Have I Become a Watch Snob?

Sometimes, people who hate Rolex are referred to as as snobs.

I've never thought of myself as a watch snob -- for example, I completely agree with a lot of both the negative AND the positive things which are said about Invicta (negative: their marketing strategy of giving their watches MSRP's 4 times what they intend to sell the watch for, and then pretending that, TODAY ONLY, they're offering an incredible deal, when it's the everyday deal; and using way too much gold plating. 

 

Positive: making some watches which actually function pretty well, and drawing the attention of a lot of first-time watch owners to a wonderful hobby)  -- but it's very hard for me to imagine myself ever wearing a Rolex. I would much rather be seen wearing the garish Invicta in that photo. 

As loyal readers of this blog know, this represents a complete change from 5 years ago, when I lusted after the platinum Rolex Daytona. What happened in those 5 years? I've learned a lot about watches. I know Rolexes are good watches, but today, they're overpriced to the point where it seems to me that you either have not know very much about watches, or ignore a lot of what you know, in order to shell out that much for a Rolex, when you can always, ALWAYS get a far superior watch for the same money. I just can't separate my reaction to the marketing and the prices from my reaction to the actual watches.

If that means I'm a watch snob, well then, I supposed I've become a watch snob. Even though my annual income is less than the average selling price for an entry-level Rolex, which is much, much higher than the MSRP for that Rolex. 

I personally don't think it's snobbery, it's actually concern about people being ripped off, and people investing in a risky bubble -- assuming that the Rolex bubble actually will burst at some point. And of course, it's POSSIBLE that it actually will NEVER burst. Financial bubbles, by defintion, are built on irrationality, and irrationality has never run to a sensible timetable.

Wonderful, Wonderful Dancers

Jane's Addiction's video of "Jane Says" splices shots from several performances together. In addition to the band, there are several gorgeous and very talented female dancers onstage. Starting at around 3:49 there is a shot of some of the dancers, a couple of seconds which just overpowered me. After examining those two seconds of video over and over, I can see that they merely show some of the dancers lying on their backs, one in front of the other from the point of view of the camera, and raising their limbs up and down. But this simple thing is danced and photographed so well that it is truly magic.

Also after watching those two seconds' worth of video over and over, It struck me that the dancing seems somewhat similar to some of the dancing featured early on in the movie Ocean's Eleven, when Brad Pitt's character Rusty is in a nightclub trying to teach movie stars to play poker, and there are dancers, male and female, in a couple of glass cubicles visible over the bar, and also visible in the backroom where the movie stars are playing hopelessly bad poker. 

I only first noticed the "Jane Says" video a few months ago. I first saw Ocean's Eleven shortly after it was released in 2001. There's a scene where Rusty is at the bar in that club. The bartender, apparently aware that Rusty is hanging out with movie stars back there in the backroom, asks him how it's going, Rusty replies that it's very boring, the bartender asks him to repeat himself, and Rusty says, louder, "I'm running away with your wife." The silly grin on the bartender's face doesn't change, apparently he still hasn't heard what Rusty is saying. 

In that same short scene at the bar, the song "The Projects" by the group Handsome Boy Modeling School is heard, with someone rapping the words "My wife sleeps peacefully." And one of the dancers, who looks as if she might be Jennifer Anniston, but I can't tell for sure because her hair is hanging down over her face, is on screen for maybe less than two seconds, but she's shaking in a glorious way that Jennifer Anniston and very few other people can do, and that shot is followed by a shot of Rusty staring as if one or more of the dancers has his full attention. 

Ocean's Eleven was released in 2001. Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston were married from 2000 to 2005. That "Jane says" video was released in 1997. So my questions are: are any of those dancers in both the music video and movie? If not, did any of the dancers and/or their choreographers influence each other? Was that really Jennifer Anniston in an uncredited cameo? And if so, was the word "wife" tossed in twice to give attentive viewers such as myself a hint that they might be right, that it was Anniston? Were Pitt and Anniston on their honeymoon at the time the nightclub scene was filmed? Am I the greatest, most subtle film critic of them all?

None of these dancers, neither in the music video nor in the movie, are in the credits. Kelly Adkins, who is in the credits as "Dancer," is the showgirl in a nurse's outfit who gives a security guard a private dance at the Bellagio in order to borrow his pass. It would be entirely unfair to Kelly Adkins to finish this post without mentioning her. 

And now, if you've read this entire post, you have a much better idea of what I think about all day every day than you did a few paragraphs ago.

Facing my Book

Facing my boo-ooook

Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiim facing my book

Agaaaaa-aaaain

Hey won't you look

At the way that I'm facing my book?

It's the way that I'm facing my book

I invite you to all take a look

At the way that I'm facing

Myyyyyy Boooooooooooooook!

Before and After Freud: the Case of Nietzsche

Instead of succumbing to the anti-semitism of Schopenhauer, Wagner and his own sister and brother-in-law, Nietzsche regarded individual human beings who happened to be Jewish, and praised Spinoza as his great predecessor and brother-spirit, and Heine along with himself as the two greatest German poets. 

Instead of joining in in the great chorus of German nationalism with followed the unification of 1871, Nietzsche chose to live south of Germany, was an early advocate of a united Europe, and was much more meticulously critical of his native Germany than of any other land. 

When it came to sexism and militarism, however, Nietzsche did not free himself of the destructive prejudices of his time. 

 

Living just a little bit too early to benefit from the insights of Sigmund Freud, he projected his own life, where his father died when he was a young boy, leaving him dominated by his mother and older sister, into a senseless critique, in his philosophical writings, of the entire female gender, and in particular steadfastly denying that women had any place either in the ruling of a state, or in the creation of serious literature or philosophy. Making the mistake he had avoided when it came to ethnic groups, regarding people -- well, men, at least -- as individuals, he always writes of women as an homogeneous group, with no brilliant individuals worthy of his detailed attention. He does mention George Sand, but only long enough to insult her.

If you've read his books first, his letters come as a complete surprise: he's quite mild-mannered, and as polite to numerous female correspondents as can be. No hint of the sexist contempt in his books.

And when it comes to war, Nietzsche, who was too frail to be accepted as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, and saw it only as an orderly in the military hospitals, is as jingoistic as only those can be who have never fought. As with his sexist projection, the overcompensation of his glorification of war is as clear as can be to us, who have had the benefit of Freudian insights. I think Nietzsche may make a good Exhibit A if one ever debates against those who minimize the effect Freud has had on the world's collective consciousness. 

Did I Learn Anything from New Atheism?

From about 2012 to 2014, I spent a lot of online time with New Atheists and the people they argue with. I've written quite a lot about it on this blog.

When I first heard that there was a group called the New Atheists, I assumed I was one, because I am an atheist, and the time was now. 

 

But very quickly I found that I had some serious differences with the New Atheists. At first I pointed out a few things, assuming that people would be enlightened, and would thank me for the info. But that didn't happen. It happened much more often that New Atheists would assume I was a Christian, because I disagreed with them, even though I disagreed about something other than existence of God. 

In retrospect, ironically, no doubt I too prematurely assumed this and that about a lot of people with whom I disagreed on this or that religious topic.

Then for a while I feuded with the new Atheists, and constantly attempted to point out that one could be an atheist, without being anything like these guys. 

Then, finally, I figured out that I didn't have to waste any more of my time on them. I just had to stop seeking them, stop joining their Facebook groups, essentially, and it would be almost as if I had never met any of them. They could be Wrong On the Internet, and I was capable of just letting it go. And none of them would hunt me down in order to continue our disagreements.

As soon as I found the New Atheists, I found other people, whom I assumed to be Christians, who claimed that New Atheism was a religion. This claim greatly irritated me at first. Then, after a while, I realized that New Atheists do share many traits with conservative evangelical Christians, which is unsurprising inasmuch as many or perhaps actually most of them were born and raised in conservative evangelical Christian families. 

But I still resisted thinking of any form of atheism as a religion. Now I don't know. I have come to accept that the term "religion" is defined very broadly by some people.Much more broadly than I ever have. And, as I have pointed out on this blog, words mean what people use them to mean, whether you or I like that those words are being used in those ways, or not.

It is hard to express how much of a shock and a disappointment the New Atheists were to me. But in retrospect, I have to admit that I had a lot in common with them in 2012. Now, I hope, I have shed at least a few of their bad habits. 

For example, like most New Atheists, I thought of monotheistic religion as the belief in the existence of an anthropomorphized creator of the universe. Polythesim, I believed, differed in that it had multiple anthropomorphized supernatural beings. The first time someone told me the Buddhists were atheists, I assumed that if there were any atheist Buddhists, they were Doin' It Wrong, and that the Buddha and other beings were worshiped as immortal beings, much as in Hinduism.

I was wrong. Buddhism is a whole different religion than Hinduism, and I basically knew doodly-squat about it, despite having read Nietzsche.

One particularly obnoxious tendency of the New Atheists, which they share with many fundamentalist Christians, is that they regard their viewpoint concerning religion to be the most important thing in the world, and they are always sharing it with people who never asked them to. 

So did I, before I met them. Now I don't. I think it was rude of me to do so. Over and over again, in my attempts to debate with the New Atheists, I pointed out that the question of whether or not there was a God or gods could be thoroughly answered in a few seconds, which left a Hell of a lot of other things to talk about. I finally took an obvious lesson from what I myself was saying. I have become somewhat less pushy and rude, I hope, when it comes to expressing my views on religion. Especially that one particular view, on the existence of a deity or deities. Which leaves a lot of other things having to do with religion which can be discussed. 

The New Atheists sometimes also refer to themselves as the Brights. They believe that they are smarter than believers. But a lot of them are just as stupid as can be. Hopefully, after the horrible experience of spending so much time with them, I am now less likely to prematurely judge people, based on that one theistic question, or on any other over-simplifying basis.

I'm Officially Predicting: Rivian and Lucid Will NEVER Deliver

For just a moment I thought Lucid had actually beat Rivian in getting one of their vehicles into the hands of an actual customer. I saw the partial headline: "CEO Peter Rawlinson Delivers Lucid Air..." And I thought: What? Lucid is making deliveries?! And Rawlinson himself dropped off the first one in person?! That's class! (Assuming that Rawlinson then actually left and let the customer have the vehicle to him- or herself.)  

But no: The entire headline reads: "CEO Peter Rawlinson Delivers Lucid Air Production Keynote Address." 

 

Actual customer ownership of a Rivian or a Lucid remains just a dream. It'll never happen. That's right: I said: NEVER. That is my official prediction concerning when both of these companies will deliver vehicles: never. But they'll continue to make big splashy headlines on every other conceivable topic, of course... 

PS, Sep 2023: I was wrong, of course. Rivian is closing in on 6 figures of light trucks and SUV's plus who know how many bread trucks sold to Amazon and others, and Lucid makes AND SELLS very nice cars that'll do a standing 1/4 mile quicker than anything else that costs less than 7 figures.

Stop Saying "Iconic" All the Gosh-Darned Time, Watch Guys!

It's driving me up the friggin wall: watch guys saying "iconic" over and over and over and over. 

You use a word too often, it becomes meaningless. When it comes to "iconic" watches, we reached that point about 5 billion uses ago. It's time to wake up and smell the thesaurus.

Lots of people are overusing the word "iconic," but watch guys are among the worst offenders. Here are some synonyms for "iconic" : epochal. Exemplary. Quintessential. Classical. Seminal. Emblematic. Historic. Representative. Established. Esteemed. Admired. Dominant. Eminent. Acclaimed. Top-notch. Preeminent. Noteworthy. Reputable. Extolled. Big-league. Imposing. Highly regarded. Heavyweight. Premier. Glorious. Lionized. Remarkable.

You don't have to keep saying "iconic" every third sentence. You're welcome. And when you start over-using these, just do what I did: a Google search for synonyms.