One of my many quirks is the fact that I google the ending to everything – movies, books, television shows – I can not stand to wait to figure out what will happen next.  That, along with my favorite french saying “Je sais l’avenir par coeur” (via Paul Valery) illustrates what I want out of life: I want to know how it ends in intimate detail.  I want to know the future by heart.

Since you can not “know” the future, I tried to impose my Will on it.  I have a very strong Will.  I feel that I can accomplish anything and, ultimately, when I set my mind to things – they happen.  With that Will, I tried to create a scenario where I knew the future – in particular my love life.  The Will is strong and I almost made it happen.  When it didn’t, I found myself befuddled.  How could I not get what I wanted?  How could I not make something I felt such powerful passion for reality?

I was talking to Sarah today and, as per usual, her somewhat detached observational nature made me start to put into words the things that I have been feeling.  I have been reveling in the uncomfortable nature of not “knowing” the future.

That uncomfortableness made me realize a lot of things about how sometimes you can’t just get things because you want them – especially when love is involved.  For an average looking guy, I have not faced rejection that often.  I have successfully pursued many girls that were far out of my league.  And I did this with the confidence that, if I tried hard enough, nothing could stop me.   My mindset always was, as I’ve written before: I do know the future by heart, because the future resides within me.  My Will creates the future as I want it….

With love, however – it’s different.  Love shouldn’t be the powerful Will of another causing submission.  It should be the interwoven passion of two people.  Back when Sarah and I dated, she did one of the most romantic things that a woman has ever done for me.  I arrived at her house after work to a note that said, “Go to the place where we had our first date….”  I went, where I was greeted by more clues that lead me on a scavenger hunt throughout the months of our relationship.  When I finally gathered all the clues, I was directed to her place where she was there – cooking for me.  We had a nice dinner and I have never felt more loved in my life.  She illustrated her passion in me by going above and beyond.  Our passions were aligned and that lead to our relatively successful relationship.

Looking back over things, I realize that if you spend too much time trying to create the future – you never will receive the affection in return.   Over the course of years, I never did get anything in return.  There were gifts of all sizes sent to whatever location she was in – even ones that never arrive because of Italian customs.  There were password protected Posterous accounts that had pictures of every time I thought of her – a site with over 300 posts in 4 months that she never even bothered to check once.  There was so much passion and Will to make something happen that, l forgot to even see if there was passion being returned.  There wasn’t and there is really no one to blame other than myself.

So, with this introspection, I realize that I can no longer google my future to determine what will happen.  There’s no “George G Smith Jr’s future is….” blog post out there that will determine it.  No image search that will identify future lovers.  Ultimately, it’s each and every moment – filled with the horrifically beautiful “unknown.”   I think I’m finally ready to let go of the need to “know” the future and just sit back and enjoy the present…

As the weather starts to cool off, I would expect that my movie watching would start to pick up. Back in High School, my friend Brian and I watched the AFI’s top 100 movies. I’m not sure if we ever got through the entire thing, but we definitely watched the top 25. I think it might be nice to start that over again – to consume these movies with a new perspective. I’m older, sometimes wiser, and much more experienced.

District 9 is a movie about humanity – a term I use in the loosest sense of the word.  While it may be marketed and described as a sci-fi movie, the movie is, sadly, far too real.

The details are as follows: Aliens arrive on earth in South Africa.  They are ostracized and put into a slum known as District 9.  The movie takes place as the South American government is looking to move the residents of District 9 – which is in the heart of Johannesburg – to District 10, located 200 miles outside of the city.  The action of the movie is at times intense and moving.  The main plot was entertaining but it was the message behind the film that was really amazing.

The film is simply an allegory of the crimes against humanity that far too many cultures have been privy to.  You can make direct correlations to South African Apartheid, but there are allusions to Nazi Germany, the United States government treatment of Native American, and countless other forms of ethnocentrism that have plagued our species since the dawn of time.  The movie wasn’t about Aliens, it was about the humanity – or lack thereof – that exists in the human species.  Each character was a caricature of the people that make these types of behavior possible.

The ending of the movie is a revelation of storytelling.  The main character – Wikas – was stricken with an ailment that was slowly transforming him into a “prawn,” a derogatory name for the Alien creatures.  In an attempt to try to turn himself back into his human form, he helped one of the Aliens, who goes by the name Christopher, who has the knowledge to activate the ship and return the aliens to the home planet.  Wikas and Christopher take on the government – in the form of an organization called Multi-National United – and attempt to reactive the mothership.  Ultimately, they are successful and Christopher reactivates the ship and takes off – with a promise to return in 3 years.  The movie ends with Wikas – fully transformed into a “prawn” – living in District 10 and whether Christopher would return is unknown.

The movie, ultimately, ends with the audience questioning what happens next.  Does Christopher return?  If he does – will it be with an army to destroy earth for their atrocities?  Will it be simply to reclaim his people?  Ultimately, the audience is left simply with the question of, “What would you do?”  And that begins the true beauty of the movie…

For many people, the answer to that question is revenge.  Revenge is a tricky concept though.  It’s a personal thing and yet, so many of our world’s problems stems from the feeling of retaliation.  An eye for an eye is one of the oldest human mantras.  Many of our modern problems in the Middle East stem from the concept of revenge – from the personal loss of family members to the deeper seated feelings due to centuries of persecution.  The movie’s allegory causes you to feel the need for revenge which ultimately conjures up the darkness of the human spirit.  Strip away the movie’s science fiction elements and look at how humans treat each other based on imaginary lines of country, the color of one’s skin, or ideologies and you start to feel sick.  I couldn’t help but ask myself “when does revenge stop?”  The sad thing is that it doesn’t.  Nothing exists in a vacuum.  For some, a day like 9/11 was a day of reckoning – when a group of people were able to seek revenge on the Evil Empire that is the United States of America.  To us here in the US, many cries for revenge occurred because those civilian people who died needed to be avenged.  Wars raged – killing more, creating a circle of violence that we may not ever see the end of.  This is over multiple continents.  If you examine the Palestinian and Isreali coflict – you’ll see a cycle of revenge that may never see an end.  These are the thoughts that the movie inspired as the credits rolled.  It made me feel sick to be human.

Movies like this deserve to stand on their own – to let the questions it inspire stand still.  I doubt there will be a sequel – although many people take the unresolved ending to mean there would be.  I think they’re missing the point.  The point was to have all those thoughts that I had above swarm through your head.  The point was to reflect on your own humanity – including the dark parts of our souls that allow us to stand still while many of the activities that we saw in the movie are actually taking place.  To real people.  Right this second.  The movie isn’t about a plot – it’s about saying something to all of us.  It’s the first truly artistic movie I have seen in a long time.  A movie that speaks volumes without shouting it, without dumbing it down.  It’s a movie with a point – even if the point is to point out the evil that we do to each other.

I apologize for any typos in the above and/or confusing sentences.  It’s hard to really write in detail the way this movie made me feel and the countless thoughts that are running through my head.  At the end of the day, I suggest that you go see the movie.  I don’t think you’ll regret it.

So – my roommates just had a dance party/lip synching party on UStream.tv.  It was pretty funny – although an hours worth of it kind of got annoying.  It was pretty funny some of the comments that were in the chat.  This was the second UStream we’ve done recently and the anonymous chats are pretty interesting.  That, of course, lead me to start really thinking about anonymity on the web.  I know I’m not the first person to think about this topic – nor do I expect to come up with any new observations – so I won’t go into too much detail about my thoughts.  Still, it is something strange to think that people will revert to ugly behavior when they can not be identified.  The socialization of the Internet – whether through OpenID, Facebook Connect, or the next form that develops – will help alleviate some of those concerns.  You can start to see it now – with people wanting real pictures, real names, and no hidden identities on the various platforms that develop.  Hopefully this will bring about the best behavior from web citizens, but it probably won’t change everything.  And while I know the anonymous people on the UStream line were friends just teasing – these thoughts still came up.

Always Be Charging – like I wrote in the previous post – is a key to survival here at #SXSW.  Stay tuned for more video pod casts from the Pepsi Podcast Playground here at #SXSW