• Operation: Steal Black, from February 15, 2009
• What It Takes To Be President, from February 8, 2009
• BHM Fail, from February 1, 2009

Also, while not part of the Black History Month posts canon, I would also throw in my post from February 18, 2009 called A Disturbing Cartoon as it involves a current event issue that many are relating to a discussion of race.

A long time ago, I would have bristled at the idea of a specific month set aside for Black history. Over the years, though, I recognized the potential for dialogue, exchange and learning that may happen when something like Black History Month was going on. One of the notable vocal detractors of a month dedicated to Black history is actor Morgan Freeman. Here’s a very brief, but telling, clip of his discussion with Mike Wallace about the very same issue:

Now it’s no secret that I’ve hated Morgan Freeman since the film, Bruce Almighty. In that movie, he revealed that, yea, Freeman was truly the one jerking us around who is most often referred to as God. Later in his “movie career” he shewed us that he can jerk over the bird kingdom in a film called March of the Penguins. There he droned on-and-on, all the while penguins suffered, died and sometimes failed to reproduce. Damn you, Morgan Freeman!

But in all seriousness, I’ve been giving the idea of even having Black History Month some credence because I thought that it would be an educational opportunity to learn something about what Morgan Freeman considers American history. Has anyone — whether black or white, red or yellow, rich or poor — learned anything this month? I know I have — not as White, not as Black, but as an American. I’m on Morgan Freeman’s side that Black history is American history.

But ending racism by not talking about race? Could it be that easy? Maybe so.

Personally, I’m glad there’s no White History Month. I don’t have a lot of identification as a white person, and I don’t think that a lot of other white people hold that identification as well, so there wouldn’t be too much point. I’m more inclined to honor my Scottish heritage, since I can actually see uniquely Scottish people who have significantly impacted history. I would have a hard time dealing with a discussion of uniquely white American’s accomplishments — slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, etc. Yeah, I know white people have actually done good things, but White History Month would bring up a lot of negative stuff and probably be more divisive in the end.

So, in summary, if you learned something this month, good for you. I’m pretty sure most people haven’t. While, for me, this was a good learning experience, I’m down with Morgan Freeman on this one now. Black history is American history and, as such should be a part of every American’s civic education. You can’t pigeon-hole American history into the shortest month of the year. Great, now we’ll have to have a series on American History Month and the lack of knowledge Americans have in the basics. Geez, this blogger’s work is never done…

H/T:  End the War on Freedom

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who have ever lived. I see all this potential — God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables;  they’re slaves with white collars. Advertisements have them chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit they don’t need. We are the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no great war, or great depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised by television to believe that one day we’ll all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars — but we won’t. And we’re learning slowly that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.

That’s exactly how I’ve been feeling lately, although I’m feeling a bit more literal than figurative about our generation’s coming great wars and great depressions though. More gems from this one can be found by watching the movie, checking out the screenplay or reading the book.

I was once told by a chick that worked at a movie theater that this was “a guy movie.” You know the type — someone who works at a movie theater because they really, really like watching movies so they might as well be able to do it for free. And since they’ve seen every movie, they know all the behind the scenes details and can quite frequently recite long monologues verbatim, they are quite opinionated about what is a good movie. She was of the mind that Fight Club was not a good movie. Anyway as one of the pinnacles of gnosticism-themed cinema, I beg to disagree.

That would have meant I would have spent most of the day in jail. Luckily though, I was able to chill enough to go back to bed. I was awoken five hours later by a visit from one of the people to whom I sent a crazy, obscenity-laced email. Big ups to Linda for understanding that I was under a lot of pressure. I couldn’t quite articulate what I was feeling, but I think she understood. Later, I realized that a verse from the Green Day song “Having A Blast” came closest to expressing my feelings:

Do you ever think back to another time?
Does it bring you so down that you thought you lost your mind?
Do you ever want to lead a long trail of destruction and mow down
any bullshit that confronts you?
Do you ever build up all the small things in your head
To make one problem that adds up to nothing?

Anyway, I blew off most of my plans for the day to unwind and de-stress by playing miniature golf, visiting the batting cages and hitting the arcade at Adventure Landing in Raleigh. It was a lot of fun and worked wonders for my overall stress level, especially a game in the arcade called Silent Scope. In it, you shoot terrorists with a sniper rifle-shaped controller. Mmmm, fantasy violence… makes me think that I missed my calling in life. Best of all, it kept me out of trouble. 

I learned shortly after beginning formal marketing studies that there’s more to marketing than promotions. It’s important to understand your company, customers, competitors and distribution channels (the 4 Cs). Only then can you concentrate on the 4 Ps of the product, pricing, place and (then and only then) promotion. I keep finding that there are extensions to this marketing mix. Services marketing adds three additional pieces (people, process and physical evidence), while Web 2.0 marketing adds four more (personalization, participation, peer-to-peer and predictive modeling). Anyway, the point of the matter is that there is more to marketing than quirky commercials and slick ads. My interest in commercials is how well they fit into the overall scheme of an entire marketing plan.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t interested in watching this year’s Superbowl commercials at all. It’s just that I was much more interested in the game itself. A few of the commercials this year stood out. Probably the most noteworthy one in my mind was the Doritos commercial that involved the guy and the snowglobe that he said was a fortune-telling crystal ball:

It was really quirky, and the Doritos people usually come up with something good every year.

I also thought that it was an important statement that some of the commercials capitalized on the current state of the economy. The ones I remembered included Hyundai…

…and Cash4Gold…

It was also good seeing Ed McMahon back in the pitch business after his recent bout of medical and money problems.

I also had the opportunity to get stoked for a couple of the upcoming movies. Particularly Angels & Demons…

…and the movie remake of The Land of the Lost…

Normally I don’t go for remakes, but I go for almost anything with Will Ferrell in it.

I’m sure there were some other good ones, but those are the ones that I particularly remembered. Correction, those are the ones that I remembered that I viewed favorably. I also remembered my disappointment in this year’s GoDaddy commercials. I’m a staunch GoDaddy loyalist, so I would be one of the ones to turn in just to see their commercials. I’m sure that part of it is due to the desire to push the limits butting heads with standards and practices. Kind of like the punchline to the standards and practices discussion in the Gee Whiz episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force — standards and practices ensures that a really funny idea is turned into a totally lame or mediocre end-product. But GoDaddy’s come out with a few good ones that are on their website (and a few that didn’t make it).

For the rest of the best Superbowl commercials, you can check out YouTube (or any number of sites whose commentators are blathering on-and-on about silly commercials).

I first experienced the idea of The Wizard of Oz having some level of secret meaning by another movie called Eyes Wide Shut. It’s a pretty popular movie among folks who are into conspiracies. It also happened to be directed by classic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, which I guess helped its notoriety. After watching that movie, I was pretty puzzled with all these strange rainbow references, so I started researching further. This led me to find conspiracies about mind control and sex slavery and secret programs like Project Monarch and Project MKULTRA and their ties to The Wizard of Oz.

Movies like The Wizard of Oz are weird enough on their own. The secrets behind those movies are downright distressing. I could blame the sleepless nights on Google, but knowing the whole story isn’t so bad once you learn to settle down and deal with it. Since my first exposure to the world of conspiracies and film, I have decided that I will never take what a movie (or the world) was literally showing me at face value again.

Our professor did include some really interesting videos at the end of the class that at least brought me back to life. The first one was a scene from the movie, A Beautiful Mind. It was meant to be an introduction to a discussion on game theory, in general, and on understanding competition, in specific.

Hmmm… Maybe Adam Smith wouldn’t have a good understanding of this type of situation, but that doesn’t mean that John Nash has a good grasp on it either. Remember, he ends up spending all of his time being nuts and doing math. The problem with this application of Nash’s equilibrium is that the women in his example could choose not to go with any of the guys. They all could be lesbians. Maybe they’re into guys, just not these particular guys. Unfortunately, most guy’s egos (especially when beer-enhanced) won’t let them fathom these possibilities. Thus, began John Nash’s decent into insanity. Nash’s friend was at least right on one thing when he said you can lead a girl to water. You can also make her drink, but this will earn you some jail time.

Not a lot of people were feeling A Beautiful Mind. Howver, everyone was totally into the next clip. In it Stephen Colbert offered his thoughts on Cingular changing their name to AT&T.

I forget what the exact context of this video was, but it drew a lot of laughter and woke the remainder of the class up. I mean, who doesn’t love Stephen Colbert? If watching Comedy Central made people smarter, Colbert would be the answer to educators everywhere. Just string together a bunch of videos from The Colbert Report that are united by a singular topic. I’m sure somebody’s done a study on humor and intelligence. Anyway Colbert has my vote over Nash as an educator. He’s got nice insight and good delivery. Nash, not so much, although I’ll give him kudos for being kooky in a really smart way.

Now I don’t seriously think that this was a ghost or an attempt at communication from beyond, but it was still kind of wicked cool.