It’s All Natural – Arsenic

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Dec 4, 2017 in Blog Posts, It's Just Business | 0 comments

If you have stuck around this long, you obviously know my feelings towards business and marketing terms.  So, if you are surprised here – that’s on you.  There are laws in place to protect a consumer from being taken advantage by false advertising.  But there are various ways to avoid breeching those laws… like creating a product called: “REAL CHEESE!”.  Now if you are super sneaky, you can call the new product (created from pure chemicals and formulated in a lab) “NATURAL REAL CHEESE!”.  As a product, and having it trademarked, you can do whatever you want with the term.  Derived from soy beans and decomposing plant farts, doesn’t matter, the product is still “NATURAL REAL CHEESE!” and it can be sold as vegan!  Imagine that, a cheese product that is vegan.  Then there is the vegetarian option: “NATURAL REAL CHEESE!!” that is made from human farts, soy beans, and goat urine – yummmmmy!

My point is quite simple, though I meandered from my original topic, and that is anything can be called natural.  In the above case, I can use law to generate an appealing product by naming it one thing even if it is creating from human shit.  By creating a legal name for the product, I force you to only look at the surface level and see: real cheese.  Not only that, I throw in natural to make you think that it was derived from a natural process like fermentation.  This isn’t the case, the process is manufacturing, but the ingredients are natural.

However, the clear issue is the concept of natural.  Everything is natural.  But I can promise you would have certain feelings to the difference between a strawberry from the side of a mountain versus one grown in a test tube – yet both are natural (since atoms/elements/quarks are all natural).

Hard Determinism and Ethics

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Nov 26, 2017 in Blog Posts, Philosophical Diatribe | 0 comments

Apparently, I decided to write a single philosophical piece about a meme (The Stars and Planets Will Affect Your Life in Some Way) and it snowballed into a bunch of smaller pieces to explain certain pieces that I discussed in the aforementioned piece.  For example, I discuss how planets will affect your life in many ways based on quantum mechanics.  Before I get into the ethical issues for hard determinism, I figured we should go through a primer on quantum mechanics and how you have zero free will but perceive that you have free will.  This is the same type of argument one would discuss if someone believed God was all knowing, all powerful, and all moral; God knows everything so nothing you do is a surprise to God, so you don’t have freewill, it is all pre-determined, but you don’t know that so you don’t realize you lack free will and instead perceive that you are free. (I got wordy, so I added a [Read More] link so you can choose to continue reading or not)

The Wonderful Musician

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Nov 18, 2017 in Blog Posts, Project Grimm | 0 comments

“Oh, musician,” replied the little hare, “I will obey you as a scholar obeys his master.” They went a part of the way together until they came to an open space in the forest, where stood an aspen tree.  The musician tied a long string round the little hare’s neck, the other end of which he fastened to the tree.

“Now briskly, little hare, run twenty times around the tree!” cried the musician, and the little hare obeyed, and when it had run around twenty times, it had twisted the string twenty times around the trunk of the tree, and the little hare was caught, and let it pull and tug as it liked, it only made the string cut into its tender neck. “Wait there till I come back, ” said the musician and went onwards.

~Brothers Grimm

Fuck the musician.  This piece of shit is a total asshole who took advantage of the woodland creatures because of his laziness.  Listen to this shit: “‘Why, a hare is coming,’ said the musician, ‘I do not want him.'” Three animals appeared and wanted help (wolf, fox, and finally, the hare) learning the fiddle.  Something the musician wanted to teach, but him being a bigoted asshole, he only wanted to teach humans.  Now, I know I am reading this shit from the perspective of our current time, but I can only imagine that the original moral here was: don’t play with wild creatures, you have no idea what they want (since wolves and foxes probably killed kids often).  But reading it now, I have gotten a whole new moral analysis.  [Click “Read More” for my modern take]

The Stars and Planets Will Affect Your Life in Some Way

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Nov 8, 2017 in Blog Posts, Philosophical Diatribe | 0 comments

While strolling through the world wide web, I came across one of these meme thingamobobs where it listed all the zodiac signs and then their horoscope.  For each zodiac, it stated: “The Stars and Planets Will not Affect Your Life in Any Way”.  Now, the question you are probably asking is if Theodore is a believer.  Some of you no doubt believe in horoscopes and some of you hate them and consider them a plague upon the rational enlightened mind of the homo homo sapien.  Or perhaps it is something different, like that person I met who believed pink quartz had healing capabilities and was fixing their ailment; this thought had spread from their significant other.  If you have to ask where I land on this topic, I highly suggest you review my marinade recipe rant: Marinade or Cancer Cure. However, I am not on the side of this meme because they failed linguistically.  Blatantly put: they are wrong and their meme is a lie.  You want to know how I can say that so confidently? Click [Read More] and I will take you through a philosophical journey.

The Man in the High Castle – Not the Book by PKD

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Nov 2, 2017 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

I recently heard about a man who has locked himself in a castle (large mansion that is nicknamed the castle).  He doesn’t have visitors often and is mostly there to maintain the place and enforce the rules.  It is an isolation job where he doesn’t see anyone for many days throughout the week.  When he does have an interaction with someone, it is usually brief and him discussing what he does.

Now, I know that I am an extrovert and introvert blend, and because of that, I need to see humans on a regular basis.  I need to see the way they tick and move.  All these observations go into creating mannerisms for characters, speech patterns, and all of that fun jazz that makes a character three dimensional/realistic.  Obviously, I make some stuff up, but I often listen to the world around me and pull from there.  This blog post is developed from this approach and a conversation with a neighbor.

So, the man in the castle confused me.  His goal is to write a screen play for a movie.  That’s why he took the job in the mansion – he needs the isolation to work on his product.  Now, when I write I am capable of doing it in a coffee shop (only for short stints, I am actually writing this blog in a coffee shop right now) or with pure silence/instrumental music (if a neighbor is being loud).  So I do understand the benefit of being in your home, by yourself, with silence, and how it makes writing easier.  If I could have a pure silence chamber, I would write exclusively in there.

Yet, when I am writing, I am usually writing or creating something that comes from a semblance of reality.  The concept of existing in a bubble, in a castle, and writing a screen play (unless it is about living an isolated life and the incurring psychological damage you receive) doesn’t seem possible to me.  Where is the material coming from, the ideas, the human characteristics?  Then again, everyone is different and I am especially adept at knowing the environments I need to be productive.  Perhaps, his is isolation allows his thoughts to hammer on his brain box until something squeaks out his hands.

All I know is I couldn’t do it.

The Good Bargain

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Oct 26, 2017 in Project Grimm | 0 comments

“What,” cried the peasant, quite angry, “since you are determined to know better than I, count it yourselves,” and threw all the money into the water to them.  He stood still and wanted to wait until they were done and had brought him his own again, but the frogs maintained their opinion and cried continually, “aik, aik, aik, aik,” and besides that, did not throw the money out again.  He still waited a long while until evening came and he was forced to go home.  Then he abused the frogs and cried, “You water-splashers, you thick-eads, you google-eyes, you have great mouths and can screech till you hurt one’s ears, but you cannot count seven talers!  Do you think I’m going to stand here till you get done?” And with that he went away, but the frogs still cried, “aik, aik, aik, aik,” after him till he went home quite angry.

~Brothers Grimm

In my previous post for Project Grimm (Faithful John), I discussed the potential mistake I made by starting this project.  Based on my notes, I had originally planned on discussing The Good Bargain from the perspective of the Peasant being a villain and no one being a good guy.  This is pretty easy to run with because the Peasant constantly blames everyone else for his failures, ignorance helps him stumble through countless obstacles, and those around him are punished for his foolishness.  At the root of this piece is a dude who is not very bright, believes animals can talk (gives them his food and money), insults a king, gets tricked into giving a two people his reward (which isn’t a reward, but rather 250 lashings, gets the king to laugh, and then gets some real gold.  He is a bubbling boob who ends up earning a treasure through sheer stupidity.  1/7 not recommended. [Click “Read More” for more of my rant]

How I Go On…

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Oct 20, 2017 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

I realize that someone looked at the Emoji Movie script and said: “How much do you need?  This will be brilliant.”  Then, somehow, a bunch of actors – T.J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Patrick Stewart, Sean Hayes – looked at the script, read it, and said: “I’m in!”  So… if the Emoji Movie can be birthed into this world and be marketed, I think I will be just fine.

But that ignorance is obliterated when, being an idiot and curious, I searched and learned that the movie had an estimated budget of ~50 million dollars… and made over 200 million in gross revenue.  At which point, I begin to doubt the universe and my future.