Sudden Short Story 7

"There was a time when people worked on Christmas Eve. That's why it's an 'eve', you know: It's just the evening before, not the whole day."
"Well, strictly speaking, asking is just a formality. It's more to notify you than anything else."
"Nevertheless, it would be good if you could come in. With the year-end approaching, we'll need your help."
"You sound like you actually believe that," he said with a chuckle. "We both know that nobody has to be here. Heck, give everyone the day off and let an AI fill in. It's not like they're hard to find."
"You know that inconvenience isn't that point. Sure, I could give everyone Christmas Eve off. Then again, I could give them Arbor Day, or, I don't know, August 8th for all the difference that it would make. I could give everyone every day off and just have robots run the whole business! That would defeat the entire point, though."
There was a pause as they both thought on the subject. They both knew why they were there. They didn't want to talk about, nay, didn't want to think about the fact that they didn't actually need to do anything. After all, in a post-scarcity world, there was plenty of value to go around. The 'business' just let them feel useful.
"So you'll be here, then?"
"Bright and early, 'boss,' bright and early...."

An Open Letter to TV Networks, Regarding Halloween

Dear TV Networks,
I've noticed that you tend to run themed programming or marathons in October, leading up to Halloween. In particular, I notice that the themes are generally "horror" in the general or "zombies" in the specific. Sometimes it's a different specific, such as "slashers" or "Hitchcock", but not usually.
My point is this: For the season when, per tradition, the veil between worlds grows thin and those who died in the past year ready themselves for their journey to the afterlife, why not show films about ghosts and the afterlife? It would give us something different from the usual mix, and it's thematically appropriate.
Well, that's what I wanted to say. It's just my two cents.
-Wikimancer

P.S.: If you saw this post and would like to mention a good ghost- or afterlife-related film, then leave a comment below.

On 3D, Color, and Talkies

So, you may have noticed a 3D trend in film lately. There becomes a question of permanence. Is 3D here to stay? It seems like a fad. After all, 3D was a gimmick in the 1970s and 1980s, and even back in the 1950s.
However, 3D has something in common with synchronized sound (a property of films known as "talkies") and color. It's part of how we experience reality. Reality has sound (except to the deaf), reality has color (except to the colorblind, though even they can see some colors), and reality is 3D (except to those who lack depth perception). So, while I'd say that films don't need to be in 3D, they also don't need to be in color. It doesn't mean that the technology will go away.
That being said, the previous point that 3D has come and gone might indicate that it will fade again since the technology wasn't accepted just because it was widely available.

Personally, I think that 3D will first solidify itself outside of theaters, where individual people watching their films on personal laptops or handheld devices will allow for the use of autostereoscopy, such as via a parallax barrier. That is, you'll no longer have to wear fancy headgear for 3D, since the screen will effectively "know" where your head is, since you won't be likely to change it, a la how the Nintendo 3DS will work. (It loses the 3D effect if you're viewing the screen from off to the side.)

Was He Dead?

I've noticed a peculiar trend regarding the English language. Specifically, this has to do with tense and dead people. In English, when referring to someone who's dead, and describing that person with "to be" or "to have" or similar, one uses the past tense (except, of course, when using the word "dead"). So, for example, "he was tall" or "she had blue eyes" would be used, rather than "he is tall" or "she has blue eyes".
So, if someone's dead, then use the past tense, and, by the contrapositive, if the speaker is using the present tense, then the subject is not dead.
The problem is that a lot of people seem to assume that the converse and inverse are also true. That is, they assume that, if the speaker is using the past tense, then the subject is dead, and if the subject is alive, then the tense will always be present.
I happen to find it a bit annoying when this happens. I use the past tense when I'm referring to something in the past, but sometimes I'll be talking about something in the past and it happens to involve a human and a listener will assume that I'm talking about someone who's dead. Why? I don't know.
Does this ever happen to you?

Super-superregnum

I want to post this before I forget (and before someone else claims it). I think that we should preemptively add a "top" level to our classification/cladistics/phylogeny. It's tentatively a "super-superregnum" level, which puts lifeforms into entire biologies based on their planets (or other regions) of origin. I think that ours should be called "Terrus" because it sounds like "Terran" but "Terran" is already used descriptively in other ways, and because most of these end in "-us" or "-um".
I also hold that one super-superregnum (such as "Terrus") could in fact cover multiple planet, in cases of panspermia, whereby one planet's (or other region's) biology originates from another's.