Nostalgia - Oh how the ghost of you clings...

I have a half-terabyte hard drive. I use it to store handycam movies and other large files among other things. One of the things I have been doing in an attempt to simplify my life is offloading all my video files onto it; so far it's working marvelously. I have an entire binder full of CD's, DVDs, and double layer DVDs even, all flipped over shiny side up to show I've transferred them over, and whenI'm done with my storage project, I'm going to give them away or find some constructive use for them.

And then I'm gong to try really hard to Never. Buy. Another. Blank DVD. Again.

I'll get to my nostalgic point in a second. I thought it was the primary focus for today's piece, but I feel a rant coming on, so I'm slapping my inner elbow hard a few times to get that heroin junkie feeling going. Beware....

See, here's the thing. It's great that we can buy cheap DVDs now. Buy 'em up by the spindle, they're so cheap! A hundred at a time!

Now, granted: the more available a medium is, the longer it has been around, the easier it is to duplicate, the cheaper it gets. DVDs are dead cheap, and you can buy a hundred of them for $27.00. Canadian, even. That's, like, $25 American, but you can blame that on the Bush administration. Just you see. By the way, as a completely random aside, I've been reading comics again online (it's amazing what you can find if you look hard enough) and Firestorm, one of my favorites from the 80's, has been ressurected, jacked-up, pimped-out, urbanized, and made hip. On top of which, their progressive, Democratic party senator Lorraine Reilly is starting to look increasingly like Hilary Clinton, and she's spouting anti-establishment propaganda.

Hmm...Interesting way to get the attention of a liberal-leaning vote-weak section of the population, isn't it? DC Comics interjects anti-Bush administration speeches by way of plot devices in a parallel-universe and makes the highly sympathetic and charismatic recurring lady character look like a younger, actually attractive version of the lady who's declared herself a hopeful for the upcoming presidential race.

Pretty ballsy move on the part of our friends at DC Comics. I might have expected that from Stan (The Man!) Lee, but this was a reall bucket of cold water in the face.

Hey, funnier thing. I just did a random search on "Clinton" and "Lorraine Reilly", which is the name of the aforementioned anti-Bush senator, and found this. Scroll down to the bit that starts with "Firestorm Is Shriiiiiiiill " and you'll see the reference (fyi, it's in French). So I'm not just imagining things, someone else has seen it too. And that means that there's a buttload of other folks who haven't bothered blogging about it but have just tucked it away into their subconscious in the meantime.

Here's a quick picture I found of them both, one from the comic, and one from Hilary-ious real life.



The picture on the right is from a 2001 address to the graduating class at Yale university. DC even kept the earring in. Shameless, I love it.

I want to transcribe her words to the youth of America. I'm pretty impressed with the message, and I think it's fantastic that DC decided to express itself this way:

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"When my father was young, they had a saying; "Never trust anyone over thirty. It sounds silly, but it was avery serious response to the times. Back then, a group of older men had a stranglehold on the federal government. They were deeply entrenched and very powerful. So my father, and his brave friends, moved heaven and earth -- and forced them out. And then, somewhere along the line, my father's people thought: "We've won. The old men are dead and gone."

Ladies and gentlemen, they were wrong. Today a new group of men controls all branches of the federal government. Men of power. And just as their predecessors did, some thirty years ago, they treat us like children.

They lie to us about weapons of mass destruction. They run crucial government agencies with shameless cronyism, then watch as our cities flood and die.

They preach morality while they steal our jobs and bankrupt out future -- all the while grabbing more money for themselves.

And when we speak up, when you, the people, raise their voices just slightly, asking them to explain some obvious lie -- what do they say?

'Trust us. Trust Daddy.'

Well...I don't trust them anymore. I trust you. I know that the politics of hope can triumph over the politics of fear. And I know with all my heart that we will win our country back...TOGETHER."

---

Damn, that's one fine speech. And now that I look at the Lorraine Reilly charater, she's more of a cross between Hilary Clinton and Princess Diana (yowza!). There's some fiiine manipulation going on in that bit of wordsmithing. There's tugging at heart-strings and patriotism (you, the people... oh YEAH baby...that's hitting them in the stars and stripes) and a poke at a few notable Bush administration cockups. Very nice. And a good clean finish, wish a subtle call to action telling the comic wielding youth of America (which, by the way, has a substantial representation in the voting-age apathetic absentee voter crowd).

I never thought that comic books could have a political agenda, but this blows me away. And I love it. I can hardly wait to see whether there's any impact, or whether there's other signs of this sort of thing out there. Please, please, please, feed my conspiracy theory! I'd love that!

But this whole spiel is a random aside, because I really wanted to tell you about the economics of never buying another DVD again.

Look, I think I've just upstaged myself, that'll have to wait.

I have to go and be a bastard somewhere. You wait here, I'll be back in a bit.