The Matrix Trilogy As A Western planning

I just finished watching the last two Matrix movies and I realized that there are many parallels with traditional western film stereotypical scenes. The romance between the two characters Neo (which is "One" flipped around) and Trinity is much like any other romance between a man and a woman in a western film. The gun-slinging in all three of the movies was "inexorably" western, since at least 50 shots were fired before one person would get hit, and then that shot would be the greatest aimed shot ever fired from a gun. The people of Zion were like members of a small town who were getting attacked by a hoard of outlaws, which in this trilogy's case would be the Sentinels that borrow into Zion and attack it during Revolutions. Neo was a cowboy, Morpheus was a sherrif, Trinity was the Love Affair/Gunslinger Female, and the Agents inside the system (which were also the machines in the physical world) were the outlaws. With regards to the outlaws, the Smith Program would represent one outlaw that took over a larger group of outlaws, or replicated himself inside the Matrix, to become more of a threat to the main character (Neo, the "Blondie" of the Future) than any of the other outlaws (agents) until the main conflict was no longer between anybody but Neo and Agent Smith. Lastly, the largest stereotype that has been perpetuated from many Western films was that the good guy eventually won and saved the day. I would say that he would have also gotten the girl, but that happened earlier in the trilogy at the end of the first movie.

The most eye-opening thing for me today was that I saw that the western film genre was the predecessor of the action film genre. I never noticed such strong correlations between what America expects from a good action movie and what America used to get during the time when spaghetti westerns were very common. I'm going to watch the first Matrix movie tomorrow or Saturday so that I can get a closer glimpse of the rolling newspaper scene. I have already seen one in one of the other movies. If I remember correctly, it was Reloaded where I saw Neo looking down a quiet hallway in the Matrix while looking for somebody, and in the distance at the end of the hallway/alleyway, you could see a newspaper rolling along like tumble weed.


Sources:
"Neo and Agent Smith punch". Screen shot. media.collegepublisher.com.  07 Nov. 2003. 23 Apr. 2010. < http://media.collegepublisher.com/media/paper854/stills/3fabe4570c2ed-97-1.jpg > 

Plan worked out

Garrett and I talked about the project in class on Wednesday and decided that we would spend the next week watching the movies, and when we have done so (by next Wednesday), then we will share notes and talk about what we could talk about during our presentation that would convince the entire class that The Matrix Trilogy is without a doubt a western film. Another idea that came up in discussions was the fact that in western movies, the hero always gets the girl. Neo is predetermined to fall in love with Trinity by the Oracle, and Trinity states this in one of the movies (I think the first or second one?). I'll have to find that while watching them, but the movies will all take 7 hours to watch, even if I'm going non-stop, one after the other. Plus, neither of us actually own these movies. I have a friend with the second and third movies, but that still leaves me with the first. Hopefully, I can find a watchable version online. If not, then I'll rent it or something.

First talks about final project

I have nothing to tell because I haven't talked to my partner yet about the project in length. I can say this much:
 1. We have decided to use all three movies so that we have access to any scene in the Matrix Trilogy that might serve our purpose.
 2. The conflict between Neo and Agent Smith are quick draw scenes, and there are a lot of them.
I'm sure that there is more to it, but I know that I don't have the time to watch all three of the movies right now, too, so any research on this will have to wait for a while. The end of the semester is always unbelievably busy, and this semester is no exception, that's for sure...

Paper #3 Topic Idea Workthrough

While in class on Monday, many of the conversational pieces piqued my interest reasonably. I want to rant on a few of them to get my thoughts straight for this paper. After each main idea that I can come up with, I'll elaborate a bit. By expanding on these thoughts a bit, I'll be able to look and see where I have the most room for growth or where I hit a dead end.

1. The idea presented at the end of Smoke Signals of forgiving your fathers and your ancestors for the things that they may have done wrong that messed up your life is very close to me personally. I really want to write about this topic so that I can relate it to my own personal experiences with my father's alcoholism, but I shouldn't write about this topic for that very reason. The paper would be too personal and I wouldn't be able to separate good factual quotes from my own personal feelings. If I did this paper, I would have to be very careful to make sure that I relate the things that I may choose to say to the movie and to Victor's Father's problems with alcohol. If I can change the wording in a way that prevents me from coming back to alcohol without changing the idea, I might be able to come up with a stronger thesis, and ultimately, a stronger paper...

2. I would love to focus on the ancestry involved in Native American Culture and then use the history that we have learned about Native Americans with writers like Zitkala Sa and compare that to the image of the ancestors that Hollywood creates with the stereotypical, "stoic" Indians. I want to really centralize around how the concept of ancestry is important, but that the real ancestors are faded and clouded by the idealized ancestors that Native American kids like Victor from Smoke Signals imagines. I would use Sherman Alexie as an example of modern day Native Americans and their problems. I would try to reference back to Zitkala Sa for direct references of what real Native American culture was like off the reservations. I would try to say that many kids, Native American or not, believe that the stereotypical Native American man that hunted buffalo with spears and wore animal skins while dancing around a fire is really what Native American culture used to be like. I don't foresee many problems with this paper, actually. It seems solid.

By the end of writing this blog, I've decided what I want to write about, examples from texts that I could use, and what my main argument would be. I'm not going to delete the first part, though because I want my original thought process to show in my final decision. I made stronger connections with something that I already thought of and created a thesis around it that would support the stronger ideas. With this kind of pre-planning, I feel confident in advance about the quality of this assignment.

Iowa Review

At this point, Alexie is really trying to be blunt about how the white man messed up his people's home, and at this point, I don't really blame him! He admitted that the United States was the greatest country in the world (doesn't matter to me at all if he thinks that or not), but he has so many problems with it. The way he was talking about the USA being a colony was revealing. Now I can see from the perspective of the Native American. We practically invaded and formed a colony, which still persists today, despite the fact that it is self-governed. By thinking about the United States being predominately Caucasian, I feel the pressure for Native Americans. We, as white people, have largely forgotten the transgressions of our past towards the Native Americans that were here before us since it is convenient for us to forget something distasteful. It must be hard to get acknowledged by the white people in the US when the large majority of them are trying to forget you and your people. For a long time as a kid, I thought that the Native Americans were killed off and that no more of them existed anymore. The fact that that mentality was allowed to persist, gone uncorrected by my supervisors for so long, should be solid proof of this idea.

They would have been sad...the movies, that is.

The Native Americans were probably the most qualified to make a great and accurate movie about Native American life. If the Native Americans were making the movies, though, then they would actually be receiving more help for the dominant problems that they face that never seem to be in the movies. Those movies would have been sad, and the subsequent "Awww, poor Indian man" that would have been groaned all across the country from movies like this being shown would be enough to get the attentions of people that could help. For that matter, why doesn't Oprah or somebody similar do something to help the Native American population when half the stuff that they waste their money on doesn't even matter to anybody but themselves? They could make a real difference if they cared; however, I believe that is the problem. Even after Native Americans started making movies that were revealing and powerful, nobody actually did much of anything.to help the Native Americans. I didn't even know that it was a stereotype to say that Native Americans were heavy drinkers until I took this class.

Alexi's "Pheonix, Arizona"

Alexi's story about life in Arizona is cold and gritty. A cruel and real tale of life at it's bleakest, but there is one point that I want to focus on. The jack rabbit killed itself to get away from Phoenix, Arizona. Desolation and death were constant in this story, but of all things, this rabbit, being the "only living thing left in Arizona, had to die. Why did Alexi describe the jackrabbit as being the only living thing left in Arizona when there are a ton of people living there? It is most likely because all of the people are dead on the inside and are just waiting to die on the outside, too. That is definitely a strong feeling that I get when reading this.

The Cowboy

When I read the end of this story where the cowboy actually got blamed for what happened, I was a little surprised. I may not like the cowboy, but that is out of personal preference. The typical cowboy is supposed to be the hero, and you either have to be thankful/supporting of him a the end of the day, or you most likely got shot during the story. I wonder...Why was there a transition to the rejection of the cowboy in literature when the cowboy used to be the picture perfect American male with the perfect life? I think I would like to write about that in my next essay. It is a relatively simple question with a far more complicated answer that would have to be developed in an essay.

"Frayling Chases Spaghetti Westerns"

Hollywood eventually got over the Western movies that used to be so popular, and when confronted about it by Leone, many directors told him that the Western was dead. Sergio Leone "revived the genre" (NPR) by creating a brutal west in his movies where it was more often than not a kill-or-be-killed kind of story. The "Freudian Westerns" (NPR) that contained subtle psychological themes were excluded from Sergio's depiction of the memory of the American Western because he didn't like them, which I find annoying. I don't like that he made the Western genre all guns and horses and no complex motives or detailed reasoning behind why the borderline-psychotic cowboy just shot down 57 Native Americans in a desert.

In fact, the repetitive, shallow storyline in the Western movies of the time disengaged the viewers brain, and that is why I don't like to watch Western movies. The pattern of analysis and prediction that makes a great storyline so much fun to read or experience is nonexistent all too often. When there is some kind of background explanation or expressed reasoning, it's never hard to figure out, which destroys the wonderful chances that the authors would have for deeper character development. I will most likely zone out and stop actually watching the movie unless I have some other reason for watching it (Like my grades!). The Instant Hollywood Brain-Musher seems to dull the senses and can also desensitize the viewer from things like murder, theft and alcoholism, too, since you see a ton of drinking, shooting, and looting in pretty much every single Western film.

To give Leone some credit, I should definitely say that he did his homework. It was said during this podcast that his physical appearances for the people that lived in the western movies was closer to the actual photographs of the actual Western people that lived during the time than any other movie depiction thus far. Despite the typical good guy physical appearance, Leone gave his protagonists gray hats and a dirty look to neutralize their appearance and make the characters seem more believable.

Frayling Chases Spaghetti Westerns. NPR 2005. Podcast. 24 Feb. 2010.  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5506405

First Essay Ideas

I have one or two things that I may want to write about. My first thought was to talk about how old western stories frequently turn the protagonist and the antagonist appear to be superhuman, as I observed while reading "Jesse James, The Outlaw". I was going to talk about how the villain has to be larger than life and that they protagonist has to rise up to match the level of the villain to tear the villain down again and bring them to justice. This also brings up the omnipresent battle of good and evil, which would also be a great essay topic, as I could write about why the ones who were depicted to be the bad guys are all Native American and Outlaws.

A Third essay topic would be about the cowboy and how many of them are either borderline psychotic or just an actor in spurs. I don't really want to get too deep into this one right now because I don't think that I can just lump all cowboys into two groups like that and retain political correctness, but maybe with some further thought, I could make this presentable.

Handout?

I don't remember getting a handout for this blog assignment on Wednesday and Dr. Griffiths wasn't there on Friday to hand it to us. When it is either revealed that I have in fact received it already or that I have come to class and gotten a copy, I will do the blog for today. Sorry.

John Wayne Playboy Interview

After reading this interview, I feel as though I was reading about a celebrity, not a cowboy. I have a lot of personal biases about this due to bad experiences, but it truly shocked me that John Wayne was a heavy drinker. Not only that, but the man did pot and opium, too! That, more than anything, totally knocked me off my horse (pun intended >_<"). This idea that cowboys are more entertainers than heroes really reverberates here, since Playboy normally does celebrity interviews and they got one with John Wayne. They eventually got through all of the major topics that they would have gotten through while interviewing a normal celebrity, too. Things like "How do you feel about this?" and "How are the addictions going?" that many celebrities avoid answering to protect their image. John Wayne just came out with a bunch of this stuff, though, as if he had no interest in defending his own image. I found that to be interesting, too. Finally, just as a funny note, did anybody else think that it was hilarious when Playboy asked John Wayne what he thought was perverted? I just felt it to be ironic, that's all.

How to Play Indian: A Manual for the Native American Suicide

WHAT was this guy thinking? This is almost comical! Who would do this, in a movie or in real life? Nobody has ever...well, maybe that one time in that Western movie, but not always...then again, I do remember that one scene where the Indian...Okay, so this is actually pretty accurate for movies. You see these kinds of dumbed-down Native American behaviors all of the time. Why, though, did this guy have to degrade the Native American population by even writing this? Well, Eco Umberto, the author of this checklist, could have been trying to reveal an interesting truth about the typical Western movie and how almost all of them are racist and biogotted. Back in the times where these movies were common, the white man had yet to realize the racism involved. It wasn't until around the time of the African American Equal Rights Movement that people started to think about how what they had done to the Native Americans might have been wrong and biased. The worst part of it all is that there are still people that think this way.

If this piece of work had another purpose, it may have been to say that even with this kind of treatment, Native Americans were desperate for work and would subject themselves to this kind of treatment to be able to afford the necessities of life. Nobody would hire an Indian just as nobody would hire a woman or an African American. People were really racist and sexist, so whenever the opportunity to work presented itself, what other choice would a Native American man have to find work? In some ways, were you to consider the level of innate racism towards the Native Americans since we got here hundreds of years ago, it may be considered lucky to even find that job, despite the lack or respect. I am glad that things are better now, but still fully understand that we have a lot of work left to do. Hopefully we get there.

John Wayne? Who's that?

Sorry that this will be short due to my lack of knowledge, but I have no clue who John Wayne is. I've most likely never seen any of his movies, either, since I've just seen a picture of him and still didn't recognize him. I'm guessing that I'm going to be hearing about him in class, though.

Lone Ranger and Sherman Alexie

These two readings were kind of the two poles to the graph. One side was all about a Native American perspective and how Indians were portrayed in Hollywood and popular culture. One was about the typical cowboy hero and his adventures fighting outlaws and Indians. The two could not be farther from being apart, but for some reason, I had trouble taking the two readings as separate, since they both fit on a time line. They melded together in a weird way, almost as if there were undertones from each of the opposite. I think that back in the time of The Lone Ranger (probably circa 1950's or '60's), there was the typical Hollywood view of the "Wild West" and that by the time that Sherman Alexie played Tonto, a growing realization of what really happened back in the day was starting to occur. For example, in the reading about Sherman Alexie's time as Tonto in a movie ("I Hated Tonto (Still Do)" -- An Essay by Sherman Alexie), Alexie started to talk about how the Native Americans were having some problems and that they had "learned to be happy with less." He also said that "We made up excuses", which shows that at some point, people at least started to realize what they had done. In contrast, during the first episode of The Lone Ranger which aired decades sooner, there was still this commonplace ignorance and denial.

OF ALL THINGS, WHY THIS?

When I have to go and read some Cowboy and Indian nonsense, I cannot help but feel vast disappointment about how we somehow managed to study this stuff instead of The Matrix. Thinking about the things that we would be studying, the interesting philosophy and religious parallels in the series, had we gone with the Matrix always seem to distract me whenever I try to focus on this stuff. I am trying really hard right now to not say overly-negative things, but just to put it into context for everyone, I should probably say this much: I HATE COWBOYS AND INDIANS. The entire "Wild West" thing, with the leather, the guns, the lack of honor, the loss of the gentleman, the end to a culture, and the white man's total lack of shame for what they have done to Native American culture, is repulsive and uninteresting. I would have rather studied anything other than this stuff, and that is the truth.

The sad part about all of this is that the 3 movies that make up The Matrix Trilogy are probably my 3 favorite movies of all time, and because of ONE person who decided that they just could not handle a semester of Keanu Reeves, I missed the opportunity to spend a semester analyzing them. I'm not exaggerating, either. It may seem like I'm just blowing this all out of proportion, but I really hate Cowboys and Indians that much. I have just been peacefully avoiding the whole subject for years, even during Thanksgiving, because until now, I have had no reason to read this kind of...stuff (for lack of a more mature term). It's just such a huge contrast in interest that I couldn't help but to say something. I'm thinking about making the background of my blog the scrolling characters from the computer screen in The Matrix in rebellion. I may not be able to change what has already begun, but I can definitely complain about it!

To wrap up: I know that there are important lessons to be learned through this literature and I normally do not have a problem pulling out important concepts from things like this, but it is almost too much for me to just sit here and read it. I do it for the grade because I owe myself that much, at least. However, do not expect me to enjoy the readings. I will do my best to stay appropriated, though. Lastly, if this entry seemed accusatory or angry, just know that I wrote this at 3AM and that I am tired and not thinking too clearly. I just wanted to start writing something to get me going on the blog entries for our HW, but I ended up writing this. I didn't want to erase it because I frequently write how I feel on Facebook or something to vent, but then erase it before I post it because I don't actually want to tell anybody how I feel for fear of the ever-present and long-lingering drama that seems to encircle many of the people that I choose to associate with on a daily basis (I mean my friends at home in Monroe, not you guys =P).
...Wow...looking back up, I wrote a lot, and I'm getting to the point where I am swaying between emotions. At first I was angry, then I calmed down, then I got sappy, and finally, I'm happy. I should really try not to be so crazy, but I really can't help it. I'm so tired that my face is numb, so my mental stability was bound to go sooner or later.

Dime Novel Discussions and Jesse James Essay Topic

Something that I noticed while talking to everybody in the class about the stories that they read was that everybody was disappointed with the characters and the way that they were presented vs. the way that they actually were.  In Jesse James, Jesse was presented as this super-human outlaw who could do anything and never die, but in the end of the story, he was a coward and ran away from Lawson to avoid being killed. People in other groups were telling me similar stories about how the main character just suddenly got killed or how they were not what they were expecting, so I know it wasn't just in Jesse James where things like this happened. Clearly these novels were not meant to be anything more than a quick read, since any analysis shows that there are some serious flaws.

If I were to write an essay on Jesse James, The Outlaw, I would have to write about how the Good VS. Evil struggle between Jesse and Bill Lawson made both of them seem almost super human. The scene on the train where Jesse James darted between dozens of bullets at once is not something an ordinary man could do. Lawson was the good guy of the story, and the only way to keep the story going was to let Bill escape all of the death and destruction that would have befell him if he weren't having a story written about him. His luck was almost inhuman. No man would have survived the things that these two characters have, especially considering the time frame in which this was written.

Jesse James 3

By the end of the story, I was having no problems with reading it anymore. Jesse James was written in a much different time and it took me so long to finally get used to it because I go out of my way to avoid literature like this. The Wild West is all gun-slinging and horse-riding, so it's hard to motivate myself to read a story and find out what it is about when I already know about 95% of what is going to happen. I admit, the train may have knocked that percentage down to 85% this time, which made it a slightly more interesting read than last time.

In the last part of this story, I have several things that I could rant about, but I see an important theme that needs to be addressed. At the end of the story (SPOILER ALERT), Jesse James turned out to be more cowardly than previously thought. He wore a bullet proof vest under his clothes to protect his chest and he was hiding his face behind the body of a little kid. That really ruined the image of the invincible Jesse James in my mind. The author spent all of this time building him up, making him dodge bullets more effectively than Neo (from THE MATRIX) and do a triple backflip off of his horse and stick the landing perfectly (jk. That didn't happen, but they worded him dismounting his horse "Dancer" a lot like that frequently, especially during confrontations.) just to have him run away like a mortal wimp. Some of his invincibility was preserved, though, as he did get away in the end without getting killed. (In my opinion, that was a major cop-out by the author. I felt cheated. I sided with Bill Lawson the whole time and then Bill doesnt' even get to kill Jesse? Lame. Very lame.)

One last thought: How good was the technology for bullet proof vest in this time period? It is strange for me to even think that they had "Iron-clad" shirts at all...

Jesse James 2

Alright, I admit it. This has gotten interesting. If you haven't read Jesse James before, as I originally hadn't, then you probably don't want to read this post, as it would contain some spoilers for you. William Lawson, or the doctor from Boonville, got exposed for who he really is and Sheppard shot Jesse James in the neck, but the bullet only grazed the skin on the back of his neck. Instead of just yelling "Ouch!" or something, Jesse James actually faked his own death, and when the time was right, he ran away. Dodging bullets left and right, he made it all the way through a train-full of people and mounted his...what did they call that thing? A "Sorrel"? What the heck is that? Let's see...

Merriam-Webster Dictionary states that a "Sorrel" is:
"a sorrel-colored animal; especially : a light bright chestnut horse often with white mane and tail."
(http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sorrel)

Well, I guess they were calling the horse by the description of the horse...Not too confusing now that I've looked it up. I did have to look that up before it made any kind of sense, though, which is how quite a few of the descriptive words used in this text have been for me. Anyway, the story has started to pick up nicely, and I can't wait to read the rest of it this weekend! I think I've made it through the minor language barrier problem I was having, too. We'll see how it goes.

Jesse James 1

I know this isn't a creative writing class, but I had some major problems with this work. I found the reading, as interesting as the story is becoming, to be painfully dull. The way that the story was written took all of the excitement out of it. I almost couldn't finish reading the four chapters that my group decided to read before class this Wednesday because the language stole the life from the story and, by proxy, the reader (me). The literal and factual manner of speech and narration may have been commonplace in the time that this story was written, but it is slow and tame, which creates a poor contrast between the action-packed nature of the story and the words that make it up.  Short of the occasional "Bang! Ping! Thud!"s that appear to describe sounds, the first few chapters were really controlled and funneled with precise dictation. The story did start to pick up a bit during the train robbery, but that, too, was muffled by the puffy words. I am a bit of a hypocrite on this issue, though. I write in the same wordy and fluffed-up fashion to properly convey thoughts. Hopefully, I one day learn to stop writing like this myself, though, as I tend to suffocate my writings in the same manner. It must be infuriating to my professors!

Baum, Charlot, and Deloria

Baum was a jerk, to say the least. From the two excerpts that are presented in the paper we were told to read, he was basically saying that Indians are no good and useless, that they lost all of their spirit, and that they should just be wiped from the faces of the Earth now than to let them continue to waste air. What is worse is that he is actually trying to rally people to do so! While reading this article, I couldn't halp to think "What, is he the Native American version of Hitler, but without the political power?"

Charlot was right, and I agree completely with what she was saying at the time. The white man had no right to ask for money of any kind from the people that they basically imprisoned. We took so much from the Native Americans, and asking for taxes doesn't reverse that process. In fact, we should have been giving them money on the reservations as compensation for their cooperation.

Deloria wrote about something rather interesting to me. That the Boston Tea Party was such an organized event is impressive, but there were two things that caught me off guard. First, that the guards of the ships were 'sympathetic' and let the "Indians" onto the ships after not but a verbal warning is strange. Why would the guards be sympathetic? Did they think that the Import Taxes on the tea were wrong? Second, why on Earth would the band of misfit "Indians" that just came onto the ships "forcefully" and trashed the ship's cargo take the time to stay after the raid and clean up? It presents a sort of gentleman-ly view of the Tea Party, but provides and interesting contrast. Why would they be acting so nice and civilized while dressed up as the Native Americans if they thought that the Native Americans were nothing but savages? Maybe some of the Americans of the time actually sympathized with the Native Americans' plight.

Zitkala Sa, Helen Hunt Jackson, and "Noble Savage"

Seeing how this is the first post on this blog and I'm not entirely sure as to what is expected of me here, I'll just quickly summarize what I have read in an effort to get something on paper to prove that I read the articles.

Zitkala Sa was an Indian woman who was educated by white men in the late 1800's who later acted as an advocate for Woman's Rights and Native American Rights, as well. She lived in the early 1900's as well, and she wrote an autobiography. The autobiography is of her as a child and she frequently speaks of her mother's hatred of the "Paleface" white men that were making life difficult for the Native Americans back then. Around this time, the Federal Government "closed" the frontier, which meant that they were no longer just giving out land out west. The government was also corralling Native Americans into reservations to keep them in check, and then established educational programs to essentially "kill the Indian" in them and to "keep the man". She fell into a coma and passed away in 1938.

The Helen Hunt Jackson excerpt was from her book "A Century of Dishonor." She was born in 1830 and died in 1885, only 4 years after her book "A Century of Dishonor" was published. When "A Century of Dishonor" was published, the federal government passed the Dawes Act to help investigate into the security an well being of those Indians on a reservation. The Dawes Act was also responsible for breaking Tribes apart and sticking Indians together with small family units instead of communities, which is ironic because the Dawes Act was meant to help the Tribes stay strong as a whole. We tried to inject our culture plan into theirs and it didn't work.

The "Noble Savage" is a derogatory term that was adapted in the 1800's to describe the Indian people. It was meant to imply that the Indian people were simple, but that is only because we never took the time to get to know their culture. To me, calling an Indian or a native of a specific Geographic area a "Noble Savage" is like calling a lion a "big kitty". You are just devolving the true nature of the jungle cat to a level that you are willing to accept and ignoring all of the other parts that make up the whole. Frankly, it's downright insulting and I certainly wouldn't want somebody calling me that.

~Kyric NeonSilver (Richard Hassinger)

Before any kind of assignment...

First, please allow me to take this opportunity to explain why I have chosen the name of the blog to be "The 3rd Party". In almost every event in my life where two people have clashed on an issue, I have had to intervene as the third party to explain how both sides were just being biased towards their view and that both parties were at fault. This, in and of itself, is a good enough reason, but I do have something else that I find rather interesting that would effectively illustrate my point. You see, I often fantasize about the afterlife. Not the angelic, puffy marshmallow-of-an-eternity known as Heaven, and not very often about the ash pit below us, either. I love to ponder on the nature of the middle ground between the two extremes, the grey in relation to the blacks and whites of life and death, and Limbo, Purgatory, and other such themes fit this bill nicely. This extends beyond the abstract concepts of life after death, though. This is about the right to be indecisive. People care to much about being one thing or the other, and frequently will assume that if somebody isn't one thing, they are the opposite. This is an unfortunate programming of our minds that many of us didn't even realize was present until the damage was already done. The long forgotten 3rd Party, like me, remains strong in the face of neglect and dissatisfaction, and will always be there as a last resort when both of the previously exclusively understood options fail and people are left with nothing more than a memory of a concept. This middle ground would encompass many things, from the 50/50 mix to the lack of anything at all, which are possibilities that not many people wish to consider; however, to me, that makes it all the more appealing of a possibility. So I say now, "You have now joined The 3rd Party." Enjoy the middle.

~Kyric NeonSilver (Richard Hassinger)
(Picture by The FisFis on DeviantArt.com)
http://the-fisfis.deviantart.com/art/Middle-Ground-110556824