So much for once a day...

Note to self: Not a good idea to promise to write once a day immediately before travelling and getting massively sidetracked.

I was originally going to write a film review or two, but somehow a review of "The Punisher (2004)" seems like a godawful way to start anything out.

So just what will I, one day, actually be posting.

Here's the current hope...
- Comic reviews. Every wednesday the comics for the week come out, so I'm aiming to have short mini-reviews for everything I read up by thursday/friday depending on when I can manage to find the time to track down the books of the week.

- Movie/TV rants, raves, and rantings.
I'm not a huge moviegoer but I do occassionally see something new in the theater that interests me. Much the same way, I watch only a few tv shows weekly. While I'll get into what I watch in a more detailed fashion later, I've got a natural attraction toward any serialistic sort of show. Heroes, 24, How I Met Your Mother, and Alias (cancelled but not forgotten) all share the common thread of telling a continued story week-by-week.

I have a burning hatred for procedurals such as Law and Order, CSI, etc. It may be slickly made and produced, but it's still crap in my book.

- Politics!

I classify myself as a libertarian, but lately I've taken a much more pragmatic issue-by-issue stance on things. Living in Boston means that I get enough democrat doctrine as is; unfortunately republican talking points aren't much better to listen to.

In short, I'd like to legalize marijuana (I don't smoke), legalize prostitution, end censorship (FCC, I'm looking at you), severely cut back on meaningless foreign aid (building tennis courts in Africa helps no one), and return to a more practical view of foreign policy.

I'm rather apathetic these days, so I probably won't respond to most of the latest political rumblings in washington. Needless to say, I'm quite depressed by the current state of affairs on both sides of the aisle.

- Personal/Philosophical
These entries may attempt to be poetic and poignant, or they may just be a list of vague references to things going on in my life. Either way, they'll be amusing.

- Class material
Anything I write in class that seems worthy of being thrown up online.

And now, without further ado.... an example of my high school idealistic style of writing. This was written for my school newspaper junior year of high school. I cleaned it up a bit from it's original publishing; consider this a director's cut of the original.


Polarization, Politics, and Polemics by Steven Timberman
In one way or another, this was the year of confusion, division, and polarization. The cynicism of the late nineties has become splintered into sections and factions, all of them trying to gain even more influence in this “culture war.” A sunny optimism that borders on naïve mistrust has taken over the religious, conservative, and rural portions of America. They march on in the name of Patriotism, while we get bogged down in what is rapidly becoming America’s Second Dirty War. The cynicism of the past has been supplanted by an even deeper pessimism that has taken root into the liberal side of politics. America is morally bankrupt, and it’s lost in a haze of insecurity.

Not convinced that America is polarized? Take a trip outside of our sunny Californian Cocoon, and look around at the ever widening gap between the urban and rural communities. America has become splintered into sections and factions, all of them trying to gain even more influence in this “culture war”. America has always tended towards an us versus them mentality due to the two party system, but that has spilled over into our culture, our foundation, our very way of life. Worse, both sides view each other as either arrogant latte sipping peaceniks, or backwards bible banging rednecks.


The real losers of a divided America is the teenage population that gropes for a moral compass
The urbanized youth of America continues to find a misplaced identity in ebonics and the “ghetto” way of life, never stopping to realize that life is about responsibility and growth. They have become a disfigured Marlon Brando, a rebel without a cause.
Then we also have the rich white suburban kids destined for “greatness” who have hardwired into their systems that they must work hard, they must beat the competition, they must be successful. They are fed the same old diatribes week after week, day after day. They are told to strive for their dreams, even if only a few of them will actually reach those dreams. As they say Yes Sir for the forty-second time of the day, they neglect the simple pleasures in life. Their class will not become the successes of tomorrow, for they are destined to be the CEOs who when faced with failure for the first time hang themselves in the night.


History is a cycle, a chain of events where the past influences the future, all to be retold by a new generation. After the “everybody be nice” mentality of the fifties, the sixties saw a new generation seize life and flatly reject the past. The rebellious hippies have grown up and have now raised the tofu eating yuppies of our generation. As for the new year…. unfortunately this “cycle” takes longer than the passing of a single moon. We will not “heal”, we will not be “united”. We will become more polarized, more angry, and more hostile. We will find ourselves entangled in more Foreign Policy imbroglios as America continues to wage a war against the world. We will become an America without moral complexities, without meaningful debate, and without freedom of expression. We have lost sight of stability in a time of chaos. We have lost Moral clarity in a time of Moral Hypocrisy.