Depressing Shit To Avoid, Part 13

I recommend you see part 1 of my Depressing Shit series and read my original disclaimer here; now here's installment 13.

I'm only telling you about these things for your own good. Unless you have the problem of too much happiness and too little awareness of bad things, AVOID! AVOID!
 

Movies:

About Schmidt
(my man G says it's depressing; I haven't seen)

Ararat
(haven't seen, don't wanna)

Maybe:
Beasts of No Nation
(think I might actually break my own rules and watch this one, 'cause, you know, Idris Elba. Has he ever been in anything bad?)

Blackfish (have I said that one already?)

Bunny Game (Thanks to Bobby Wilks for tipping me off to this.)

Maybe?:
Harry and Tonto (mixed  reports from Netflix reviewers)

The Road
from http://www.slashfilm.com/films-leaving-netflix-november-2015:
"John Hillcoat‘s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy‘s pitch-dark novel is one of the most miserable movies ever made, but it’s wholly intentional. By stripping the inherent romance, adventure and excitement out of the post-apocalypse, this film showcases a world dying with a whimper. The whole thing is essentially plotless, following Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee as an unnamed father and son duo on a episodic quest through a dead world, which means it can drag. Some sequences are better than others. But when The Road connects, it really connects. This is the best movie to watch if you’re ever having too good of a day."
[sounds like the book's no fun, neither]

Another Maybe, for some people:
Snowtown Murders (Definitely disturbing and would probably depress a lot of people, though, surprisingly, it didn't really depress me. I guess I'm too fascinated by the dead-on filmmaking and the eery crime-y-ness of it all.)

Una Noche (didn't watch, as I was warned that it was depressing by reviews on Netflix)

Books:

The Tears of Olive Trees (autobiographical, about Palestine. Yeesh.) 


More depressing stuff: Read Part 2 here.
And here's Part 3.
And Part 4! Are you depressed yet?!
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12 


As always, I welcome your suggestions for More Depressing Shit. Please comment, and I'll include any good suggestions in a future update.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Civil War Two, Part 1

by Randall Collins

Giveaway ends May 24, 2018.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

In REED Mag: NAPOLEON NEVER SLEPT: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy

From the current issue of REED Magazine:

Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy, by Maren McConnell-Collins ’98, coauthor (Maren Ink, 2015). Maren and her father, Randall Collins, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, investigate the common thread in highly successful individuals throughout history. They share their discovery that charismatic leaders motivate and are motivated by emotional energy. “Charismatic leaders set in motion positive feedback loops: people in the group build up a shared emotion; the stronger the emotion, the more they feel themselves in tune with each other, and the more tightly they focus together. And the more tightly they focus, the more their shared emotion pumps each other up.” More at www.maren.ink.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Civil War Two, Part 1

by Randall Collins

Giveaway ends May 24, 2018.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

How Syrian Refugees Can Help America

I haven't worked out the details of how this might work, but here are the basics of my Great Big Plan For America.

Bring refugees here, have them live wherever they can be housed. I know this is complicated, but whatever the economic or political conditions, there are a lot of empty homes going untenanted in various parts of the country.

One area in particular should be considered: the Rust Belt. Not the best place to be in the winter, but if we put able-bodied refugees and Americans wanting work to work (at whatever time of year) making the empty and abandoned homes in these places livable, it would completely reboot the local economies. All sorts of infrastructure in places like Detroit need rebuilding, and with major funding and impetus from the federal government-- something like the New Deal programs that got people to work in the Depression era-- you could rebuild old cities, get lots of people working, house lots of people-- and heat their houses-- for whoever needs it, both Americans and refugees. You might even end up fostering goodwill between Americans and Syrians.

See also: Utah has a program called Housing First, which has proved an effective and MONEY-SAVING way to house people who need homes. Policymakers, activists, and others can learn a lot from this, not just in how it applies to the homeless, but in how to house anyone you don't know how to house, e.g., refugees. In other words, I think investing in low-income housing on a large scale, in a way that also helps the other people already living in underserved places like Detroit by getting people jobs and building infrastructure, would be a win-win for citizens, refugees, and taxpayers, as local governments could save money on any number of problems (crime, the need for emergency healthcare for the suffering) that are exacerbated by not housing people.

And hey, even Detroit can't be a worse place to be than Syria right now.

Use Your Powers For Good (For Those Who Love to Argue)

I love to argue.

But sometimes I just wanna go home.

Have you seen the internet? My, but people love to argue.

But I also like to DO stuff.

I want to support all marginalized people. But some of the arguments on the internet, like one I skimmed recently among lesbians and trans activists on a Facebook page [which I'd link here, except that it's disappeared] yesterday, make me sad because it's hard to see how it helps any good cause rather than harming it.

I could read and read... or I could just stop reading and start singing to myself to get the arguing out of my head. You could call that privilege, that I don't have to argue or pay attention to arguments all the time.

Do you/your social category have big problems? Undoubtedly. Are your problems bigger or more important than other people's problems? Impossible to say. They are to you, of course. "All suffering, however multiplied, is always individual," said Gandhi, possibly. (I read it somewhere and am having trouble finding the original quote.)

Do you have the right to be offended? Yes, at anything and at any time, and neither I nor anyone else has the right to tell you you shouldn't be offended at something. Maybe I don't think you should, maybe I think you're annoying, but that doesn't matter. Getting offended is free, free, free.

But what is the point of all the arguing? Changing minds is important, yes. But berating potential allies for your cause, people who may have some very major enemies in common with you-- e.g.,  THE PATRIARCHY!-- can be massively counter-productive. It's beneficial to limit your arguing to what is actually doing good, I think, which, though it sounds good, is also hard to determine.

But I'd offer everyone fighting for a cause this simple-ish advice: Take at least some of the time and energy you could spend arguing with potential allies and spend it on taking REAL action in the real world to benefit actual people. Fighting online may feel righteous, but there's a good chance a lot of the effect will NEVER result in any positive change for the people you claim to champion. Like real transwomen suffering real violence out there.

Let's lessen the arguing and try to DO SOMETHING.



---------

 Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy  

 Micro-sociological secrets of charismatic leaders from Jesus to Steve Jobs

E-book now available at Maren.ink and Amazon

Depressing Shit, Part 12

I recommend you see part 1 of my Depressing Shit series and read my original disclaimer here; now here's installment 12.

I'm only telling you about these things for your own good. Unless you have the problem of too much happiness and too little awareness of bad things, AVOID! AVOID!
 

Essaying to watch War Witch on Netflix and not sure if I should go on. Seems very... educational, in a massively bummer-causing way.

And it reminded me-- time for another installment of Depressing Shit(TM)!

Movies:

◦Little Moth (haven't seen, don't want to)
◦Petits Frères (haven't seen, don't want to, can you guess why?)
◦War Witch (not a spoiler: young girl is forced by guerrilla soldiers to kill her parents in the first 5 minutes. Child soldiers. Had enough yet?)
◦Welcome to Me (Kristen Wiig quasi-comedy that wastes the talents of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joan Cusack, & many others. Supposedly about Borderline Personality Disorder, but didn't show any of the scary violence that is often associated with it, though this doesn't mean it's fun, either. "Kooky," but overall a bummer.)

TV:

◦Spiral (French title: Engrenages) (another pit of joy I tried to watch because it was expiring on Netflix and they told me I'd like it; can't say it's bad, but wish I hadn't watched it. There are better ways to learn French.)


More depressing stuff: Read Part 2 here.
And here's Part 3.
And Part 4! Are you depressed yet?!
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11

As always, I welcome your suggestions for More Depressing Shit. Please comment, and I'll include any good suggestions in a future update.

What would Steve Jobs or Napoleon say about Amazon's workplace culture?

Our new book is called Napoleon Never Slept: How Great Leaders Leverage Social Energy, and has to do with the fact that great leaders get to be successful at least partly because they have so much energy. Did Napoleon really not sleep? Evidently, not much. Does this mean workers shouldn't sleep, and work night and day like Amazon employees reportedly do? Not exactly.
   Our big thesis is about how great leaders, including Napoleon, Steve Jobs, Alexander the Great, and others, are energetic people (many of whom, like Napoleon, happen to sleep considerably less than 8 hours a night) who energize the people they lead, and are in turn further energized by own successes and by the energy shared by the people they lead. So no, sleeping less in and of itself isn't the secret to great success, either individually or as an organization.
   But seriously, folks, read the book. Not just because we want you to buy it, but because our thesis can't be neatly or fully conveyed in a soundbite or even in a single blog post. This is real social science, though it makes for not a very long book, and we tried to make it easy enough for the layperson who doesn't like jargon, without talking down to anyone. Suitable for pro scholars and non- alike.

UPDATE, 9/4/15
   You can buy a pretty, soothing-to-the-eyes PDF at the Maren Ink site for about $14, or a nice new Kindle edition on Amazon for nearly $40. More formats and outlets may be available eventually, depending on demand.

Cartoon credit: Rob Rogers, August 22, 2015, http://www.dailyfunnies.us

Too long for Twitter

Just realized someday I could be one of those old people who has a caretaker and we form an enchanting special friendship which is so unlikely because we're such different people but I make them laugh because I'm a very special old person and we both learn a lot about life.

How did I know gun peeps would demand guns in church?

My lyrics are weirdly prescient about world events sometimes. Here, my fake outrage about not being able to bring guns to places of worship, pre-echoing the fun NRA guy's assertion that the shooting in Charleston could have been prevented if only those dang liberals hadn't opposed letting peeps carry guns in church...

We released the album that includes this song in February 2014.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, here's a link to an article re the NRA board member's comments:
NRA Board Member Blames Church Pastor For Charleston Shooting

Am I capitalizing on tragedy? Well, I don't see myself making money on this, so in that sense, no.
But maybe peeps should listen to my songs & worry more abut the world around them! I worry, why not you?! Look at all the good it does me! AAAAAAAAAGH!

On September 3, 2001, my old band released the song "The AttaQ" to the world via our first show. It contained these lyrics:

We did it for Allah

The white place down...

White place, falling down...
and I'm prepared to meet the man upstairs...
I'm almost there, I'm almost there

[accompanied by a sound like a plane flying]

Um, yeah. Also, I've put curses on people via song before (intentionally? un-? maybe not consciously...).

As for if this power is worth money, you tell me, world. Hint hint.

P.S. I'm fine with people having guns under certain conditions-- like the condition of not being a terrorist.

Our new book on energy & success: Napoleon Never Slept

Click to get it HERE.

"What do Steve Jobs, Sam Walton, Napoleon, and Alexander the Great have in common? How to generate emotional energy in oneself and others." It's real sociology, so it's more than a cut above the herd of success-ology books out there.

Yes, my Dad/co-author and I have been working on this for over a year. Didn't think I had it in me, did you?!

We're publishing this first just as an ebook, though we'll have a print version available soon.

Go get your success, darlings.

Movie review! "Girl Slaves of Morgana Le Fay"

Why is this labeled "Horror"? Nothing scary, no blood, very little of anything except molasses-slow softcore scenes. I guess if you have anything even remotely witch-related, it must be "Horror." And Netflix often does a good job of predicting what I'll like, but the algorithm must have been sick that day, because, well, No. I like many foreign films, and I love a lot of horror, but this is just a lot of pretty women with nice hair cooing at each other. I want my imaginary money back.

P.S. The "dwarf" they promised isn't even.

Dear Anti-Vaxxers,

The air you breathe is full of pollutants!

Water is the number one cause of drowning!

And smoke detectors make a beeping sound that will alarm you!

So you'd better avoid all those things.

Sincerely,

Me

Stories SO short...

...I almost feel silly posting them on here, that's how short some of my "stories" are. So I'm starting to post some of them on my tumblr, because they are just SO short. There might be non-stories there, too, so watch your feet and hands, don't want to lose any little fingers.

Feel free to visit...
I'll Be Popular When I'm Dead 

Yes, boy, ma'am

"That's just how little of anything there is."
"Good. Now go away."
"Boy, will I ever!" (twirls cap on finger while speeding hence)

Ducks Unreal

"I cared until I found out they weren't real ducks."
"Yes, that's usually a hard blow to weather. Are you going to be OK?"
"Couldn't say. Too soon to know."
"Time will tell."

Make Your Own "Holy" "Water"!

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Your-Own-Holy-Water

Is there anything that li'l old internet can't do?

Depressing Stuff #11-- Depressing Shit *Lite*

I recommend you see part 1 of my Depressing Shit series and read my original disclaimer here; now here's installment 11.


Just a lite version this time, because it's about time and you need to know what to avoid before it's too late.


movies:
All the Light In The Sky (haven't seen it, but the description is depressing enough.)
The Wolf of Wall Street (have seen it; depressing as hell.)

songs:
"In The Ghetto" by whoever

More depressing stuff: Read Part 2 here.
And here's Part 3.
And Part 4! Are you depressed yet?!
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10 

And as always, I welcome your suggestions for More Depressing Shit. Do comment, and I'll include any good suggestions in a future update.