Daniel Dessinger

Month: February 2007

  • Is HPV the Result of Pesticide Spraying?

    Amidst the uproar over Texas Governor Rick Perry’s HPV vaccine mandate, there are rumors over the causes of the virus. While news stations including WFAA Channel 8 (Dallas/Fort Worth ABC affiliate) continue to describe the human papillomavirus as a “sexually transmitted disease” (STD), there are rumors surfacing about the true origins of HPV.

    Some sources claim that a form of HPV is actually transmitted via widespread chemtrails and/or pesticide sprayings. Toxins in the air both weaken the immune system and carry poisons which the human body will react to in various defensive ways. These sources believe that Merck & Co. is responsible for the STD revisionist history, with hopes to capture the state’s and eventually the nation’s approval for production and implementation of HPV vaccinations.

  • Hollywood Follows Comic Book Trends

    Look at the difference between 1950s and ’60s comic books and those drawn and written in the 1990s. Older comic books were more about developing story lines, while newer books even of the same title have become more and more about sensationalistic artwork. Look at Spiderman of the ’60s versus Spiderman of the ’90s. Did he ‘roid up, or what? Everything about those same comic books are newer, flashier, more muscular, and more sensational.

    The ’90s saw the advent of the full page spread, where the pencils and inks flaunted their stuff, highlighting every crease in the face or bulge in muscle. In some cases, the quality of content was surrendered to make room for bigger and better artwork. And even when the stories weren’t lost, the amount of dialogue and narration was dramatically reduced so that the readers had to spend more money on more comic books to get the same amount of story. Bigger artwork meant fewer dialogue boxes. Image Comics, like Spawn, Shadow Hawk, Youngblood, and Savage Dragon are prime examples of the excesses to which comics took their artwork, to the detriment of their storyline. The stories were there… readers just had to read twice as many issues to get anywhere with the storyline.

    Hollywood has followed the way of the comic book. Obviously, films like The Matrix prove how much directors can borrow from the comic book creating process to make a movie. Storyboards are often drawn up to look like comic book pages. But beyond the storyboards, everything in Hollywood films seems heading towards a bursting of the film making bubble. How much time in a film can you spend on special effects, cheesy one-liners, and head shots? Quite a few, if you’re making an action movie. But action movies don’t usually win awards or critical acclaim. They’re fun, sensational, and forgotten.

    The “artsy” critics shifted away from Hollywood long ago in preference to Cannes and Sundance and many other film festivals featuring very few sensational effects. These films are rich in content, focusing on emotional details or clever story telling rather than bizarre shifting camera angles.

    Comic books sales took a drastic down turn in the ’90s. Altogether, I think it was the combination of ridiculously increased prices, more space taken up by advertising, and the lack of quality narrative and dialogue. The commonly accepted value of comic books dropped drastically and new independent comic book companies cropped up to compete in a suffering market space. Hollywood’s bubble hasn’t popped just yet, but it could be coming.

    It’s hard to predict what will happen. In some senses, the general populace has been conditioned to expect less from most films. It has sadly become enough if three of four films out a year’s 30+ are of any real value.

    Thousands of comic book readers decided that sensationalism isn’t compelling enough to warrant expensive comic books. The question is: will movie watchers come to the same conclusion?

  • Dallas Fort Worth COBOL Analyst For Hire

    If your company is looking for a COBOL Programmer/Analyst, contact me at daniel-at-culturefeast-dot-com. I know someone relocating to the DFW area who is looking for a position as a full-time or contract COBOL programmer/analyst. He has 10+ years experience as an information systems analyst, and glowing recommendations from past co-workers and supervisors.

    Please send this information out to anyone you know who might be looking for COBOL programmers/analysts, and have them contact me.

  • Regretting Things You Cannot Change

    some things you cannot change
    some things you will not understand
    if you were here, if you were here
    always hoping for the best
    ignoring sharp pains in your chest…. always

    sometimes it hurts and there’s no fix
    for months or even years ahead
    what do you do when nothing works
    to ease the claustrophobia inside your head.

    sometimes it hurts someone more than you
    what can you do? what can you do?
    when the pain cannot be stopped by you
    what can you do?
    what can you do?

    sometimes you thrash and moan and cry
    when no one takes away the pain
    or when, like now, your closest one
    feels all alone like when we die.

  • Top 10 Signs You are a Starbucks Tramp

    Seven years ago, I was proud of my little independent coffee shop right down the street. But then a Starbucks moved in. Within two years, the indie shop moved to downtown. i was stuck with Starbucks, a name brand I had always associated with everything soulless and cheap about American business. That was, of course, until I saw their prices. They’re definitely not the Wal-Mart of the coffee shop industry!

    Since there was no one else, I gave Starbucks a chance. Truthfully, it was the college campus Starbucks that gave us a $70 credit that really got us hooked. Not sure how that happened, but somebody was a brand genius (bastards!).

    So it was actually the free coffee on campus that finally connected me to a brand I had no interest in. What can I say? I was poor and cheap and it was one of the most popular places to be on campus (i.e. small campus).

    It’s 2007, and I work from Starbucks on a daily basis. I spend more time at Starbucks than church. More time at Starbucks than at all my friend’s houses combined. More time at Starbucks than any other place in the universe outside of my home, and even that would be close if it weren’t for sleep time.

    Without further ado, here are the “Top 10 Signs You Are a Starbucks Tramp”:

    #10 – Every barista at Starbucks knows your name, though you’ve spent no time with them as friends.

    #9 – You actually spend time campaigning to get your deep thoughts printed on the outside of the Starbucks coffee cups.

    #8 – The employees let you pick the background music.

    #7 – You bring back lunch for the baristas on duty because they expect it.

    #6 – You visit other Starbucks locations when you need to spice up your life.

    #5 – You feel clever for ordering the Starbucks wi-fi service as an employment tax writeoff.

    #4 – You feel comfortable bringing in food from Chik-fil-A.

    #3 – You catch yourself referring to your favorite Starbucks as “The Office.”

    #2 – Baristas offer you free drinks when you look depressed (’cause let’s face it: you’ve become the store’s ambiance)

    And the #1 sign that you are a Starbucks tramp:

    #1 – You feel entitled to the padded chair when you arrive because it has your permanent butt imprint.

  • Office Cubicles are Evil

    How many people do you know that live like robots, trudging off to the office every day, to do the same thing over and over and over while trapped in their own personal 4’x4′ cell. Office Space became an instant cult classic for a reason: millions of Americans feel trapped with no way out.

    Once upon a time, corporate executives sat down and asked themselves how to orchestrate the office environment to promote productivity. First, they had to determine the obstructions to productivity and then design to prevent those horrible things. Sadly, these schmucks thought that face to face interaction with one’s coworkers and personal conversations were a bad thing, so they threw up some cheap walls and required personal conversations be restricted to the lunch hour and other scheduled break times.

    Do what? Someone actually thought this was a good idea. Of course, someone also made millions on the conveyor belt, which brought the need for specialization in a way that required one person to turn a bolt the same direction the same number of times a thousand times a day. How wonderful! Capitalism in action!

    I was part of the madness just a few years ago. I was held captive. But by the grace of God I broke free. My wife loves me so much that she insisted that I take a risk and throw myself into a full-time copywriting internship that was available. The company I interned at actually split in half within four months of my joining the team, so I didn’t actually make it on staff there, but I did get the chance to escape the evil office cubicle.

    This place occupied office space in Addison above the photography studio for a national hair salon chain. I walked through some funky, post-modern decorative art every day I went to work. Upstairs, we all sat at metallic tables with curves and cool designs. They never did finish decorating the space, but it felt like a creative think tank, not a stuffy office building. Watching cool photo shoots through the second story windows and listening to the photographers choice of alternative and pop music all day didn’t hurt, either.

    Granted, the company was pretty much a flop, but there were some redeeming qualities to the place. As I was saying to a friend of mine the other day, the goal when searching for or building a company is to find a balance of creative expression and organizational structure. The first is chaos without the second. The second is dead without the first.

  • Texas Governor in Bed with Big Pharmaceuticals

    Texas Governor Rick Perry is serious about mandating that every public school girl receive a vaccine for the Human Papillomavirus (HPV). This is the time to start worrying. Why? Every major vaccine people receive causes undesirable and even dangerous side effects. Think of several million girls in Texas all passing along some birth defect or mild retardation to their future children because they all received this experimental HPV vaccine.

    First and foremost, always be concerned when government demands that the people receive a certain type of medical treatment when said treatment can only be provided by one company. This is dangerous! Merck is the giant pharmaceutical company awarded the contract of providing all of these vaccine shots. Doesn’t that make you nervous? The question each and every one of us should be asking is: What is the government getting in return from Merck?

    Is it payday for Rick Perry? Are they going to fund his next political campaign? What money and/or power has been promised in return for this multi-million dollar business deal?

    These are questions that need to be asked because the motivations of a government and a pharmaceutical drive them to make the decisions they make. Is Rick Perry on the take? Why are thousands upon thousands of adolescent females now the guinea pigs of a “tested” vaccine which has not been tested long enough to determine long-term side effects, especially in relation to childbirth?

    Someone needs to demand answers. Don’t let Rick Perry and Merck stick a needle in your arm because they’re bigger than you.

  • 7 Reasons Why They Sell You Deadly Foods

    Unless you belong to the 1% of Americans labeled “freakishly strange” or ” for your health conscious diet, you’ve been taken for a ride by just about everyone involved in the sales and production of food. What’s the deal? How could so many companies possibly be so bad as the conspiracy theories say?

    Food product manufacturers build their companies and their profits upon a few accurate suppositions:

    1. You are most concerned with how products immediately make you feel
    2. You are not a chemist
    3. You do not know what most of the chemical ingredients are
    4. You do not know how those chemicals affect the human body
    5. You do not care, because it’s inconvenient to pay attention
    6. You do not believe that corporations could be so evil as to hurt their customers in order to make a profit
    7. You disassociate yourself from the affects of the food they eat because you don’t want to accept responsibility of finding and preparing healthy food

    Some things we know are dangerous. It’s illegal in New York to sell foods made with transfat. Most people have heard by now about the dangers of red food dye. But what about high fructose corn syrup? Or genetically modified corn? Or artificially created folic acid?

    The list goes on and on. Everything the average American eats is deadly. The ancient Greeks displayed amazing insight when they claimed, “Death begins in the colon.”

    Think about it. And ask yourself whether all those companies should make a profit off of your unwillingness to get involved.

  • A Toast to Aaron and Stacy Phillips

    As the best man in Aaron and Stacy’s wedding, I offered this toast (speech) at the wedding reception:

    “Despite the cynicism that weighs down so many men and women of our generation, I am convinced that a man and a woman can, and most definitely should, enjoy a lifetime of love in marriage. Our generation has not bought into the sugar-coated, fairy tale version of marriage sold by the media from previous generations.

    We are men and women determined to find the REAL, to live the REAL, and to grow old together still insisting upon the REAL. This marriage between Aaron and Stacy is a picture of our own lives. Aaron is the “slightly” older, worn and weary version of us. Stacy is the youth, the amazing energy, and the promise of a future the Aaron in each of us so desperately needs.

    This marriage joins man and woman, young and slightly less young. I have known Aaron for 12 or 13 years, and I have walked with him through some of his happiest mmoments in life, and also some of his most difficult. And through those 12 years of friendship, there are a few things I can say about Aaron with certainty:

    First, he values sincere communication more than most men, and he pulls off being real and sincere without seeming less masculine.

    Second, he has an uncommon sense of decorative style, which makes me wonder how he pulls this off without seeming less masculine.

    Third, he desires to be a good father, and will do anything and everything in his power to make sure his children know that they are loved.

    Fourth, he desperately needs Stacy in his life to be that wellspring of energy and vitality that draws out of him many amazing character traits which still lie dormant (everyone laughs)… I wasn’t joking (everyone laughs some more).

    Fifth, He taught me what it means to be a loyal friend. I learned from Aaron what it means to demand loyalty of oneself even when it is inconvenient.

    Lastly, he has a God-ordained calling upon his life which he may or may not have yet understood, but through his union with Stacy he will understand in time as they continue on the path set before them.

    It does my heart good to see Aaron find a woman who possesses the willingness to embrace the pursuit of the path and the life God has called them both to.

    I do not know a great many things about God. Despite my years of asking and pondering, He is still largely a mystery. But if there is one thing I can say that I know about God, it is that loving and receiving love appear to be much more important to Him than merely following a set of rules. And if there is one thing every man should know in his heart, it is that at the end of the day, a man who lets his guard down and looks his beautiful wife in the eye without emotional protection is worth ten men who perform all the right daily rituals and husbandly tasks so they can check off their “to do” lists from a safe emotional distance.

    No marriage will ever be easy. Let’s be real. Nothing on the face of this earth is more difficult than maintaining a healthy, romantic, and intimate marriage.

    But since we’re being real, let’s not forget that nothing else in our lifetime will ever possess the fragrant hope and opportunity for REAL companionship, REAL intimacy, and REAL fulfillment.

    Aaron and Stacy, if nothing else, I challenge you to demand of yourselves to be REAL. Real in pain. Real in joy. Real, even in heartache or offense. And always pursuing a fresh, new way to maintain soft and vulnerable hearts… in other words, real in love.

    May your lives be filled with this soft, scary, thrilling, unnerving, and ultimately liberating kind of love. May you find in each other the companion who captivates your heart, challenges your faith, and satisfies the God-given ache to never be alone again.

    To the bride and groom!!!!