Author: alternateorg

Instead of election coverage, like every one else (I voted for Nader), I thought that I might explore something that’s been on my mind for a little while, and has very little to do with politics.

Here’s my question: How come TV executives think that we (the TV-watching audience) can deal with and enjoy characters on television who are gay, but that we can’t take it if the actual actors themselves are gay?

Let me explain what I mean. I got in the car yesterday, and on the radio happened to be an ad for the new show in which John Goodman is playing a 40-something gay man. His ‘dad’ was saying something about being in the gay bar to the effect of “I’m in a box of fruit-loops!” And that really bothered me. Not because it was a relatively bland gay-bashing remark, but because I instantly remembered when Ellen’s show was violently yanked off the air a couple years ago, primarily because she herself was gay (not her ‘ficticious’ character). I then thought of ‘Will and Grace,’ and their own version of gay-stereotyping, which has apparently made that show pretty popular. I just don’t get why gay CHARACTERS are okay, but actually homosexual ACTORS are not.

I think the conclusion I came to is that it’s easier for the mass TV-watching audience, as well as the executives deciding what goes on the air, can deal with parodies and abstractions and false gay people on TV, but simply are horrified to find that the real person on their television (or next to them on a bus, or on the street) is actually really gay. It’s just really disappointing to me, because a lot of people view this trend of having shows about gay people is a good thing for the gay community, but in actuality, it’s setting the movement back years. Because these people acting gay aren’t, and they’re just mostly poked fun at. I thought the Archie Bunker-style ‘it’s not really offensive because the character is so obviously out of date that it doesn’t matter’ type of humor was done with. And actually, this whole thing works word for word with black people as well.. only the person playing a black person has to actually be black. It just seems like gay people are still not really accepted, but laughable gay characters are, which is not good.

I don’t know. I’m just really frustrated by the whole thing.

I know that we at Alternate.org tend to shy away from political issues (not just on the site, but in real life, too), but I implore you all to vote with your conscience; don’t just settle for a republican or democrat simply because you’re a registered member of the party. If you want to vote for Nader, or Browne, or even Buchanan, then please do so. This year probably won’t be when a third party wins, but next election, who knows? It could start us on the path to a less fucked-up Washington.

We just got the Photoshop 6 upgrade yesterday at work, and I have a few things to comment on. First of all, Adobe could have taken some pointers from Apple as far as install ation goes… let’s just let it be said we had some major serial number issues. When you enter your serial number into the installer, Photoshop 5.5 conveniently hides the dash and the last 3 digits, so you can’t just go into the About box in 5.5 to get your serial number for the Upgrade… and our documentation wasn’t great, so yeah. Headaches. But I must say that on the other hand, Photoshop 6 is probably the most feature-rich version yet (I know, I know… but I thought the magnetic lasso tool was cool in 5.0). There’s this whole thing with adding notes to places on the document that can be hidden (like if someone else is going to be coding a web layout, or something). I won’t go into a full feature breakdown here, but if you have the means, I strongly suggest checking it out. Download the trial, or something.

From WiredNews:
“Half the technology that’s in there [Windows 98 & Windows ME] is stuff that an end-user will never use.”

Great. Then WHY IS THAT STUFF IN THERE? Oh. It’s because MS could give a flying fuck about their ‘end-users.’ Apparently (duh) Windows ME and 98 are slower because of all the crap that goes on in the background, mostly the Active Desktop (I love typing that, because I don’t have one…:> ). So this dude wrote this little app called 98Lite to divorce the system with all that extra crap that comes along with it (IE, for one). This tends to make the system respond ‘snappier.’ Hrm. My system is snappy without any sort of third-party software, but whatever.

Okay, so this might sound like fiction to you, but bear with me here: I was watching football this Sunday (I was at my parents’ house, what can I say?) and despite the fact that my father has a satellite dish, he had it turned off so he could get CBS.

Now here’s where the rant starts: I could not believe all the 3D bullshit that was going on during the game and halftime report. There were 3D boxes of stats flying all over the screen… the scorebox would fly in, with the “1st and 10” box popping up, then arbitrarily zooming away. I mean, I thought I was watching the fucking Terminator, with all the robotics going on. Isn’t there enough to see during a football game; enough to keep your eye on? Now we have to watch little boxes zooming in and out as well, just to see what the score is?

Obviously (and here comes the second part of the rant), I can’t blame CBS for this… after all, wasn’t it FOX who did this first, with that horrible SuperBowl coverage a couple years ago? As I recall, SGI themselves did the work for it, and there were giant scoreboards materializing out of the endzones and shit. Then eventually, of course, a toned down version of all that got introduced to their coverage every Sunday… but the fact that CBS had the audacity to absolutely copy everything FOX does (after all, I sort of expect that kind of thing from FOX, don’t you?), and badly as well, that annoys me. Case in point: the halftime report consisted of this giant interface (after all, that’s what they’ve become), which only had to do one thing: show us the names of the two teams who were playing elsewhere, with each team’s respective score next to their name… maybe an injury report or something, but that’s basically it. What did CBS have to do? Animate every fucking metal pane containing each team’s logo, their city and their score, along with 12 other things on the screen, with very little of it actually legible.

And that’s not even the worst part of all this. What really got on my nerves after a while were the SOUNDS. These little ‘skrreeee’ sounds of what I’m assuming the interface, had it been real, would have sounded like. Give me a fucking break. Now, the little thing that pops up letting me know that a flag was thrown, that can be useful. But does it have to rotate in from the screen like a robot? If all of this were being used on, I don’t know, Battlebots or something, that would be totally understandable. Robots fighting eachother, hence the metal scoreboard. But football? Come on. Even baseball could use some more energy… the only worse sport I can see this being used on is hockey… which they’re already started on with the little highlight that follows the puck around the screen during playoffs. If you need this thing, I’ve got a tip for you: don’t fucking watch fucking hockey.

But I digress.

All of this stuff stems from ESPNs use of graphical ‘interfaces’ during SportCenter. But ESPN does it right: all the graphics are there to get you excited about what they’re talking about, and display the information coherently. FOX, CBS and who knows who else (I’m assuming the other NFL-covering networks do the same things) are just moving little metal pieces around, which has nothing to do with anything. Okay. That’s it.