra for the side "retirement fund". For example he'll have a suspect he knows is guilty of lots of murders and rapes and other horrible things Mackey will just kinda "help" this guilty party find his way to a long jail sentence. Maybe it's planting drugs in the guy’s house to get a search warrant where they find some murder weapons. Ok so the constitution was just grossly violated; on the other hand a really, really bad guy isn't going to be raping anyone for a while. Another example is the child molester he knew was guilty and had a dieing small boy tied up and hidden SOMEWHERE yet refused to give up the location. Well good old Mackey beats the shit out of him using a phone book. Saved the boys life, got the confession out of the kiddy rapist and the kiddy pervert won't be hurting anybody for a while. This show really is "poor man's sopranos".

So ya see, sure he's a bad guy. But don't we all wish we could beat the shit out of a kiddy rapist? This show is also one of the few that actually mentions the cigarette black market in California. NO SHOWS have the guts to even mention this never mind revolve an entire episode around this detail.

This show would have been at the top but I've been for the most part disappointed by this second season. It just seems some how like a bad sequel. But it is getting batter and better each new episode. This week’s episode for example was a very good origin story setting up the whole plot over this last season and a half. And it leads up absolutely perfectly to the pilot episode. Just fantastic.

Alias

Under normal circumstances this show would be higher than number three but there's just too many good things on lately. This one is about a spy, Sidney Bristow (again, no idea on spelling) who must do various missions for the CIA. And there's also this sub-plot to find this 4 or 500-year-old artifact that will give the bearer much power and supremacy. Actually up to super bowl Sunday the show consisted of Sidney being this double agent for the CIA and this terrorist organization masquerading as the CIA to it's unsuspecting employees. Each episode the terrorist organization, "SD-6," would give Sidney a mission and the CIA would come up with a counter- mission. The long-term goal in the beginning was to dismantle this SD-6 and the associated alliance. This I figured may or may not be happening in season 7 or 9 or whatever when the show starts to get stagnant. But nope, basically do a whole re- launch of the whole show and change the whole dynamic.

Very impressive.

Now the CIA has "defeated" (see show for what I mean) SD-6 and associated alliance but is faced with an even worse antagonist. And now a personal friend of Sydney's has been killed but replaced by some sort of dopple-ganger whose DNA has been modified to match the friend's exactly. Or something like that.

I can honestly say I don't think I've ever seen a single episode of Alias I could describe as "unsatisfactory" or "mediocre". Every episode is good. Really! Well maybe not that flash back clip show they did to catch up the latecomers. But even that was pretty fun.

Also that Sydney chick is hot :-))

Posted 11:18 PM by Col. Dubois

"So, Why is This Fun?"

My English 1C teacher is now starting to annoy me. English 1C, for those who don't know, is an "intermediate composition" class. Or something like that. It's the follow up the general-purpose English class (1a) every community college student must take to transfer to a university. In other words the statement "English 1c is much harder than English 1a" should be more than accurate.

However for some reason this is one of the easiest classes I've taken. So am I really that good of a writer? Or is it the teacher.

Well first this teacher speaks amazingly similar to Ozzy Ozbourn. Everything she says sounds like one long sentence, no periods or end of sentences. And she's really ambiguous in a lot of her assignments. Which I find annoying. And I got one question: Why is it so many of the English teachers I have had have had so many of the same attributes? All short, middle- aged woman, who wear glasses and are obviously quite liberal politically. It's the weirdest thing. In the past 10 years high school and college with few exceptions that fits all the English teachers. Why is that?

For some irony this English class is covering logical fallacies. It's so ironic that a liberal would try to teach errors logic since most liberal are incapable of being logical in the first place. Now I'm serious about this. In the same period, within 15 minutes each other, this teacher defined a fallacy and then used that very fallacy herself in an off-color statement. And, of course, completely oblivious to this. Why do these teachers have to be politically biased? Why do I have to pay money to listen to them? I dun no. Kind of a take advantage of the captive audience thing I guess.

So I came up with something to amuse myself while suffering through these 19 weeks of easy-English 1c: satirical essays. One thing that is different from English 1A to 1C is the amount of writing. I think it's a little more in 1c. I already wrote two argumentative essays for this class in the about last 8 weeks. On of them I even put up on this blog (see first entry 2/24). This is the only way I can express myself. By parodying her. I can't very well stand up in class and tell her she's full of shit (although I'd really like to) or give her the finger and walk out (I'd like to do that too). So instead I'm creating loosely veiled satires of arguments that I know are the polar opposite of what she thinks. AND she gives me high grades for these essays. So essentially my liberally-biased English 1c teacher is giving me high grades to me for giving her the finger.

How Ironic.

Am I the only one that's entertained by this? Am I just pissed off or what? Well I if no one else find this absolutely hilarious. I mean, it's terrific. It almost makes this lame class bearable.

Then there's the confederate flag. I mean I realize this is a pretty "politically charged issue" and all. But geese. Is it too much to ask for at least a little research? My teacher seems quite convinced that the only possibility is that 100% of the people who are flying and would ever fly the confederate flag are racists in some way. Any possibility of otherwise? Way to identify yourself with where you're from? Distinguish yourself? Is that a possibility? Apparently not to this teacher. I thought liberals were against stereo types and ignorance. And yet she doesn't even see the possibility that the confederate flag could stand for anything else but racism. In fact she seems quite comfortable with the knowledge that the confederate flag is some how equivalent to the nazi flag. No possibility this is in any false either. This is, of course, because the south had slavery and therefore everyone in the confederacy had slaves and was pro-slavery and therefore equivalent to the Nazi Germany. That was her insinuation anyway.

This all came out of a story in the text book about a student at some famous-name university (like Stanford) hanging a confederate flag outside a dorm window followed by a shocked-and-appalled classmate flying a swastika flag in protest.

This is very ridiculous. The worst part is she's not even willing to expand her mind and do some actual research into what the actual confederate flag means. Is everyone who would fly such a flag (the confederate) a racist? Is there any possibility at all a confederate flag doesn't mean this? Why isn't the Palestinian flag considered in the same light (yes, man Palestinians want to kill off all Jewish people and some even read Hitler's famous book Mien Kompf).

Well I hope this non-sensical babbling has made some sense. Probably not. The stuff I turn in for a grade is much better than this. Promise :-)

Posted 7:28 PM by Col. Dubois
"Hey, What's the Deal With the Name `Col. Dubois` "?

Ok I'll explain this. I play different computer games and use sign-up forms so often and yet have such trouble coming up with a decent knick/character name. Then, for no good reason, I read the book STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein. It's important to mention this was inspired by the book, not the extremely awful movie. Anyway in this book was the character Colonel Dubois. Yes, I wish it was a more masculine (non-French sounding) name. But "Dubois" is memorable anyway. And why did I pick that character?

In the book this Dubois guy does more philosophizing than fighting or anything else. He starts out as Sgt. Dubois actually. He's a teacher of the main character. In the book the society has rules such as citizenship that must be earned in some manner such as military service or in some other way serving the public good. And his views on punishment of children, though an extraordinarily short segment of the book, has proven quite controversial for some reason.

As the book goes some aliens some how aim an asteroid (that's what I remember, perhaps I should re-read the book) and hit a city on earth. At this point in an obvious fictionalization of World War II the whole society goes into over-drive to defeat this alien menace. This Sgt. Dubois becomes Col. Dubois and some fighting takes place. There really is very, very little in common with the movie, which is very, very bad.

I highly recommend this book to any dedicated book readers out there. Keeping in mind is more about the philosophical concepts of how a society should work than it about fighting or war. Since this character spoke so well to me, and since the game I was playing at the time had little going for it in the way of more and more content being added, I followed along with the character. The computer game was Neocron. My first character's name was "Sgt. Dubois". I started the Beta 3 stage of this game about February of 2002 (or it may of been March, can't remember now). As I became more and more familiar and fluent in the game I felt this should be expressed in my character's name. Since it is not possible to re-name a character this wasn't an option. But as was famous with the developers at the time there was a "char wipe", meaning all characters were wiped from the server, which was around.... May or June of that year. I took this opportunity to call my character "Col. Dubois".

To say the very least it appears this is a very unique name and concept in naming. As anyone, even those who would never care to play a computer game like Neocron, would guess the character names in these games often float around pop culture. The million "Neo"s or "Morphious" (a reference to the movie THE MATRIX) or whatever other pop-culture references you can think of (recently I even saw a character name "Simon from American Idol" which I found somewhat entertaining). But at least I'm sure (probably) no else will have the name Dubois. It's not exactly a roundabout way of saying "skull crusher" or some other tough-sounding name, now is it?

Now to summarize these last several paragraphs into a sentence: Why did I pick "Col. Dubois" for my name? The character of the same name in a book is my personal hero...

Some time I'll do a sequel to the blog posting. Something to go into further detail in the book and what I like and dislike about this Dubois character.

Upcoming entries....
Pop culture:

• One of my favorite TV shows ever...on at 1:30am. Dub
  
• Other favorite TV shows...
  
• Dubois' guide to the best websites...
  
• Dubois' cliché day: "Why I [used to | still ] love(d) the The Simpsons.
  

Computer-related:

• LiteStep, the "shell", Windows, Linux, STFU, RTFM, and "yes, I'm sure"
  
• A new net connection? How is my home network setup?
  
• Recording my favorite (at 1:30am) show on TV to my computer.....
  
• More details on this Neocron game I mentioned (and a discussion of some more upcoming online games)
  

Posted 10:29 PM by Col. Dubois
This is my first official blog. I actually started something similar over at slashdot but I didn't commit to it for very long.

I'd like to believe my first submittal to something like this would be something to really capture people's attention and cause at least one spit-take on a first read. But that probably won't happen. So to play the "stall for time" game I'm going to past something in I already wrote for an English class. This will perhaps need a little introduction.

I am currently living in what I affectionately refer to as the "Marxist People's Republic of California", USA. But I am not what most of the population would "liberal" or "politically correct". Unfortunately 99% of the professors are the polar opposite of this. I don't so much care what their political philosophies are, I'm only stuck with any one of them for, at most, 19 weeks anyway. It's the imposing political beliefs on me as if it were !@#$! gospel that annoys me. So at some point I just "awe, fuck it". I now to choose to find it funny mostly. So rather than try and argue with the idiots I choose to make my views known through "subtle" satire. Below you will find an unedited (actually I changed any names) argumentative essay I recently turned to an English 1C class. I didn't spend as much as time as I would of liked and would have given myself about a C- if I was feeling generous. However I got a much higher score than this. You will find this essay below. Would anyone care to guess what grade I got? Did I deserve lower than a C- or am I my own worst critic?

My next blog entry should be an explanation of the title of this blog. The first part is Latin, the second part is reference to favorite Windows program (LiteStep). The Blog entry about that is planned to be about LiteStep, followed by "Why I use the knick name "keith_nt4".

------------ essay -----------------
censored!(my name)
censored!(the teacher's name)
English 1c
Due 11th February 2003

This essay is a satire of another issue. I was trying to be humorous and entertaining, not thought provoking. Any fallacious reasoning, other lapses in logic are purely intentional along with any factual inaccuracies. The reader is left to figure out which issue is the intended target of the satire. The last page is a further discussion and explanation of what I was trying to say.

Keep out of the Wood Shred

...............Right now in millions of American homes, there is a hidden danger unbeknownst to the citizens of the country. There is one product that has untold millions of dollars of damage and untold amounts of suffering and yet still remains unchallenged and unregulated. Many citizens do not yet realize just how dangerous this product is. Some owners even innocently allow their children to play with it. This product, as if it is not already obvious enough, is the paper shredder. These highly unregulated, dangerous devices have aided in untold millions of dollars in damages and untold amounts of suffering and yet remain easy for anyone and everyone to obtain. There are no mandatory warning labels, nor any age limit on who can buy one. The paper shredder industry even enjoys broadcast advertising rights. Legislation is now necessary to regulate the paper shredder industry as soon as possible. Ideally, the best idea would be a government database to track all paper shredders manufactured, a chip in each device so the owner can only use each paper shredder, and a tracking device for easy tracking of each paper shredder, and eventual confiscation of any privately owned paper shredders in the United States. As it stands, any citizen of any age could easily walk in to a local office supply store and buy unlimited number paper shredders without so much as a question of motive never mind a background check.

...............As it stand there are millions upon millions of paper shredders in circulation in the U.S. and the world. To date, nothing has changed to track or regulate these dangerous devices. Billion-dollar corporations such as Enron as well as private citizens have used paper shredders to dispose of incriminating evidence. From private citizens to politicians, the catastrophic affect this product has had on citizens directly and indirectly is incalculable. In the face of such scandals as Enron, change is needed. With some many paper shredders in circulation from years of selling to private citizens the potential for a black market is even greater. Paper shredders are still readily available.

...............How easily obtainable are paper shredders? Office supply stores all over the country are willing to sell a shredder to anyone who wants one. There are no age requirements, no mandatory tests, and no declaration of intent when a customer of any background, even a CEO, requests to buy a paper shredder. As an experiment I did a search for the terms "paper shredders" at and found more than 95,000 matches, revealing a very much a live and well paper shredder sub-culture. Further research revealed that anyone could actually buy a paper shredder over the Internet and have it shipped to their house without so much as a driver license to verify age or a background check to ensure to buyer isn't a CEO. In the face of the recent scandals, this was quite unbelievable.

...............In light of such recent events a law suit could effectively be filed against the paper shredder industry for knowingly allowing shredders to fall into the hands of people it knew would use this product for insidious purposes with the money from any lawsuits going towards helping laid-off workers from the companies that have gone bankrupt. Millions of dollars could have been saved if Enron had been without the most popular form of evidence disposal.

...............Critics might say a database, a mandatory one-owner identification built into each unit, and confiscation of the private property of private citizens goes too far. However, in order to prevent such horrific events in the future this is a necessary price to pay. If a lack of paper shredders results in saving the job of even one employee, the price is not too high.

...............As it stands today no there is no legislation pending on either the state or federal levels. The billion-dollar paper shredder industry continues to operate today as unchecked as ever. Millions of paper shredders are still for sale to the public completely unchecked. For all these reasons, paper shredders deserver regulation as seriously as any other dangerous product.

Explanation and further discussion

...............I hope this satire was as fun for the reader to read as it was for me to write. I also hope it is more than evident what I was attempting to satire and that my point was made. In reality, of course, there are many uses for paper shredders. Some people use them to recycle paper; some break down paper for easy incinerating, shredded paper could be used for mulch in the garden. Legislation, I realize, would do little good as other methods of evidence disposal would be used (such as burning) and companies would go out of business with or without such paper shredder devices.
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