Dear Halloween

Has nothing to do with my reasoning, but I thought it was hilarious... Deal with it.

Let's get this straight: I've never celebrated you, Halloween. Everything I will say in this letter is a third-party observation. Halloween, I grew up in a devout Christian household, so quite frankly, I've never been exposed to all of your 'greatness'. That said, I can see your allure for small children, whose addiction to sweet treats and dressing up like cartoon characters is almost crack-like. My beef with you, Halloween, is what happens when constituents of my age bracket start planning for you.

Enter the waning weeks of October. Everywhere I go I see parties (the adult version), decorations and general regalia dealing with you. And I wonder, 'Why?'. As young adults, what really is the point of dressing in costumes to do what they do on weekends anyway? Drinking and dancing seem a lot more cumbersome when donning masks, bad makeup and other random props. Also, not to be sexist, Halloween, but your occurrence is nothing more than an excuse for women to be half naked during the late-fall freeze. Why wait until a kids holiday to do that? Why not walk around drunk in a cutoff pirate uniform in mid-January? For men, you're an even stranger holiday. What do I look like dressing up as a policeman, at night nonetheless?

It's not that I'm against you. It's that after a certain age point, you don't have any use. In the same way that Christmas loses it's magic when one finds out that Santa was indeed their father, and one's birthday falls off when their parents stop throwing extravagant theme parties, you become another day on the calendar with a funny font. Halloween, maybe it's the cynic in me causing this feeling. Maybe its the household I grew up in. Maybe it's that I hate wigs more than I hate waiting in line at the convenience store. Whatever the case, Halloween, I won't be dressing up. Sure, I'll be at the gatherings and engage in whatever buffoonery taking place. But I won't do it simply because you're here. Holidays tend to make people into fools for that holiday. Ghosts and the like aren't real. Nor are the traditions we make up. In fact, the real reason behind the costumes was to disguise oneself for the impending influx of dead spirits that would be wandering as the portal between our world and the underworld opened momentarily. Does that mean after you, some spirits will still be hobbling around? No. It means most will have spent their hard earned cents on apparel that won't be of any use on November 1st. That I can pass on... Even if my sweet tooth does lead to some serious binge candy eating. Happy All Hollows Day to my future cavities and those that won't be scraping fake blood and cobwebs off for the next week...

Dear Walkmans

via The New York Times:

Sony is sending its cassette tape Walkman into retirement in Japan as demand for a music player that was ground-breaking in its day dwindles to a tiny niche in the era of digital technology.

Sony stopped Japanese production of the portable music player in April and sales will end once the last batch disappears from stores, company spokeswoman Hiroko Nakamura said Monday.

Sony has sold 220 million cassette Walkman players globally since the product's July 1979 debut that changed lifestyles by popularizing music on the go. More than 30 years later, the cassette Walkman has been rendered an anachronism by MP3 players and iPods. Demand for cassette players in Japan is now largely limited to elderly users. But Sony will continue production of the cassette Walkman in China to accommodate users abroad, including in the U.S., Europe and some Asian countries, Nakamura said.

It is a sad day in music technology. As we enter the day and age where EVERYTHING is on the internet, the media we used to inject our music on is becoming thing of the past. As with the traditional vinyl record, 8-track player, VHS and Betamax, every media format has its dying day. For you, oh great Sony Walkman, with your cassette tapes, that day is upon us. Built in 1979 to a throng of no one (people were still convinced 8-tracks could catch on), you enabled people to take their favorite recordings with them wherever they went. They could use your format-able cassette tapes to record whatever they wanted, from long riffs by jam bands to four hour-long radio blocks with their favorite rappers. Walkman, hip-hop, and music today, would be nowhere without you. You single-handedly began what we call filesharing today.

In the 80s you were synonymous with youth culture, as beat-dwellers were lost in their headphones everywhere you could be taken. My mother said you were the reason my generation would go deaf, though ironically I heard everything you blasted in my ears. Your convenience was unparalleled. Whereas record players and 8-tracks needed an absurd amount of space, all you needed were two double A batteries and a pair of headphones to turn a routine walk to the gym into a personal concert. I can't tell you the last time I've used one of you, but I'm sure in some dusty basement, you're there, just waiting to play 'The Chronic' or 'Illmatic' for some unwitting soul who would never know your magic otherwise. Yes, we dropped you in lieu of CD's and newer versions of your namesake, but your original form will be remembered the most. Walkman, you will be sorely missed as we move into an era where removable media is forgotten and iPods thrust their sound waves into our eardrums. As a child of the 80s (90s really), I'm sad to see you go by the wayside, but happy to have known you, even if half of my cassettes got recorded over by accident...

Pokemon in Retirement

One of the things that always crosses my mind is what happens to cartoon characters and personalities when the show goes off the air. Whether the show is in syndication, banished to DVD releases and random marathons, or just lost in television history, the fate of some of our favorite characters almost never seems to be discussed at any length. If you were a kid in the late 90s and early 2000s, there is no doubt in my mind that you've watched at least one episode of the Japanese anime phenomenon, Pokemon. The television show, the trading cards (props to whoever has a holographic Charizard collecting dust somewhere) and the video games will always hold a special place in my memories for their addicting nature, and for the simple fact that my income as a 10 year-old was devoted to these miniature monsters. That said, upon my resignation from the nation of Pokemon lovers, their existence became a forgotten one... Until now. Check out what happened to some of your favorite Pocket Monsters after Ash, Misty and Brock eventually caught 'em all...

PS: Major e-props to those that can name 'em all...

Sesame Street x True Blood = True Mud

If you don't watch True Blood, then this clip might make little, if any sense to you. Even so, you can't deny the hilarity and charm that Jim Henson's pet child has when taking on the big people's television shows. In this round of kids' parodies we've got the Sesame Street characters playing out a scene in a fictional bar, where the delicacy isn't blood, but mud. No fangs, grotesque rituals, supernatural entities or political undertones here. It's just pure fun and a nice mudbath for one of the Grouches. I can't say that I wouldn't watch another episode of this or that the fake Sookie isn't spot on with her mannerisms. Whatever the case, check out the Sesame Street spoof....

Dear Over-parenting Parents & Schools

via The New York Times:

Most children naturally seek close friends. In a survey of nearly 3,000 Americans ages 8 to 24 conducted last year by Harris Interactive, 94 percent said they had at least one close friend. But the classic best-friend bond — the two special pals who share secrets and exploits, who gravitate to each other on the playground and who head out the door together every day after school — signals potential trouble for school officials intent on discouraging anything that hints of exclusivity, in part because of concerns about cliques and bullying.

“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in St. Louis. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”

“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”

That attitude is a blunt manifestation of a mind-set that has led adults to become ever more involved in children’s social lives in recent years. The days when children roamed the neighborhood and played with whomever they wanted to until the streetlights came on disappeared long ago, replaced by the scheduled play date. While in the past a social slight in backyard games rarely came to teachers’ attention the next day, today an upsetting text message from one middle school student to another is often forwarded to school administrators, who frequently feel compelled to intervene in the relationship. (Ms. Laycob was speaking in an interview after spending much of the previous day dealing with a “really awful” text message one girl had sent another.) Indeed, much of the effort to encourage children to be friends with everyone is meant to head off bullying and other extreme consequences of social exclusion.

It's a sad day and age when kids aren't allowed to just be kids. It's even sadder when adults feel the need to intervene out of some self-obligation to protect kids from bullying. I understand that bullying is an issue and that the repercussions for not attending to bullying problems can be fatal (see: Columbine). That said, trying to create an artificial 'group' of friends is downright ridiculous. Parents, while I'm no expert on child development, my childhood years are not that far behind me. I can remember having in my 10 (give or take) years of childhood 3 exclusive best friends. No, it wasn't always pretty when arguments and fights did occur, but you have to learn how to deal with it. Over-parenting parents, by making kids be friends with everyone, you're slowly yet surely weeding out discernment, among other things in a child's life. If a kid has to be friends with everyone, then he's really good friends with no one. The child gets no sense of what he does or doesn't like in a person because he's forced to like everyone. It's almost torturous to think that kids have to be nice to and play with everyone, simply because a school administrator says so. What's worse is the false sense of security that children grow up with because of such sheltering.

When I was a kid, there was freedom: freedom to make friends, freedom to stop being friends, freedom to be hurt by friends and freedom to make up the next day and go on about our days like nothing ever happened. Parents and schools who force kids to be friends with everyone, you're building up artificial security, in that these kids never will experience rejection in its most natural form. By holding the reins on organic relationships, you're allowing kids to grow up thinking everything will simply fall into place because 'that's what the teacher says'. Instead of fostering natural development, you're raising these 'bubble' kids, who have everything in their lives vacuum-packed and hermetically sealed. You don't allow them to experience pain or hurt at a young age, so when they enter the 'real' world (I don't think there will be a 'real' world in 30 years) everything is a shock to them. Kids will grow up, and at the first sign of adversity, they freak out because nothing's ever gone wrong.

That's not to say that we should toss children into the fire and see if they make it out without burns. It means they should be free to run, jump, slide, hang, fall and ride out with whomever they see fit. If the friendship doesn't work, so be it. Kids are born with two things inherently: a clean slate and natural resiliency. Hindering either of those leaves a huge void in their development, both socially and emotionally. Parents, stop trying to raise the perfect generation of kids and allow kids to be kids. We will never live in a Utopia, and sheltering the next generation won't ensure that anymore than brain-washing and full censorship. Word to Dystopian literature...

The Lego Printer

This is honestly among the coolest sh*t I've ever seen!! At one point, in my room as a child, there was a swarm of Lego pieces threatening to stub toes and make people slip on a moment's notice. My parents always told me to pick up the pieces and do something constructive with them (like what?? I was 6!! I'm not going to build a damn arc reactor!). My guess is, that if I built something like this, no amount of floor-bound Lego pieces could upset them. Randomly stumbled onto this video while browsing Youtube, and it has me wanting to build a printer myself. This guy used a felt tip pen, simple programming software and a horde of Legos to create a printer, complete with the little yellow Lego guys doing all the grunt work of the actual printer. You might not be printing out your 30 page senior dissertation on this, but it'll at least distract you while you wait...

World's Largest Dodgeball Game

Re-living childhood memories when you're older is a treat that everyone relishes. I know a lot of you remember playing dodgeball in gym class. These students at the University of Alberta (Canada; next time get an atlas) decided not only to play dodgeball, but to host a game so big, it would break the world record for players. First off, some of those kids had to be cheating. And second off, how long was that game?? The game still looked like dope time. Check the video...