Netflix: What The Fuck, Man?

In discussing my twelve-year marriage, I referred to it as “The best decision I ever made” and “nothing can derail us but for an external force.”  So it’s kind of funny to look over at NetFlix and see a separation that appears to be the result of bad decisions and derailings a-plenty.
If you’re not familiar with Netflix’s new separation announcement into NetFlix and Qwikster and Chapter 13, I think Blergeatkitty sums up my initial reaction pretty damned well.  Why the fuck is splitting into two separate companies somehow better?
One suspects that Netflix is not quite as dumb as this, or at least one hopes; I know the movie companies (who hate this “intarwebz” thing and are doing their damndest to destroy any legal usage of it) are all pissy at Netflix for being better at it than they are, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all to discover that there was some complex set of hidden pressures that’s forcing Netflix to separate into two companies or subtly have their business model destroyed.
But if that’s the case, then Netflix can never say anything about it, because in the end when they moved to streaming video, they became dependent on the good will of the movie studios.  When they were sending out physical DVDs, they could say, “Yeah, Starz, go fuck yourselves.  See that?  We’re buying 10,000 of your DVDs through Ingram, so take your profit and eat a big one.”  Now they have to cultivate relationships to ask, “Please, sir, may I stream the latest Michael Bay movie today?” and the movie companies can tell them to eat a big one themselves.
That means whatever elephant dung they get handed by the studios, they have to smile and pretend it’s candy.  And never mention how badly they’re screwing themselves.  Kind of like Apple and iTunes.
It’s a weird business model, one that none of us fully understands (and, one suspects, neither does NetFlix themselves).  There were probably some rather heated behind-the-scenes meetings that I’d love to hear, because this separation of business models can’t be easy, and they must have been forced into by something.  Lord knows what.
In the meantime, a Tweet from Wonderella sums it up for me: I just got an email from Netflix’s CEO telling me to – and I’m paraphrasing – “Please start torrenting.”
Your predictions as to how long NetFlix lasts start…. Now.

A Sleepy Monday

Just as an FYI, I planned to post a clarification/retraction of some of my statements in my Gay In YA post this morning – but a) I was up until 5:30 last night importing the new Magic set (stupid double-faced cards), and b) when I make an error in terms of how I present an issue so that the essay doesn’t truly reflect where I stand, I’m doubly cautious when it comes to clarifying.  So that’ll be later in the week when I recover.
Also, if I’m going to make one post today, it’s going to be referencing the fact that it’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day – which, to those paying attention, means that it’s my anniversary!  I never really thought I’d be married at all, so to be married for a dozen years is somewhat amazing.
When you’re married and get divorced, you get differing reactions from people based on how long it took you to separate.  If you get divorced in the first year, well, you just didn’t think it through.  Two to five years, and you were too fundamentally incompatible on some level to make it work in the long run – but you gave it a rum go.  Five to ten years, and people chalk it up to the usual combinations of neglect and differing goals.
At twelve years, it amuses me to note that I’m now approaching the stage of marriage where if Gini and I separated – which we’re in zero danger of – the public reaction would be that something had to have happened.  An affair.  An untreated psychosis.  Meteorites. Something.  We’ve been together for long enough that we’ve become an institution, and nothing can derail us but for an external force.
I often refer to Gini as “The best decision I ever made.” She’s the smartest, funniest, and sexiest woman I know.  If I ever give the illusion that I have any wisdom, grace, or charm, understand that a significant portion of that is my wife, quietly bolstering me up behind the scenes.  She’s amazing, she’s led me to a much happier place in life, she bears with me when that black dog depression comes biting, and I literally could not ask for a better partner.
I love you, sweetie. Twelve more YARRRS.

Teh Gay In YA

As a general rule, wait two days after reading an inflammatory blog-post before commenting or retweeting. The Internet moves with rattlesnake speed, but without the accuracy.  Wrong things can be said, and take deep root.
For example, the Gay In YA discussion.
For those of you not in the know, there was an article on Publishers’ Weekly that said that two authors had been rejected by an agent because they refused to remove the gay characters from their YA novel.  Now, I’m not saying that couldn’t happen – but what struck me about the response from every YA author I knew who posted about it was “This has never happened to me ever, but if it did, then I’d take my book elsewhere.”  Which made me wonder.  I mean, these were the YA writers, and if they weren’t seeing this pressure, then shouldn’t we be seeing not just one, but crowds of YA authors rising up and saying, “Yes!  This happened to me!”
So I was wondering how prevalent it was.  In fact, my scheduled essay for tomorrow was going to be that very question… When the agents in question responded that it isn’t true, that the novel a) had too many viewpoints that weren’t carrying their weight (and five different viewpoints does seem like a lot for a YA novel), and so they wanted to cut two characters, one of whom was gay and apparently underwritten; and b) they wanted to make it a younger book, which would cut the romance entirely, hetero or homo.
(And I have to appreciate their stance, which is “Even though we didn’t do this, the whole ‘who publishes gay books?’ is an important question and needs to be asked.”)
Now, you can question whether an agent should request such large-scale changes – I think they should, they’re the women who know about selling books – but given that there was more “That’s dreadful! Thank God nobody’s ever asked me to do that!”s than “I too got my book de-gayed!”, I think the publishers are willing to publish YA with gay on the whole.   (Though it may be that gay YA books get rejected for subtler reasons, in much the same way that nobody’s ever not given a job because they’re black – it’s always the wrong qualifications, or just a poor interview.)
What I do point you to is Malinda Lo’s most excellent post on LGBT YA stats, which breaks gay characters down by publisher and by number.  The end result of some excellent number-crunching?  Less than 1% of YA books have LGBT characters.  Now, I’ve never bought that stat that one out of ten people are gay, which seems ridiculously inflated, but my experience runs truer to the stats that between 2 and 5% of all people are gay.  Which means that LGBT characters are riotously underrepresented.
So I exhort you, if you are a YA writer: write more LGBT characters.  Put them in your books.  They exist, and adolescents who are gay need to be reminded of that.  At a time when any difference feels as sharp as a knife cut, when a pimple can make you feel like such a freak that you can’t bear to go outside, having a book that tells you, “People like you exist, and you’re normal, and you can be happy” is a goddamned lifeline.
This isn’t just about honesty in literature, though it’s partially about that.  It’s about doing the right thing.  These teenagers need your help, and if you’re friendly and in a position to write where they can hear you, then I urge you to do so.
It’s all too easy for straight writers – of which I am one – to forget about these other sexualities and create rubber-stamped worlds where everyone has the same urges that they do.  But writing about other sexualities, other races, other disabilities makes you a better writer.  It stretches your imagination, forces you to do some research, makes you look at the world in new ways.  And when you’re done, you not only have a better story, but a better toolchest to work from in the future.
So if you can… Do.  Please.  It’s worth it.
 
 
 

The 9/11 Anniversary Issue

Newsweek has a two-page spread showing all of the al-Qaida terorists we’ve killed since 9/11.  I guess it’s supposed to make us feel like we’re making progress, but me?  All I can think of is, “Gosh, we’ve sure killed a lot of people in our attempts to keep ourselves safe.”  And then I think how many of those people have been replaced, and it just depresses me.
I mean, al-Qaida is definitely weakened.  That’s good.  But holy shit, we’ve had to massacre swathes of people to do it.  I can’t really take pride in that.
Also, in that same issue, it’s pretty clear that when Obama made the call to get bin Laden, the odds were only about 50/50 that bin Laden was there.  If he’d been wrong, we would have pissed off Pakistan mightily, probably gotten some soldiers killed for no reason, and had a military fiasco to possibly rival Carter’s Iran hostages debacle.  So give the Prez credit; he made a tough damn call, and made it right.
(And yes, despite the previous section, I can still feel glad that bin Laden is dead. I am vast, I contain multitudes.)

In Which I Do The Dangerous Thing…

…and disagree with my wife.  (Which I do, you know.  On a regular basis.  I assure you, we’re not connected with a web of neural impulses.)
Let’s have Ron Paul, that ever-happy Libertarian who even Fox doesn’t want to acknowledge, talking about what happens when a thirty-year-old man gets sick:

Watching this video-meme spread across my Facebook, what I saw was this:
“The Tea party is okay with the poor dying in the street…”
“He said that the uninsured who get sick should die because they made a choice to be uninsured….”
“Screw ’em if they’re too poor to have insurance.” (That would be my wife.)
Except, you know, that’s not what he was asked, or even how he responded.  What was asked was this:
“Lemme ask you this hypothetical question: a healthy, thirty-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna spend $200 or $300 a month on health insurance cause I’m healthy, I don’t need it.’  But something terrible happens, and all of a sudden, he needs it.”
That is not a poor person.  That’s a person who could clearly afford insurance, and chose to spend his money on something else.  (Before you growl, “He chose to spend his money on peanut butter to feed his starving children!” note the “makes a good living” in the question’s supposition.)  And that’s someone who’s made a dumb fucking decision, and now it’s going to bite him in the ass.
That’s a much tougher judgment call.  I mean, what are we rewarding then?  Yes, it’s compassionate to save this doofus who went, “Well, I’m never gonna die, so I’m not going to bother to plan ahead” – but what about all the other people who actually have put in their insurance to, you know, do the right thing?
You can hate me, but in this tremendously loaded question – which assumes that we know the state of America’s insurance, and that we have a mysteriously well-off man who decides to fritter away his cash on other investments to save money – we should seriously consider letting him die.  Dude, if a guy knows the hammer could fall and lives his life as if everyone around him should catch him when he trips, then why should anyone be responsible?  Why don’t we all just lose our damn minds and pay zero until hey, it’s cancer time?
This isn’t like, say, the housing market, where banks and scummy middle-men lied to poor people and told them that hey, this house will cost you $400 a month forever, don’t read the contract, trust me.  (And don’t fucking tell me that they weren’t lied to; my wife’s a bankruptcy lawyer, cleaning this shit up.  These uneducated people were fed lines of bullshit until their back teeth squeaked.)
This is America, where there isn’t a single person over the age of twenty who doesn’t know how expensive medical bills can get and how badly we fuck over sick, poor people.  You have no excuse.  If you can purchase insurance, and you decide to slide by without, well, maybe letting you collapse into your own stupidity is going to clean up the gene pool a little.
But that question is also bullshit.
Because the healthy thirty-year-old who can but doesn’t is pretty goddamned rare.  This is a softball question, because he should have asked uglier questions like:

• Let’s say a healthy thirty-year-old guy has cheap insurance at his workplace, and gets dreadfully sick.  The insurance company says his condition is pre-existing, though there’s no real evidence for that, and decides to do the insurance company shuffle of “Let’s deny claims until he dies.”  What laws do you suggest to fix this problem?
• Let’s say a healthy thirty-year-old woman contracts AIDS through an act of rape.  She now has a pre-existing condition, and no insurance company will cover her, trapping her in a job that can now abuse her as they see fit because her life literally depends on their good will.  What do you suggest she does? No, seriously.
• Let’s say a healthy thirty-year-old man wants to start up a competitive start-up, but finds that he can’t get good workers because the insurance costs for small businesses are too expensive and don’t cover enough.  Given that this issue is stifling technological innovation, who do you choose to side with – the insurance companies or small business?

The problem, of course, is that if we go with the dreaded S-word and acknowledge that maybe health care should be a fundamental right – not for moral reasons, but because it’s something that’s ultimately good for business, stripping our GNP of this useless health care boondoggle we’ve been sold – then suddenly we have to get honest about “Who should be allowed to die?” and stop pretending that it’s just the unworthy who suffer.
As it is, the Tea Party’s shouting, “YES!” not because they want everyone to die – but because the answer to this narrow, tilted question is self-evident to them. You’ve set it up so that a short-sighted idiot is finally falling to the consequences of his poor decisions.
Ask them better questions – ones more complex, closer to the truth on the ground, a lot harder to answer. The problem with this is not that the Tea Party wants people to die, but rather that we ask questions that makes it seem like the uninsured and the sick are just lazy bums, and we let them get away with this bullshit illusion.
Don’t play to their fantasies.  As a health care professional, Mr. Paul, you should know better.  And I believe you do know better.