Villains

Okay, I thought I'd better write the post about villains immediately. I might forget about it otherwise.

I've always had a thing for the villains, no matter whether it was fairy tales as a child or those bad guys in the movies these days. And it's not just the whole "dark and dangerous" thing. (Although, admittedly, it's part of my fascination.)

Usually, the hero is far less interesting than the villain(s) of a story. The hero tends to be a 'good guy' who feels it's his duty to rid the world of a few baddies. Villains on the other hand usually have issues and goals - and hidden motives, too. They are always good for a surprise in the middle of the story.

And - as a writer - I also have to admit that writing a scene for a villain is much more fun. You can go deep inside your soul - to those dark parts with the extra padlock attached - and pull out all those dark feelings and evil wishes you have ever harboured and let the bad guy (or girl) actually make them come true!

The background of the bad guys usually doesn't get told as precisely as that of the good guy (though I like the background of Batman ... but then, he's me anyway...). That leaves more space for the fantasy. And as most of those villains aren't really nice ('nice' and 'villain' don't go well together), one might wonder why they are the way they are.

Villains are quite fascinating on the whole. They get to do everything everybody sooner or later wishes to be able to do. And in the end they usually also get an interesting death. No 'heart attack' or something like that. Not your average deadly accident. No, villains are shot, squashed by something big or something else like that. Sometimes there even isn't enough for a grave ... which is good as well, because a person without a grave may still be alive (even without being Hammer Production's "Dracula").

That's another trait about villains I like a lot: the way they pop up after everybody thought they were dead already. It's cool and it makes stories much more interesting.

To add something that fits with my post about heroes: Villains work marvellously with heroes, obviously. The main reason for this might be that while heroes are slightly masochistic, villains are sadists. Heroes submit themselves, as I've pointed out in the post mentioned above, to a good cause; villains, on the other hand, want to control and dominate. It's a perfect relationship ... in a strange way.

The will - or quite often rather the need - to dominate is an important feature for everyone who wants to be a villain. A villain doesn't ask his henchmen to do something, he demands it ... and if they fail to obey, it's most likely the last failure of their life. That's a really strict management - which a lot of managers probably would love.

Yes, I love villains more than heroes - and I always will. They're just so much more interesting than heroes.

So many posts, so little time

There's so much I should be writing about: There's at least two DVDs I wanted to write something about, I have a post about "Tomb Raider Anniversary" firmly placed in my mind, then there's my 'villain' post that's still mainly the first paragraph (and currently it's a short paragraph) - oh yes, and I'm halfway through "A Series of Unfortunate Events" and would like to write a couple of lines about those stories, too.

The only thing that really doesn't faze me at all is the whole "Paris Hilton" issue. I couldn't care any less about whether or not she does her time in jail. (Although, just as a majority of people on the streets in Germany, I'd rather prefer to see George W. Bush behind bars - for the rest of his life, if I'm the judge.) Of course, it would only be fair for her to serve those twenty-odd days in jail, just like everybody else. But then, a lot of rich people don't go to jail (or at least not as easily as the rest of the population).

And nobody ever claimed that life was fair - in fact a fair number of people claim the opposite.

So expect more of me - maybe tomorrow after a long session with "Cat's Eye" and "Sherlock Holmes" (with Basil Rathbone).

Heroes

While I was going through Bitchy Jones' Diary yesterday and read about her view on heroes, I found myself rather forced to agree with her: In many ways heroes have to be masochists.

Now, that might sound odd to you - especially if you're male as well and consider yourself to be a tough guy, just like your favourite Superhero (whoever he may be). But really think about it.

Heroes - no matter from what genre or time, really - always have to suffer. It's some sort of natural law. Take whoever you want from your favourite comics or movies and think about it: Is there any story without the hero getting beaten, trapped, bound or somehow injured? And what kind of person would lead a life full of pain and humiliation out of their free will? Only proves my point (or rather Bitchy's).

Then there's the whole 'sacrifice'-business. You don't have to look into religion to find that principle ... just imagine one rather normal situation for the hero-guy of your choice: The damsel in distress (and god, do I sometimes hate those) has been caught by the villain and he threatens her with the weapon of your choice. What's the hero probably going to do (provided there's no way to disarm or kill the villain safely)? "Let her go and take me instead." And the villain is stupid enough to do it ... it's a shame, villains these days. If I were the villain, I'd say "sure", let the girl go, then grab the hero, shoot the girl and shoot the hero right afterwards - problem solved, world domination, here I come. But that kind of thinking probably is the reason why female super villains are so rare ... too pragmatic.

But back to heroes ... maybe some time in the future I'll do a post on villains, too.

The real heroic trait seems being ready to suffer for a good cause. Of course, you also get to kill a couple of people and usually you get a pretty girl to impress who'll fall for you. Even though, with some Superheroes, I can't fight the impression that they'd like a pretty boy falling for them a lot more (but that's an old discussion).

And if you look back a couple of decades, to the good, old time of the "Film Noir" and the tough, cigarette-smoking private eyes, you'll find they almost never got through a case without getting seriously beaten up by someone. (I personally often wondered whether or not they could actually get an health insurance in a job like that.)

So, let's bring this all together: Heroes often suffer and obviously either don't mind it or even like it. They submit themselves not so much to a person, but to a good cause they're ready to suffer or even die for. And that's not new, even ancient heroes had to suffer a lot (and probably looked quite yummy while doing so ... judging from the fashion styles of that time).

Heroes ... I've just found a good reason to like them (and a good reason why I personally like villains better: they get to torture the heroes, after all).

The Concept of Evil

A post on "E is for" about evil made me think about my own views as far as 'Evil' is concerned. Those a partly fuelled by my own experiences with people who, like the one in E's post, are doing very bad things to others for no apparent reason and partly by my view of mankind in general (which some days isn't the best, either).

In the beginning I'm going to tell you a big secret: Humans are not the only creatures able to commit crimes (chimpanzees commit murders and even some ants are able to enslave or kill other ants for nether motives), but they might be the only creatures who can be evil. Now you might say that 'committing crimes' is the same as 'being evil', but it isn't - even though the principle of 'crime' is a human one, too.

Fact is, to be 'evil' you have to know the concept. Being evil is something you do by choice. And animals, at least as far as we know, don't have a definition of 'evil' and thus aren't able to do anything evil. They can do bad things, but it's their nature, nothing more. We don't expect them to change their ways, we don't expect an ant to rise from the heap and tell all others that slavery is wrong. We don't expect chimpanzees to form a CSI-unit to find out who of them did it. We judge their acts and see them as criminal or even evil, but to them they're just what they do - nothing more, nothing less.

But now on to the main topic: Evil.

I personally don't think there's a clean line between 'Good' and 'Evil' as some religions make you think. There isn't the precise moment where 'Good' turns into 'Evil' or the other way around. It's a slow process and in the end it's impossible to say where something went wrong.

Then you have to divide between 'willingly being evil' and 'doing things for the greater good'. Most humans don't even make it to 'willingly being evil' (even those absolutely characterized as 'Evil' in the end - like Hitler). They stay in the large realm of 'doing bad things for the greater good', a reason that can be used to excuse almost every evil thing humans can do to each other.

You see, if you believe in 'doing things (even very, very bad ones) for the greater good', you don't see yourself as 'evil'. I highly doubt Hitler and his fellows ever said "let's go kill some people just because we can" (they did it, but they never said it out loud). They thought they were doing this for the good of the German people. Well, a lot of good this has done us... But if you look back at history (even before the 20th century), you'll find that people 'doing it for the greater good' did more lasting damage than everyone else. They go around wiping out a great mass of people and all the while think they're doing something good. Think 'Inquisition', for example, or think 'Witch Hunts'. Think 'Crusades' or think 'Jihad' (which, actually, is pretty much the same, only seen from two different sides). Half of the time people go around murdering each other, they claim "it's for our god, really". If there is a god (and some days I'm not really sure about that), She is sitting up there and patiently developing new ways to torture all those bigots who are killing off others in Her name. The other half is more honest and says "I'm doing this for myself".

'Willingly being evil' is something a lot of Satanists seem to attempt. They are not doing things 'because something good will come from it', but simply because they think they are supposed to be evil and do very bad things to other people. They live by the principle that the stronger one is entitled to do bad things to all those who can't stop it from happening. If whole countries were officially working that way, George W. Bush would not have had to claim "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction". Then he would just have had to say "We're stronger and we want the oil and we hate everyone who's not white, Christian and from European descent, so we'll wage war on Iraq and kill whomever walks into our path". But you can't say that as a president of one of the most powerful countries in the world. It would be honest, but not politically correct. Saying you're doing this for the greater good (seen something you might recognize?) is always more acceptable - and maybe, just maybe, they're even believing their own lies.

But most of the people are neither willingly evil nor doing things for the greater good. They are evil in a very mediocre way. I don't even mean people committing crime, that's mainly motivated by egoism and is thus something that can be explained. But there's bad things people do without any apparent reason - like mobbing someone who's no threat to the mobber's own career. That's something I can't really understand either. I can understand undermining the standing of someone who could be a thread to my own career (even though I wouldn't do it myself). But if someone is no threat whatsoever to my career or personal life plan, there's no reason to invest time and energy in making that person's life miserable.

Unfortunately not all people think like this. There are some who actually wallow in this, in seeing someone suffer for no real reason. ('Real reason' for me in this case means 'a reason I can understand, even if I can't agree with it'.) Sometimes I even think they cause this much misery because they actually gain something from it. Maybe they do, at least some satisfaction.

It would be up to society to make clear this is no acceptable behaviour, but many companies (and other places where a lot of people come together and social positions are important, like school) rather support it. During the last couple of years everything in life has, to some people at least, become a 'war' (which is why a lot more people than before have been reading Sun Tzu's "The Art of War"). Holding you job? A war. Winning a tennis match against a friend? A war. Finding a woman/man to spent the rest of your life with? A war. (Strangely enough, Sun Tzu himself was absolutely clear about the fact that his thirteen chapters on warfare were not to be used in times of peace.) The question I always wanted to ask those people is: "Are you happy to lead a life in which everything is a war? Does it give you satisfaction?"

For those people, making others miserable seems to be essential to leading a 'good' life. They always feel assured of their position and their way of life after they've managed to bring somebody else down, I guess. And as long as everyone says we're living in a world where only 'the strongest will survive', they will continue to act like that.

So 'Evil' from my point of view has only little to do with the devil and his demons. Humans are far better at being evil, just by acting 'human' in the worst way that word can be defined. I guess I will never fully understand what people gain from it, but I think the society does have the responsibility to make sure this dark side of our nature is kept in check better than it currently is.

How not to lead a company

First of all: Yes, I know, I'm terminally bad at leading companies (at least in business simulations), but I have worked in various companies in the lowliest places and seen a lot of things bosses better should avoid.

Being a telemarketer and working in a call centre is probably one of the lowliest jobs in the world. In that job you actually have to look upwards to see the bottom feeders. But that's not the worst part of the job, the worst part is how the team leaders try to 'motivate' you.

Motivation is an important thing for someone working in telemarketing. In order to sell things over the phone, you have to sound convincing and friendly. And "a smile can be heard over the phone" as you're often told on your first day. Scientists by now say that this 'forced happiness' workers in a call centre or at the reception of a company or hotel have to keep up the whole day can lead to serious psychological problems. In other words: The less forced the happiness, the less dangerous for the employees.

Unfortunately the bosses haven't learnt that yet. They only know one tool to work with: fear. And today, with a lot of people unemployed and the laws of the country changed in a way that mostly forces people to take up every job, no matter how badly paid or morally questionable, fear of unemployment is a powerful tool. But there's one thing bosses should keep in mind: powerful doesn't equal perfect.

Why I am thinking about this right now? Because I had a nice chat over the phone with my friend Heike and she's currently working in a call centre with a boss who probably wouldn't even know he's doing something wrong.

First of all, bosses seem to think that by increasing the pressure, putting up more rules and making life at work miserable for their employees, they can get more results. That's about as effective as killing half of your chicken and expecting the rest to lay more and better eggs afterwards.

Let's take my friend's job as an example, shall we? She tries to make dates for the salesmen of her company, so they might go out to the customer and sell them wine. Not difficult as a such. In order to make dates, she needs data: addresses, telephone numbers and so on of people who actually are interested in wine. So the company she works for also has telemarketers who do a 'poll' on the interest in wine. Those who say they're interested, get a phone call from my friend and her colleagues. But instead of counteracting the dwindling number of successes by increasing the number of people doing that 'poll' and finding new potential customers, the company increases the number of people working the old addresses and expects them to be successful where they failed before. (That's pretty much like one company I worked for buying addresses so old some of the companies had been out of business for 5 damn years. I would demand my money back, if I got sold addresses like that - and I'm not even a businesswoman.)

The company my friend works for increases the pressure on it's workers, making more and more new rules to make life more miserable for them. By now they're not allowed to have anything on their desk except for one piece of paper and one pen. No coffee, no water (even though people who spent six, seven or eight hours a day talking really need something to drink), nothing personal. They are also changing their places every day. So you never know who'll be sitting beside you tomorrow or where you'll sit. Sick days are no longer paid, instead people are forced to work those hours afterwards. That's not really conform to law in Germany, because an employee who's sick and has a recipe from the doctor to proof it, normally can't be treated like that. But again, people are afraid to loose work and so they put up with it. If they have to leave three minutes early, fifteen minutes are taken off their working hours. The employees on the other hand have to record every minute they don't spent at work (going to the toilet or taking a break, for example). Oh, they also have to be in ten minutes before they officially start working ... and those ten minutes don't count, of course.

On short term this even works, but in the long run it only leads to trouble. A call centre can quickly get a bad name and that makes it more difficult to get new workers. "Walter Telemarketing" for example, a company in my area, does have such a bad name. They always tell they're hiring new people, but avoid to tell the real reason. It's not because they grow so fast - it's because their employees quit the job as soon as they're finding something new. But obviously, as long as there's enough work in telemarketing, they don't think about the reason for this.

And sometime in the future, things will change. Call centres have grown fast over the last years, with many companies outsourcing their telemarketing and service hotlines, opening a call centre was pretty much like printing your own money: good projects, employees who often only worked a few hours and didn't cost much and not too much competition. But by now there's too damn much of those companies out there and sooner or later the market will shrink a lot.

That's mainly because they already don't work completely legal. Simply calling people and trying to sell them something is illegal in Germany and I think that sooner or later the consumer organisations in Germany will press on to really put those laws to good use. That would then mean that a lot of the current projects will no longer exist. What will remain probably will be some work in service hotlines and other inbound calls (meaning the customer calls the telemarketer, as opposed to 'outbound' where the telemarketer calls the possible customer), maybe with some outbound calls to customers who want to be informed about new offers to the side.

It has already started, a lot of smaller call centres which often were opened in quite a hurry have gone bankrupt already (actually, I was glad I hadn't started working in one of them). And those who remain really should stop using fear as a tool to get success. In the long run work only increases sick days and quick changes in the personnel, not something a company should hope for.

Currently a lot of work is done with fear, using the high rate of unemployment and the insecure job situation to keep the employees down and make them work for less money and under worse circumstances than in the past. Nevertheless, the companies should be careful: one day the unions might get strong again (though personally, I don't believe that) and the job situation might get better (especially with less employees growing up because of less children being born). Then the companies will suddenly be the ones on the other side of the sword - the employees will make the rules and they will have to obey.

That's a vision of the far future, probably, but I'm still sure about the call centres dying like flies in the next couple of years.

Still, I wonder why managers find it so hard to understand that a happy worker is a good worker and will bring them more money. That's so easy to see, even for someone like me who fails miserably at leading simulated companies.

I love tax returns

Today I got a letter from the tax department ... and guess what? I've got a tax return of over 500 Euros coming.

Now I know why I spent half an afternoon about one month ago doing all my tax stuff. Honestly, I can only advice everyone to go through it - although it might take ages - and take it seriously, because for me it has always paid in the past. At least in Germany, where you usually pay a little taxes every month as an employee, you're normally always getting some money back.

Taxes ... you can loathe them or hate them, but you've really got to love tax returns. It's one of the few times when the state does willingly give you money.

Another sweet memory

A long time ago - when I was still at school or starting university - "Apogee" was a name I knew well. The software company produced some of the best games I've ever played, including the "Commander Keen" series, "Alien Carnage", "Duke Nukem" and "Hocus Pocus". "Apogee" has become "3-D Realms" by now and is working on the newest part of "Duke Nukem" while I'm writing this (and they have been working on the game for ages, literally).

But what I remember far better than "The Duke", are their old Jump'n'Runs. I have played all six parts of "Commander Keen" from the very first to the last. I raided numerous strange castles in "Hocus Pocus" in search of powerful crystals ... and I saved the world as muscle-packed ex-marine in "Alien Carnage" (which was published in Germany as "Halloween Harry").

I haven't thought about those games for years ... I only own "Commander Keen 6" any longer (and until today I rather decided to sell it, provided someone wanted to buy it). But "3-D Realms" has started to release the old games as freeware now - and with an emulator they can still be run on modern machines - and I downloaded "Alien Carnage" and the "Hocus Pocus" shareware episode yesterday.

Unlike my meeting with the TV-series I watched as a teenager, playing those games again was actually fun. I've been going through the first episode of "Alien Carnage" yesterday (and found some parts harder than a lot of the games I play these days) and I've played four levels of "Hocus Pocus", too. (Hopefully the full game will be released as Freeware, too.)

Admittedly, the graphics are bad, really bad. You should see the animated cut-scenes with Harry and his boss Diane (yes, Mr. Tough-Guy-and-ex-marine works for a woman, but that's the year 2035 or so) ... hardly anything is moving, except for words of the subtitles and the mouths of the speakers. On the other hand, I don't mind it. The characters (especially the monsters) are cartoon-type anyway and so they don't need to look realistic. The whole game is in 2D - so my graphics card probably is wondering about what to do with all the free resources while I enjoy blasting nasty aliens and green-skinned zombie-office-workers with my handy (and in those graphics almost cute) flame-thrower. The graphics of "Hocus Pocus" are slightly better ... the game was released a year or so after "Alien Carnage". But still, the young wizard-in-training doesn't look as eye-catching as Simon in his newest game.

But so what? I've always loved games for their content, not for their looks (and with "Boppin'" on my hard-disk now, I won't start with it). Playing those old Jump'n'Runs has shown me how little 'good games' have to do with 'brilliant, state-of-the-art graphics'. A valuable lesson.