Behind Plastic Eye-Holes

For this Halloween,  I thought I'd complain about the costumes available when I was a kid. Pre-made Halloween costumes from the seventies and eighties were crap.  For a start,  they were just a cheap plastic mask, and a sort of tunic body covering that was obviously just a colourful garbage bag.

But the thing that bugged me most about these things is their complete failure at being costumes.  There'd be, say, a Bugs Bunny costume with a Bugs Bunny mask, but then the plastic garment would have a picture of Bugs Bunny on it, possibly with the words,  "Bugs Bunny" on it.  For one thing, it's a bad costume if you have to tell everyone what you are. But more to the point,  Bugs Bunny doesn't have a picture of himself on his chest. So you aren't dressing up as Bugs Bunny so much as you're dressing up as an obsessed fan of Bugs Bunny, which is no fun.

Even to my developing mind which was still figuring the way the universe works,  I could tell something was wrong with this arrangement.  I couldn't really articulate it,  because it's kind of an existential mobius strip: things don't usually have pictures of themselves on themselves.  So I just had to accept this and not criticize my classmates when they dressed up as Darth Vaders with pictures of Darth Vaders on their chests.

Since then,  I've found that others had the same problem with these costumes.  Apparently they were like Scrappy-Doo: we all hated it,  but didn't say anything at the time.  Anyway,  I bring this up because I'm amazed at how far costumes have come.  Even pretty cheap Value Village costumes are much better than those old plastic monstrosities,  and probably cost the same,  adjusted for inflation. And they at least take a stab at looking like things,  not referring to them.  So that's something kids today can take pleasure in: better Halloween costumes,  and better cartoons.

Mustang Silly

Back in 2002, GM took the Chevy Camaro out of production due to poor sales. I read an editorial in the Detroit Free Press that tried to explain why the Camaro's sales were low, especially considering that it's eternal rival, Ford's Mustang, was still doing well. Unfortunately, I couldn't find it now, but the gist was that the Mustang had some subtlety while the Camaro was too showy, a point they illustrated by refering to the song "Bitchin' Camaro" by the Dead Milkmen. I believe the way they put it was that the Mustang is a cool car for cool people, while the Camaro is the car that tries too hard for people who are desperate to look cool.

At the time, that seemed to me to be an accurate assessment. The Mustang of that era was a fairly modest car, an evolution of a design first used in the late seventies. While the Camaro contemporary was a gaudy vehicle that somehow managed to be sleek but not sexy. So I was totally in line with the editorial board of the Detroit Free Press and the Dead Milkmen.

But I'm not so sure anymore. If you don't follow automotive news on the Internet, let me explain. Owners of impressive cars often get together, for car shows, or more informal gatherings such as the Cars and Coffee series. And when people leave these gatherings, they often can't resist the temptation to lay some rubber. And since many people who own powerful cars cannot drive them nearly as well as they think they can, these burnouts often result in the driver losing control rather embarrassingly. And because there are usually a lot of people around watching this parade of impressive cars leaving the meet, there are a lot of people on hand to see the embarrassed driver, and usually at least one person recording it on their phone. It goes on YouTube, goes viral, yada yada yada.

What's weird is that the car driven by that bad driver is usually a Mustang. I'm not sure why: the Chevy Camaro and Dodge Challenger offer cars of similar design and power, and the Camaro is currently selling better than the Mustang, so you would expect that there would be plenty of Camaro crash footage too. But it's more likely to be a Mustang. And that's led to a bunch of memes on the subject. And that has led to one celebrated case of a Mustang owner who claimed he wanted to sell his car because he was sick of the memes.

In my own experience, I have to say that there may be something to this idea that Mustang owners are a little different. I mean, I think we all start to notice differences in the behaviour of drivers based on their cars. Even if you don't know much about cars, you've probably realized that you have to give SUV's a wider berth, because there is a good chance they haven't noticed you. And similarly, you realize that BMW and Mercedes drivers will notice you, but won't care. And I find that Mustang drivers are more likely to push the limits. When seeing one of them, I do subconsciously ready myself for aggression.

I don't know why there'd by a difference, since both cars seem to have a similar gaze-upon-my-masculinity style to them. But somehow the recklessly aggressive are opting for the Mustang. That's a little troubling for me. Mustang vs. Camaro is one of those dichotomies where you're drawn to one or the other, and I've always had a preference for the Mustang. But I have a much stronger aversion to the culture around it. So now I'm not sure which I would prefer out of these two cars I'm unlikely to ever own.

Subterranean Home: Sick, Alien

You know what would be a good idea: double basements.  That is, you have a basement that's twice as deep, so you have two floors underground.  I know it sounds crazy, but think of the benefits: you have more room in your house without compromising the space in your yard.  You have free insulation.  The ground moderates the temperature of the interior.  But best of all, it is the embodiment of the suburban dream: you live near your neighbours, yet you can also get far, far away from them.

I know, you don't like the idea of living below ground without windows.  Well, you don't really need windows: it's not like the view really changes in suburbia. Besides, in our modern world, you probably aren't looking up from your screens very often anyway, so who needs to look outside. And here in Canada, you'll only be missing out on the twelve days a year that the temperature is right for opening the windows.

And in addition to you not needing to look outside, people outside don't need to look at your house.  Most suburban houses are either small-and-simple, or big-and-ugly. Putting most of the girth underground saves you from having to come up with one decoration after another.  You have enough exposed house to express your sense of style, but you don't feel the need to add gratuitous arches and columns.

So I went googling the idea, but I found that my radical idea was a little too advanced for our timid development industry, saying that it's "too expensive," "probably illegal," and "you'll die from radon." But there was some precedent of it in Britain. It makes sense there, since space is at a premium, and rules often restrict your ability to add on to existing buildings. So if you want to have a big house, but you also want to live in London, building down might be your only choice.

I think that would be ideal: you're living in the city, but you can still have a quiet getaway deep in the earth. So that's what I'll do if I ever make billions.  That, or I'll build a mansion in the suburbs that will be disguised as a normal house.  There'll be a huge basement that takes up the entire property, but only a normal-sized house sticking up above ground, with no indication of anything unusual. The garage will have an elevator down to my car collection. And I'll make a deal with the developer to build my house before anyone else in the subdivision moves in, so no one will know there's anything unusual about it.

Let England Shake

It history, they talk about the "Great Man" theory, which is the idea that most of history is guided by a few strong individuals. Given that no one has bothered updating it to "Great Person," You can surmise that it's not a very popular view anymore. Today, historians are more likely to see the path of history guided by big movements among many people. For instance, both world wars were, on the surface, triggered by individuals. But both wars were the result of much bigger societal and economic forces, and probably would have happened eventually anyway, even if they weren't triggered as they were.

But I still find it interesting to look for those times when an individual makes a decision that impacts history. I mean a situation where the decision is not pushed by outside considerations, but instead is an individual's judgement. I'd say one example would be the Cuban Missile Crisis, where Kennedy and Khrushchev could have taken any of a number of actions, and that could have had huge impacts on the course of history.

Another example would be Brexit. I know, that sounds like the complete opposite of what I'm taking about. It was a referendum of a large country, not an individual's decision. But it was an individual - Prime Minister David Cameron - who decided to hold the referendum. It wasn't because of a recent change in support for the European Union in Britain; it was a calculated strategy.

British politics in general, and the Conservative Party in particular, have always suffered from the distraction of euroskeptics, those who dislike and demonize the European Union. The intention with the referendum was to get the public to agree to remain in the EU, thus disarming euroskeptics in the future, since the country would have very publicly endorsed membership in the EU.

Of course, it didn't go at all according to plan. The public surprised everyone by voting to Leave. What I find interesting in this is that Cameron's gambit has changed the direction of modern Britain, and it's all due to nothing more than timing: young people were disproportionately in favour of staying in the EU, Britain's membership in the Union would get more popular. So if Cameron had chosen a different strategy for dealing with euroskeptics, there never would have been a referendum for another decade or two. That hypothetical vote would have gone the other way. Today's young people, who mostly wanted to Remain, will eventually be the majority. But they'll live the rest of their lives in a more isolated country outside the EU, even though that wasn't their choice.

This all comes to mind because the Brexit referendum seems to have changed the entire mood in Britain. You may have already seen the reports of a troubling increase in racist attacks since the referendum, as the nation's bigots seem to feel empowered. The country's already nationalist newspapers were all-too happy to make their biases more open. But on top of that, the new post-Cameron Conservative government has embraced the anti-foreigner feeling, with disturbing promises to name and shame companies employing non-Britons.

So essentially, Cameron's strategy not only failed, it actually worked backwards: instead of discrediting the euroskeptics, the referendum discredited those who believed in a more international, interconnected country. I don't know how long this new attitude will last, but for now it appears that the entire country is going quickly in a new direction. And it's a direction that it really didn't need to go.

It certainly seems hard to stop. While all this has been going on in government, the opposition Labour Party is having its own crisis. It's currently lead by Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to be Bernie Sanders without the endearing anti-charisma. He's not popular with fellow politicians or - according to polls - the general public. But he's super popular among left-leaning people, so they put him in the position, then confirmed him when his own caucus tried to kick him out.

Of course, this sort of situation comes up a lot in politics: should the party choose the middle-of-the-road candidate the general public will like, or the ideologically-pure candidate the party members want? Essentially, both American political parties struggled with the same choice in the primaries. Yet with Labour, there seems to be no one arguing for moving to a leader that's more palatable to the electorate. Of course I don't know all the nuances of the situation, but in the discussion online, I've noticed that when anyone argues for centrism, Corbyn's supporters are quick to invoke the name of Tony Blair.

Their view seems to be that Blair made the deal that if the party moved to the centre, they could get into power, even if they didn't get everything the membership wanted. That worked, until he made the uber-blunder of joining George W. Bush's war in Iraq. That move wasn't merely unpopular, it was everything the party membership hated. Honestly, it was worse to them than anything Margaret Thatcher ever did. So Labour Party members felt like they'd been tricked into electing a might-as-well-be-Conservative government. That's poisoned the concept of moving to the political centre, and it is a non-starter among party members. Every liberal party may have is hardliners who say that moderates like Hillary Clinton are no better than their conservative opponents, but at Labour, they appear to believe it.

So all together, it seems like the United Kingdom has really lost it. But really, the crumbling seems to be concentrated in England. Scotland had far less problems with post-referendum hate crimes. And they voted solidly to stay, so now they're eying the exits. And people started talking about Irish reunification. And you know things are bad when even Wales is talking about leaving. But that's where they make Doctor Who. Great, another British institution that could pay the price.

England's problems are deeper than politics and economics; it's beloved soccer team has been a sort of metaphor for the country recently, first getting booted from the Euros by small but united Iceland, then losing their new coach after just one match thanks to bizarre bragging about rule-breaking. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that England has Jumped the Shark. Or, whatever the national equivalent of jumping the shark is. Actually, this could coin a new phrase. I suspect that centuries from now, people will be saying that China is no longer the country it once was, and that maybe it's "Voted to Leave."

These Memes Won't Turn Anyone On

I'm kind if surprised that people are still using homosexuality as a putdown.  For instance, I've seen a few variations on the graphic to the right.

As you can see, it makes pronouncements about how various musical jobs will affect a man's ability to attract women.  For the most part it shows the hierarchy we'd expect, putting the singer and guitarist at the top.  Although in my experience, people are quicker to slag the drummer than the bassist, but either way, neither gets the respect they deserve.

But it's disappointing that they use the implication of gay men to deliver the ultimate put down to the keyboardist.  Yes, I know, homosexuality has been devalued forever, this shouldn't be news.  But with its increasing acceptance in society, you'd think the people who still see it as an insult would be aging legislators who don't know how to use the Internet.

So it worries me that a lot of the acceptance of homosexuals may be shallower than we think.  People have gotten to the point of accepting their existence, or their lack of evilness at least. But perhaps they still haven't gotten to the point of seeing it as equal to any other sexuality.

Like I said, I've seen a few variations on it.  One was to insult different types of cars.  Unfortunately I couldn't find it when I just went looking, but the same point can be made with these graphics that reflect demonizing of gay men, or possibly straight women:

And of course it reasserts my point that the Chevy/Ford rivalry is just a meaningless lobbing of the same insults back and forth.

But the breaking point that prompted me to write this was when I saw the meme applied to programming languages:

I assume that if you aren't familiar with programming, then this looks rather surreal, a bunch of unfamiliar names arbitrarily assigned to implications of virility. Well let me reassure you that even if you are familiar with all these languages, it looks about the same.  I really have no idea how they decided on these, other than that it was obviously put together by a PHP programmer. As the oldest and least-forgiving language there, one would think that C will make you attractive to others. Maybe Perl if you're looking for someone particularly kinky. But the point is, that shows how silly this all is. People are just flinging outdated insults at others, but all they're doing is exposing their own bigotry .

Peace Offering

Sunday night, a Republican campaign office in North Carolina was firebombed. We don't yet know who did it, but graffiti at the scene showed it to be a targetted act. Even in this particularly bitter campaign, that is taking things to a scary new level. Some Democrats were also troubled this, so they set up a crowd funding campaign to raise $10,000 to fix the office. News of the campaign spread quickly, and the money was raised within hours.

That funding campaign seemed like a nice thing to do. After all, no civilized person wants to win because of violence, whoever committed it. So offering a helping hand goes a little way to revelling the playing field. But I've found a number of left-leaning people on the Internet didn't like it. Certainly, no one endorsed the bombing, but the fact is that the gesture is just symbolic, since the Republicans presumably have insurance.  And of course, it's an expensive gesture; ten grand may seem like a drop in the bucket in billion-dollar campaigns, but it still could have made a big difference for individuals.  And much as we'd all like to view political opponents as honourable and respectable, the fact is that Trump's Republicans have caused real harm to large numbers of people.  And this is North Carolina, where state republicans pushed through anti-LGBT legislation earlier this year.

So was it a good idea to give money to someone who's actively working to make many people's lives worse?  To me, it still seems intuitively like it is.  Though I have to point out that, in the tiny sample size of people I read on line, the people in favour were generally straight-white-able-bodied-cis-males like myself. Those who had problems with the monetary gift usually had one or more traits that put them in the Republicans' crosshairs.  So perhaps I'd see it differently from that perspective.

It would be nice to believe that we could do something that would ease the reconciliation after the election.  I know, that sounds naive, but at some point, people have to get along. I'd like to think that a gift like this would help the process, though I realize it may not work out. Playing up the bombing will reinforce Trump's us-against-the-world narrative, and his supporters will probably never hear about it on conservative media.  Still, I hope it made an impression on someone that there was an effort to restore a little fairness.

Voices Carry

I was just reading a transcript of a speech by President Obama, and realized I was reading it in his voice.  I'm sure in not the only person who does this, especially for people with distinctive voices.  I first became conscious of the phenomena when I read something written by Stephen Hawking, and just couldn't get through it without hearing it in his computer synthesized voice.

In some cases, reading in another's voice is inevitable, if they have a distinctive way of putting words together. It's easier to read Donald Trump's words in his voice, because that's the way we're used to hearing those meandering parades of sentence fragments.

Surprisingly,  I don't often read tweets in other's voices,  though that's because of the strange fact that I have heard little if any spoken words from the folks I follow.  So many of them are people I've found on twitter or elsewhere on the Internet.  The one exception is sportscaster Vic Rauter who tweets in the same spurts of phrases that he talks in, so I find it impossible to read them any other way.

I've tried to think back to remember if I did this reading quotes in the past, but I don't think I did.  But it occurs to me that we didn't really read the words of others very often.  Books and newspaper articles were written by people we'd never heard the voices of. Famous people spoke on TV,  but we didn't really have the chance to read anything they wrote. The most was perhaps reading a quote,  say in a newspaper. But they were often edited for grammar, and weren't very long.  Actually reading things written by famous people is a unique feature of our age.

Try To Keep Up

Today I saw a news bite that Jamie Lee Curtis had criticized Donald Trump for his attack on Lindsay Lohan.  I was like, wait, what?  I thought it was Marlee Matlin that he had criticized.  Oh, that was earlier today, leaked from Celebrity Apprentice. The loan insult was from an old Howard Stern. That's it, even for a person like myself, who tries to keep up with current events,  even with our 24 hour news cycle, the scandals are coming to fast to digest. We have reached the scandal singularity.

The reaction to accusations of sexual assault against Trump have followed a predictable pattern. You may have heard of Lewis' Law "Comments on any article about feminism justify feminism." I think we need a new law: People's reaction to women finally coming forward to talk about sexual assault is why women are so reluctant to talk about sexual assault.

On the one hand, there seem to be more people willing to listen instead of dismiss the allegations. Some of it is because people are finally getting experience and understanding of the issue. Though I suppose it's also because the allegations square with Trump's public personna more easily than they did with Bill Cosby. It's also easier to understand their desire to keep quiet given the accused's quickness with litigation. But on the other hand, the partisan nature of this issue had meant that people ate dug in on both sides, so the fight is going to be extra toxic. But it's further evidence that people are coming to accept this election as the referendum on civility that I always saw it to be.

Do Rats Get Adorable Little Lifeboats To Abandon Sinking Ships?

You've probably heard about the tape of Donald Trump saying Trumpy things. And now, at long last, it seems he has Finally Done It. Yes, as predicted by so many, he has Gone Too Far, and Republicans are making the decision of whether or not to jump ship. So if you choose "jocular discussion of sexual assault" in your Trump self-destruction pool, congratulations.

Observing liberals online, this lead to 24 hours of rejoicing, followed by anger that none of the other disgusting things he's done was enough to trigger such anger. If you are wondering why this was the final straw, here are some ideas:

• When you read or heard Trump's remarks you probably involuntarily pictured him doing the things he was talking about. And depending on your life experience and the literalness you took the remarks at, it was somewhere between bizarre and horrifying. But think back to that mental image and ask yourself, what colour is the woman?
• Notably, Trump made it clear it didn't matter if a woman was married. That allows old-fashioned men to take it personally, in a way that his insults against women don't.
• Republicans have been caught in a kind of Emperor's New Clothes situation with Trump, in which he holds so much sway over the party's voters that no one wants to point out that he's naked. This incident is the first that's big enough that people have the confidence to believe they won't be the only ones involved in the coup. Even as it is, we're seeing the wrath of Trump Nation. Republicans that criticised him are getting rude receptions at campaign events, and accusations of treason, and that's the ones that didn't actually pull their support.
• This leak is a great example of the "October Surprise." Elections are in November, and dropping big negative news just before the election gives the opponent little time to recover. What must have Republicans worried is that this leak came out on October 7, implying that there's plenty more to come. Indeed, people from The Apprentice claim there are.
• Keep in mind that the politicians will know things about the campaign that we don't. For instance, it's important to remember that the polls we see in the media are cheap things that are often not that accurate. The parties themselves do polling that's of much higher quality (which they keep to themselves.) So it's possible that Republicans knew the situation was bad even before this incident - say since the first debate - and had been looking for an excuse to jump ship.
• There were already several allegations of sexual assault against Trump, but they weren't getting much play in the media. We saw in the Bill Cosby situation that there was a turning point when the allegations went from being assumed unfounded and ignored, to widely believed. So there's a possibility of that pattern repeating itself with Trump, especially if anyone else feels empowered to step forward now.
• Keep in mind that Americans vote for lots of things at once, so voters will be selecting not only the president, but also representatives, and possibly senators, governors and other lower positions. Party leaders have to be concerned about Trump's effect on the other races. Even if he can ride an alt-right wave to victory, that would still turn people off of Republicans in general, or discourage traditional Republican supporters from showing up to the polls, thus hurting the party in all those other races. There's already word that the party is diverting money and effort away from the presidency and to other campaigns.

Give Up Truckin'

There's a movie coming called Monster Trucks. It won't be out until early next year, so you normally wouldn't be hearing about it so early. But it made the news not in the entertainment section but the business section. Apparently, the movie is so bad that the studio's accountants are taking a $115 million write-down on the movie, which is accounting-speak for "this movie's gonna bomb, so we'll just write all the negative numbers in the budget right now." And it's all under the assumption that it will bomb at the box office.

You might think that a movie about monster trucks would be a slam-dunk for Americans. And it stars the guy from the new MacGyver, who I was surprised to see is not also one of the guys from Supernatural. The idea is that this particular truck is possessed by an actual monster. See, this is what they call a "high concept" film, where there's a simple premise, which is explained in the title.

This preemptive panic by the studio had invited people to start piling-on the criticism. A movie about a monster living in a truck? What a silly idea, of course it's a failure. It gets worse when people find out that the movie was inspired at least in part by a studio exec's five-year-old. Again, cue the amateur critics, tut-tutting the idea.  But really, it's not that different from Cars, which was wildly popular. And Disney even managed to wring more money out of that concept with Planes, which you have to think would be a flimsier idea that going with trucks.

And the exec's son? Was it really such a dumb idea to get a kid's input on a kids' movie? After all, that little consultation could have prevented Mars Needs Moms. I don't understand why the same public that notices, or even revels in, the stupidity of movies, thinks that it's obvious which movies are going to be popular. And also, give the public a little credit for being open to oddball ideas.  Can you really say Monster Trucks is an inherently worse idea than Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?  

I'm not saying it will be a success.  Though studios are sometimes surprised by bombs,  if they know the movie is in trouble this early,  they're likely right. Having seen the trailer,  it looks like it could be dumb fun,  though not nearly what I would expect from a movie whose two defining concepts are "monsters" and "monster trucks."  So I have no doubt the write-down is correct. But don't fire that exec's kid just yet.

Surveying The Slightly Insulted

Lots of people, myself included, have called Donald Trump racist. I think that's reasonable, given his statements on Mexicans and policy statements about Muslims. Though to be honest, I'm not sure he himself is racist. More accurately, he doesn't mind saying racist things if it makes him popular. I really doubt he believes in anything but himself.

But on the race issue, I've been interested in how non-whites have reacted when they aren't the ones in the crosshairs. For instance, Asian-Americans are one of the few minorities that Trump hasn't insulted, but they are largely Democrat and getting more so, with a particularly poor opinion of Trump.

Jewish-Americans have been solidly against Trump, despite never being directly targeted. One person online explained that Jews never get behind such movements because they know that even if anti-Semitism isn't mentioned at first, it will be along soon enough. Essentially, it's principle of the First They Came... poem. And indeed, although Trump himself doesn't do it, a number of his supporters have targeted Jews.

And then there are African-Americans. There have been lots of stories marveling at their lack of support for Trump. He's scored literally zero among blacks in some state polls, and some national polls have him in fourth, with the meager support of Jill Stein and Gary Johnson edging-out Trump. And yet, Trump hasn't really attacked them. I mentioned once that he'd be in trouble if he overtly attacked them, and he has indeed avoided it. His you-have-no-hope-might-as-well-vote-for-me plea was pedantic, but groups have forgiven him for more than that. Although I've heard no one spell out the philosphy of Blacks on this, I'm guessing they see it the same way as Jewish Americans: when someone stakes their career on satisfying White America's worst impulses, they know where that's heading.

So that explains why Trump's attempts at outreach to the African-American community have fallen flat, even if they are about as sincere as he gets. I've seen many people online explain that Trump's appearances at Black churches is done for the benefit of Whites: to win the election, Trump needs the support of not just hard-core racists, but also hypocrites who like his fearful message but don't want to think of themselves as racist. So seeing Trump palling around with Blacks at a church will convince them he isn't so bad, and thus you can vote for him and not be racist. And this was underlined recently when Trump visited a Black church on Sunday, then called for nationwide stop-and-frisk the next day, thus nuking any African-American support he might have built up. So this strategy of tiptoeing around racism may win over more whites, but it isn't convincing anyone else.

Burger Time With A Computer

When I was young I - like many children - didn't like mixing foods. One way that manifested itself was that I preferred my hamburgers plain, no mustard, ketchup, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun. Well actually, I was okay with cheese.

Even though that's usual for kids, it caused some problems. For instance, my parents liked to put onions in the hamburger patties. I'm not sure why, I guess they saw it in a magazine it something. But I hated it. A hamburger is the simplest food there is, so adding in something I didn't really like just made it unappetizing. Of course - as with so many things parents do - I later realized it was actually not too bad an idea.

The other casualty of my dislike for mixed foods was McDonalds. Most kids love McDonalds as much as pop-culture programs them to. But their assembly-line burgers with their blur of condiments were just gross to me. Sure, over time I got used to food with a variety of flavours. Now I have relatively few foods that I hate, and no alergies or religious restrictions, so I don't really think about the ingredients of anything I order. If I order a fast food burger, it doesn't even occur to me to hold any toppings.

Anyway, it's taken a while, but here's how far I've come: Today I used McDonalds' custom burger kiosk. And there were several levels of irony.

• McDonalds, that paragon of standardization, is betting their future on personalization
• I get to choose my topings at McDonalds, 40 years after I could have used the opportunity
• Given the choice, I put lots of weird stuff on it
• I voluntarily added onions.

It was kind of fun, bashing pictures of food on the touchscreen, trying hard to look like I know what I'm doing. But more than anything, it was one of rare points when I honestly felt like I'm living in the future. Yeah, I'm using a computer to order at McDonalds; I'm George Jetson. That's why it seems futuristic. So many of the really mind-blowing changes in our society are totally new concepts, rather than a modern spin on old things. Like you never saw Facebook in science fiction. It never occured to anyone because it's not like anything that was around then. But ordering fast food is something that's been done for decades; doing it in a gratuitously-modern way is just how I envisioned the future.

The process was fairly easy. Though in retrospect, I would have expected an easier interface from McDonalds. It also wasn't as superfast efficient as you would expect from a collaboration between technology and the Western service economy. For instance, the machine had to tell me to get a locator beacon from the counter. (Okay, I'm not sure if that's what their called; I mean the thing that identifies who you are and where your table is.) I have to ask at the counter? That cancels the system's two biggest benefits: efficiency and not talking to people.

When the burger was delivered, it came on a rustic cutting board, with the fries in a precious little deep-fryer basket. It was like what you'd expect in a chain restaurant where you have to chose between sitting at the bar or grill. But on closer inspection, the cutting board was plastic. Oh, McDonalds, even in the future, you can't help but be McDonaldsy.

This is an interesting concept, and it could change how fast food works. I've always been interested in how McDonalds organizes itself for efficiency. At the tiny McDonalds counter we used to have in downtown Kitchener, you had a great opportunity to see how everything works, because most of the food preparation happened within ten feet of the counter. So you see them making the burger patties dozens at a time, watch the worker with the condiment gun firing at each open faced bun. And you see how they try to make the maximum number of offerings from the fewest possible basic ingredients.

But now, all they have to do is have the basic ingredients available, and leave it to the customers to figure out what things they want to create out of them. So maybe one day they won't bother trying to make up standard sandwiches. Instead of researching what people want and marketing it, they'll just concentrate on getting those basic building blocks to the restaurants as cheaply as possible.

(Only after typing "building blocks" did I realize they have created Lego-as-food.)

But I'm not sure that it's going to work out they way they intended. See, I never saw anyone else getting their custom burger. Sure, I was there well after the lunch rush (I wanted as few people as possible to watch me blunder through the process.) But there were still a lot of people going through, and many were using the self-serve kiosk, but it was mostly to order from the standard menu. So maybe this personalized, lots-of-choice isn't what people want from McDonalds.

They've been trying to cater to a sophisticated clientelle for a while. They're pushing coffee, they made nicer interiors, and suddenly all their restaurants look like they were designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright fanboy. (Speaking of which, if I have any readers in Pennsylvania, could you check on Fallingwater and ensure that it hasn't been turned into a Mcdonalds.) But I don't know if any of this has really changed the way people think about Mcdonalds. It's true that as I left after my meal, I noticed there was a Ferrari in the parking lot, which has to be a first. But mostly it was just people coming in and casually ordering standardized food, same as it ever was.

So perhaps they should embrace the way we see them. For instance, instead of the cheesy cutting board, here's my idea: develop a machine that prints out the burger containers and assembles them on the premises; you can upload your own designs, so your burger comes in a traditional container, but a custom one. That way, you're getting the fast food experience, but it's a modern take on it.

Mighty Vocal People

With the baseball season winding down, people are talking about who's going to win the MVP awards. Of course, I was hoping that Toronto's Josh Donaldson would win for a second straight year, but he fell out of the running after he joined most of his teammates in taking September off. My next choice would be the Astros' Jose Altuve, since he is, like me, both short and not a member of the Boston Red Sox.

But like any discussion of MVP awards, we also have a debate of the definition of Most Valuable Player. You might think that it is tantamount to the best player. But the "most valuable" player could just be the player who makes the biggest difference to their team. But then, the player that makes the biggest difference could just be the only good player on a bad team.

It can be a frustrating argument. Yes, I know, part of the fun of sports - especially baseball - is the arguing about it. But in this case, it's arguing about what we're arguing about, and that's never fun. But it gets worse, because in the past few years, a lot of people go into the baseball MVP discussion with the argument that Mike Trout is the best player in baseball, so he be MVP. That's despite the fact that Trout trails probable-winner Mookie Betts in just about all offensive categories.

I've heard a few people make a similar argument in basketball, calling for LeBron James to be the default MVP as the best overall player, even if Steph Curry had the best season. Essentially the argument is that James and Trout should win the award year-in, year-out, until another player surpasses them in general talent.

So the MVP could be the player who had the best season, the player who made the biggest difference, or the best overall player, even if he doesn't have the best season this particular year. Just what we need, a third definition.

I guess this idea is a result of our celebrity culture, where the designated star gets to be the centre of attention, with details like reality not mattering. But another contributing factor is the weird place baseball occupies in American culture right now. As I mentioned once before, baseball has become a local game, where fans care about their own team, but not the sport in general. That's unfortunate for someone like Trout: as a generational talent in a popular sport, he should be the most popular guy in America. But most baseball fans care more for their own team's utility infielder.

This situation seems to be frustrating baseball journalists. They're trying to give credit to a star player, but no one seems to be listening. And they have to worry for the long-term health of a sport that's traditionally been defined by individual stars. So sometimes their efforts to laud young talent at every opportunity sounds a bit heavy handed.

Going Back For Thirds

With a contentious election in the US, both parties are trying to get every vote out. And that means the quadrenial effort to explain why you shouldn't vote for a third party. This year they are particularly tempting given the acrimony of the primaries. If you had your heart set on Bernie Sanders, you might be tempted to vote for the Green Party's Jill Stein as an ideological alternative. Similarly, a Republican turned off by Donald Trump's racism or anti-free-trade stances might be looking at the Libertarian Party's Gary Johnson.

Fortunately, the third party candidates themselves are doing plenty to encourage voters to go back to the mainstream candidates. Johnson's biggest splash in the whole campaign was his interview embarrassment where it turned out he had never heard of Aleppo, the besieged rebel-held city in Syria. Embarrassing as that was, I have to give him credit for owning his ignorance and saying he would research the topic - most modern American conservatives would have tried turning it into a positive: "of course I haven’t heard of some little town in Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan, I’m more interested in what matters to American taxpayers."

As for Stein, she seems to be an amalgam of all the bad attributes of left-wing politicians:

• populist promises that the country can't afford
• promises the president doesn't have the power to implement
• simplistic understanding of economics
• flirting with conspiracy
• citing or ignoring scientific evidence as is convenient.

But as always, the main reason not to vote for them is that they simply can't win. Even if you have solid evidence that one of them is the best of all possible presidents, a vote for them would still be a wasted vote unless you know there’ll be a groundswell of support for them unprecedented in American history. By a nice coincidence, Facebook’s memories feature brought up this cartoon I made eight years ago, for illustrating the concept. Also, tech writer Clay Shirky does a great job of explaining it.

It's a really frustrating topic. It can be depressing when we see just how few people have a passion to make the world a better place. It can also be hard to come to terms with how few people have the skills to apply it. But times like this expose how few people combine the two into effective change. And when I see that it's easy to lose hope.

But now I find out about a new group that has this combination of hearts and minds. I've come across a Facebook group of actors, writers and producers from various incarnations of Star Trek who are campaigning against Donald Trump. And interestingly, they're putting special emphasis on reminding people not to vote for a third-party candidate. Oh Star Trek, however crazy the world gets, you're always there for me. On the other hand, I'm more than a little worried to discover that Star Trek is the lone oasis of humanity in America.