Celebrity vs Soldier Death Rhetoric

Cory Monteith, star of the show Glee as Finn Hudson, died in July 13th, 2013. They found his body at the Pacific Rim Hotel in Vancouver. He was alone and there was no foul play involved. Recent autopsy results showed that he died of a "mixed-drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol." It was known before that he battled drug addiction. He was on the road to recovery (many were hoping) and even completed a 30 day rehab. It's hard to overcome vices.

I only know of the actor from Glee. He was a fan favorite. It's a shame what happened and I feel sorry for his family and friends. What irks me, though, are the year-round "celebrity vs soldier death" arguments. I'm not smart enough to know what this term is, but I'm sick of it. They use it to comparing everything (i.e. athlete/celebrity vs. soldier/teacher salaries). It's a lazy (mostly unnecessary) rhetoric for things that don't need to be argued.

If I remember correctly, we are all equal in this country. Soldier's are doing a great service, protecting this country. Other than that, that don't make them more important than anybody else... unless all that equality talk is actually not true. Oh, it's not? Well, then... carry on.

But let's believe, for a minute, we are all equal. Nobody is more important than anybody else. When a person dies, the importance of their passing falls on the people close to them, people who adored them and people who knew them. That's it.

People I don't know die everyday. People I don't know. That's it.

I'm done.

"I have been brainwashed"

"Because I think I am an interesting woman when I look at myself on screen. And I know that if I met myself at a party, I would never talk to that character because she doesn't fulfill physically the demands that we're brought up to think women have to have in order to ask them out. --- There's too many interesting women I have…not had the experience to know in this life because I have been brainwashed." - Dustin Hoffman

So much respect for Dustin Hoffman.

I'm done.

Death

I love the feeling when we lift off

Watching the world so small below

I love the dreaming when I think of

The safety in the clouds out my window

I wonder what keeps us so high up

Could there be a love beneath these wings

If we suddenly fall should I scream out

Or keep very quiet and cling to my mouth as I’m crying

So frightened of dying

Relax, yes, I’m trying

But fear's got a hold on me

Yes, this fear's got a hold on me

I love the quiet of the nighttime

When the sun is drowned in the deathly sea

I can feel my heart beating as I speed from

The sense of time catching up with me

The sky's set out like a pathway

But who decides which route we take

As people drift into a dreamworld

I close my eyes as my hands shake

And when I see a new day

Who’s driving this anyway

I picture my own grave,

'cause fear's got a hold on me

Yes, this fear's got a hold on me

Floating neither up or down

I wonder when I’ll hit the ground

Will the earth beneath my body shake

And cast your sleeping hearts awake

Could it tremble stars from moonlit skies

Could it drag a tear from your cold eyes

I live on the right side, I sleep in the left

That’s why everything’s got to be love or death

Yes, this fear's got a hold on me

I'm done.

FINAL FANTASY DANCE MODE (Final Fantasy VII & XIII Themes) by Mike Song ...

Nicely done.

Hoarding Shows

I'm not referring to the reality show or the various spin-offs and related "educational" shows from A&E or the Discovery Channel. Long before the Internet was considered normal or "common" (the thought of it still amazes me), people have been hoarding things from stamps, trading cards, books, 8-track/cassette tapes, VHS/DVDs and anything else worth collecting. Like many, I'm a hoarder.

I can't pinpoint a specific time when I started collecting things, but I started young. I collected stickers and street vendor plastic toys (Street fighter figure molds and various indiscernible cartoon characters of my youth). When I started getting allowance, I saved up my money for Christmas gifts and spent the rest on collecting other things.

I remember the girls in my elementary class collected stationary and stickers. The guys got into collecting Basketball cards and Magic: the Gathering cards. Trading cards were off my budget at that age. I didn't even bother to ask my mom to get me one of them. They were ridiculously expensive. My siblings and I did collect X-Men and Power Rangers trading cards. Both shows were on at the same time. Many companies cashed in and started selling not-so-obvious-then-as-a-child knockoff trading cards. We also collected Pogs. The local Coca-Cola company were doing promotions to exchanging bottle caps for Pogs. We had lots of them. We gave them all away to our cousins prior to moving here in the US.

That's when I started collecting Basketball cards. They were cheap here compared to the US. Currency and market value aside, I collected them in middle school. I think these were the only collections I remember hoarding solely for the fact that my classmates in elementary school had them. I think it's human nature to want to fit in, even when my classmates were already half a world away. Of course, most kids my age at the time in the US were not concerned with Basketball cards. Only die-hard fanatics and collectors were into them. I found myself getting into videogames.

I wouldn't say I'm a videogame hoarder. I don't have the latest copy of every single game out there or any of the popular ones. My attitude towards them is a form of hoarding. Before Xbox achievements and Playstation trophies, I was beating games and obsessed with absolution: 100% completion of collecting in-game items, objectives, hi-scores, hidden extras, etc. Then again, I was in middle school going on high school. I had all the free time in the world. Middle school and high school was a breeze. I had anime, cartoons and various TV shows that I constantly watched. This was before they started selling DVDs and box sets of TV shows (unheard of at the time). Once companies figured out there's a market for box set TV shows, I almost became a box set hoarder. I already had box sets of Dragonball Z sagas in VHS form. They took up too much space. I opted out of hoarding shows, to a point. Then Napster happened.

Napster redefined how people consume entertainment. It was a conduit for sharing music as MP3 files. Not long before that, cable internet became a thing. Faster download and upload speed. Everything was pointing digital. I know a previous boss with a huge library of songs in the hundred gigabyte range. That's hoarding right there. As of now, I only have about 40GBs worth of songs in various music file formats. They are mostly songs I've heard on the radio or online, videogame music and soundtracks. Digital format took hoarding to a new level. My biggest digital collection so far are TV shows. I have collected a lot of shows. It's not as bad as some people having their own server farms with multiple terabytes of data, but it's hoarding nonetheless. Right now, I'm on the fence on one show, which is why I started this post to begin with.

I've been collecting this show since college. Right now, I have FiOS internet. There should be no reason for me to hoard these shows. I can just find some shady website streaming these shows for free. Part of me still want to keep them. It's an irrational reaction. For me at least, there are memories tied to them. Maybe it was the feeling I felt watching these shows. Maybe it was the feeling I felt why I had these shows in possession. When it comes to hoarding, my biggest collection so far are my memories. It's both a gift and a curse. So is it worth deleting 10 years of data and memories? Maybe I'm scared I'll forget.

I'm done.