Archive for the ‘Anarchy Journal Constitutional’ Category

#WrestleManiaXXX aka It’s OK to Believe Again

Posted: April 16, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
4/15/2014

Over a week later and I’m still reeling from WrestleMania XXX. Did Brian Danielson actually pull the sword out of the stone? Did The Undertaker actually lose? Did Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin actually go face to face in the same ring at the same time?

YES!

YES!

YES!

WWE decided to take a break from advertising their à la cart internet cable channel to produce a wrestling show. It just happened to be the best one in five years which was the best in the five years before that and the five years before that and the five years before that. Noticing a trend? My friends @CFH_Chief and @TheFantom have heard me say multiple times that the WrestleMania’s that end in a 5 or a 0 mean more than the rest. The rest are bastard shows. The exceptions to that rule out of 30 are numbers; 1, 3, 6, 17, and 18. You can make a case for maybe one or two others, but that would be a case built upon personal bias.

  1. Pro Wrestling isn’t fake, the winners are just predetermined. Just ask Dr. James Andrews about that.
  2. Pro Wrestling is good when either it is logically predictable or something was just done that shocked the hell out of an 20,000 fans in the arena and a few million watching at home.
  3. Pro Wrestling is bad when it tries to be unpredictable for the sake of being unpredictable. That is why TNA Impact Wrestling has been stuck in second gear for the last six years.

WrestleMania XXX was logically predictable and shocking as hell. The best of both worlds. WrestleMania V, X, XV, XX, and XXV shared the same traits. From the battle of the Mega Powers, to the Ladder Match, to Austin vs Rock proper, to Benoit/Guerrero, to the magic of The Streak vs Mr. WrestleMania…5s and 0s mean more. Vince knows it. The boys know it. The fans know it.

The ramifications of WrestleMania XXX will literally be felt for a minimum of five years and likely for a full ten…Why?

Daniel Bryan is the new John Cena, the new Steve Austin, the new Hulk Hogan. Daniel Bryan became the last Undisputed Champion at WM XXX. He is the chosen one. He is the people’s champion. No one will emerge to unseat him for at least the next five years, more than likely we’ll have to wait eight to ten whether Vince wants to or not. Strength in numbers folks, never forget that…ever.

The Undertaker is done. He may wrestle Sting next year and have a farewell tour, but he is done. The Streak is over. The Streak has been WrestleMania for the last half decade. WWE has sold a one hour, prime time, network television special to NBC centered around the aura of The Streak since 2009. John Cena being the definition of stagnant since 2006 has meant WWE has had to lean on Taker like a crutch to make WrestleMania mean anything to the adult male audience during that time.

The Streak has also put Undertaker in the same league as Hogan and Austin. Before 2007, The Undertaker was an all time great, a legend, an icon, and a wrestling fan’s wrestler. In the last five years he has crossed the pop culture dividing line. A line only crossed by Hogan, Savage, Austin, Rock, and John Cena. We would all love to think that Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Mick Foley, and Randy Orton crossed that line too…but they didn’t. They latter are just popular wrestlers, the prior are pop culture icons.

Taker now gets to retire a brand, as big or bigger than the WrestleMania brand, a brand that is bigger than WWE. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving person. No professional wrestler has worked harder or longer than The Undertaker since 1991. He earned his money the hard way. He earned his one match a year schedule the right way.

But that’s all done now. He’s going to ride off into the sunset, out to pasture. WWE now must pass the torch and give the ball to the new generation. Daniel Bryan is the face of this new generation. Behind him are Sheamus, Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro, The Shield, Bray Wyatt and definitely not Batista. The part timer fad may not be over but it is fading the face of the WWE Network profit model. No need to use big names of the past to pop a buy rate when PPVs only cost $10.

No crutch to lean 0n and no choice but to push the new generation of young talent who happen to be predominately junior heavyweight workhorses…..sounds like a reason to hope for me. How about you?

#MunicipalBankruptcy Shows Who’s In Charge

Posted: April 16, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
4/15/2014

Did you hear the one where America turned into an oligarchy? It goes something like; between the start of the industrial revolution and the start of the Vietnam War land and resource ownership was grabbed and consolidated by a select few and they have been using the influence of said land and resources to try to grab more, more, more…how do you like it? how do YOU like it? how do you like it?

Do you know what municipal bankruptcy is? That has such a striking ring to it, no? Municipal bankruptcy. It sounds much more damning than Chapter 9 Title 11 Bankruptcy.

I grew up thinking that governments were in charge. Federal, state, and/or local. Detroit is like a highlighter pen on a never-ending text-book page of small words, showing who is really calling the shots and who has all along…banks.

Banks nearly destroyed modern civilization as we know it in 2008 and who went to jail? Who got brought up on charges? Did any one Wall Street CEO go through half of what a single mom applying for food stamps goes through? Didn’t think so.

Money talks and cash is king. We all learn that at some point or another. It is one of the many aspects of modern society in which we quietly lie to ourselves so we can believe we are have evolved since the caveman era.  Municipal bankruptcy will soon make it impossible to ignore. Detroit is not an exception to the rule, Detroit is a harbinger. Resistance to pension reform has made that all but a certainty.

What does municipal bankruptcy tell us? That we are still serfs and they are still living in the castles. Castles became known as Manhattan penthouses in the mid 1980s. Municipal bankruptcy shows who is really in charge. We can hold all the elections we want but there is a reason it’s called virtual reality. It’s not the real thing. It just looks and feels like it…

 

 

#CancelColbert shows #TwitterActivism is Social Media’s Tooth Fairy

Posted: April 10, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
4/9/2014

Remember the #CancelColbert fuss? Yeah, me neither.

What do the Tooth Fairy, Twitter Activism, and the happy women from tampon commercials all have in common?

None are real. They are all constructions of our imaginations, advertising campaigns, and ego not necessarily in that order.

The difference between Twitter activism and actual activism is the difference between playing sports video games and playing sports. One can be done sitting on one’s ass, sober or stoned while the other requires physical movement, discipline, practice, organization, and the concentrated effort of a group of people to manifest something into existence in the physical world.

Twitter activism is a joke. Even real activism that was spurred by Twitter like the Egypt uprising has proven to be futile as what we have seen in Egypt for the last three years is the same as the last 40; military coup, military rule, repeat.

Activism also requires competence and a depth of understanding of something outside of reflecting anger and self loathing. Things that the founders of the #CancelColbert movement clearly lack. Not to mention being devoid of what satire is in theory or in practice.

The apology that the #CancelColbert crowd is looking for doesn’t come from the entertainer. They’re looking for apologies from;

  • The mean kids on the playground in their youth.
  • Insensitive coworkers during the adolescence.
  • The douchebags at their local bar from their early adulthood.
  • They have internal wounds and want someone to apologize to them, kiss them on their head, and tell them everything is going to be alright.

Well it’s not Stephen Colbert’s problem that these people were the victim of racism at some point(s) in their lives. Colbert says provocative, shocking, and controversial things in every segment, of every show he has done since he was a correspondent for the Daily Show.

The world can be a cold, hard, unforgiving place. More people have been wronged than allowed to live a pain-free existence. But pounding the social media firestorm drum isn’t going to make anything better. You want change? You better be prepared to spend all of your leisure time for the next half decade minimum trying to enact change one millimeter at a time in the physical world.

140 characters and a victim mentality? Neither mean shit to anyone of influence in this world.

Especially not to one of the funniest people in the history of television. Colbert didn’t give an inch, nor should he have. In the end all the #CancelColbert hullabaloo did was give him free publicity and advertising for his show. Two things which in turn help to insure that Colbert won’t be canceled any time soon. More publicity means more viewers means more advertising revenue means more Colbert Report for years to come.

So thank you #CancelColbert Nation. You have done your part to keep Colbert on the air, great work!

 

#WindEnergy Springs Eternal

Posted: April 10, 2014 in Frackishima
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by @anarchyroll
4/9/2014

The largest state in the continental United States is getting 1/3 of its electricity from wind farms.

That is encouraging. It is hard to find encouraging stories in the environmental, climate change, clean energy field(s) these days. It’s not that the stories, facts, and events don’t exist. It’s that there is so much more bad news out there.

The fact that one of, if not THE most conservative, republican state in the country is also the biggest clean energy success story says something. The fact that the state where George W. Bush was a two term governor before he was a two term president is getting that much power from clean energy says a lot.

What does it say? That there IS hope.

Hope springs eternal…and so does renewable energy. That’s why it’s renewable.

If Texas can get behind clean energy in such a resounding way then any state can, outside of the confederacy at least.

#DataMining means #Privacy is so 20th Century

Posted: April 2, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
3/31/2014

Data mining and data brokers are two concepts that everyone who has a smart phone and/or uses the internet need to at least be aware of. One need not be an activist on the subject, but these are issues that effect you whether you care or not, know about them or not, are pro or con. If you are the type who is upset about the NSA bulk collection revelations by Edward Snowden, data mining and data brokers definitely need to be on your radar.

  • Who is mining our data? Traction, Acxiom, Datalogix, Epsilon and Experian are the big time data brokers. But there are literally thousands of these broker firms.
  • What is data mining? Data mining and data brokering is why email and social media are free. They are why you get a discount with a membership card at a grocery store, coffee shop, department store, etc. Our email addresses, likes, retweets, pins, reblogs, and purchases are monitored, collected, grouped, and sold in bulk to the highest bidder.
  • When is our data being mined? Any time we visit a website. Any time we log in to any online account with a registered email address. Any time we pay for something with a credit, debit, or gift card.
  • Where are these data mines? The headquarters/ server farms at the HQ of Google, Facebook, and the data brokerage firms listed above. Google and Facebook keep the information whereas the data brokers exchange and sell the information just as stocks, options, treasuries, etc are on Wall Street.
  • How is this done? Digitally/electronically through cookies in your web/ios browser(s), the networked computer the card swiper in the store is attached to…you get the idea.
  • Why is this worth knowing about and/or caring about? Because it is unregulated and most people don’t know that simply visiting a website is giving permission for your information to be raided, collected, and sold. Because our privacy is not just being violated, for those who use web browsers and smartphones, our privacy actually no longer exists.

The data mining industry is self-regulated. How did self-regulation work out for the meat-packing industry? Tobacco industry? Investment banking industry? Real estate industry?

60 minutes recently did a piece on data mining that is a must see for every internet user. The videos are short, easy to digest, informative, and unbiased. Including the journey to opt out of data collection and the easier, smaller steps we can all take to protect our privacy.

The billboards one sees when driving on a highway, have now replaced the road. There is no such thing as a free lunch. We were/are all naïve to think that email, social media, and discounts at retailers came at no cost. The costs are our identities, habits, desires, physical location, history, age, sex, preferences, strengths, weaknesses, accomplishments, and failures. All the things we used to only tell our friends and family that we now post electronically for the entire world to see. The thing about that is, advertisers are part of the world too.

We have a right to privacy. A basic human right. Many people will be and are happy to give it away in exchange for what they get online and offline. But data mining is done in secret. Big data are obstructing congressional investigations into them. If what they are doing isn’t wrong, why the secrecy? Why the obstruction? Why decline interviews? Why not let people opt out?

And before you point the finger at the firms listed above, remember the biggest, baddest and OG of the data mining industry has been and always will be, Google.

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