Notes From the Midwest

Coulterland - Beginning Principles

2009-01-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

Note: This will be a multi-part post, since as I continue to write it I find that A. I'm quite tickled by the notion, and B.--not unrelatedly--I find myself writing a lot more than I originally intended. So I'll be breaking this into bite-sized chunks for easy consumption. And hey, if all goes well, I smell a book deal!

The question one must ask of any philosophy or political position is "Quo vadit?" (One must ask this question in Latin in order to seem, you know, smart.) That is, "Where is it going/does it go?" Aristotle bases much of his philosophy on the concept of functions--that is, everything that exists has a function, and to understand that thing, one must understand its telos, its end--the telos of an acorn is to grow into an oak, for example, just as the telos of an egg is to become a bird, the telos of fire is to consume its fuel, etc. (The challenge of the philosopher, of course, lies in determining whether a possible telos is in fact the true telos. And naturally, if you're not an Aristotelian, you don't believe that things have proper functions, and that they just are, or are not, and meaning cannot be ascribed to either state. Thank you, F. Nietzsche, but we'll stick with Aristotle for now.) So--

The question I ask myself is this: What does the ideal world of the neocons actually look like? That is, if we are to take their moral, social, and economic positions at face value--dicey, I know, but their readers certainly seem to--and give them, as it were, the three wishes of the genie in the bottle, then what would a world in which all of their positions were fulfilled be like to live in? The test of any philosophy is its results when it is given every chance to succeed--thus we know that Leninism/Maoism is crap, because the nations that embraced it/them were, in the end, substantially worse off as a result. Too, though, we know that complete and utter 'free-market-capitalism' is a terrible idea, as it tends to lead to things like the Belgian Congo (the very epitome of market-driven, aggressively profit-intensive labor relations.) So--

Let us, then, picture a world in which Coulter, Limbaugh, Scarborough, Ingraham, Hannity, Liddy, O'Reilly, D'Souza, Goldberg, Savage--my God there are a lot of them--et al. get exactly what they want: the death of liberalism. Complete and utter. No voice of dissent or disagreement with/from their neocon values. Would this be a dystopia, and if so, what would be its character? What would it be like, in short, to live in the neocon America? For only by imagining total victory for their positions can we test their value. (And if it sounds like I'm indulging in one of those Alternate Universe scenarios in which the South won the Civil War or the Nazis WWII, well, yes, I am, but I do not plan to make this either a cheap Orwellian knock-off, nor a reductio ad absurdum. I want to imagine a world in which these people are happy and content--where things are, as Limbaugh would say, the Way Things Ought To Be. So, like the Bear in the song, let us go over the mountain, and see what we can see.

First, let's be clear about one or two things; even though I've sworn not to go all 1984 on their collective asses, this imagined nation will, by definition, be totalitarian. One political party, one perspective on social issues--that's what 'totalitarianism' means, go ahead and look it up. Since the word inevitably has a negative connotation, let me concede that A. an all-liberal world would be equally totalitarian, and B. since we are imagining an ideal world, we will imagine that everyone in this world agrees whole-heartedly with the neocons, because of course, if they are self-evidently correct (as they claim), then the ideal would be universal recognition thereof. So we need not imagine 're-education camps' or such easy stuff of nightmares. Everyone just woke up one morning and said, "You know what? I agree with absolutely everything I read in Let Freedom Ring, Treason, and The No-Spin Zone." I will moreover vow that I will strive to avoid satire or cheap-shots--those aspects of life, if any, that would be better under the neocon banner, will be acknowledged, and those aspects of life unchanged or changed without disruptive significance will likewise be noted. My attempt is to see what The Good World of these people looks like, and clearly, they do not see it as any kind of dystopia, so I will veer away from that temptation. So--

Well, start by eliminating the extraneous. Literally--let's examine the rest of the world before we look at things down home.

Geopolitically, I'm at a bit of a loss to visualize this world. I think that the only way the neocons can get their way is either for us to conquer the entire planet--shades of Randy Newman's satirical vision of every country the whole world 'round being just another American town--or else we would have to seal our borders entirely, and go into full-blown isolationist mode. It would have to be one or the other; the Neocon vision is not one of half-measures--their unwillingness to compromise is part of what distinguishes them as a philosophy. As I do not think that world conquest is practicable, I'm going to go with the isolationist perspective. Global trade will, of course, still be necessary, but inasmuch as we can rely on multinationals to handle such trade in a way that supports and develops, rather than undermines, geopolitical stability (per the neocons, mind you), we need not worry about international embroglios or dust-ups; Blackwater will handle such things, and our military can do what it's supposed to do--stay at home and guard our borders. Call it the Monroe Doctrine 2.0: The XTreme Edition.

The poorer nations of the world would probably suffer as a result of this new world order, inasmuch as outfits like Nike would, absent any government oversight or finger-wagging from the State Department, almost certainly engage in truly horrifying labor practices overseas. (Please see earlier note about the Belgian Congo.) But, as the neocons point out, such labor practices would be occurring under the auspices of the countries in which they took place, and therefore the blame for any such atrocities would have to fall squarely on the shoulders of local government. Bribery of said governments by the multinationals would allow these horrific labor practices--all right, all right, let's just call it 'slavery'--to continue, but inasmuch as our own rebellion and achievement of democracy ought to be the model for all subjugated peoples to rise up and achieve self-representation, well, we can't be responsible for a bunch of babies who won't grow a pair and stage their own Battle of Lexington. In short, Not Our Problem. Our responsibility as Americans is solely to ourselves as Americans; other nations must shift for themselves. Just as we do not ask them for aid, neither should we be compelled to give it. (Slashing the living shit out of the federal budget for a few years will, of course, enable us to pay off those pesky loans from China, and then it's a strict diet of self-sutained economic development. No more going to that well for us!) In short, a metaphorical wall has gone up around the nation (a literal one on our southern border), and we just don't get out to see the neighbors. Not a problem--we've got all we need right here at home. If you are, as we are, the greatest country in the world--in history--then why worry about anyplace else? People in Heaven don't take vacations.

So what's life like at home? Tune in tomorrow.

Long Overdue

2008-12-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

Every snarling misanthrope and general curmudgeon should, at some point in his life, make a stab at his own version of Gilbert's "Little List" song from The Mikado. (Gilbert himself updated the lyrics as some became outdated and better ideas occurred to him, so there's a long-standing recognition that it's OK to do so. Well, that and, let's face it, the original lyrics include the word "nigger"--so seriously, we pretty much have to change them or else every boarding school production in America will be guilty of a hate crime.) Anyway, here's mine:

As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I've got a little list — I've got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed — who never would be missed!

There’s the people who bring infants onto overcrowded planes
All drivers who start signaling just after changing lanes
The shirtless man at football games who’s painted like a clown
The people who climb Everest and have to be helped down
And that scourge of all talk radio - the redneck jingoist -
I don’t think he’ll be missed—I’m sure he’ll not be missed!

I’ve got ‘em on the list – I’ve got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of ‘em be missed.

All college academics who write books that no one reads -
The gender theorist – I’ve got her on the list!
All those who think that Sarah Palin’s “what this country needs” -
And the 'vampire' novelist – I don't think she'll be missed!
The women who “drop everything” for “Oprah” and “The View”;
Men quoting Monty Python, “Battlestar,” and “Doctor Who”;
All those who not understand that “Warcraft”'s just a game.
All people who “despise L.A.” but live there just the same;
And those who do not bathe because they’re “eco-activist”--
I don’t think they’ll be missed—I’m sure they’ll not be missed!

I’ve got ‘em on the list – I’ve got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of ‘em be missed.

There's the starlets flashing cameras as they step from car to curb,
And the tabloid journalist – I’m sure he’ll not be missed.
All those who use emoticons and “backpack” as a verb;
They’d none of ‘em be missed, they’d none of ‘em be missed!
All talking heads with empty minds and mouths that fill the screen;
All debutantes who pitch a fit about their sweet sixteen;
All those who sit in coffee shops with laptops all ablaze;
All those who leave their cell-phones on at movies and at plays;
And baby boomer hippies who continue to exist -
They’d none of them be missed – they’d none of them be missed!

I’ve got ‘em on the list – I’ve got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed – they’ll none of ‘em be missed.

Necessity Fulfilled

2008-12-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

In debating the existence of God, philosophers must inevitably deal with what I call The Moment of Frustrated Necessity. That is, moments where one is decisively certain that something should be happening, but is not. I have returned from such a moment. Clearly, in a just universe ruled over by an all-knowing Creator, the following is what should have happened:

I am at the local market, and find myself in the frozen foods aisle, looking for (shocking, this) frozen foods, specifically strawberries and peaches. None is immediately evident, and I pause, brow furrowed, to try to place myself in the mind of the corporate manager who organized this place. Fruits are not vegetables, and therefore "Frozen Vegetables" seems a poor bet. Nor are they "Novelties"--Hmm. As I shift my weight back on one foot so as to tap the other in thought (yes, I actually do this), I am involuntarily aware of the song that is playing over the muzak.

It is "Let It Snow," though it is no version of this song I have ever encountered, and for good reason. This is not the bouncy, vivace piece popularized by such as Bing Crosby and Dean Martin. Oh no--this is "Let It Snow" re-interpreted as, as far as I can tell, a porn-movie torch-song. Drippingly ballad-slow, throat-heavy vocals that might be Michael Bolton, or at least someone trying to be him--a sickening ambition if ever there was one.

Mere transcription cannot do justice to the merciless cruelty of what I'm hearing; the singer sounds like he's trying to fake the sounds of a man trying to hold back an orgasm, and thus merely sounds life-threateningly constipated. Try to wrap your brain around it: "Oh-the-weather...(three-second pause)...outside...(three-second pause)...is-frightful...(ten-second pause)...But-the-fire (three-second pause)...is-so...(three second pause)...delightful..."

I pause. I look around at the people shuffling past me--my disbelief is both confirmed and dispelled: they hear it too. Everyone hears it. And everyone either hunkers his head down a bit more, like someone trying to ride out a bitter blast of stinging rain, or else meets the eyes of a total stranger to exchange a little "Sucks, huh?" shrug of broken-spirited comradery.

I listen for a few more moments: "Oh-it-doesn't...(three-second pause)...show-signs...(three second pause)...of-stopping...(ten second pause)...and-I've-brought...(three second pause)...some-corn...(three second pause)...for-popping..."

No. No. This cannot stand. This cannot be allowed. I cannot live in a world in which this is allowed to happen. I drop my basket with an audible clatter, drawing the stares of the rest of the store.

"I'll just be a minute," I announce, generally, and then stride off, disappearing around an aisle and out of sight. Somewhere, there's the sound of a far-off door opening and closing, and then steps that fade into the distance.

The singer continues, and this is the transcript of what follows: "Oh-the-fire...(three-second pause)...is-slowly...(three-second pause)...dying...(ten-second pause)...And-my-dear...(three-second pause)...we're-still...(three-second pause)...goodb--hurk! (Dull thud and the sound of the microphone tumbling to the floor, several seconds of scuffling, then something heavy hits something less heavy) AAAAAAAH! Oh, God, you broke my--AAAAAAH! AAAAAAAH! Oh Jesus God, help me! Somebody help--he's got a--(A sound similar to the snap of kindling)--AAAAAAAAH! Christ! Christ! Holy Christ--that was my--why are you--AAAAAAAH! My God, you can't put that--it won't go in my--you can't---AAAAAAAAAH!! Jesus Jesus JESUS PULL IT OUT PULL IT OUT PULL IT OUT--(gasp)--Oh, God, thank you, thank--AAAAAAHHH NO NOT DEEPER NOT DEEPER AHHHHHHHH!!!! SOMEBODY PLEASE STOP HIM--he's putting--KEROSENE!!! THERE'S KEROSENE EVERYWHERE!!! PLEASE SOMEBODY DO SOME--(The scratch of a match, and a fwoomp--a lot a screaming follows. Then, the low sounds of someone trying feebly to crawl to saftey. Then, the unmistakable growl of a power tool. The voice that speaks now is thick and clogged, as if speaking through a chunky milkshake.) Oh no, no, no, no--NOOOOO--AAAAAAAH!!! Not my eyes! NOT MY EYES! NOT MY--AAAAAAAAH!!! (Several more seconds of screams, then sudden silence, then a wet gurgling sound that goes for about a minute. Then--)

My voice: (clearly out of breath) Be just a second, folks.

(Then, a moment later, the sounds of Nat King Cole singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." The store below gives a round of cheerful applause, and everyone goes back about their evening. When I return to the scene, peeling off a bloody tarp to reveal my own unstained clothes, I'm greeted with pats on the back and a sweet "Thank you, dear" from the old lady in the dairy section.)

That needs to happen.

A Very Belated Response To WALL*E

2008-12-05T12:42:00.000-08:00

To be sure, this commentary is no longer current, since I'm only just now getting around to watching the damned thing at home, and not in the theater as God and Pixar (same thing?) intended. But better late than never, said the chemotherapist to the corpse, so here goes:

I was disappointed.

Wonderfully.

Allow me to explain. I watched the first ten minutes, then hit pause, and watched them again. Because I wasn't sure that what I had just seen, I had in fact just seen.

But I had. What I'd seen, if ended right then and there, would have been one of that rarest of things: a perfect work of art. The ten minute sequence that discovers Wall*E in total isolation (cockroach excepted), post-apocalypse, gathering seemingly random bits of junk and then returning to his crib to sort it out--his befuddlement over the cataloguing of the spork was sharp, but the poignancy of the tool-bucket full of cigarette lighters was better--and then watching the video of Hello Dolly! as a means of reminding himself of (though he's never known it directly), a world in which all these things had a place and a meaning that somehow gives them value and meaning in the present, despite the fact that they've been lost--the parallel between the accumulation of crap by the paper-thin WalMart company that led to the apocalypse, and the accumulation of that same crap by an innocent mind, which transforms it from crap into totems of uncomprehending nostalgia--that, folks, is so brilliant that I'm still getting goosebumps.

It's art, folks--it stands up to that kind of academic nit-picking in which I and my fellow ivory-tower inhabitants specialize. I could do a Heideggerian reading of those ten minutes. And a Marxist reading. I could use Camus's vision of Sisyphus to explain WALL*E's devotion to his clearly endless/pointless task. Don Quixote is in there, and Robinson Crusoe, and we can work our way all the way up to A Canticle for Leibowitz and Blade Runner if you like that post-modern stuff. Because there's Duchamp in there, too--just as a urinal seen in the right context is art, so too is a spork. Warhol? Mass production moving first into satire, then camp, then back into the objectivation of an image to the point of naive appreciation. It's there--it's a dense, brilliant, perfect piece of film. Like Salieri's description of Mozart's music in Amadeus: "Displace one note and there would be diminishment. Displace one phrase and the structure would fall."

Which is where the disappointment comes in. Because I said to myself, "Dude" (I call myself 'Dude' in the delusion that I am, in my heart of hearts, easygoing and fun to be with--I'm not), "Dude,"I said, says I, "there's no way they're going to be able to keep this up." And of course I was right. Many moments came close to that opening 10 minutes--the space dance, the simple ability of robots to hold hands--suggesting that on some level, the humans who created them couldn't bear to give a creation the burden of awareness without the compensatory ability to feel connective joy--indeed, much of the movie is a beautiful illustration of the concept of "Only connect"--E.M. Forster took most of his greatest novel to make that point!--but no, it couldn't sustain it. It never dipped below the very very good--and such 'low' moments were rare. But it didn't hold on to that gem-like perfection, and that meant that there was a letdown when it failed to do so.

I'm not complaining, really. Perfection is such a rare, rare thing in art, and sustained perfection is damn near impossible. Dickens never wrote a perfect novel. Shakespeare? Please--Hamlet is one of the greatest achievements by any human being, and it's way imperfect. So few things are. Paradise Lost, yes. Heart of Darkness, yes. I think I could make cases for Turn of the Screw and Salinger's Nine Stories. But most works of genius are works that achieve flashes of insight that lift you out of yourself for a few minutes, then plunk you back down again. Such was Wall*E. And you know what? S'OK. Because that puts it in the company of Citizen Kane and Seven Samurai and The Rules of the Game and Casablanca. If the worst thing you can say of a work of art was that you only glimpsed perfection therein, um--that's a pretty fucking amazing work of art. Which this movie is. Plus, of course, it had robots.*

*I still prefer The Incredibles, mind you, because that had robots and Samuel L. Jackson. Case closed.

Do Not Buy This Book

2008-12-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

I'm torn between so many impulses: nausea, of course, and tears are right up there. Laughter, to be sure, but so many kinds of laughter, from the low cynical chuckle accompanied a "what can you do?" shake of the head, to the high-pitched chest-heaving kind that one usually associates with the phrase "neighbors have described the suspect as quiet and well-mannered." But enough coyness; here's why:

http://regent.gospelcom.net/rcp/authors/dennisdanielson/

Let us be clear: someone has "translated" Paradise Lost into "English." And others have looked at this and deemed it appropriate: http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/paradise-lost-in-prose/?ref=opinion. The attitude seems to be "Well, if it's something that makes the book easy and thus available to readers, why, more power to it!" And "It's not a 'translation,' per se; it's an interpretation that enables the original!"

With all due respect: Bull. Shit.

Allow me to offer an analogy: A conductor produces a performance of Beethoven's Ninth that eliminates everything but the strings and percussion, claiming that this streamlined version, inasmuch as it is easier for the ear to follow, will open up the work to listeners who aren't quite musically experienced enough to listen to the original. He'd be howled from the podium, pursued by a shower of rotten fruit, and rightly so.

This is the ugly side of a society that believes that "All men are created equal" means "No one is better than me about anything ever"--that thinks that the quick path to stardom created by a few weeks on American Idol is a better, sexier way to greatness than pulling one's tired ass from low-rent venue from year to year until enough character and compexity is created to make the breakthrough legitimate. There is somehow the notion that things that are "hard" are never legitimately so, but are designed to be so in order to exclude you. That works of genius ought not to demand effort from us in order to appreciate them. To repeat: Bull. Shit.

Let me suggest something radical: if you can't read Paradise Lost, then you shouldn't read Paradise Lost. If you have to work at it--if you have to take a college course, or refer to the annotations, or struggle--then good. It should be a struggle. Most things worth doing require effort. This is particularly so of artists, and especially of poets. Shakespeare is hard. Chaucer is hard. Jonson and Spencer and Browning are hard. They're not hard because they "use all that-there fancy-talk"--they're hard because they're hard. Genius is hard--try reading Newton's Principia if you doubt me. Complexity of meaning requires our minds to occupy more than one place at the same time, which they can--but not without effort. So the notion that making Milton 'easier' is a legitimate enterprise is offensive and the kind of thing that makes democracies devolve into dictatorships. (Read Plato's Republic, if you doubt me--oh wait, that's hard, too.)

Look, I'm willing to compromise when it's another language--me, I can't read Greek, and yet Homer and Aeschylus and Sophocles have changed my life--I don't have enough Spanish to read Cervantes, and I'd be a poorer soul without Don Quixote. If you need a bridge to cross the gulf between nations, I'll let it go. But English is our language; it's the language that defines how we think, what we feel, who we are. And Milton, with the sole exceptions of Shakespeare and Samuel Johnson, has done more to enable the language to achieve heights and nuances of meaning--and has thus enabled us to achieve those qualities in ourselves. To suggest, then, that Milton needs to be dumbed-down--and that is exactly what this 'translation' is, let's not kid ourselves--means that we need to be dumbed-down--that we are too little in our thoughts and feelings to achieve Milton's level. We are not smaller than we were in his time--let's not allow ourselves to be self-crippled by demanding less than an honest effort. To do otherwise is to bitch and moan about how it's not fair that we're fat even though we're not willing to eat less or exercise. Effort is the only means to achievement--anything that life hands you is essentially hollow, which is why the children of the rich either go out and do something with their lives (FDR, JFK, Churchill) or degenerate into self-medicating gargoyles (anyone until 50 with the last name 'Hilton.')

Milton's poem is, among many many other things, about language itself--he tells us that he will attempt to "justify the ways of God to Man," and do so in the language of poetry. But much of the poem is given over to the inadequacy of any language to convey the meaning of the absolute or the divinely obscure--that humanity's frustration is that what we perceive and what it means and how we account for it in speech and action is just own great big godawful mess, and that the only individual who says what he means and means what he says is God, and that's what makes him God.

And yet the poem isn't about despair; it's about struggling against our linguistic inadequacies--about pushing against the limits of words to achieve something approximating the ability to say something--to really say it. For such a poem to be render user-friendly for them what ain't got the book-larnin' is sickening. It's a poem about how hard it is to understand things, and how we have to try all the same--and to corrupt that by making it 'easy' to understand is just...well, words fail me. (Which is kind of the point.) Shame on everyone who touched this slab of pitch and pretended they weren't defiled thereby, and shame on you if you support it.

In in particular, shame on Fish. Goddammit, Stanley, you know better. And if you don't, go back a reread the original, because you've forgotten why you got into this job in the first place.

A Tale of Two Warehouses

2008-08-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Some years ago--never mind how long precisely--I was stranded by the schedule of a friend with a car in a place with virtually nothing to recommend it apart from the fact that it got plenty of sun and seemed to have the necessary amount of oxygen to sustain life. Having nothing better to do, I wandered in to the only building in the vicinity. I was motivated by the same kind of perverse fascination that leads one to kick over a rotten log--I'd never been inside a Walmart Supercenter before, and I'd heard such horror stories.

My reaction was not what I expected. I wasn't appalled or amused. Instead, after about 10 minutes, I realized, with dismay, that I was clearly sliding into another depressive episode--that hopeless, grim anxiety began to descend upon me with a decisive weight, and I knew I was in for a rough day, week, month--who knew how long? Unhappy (as one might expect), I walked out quickly, deciding that I would let the sun shine on my face and at least get some Vitamin D in my system.

And five minutes after leaving the place, I was no longer feeling depressed.

Curious, I went back in, armed with the expectation of the experimental. And sure enough, about 10 minutes later, the depressive feelings returned. Knowing now that they were probably environmental, I suppressed them and stayed and tried to puzzle out my reaction to this place.

It didn't take long to interpret. I had been inside a massive (no, make that massive--the italics really are necessary, given the subject) open space, filled semi-literally to the rafters with puchaseable items, all of them at rock-bottom prices. And I hadn't seen a single thing that I'd even consider buying. Not even the least little bit did I want any of it.

I saw junk food--too much of it--and soda--again, too much of it--and bathroom accessories and lawn furniture and decorative items that I couldn't imagine looking tasteful in any setting. I saw lotions and hair-dye and toys that were nothing but souvenirs from the latest movie. I saw music made by artists who had to be studio-sweetened beyond recognition, and DVD collections of terrible mid-70s sitcoms. I saw clothes designed to catch the attention, but not to please it. I saw dozens of TVs with nothing on them worth watching. I saw rugs in patterns that distracted the eye unpleasantly. I saw so many things made of that shiny plastic that they use to make beach balls, that leaves its smell and a kind of after-touch of slickness on one's skin. And none of it--but none of it, was something that could be described as "necessary." It was all just so profoundly, overwhelmingly available that unless you really looked closely, or stood far back, you wouldn't notice that none of it was remotely appealing.

And yes, I saw the people shopping. And yes, they were fat. All of them--even and especially their many children. And when they moved, I thought of the scene in Dawn of the Dead where the zombies return to the mall where they spent so much time in life, unable even in death to break the habits of shuffling from store to store.

I don't mean to be a snob--and I don't think that in this instance, I'm being one. What I was seeing was something that actually made me think that the goddamned hippies who fulminate against American consumerism might actually have a point, and if there's anything I hate, it's conceding the validity of the opinions of the fuzzy-minded left. What I saw in that store was the fall of Rome--the point at which we as a nation have moved beyond satiety to the point at which there is no new thing under the sun, and all we can do is purchase more of what we already have, or eat more after our stomachs tell us we're full. It was, in short, an exercise in the nihilism that comes when studying the long view of history.

But--

Then something else happened, and it enables me to take a step further back and maybe not end on quite so sour a note.

A few months later, I went to a Costco.

And far from being depressed, I was giddy. Yes, again there was too much of everything, at rock bottom prices. Yes, the TVs still had nothing on them. And yes, many--though not nearly as many--of the people there were very, very fat. But somehow there was a briskness to it all, a lack of pretence and a winning sense that we were here for things we actually needed--that the food here was generally not junk, but simply large portions of staples. (Well, and condiments. But for Americans, condiments are a staple. It's a cultural quirk I've made my peace with.) The latest books were available, but also good editions of an eclectic mix of classics. The children's section focused on educational DVDs and software. There was a sense, in the men and women who were handing out samples, that the idea of this place was an attempt at quality, and not just quantity. We were offered fish as well as frozen pizza, fruit juice as well as spinach dip. The key difference with WalMart was the sense that we were being offered variety not just of product but of quality; yes, we could buy cheap, but we could also buy relatively dear, and get good value all the same. Wine and fresh bread, cheeses from all corners of the globe--it was a marketplace in the oldest sense of the word.

It was, in short, a vision of the success of America--a place where the openness of our society, the welcoming attitude to other places and people enable us to reap the benefits of their best, rather than just their cheapest. Where the product was more important than the brand. And while it was, in a sense, only a vision--after all, Costco sells a lot of the same stuff as WalMart--the difference between them isn't all that stark--it was nevertheless a sense of what was right about our desire and ability to lead pleasurable lives without crippling ourselves through work or debt to do so.

So maybe Rome will fall. But I'm not so sure that's it's time, just yet. Remember that the clash between Athens and Sparta should have been completely one-sided--Sparta's society was devoted entirely to the warrior ethos, while Athens was devoted to commerce and art. It should have been the jocks kicking the asses of the drama club. But against all logic, Athens not only held its own, but prevailed. (Temporarily. Then they engaged in an unprovoked war of imperial expansion and--OK, I'm getting depressed again.) Point is, we may be Athens as well as Rome. And our time may not yet be here. Just visit Costco, and you'll see.

Plus which, they have Cuisinarts on sale for, like, less than $75! I mean: dude!

Death of the Script

2008-08-13T10:53:00.001-07:00

There have been, for about six or seven years now (I know, I'm ever-so-cutting-edge), rumblings in the Cultural Commentary Community about the end of scripted television. Ever since Survivor took to the airwaves and showed the world that Reality TV was ready for prime-time (ready to make the leap from the smaller audiences of Cops and The Real World, in short), folks've been bitching about how, given the low cost and high ratings of such shows, scripted television was a dinosaur, a dodo, a Yangtze river dolphin (too soon on that last one?) And while reports of the death of S.T. may be greatly exaggerated (gotta go for that Twain reference), there is no doubt an element of truth therein. True, there've been backlashes--oh, how we all remember the gorgeous conflagration that ensued as a result of Who Wants To Marry A Millionaire?--but even as one game show (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?--did anyone ever get that that was a Cole Porter reference?) gives way to another (Deal or No Deal) and one 'contest' show segues into the next (The Apprentice becoming Project Runway and/or Top Chef), we're seeing a continual feed of such stuff gobbling up more and more airtime, to the apparent delight of viewers--Dancing With The Stars has got 'em glued to their seats, folks, despite the fact that there are two things wrong with that title, and "With" and "The" don't count.

So why the decline of S.T.? Is it just cost, or the fact that, more recently, the writers' strike forced networks to devote even more time to R.T.? Perhaps.

But it could be that S.T. sucks, and that it has sucked more and more over the past decade.

Allow me to explain--a 'tip-of-the-iceberg' moment of epiphany occurred to me while watching Mad Men the other night. Now I adore Mad Men, but there's been something a bit 'off' about that show for me--as good as it is, I couldn't quite lose myself in it--there was something distant, something off-putting, and suddenly in the middle of the show, one of the characters makes a reference to The Twilight Zone. And I got it--Mad Men is a show that tries to be smart. That is produced by men and women who self-consciously are being "intelligent." And while it and they often--even usually--succeed, the effort shows. But think now about the brilliance of The Twilight Zone; the difference between the two shows is clear: Mad Men tries to be smart, and often is--The Twilight Zone is just smart. No effort, no self-consciousness, no "bringing to television what it and the audience need"--it's just written by smart people (Rod Serling might have to go on a relatively short list of the 20th-century's creative geniuses for what he accomplished in the infant medium of television) who instinctive assume that smart people will watch and get it.

Now think about all the "good" television you've watched in your life. The Sopranos. House. We could go way back and talk about Hill Street Blues and Cheers. And what do they all have in common? Effort. Obvious, patent, can't-miss-it-once-you-realize-it's-there effort. Self-consciousness is the death of creativity. It's the death of engagement, of emotional investment, of catharsis. It's the death of inspiration, in short, and the more and more we go on into the new millennium, the more it becomes apparent that trying to be smart gives a show a very short shelf-life. Dramas care more about being "important" and "groundbreaking" than about being competently, cleanly written. Comedies care more about being "clever" than actually, you know, funny. Television hasn't gotten dumber, folks--it's gotten desperate. Smart people have become too aware of what they're doing, and now, like people who think about breathing, and walking, they can't do it naturally. Watch S.T., folks--pick a show, any show, and I bet you my lunch money* you'll see pretty soon how labored it is. How the effort shows.

We're seeing them sweat. And that's the point at which disenchantment sets in.

And I'm sorry to say that if history is anything to go by, this loss is irreversible.

Again, I open the floor to those who wish to offer shows that do not show such strain. But I'm dubious...

*As I do not eat lunch, this is an extremely safe bet for me.

A Very Short List Indeed

2008-08-05T13:22:00.001-07:00

I've been puzzling over it, and I've come to the conclusion that women are much better suited to movie-going than men. While it's true that certain movies are indeed "guy" movies, and that no woman will ever know or understand the true joy of watching Die Hard (sorry, ladies, but you really need a Y-chromosome to really get that movie; also true of The Godfather, Animal House, and anything starring Clint Eastwood--with the exception of Paint Your Wagon--that you can have--), I think that movies are generally emotional experiences, designed to produce not thought or reflection, but catharsis. Which means, more often than not, crying. And men don't get to cry. We just don't. It's a stereotype because it's true, folks. A woman in tears is an object of sympathy and offered solace. A man in tears is an object of avoidance and derision. (The only men who apparently feel free to weep are, unsurprisingly, very 'out' homosexuals, and I wonder if it's that kind of behavior, rather than their bedroom shenanigans, that freaks out straight men so much.) Why this taboo exists is self-evident enough to those who pay attention to Darwin, Levi-Strauss, Freud, and others of that ilk. (See also: Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, and Raymond Chandler. Philip Marlowe does not cry.) So women get to cry at movies, and men don't. Simple enough, and I seem to be reinventing the wheel here.

Except--

There are movies where men not only get to cry--they're supposed to. Where tears are utterly and completely required. Where one steps through the looking glass into a world where a man who doesn't cry is mocked and shunned. Let's take a look, shall we?

Brian's Song. Pretty much the Rosetta Stone of "You Are A Man And You Will Cry" movies. It retains all of its power to turn die-hard, tough-as-nails, spitting, swearing, beer-drinking, bar-fighting he-men into blubbering piles of sentiment so hapless that their pet dogs lose all respect for them. Watch this: "It's fourth and eight, and they won't let me punt." Every man who's seen this movie is now tearing up, and trying poorly to hide the fact. Poke him in the back and make fun of him, and watch him get angry and defensive. Something about the A.E. Houseman-esque athelete dying young manages to reach into our guts and twist 'em sharply.

And for many years, really, Brian's Song was it. You could cry at that, but not at anything else. Why? Well, first, because men can't cry at anything happy in a movie. Women can cry at the end of, say, Pride & Prejudice when Darcy finally breaks down and tells Elizabeth he still loves her. And men will turn to their snivelling dates and ask, "Why are you crying? It's good that this just happened!" So even moments when you'd think it'd be OK to cry--like when Rick decides he'd rather stay and fight the good fight rather than wheedling Ilsa into staying, you don't cry, because he's being a man about it. Which is a good thing. No crying. Ratso Rizzo dying on the bus? No crying. No, he didn't make it to Florida, but he died in hope. No crying. Maybe--maybe you could cry at Old Yeller getting whacked. A little. But because the kid himself volunteered to do it, you knew he was just nutting up and taking the final step into manhood. So not really able to cry openly, even there.

And then something remarkable happened to my generation. Field of Dreams. And I'll never forget the moment when, on the weekend after it opened, a few of my manlier friends and I were gathered for a smoke-and-joke and somebody mentioned that he'd seen the movie, and we all acknowledged that we'd seen it too--and then the bravest one of us (not I) said: "I don't know--something about that ending--something about a guy getting to play catch with his dad--I don't know what happened, but..." And he started to tear up. And normally that would've been the point at which we tar-and-feathered him. Only no. Because we all met each other's eyes, and just said variations on "Yeah...yeah, it was really...Yeah." Inarticulate, but dude, we'd wept--all of us, and it was OK that we had.

So I'm pondering about these two movies--the only two I can think of that men can cry at--both are about death, both are about the loss of a loved one, both are about the loss of a male loved one. And both are framed by the "manly" ethos of sports. Is it the athletics that make them permissably weepable? Perhaps. But I think it's more to do with the one kind of love that men are allowed to be sappy about--the love that we admit to when we're drunk and it's last call, and we swing our arms over the neck of the guy sitting next to us--"You and me, man--you and me." It's that dumb, instinctive passion that dull-witted writers call "bonding," but which is something far less structured, far more atavistic. It's not friendship--it's not brotherhood. It's love--the kind of love that Plato insisted could only exist between members of the same sex, who could genuinely understand each other on that primal, "I occupy the same biological structure as you." It's a love that we never talk about, or much think about. And it's something that matters more to us than--sorry, ladies--virtually the women in our lives. And so we instinctively know that when we weep at these movies, we're admitting to a secret that only we share--that love, and how much it means to us.

Something like that. It's late and I'm still tired from the move, and I still don't have furniture so my legs are cramping.

But something like that. Brian Piccolo dies, and too soon. A father returns from the grave in a form that his son can openly love. The connection is there.

I'm sincerely wracking my brains for other movies it's OK to cry at. Any help out there? I want to develop this theory further, as it seems to be a key to an important aspect of the male psyche...

New Beginnings

2008-08-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

This morning finds me waking up in a new city, anticipating a new job, and thinking much about this blog I've been neglecting so terribly. It strikes me that I perhaps ought to either reinvest myself in it a bit, or else quit altogether. Since quitting seems both easy and comfortable, it's clearly the wrong choice--one should pursue challenges, always, especially those that require exercise and discipline.

But I'm inclined to change the tenor of the blog a bit. For one thing: no more politics, or at least, no more direct commentary on policy--political opinion should be based on research and reflection, and while I've plenty of the latter, I've little enough of the former. Plus, if I'm going to fulminate, it ought to be about something that you can't find in spades elsewhere. (By the way, if you do want first-rate political commentary, check out ginandtacos.com - great stuff, smart guy, he's going places.)

Looking back over my work, it strikes me that the stuff of mine that was most interesting and most fun to write was cultural stuff--pop cultural, mostly, but you work with what's handed to you. So I'm thinking of turning this blog over into a primarily cultural-commentary-based venue. Mind you, this too will be limited; I freely admit that I'm aware only dimly of most contemporary music--I'm aware of, say, 50 Cent in the way that I'm aware of the planet Neptune--I know he exists, but I've never seen him. Rap eludes me for the same reason punk eluded me; for me, music is escapism, not expressionism--I want to forget my anger and frustration, not embrace/celebrate it. Sorry, Violent Femmes, I just can't; just leave me alone with my complete Beatles anthology, and be on your way.

So this, I think, will be the 'tone' and framework of the blog from hereon--commentary on film, television, 'trends', and the various instances of the signpost that indicate where our society is headed. And lest this seem trivial, remember: Thomas Carlyle--probably the greatest English philosopher of the 19th century (unless you're into utilitarianism--then it's John Stuart Mill)--wrote a compellingly fascinating faux-analysis of the philosophy of clothes, arguing both sincerely and ironically that fashion was as indicative of civilization as art, architecture, or military achievement. If it's good enough for Carlyle, it's good enough for me.

Let's see what happens.

Well, This Is Interesting

2008-06-12T21:34:00.001-07:00

I'd always believed that near-death experiences came in two varieties: the ones where death jumps out in front of you, and the ones where it creeps up from behind. Example: facing a bullet that misses you is the first kind. Finding out that the flight you just missed went down over the Rockies is the second.

The first is probably the scarier, since it usually requires you to jump out the way of your doom, and relying on your own feeble instincts and talents to survive usually only serves to remind you just how feeble they are. On the other hand, you did manage to pull your act together well enough to live to tell the tale, so there's at least one self-administered pat on the back due you, I'd say.

The second kind is insidious and subtle--rather than your jumping out of the way, it basically depends on Death deciding, quite randomly, that mmmmmno, not today, today I'm going to take someone else. Which maybe explains why we don't talk about the second kind during barroom exchanges of life-stories; they're essentially extended illustrations of your own impotence, and who the hell wants to tell a story in which s/he is the inert non-victim of circumstance.

Despite this collective silence, I think that most of us have had the second kind more than a few times; in fact, I suspect that we've had more such experiences than we know about--who knows how many times we've come frighteningly close to getting smeared across the business end of a semi while looking the wrong way? Plenty, I'll bet. But that's the up-side to the second kind of death: the oblivious quality to it. You don't see it coming, so you're impotent, but unaware. Whereas with the first kind, you've got the terror, but you get to feel like a hero.

There is, as it turns out, a third kind.

My thoughts turn to such morbidity because over the past few days, I've been under a persistent threat of injury and/or death, all thanks to weather conditions that have turned the local TV stations into a 24-hour fright-fest of interrupted programming and Doppler radar images that seem to be turning colors I've never seen before. The storms that have been freight-training across the state have caused the local river (a not-insubstantial one) to flood, and in some cases, flash-flood, and more rain is on the way, making the threat increase exponentially all the time. Simultaneously, we've had hail that ranges from golf-ball to baseball sized (impressive work, God!), and, of course, tornadoes. Several times. So I'm placed in the comic position of being told to get down into the basement (the people on the TV were really quite insistent about this, and since the 'live shot' they used to show their viewers just how dangerous this situation is is a shot of a street not five blocks away from me, I'm inclined to take their word for it), but that in the event of flash-flooding, I should for God's sake get to higher ground and avoid basements at all cost.

Basically, I'm fucked either way. And while I could shrug it off the first couple of days, it's getting on to about a week now. And it's threatening to continue well past the weekend. My nerves are getting dicey, to be honest--and, judging by the frayed appearance of the meteorologists on the aforementioned local stations, I'm not alone in this.

Problem is, I don't get to be oblivious (hard to be when the house is blinding white by lightning so close you can smell the ozone, then shaking so hard you can hear the cutlery doing the boogie-woogie in the next room), and I don't get to be heroic--because tornados and flash-floods are going to be Rock to my Scissors every time; there's just no standing up to them. Essentially, I'm being told to sit here and wait for Zeus to decide when or if he's had enough. And I'd feel like more of a wuss if it weren't for the fact that my neighbors keep coming out onto their porches during the few breaks in the deluge and giving each other what are very obviously "thank God we're still alive" hugs. I do not need this...

OK, LOOK...

2008-05-20T15:51:00.000-07:00

...haven't posted in awhile, don't care, won't apologize, but this needs to be said or my brain will sizzle in my skull like a steak on a skillet: Can that f*cking, f*cking, f*cking Sex And The City movie open and then run its miserable, carcinogenic course, and die, die, die, die, die, DIE?!

Please, I'm begging the universe to make this whole thing over. It was a stupid, stupid show, which in and of itself I don't have a problem with--looked at through the cold lens of maturity and logic, all television shows run the gamut from Just Plain Stupid (yes, even the good ones--I'll say it, and be done with it: even The Simpsons is stupid--any show that depends on plots that depend on characters behaving in endless cycles of the same self-humiliating behavior is stupid, and that's all of them, folks) to Oh My God This Is The Most Screamingly Stupid Thing That The Cosmos Must Have Puked Up After A Night Of Binge Drinking (I'm looking in your direction, Desperate Housewives). (I know what you're thinking--"But American Idol and Deal or No Deal are way stupider than that!"--and indeed they are, but 'talent'/game-based shows aren't 'television'--they're freak shows with the added pathos that the participants don't know they're freaks--it's like watching Lobster Boy confusedly trying to figure out why people keep staring at him.)

My problem with that f*cking show (and the fact that that phrase is a pun just boils my blood) is that it's not, as most shows are, quietly content to be stupid. (No one complains or even much notices the stupidity of good shows because the producers are under no illusions about Making Something Important--they mostly just want to be funny/entertaining, and at that they're often pretty efficient.) No, no--it's HBO. And therefore Important. And based on the We're Going To Jam This Down Your Throat Like You're Our Prison Bitch assault that this show keeps making: Wear this! Drink this! Care about this!--I can only assume that women out there are, and this is something that moves past the point of hilarity into horror, buying into it.

I realize I'm not saying anything new with this. Rants against Sex and the City are so common (and so spittle-fleckedly vitriolic) that, for a while, I was willing to actually defend the show as being 'not that bad, for Christ's sake!' But that's over. I just can't take it anymore. I hit the saturation point this afternoon, and I realize that I'm tired of playing advocate for this particular she-devil. Because apparently a whoooooooole lotta women really need this show to continue to tell them what to value and how to view their lives, and given the two-dimensional shallow stupidity of this show (not to mention the fact that why am I the only one who notices that none of these fictional women actually has any taste--the clothes f*cking suck and the booze might as well be garnished with lollypops), this is a very, very bad thing indeed.

I realize that I cannot stop this from happening. But I would like to fast-forward through the next month like it's a commercial on TiVo. Which, come to think of it, it is--a commercial for a life of idiocy and emotional retardation celebrated as liberation and style. I want out. And what's worse is that if it's a hit, you just f*cking know they're going to start planning an Entourage movie, next to which Sex and the City looks like a serialized version of Citizen Kane. I hate my own species...

We're Doomed. Again.

2008-04-06T13:39:00.000-07:00

Oh, shit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/washington/06patch.html?hp

OK, class, any guesses as to what happens when companies know that they can avoid being sued by simply getting the stamp-of-approval of government agencies that are incredibly susceptible to interference from lobbyists (in the form of bribes/kickbacks) and elected officials (in the form of threats/kickbacks), both Executive and Legislative, who are themselves thoroughly and completely in the pocket of said companies? Any ideas as to what companies will do when told, after writing a check, that they're legally bullet-proof? Anyone? Yes, I see a hand in the back. Your answer? "Things that would make Lex Luthor throw up"? Yes, that is correct.

Look for the next generation of thalidomide babies, coming soon to a town near you!

Lest anyone think that electing Bush didn't incur long-standing disastrous consequences for the lives of Americans, one really need look no further than a Supreme Court that now has a nice, clean slam-dunk on cases like this one.

History Lessons

2008-03-27T21:01:00.000-07:00

It's either post, or grade, so you know which one I'm gonna choose.

The blessing/curse of having a solid grasp of Western history is that, when tempted to drop one's face into one's hands and moan gutterally that "It's never ever been this bad before," one can always remember that Caligula made his horse a senator and nobody said 'boo,' and--within living memory of his lunatic reign--the same populace allowed themselves to be ruled by Nero, who thought it was super-cool to dress up like a wild animal and mutilate the genitals of bound prisoners. So just remember: it's always been this bad.

Read Thucydides, and read about a nation-state so arrogant that they entered into a treasury-depleting war-of-choice in which they totally overestimated their ability to quell the forces in the nation they invaded and ended up destroying themselves.

Read about Savanarola, who ruled according to blind religious faith in Florence, and came a serious cropper as a result.

Just read, people. Seriously--pick up a book and read it. Herodotus, Livy, Plutarch--these guys will really help you put your life in perspective.

I've been truly bitter as to the reaction to Obama's speech. Sickened by the bigotry--both racial and intellectual--that it's provoked. I could despair. But then I remember: when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, people hated it. They thought it was a flat, insipid bucket of bathwater. And they hated him, too--they hated him, and they hated Kennedy, and they hated King--and when all three men were killed, people in this country celebrated. There have always been and will always be evil men and women who hate those who call them on their bigotry and bullshit, and make no mistake, that's who's making the noise about Obama these days. But history reminds us, too, that Lincoln and King are the ones who, in the long run, won. I do not, needless to say, expect that Obama will meet with a similarly grisly end. But when the ignorati turn up their noses at his message like it's the dog's breakfast--well, "filths savor but themselves," as Shakespeare puts it. History has a dustheap, and those who fight against the progress of tolerance and enlightenment invariably wind up there. When he's dead, Sean Hannity will be forgotten, just like Walter Winchell was, just like Joe McCarthy was. We'll remember him as we remember them, as an embarassing joke--we'll look back on him and Coulter and Brit Hume and John Gibson and we'll have the same kind of half-amused, half-creeped-out shudder that we get when we see 'Negro figurine' memorabilia. Just another bit of stupid sludge that time and the slow pace of collective wisdom will flush and forget.

We'll remember the speech, though.

On an autobiographical note, I've been offered a tenure track job, somewhere else in the Midwest. I'm thinking it over.

That F***er.

2008-03-19T14:53:00.000-07:00

So, I watched The Speech. You know the one:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/us/politics/18text-obama.html?em&ex=1206072000&en=ee9b37a72e4cff50&ei=5087%0A

I am, as most who know me will confirm, a rather skeptical fellow. I view the world with a cocked head that sees and a ready grimace that comments on its hypocrisy, folly, cruelty, and greed--all those things that Holden Caulfield instinctively (though witlessly) calls "phony" and that Brick eloquently (though repressedly homosexually) calls "mendacity."

I know that it's there--that lying, slithering viciousness that makes the philosophies of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Nietzsche appear solidly footed.

I watched the speech.

I tried to be skeptical--I succeeded for awhile.

But by the time he got to that Ashley story, I was a tear-streaked mess. (That little bitch better exist by the way--if she's a figment of Obama's rhetoric, somebody's getting nut-punched. I do not like being moved to tears by getting punked.)

I hate that he can do this to me--I hate the degree to which a stranger has this kind of power over me. I'm just so goddamned comfortable being skeptical-to-the-point-of-cynical. It's so easy, so clear-thinking, so smart. I hate that someone can, with nothing more than a clear command of American history and the English language and a solid occupation of the moral high-ground, make me soft-skinned and wide-eyed and wanting to believe that this guy's the real thing. I hate that, because such faith is too easy to crush--such desire is too easy to be disappointed.

I hate that he can't--he just can't--be what he seems: smart and dignified and not about to snivel a retraction he doesn't believe in and more interested in forcing issues than smoothing them over. I hate that he seems too much to be a man I want to follow with optimism and purpose, and my intelligence and experience tells me that No, He Isn't--He Can't Be--No One Is.

I hate it.

I don't care.

He's got my vote.

As If Pedophilia Wasn't Bad Enough

2008-03-17T11:07:00.000-07:00

Lest anyone wonder why Catholicism gets less and less respect as a religion these days--let's face it, if it wasn't for that birth-control ban, their numbers would be plummeting even faster than those of Episcopalians--I'm talking to you, my white-bread brethren! Breed more! Breed faster! Less golf and cocktails, more baby-making! Take/give one for the team, or you're going to have to start letting Mormons into the country clubs, which means lectures in the lounge about how you shouldn't be drinking real coffee or having ancillary sexual encounters with the help!--anyway, where was I? Oh, yes: Catholics, and why picking a comically Teutonic high pontiff is just one of a series of bone-headed P.R. moves designed, it seems, to bring the 2K-year-old structure down in a resounding crash--I give you this:

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/seven-more-sins-thanks-to-vatican/

I really have few words for this one, except that clearly they had much better writers when they came up with the first seven. In case you hadn't noticed, "Excessive Wealth" isn't a state of mind/desire--it's a result of...wait for it...Greed. Which, last time I checked, was already a Deadly Sin. And isn't Drug Abuse a derivative of Sloth--or Lust, I suppose, if the drug in question is Viagra! (Ba-dump-bum! A Viagra joke! How topical!) Polluting the environment: Greed + Pride. Bioethical no-nos: Pride. (Didn't any of these people read Frankenstein?) All these acts (rather than desires/frames of mind, which is what the original list was designed to address) can be traced back to the original list, rendering this list...well, pointless and silly and and an incredibly lame attempt to appear 'trendy,' which works about as well as Carol Channing doing a cover of "Gangster's Paradise."

In short, there is no new thing under the sun, here, and it seems instead designed to A. reiterate canonically questionable positions they seem desperate to shore up, and B. present choke-inducing instances of hypocrisy. Last I checked, everybody from Archibishops up could easily be accused of Excessive Wealth--and the Church's policies on birth control and abortion help mightily to Create Poverty. As for Polluting the Environment, so long as James Dobson is allowed access to media outlets, I think we can call hypocrisy on that one, too.

In even shorter short, these people are acting very, very silly, indeed, and once again proving that the bigger the religion, the more its unqualified middle and upper management make bad decisions that just brings down the street cred of the institution. Which is good entertainment news for the rest of us, especially as Scientology seems finally to be entering into the "can't make a smart move to save its life" phase. (See, this is why Judaism maintains its exclusive, 'boutique' status--it's achieved a perfectly sustainable size to maintain product integrity, and knows not to expand beyond that point. One would almost suspect that its management has made a point of ensuring that its members are well-versed in matters of media and advertisement...Nah.)

Yellow

2008-03-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

As someone who's been flying a lot lately, let me ask: If the Threat Level is always elevated--that is, if it's always Yellow, as indeed it has been for well over a year--then doesn't that level become, by definition, not elevated, as it is now the standard, rather than a heightened state? I mean, if it's always 90 degrees, isn't 90 degrees the average temperature, rather than 'hotter than normal'? "Elevated" seems to fall into the category of Starbuck's use of "Tall," namely "a word that we're going to use in whimsical defiance of its actual meaning." Given the definition of "Guarded"--which means "a general risk of terrorist attacks," and no, I'm not sure what 'general' means--is there any significant distinction between the two? And isn't warning people that the danger is higher right now the equivalent of crying wolf? And at what point can I stop asking rhetorical questions and just accept the fact that "three-ounce containers in a plastic bag" is the way of the world from now on? Answer: Now.

Not Yet Back, Not Yet Whole

2008-03-10T11:32:00.000-07:00

This will be mostly bitching and moaning, so if you're having a trying day, please skip it, because otherwise you'll be doing a lot of eye-rolling while muttering "Cry me a fucking river, drama queen." And you would probably be right to do so. That said:

February was a cruel month--lot of travel, lot of stress, lot of rejection--and I learned a lot, though not much of it was pleasant. I've got another campus visit in a couple of days, and then, finally, thank God, spring break. I'm reminded, of course, even at times like this, that others have a much harder row to hoe--I tell myself that, and generally it works to staunch the flow of morbidity. Next to violence, self-pity is probably the most distasteful 'natural' impulse human beings have--stemming as it does from a fundamental selfishness that makes perfect sense on an evolutionary level, but which has none of the acceptable atavistic hallmarks of survival. One doesn't do better or accomplish more as a result of self-pity--it doesn't feed lizard-brain-wired needs like gluttony or laziness or lust. It just acts to advertise one's sense of self-selection as the Most Important Person In The Room, without doing anything positive to justify it.

I remind myself of this, and I shut the hell up. It's not easy, of course--I realize, in my rare moments of genuine self-objectivity, that I'm an appallingly selfish person--but I do try--I may be narcissistic, but I'm not solipsistic. Other people exist, and, Nietzsche be damned, they really do generally matter more than I do. Than we do. Because...well, there's more of them, for one thing. But for another, other people are often quite easy to help--quite easy to guide and assist and soothe. And if we can't do that for ourselves--I sure as hell can't--then doing it for others is, I think, a small way of reminding ourselves that, at the very least, our own problems a. aren't that bad, and b. may have solutions. Which brings us back to the fact that It's All About Me, I admit. But hey, I've figured out a way to be a narcissist and a decent person. So that's something, right?

But--

I made a decision early on not to talk about the break-up of my marriage here, and I'll stand by that decision. To do otherwise would be tasteless, embarassing, and even if it were neither of these things, creepy and unfair. So I will not do so, except to say--and this is more 'aftermath' than 'event,' which is how I justify saying this: such experiences wound you in many different ways. Some you recover from. Some you recover from eventually. Some you don't. Ever. I'm just beginning to realize that last part. And it's become a sore tooth I can't stop jabbing. But I have to. Just hasn't happened yet, and combined with a cycle of professional rejections, it leaves me...uncommunicative. Hence the long silences.

Here's hoping for better days.

Cyprus Nights

2008-02-25T09:34:00.000-08:00

So, yeah, I couldn't resist sneaking into an internet cafe and posting from the birthplace of Aphrodite. Not that I have too much to say other than that I'm here, and that there are many many cats in this city. (Nicosia--or Lefkovia, depending on whether you're giving the Latinate or the Greek version of the name--people seem to use them interchangably, which was plenty confusing at first.) Yes, I've eaten lamb sliced off a skewer, and yogurt that I can only describe as a reason to emigrate here. Seriously, it was that good. The flavor of the city is very Western Europe, on the whole--though I've not ventured beyond the mid-city border into Turkish territory--why, I know you're wondering, on Earth not? Dunno--something about signs posting UN warnings and informing me that cameras are going to get me into serious trouble that just...puts me off.

I arrived here semi-zombified, and haven't quite recovered--ah, jet-lag, you're twice as sweet to those of us with a proclivity for biochemical depression. Though there's been little to be depressed about--the place is quite lovely--as I say, Western Europe shows here--the Venetian roots and the British occupation are in evidence, and it's not as if the Ottomans didn't know how to run a city. Oh, and there's a wee bit of Greek culture, too. Just a little. Alas, the fucking museums are all closed on Mondays, because, of course, they knew that that was the only day I'd be available. Bastards. Plus they drive on the left side of the street. Damn you, Britain, and your wrong-headed automotive imperialism! (Though I suppose until we in the U.S. shape up and go metric, we've no right to complain. Still.)

Arrived in time to drive by about eighty press conference--there was a national election, and they've got a new...head...guy. (Seriously, I don't know--President? PM? Anyone? Anyone? The TV stations are mostly in Greek, and all I know is the stuff waiters in restaurants shout when they break dishes!) Apparently, according to the BBC--OK, so I'm grateful for a little cultural imperialism there--he's a genuine Communist, but that his election is generally quite popular here and abroad, as he's made it his first order of business to reunite the country--kind of the flip-side of Raul Castro's 'election,' after which he promised There Would Be No Changes--the Cypriot's much more the Obama voice of audacious hope. So, here's hoping.

There are, to reiterate, many many cats here. All feral, presumably, but clean, sun-drunk, and quite happy-looking. (A healthy pigeon population probably keeps them well-fed.) I've been meowed at and stared at from parks, atop walls, from balustrades, and roof-tops. Cute little things.

No public transportation; you either walk, or drive. Alas for environmentalists, it seems that people here choose the latter. Which leads to parking jobs that can best be called hilarious--there are no sidewalks in Nicosia--only places where people walk around over-the-curb parked cars. This has to be illegal, yet no one cares.

My interview is tomorrow morning; I'm still a little spacey, and worried that I'll be so then, which is not good.

I left for Cyprus thinking that if I didn't love it, I wouldn't consider staying. I'm considering staying. Which means, fate being what it is (see "hell-bitch with an ugly sense of humor"), they won't offer me the job.

Off To The Far Side Of The World

2008-02-22T20:18:00.000-08:00

Starting tomorrow ca. noonish, when the van picks me up and whisks me off to the nearest super-major airport, I'll be in transit for the better part of a day, winding up on a Mediterranean island for one day of recovery from jet-lag and then a job interview. I am, as to be expected, nervous. Yet also, not. This job, I want. It would mean challenges and difficulties and lots of displacedness-induced angst, and yet...yeah, I want this job. So wish me luck. Should be back on Wednesday next, but travel in an uncertain universe being what it is, who can say?

(Low Menacing Growl)

2008-02-21T08:34:00.000-08:00

Heard from one of my potential hirees this morning; it seems that at the point at which they were about to make a decision, the university administration informed them that the funding for the position was no longer available. Which means that there suddenly was no job for me to get or lose. Poof--all gone! The committee fell over themselves apologizing--and it truly isn't their fault--they wanted to hire somebody. But someone among the higher-ups made a last-minute call that reduced the past few months to a waste of time and (amusingly enough) money--searches are expensive. Alas for me and for the kind folks at the department.

The problem with profanity--needless to say, I've been cursing under my breath quite a bit today--is that the best sounding words are the most offensive. Take "c*cks*cker." The sound of it is just perfect--that Teutonic bite to it is a magnificent means of expressing a bitten-off chunk of anger. But you just insulted a large number of gay men by suggesting that a perfectly harmless practice of theirs is vile. Similarly, "c*nt"--well, we won't go there--it's a good sound, but a terrible word. "F*ck" is OK, but it's more of a bark than a curse. "Sh*t" sounds petulant. And one can't go with "D*mn" without sounding like a 19th-century English gentleman who's just lost the fox's trail mid-hunt. Profanity is difficult. Which, at a time like this, it shouldn't be. Consarnit.

Mission Unaccomplished

2008-02-20T09:12:00.001-08:00

Back today from an-occasionally-literally-disorienting trip to New Orleans for a campus visit. (That's a 'final job interview,' for those of you not hip to the academic lingo.) Flew in Monday night, ran a gauntlet of meetings and interviews with various solemn worthies, taught a 'sample class' on Othello (that was genuinely fun, I admit), and flew out late afternoon on Tuesday--so I really didn't have much time for anything else. I cannot tell you what the French Quarter is really like, though I will bet you that one leaves it with a true appreciation for the nuances of the varieties of beer vomit.

But I did notice something that I take home with me. (Apart from that awesome 'drunken Cajun salt-and-pepper shaker' I picked up in the gift shop--that is so going with my good china!) And that was this: People there talk about Katrina. A lot. Only natural that they would, to me--they're introducing me to a city I might very well move to, and they want me to know the Real Deal--but they never call it "the Hurricane." They call it "the flood." Because, as more than one person pointed out, "the storm didn't do this to us--the levees did." They are painfully, angrily aware of two things: One, this didn't have to happen--that enough people had been saying for long enough that these levees would not hold, and Two, in the wake of its failure, the government has been cruelly negligent. New Orleans is an angry city--and it's a good, clean anger that's actually brought them together, in the same way that hating an enemy in a time of war will unite a nation. And coming back, I was a little angry, too--it's infectious, and I'm prone to that disease, as you all know.

It wasn't the storm, it was the flood. It wasn't a natural disaster--it was a man-made one. They know this--and they know that people outside have forgotten.

And they're clear-eyed and angry about it.

Good.

Perversely Hypnotic

2008-02-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Johnathon Swift once stated that "satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." Truer words, and all that, as Bertie Wooster would say.

I thought of that aphorism when I stumbled across this site: http://jezebel.com/gossip/crap-email-from-a-dude/.

It's probably relatively work-safe, but wait 'til you get home, because you're going to want to spend a few hours there--especially if you're a straight guy with even the smallest capacity for self-reflection. Oh, it won't be a pleasant experience--quite the contrary. Enlightenment is rarely gratifying; it usually takes the form of being confronted with what a total ass you've been. And this site is a doozy of an enlightener.

In all the times that women have told me--and men around me--that "we just don't get it," I've been inclined, I admit it, to think of that as a cop-out. That rather that explaining what it is we don't get, they simply throw up their hands and bail, as if they were faced with the task of teaching particle physics to special needs kids. But most of the men I've known have been, most of the time, capable of high-level-cognitive processing; we're not dumb, ladies--that's just something you tell yourselves so that the fact that we don't care about the same things that you do becomes our problem rather than yours.

But--

That said--

I began to read these letters, and realized that Oh My Sweet Lord They Might Have A Point After All. Because the letters here aren't written by knuckle-draggers. (Their high-level of grammatical errors notwithstanding.) They're actually the product of effort and thought and an attempt at verbal nuance/precision. Which makes them all the scarier. To return to the analogy of the special needs kids--hey, it's not like I'm afraid of pissing them off, as I'm pretty sure I can outrun them, and they always fall for the "It Was My Evil Twin" excuse--when said kid attempts to produce a 'pretty picture' and instead produces a godawful smear of random colors blending into muck brown, you still admire the effort and the creative impulse. The kid in question shouldn't know better, and is judged accordingly. But when a grown man who holds down a job and ties his own shoes and manages a stock portfolio does the same thing--well, then it's equal parts creepy and sad.

And what I realize in reading these letters is that when guys try to talk about their feelings or explain their behavior--this is how we sound. Self-important, condescending, and so completely un-self-aware that you just...curdle. And it's not just some of us--it's all of us. We all sound like this. Because...I think...we just can't get it. Maybe it's the limitations of English, maybe it's the way we're taught to use it, maybe it's our egos, maybe it's our insecurities--and yes, "All Of The Above" is probably the right answer--but when a man tries to explain himself, he invariably ends up trying to justify himself. Which makes him defensive and controlling. Which makes him, well--these guys.

And the only thing that consoles me is the fact that the only thing worse that being such an awful creature, is being forced to spend your life with one. Sorry, ladies--we really didn't know. And sorry, too, that our knowing will not fix the problem.

Murder

2008-02-15T07:58:00.001-08:00

There are really only two responses to what happened yesterday--grief and rage. Because I'm a WASP male with a geneology dominated by Irish, Polish, and German, I don't do grief, so rage is all I've got. Because I teach students the same age--because I teach the same people that this murderous, hell-bound thing killed, I take it a little more personally than I perhaps have a right to. I'm not saying that I get it in ways that others don't--I'm removed enough from the place and the event that I can't claim any such thing. But here I am in southern Wisconsin, which is uncomfortably close to Northern Illinois. People on this campus knew people on that campus. And so how can I not look at my own kids this day and not see them as potential victims?

I'm supposed, according to Good Solid Judeo-Christian principles, to forgive. I don't. I can't. (Again, I don't say this with some kind of macho swagger that shows how much I really really care. Just a fact, nothing more.) Young people, for all their foolishness, and shallowness, and stupidity, are really quite wonderful. They--there's no other word for it, so sorry about this--they glow. They hum. There's all this energy and hope and frustration and the excited impatience of knowing that their lives are waiting for them, and they still think of those lives the way kids think about unopened presents on Christmas morning. They live in ways and in degrees that I watch and envy--they have, all of them, so much to give and to do, and no, most of them don't--most of them slack, and party, and fall asleep in class, and wait 'til the night before the paper is due to get started. But that's part of their charm--they're finally free to live according to their own body clocks, their own impulses, their own values. And sure, some of those values are a bit laughable, in retrospect--but only in retrospect. In many ways, this is the most free they've been since before kindergarden--and the most free they'll ever be. I love them; I truly do. Even the ones who drive me mad, even the ones who ignore me--I love them all.

And I hate him. To take away that life, that joy--can there be anything so selfishly, stupidly hateful? There isn't even the comfort of yesterday's butchery being 'senseless'--it isn't. Someone was in pain, and decided to hurt others--not so his pain would end--a simple suicide would have solved that, and earned my sympathy and sober attention--but so that they would hurt, too. As if their pain and horror and loss would somehow make his justified or tolerable or right. That's the face of evil, folks. That's Iago. That's Satan. It's cheap, and small, and contemptible. And I hate him for it.

I've rambled. So be it. Somehow coherence and polish seem inapt in the face of such viciousness.

February 14th

2008-02-14T12:49:00.000-08:00

Henry Ford once said "Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you do not need it. If you are sick, you should not take it." Then he probably added something about how it was Jewish conspiracy, but never mind that.

I think the same thing about Valentine's Day. If you're in a couple, you don't need it. If you're not, it's only food for morbidity. Look, in the same way that "every day is Children's Day," every day that a happy couple is together is Their Day. And if it isn't--if they need a day to remind them of how lucky they are, well, that's what anniversaries are for, right? For the rest of us, Valentine's Day is a day of gloom, rash declarations of insincere affection, and a whole lotta drinking as a result of both. It's a poorly conceived holiday because it celebrates that which those who have cause to be celebratory, are already celebrating. And those who don't, can't. So f*** it, and those who perpetrate it--it's not 'phony,' or 'commercial,' or even 'cruel'--it's just a bad idea, ill-conceived from the get-go. Can we please let it go the way of Flag and/or Columbus Day? Please?

(OK, enough from me--go eat your chocolate, all you happy snugglebunnies out there. And yes, feel a little bit smug about the rest of us on the outside looking in. It's only human nature.)

Strike's Over!

2008-02-13T08:29:00.000-08:00

And not a moment too soon. Another week without Grey's Anatomy and I'd've been climbing bell-towers with my trusty Red Rider. But seriously, folks--what's remarkable is how little I've missed what these guys had to offer--one realizes that television, for instance, is a habit rather than a pleasure. I mean, did any of us actually miss all those lost episodes of SNL? I think not--lame, one-notion sketches about, oh, I don't know, Obama and Hillary trying to be awkwardly polite to each other and failing. Haha! That was mildly, if obviously funny for, like 18.7 seconds! What're you going to do with the remaining five minutes? Oh, I see--recycle the joke. Lovely. And while I'm picking on poor SNL a bit, let me suggest that there's a larger concept at play: all shows are like SNL sketches. There's a reason why so many first seasons (Heroes, Lost, Alias, etc.) rock, only to have subsequent seasons suck, and suck hard--the precipitous decline can be blamed essentially on a fundamental frustration on our part with what we realize is a poorly conceived recycling of the same shit.

Look, 'twas ever thus--I'm not saying anything new, here. We all knew that Rod Serling is going to twist things around in the last five minutes of The Twilight Zone. We all knew that Perry Mason was going to get his client off, and that Columbo was going to nail the B-list celebrity bad guy. We definitely knew that the castaways were never going to leave that damn island. (Incidentally, has anyone pointed out that M. Night Shyamalan is a very very very poor man's Rod Serling, minus, you know, the remarkable social commentary and progressive politics? Seriously--go rewatch that show--Serling was the man when it came to civil rights, the environment, post-war paranoia and conformity--just a buttoned-down version of Lenny Bruce with a talent for the fantastic. Anyway--)

So, strike's off. And while it means that Daily Show and Colbert can depend less on interviews--though they've had some remarkably good ones in the interim--both men come to the table well prepared and have shown a truly remarkable willingness to let the other guy talk without giving an inch--seriously, Colbert and Stewart would each of them be able to segue rather seamlessly into 'real' news if they wanted to. But why would they want to?--and I'm glad about that return to a scripted format--am I really all that happy beyond this? No. I just haven't missed the writers.

Mind you, I'm truly unimportant in this respect. ("And in every other," you say, and fuck you, too, pal.) That is, I'm not, never have been, and never will be the intended audience of the workers of the WGA. Businesspeople themselves, they're looking to market their goods to the widest possible audience, and--oh, the wackiness of Adam Smith--that means that they actually have to exclude some consumers in order to get the largest possible number. So we on each side of the bell curve--look, I've got a freakin' Ph.D. from a top-twenty program, I'm one of the smarties, 'mkay?--get to go chase our amusements elsewhere. And writers, aiming solidly for the middle, produce...well, have you ever tried to watch a sitcom on ABC? Try it sometime--but remember, it's like the first time you drop acid--have a friend nearby who stays clean and can help you through the rough spots.

So I'm glad they're back--I'm glad that they got something for their efforts. And yeah, I'll still tune in to catch the occasional episode of House and 30 Rock. But in the long run: meh.

Post-Game

2008-02-05T08:57:00.000-08:00

I'm off to one of my campus visits tonight, and am appropriately paralytic with fear, dread, and yes, just a soupcon of nausea. In order to distract myself, I will go ahead and jump on the bandwagon in pointing out that Oh My Dear Sweet Lord In Heaven were those Superbowl ads racist. You know the ones I'm talking about. The Charlie-Chan panda bears. And the Subcontinental salesman, with the--but of course--seven kids. SalesGenie--know the name so that you may avoid it. I just...it...words failed me. Oddly, I wasn't deeply, deeply hurt or offended (my lily-whiteness probably had something to do with it) because there's just a certain point at which racism becomes funny to me--so absurdly disconnected from reality that I just have to lean back and laugh. And then ignore the source forever. Which I plan to do. Interestingly enough--and this fact has been getting a lot of play as well--is that the ads were written by the company's CEO, who's India. Which, if you think about it, kind of explains the anti-Chinese racism. And perhaps he's self-loathingly Indian? Who knows. All I know is, I've got a number of close friends who are Chinese, and I wonder if that sound I heard from a great distance was that of their heads exploding. Mine would have...

Largely Half-Hearted Post

2008-02-01T08:17:00.001-08:00

More of an assurance to concerned readers (both of them) that no, I'm not dead. Just in Wisconsin--ba-dum-bump-tish! But seriously, all the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) and the sky is grey (and the sky is grey.) It's staggeringly bleak here, relieved only by the occasional dumping of another 3-inches. I took my second major seasonal spill on an ice-laden sidewalk yesterday, and am feeling the effects still, a reminder that, no, I'm no longer in my bounce-back-after-a-gut-shot twenties. Now I'm more in my takes-the-elevator-to-go-up-one-flight late 30s. Joy. Anyway--

This month initiates my trial by fire, as I travel to not one, not two, but three campus visits. (I also have upcoming phone interviews for two other schools, one domestic, the other staggeringly not.) Georgia, Louisiana, and a certain Mediterranean island--yes, you heard that last part right--will be visited by yours truly, where I will attempt to convince skeptics that I'm not a total mongoloid. (Wish me luck on that!) Since I hate travel immensely, I will probably enjoy very little of this, and don't bother trying to tell me to think positively and approach these as mini-vacations, because it's not going to work. Jet-lag, missed connections, and lost passports are what this means, and we both know it.

Mind, such travel also means that I've got another several shots at getting a Real Live Job, so I'm not going to bitch too terribly much. Still, between one thing and another, I'm more than lightly frazzled.

Oh, and my social isolation has become so complete that I'm actually in the early stages of taking an art class. Because, you know, that's where all the women go to meet heterosexual men. Yep. That's where we flock in droves. Sigh...

Blurgh

2008-01-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

Seems only appropriate that I should be hung over the day after my birthday--but that the hangover should continue to the day after the day after? That seems excessively punitive of God. (Then again, we are talking about a guy who tends to punish with what might be considered a heavy hand, except that if you point this out to Him, he will not only give you boil-sores unto the ninth generation, but condemn all mankind to the everlasting bonfire unless His only begotten Son volunteers to get whacked with extreme prejudice to save your sorry ass. So, you know, not what you'd call the most fair-minded deity. Gotta love His kid, though--a real stand-up guy, that. Anyway--)

Two celebratory meals in a row--dinner with a lot of red meat, carbs, and booze, then an early lunch with even more read meat, even more carbs, and oh my ever more booze, and my pathetic body, its muscles sere, its bones hollow, just decided that enough was enough and down I went. And remained so all last night. And then after I'd slept nice and late today (praise be to the lengthy vacations bestowed upon us by the semester system), and got up, I found that...I did not want to get up. Or move. Or blink. A two-day hangover??? Oh cruel fate, why do you torment me so--I am like unto Prometheus, chained to his rock and torn at by--what? Stop whining, take some Alka-Seltzer and go back to bed with a book and shut the fuck up?

Well...OK.

January the Ninth

2008-01-09T00:08:00.000-08:00

Allow me to make a brief statement on the occasion of my 38th birthday:

God-dammit!!!

Thank you. This concludes my prepared remarks. If you have any questions, you can address them to the trail of Bushmills bottles I'll leave behind me as I slither back under the covers. The world and everyone in it can go fuck themselves with a wooden spoon. (No, not the *same* one--that's time-consuming and unsanitary. Everybody get your own. Jeez, do I have do all the thinking around here?!)

Under Protest

2008-01-06T16:09:00.000-08:00

I've been requested by readers--the number has moved from "a couple" to "a few"--to post the goddamned poetry I've been writing. I suspect this request is prompted by the slavering anticipation of entertaining godawfulness. I disapprove, but one must give the people what they want. I will limit myself to two selections, and hope that these suck enough to sate the most depraved of sadomasochistic appetites.

Enjoy/Suffer:

Untitled Sonnet

Where most I love, ‘tis there I must not speak:
To speak, to coax a pledge is to define,
And thus to fix the contract that I seek,
And limit her to be the she that’s mine.
Dull fool, to think to limit with a name
That she whom most you love for variance’ sake.
One moment to the next is she the same?
Or would you fix that which your love would break?
Imagine then the words between you spoke
She laughing soon will fly both term and bed
She doing so, no contract will be broke:
The she that vowed is not the she that fled.
She loves, and this is more than words can win
To make her less to make her thine were sin.

and

I Wonder

Was Lazarus disappointed?
I'm sure he must have been polite about the whole thing.
After all, a favor unasked is still a favor
And what a favor, to be sure--
Made that whole water-into-wine number look like a party trick
(Which, if you think about it, it rather was.)
So he must have said "thank you," and probably more than once
And consulted Emily Post for the appropriate gift for such an occasion.
No doubt she disappointed him, and he had to make do with a nice long letter,
Dictated to the local scribe, because surely he couldn't read or write.
So it must have been flattering, at least. Pleasing, in that sense.
And yet—
Had he been warm? At peace? Coolly detached, like Chaucer's Troylus?
No reason to assume that whatever the other side held, he wasn't allotted the best.
After all, if the Son weeps for you, you must have been worth the tears.
(Oh Dante will tell you a tale of where he must have been
But Dante was a poet, not a scholar
There are no scholars of Hell.
Heaven either.
Or whatever there was before He rearranged all the furniture on that side of things.)
So no reason to think that he wasn't, let's just say it, perfectly happy where he was.
And look what he came back to--
Not that life's not worth living—
But between the evils of the day, and wondering where that daily bread is going to come from
And the aches of a poorly made bed stuffed with husks
And a sun that's either too brutal and bright or gone too long
Clothes that itch, food that's suddenly too salty too sweet too much--
Think of that body, shocked by pricks and stabs that it thought had been left behind
All the old lessons of sense having to be learned again, like a neglected second language
He must have been a bit wistful at times, surely.
And now think of all those people pestering him
With questions questions questions
Most of which he probably wasn't able to answer very well
Any more than you or I could explain that patched and awkwardly plotted dream last night—What was the rocking horse doing there—did it mean something—and why was it on fire?—
I doubt many of them left him satisfied
And so he would have been a disappointment all his (second) life.
A bit of a freak, wouldn't he have been?
Some people, surely, would have crossed the street when they saw him coming
And claimed that they could still smell the tomb on him
And while they must have been happy to have him back—
Wife and children and family—
Wouldn't they even they watch him with suspicious eyes
All their love soured by a wariness?
They'd let go of him once, after all, and that must have been hard
It always is. Nothing harder.
He'd let go too.

So, there you go. Two poems. Now let us never speak of this again.

Quietly Bereft

2007-12-20T14:56:00.000-08:00

The usual holiday-related hiatus is in effect, as if you hadn't noticed. Yes, I've got more time on my hands and thus, theoretically, more time to write, but goddammit, I'm on vacation, and writing is hard work. Speaking of which, am I the only one who is sick and freaking tired of the WGA strike? Make no mistake, I'm with the scribblers on this one (goes without saying), but while I don't much miss the prime-time line-up ("when TV's brightest stars come out to shine"--thank you, Homer Simpson), I'm quite seriously jonesing for both Daily Show and Colbert. I suspect I'm not alone in this. A lot of good material is being lost to the ages because of the rapacity of studios--look, I know they've got nests to feather and shareholders to keep happy--I get that this is a business and as such, it depends on paying as little as you can for what you can sell for as much as you can. I get it; I really do. But writers are an absolute necessity--the process grinds to a halt without them, unless you want nothing but reality television and game shows, and do we? (Crap--we probably do, and by 'we' I mean that part of America that snobs like me always sneer at while not really having the vaguest clue as to who these people are or where they live.) Point is, I miss my Stewart/Colbert fix, and while I'm willing to ride out the strike because you've gotta let them fight the good fight, I feel, as I say, quietly bereft by their absence, a small cloud hanging over the holidays.

That, and having to fly back to fucking Chicago in the dead of winter for a bunch of interviews. That sucks, too.

I Suspect That I Am Going Mad

2007-12-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

A brief note on the tenuous state of my sanity: I'm concerned. Bemusedly.

You see--and this is so very hard for me to confess--

Oh God.

All right:

I've been writing poetry.

I know, I know, I know. Nothing deep or meaningful, I swear. Rien d'importance, as Humbert Humbert would say. And yet I've done it two days in a row, and found it--again, the shame of it--oddly satisfying. It's not that I'm good at it, mind you; I suck. It's just that I'm doing it, well, impulsively. As in: I have a sudden inspiration to write a poem about a particular subject, and then--and this is the weird part--I go and do it.

I cannot fathom this. I don't much like poetry--the list of poets I'd read voluntarily can be tallied on the digits of a quadruped. And yet here I am doing it and liking it. It's like discovering you have a particularly unsavory fetish, and I don't like it.

Because of course I do like it. And I hate that.

I think, as I say, that this may be the final initial stage of a total mental breakdown. Should be quite a ride, if poetry is only an early symptom...

Requisite Bitch and Moan Session

2007-12-07T08:27:00.000-08:00

Lest anyone should wonder--and that's a big 'lest'--whether or not I have reached the point in the semester when I am just bone-tired exhausted and thoroughly demoralized by the fact that I have to drag my sorry butt out of a warm bed every morning to trudge through snow and ice (uphill, I kid you not) to teach stuff that I'm so frazzle-headed that I have no idea what it is or what I'm saying or where I am when I teach it--lest you should wonder, then:

Yes. Yes, I am.

I remind myself, often, that most people have real jobs that require such efforts every day, and aren't given the benefit of substantial periods of vacation, like the one I've got coming up. I try to remember to be grateful that I am not one of those people. I try to remember that I live above the poverty line. That I have health insurance. That I'm good at my job and that I receive credit and appreciation for being so. I remind myself of all of these things.

It does not work.

Seriously, though, does it work for anybody? And what drugs do you have to take for this to happen? 'Cause I'll pay. I swear, I will.

Wanted: PR Experts

2007-12-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

See, here's the thing about Christianity and all those people--Bill O'Reilly, I'm looking in your direction--not directly at you, mind, because I think that can cause irreperable damage to the cerebral cortex--who claim that The Dominant Voices Of Our Culture--i.e. movie studios, television executives, and newpaper/magazine editors--are endlessly colluding to smear, mock, debase, and otherwise sully the good name of the One True Faith--this claim may be true, or it may not be true (see if you can guess which option I favor), but it really doesn't matter. And here's why: Remove all the sneerers and deriders and lazy script-writers who, if they want to make a character instantly loathsome, just have him/her speak openly about his/her 'faith'--get rid of all these people, and Christianity will still be something to be pointed at while sniggering.

Why?

Because its proponents are its own worst enemies. Know why Buddhism is a universally respected religion? Because Buddhists are capable of shutting the fuck up about their religion, and when they do talk about it, it's in measured, self-conscious, self-critical tones that bespeak thoughtfulness and a desire to know the truth in whatever way it manifests itself. Know why Christianity and Islam are universally reviled? Take everything I just said about Buddhism and reverse it. Mind you, I don't mean actual Christians and Muslims. I don't mean people who live lives in the real world and turn to their religions as a source of meaning and comfort--who are able to balance faith and reason as necessary counterpoints to one another--who find a structured mode of faith the form that gives them the most fulfillment, and who emerge from the church/mosque enlightened and enlivened and determined to help the next guy with a flat tire on the side of the road. Would that those people got more coverage. They don't. Know why? Because the leaders of Christianity and Islam don't want you to know about them. Because the power of the Pope, or Pat Robertson, or pick-your-favorite Ayatollah lies in their ability to instill fear of the religion in those who do not practice it. The air of Vatican is rife with menace--the 'joy' that Robertson speaks of in describing the armies of his followers is an implicit threat to those who are not card-carriers--the fervor of the mullahs expresses itself in an endless series of threats to the infidels. (Islam is, in this respect, a much less hypocritical religion, in that its leaders do not pretend for one second to have anything but murderous loathing for non-believers--you've got to concede that you know where you stand with such people, and that's something.) In short, these people are *mean*.

But that's not why they're truly failing to win over the hearts-and-minds of the mainstream. I mean, if George Wallace and the fascists of the 20th century proved anything, it's that organized hate has its appeal, and the charisma of its leaders can overcome any squeamishness we might have. But--and this is key--we've got to, somehow, admire the son-of-a-bitch. Wallace was a political genius--can't take that away from him--he makes Karl Rove look like a feeble little piker. Hitler, Franco, Mussolini--oh sure, they might look silly in the news-reels in retrospect, but put yourself in the shoes of the there-and-then audience, and trust me, you'd've followed them to Hell after one of their speeches. Why? Because these guys were genuinely bright. When they spoke for their beliefs, they spoke with eloquence and intelligence--they knew that you win over the fence-sitters not simply with passion, but with reason. They knew that you don't amass a majority by preaching to the choir--they're already there behind you--you pitch your product to the folks lingering on the church doorstep, coaxing them in with plausible, careful discourse.

Name me one prominent Christian who does this. One. One. C.S. Lewis is dead, folks, and not just in the literal sense. The Pope insists that when people have to choose between the vicious suffering inflicted by a strict obedience to hierarchical dogma (overpopulation and and AIDS pandemic due to a ban on birth control, say) and blind obedience to a church that has shown itself more than willing to bend the rules for its own members, we gotta go with the bitter pill, while Father McPedophile gets transferred to a new parish. And he wonders why people question his infallibility? And don't get me started on that lunatic wench on The View who isn't sure if the world is round and who doesn't believe that there are any religions that predate Christianity. Because yes, she's obviously a clown put there to say stupid shit like that and get ratings, but at the same time, if I were a prominent Christian leader, I'd get her the fuck off that show in a heartbeat, because what she says will get smeared all over my religion.

Look. The religious impulse isn't going anywhere. Christopher Hitchens (speaking of fucking lunatics) can write a billion more books sneering at the pointless mendacity of faith, and it won't stop that atavistic impulse to carve a little abstract image of the divine out of driftwood and offer it a toke and a drink every so often when you want the weather to change. That's just going to happen.

The problem lies in the fact that Christians and Muslims have a terrific product to sell, and they're letting their CEOs make terrible marketing decisions. It's time for a change in management--we're not going to change the product--look what happened when they tried to do that with Coca-Cola--but we need to fire the board and boot out the upper-level management on a case-by-case basis. We need, in short, to drive the money-changers from the temple, because they're just making us look bad. Then we need to take a deep, cleansing breath, crack open the Book again, pay closer attention to the nuances, and recognize that a fundamental principle in Christianity is the ability to make personal moral choices and enabling the moral choices of others. Start from there--I'll give you a slogan: "Christianity--What Can We Help You With?"

And seriously, get that bitch off The View. Now.

A Dilemma

2007-11-30T08:09:00.000-08:00

X-Boxing for 9 straight hours.

Staying up really late, drinkin' and tokin' and yellin' real loud over the ear-bleedingly thunderous club music.

Heroin. Oxycontin. Percocet.

Net porn. (Porn, period.) (Or, if you're into that sort of thing, Period Porn--like, daguerrotype-based stuff.)

Pizza.

All of these things? Things that you enjoy, but which don't make you feel good.

Now:

Exercise.

Salads as entrees.

Sitting down and writing that novel.

Reading your way through the Moralia of Plutarch.

Learning another language.

All of these things? Things that you fucking hate doing, but which make you feel really good.

Why is it, pray, that the things that we enjoy are almost invariably bad for us, while the things that we agonize our way through are all too often good for us? It's not a simple matter of instant gratification versus long-term payoff, since one who lives entirely for the moment is a self-destructive fool, but one who lives entirely oriented towards the future is losing precious moments of life that could be better spent in a more 'present' state of mind/body.

I think that the reason why we love sex is because it's one of the few things that feels good at the time and (STDs and emotional psychos aside) is good for us as well.

Do we live for the now or the then? If we live for the now, the then will never happen--the problem with living each day as if it were your last is that there is no more certain self-fulfilling prophecy. ("Hey, officer! Go fuck yourself and your pussy-ass costume! Do those come in men's versions? Yeah, that's right, pull out your gun--you ain't got the balls to use it!" And hello to the morgue attendants.) But to live for tomorrow is to live for a day that will never come, as the Buddha probably said on one of those days he was just phoning it in.

I know, alas, what I should be doing with my time/energy/life. I also know what I want to do with my time/energy/life. But one produces ennui, and the other guilt. I'm sure that somewhere out there, there's someone who can flip those emotions around to their positive equivalents, and to that person, let me just say: Fuck you and never cross my path unarmed.

Pleasure or progress. Enjoyment or achievement. Not an easy choice to make, and don't tell me to 'balance the two, silly,' because real achievement takes a hella lotta time and effort--Milton didn't write Paradise Lost whilst dicking around on the clavichord. ("But he was blind," you say. "Ray Charles? Stevie Wonder? Get a clue," I reply.) Devotion is the only path to achievement, and it involves a powerful sacrifice of pleasure. And yet, and yet, and yet--

I have no conclusion to all this. Hence the title--it's a dilemma, and there is no good answer. I'd continue to ponder, but as that's neither pleasurable nor productive, I would appear to be screwing myself twice over in doing so.

And people wonder why I'm generally saturnine.

Trainspotting

2007-11-25T14:11:00.001-08:00

The life of a junkie is no damned fun, lemme tell ya.

Those of you who know me, know that I have a quite-controllable case of chronic depression. Nothing that can't be maintained with diet, exercise (oh, most definitely exercise), and a daily regimen of the finer products of Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline. But in the latter condition lies the rub. I need that stuff. Badly. The fact is, my brain don't quite work right all the time. (Allow me to compare it to a Jaguar--when it works, oh my God does it work beautifully. But it also spends an uncomfortable amount of time in the shop.) But I've got, as they say, a handle on it. I'm not self-pitying about this; we've all got our own row to hoe, and while some may be easier than mine, most are not. God gives us each a little Special Something just to remind us that, while He loves us, He's a very dysfunctional partner. Still--diet, exercise, drugs, and I'm basically cool.

But I need those drugs. I am, folks, an addict. A legal, medical-insurance-subsidized one, to be sure (and don't think I'm not thrilled about the subsidy--goodness me, but the thought of having to pay for my pills...to have to choose between them and, say, food and shelter...um...yeah, I don't want to go down that road of thought--it leads nowhere good, to judge by the bleached bones that litter the highway--I think that was Sylvia Plath's femur we just passed! Anyway--)

Point is, I forget, sometimes, that I'm a junkie. And when I forget, I get careless. Doesn't happen too often. And the reason it doesn't happen too often, is that when I get careless--when I forget, say, to take my meds at the end of a harried day and I just want to get into bed...

Yeah, the next day? Not so much fun. Kinda the opposite. And when that day happens to be Thanksgiving? A day when you're surrounded by loved ones and you don't want to spoil their good time and inwardly you're a shrieking void of withdrawal-based anxiety? Even more the opposite--pushing the edge of that other side from 'fun.' Urgh. And oh how I wish this were a hypothetical instead of a 'How I Spent My Thanksgiving Break' confessional.

Did I lose it? Mais non--like I said, I'm one of the lucky ones. I'm one who at my worst of worst times has never missed a day of work, or failed to get out of bed, or succumbed to that dark temptation to End It All. (Suicide, if nothing else, is so utterly rude that, if for no other reason, I find it repugnant.) No, I did what we lucky ones do--not that we feel lucky at the time, mind--I sucked it up and carried through and rode it out. And when, later that evening, I confessed to a few people what I'd been going through, they were shocked--I'd shown no signs of being even slightly disturbed. (Not to creep you out, but those of us with mood disorders and other lesser forms of Icky-Brain-Syndrome--we're usually really good at covering it. Chances are, you know people who are, beneath the smile, absolutely batshit, and have just learned to hide it. OK, so yeah, that did creep you out. Sorry. Still, I say this because when lunatics crack and do horrible things, we all tend to 'tsk' and say "Couldn't someone have seen this coming?" As someone who felt as bad as I did and gave no sign of it to people who know me really well, let me just say, "No, probably not.")

I managed. I dealt. But it was a reminder not to forget. Chronic depression, alas, is like diabetes--you can treat it, you can hold it in place, you can push it to one side of your life--but you must respect that it's part of you, because only by respecting it, can you defang it. I forgot that this week, to my cost.

Remind me not to do that again, m'kay?

Fulminator's Block

2007-11-23T21:15:00.000-08:00

Several folks have pointed out recently that my attitude of responsibility towards my blogging has been roughly that of our current administration's towards black gay Muslim single-parents. (Which would suck as a demographic to belong to, wouldn't it?) This is true, but what with the writers' strike, I suppose I'll have less to do with my evenings when they run out of backlogged episodes of House M.D. in a few weeks, so I should just suck it up and get back into the game. I'd be lying, though, if I said that the thought wasn't a little tiring--I'm nearing the end of a semester that has, for various reasons, just kicked my ass--job applications, prepping two new courses (I mean really, what the hell do I know about poetry, when it comes right down to it?), a general seasonal malaise, and a few other personal matters that approach the trivial, leading me nicely into the segue of: But you didn't come here to hear me bitch about my life.

Truth is, though, mid-way through the Thanksgiving holiday, I'm not finding myself inclined to bitch about much else. The world seems to run on cycles, and we're most definitely in a trough at the present. Bush et al. haven't done anything truly revolting recently--though whisper the word "Iran" to me with enough portentousness and yeah, you can see a little cold sweat break out on my forehead. (Somewhere in me the skeptic says that it won't happen, that expansion into a second national war. Bush has no capital, and really, all he has to do to make something unpopular is to get Cheney to say that he's in favor of it. I just can't see the Congress voting him a blank check on this one. Bottom line: to invade Iran, we'd need to reinstitute the draft. Ain't Gonna Happen, that. But then, somewhere in me, the cynic says 'Yeah, you go ahead with that rosey picture. See where that gets you.' I hate that guy, mostly because he's right just a little too often.) It occurs to me that maybe the reason the Bushies have been so silent of late is because of the Writers' Strike--so much of this administration has been fictional (badly plotted, terrible dialogue, to be sure--but still, you can see the strings and pulleys of forced narrative), maybe they've lost their script-writers to the picket-lines. Without these merry elves to tell them what to do or say in some kind of plausible way, they've got nothing to fall back on but their own abilities of improvisation. And if you've ever seen Bush at a press conference, you know just how far those'll get you.

So maybe the reason they're quiet these days is because the scribblers who made up this terrible, unfunny farce have left the building. If so, I can only hope the strike goes on for months. About 11 more months, to be exact. Sure, I'm jonesing for new episodes of The Daily Show, but if it means silence from On High, I'm willing to revisit my Complete Works of Dickens during the interim...

Tidbit

2007-10-25T10:12:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted in...like, forever, but that's due to genuine business, what with two new classes to prep/teach, a serious buttload of academic applications to compile and mail out (seriously--I measured--it was a full "buttload"--indeed, three more and it would have been an "assload," which would place me frighteningly close to the dreaded "shitload," and we all know what happens then, don't we? We don't? Really? Probably just as well--it can't be good, am I right?), and other such matters occupying my frighteningly limited time.

But today, what the hell, this is too good not to share: I received my student evaluations from my summer teaching, and they were suprisingly good--especially when one considers that the class sessions were four fucking hours long--I apologize for the vulgarity, but past two hours, you just can't avoid it. So the fact that they didn't hate me for forcing them to endure a twice weekly ordeal of what amounted to the Composition-Instruction equivalent of traffic school--well, that's quite an achievement. And the fact that they liked me, well, that...is remarkable. (Hint to all fledging teachers: Cash bribes do work. Also, do not offer sex in lieu of money. The only one who will take you up on it is the creepy, unbathed guy in the back row who never talks, picks at his face, and wears the same This Mortal Coil t-shirt every day. You do not want a piece of that. Believe me...I...I know. Anyway--)

The evals were, as I say, universally good. One student's comment, however, both delighted and horrified. In describing my "weaknesses" as a teacher (the form forces them to come up with something--most wrote "None," bless their hearts), he wrote: "He is too damn smart to be a teacher."

I...I have no response to that, really, except to laugh with both genuine mirth and apprehension...

Totally Unrelated Addendum: The Daily Show website has put up one of their best Stewart/Colbert segments ever. Understand that when Colbert was on the show, he would consistently--often viciously--make Stewart crack up on camera, while maintaining his own stone-faced straight-man field-reporter poise. A mischievously consummate professional, Colbert never cracked. Never. Which makes this one segment all the more...well, you'll see:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=108395&title=prince-charles-scandal

Holy Shit Do I Hate This Guy

2007-10-05T08:41:00.000-07:00

Late in Reagan's term (which revisionists try to forget was a miasma of corruption and incompetence-born-of-ignorance brought to light), the Gipper tried to reassert his authority by vetoing bills simply for the purpose of vetoing them--by showing that he could. The vetoes were overriden by a Congress run by Democrats who had actual leadership in the form of Tip O'Neill and who didn't quail at the thought of controversy. (And for those of you who might excuse today's Democrats by pointing out that they were living in a pre-9/11 world where dissent could not so easily be spun as treason, let me point out in return that we were still very much mid-Cold War, where nuclear holocaust--which makes 9/11 look like a spoiled sweet-16's birthday party--was a real possibility, and dissing the president was dissing the man who stood against the Evil Empire.)

Such incredibly selfish, stupidly egotistical motives on the president's part are the only ones I can think of that went into Bush's veto of the "Let's Give Poor Kids Health Insurance By Taxing Cigarettes" bill. Witness his stunning explanation for his veto: "My job is a decision-making job. And as a result, I make a lot of decisions." After the staggering stupidity of that statement had a chance to sink in, he went on to point out that he had taken advice from plenty of smart people (with Ph.D.s and everything!) but that, at the end of the day, he gets/has to make the decisions. And since this bill would have...um...OK, it was bad because...well, maybe some 'lower middle class' families would get on the gravy train, so that was bad. (Nevermind that in this day and age, what we call 'lower middle class' used to be called 'poor,' just as what we call 'poor' used to be called 'destitute.' See, by redefining 'poverty' as 'starving,' all non-starving people are rendered 'middle-class.' And surely 'middle-class' people can afford health insurance after rent and food and utilities and clothes and debt and...Holy Shit Do I Hate This Guy.)

Folks, he was saying and doing stupid and heinous shit like this long before we elected him. Twice. He's been a stupid and horrible bully and monster his whole miserable and undeserved life. And the people who voted for him? The blue-collar red-staters who wanted him because he'd bring "Christian values back to the White House"? They're gonna be the ones who suffer most for this, because--ha ha!--they're the ones who rely most on government assistance when it comes to, oh, I don't know, keeping their kids alive. (Well, them and those people of varying shades of brown who for strange and surely unforeseeable reasons were 'discouraged' from voting--I swear, isn't it time for the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam to get off their asses and start working the phone banks again?)

I would derive satisfaction from the thought of some brainless Baptist who can't afford to keep her kid in chemo watching the poor runt die because the son of a bitch she voted for just told her, in essence, that the little bastard isn't worth keeping alive, but I don't give a rat's ass about her. I care about the kid. Because whatever else you may think about this bill and Bush's decision, let's be clear about this: More children will get sick and die as a result of Bush's veto. That is pure, unadulterated fact. He just signed their death warrant, because he didn't want people to pay more for cigarettes, and less to insurance companies. Enough excuses. This man is evil. And if you still can't see that, then all I can say is, "Wow, Fox News must be paying you a lot of money."

The Squirrels' Plan Is Revealed

2007-10-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

When asked why I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I am usually wont give two reasons: the first is a pretty dry explanation of the nature of the ballistics in this case, wherein the Zapruder film actually pretty much proves A. a Single Gunman and B. a gunman from Oswald's universally acknowledged vantage point. The second (and this, I admit, is the real reason I'm convinced no conspiracy occurred) is that conspiracies depend on two personal qualities that are not lacking in abundance: competence, and secrecy. When one thinks of the historical conspiracies-of-assassination that were either successful (Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Caligula, Nero) or not (Elizabeth I, Hitler, Claudius), the fact is that the ones that worked, worked because the conspirators were either incredibly lucky or didn't care whether or not they got caught, and usually both. The ones that didn't work were the ones where those involved, however few in number, wanted to get away with it and relied on their intelligence/discretion to carry the day. They never do, folks. People--self included--have a 'reset' position of 'foolish and blabbermouthed.' And put the two together, and expect people to pull off a Mission-Impossible-esque act of derring-do? Um, no. Not in Non-Movie-Land. The reason Oswald acted alone is because, in the end, Kennedy was killed and, had there been a conspiracy, history tells us that either he'd still be alive because someone screwed up, or we'd know exactly who was in on it, because someone--probably everyone--would have talked. The best crimes are committed solo, because partners introduce all kinds of Chaos-Theory-type contingencies that screw you up in the end.

All of which is to say: I'm onto you, you little furry bastards. Your friends the geese tipped me off with their little display this morning. I'm on my way to class, passing the nearby park where I like to scope out the toddlers--you know, just to remind myself that if I wanted to become the next America's Most Wanted, I totally could--and there, on the grass, was a gaggle of the squawkers roughly the number of an erotica-themed-techno convention. (That would be "a lot," by the way.) There they were, and--this is key--not a single one is milling about. Oh no. They've all got their necks down, and are grazing like mad--I swear, I've never see such single-minded gorging since (fill in the site and behavior of your favorite "Americans are gluttonous pigs" joke--I recommend the one about the Country Time Buffet or there's always the classic about Shakey's 'All You Can Eat' Wednesday special.) What where they doing? Stalking up. Power-eating. Carb-loading--well, OK, not that last one, but the watefowl equivalent. And why? Oh, you've seen where I'm going with this. They've got a long trip ahead. A long trip...south.

Which means You Know What is on the way. Which is why the squirrels, who rival only otters and dolphins in their tendency to forsake 'work' for 'mindless frolicking that looks really awesome on YouTube but doesn't really accomplish much, thus suggesting that either Darwin was wrong or that cuteness contains some form of evolutionary advantage we don't know about,' have been so damned busy. They've got a narrow window with the proficiency of food on the ground/branch, and the onset of You Know What, and they can't afford to space themselves out the way they usually do. So they're all out at once, seeking and...securing food (you thought I was going to say "squirrelling away," didn't you, and go for the cheap pun--for shame!) for You Know What.

I figured it out! I looked into the empty, beady eyes of Nature's minions, and, with the help of the inadvertant treachery of their winged associates, I deduced their true plans. I win, thus proving man's rightful place at the top of the foodchain.

I'm so proud I can almost overlook the fact that all this boils down the fact that You Know What is coming. That fucking sucks.

I Am Hated

2007-10-01T13:35:00.000-07:00

This is a new experience for me; I normally don't think of myself as being important enough to merit hatred. But I know it when I see it, and oh my do I see it in the face and body language of a young woman in one of my classes. She flat-out hates me. Hates what I have to say, hates what I don't have to say, hates hates hates me. She is, based on her few passive-aggressively vitriolic remarks, quite convinced that she could be doing a much better job teaching this class, and that I am offensive by my mere presence. She has started to make her hatred known by asking pointedly angry questions that reveal a determination to take umbrage at anything I may have to say.

Make no mistake; she is not 'challenging' me--I've been challenged before, and there's an excitement and mutual pleasure therein. I like being challenged. This...isn't that. She hates me.

What's good is my reaction to this fact. A few years ago, I would have responded with a Michael Scott-like need to make her like me--to 'win her over'--to show her that she's wrong to hate me, that I'm really awesome, and that she should, upon getting to know me, adore me as the Best Teacher, Like, Ever. I would, in short, have responded with desperate neurosis born of insecurity and cowardice.

But I do not feel that way now. Quite the contrary. I kind of...relish being hated by this woman. When her face goes twisted with angry disdain, it's all I can do not to give a particularly toothsome grin. Because I think it's good to be hated by someone like this--to be the focus of someone else's preoccupied rage and seething resentment. Because it means that I'm doing my job. I'm not telling her what she wants to hear. I'm infuriating her--frustrating her--making her hate me is driving her up the wall, and there's nothing she can do about it. And you know what? A. this is an important lesson for her to learn--Lord knows, I learned more about myself from the teachers I hated than from those who just tickled me to death--and B. I've fucking well earned the right to be hateful. I've earned the right by learning all I know, and by teaching class after class, getting better and better at it--I've earned the right to do what I do the way I see fit, and not to give a flying frak whether or not it makes her happy. I'm not there to be loved by one and all. And if I am--I'm probably doing something tepidly vacuous. If someone hates me, I matter. And that...is a good feeling.

I'm probably a very sick person for these thoughts. Don't care, though. Bite me.

A Most Remarkable Event

2007-09-28T10:48:00.001-07:00

This may qualify as a unique occurrence in the history of psychoanalysis.

I was having my head shrunk the other day, working over a problem that's been feeding on my for some time, going around in circles with it, and generally feeling my insides twist into a tighter and tighter knot of stressful misery. And then, it happened.

My therapist leaned back, smiled, and said something. It took her quite a while to say it, but when she was done...I was better. And I mean, all better.

Let me restate that: something my therapist said made me, instantly, feel 100% better--as in, the problem that I came in with was resolved and I walked out feeling perfectly together on that one issue.

How often does that happen, I ask you?!

(And no, that's not to say that I'm done being head-shrunk. I continue to be a delightful melange of neuroses and hang-ups. But this was a bad, bad issue--and now, it's not. That woman earned her freaking co-pay yesterday. Hell, I practically felt the irresistable urge to tip her as I left...)

They're Up To Something

2007-09-24T13:29:00.000-07:00

Seriously--18 different squirrels spotted during a 15 minute walk through a residential neighborhood? That's too many, right? Two more, and we'd be in "look at all the crows on the jungle gym" territory. I'm unnerved...

Investment

2007-09-16T20:56:00.000-07:00

Curious moment, recently. I'm forced, by the 'temp' nature of my employment here, to go back out onto the job market this fall. (The folks here may yet hire me permanently, which would be swell, but I can't gamble with my--what's the word?--life by just sitting back and waiting for them to do so. I have to keep my options open, which means going through the application process again; please see previous posts here and back on the old blog for why this has me stocking up at the discount liquor store on a semi-weekly basis.) And in going over the list of available jobs for this year, one popped up that struck me as...both menacing and intriguing. It's out-of-country. In an interesting place. (Class instruction would be in English, but I'd definitely have to crack out the language tapes if I was going to stay there.)

The thing about foreign jobs is this: they're permanent. As in, for reasons I don't quite fathom, the American academic community will not hire someone who has taught overseas. (This is true even of places like the Sorbonne; I think Oxford and Cambridge are the only ones you can book a round-trip ticket to.) So if I were to apply, and if they were to offer it to me, I would be leaving for good.

This does not horrify me as much as it should. And the fact that it doesn't horrify me, horrifies me.

It's not that there aren't people here than I'm attached to in varying degrees. It's not that I wouldn't--I'm sure--realize when/if I got there that I'd taken many things for granted (like, I don't know, easy access to hot water or electricity or who knows what--this place is definitely 'first world,' but one never knows what other countries will present in the way of challenges to the day-to-day necessities you haven't thought about because they've never been challenges.) I recognize that going there would be a sacrifice.

And yet--

I don't know. There's so much I wouldn't miss. There's so much I could never see or hear again and be happier for the loss. And the thing is, I could go. I look around and I realize that what sets me apart from the people in my life is that they, unlike me, are placed. Homes, jobs, families, lives--nothing about them is 'temporary.' Whereas I--well, the record reflects a state of nearly permanent impermanence thus far--school until 21, with its constant sense of 'next year' and 'prepping for the real world'--then for several years after that, floundering around in jobs I had no intention of keeping because I knew that none of them was 'what I wanted to do with my life'--then back into graduate school, and again we're back to the sense of 'next year' and 'finish the diss' and 'lecture until you get The Job' and so on. And now--even now--I'm still unplaced. No job security beyond next year. No wife/kids. I rent, not own. Nothing has really held me here--and I'm realizing that that's been true for a long, long time.

I'm not depressed by this thought, mind you--I suspect that a lot of people, even the people I think of as being 'placed', feel a lot more temporary than they admit to others. I imagine that most people live in what feel like houses rather than homes. Or have jobs rather than careers. Or hobbies rather than lives. But I looked at this job, and thought about how, if it were to be offered to me (and by the way, this is not likely--as with all academic jobs, the number of applicants precludes any confidence of acquisition), and I took it, I would be completely and utterly placed. Which didn't feel bad, frankly.

So I'm going to apply. And if they offer--and nothing else comes up--I think I'll take it. I'm 37. It's time to stop temping.

Fortune Cookie Conduct

2007-09-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

The last three times--from three different Chinese restaurants, mind you--I cracked open my fortune cookie, I was singularly impressed with the advice given therein. At some point--I wasn't paying attention--fortune cookies stopped being about vague predictions of the future ("You will soon go on a long journey"--see, read metaphorically, that could mean just about anything, and in a world of relativity and Zeno's paradox, simply crossing the room could count as 'long') or half-hearted attempts to 'read the secrets of the present' ("You are admired for your wisdom and prudence"--again, this is pretty much a lock, since all it takes is *one* person to think this for it to be true, and we can't ask *everyone* in our lives if they admire us for our wisdom and prudence--how the hell do you initiate *that* conversation?), and switched towards giving actual advice. And, as hinted earlier, the advice I've been given has been both simple and sound.

"Give a loving gift." Well, fuck it. I went out and did just that--nothing much, nothing fancy, but it was given with love to someone who is terribly dear to me, and said person genuinely loved it, and it was a moment of, well, small-but-poignant pleasure between us. There's something to be said for giving someone a loving gift, whether it's a carefully conceived birthday present, or just a "what the hell, he/she would totally get a kick out of this" moment (actually, those are particularly good.) I've continued to follow this piece of advice, and I've never been disappointed.

"You need to make a long overdue decision." An example of advice that I did *not* follow, and paid the price for said failure on my part. I knew exactly when I read it that, in fact, I *did* have a long overdue decision--one that I just simply could not bring myself to nut up and make--and even in the face of this advice, I continued to dither. Guess what? Blew up in my face. Ended badly. The decision, such as it was, was made for me, and I realized that had I made the decision, I'd've gone the other way and been much happier. I suck, and all because I didn't listen to the fortune cookie.

(Then there was the one that told me "God has annointed you His Chosen Instrument--you must Cleanse The Temple in the Blood of the Unrighteous." I'm still working through that one, but by golly, when I figure it out, you can be sure you're gonna hear about it!)

But I suppose my incredibly lame point here is that if the world offers you good advice, take it, regardless of its source. I'm not suggesting the intervention of deity or fate, mind you--these were freaking fortune cookies, for crying out loud, but what the hell? If a slogan on a billboard, or an overheard remark made to someone else in the line at the DMV, or some such unconsidered trifle jogs you, listen to it. The world is full of a lot of noise--if some piece of that noise reaches through the fog and speaks to you, chances are there's something in you that needed to be reached. Just don't, you know, tell anyone where you got your small piece of wisdom from.

Like I just did.

Fuck.

Back To The Grindstone

2007-09-06T16:38:00.000-07:00

So today was the first day of classes--Poetry Survey, Early Brit-Lit Survey, and what we would call 'remedial' composition if for some reason 'remedial' didn't hurt the oh-so-tender self-esteems of our students (actually, I suspect the people it really pisses off are their parents, but whatever.) The work promises to be its usual combination of exhausting and invigorating--and while I'm on the subject, yes I'm still going to the gym and no not just to use the vending machines, so don't nag, I'm being good, dammit.

It is a struggle, however, as it is truly balls-hot here--and humid? Dear Lord. Look, I'm not a weather-wuss, but even the natives are restless; it's that combination of blistering and soupy that makes people in Southern states go nuts and commit incest and hate-crimes in the same afternoon. (Here, we just drink more beer. A lot more.) And I've got to wear 'professional' wear in stuffy classrooms with no goddamned air-conditioning because the one building my classes are in is the 'historically preserved' one which maintains its antebellum charm right down to a questionable plumbing system. I can open all the windows I want, but I swear, I can hear the still air snickering at my hope for a passing breeze. And so I sweat like I'm having a heart attack, and look less than my usual cool-and-dapper self, and I can't help but worry that this has a deleterious effect on my teaching.

Nevertheless, I persevere. Those sonnets aren't going to teach themselves...

God I Hate This Guy

2007-09-05T07:09:00.000-07:00

So yesterday, Dubya went to Eye-rack (which is how he pronounces it, presumably for the same reason he pronounces the word "nu-kew-lur", which is: to give people who paid attention in school a throbbing headache--Mission Accomplished, George), and stood before a collection of servicemen (and "servicewomen," yes, but can we all just grow up and go back to the use of the gender neutral, please?!) and told them that, if they were really really good, and did their jobs really really well, that maybe, just maybe, some of them might get to come home in the foreseeable future.

That...is the act of a complete and total dick, and I'm not even going to bother censoring the expletive, that's how dickish it was. That's the kind of manipulative bullshit that bad parents use when making promises that they have no intention of keeping to their children. (Which also pretty much explains why the Bush twins are total fucking messes--the only reason those two skanks don't make such lunatic spectacles of themselves as Ms. Lohan and Ms. Hilton is that the latter two don't have Secret Service protection with orders to shoot to kill all paparazzi and onlookers when their charges back up over a line of people waiting outside the club while whacked out their skulls on Ketamine. With a father like that--someone who lies, and lies badly, and lies cruelly every time he draws breath, I'd do everything I could think of to get even with the son of a bitch, too.)

Let's review: he skipped into Anbar Province--a nice long way from Baghdad, where he might have to see something icky--on his way to a week of free Chinese food in his Far East trip, and dangled escape from the nightmare of Iraq (pronounced "Ee-rock", Mr. President, in case you're curious, which you're not) to a bunch of poor kids who know in their heart of hearts that he is lying, but who want so badly to go home that they will no doubt return to their duties determined to do better--which is like Sisyphus going back to that boulder thinking "This time, I'm gettin' it over that hill!"--tortured by the cruelty of hope. A hope that Bush has no intent of fulfilling. None. Zero. He will not reduce troop numbers. At all. And he knows this. He has made up his mind that he will "stay the course" so as to leave this miserable clusterfuck in the lap of his successor (good luck, Hillary!), and thus not have to face the shame of being seen as retreating from his idiotic gamble with his tail between his legs. (One thinks of James Buchanan who, as Southern states seceded, basically holed himself up in the White House, pretending that if he stayed really quiet, no one would remember that he was President and supposed to do something about this.)

He told a cruel lie to the men and women who are going to suffer more as a result of his having told it. Nice one, Big Guy. How about telling the nations's children that if their parents all vote Republican in '08, they'll all maybe get a pony? You absolutely unspeakable dick.

And we've got another year and a half of this to look forward to. I've said it before: when history judges the actions of the American voter, one of the blackest of marks against us is that we re-elected this man. It was a vote for a proven track-record of incompetence and evil. Shame on us.

Aphoristically Speaking

2007-08-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

A thought occurred to me, which I'll offer without elaboration or commentary, as it is too trivial to support either:

Anytime anyone tells you that something is a "once in a lifetime" anything, you're being lied to.

That is all.

All I Really Want...

2007-08-28T21:45:00.000-07:00

...is a life set to a soundtrack of up-beat pop music. On an episode of Family Guy, Peter Griffin frees a genie and is granted the standard allotment of wishes. One of them is for a soundtrack for his life, and we're supposed to laugh at how silly such a wish is. Balls--it's a moment that shows that he, of all people, knows the secret to true happiness: the shallow, bubbly musical enhancement of experience.

Really, except for wacky Dennis-Potter-ish uses of ironic juxtaposition, doesn't everyone's life look better when accompanied by something vapid and catchy, like "Allison Road" by the Gin Blossoms? Working out at the gym seems to fly by with sweaty good humor--and heck, if you throw in a montage--Gloria Estefan is always good for this--you can get thin and buff in a matter of minutes! Long work hours? Big research project? Easy fix--throw on "She Blinded Me With Science" or "And She Was" and bingo, not only is it done is a series of delightful fade-ins/-outs, but you're having a good time, lookin' all serious in that library late at night, or typing away at your computer when everyone else in the office has gone home.

And don't get me started on how it'll improve your love-life! Bad dates become 10-second, one-note gags that even you can laugh at, and when you find that special someone, time actually slows down so that that first kiss lasts for, like hours. (You may want to swap in something slow and syrupy for that last one--but remember, nothing profound--you want your inner audience to clap with child-like glee, not purse their lips in contemplation. In other words: No Pink Floyd, dammit!)

I want to go through my mundane existence hearing a medley of banal-but-catchy Top 40 hits--I want to walk to work to "I Can See Clearly Now"--I want to lecture to "Solsbury Hill," watching my kids' faces in perfect counterpoint to the beat--I want to engage in inaudible conversation an attractive woman across a restaurant table to "Mysterious Ways"--I want to tear through huge stacks of grading to the strains of "You Can Call Me Al." Such music makes life seem just meaningful enough to feel semi-important, and just trivial enough not to have to take it seriously.

I want a soundtrack.

Dude! Weak! Weak, Dude!

2007-07-31T14:30:00.000-07:00

OK, what the hell, man? Bergman dies, and then Antonioni??? I repeat: what the hell, man??? If I were Scorsese, I'd just check myself into the hospital as a prophylactic measure.

And yes, granted, the two guys were in their 90s, and their greatest days were behind them, but still, this is pretty close to Adams and Jefferson dying on the same 4th of July, mentioning gratefully that the other was still alive as they went.

So I guess we've all gotta go out and watch Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal (films do not get much better than this last--indeed, films flat out do not get better than this last) and L'Avventura and...and then, at the end of all this, I suspect we'll probably have to have a quiet sit in a sealed garage with the engine, because "uplifting"? Not so much, these guys.

Still, damn. Altman's gone--and now these two--who's left? We're losing the last generation of geniuses, folks. Films don't work the way they used to, and nobody's stepping up to replace the fallen because studios can't afford to experiment. Oh, sure, we've got one or two guys who know what they're doing behind a camera: Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, Allen, Spielberg, Soderbergh, Fincher--but does the work of any of these men achieve the label 'transcendant'? I think not. (Insert another few paragraphs of predictable bitching and moaning, concluding with a general statement that life sucks a little bit more than it used to.)

I realize, by the way, that I've just plain, flat-out not been posting. I'm intellectually wiped, folks--vacation time is here, and I'm using it by just flat out not capital-T thinking. (Watching the Alberto Gonzales testimony has really helped with this--that man's mind is as blank as J.D. Salinger's Friends and Family list.) I plan to indulge in this mental torpor for a bit yet, so please do not disturb the hibernating bear...

Kids--I Think I Must Acquire One

2007-07-09T22:24:00.000-07:00

A quick post on my recent experience of a national holiday. I have--thank God--family in the vicinity of Chicago, and thus within a reasonable commute. So come the 4th, I was informed politely that I was to "get my anti-social ass down here or else--"--well, I shan't get into the threats involved, except to say that I'm fairly sure that the human body can't bend that way, and certain orifices most definitely are not that capacious. So went I did, and gosh I'm glad. Because...kids. I played with kids.

It's normally a sour point with me that of all my cousins, I'm roughly the only one sans offspring. I don't know if men have a biological clock--I doubt it, we're far too crude to have such a sophisticated piece of machinery in our make-up--we might have a mental sledgehammer, but that's about it--but if we do, mine has been ticking for awhile. And this trip, I realized why.

In keeping with the overall anonymity of this blog, I shan't identify the parties involved, but I was, over the course of the afternoon/evening, 'discovered' by a brother/sister team of not-older-than-6 younglings. They were initially quite skeptical about me--a looming, saturnine stranger has entered the house--what do we do?!--but as the evening progressed and the eating/drinking intensified, rendering most of us inert, they quickly discovered that, unlike everyone else there, I would accede to their demands to "chase me!" around the lawn and swing them waaaaaaaaay up in the air when I caught them.

So I heard a lot of "AGAIN!" that night, the young lady at one point clasping her hands and placing them aside her tilted cheek in a perfect 'pose' of beseeching, and later, when I was seated and mid-conversation, approaching me and quite firmly taking me by the hand and telling me, "Now you're going to chase me again." So now, I'm seriously considering sneaking back down there in the dead of night and stealing her away.

And whenever we'd finish, the boy--who's quieter, but quite shrewd--would just stroll up, grinning expectantly, with an instinctive "Fair's fair!" look on his face, and off he'd run, and so for most of the night, I had to chase them, be chased *by* them, and became their official spokesperson when it came to telling all assembled that it was "time for everyone to make a goofy face!" Which, since most of us were pretty soused at that point, we did.

It was wonderful, really--I'm clearly a total whore for the affection of children (which explains in some part my choice of career). Of course, spending a couple hours chasing small children *really* took it out of me. (And them--they nearly fell asleep before the fireworks.) Gasping and happy, I sat with a cocktail in my hand, when my aunt read my expression and told me "I think you need to have one or two of your own." And yeah, I kind of do. As the girl was being carted off to bed, she made a point of catching my eye over the shoulder of her father, and making that little open-and-closed-fist wave as she went.

It was very, very good, that. Very good, indeed.

Flawed Character, or The Death of the Mind

2007-06-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

You know you're bored when you're actually disappointed that you did your laundry yesterday and therefore don't have that exciting activity to look forward to. I'm slightly exaggerating, of course, but allowing myself to be bored strikes me as a semi-serious character flaw. Or rather, the symptom of a serious character flaw: sloth.

Not just sloth of the body--which I've actually begun to be fairly good about, with regular moderate-to-intense exercise five days a week (I save my energy on the two days when I have to teach a four-hour class, a task which is just as much fun as it sounds, and which inevitably sends me home with a two-Advil headache)--but sloth of the mind. Because minds are just as prone to laziness--perhaps more so--than bodies. Grooves of thought become comfortable grooves of non-thought--anyone here played solitaire for a half-hour or more?--the stereotype of this is the picture of the couch potato, zoned out in front of a barking television. I don't have that particular flaw much--I'm a zone-out-on-the-internet man, myself--but it's not the medium that determines the severity of the flaw, it's the product. And a half-lidded zombie who depends entirely on stimulus--who has no response except the lack of response, who is all intake and no output--well, does it matter much whether it's the computer screen or the heroin-filled syringe? I think not. (Well, OK, the computer screen causes fewer open sores, but still.)

The problem with mental sloth is that, unlike physical sloth, is not cureable by mental effort. Consciousness of sloth does not sufficiently challenge it. I suspect that part of this torpor is the result of too little company on my part--the engagement with others creates, in the most positive sense, a competitive spirit of play and accomplishment, even if only in friendly argument. Creativity--which is the only cure for mental sloth--the state in which we become the kinetic, rather than the inert--the mover and giver, rather than the moved and receiver--the verb, rather than the object. But creativity demands an audience, and--immediately speaking--I don't have one. Boredom is not the result of a lack of recreation--it's a lack of creation. And I allow myself too much to be fundamentally uncreative. A serious character flaw.

Observation

2007-06-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

Forgive the inscrutably haikuish nature of this post, but those who know what I'm talking about will know what I'm talking about, and those who don't, won't, and it's not really explicable in language. But it's definitely a Midwest moment:

Last night, the fireflies were out.

Short and Pointed

2007-06-04T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm in a truly foul mood today, but--for once--for good reason: my landlord, who owns the renovated Victorian where I live, and who occupies the top half of said structure, is leaving tomorrow. After serving a full tour in Iraq, returning home, getting his life in order, and offering me this remarkable place to live, he's being called back for, and I quote, "I don't know how long." This guy is decent, hard-working, friendly, and in every way the epitome of that weird and wonderful Midwest vibe I've made much of here. And they're sending him back there.

God damn George W. Bush.

Back To Work

2007-05-31T11:37:00.000-07:00

Vacation-time (the first half of it) is drawing to a close, and apart from a lurch here and there, I'm rather pleased with how it went. I was able, for several days in a row, to relax and read trash fiction and not fret over how I wasn't doing any real work and should therefore feel like a guilt-ridden slacker. (That was nice, as was my discovery during this period of the work of Christopher Moore, who reminds me of a comment a friend of mine once made on a similar subject: "He writes the kind of stuff that you would write, if only you wrote." Thanks, V., I still carry that one with me...)

And I actually got some work done--Adorno is slowly being whittled away, and I'm actually understanding much of what the abstruse son-of-a-b*tch has to say--and I finished revising and polishing an article that, when run by a former mentor who is renowned for hating everything he reads (and whose work I openly disagreed with on the first page--what was I thinking???), produced a response of "It's incredibly good, and I've already called the editor of [Prestigious Literary Journal] to tell her to keep an eye out for it, so send it to her right away." So, you know, I think I at least managed to hit par with that one. More publications are not only good, they're necessary, as I will have to go out on the job market (argh) again this fall, since my current employers may decide they want to hire me permanently, but they're keeping their options open, which means I have to do the same. Oh joy, more mass mailings, sleepless nights, and rejection, oh, so much rejection. I hate this so much...

But alas, the halcyon days of f*ck-offery are waning--I gotta go back to the Midwest, and back to work--Summer School beckons, and with it, all the miseries involved in trying to cram fifteen weeks worth of teaching and grading into a six week period. (The "10 pounds of you-know-what in a 5 pound bag analogy" should come to mind.) So I'll be busy, which is good and bad, and I'll be back in relative solitude, which likewise is good and bad. Mostly bad, though. I have to start being social. Problem is, I've no talent for this--and I think I'm not alone, here. I think that many people--possibly most--become friends within and as a result of structure. Work, school, church, neighborhood--we tend to bond with people with whom we are artificially conjoined. Naturally enough--if you've got to face the same g*ddamned mugs every day, it's only self-defense of the psyche to try to find some way of liking 'em--or enjoying hating them. But absent those structures, we've got very little to go on--physically attractive people can hit on other physically attractive people, of course--though even there, it requires a degree of security and courage that not all of us have. The obvious answer to this problem, naturally, is "Boo-hoo, you f*cking whiner--nut up, and say 'hi.'" But the problem there is--most people have the capacity to be interesting. I honestly believe this. But very few people have the capacity to be interesting right away. For most people, the 'interesting' only comes with honesty and vulnerability--two things which casual meetings do not encourage--all first dates are lies, and we know it. So the problem isn't initiating contact--it's finding some reason to continue it. So much of our lives are spent on being carefully inoffensive that we instinctively shut off any other 'vibe' upon first contact. 'Dull' is dull, but it's also polite. 'Tepid' is tepid, but it's also friendly. But if dull meets tepid and tepid meets dull, why the hell would either of them want to call the other the next day, I ask you?

So my question is--how do we make ourselves immediately interesting without making ourselves obnoxious? (Hot women need not bother to respond--we know how you folks make yourselves interesting, which is why guys rarely bother to look you in the eyes, if you know what I mean...)

I Am, It Would Appear, Gay

2007-05-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

All signs point in this direction, with the minor exception of a desire to f*** or become enamored of members of the same sex. With that slight caveat, I appear to show all the signs. I'm a snob, an off-and-on creative writer, an ex-actor, I know film and theater to an eerie degree, I have most modern musicals memorized to the point of quietly humming along to their toe-tapping strains whilst going about my hum-drum day (I also use words like "whilst" and "hum-drum"), I care about my wardrobe, I don't like beer or any form of organized sports, and now...and this really would appear to be the nail in the coffin of my putative heterosexuality, I've voluntarily sat through the movie Center Stage.

And liked it.

For those of you who are straight and have forgotten this piece of cinematic marzipan (it's been seven years, after all), go ahead and refresh your memories; I'll wait:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0210616/

(I understand from One Who Would Know that the bulk of the movie is available on youtube, for those of you who really want to pursue this thing with more thoroughness than it, perhaps, deserves.)

Now then. A movie about ballet dancers discovering simultaneously that A. dancing contains in its ecstatic gyrations all that is essential to achieving complete and total self-fulfillment, and B. there's more to life than dancing. Often within the same scene. Tough enough to pull that off, but when you've got your leads played by actual ballet dancers (as opposed to, oh, I don't know, say, professional actors), well, you, my friends, are in for a whole heapin' mess of giggle-inducing silliness. And oh, there is puh-huh-lenty of such silliness to be found therein--mostly from our terminally 'cute' heroine, who looks about 14 years old, giving the scene of her deflowering at the hands of the academy's 'bad boy' rebel choreographer a truly creepy Lolita-esque-ness. And the 'groundbreaking' dance routine at the climax is highly enjoyable, if one is able to push from one's mind the stubborn awareness that it's not actually ballet, it's jazz, and would properly be hooted off the stage by the exquisitely bitchy audience of the former artform. Plus, they've chosen to tart up our heroine in a dance costume/'look' that makes her look frighteningly similar to Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls, leading one to wonder if at some point in the performance, she and her costar will do a naked pas de deux under a swimming pool's waterfall. (Again, she looks horribly young, so this is not as appealing as it sounds. At all.)

So, what with this, and the 'young black dancer with at-ti-tud-uh who learns self-respect through understanding that discipline is the key to true greatness' and the 'pushed into the life by her stage mother bulimic who learns self-respect with the aid of a cute pre-med student from Columbia who shows her that she can choose her own path' and whatnot, there's just so g*ddamned much that should be staggeringly awful about this film. And is. And yet...

And yet...

Oh, f*** it--and yet, somehow, Some How, the f*cking movie works. It has a lot to do with the dancing--these people do know what they're doing once they're on point, and the pas de deux we see from Romeo and Juliet is utterly revelatory--I got the balcony scene in a way that I've never achieved watching Shakespeare's version--but there's also the weird, sad, moving earnestness of these people. The fact is, they're most of them playing themselves, and that kinda helps, but I think the movie works because, well--the stories that play out in the movie are silly and corny and hackneyed not because the writing's bad (though it is) or the acting's lame (we'll say no more about that), but because that's what being young and in that world is about.

Being young and a performer is a weird, dizzying, wonderfuly and horribly self-destructive, exhilarating time--a time when you do run out at 2:00 a.m. for impromptu sieges of the local dance-club, when you have the energy to push yourself all day and night and be fed from that effort, rather than exhausted. We make the stupid mistakes like drinking too much or throwing up because we think we're fat, or sleeping with the wrong person when the right person is right there beside us, we hug each other incessantly because we're so much in our own skins--there's no objectivity, everything is immediate and unfiltered and real in a way that it will never be again. The f*cking movie works because what it's telling us is fundamentally true. For all of its silliness and badness and clunkiness, it's a completely honest film, and I recognized far too much of myself in it not to have loved it.

So there, I said it: I loved it. And I know that this means that I have to wear a shocking-pink 'G' pinned to my breast for the rest of my life, but so be it. You may now proceed to cast the first of many, many stones.

I Quit

2007-05-16T11:57:00.000-07:00

I'm blogging now from not-so-sunny Southern California--the June Gloom has arrived a little early this year--and I had planned on using the three weeks of vacation to briefly de-stress--do some 'beach reading', take some marina-side walks while looking for the seal lions who like to roll up to the surface and catch a little sun, etc., then set about working on a number of back-burner projects: the novel, some hard-core reading (Adorno's Negative Dialectics--not for the faint of heart), and two separate scholarly articles for (I had hoped) publication in a prestigious journal or two. That was the plan.

But today ABC announced that, as part of its fall schedule, it would be including a sitcom based on those g*ddamned Geico commercials and their perennially dissed cavemen. I quote freely from the press release, justified by the "I Could Not Make This S*** Up" rule of jeremiadish composition:

Cavemen is a unique buddy comedy that offers a clever twist on stereotypes and turns race relations on their head. Inspired by the popular Geico Insurance commercials, the series looks at life through the eyes of the ultimate outsiders - three modern cavemen - as they struggle to find their place in the world. Joel, his cynical best friend, Nick, and easy-going little brother, Jamie, are contemporary cavemen who live in the suburban south and simply want to be treated like ordinary thirty-something guys. Despite their attempts at assimilation, Nick doesn't believe mainstream society will ever completely accept them, Jamie seems to take it all in stride and Joel straddles the middle, torn between his friends, his more traditional values and his loving fiance.

So, this is happening, and nothing short of the apocalypse can stop it. Men and women in positions of great responsibility have decided that this is a good idea--and they have done so on the basis of focus groups and polling that have told them that, yes, this is what the average TV viewer wants to see. Which is to say, this cannot be forestalled by the apocalypse because this is the apocalypse. And frankly, wasting my time on producing work designed to contribute to the intellectual compendium of human knowledge is now revealed to me as pure folly, as we are clearly devolving as a species, and will soon be marking our work-spaces by urinating on them, settling arguments by throwing feces, and trying dimly to remember how to make fire. The rollercoaster has hit the apex, folks, and the track at the bottom is warped, buckled, and metal-fatigued. We're gonna have a nice, fun, degenerate fall, and then we're off the rails, our bodies liquified as we hit the asphalt at roughly the speed of sound.

So, I'm done. I'm out. I'm going to spend the next three weeks drinking myself blind, hitting on toothless bar-sluts at the local dive, and discovering whether or not this 'meth' stuff is all cracked up to be. Because there's no future in thinking and walking upright, anymore. It's no longer a growth industry. I'm just gonna steer into the skid and hope that I hit the abutment at enough speed that I don't experience any pain before I skip merrily into the white light.

So, who's with me?

God Is in The Midst of a Tough Call

2007-05-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

Seriously. If the Almighty exists in a form and psyche that even remotely approaches his various representations in world religions, then, assuming the existence of an afterlife, the nature of which is determined by our thoughts and deeds on Earth, God must really be scratching His head over what to do about the very recently late Jerry Falwell.

On the one hand, Falwell devoted his life to the Word, as he understood it, and appears to have succumbed to none of the lurid degeneracy that claimed so many of his peers in the Bible-thumping brigade. (Unless one counts Gluttony as one of the Seven Deadlies, in which case, the oinker's in trouble with the Head Honcho.) His life argues that he believed, and believed sincerely, in a fairly conventional Judeo-Christian ideology, and he spent his life attempting to spread the means by which, according to his lights, we have our one-and-only shot at avoiding eternal hellfire and achieving perfect unity with the loving absolute. So, that's the plus.

The minus? Oh, my. Where to begin? I'd be here all day, listing them all. Because of course the man enjoyed nothing so much as a good old-fashioned verbal stoning of those he deemed unrighteous, and showed an alarming tendency to render unto Caesar what was God's, and vice versa. Behind the perpetual grin on his face lurked the mind of a man who clearly envied Torquemada his freedom to Get Down To Business when it came to bringing a vision of Holy Order to the world. He embraced with unseemly fervor the Pauline vision of anti-feminism, while ignoring the (admittedly contradictory) Pauline vision of the Big Tent approach to Christianity. And don't get me started on his views on gays. And let's not forget that, days after the attacks of September 11, he forcefully proclaimed that we'd brought it on ourselves, as if God had decided to kill a random sampling of citizens, including children and other innocents, in order to make the point. Oh, and the levees broke in New Orleans because of Mardis Gras, apparently. He reeked, in short, of all that is wrong with fundamentalism--that is, the certainty that within his own mortal mind was the perfect knowledge of God's will. He thought and said and did horrible, horrible things, and offered a vision of God that was mean-spiritedly simplistic and made his followers feel good about hating others, and the world was a worse place for his having been in it.

And yet...he was, in his own way, a true believer. Does God judge us for our effect, or for our intent? (And do we just break down and extend this logic to wackos like Hitler, who by most accounts really did think he was saving the world?)

Self-doubt is a little-praised virtue. Self-examination, self-questioning--the occasional "do I really know what the f*** I'm talking about?" One wonders whether truly great men and women--the Kings, the Ghandis, the Anthonys--do they have such moments, or are they too driven solely by absolutism? I go back to Paul--grudgingly, because I mostly do not like that guy--Romans 7:14-23 (it's tricky to follow, so read it out loud): For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin. For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good. Now then it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

Even Paul, that lunatic, loses faith in himself here and there, and cops to it. And what about Augustine, mocking himself by describing his true prayer to God: "Give me chastity and continence...but not yet." And Luther spent the better part of his life in a state of self-torment, horrified at the thought that he was making a horrible mistake, but convinced that--often against his will--he had to do it because Catholicism was hurting those it claimed to help. Faith unleavened by doubt isn't faith--it's a mindless rejection of the greatest gift God (if He exists) has given us, reason and its attendant humility, and humility's attendant charity towards others. And only faith unleavened by doubt allows us to condemn others to hell, usurping God's dibs on that duty.

So I'm going to forgo deciding whether Falwell's roasting on a spit right now--I suspect that he is--let's face it, the guy was a complete prick--but...I'd be committing the very thing that made him a prick in doing so. Alas. It would be so much fun...but, I think the best thing for all of us to do is just heave him upwards, give a collective yell of "He's all yours, Big Guy," and then go about our lives thinking kindly of each other with quiet pragmatism. And then forget him. That much, he deserves.

Blahs

2007-05-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

End of semester, and my usual bout of moody unhappiness--I'm genuinely tired--this has been my first year teaching full-time, and it's been as exhausting as I've been warned about--and while I wouldn't go so far as to say "I deserve a vacation," I have, so far as my employers are concerned, earned one. (At least until June, when I teach summer school--Daddy's got credit card debt to pay down.)

And yet, tired as I am, I still feel...guilty? Useless? Blah? Yes, "Blah" sums it up. I can sleep in late, but I've nowhere to go, really, once I get up. I can stay up late, but I've no one to stay up late with. It's lonely, being gainfully unemployed. And I don't deal with 'aimless' as a state of mind/life.

I know what I should do, of course--I should go for long walks, and work on my writing--snap my mind back into some sort of shape with challenging reading, fuelling my thoughts--I should think about the future and what I can do to get there in one relatively happy piece. I should go to the zoo. And the movies. And coffee shops, where I can make eyes at women far too young and attractive for me. I should, in short, take a vacation. And, with nagging from the right people, I'll try. But for right now: Blah.

(Oh, and grading massive numbers of identical take-home exams sucks.)

Romantic Musings

2007-05-05T13:12:00.000-07:00

The Beatles once insisted, in one of their catchier moments, that "All you need is love." (And for those of you who wondered if the reverse was true, they settled that matter immediately: "Love is all you need.") Paul would later expand on this by noting that "In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make." (Is it just me, or is the White Album overrated? I've always been an Abbey Road man, myself, with Sgt. Pepper's and Revolver following in Second and Third place.) Now, far be it from me to question the authority of the Fab Four--those who know me well know that I'm inclined to view them much as others do the I Ching--the answers lie in there somewhere. (Or if not in there, then in The Simpsons.) But on this point, I may have to dissent. Heresy, I know, but as Luther said, "Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me." So, that.

Is love all we need? Perhaps in the grand sense epitomized by, say, the Golden Rule, but it seems pretty clear that by "love"--that many-splendored thing that makes the world go 'round--most of us mean what has colloquially, if inaccurately been termed "romantic love." (If you've studied the Romantics at all, you know damn well that they'd be furious to know that they've been demeaned to becoming short-hand for person-to-person bow-chicka-wicka-wicka-bow passion--though, frankly, I'm convinced that that's exactly what they were all actually into, and just tried to pretend otherwise by writing about skylarks and daffodils. Except for Coleridge, but that was just because he was tripping balls most of the time.) And do we need romantic love?

Well, the popular consensus seems to be 'yes.' A quick glance around at our culture will tell us that it seems to be viewed as the ultimate 'goal' in life--an indispensible element of happiness, and indeed, possibly 'all we need' to be truly happy. Not that there aren't dissenters. Cynics and the more kill-joyish breed of scientists will tell us that such love is a delusion created by both society and synapse to encourage us to do nothing more than propogate the species and create stable 'protective' environments to ensure physical safety for the off-spring. But these people tend to be single and dateless, leading one to the powerful suspicion that they're achieving this opinion courtesy of the sour-grapes instinct. Plus, they're the minority by a wide margin.

One cannot sell that which people do not desire to buy, and we love love. Popular music, for instance, would not exist without it. Except for rap, and frankly, I think rap is only popular because it's a bitter palate-cleanser to the cloying pablum offered by the Top 40 crowd. But without that Top 40 crowd, would vicious anger and degrading sex have such a large market? Well...maybe, but they'd have to start harmonizing, that's for sure. And notice that the lyrics of rap cannot be sung--that's significant. One cannot sing about the subjects of rap--one can only sing about, well, things like love. The Greeks would have noticed that fact right quick--song, like dance, is the body finding a way to harmonize with the natural order--the flow of notes and limbs becoming part of the rhythm and pulse and current of Life, Capital-L. And it's no coincidence, then, that when we sing, we sing about love about 99% of the time. (Unless we're in an opera, in which case we can sing about the fate of the universe arising from man's Nietzschean assertion of his superiority over the gods--though it's significant that all the events of the Ring Cycle--including the fall of the heavens--occur because one being has renounced love forever. So--)

Are we, then, hard-wired for love?

Yes, I think. And no. The species doesn't need any help propogating, and one suspects that whatever natural drive moves us to couple-up may be slowing down. Or taking an alternate course--personally, I think that the move towards 'main-streaming' homosexuality is just a sign that nature is telling us that we've reproduced well beyond necessity, and should now hook up in ways that don't toss one more squalling mass of neediness into the world. (Take that, you people who call it 'unnatural'--it's plenty natural! In fact, naturally speaking, it's hip and new and funky fresh! Breeding?! That is soooooo last millenium. Now shut up and let them marry and adopt.)

So we don't have to love, whatever Hallmark and DeBeers tell us. We certainly won't stop as a race--love is too much of a source of fun and comfort and self-important drama for all of us to give it up. So that's not gonna happen. But the necessity for it is gone. Romantic love is now a luxury, not a need. And this raises the big question:

Is it in need of a revision? The last century has given us plenty of changes--women are now supposed to be equals, gays and lesbians are now defined by emotions and the capacity for equal commitment, men are supposed to cry (good luck with that one, folks--men don't cry when they're undergoing testicular electrocution, so a little nagging is not gonna make it happen.) But what seemingly hasn't changed is the idea that people are supposed to 'pair up'--sooner or later. The idea that 'dying alone' is a dreadful fate still lingers. Henry Higgins tells us that he is "a confirmed old bachelor, and likely to remain so"--but only as a set-up to the inevitable romance with Eliza. (If we're reading My Fair Lady and not the relatively radical original, Pygmalion, whose author was himself unmarried, and remained so. Though even he wasn't immune to love, as his letters to Mrs. Patrick Campbell reveal.) We still have the idea of a partner as some kind of necessity--something without which life is incomplete.

But is it? I think not. I myself am certainly someone who needs love, despite my inability to give it with any kind of charitable consistency. (Effort and Patience are neither of them strong suits of mine.) But are there those who don't--and who are, despite this, perfectly kind and friendly and decent people, capable of a life both rich and full and no emptier for this fact?

The question seems rhetorical. Of course there are. And yet the weight of civilization is upon them--they seem, to the rest of us, to be cold, or egotistically aloof, not able or not willing to muck down here in the turgid mess of love--what, are they too good for it? Again, rhetorical. Of course not.

Romantic love is both a taste and a talent--something some people want, and something some people are good at. (God help you if, like me, you have the taste but not the talent. It's like being a parapalegic who wants to be a tap-dancer.) But if you don't have the taste--if you look at it with calm eyes and weigh the costs and the benefits and decide that other things give you more fulfillment and excitement and life, well--well, you'll still seem weird to us. We'll assume that you're gay and closeted. Or sociopathic. Or afraid. Mostly, we'll assume that you're afraid. That you've been hurt, and just can't get over it and get back out there.

And, to be fair, that may be true for many who've given up. But fear of a thing doesn't obligate one to go back and learn to like it. Look, I'm scared of rollercoasters. Always have been. And from time to time I conquer my fear and I get on them, and I come out the other end just fine. But I don't particularly enjoy them. Even if I were to lose all fear of them, I still wouldn't go on them, because--well, why bother, if I don't like it? People who've been hurt by love retreat--but in retreat they may realize that while they were still involved...it really wasn't for them. That they hadn't the taste or the talent. Such people aren't to be pitied. On the contrary--if people who've no taste or talent for love would just stay out of the game, it'd keep them out of miserable relationships and clear the way for the rest of us.

So--love? Not a need. A choice. And 'choice' means the option to decline. Sorry, you wacky Liverpudlians, but I think that, more and more, love isn't all we need--and for some of us, it isn't what we need at all.

(God, I wish I were one of those people.)

Orwellian

2007-05-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

A word that has become so very important--that has always been important--and which is in danger of being forgotten. A fact that, in itself, is somewhat Orwellian. Because if one forgets the word, one tends to forget the idea behind the word. And that may happen all too soon.

None of my students in any of my classes has read 1984. Not one. That's 0 out of over 75 college students, and a quick glance at the curriculum ahead of them suggests that this situation will not be formally remedied by the school.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing--I don't think the book should be read in high school, because frankly, you're not up to it at that age. Just as you're not up to Heart of Darkness or King Lear or Lolita. Some books require maturity to be read appropriately--to be read with understanding and resonance. 1984 is one of those books. But so few of us read voluntarily--hell, I've been known to drop the habit for long stretches--that I worry that they'll never crack the cover and read that opening that with a small, brilliant detail of dissonance, immediately sets your teeth on edge: "It was a cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

A confession: I listen to books on CD. This has struck many of my colleagues as some sort of heresy, though I can't fathom why. I never listen to anything other than unabridged versions of texts, and listening forces me to experience every single word at a measured pace, so that nothing is missed or skimmed. I've discovered things about Austen, Dickens, Cervantes, and, yes, Orwell in listening to them that I would not have done in rereading them.

On the heels of discovering that my students hadn't read it (many of them had read Animal Farm, which is the book of his they should read in high school), I purchased a CD copy and have been listening to it for the past week or so. (I don't drive much, and I only listen when I drive, so these books tend to last awhile.) It's probably not a wise decision for me to be listening to this book, given my predisposition for depression, and my recent bout thereof, but there it is. And one can derive pleasure, even from the bleakest of texts, when the author of said text can capital-W Write. Orwell can Write. Clean, precise language--mastery of the declarative sentence--a complete lack of sentiment that gives his observations a quality of scientific proof in their persuasive force. He can Write.

And in listening to the book, I've had something of a revelation: 1984 is one of the most important books ever written. Ever. "Ever?" Ever.

I want to be careful about this--I don't want to be like that jackass in the New York Times Book Review, who many years ago claimed that One Hundred Years of Solitude was "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." I don't know who that delusional idiot was, but both s/he and the editor who allowed that statement to pass into print need to be loaded into a cannon and fired into a field of cactus and alligators. I want to be measured, rational, in my justification for this claim.

Aristotle famously (well, 'famously' if you're an effete snob, which, if you're reading this, you know I am, and probably are a bit of a one yourself) declared that "Man is a political animal," comparing us to other species, like ants and bees, that instinctively form communities. (Presumably if he'd had more exposure to apes, he'd've used them too.) Political animals, and so we are. Freud may be right, of course--that there's also something atavistically (effete snob, remember) independent within us as well--something that bangs against the cage of society, but it's a comparatively lesser impulse for most people, I think. We prefer, almost always, to belong. Aristotle was right.

But what kind of political animals are we? To what kind of politics do we tend?

The problem is, we don't 'tend'. We're wildly inconsistent. For every period in which the whole movement of world seems to be in a Hegelian rush to achieve liberal democracy, there's a period in which we swing wildly back towards some sort of primal autocracy based on hero-worship. But the danger in this erratic thoughtlessness is that it leads us towards the irrevocable--the situation in which one trend leads us so far into the pendular swing that we can't go back. And that is the warning that this book represents.

Because of course, the whole point of 1984 is that it is the portrait of a perfect dystopia. The system is flawless, because it has tapped into one of the most grim aspects of human nature: our essential passivity in the face of risk or effort, our willingness to accept misery either as a perverse virtue or as an unalterable state of affairs. That's where our doom lies, if it lies anywhere--that we have within us the ability--indeed, the tendency--to follow a path of least resistance, even into soul-death, because the alternative never even occurs to us as a possibility.

I'd forgotten things about the book--for instance, the fact that the political changes that produced Oceania (which, by the way, is an obscure joke, since a 17th century liberal political philosopher named Harrington wrote a utopian book about a wholly democratic state by that name) happened quite suddenly--in the wake of a nuclear war. (Alan Moore completely and utterly stole everything from Orwell, save the pleasant illusion of a heroic savior, which is why V for Vendetta is a comic book, and not literature.) The revolution happens quickly--and what's brilliant about the Inner Party is that they tap into the inherent decency of the English by appealing to them to give up their creature comforts in order to achieve victory in an ongoing war (which may or may not exist, of course.) Hence, the Outer Party members make due with Victory Chocolate, Victory Coffee, Victory Gin, Victory Cigarettes, etc.--all of which are foul and wretched imitations of the real thing--but rather than causing resentment, these wretched things produce a sense either of proud self-sacrifice or silent resignation. Anything for Our Boys In The Front. (Whether or not they exist.)

And so it goes. What kills us, in the end, is the ability to accommodate ourselves to anything. (Speaking of "So it goes," RIP Mr. Vonnegut, and in this discussion, we might do worse than remember the old man in the train-car carrying the POWs cross-country in Slaughterhouse Five, who keeps repeating, semi-cheerfully, "This ain't bad. I've seen bad. I can sleep anywhere." He does not survive the journey.) Our ability to settle, to relent in the face of trivial demands, however irrational. And our ability, in the wake of shock--nukes will tend to do that to you--to make wildly irrational judgments that actually worsen the situation and endanger us further. And if you think I'm thinking of the Patriot Act and secret torture and the prosecution of an unnecessary war to maintain political authority, oh, you'd better f***ing believe I am. But what's worse than all these things is the people's--nevermind the media's--complete indifference to them. Which is Orwell's coldest, cruellest bit of truth. What terrifies us about 1984 is not the fact that, sooner or later, the Thought Police are going to come for everyone--but that everyone knows it, and doesn't really much care. The perfection of the government in Orwell is not that it has managed to make people content with misery--they're not, none of them--but to be unable to imagine living any other way, and thus accepting of it as the Way Things Irrevocably Are. People believe that misery--subservience to a government that kills them slowly, then quickly--is life. They have completely internalized it past the point of resistance, must less rebellion. Oh, sometimes it takes extraordinary measures to achieve this--the last third of the novel is the torture-enhanced brainwashing of one of the last few hold-outs--but as Winston Smith realizes, he is only able to resist, feebly, because he can remember, dimly, the time before the bomb. The new generation will know no other way. And after that, the game is over.

It is, in short, one of the great misanthropic books of world literature--far sharper than the supposed monarch of such texts, Gulliver's Travels--Swift was a piker compared to Orwell in his despair over man's character--a book that reminds us of something dark and small and weak within all of us. The book does not uplift, or enliven. It does, however, warn. Orwell believed very much in happiness as an essential human right. The brilliance of the novel is that it shows that if you take away "the pursuit of happiness"--which is the 'inalienable right' we're most likely to surrender--then people will resign both life and liberty without much of a struggle, because neither means very much anymore. (Of course, one could argue that Huxley's counterpoint in Brave New World is that you can simply glut people on artificial happiness, on 'feelies' and soma, and they'll do whatever you want. But no reader of the two novels would hesitate for a second as to which dystopia they'd rather live in. Huxley couldn't conceive that people could be systematically robbed of pleasure, and have that be the thing that stabilizes the government, rather than undermining it.)

So that's my lesson for the day--don't let them take your chocolate away. Don't let them take your coffee. If they take away your pursuit of happiness--then when they decide to install the telescreen in your room, you won't much care--and the bullet in the head in the basement of the Ministry of Love will come as a relief.

Sex. Coffee. Good booze. The things that make us remember that life is worth living. Don't let them come for those things. Because when they do, you've lost. Man's soul lies in his ability to feel pleasure--and to pursue it in whatever way he chooses. But we are too easily persuaded--by church and state--that we must set these things aside for A Greater Good. That...is the great lie. And it is one we too easily believe, to the cost of everything. The noise of party slogans, church doctrine, talking heads who tell us that we must give up our happiness for the safety of others--it's so easy to listen to those voices. We tend to listen. And that's our doom.

As I say, one of the most important books ever written, because nobody had said it quite so clearly and fully. And because in a world that continues to be dominated by those who know full well that the best way to control people is to follow the Inner Party's game plan, we g*oddamned well better remember it.

Footnote: "Orwellian," by the way, when it is used, is usually mis-used. Idiot talking heads (usually on the left, since "Orwellian," like "Nazi," is a slur hurled from left to right, just as "treasonous" and "Godless" are thrown in the opposite direction; "commie" and "pinko" seem to have gone the way of Joe McCarthy, despite Ann Coulter's attempts to revive them. Sorry, Ann--just stick with accusing people of "siding with the terrorists"--trust me, that's always red meat to the fans) usually say "Orwellian" when they mean to say "grotesquely false, an inversion of the actual meaning of the words used." Hence, when the Bush administration's "Clean Air Act" actually enables polluters to dump more filth into the air, the Act is called "Orwellian," and everyone on the left nods solemnly. But that is not the nature of language in 1984. "Orwellian" language--that is, the language designed by the Inner Party--Newspeak--is never an inversion of the truth. It is instead a loss of meaning--of thought--altogether. The purpose of Newspeak is not to deceive, but to slowly breed out people's ability to think independently. As the poor doomed Syme--one of the architects of the language--explains it (with horrifying enthusiasm): "The whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the rage of thought...In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." It is not an inversion of meaning--it is a loss of meaning, and of the thoughts that meaning enables. Quite a different thing, and as it is more complicated than the tiny minds of the talking heads can accomodate, they use it to mean something simpler, dumber, less thoughtful. In using "Orwellian", they are being Orwellian. Life is still quite comic.

A Good Thing to Read

2007-05-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

For those who claim (with some fairness, really) that the Onion has gone stale, I offer this:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/middle_east_conflict_intensifies

The point at which we have to be terrified is when we cannot distinguish between parody/satire and the real thing...

No, No--I'm Still Here!

2007-05-02T12:07:00.000-07:00

The latest complaint from "Anonymous" wishes to know if I've checked out for the summer. I haven't, but end-of-semester grading has me largely brain-fried, and I've not got much to say. I'm working on an entry on 1984, which I'm in the process of re-reading (so to speak--it's on CD) and which has proved something of a revelation to me in revisiting it after roughly 20 years--how much I've remembered and how much I've forgotten. (Completely forgot that Winston Smith is married, for instance.) Old books that we think we know are worth rereading. When I taught Huckleberry Finn last year, it was a revelation to me--like H.L. Mencken, I realized just how g*ddamned great that book is, how it is the work of a genius, and the first book since, probably, Don Quixote--or at least since Tom Jones--to capture the essence of human decency so completely and unsentimentally. Great book, that. As summer approaches, might I recommend picking up something from your youth, and rediscovering it? Sounds very "And now, a special message from the Superfriends"-ish (remember when ABC decided that all their Saturday morning programming had to be 'improving', but that next to the brilliance of Schoolhouse Rock, it all came off as lamer than hell?), but still--try it. And let me know how it goes...

With Regard To The Last Post

2007-04-16T11:04:00.000-07:00

OK, so I may love life, but it clearly does not love me. Stressors abound--I'm ridiculously broke thanks to a confluence of events, the end of the semester approaches WAY too quickly with its inevitable existential nightmare, and other matters too personal to mention--it's a perfect storm of all the things that on their own make me loopy, and for a poor little anxious-depressive soul like myself, well...I'm sighing a lot these days.

And tired a lot.

And I have little to no appetite. (Wait, that's a good thing--eating less is good.)

And...well, you all know. It's boring to talk about, and it's boring to read. It's the equivalent of a flare-up of arthritis, or a break-out of an unfortunate social disease. (I assume. Not that I'd know, personally. No, really! Ignore that rash!)

Anyway, I'm here, I'm gloomy, I mostly want to curl up and sleep for a sloth-like schedule of repose. But...thank you, Midwest...I continue to deal. And eat more fiber. I hear it's good for you.

Just Perfect

2007-04-05T22:16:00.000-07:00

It snowed yesterday--just a dusting that melted as soon as it landed, but still, snow in April--not funny, Midwest. Not funny. Nevertheless, it's most decidedly spring here--but only just. The snow is off the ground and folks around here have clearly prepped their lawns for the new season, as green grass abounds. Also, small blue flowers of a type I'm not familiar with--lovely things, even if they are most likely some variant of weed.

Anyway--it's clear and cold--the sun is out, but it's not t-shirt season yet (good news for those of us who aren't...in the best shape for such things. I'm going to the gym, honest!) Squirrels are out in force, searching eagerly for...well, I assume for whatever they've buried over the winter; I refuse to believe that it's anything so prosaic as nuts.

But you never know.

Because today, I saw the first robin of the season. Just one. All alone. He (I'm going to chauvinistically masculinize him) swooped down on one of the newly sprung lawns right in front of me as I walked home from class today. The first robin of the season. The earliest. You can see where I'm going with this.

Because indeed, he did something I've never seen a bird do before. He plunged his beak repeatedly into the soil of the lawn, stabbing once, twice, a third time, and came up with--my God, do they really do such things?--a wriggling worm. Which he mulled over, then ate in a gulp.

In short--by an act of nature conspiring to render a cliche' comically literal--the early bird got the worm.

I love life. I really do.

Being Sick And Alone

2007-03-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

...you know, as I typed the words of the title to this post, I realized that No, I don't think I'm going to go forward with my original intentions, which were to bitch and whine (under the auspices of some kind of objective commentary on the human condition) about how bleak one's outlook becomes when one is truly sick (I've had the nastiest case of the flu I can remember ever suffering through) and truly alone (as in, not only do I live alone, but I am completely geographically isolated from anyone upon whom I could call for aid/comfort)--but you know what? It's one thing to feel whiny; it's another to be whiny.

The former is tolerable--I mean, come on, when the alarm clock goes off on a work day, we all give a little moan of 'why me', and that happens five days a week!--self-pity is a universal condition, and that's natural enough. We're the occupants of our own minds, so everything that happens, happens only insofar as it happens to us, in whatever way we choose to let it do so. So feeling whiny? No shame in that. But that's precisely why being whiny is so repulsive. If everyone feels whiny, but few of us express it, then those who do are just claiming--unfairly and selfishly and childishly--that their problems are somehow more important than everyone else's. Bulls***. Carry your load, deal with your problems, and save your complaints for when the combine rips your arm off (metaphorically speaking, though literally would also constitute just cause)--then you get to complain. (Either that, or do what I do and get yourself to a shrink, who at least gets paid to have to sit through your snivelling crap.)

So I'll just wrap this up by saying that since what I'm emotionally and intellectually preoccupied with is various forms of self-pity and aggrievance, I don't have anything worth sharing--and I'll close with a stern lecture to readers that this is not a passive-aggressive ploy for sympathy or expressions of concern. (Though, God, wouldn't that just be so like me? I'm horrible...[grins]...) So hush, and focus on your own inner whiner. Poor little guy--you've been ignoring him for so long.

Post Trauma...

2007-03-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I *was* going to talk about how I'd had a bad spell of depressive anxiety--prompted in large part by a debilitating cold and the fact that certain medications I'm already taking do not interact well with what I took to ease my nasal discomfort--for Chrissakes, they could hear my heart beating three townships away, and the side-effects listed on the package should include "Overwhelming Conviction That The Apocalypse Is Only Moments Away"--and had come out of it with flying colors, but no. I wanted to. But no.

As of this afternoon, I was settling into enjoying the remainder of my spring break--I really was feeling better--at worst, I was a little bored, which isn't the worst state to be in. (That honor goes to "Alabama in the summertime right after a white woman has claimed that a black stranger raped her child.") But then...

OK, now, look: I get basic cable, but not any of the pay stations, and staying here with my parents, who *do*, I'm reminded why: some f*cking thing called DATE MOVIE was on--part of that whole "It's not a Wayans Brothers' Movie, but we'll try to make it just as inconceivably sh*tty" generation of movies that 'satirize' movies that don't take themselves seriously to begin with, and therefore render 'satire' unnecessary and moronic. I watched it...why? Well, it had Alyson Hannigan in it, whom I used to have tender and fuzzy thoughts about back when she was on BUFFY. (Until Eliza Dushku showed up. Then it was like "Alyson who? Stop blocking the view to the badass hottie, red!") But I still had fond memories of Willow. No longer. Now I just want to figure out how I can claw my eyeballs out of my skull, replace them with Hiroshima-strength cherry bombs, light the fuses and blow my f*cking head off rather than have one single moment of that...THING that calls itself a movie playing through my head.

Seriously, if the closing credits had been the video from The Ring, I would have welcomed that scary girl coming to kill me with open arms and a smile. Sweet merciful Lord--who clearly does not exist, since He allowed this abortion to live--there are people who find that film and things like it funny. Genuinely, laugh-out-loud funny. Now, I know I shouldn't judge, or preach, or judge in a preachy way, or condescend, but you know what? F*CK. THAT. This was, to paraphrase the great Colbert, a terrible movie, and they are terrible people for having made it for terrible people who enjoyed it, and if a meteor DOES come and wipe us all off the f*cking planet, we will have deserved it richly for allowing such people and their MINDLESS appetite for toxic swill to live among us, breed, and vote.

It just wasn't very good, is what I'm saying.

Now I have to go and practice my coping mechanism of listing 10 good reasons why life is worth living. I'm up to 2, and they both involve the possibility of Scarlett Johansson getting naked, so I'm a little worried...

It Continues to Look a Lot Like Christmas

2007-03-07T10:26:00.000-08:00

I think I may have discovered the first crack in the facade of Midwestern sanity. I've taken up, as I mentioned before, walking to school, and thus pass through a residential area that could only be described as 'Norman Rockwell quaint'--the clean, friendly architecture of houses built in a similar style, but with enough distinction to show that they weren't cranked out by a McContracting Firm. Nice lawns, well kept. (Invisible now beneath the snow, but the sidewalks are shovelled with a diligence that predicts regular mowing come summer.) One can imagine lemonade stands and games of catch. There's very little irony here--which doesn't make these people rubes by any means. Quite the contrary--the people that I've spoken with have shown a fine taste for genial sarcasm and self-deprecation. But irony doesn't exist as an automatic reaction to everything, as it does in SoCal--the people here seem to recognize that genuine experience--the enjoyment of simple pleasures--is actually preferable to mocking them out of hand. It's very...well, provincially European of them, and that's high praise.

But.

But it's March. March. And as I walk by these houses, with their large front windows, always with the shades thrown open (there's a delightfully unsecretive quality to life here), I can see...Christmas trees. And wreaths on the doors. Still. In March. Not in every one, to be sure, but in about 1 out of 5, which is definitely a pattern as you walk through the neighborhood. And it's, frankly, a little bit creepy.

Now, we've all lived on the street with the guy who never seems to take down his Christmas lights--he leaves them on well into January because it's still 'the holidays', and the Febrary and March pass, and he realizes that if he can just hold out to July, he'll be close enough to December to say "F*** it" and leave them up. We know this guy. We sneer at him, because we know that he's a lazy buffoon.

These people--are not this guy. Because, as I say, they're not lazy. (Shovelled snow and mowed lawns, remember?) They're diligent. Which means...which means that these people are choosing to keep the Christmas stuff up. Even though it's March. March. I can't quite fathom this. I can't think why--is it denial? Surely not--these are the nation's pragmatists! Is it some way of coping with the miserable weather--dressing it up as 'festive' rather than bleak? Maybe, but again, that seems delusional. I don't get it. And some part of me doesn't want to get it. For the first time since I've come here, I've recognized a cultural habit that is, in fact, genuinely weird. Not menacing, just weird. And it's got me pondering--I thought I was getting a handle on this place, but now...now I don't know...

It's Official

2007-02-27T06:39:00.000-08:00

You know, I know nothing--but nothing--about professional sports; my exposure to them has been limited to overheard yells from the next room where my father and brother are watching a game, and from the commentary I overhear as I pass through said room on my way to the fridge for a bottle of water. So when I say I know nothing, I mean I really know nothing. But even I (know-nothing!) know this: Joe Theisman is a terrible commentator. Terrible. He's dull and witless and lacks even the minimal insight one would expect from a veteran of the game, in which he was far from the greatest player. So how did he get the job? Oh, we know. We all know why:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9l6bxIXGXA&mode=related&search=

Yeah, that's why. He got hurt. He got hurt bad. His leg broken at an angle that you could measure with a protracter. Wow. Ouch. End of his career. But so...hypnotic...the car accident of sports injuries. We owe him so much for this. So let's throw him a bone and give him a job spouting idiocies from the booth. Well, no, let's not. He's a f*cking moron and he's coasting on a brutal piece of footage.

But no more. No more. Because now, now there's this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Ghupxbj9g

And oh my. Oh...oh...oh my. I can watch the Theisman footage. I can't watch this. It's too much. It's too grisly and awful and sweet Christ I can't even imagine the pain. Shaun Livingston can look Theisman in the eye and call him out. So let's bump Theisman. He's no longer the "Oh my God that's the guy who busted his leg so bad" guy. Not anymore. Shaun Livingston holds that title. And unless somehow a grizzly gets onto the course at the Master's and actually tears off Tiger's lower limbs on the 14th hole, Livingston's gonna hold it for a long, long time...

In short, fire Theisman. He's no longer That Guy, and he has nothing else to offer.

Warning: Adult Content

2007-02-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

Please note: I normally try to keep this blog Safe For Work, but this post won't work without explicit, if repetitive vulgarity, so consider yourself forewarned.

I didn't watch the Oscars last night, because I don't anymore--sweet Jesus, they've sucked for decades (really, ever since they stopped holding it as a banquet) and we must always remember that neither Orson Welles nor Citizen Kane won Best Director or Best Picture, negating the objective validity of the award. (Don't get me wrong: How Green Was My Valley is a great movie, and if Welles had to lose to someone, at least it was Ford--but still, COME ON.) Regardless, let me say this about last night:

This should have been Scorsese's acceptance speech:

"I want to thank the Academy. I want to, and I would have, about 25 fucking years ago, when this award should have gone to me. For fuck's sake, I'm like the only living director you can mention in the same breath as Kurosawa and Bergman and not get a laugh, and this is my first fucking Oscar?!?! All due respect, you antediluvian shitheads, but what the fucking fuck?! I should have fucking won for Mean Streets, I should have fucking won for Taxi Driver, I should have fucking won for Raging Bull, I should have fucking won for King of Comedy, I should have fucking won for Goodfellas, and I don't mean I should have won for one of them--I mean I should have won for fucking all of them. But no. No, instead, thanks to you cowardly, witless octogenarian fucks, I've had to sit back and watch myself lose to no-talent fuckwads likes Kevin fucking Costner, Robert fucking Zemeckis, and Ron fucking Howard. You gave this fucking thing to Opie before you gave to me? Fuck you people. Fuck you to death. I'm out of here--if anybody wants me, he can go fuck himself--I'm gonna go on a bender that would make William Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson shit their pants. In summary: I wish you all bone cancer. FUCK. YOU."

That's what he should have said. You know it; I know it. Ah well, at least we know he was thinking it. And somewhere in Heaven, Orson Welles--who can read his thoughts--is laughing.

He Puts It Rather Well

2007-02-15T19:03:00.000-08:00

From Emerson's essay on Education:

"Alas for the cripple Practice when it seeks to come up with the bird Theory, which flies before it. Try your design on the best school. The scholars are of all ages and temperaments and capacities. It is difficult to class them, some are too young, some are slow, some perverse. Each requires so much consideration, that the morning hope of the teacher, of a day of love and progress, is often closed at evening by despair. Each single case, the more it is considered, shows more to be done; and the strict conditions of the hours, on: one side, and the number of tasks, on the other. Whatever becomes of our method, the conditions stand fast--six hours, and thirty, fifty, or a hundred and fifty pupils. Something must be done, and done speedily, and in this distress the wisest are tempted to adopt violent means, to proclaim martial law, corporal punishment, mechanical arrangement, bribes, spies, wrath, main strength and ignorance, in lieu of that wise genial providential influence they had hoped, and yet hope at some future day to adopt. Of course the devotion to details reacts injuriously on the teacher. He cannot indulge his genius, he cannot delight in personal relations with young friends, when his eye is always on the clock, and twenty classes are to be dealt with before the day is done. Besides, how can he please himself with genius, and foster modest virtue? A sure proportion of rogue and dunce finds its way into every school and requires a cruel share of time, and the gentle teacher, who wished to be a Providence to youth, is grown a martinet, sore with suspicions; knows as much vice as the judge of a police court, and his love of learning is lost in the routine of grammars and books of elements."

Precisely, Ralph. Precisely.

I Live

2007-02-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

Not so much a posting as a confirmation that, yes, I am continuing to maintain my metabolic processes at a rate consistent with stable health, and no, I'm not lying in a moribund state on the floor of my shower, not quite yet achieving enough 'parfum de decay' to summon the landlord and the coroner and providing a variation of diet for my cats.

So yeah, I'm still alive. Just not much to report, alas. I'm uncreative these days--well, except for my in-class work, where I continue to improvise my ass off, usually to great effect--they're either impressed or completely confused, which they inevitably chalk up to their own mental inadequacy rather than to the fact that I am complete and utterly detached from relevance or logic. Nice job, this.

But for right now, I'm treading water, professionally, personally, intellectually, emotionally. Statis does not make for riveting narrative--has anyone ever read Waiting for Godot a second time? I think not. So I am silent until struck by the muse. And until I can stop using revoltingly precious phrases like "struck by the muse," which I may think are cutely ironic, but which are just tediously facile. So there.

30 Below Zero

2007-02-05T09:05:00.000-08:00

Do I really need say more? I walked my walk to class in weather that, with wind-chill, was 30 below zero. I am either a god or a risk for suicide. Either way, it was cold. Very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very,very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very cold.

Very.

I Have No Words. Well, One.

2007-02-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

Allow me to quote the National Weather Service in their latest missive regarding my locale:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE HAS ISSUED A WIND CHILL ADVISORY...LOW TEMPERATURES TONIGHT WILL RANGE FROM AROUND ZERO TO 5 BELOW...WITH MODERATE NORTHWEST WINDS. THIS WILL BRING WIND CHILL READINGS TO BELOW 20 BELOW ZERO. THE COLD TEMPERATURES AND BITTER WIND CHILLS WILL CONTINUE THROUGH THE MID PART OF NEXT WEEK. A WIND CHILL ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN VERY COLD AIR TEMPERATURES...AND WINDS OF 10 MPH OR GREATER...WILL CREATE HAZARDOUS WIND CHILL VALUES OF BETWEEN 20 BELOW TO 34 BELOW ZERO. THESE CONDITIONS WILL RESULT IN FROST BITE...AND COULD LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN.

Allow me to offer my response to this statement: F***.

That is all.

Up and Downs

2007-02-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

Felt pretty good today, as I just received my student evals from last semester, and apparently, I blew the doors off of every class that I taught. (They tell me that's particularly surprising for the remedial comp. class that I was teaching. Meh, so they say.) But still--nice to be told by my victims that I tortured them with a firm and gentle hand. Felt good, as I say.

Then I found out that Molly Ivins died yesterday at the offensively early age of 62. She wasn't done. She just wasn't done. Breast cancer, which by her own account, she let go undetected for far too long. This news took the shine out of my day. She wasn't done.

Stop reading this, go find something of hers, and read that. Now.

How Awesome Am I?

2007-01-29T09:16:00.000-08:00

Short answer: Not very. I'm in the middle of a truly horrible depressive cycle, fueled by excruciating loneliness and a schedule of classes--including Women's Lit. and Postcolonial Lit.--for which I am singularly awkwardly suited and in which I feel like a total f***ing fraud. (I mean, they seem to be going well, and I've got plenty to say, and the students seem to be digging the work we're doing, but still: total f***ing fraud. No, you're delusional.) Anyway, so I'm miserable and life sucks and what's the point of it all?

But.

Worthless as it all is--and it is, Big-Picture-wise--there are moments when we briefly and trivially matter. This morning, I'm walking to class (first time I've done the walk through falling snow, which is neither as bad nor as romantic as it might sound), and about 1/4 of the way there, a small blur races by my ankle. Said blur turns out to be an enthusiastic Boston Terrier (visuals available here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Terrier), leashless, and I turn to look for the owner.

There is no owner. This is a runaway. F***. Cute thing, it has seen me, and figured out that one human being is pretty much the same as another, and that as long as it sticks with me, it'll be fine. So it does. I keep walking, thinking--hoping--that it's just been let out by an occupant of a nearby house and that once it's taken care of business, it will return. No such luck; I continue to be followed by my new best friend. I notice also that New Best Friend has the disregard that small dogs often have for traffic--it simply does not exist as a possibility. And, as I say, it's snowing heavily, and gray, and the roads are icy. The recipe for canine annihilation is near-perfect. Dammit. I have to do something. But I'm late for lecture. So I make little incremental deals with myself--If it follows me one more block, I'll try to catch it and help it. S***. It followed me. OK--one more block. S***--what is this dog, a professional tracker? OK--if I get to the intersection...

But it's no use. Much as I make my small, accumulative deals with devil, the damn dog keeps following me, happy and safe in my company--and, oh for Christ's sake!--now I can see that it's limping, either due to injury or to keep at least one of its paw off the freezing ground. And when I finally (f*** it) kneel down to check it out, it comes bounding into my arms, eager for love and body warmth. It has a collar. But no address on the collar. But it has a phone number. OK...OK...what to do...I can't phone the owner myself--I've got to get to class now, five minutes ago, preferably. But I can't leave it here--we're nearing a busy intersection, and the dog will die if I let it go. Dammit...

I look for open businesses, but it's not yet 9:00, and none are open. It's getting to the point where I will be very late indeed. Then, praise Zeus, I spy a woman shovelling snow off of the driveway of a law firm's parking lot. Clearly an employee! Hope! Please, God, let the Midwestern kindness hold firm--otherwise, I'm going to have to bring this little bastard to class...

I speak to her in cheerfully apologetic tones. The dog's cuteness helps, I think. She tells me that she's just there to clear the snow--her husband's over in the plow across the parking lot. Crap. But, she says, let's see what he says. We go over; I hold up the dog, and explain that I have to get to work, but "I hate to leave the poor thing out in the cold and traffic"--holding up the poor thing and willing it to really shine on the adorably pathetic look it's been giving me.

He doesn't pause. "Well, I guess we have to, then," he says, with that easy-going kindliness I've come to expect. And I hand over the dog, and he looks at the phone number, and reaches for his cell. "You have a nice day, now," he says to me, meaning it. "You too--and thank you," I say, meaning it even more. And hurry on to campus.

So with a little help from a kindly stranger, I saved a cute little dog this morning. I was late to class, but they heard my tale and were appropriately moved. I did the right thing with only a slight hitch or two of callous self-regard.

Now do I get to go to Heaven?

Some Non-Lame Version of "Huzzah"

2007-01-19T12:31:00.000-08:00

Sorry, but as a former (and recovering, thank you very much!) Renaissance Faire attendee and Dungeons & Dragons player (I only went to one convention! I swear!), I can't really think of a cheer that doesn't sound, well--OK, I'm not in favor of using "gay" as a synonym for "lame"--or indeed, as a synonym for anything other than "emotionally and physically attracted to members of the same sex and leave them the hell alone, will you"--but the offensively colloqial use of the word expresses a certain kind of lameness, a quality of male behavior that strives for one effect (coolness, intelligence, sophistication) and achieves something much, much sadder. And no other word captures that specific--and quite common--essence.

Bottom line is, we need a new word to express this particular idea, one that doesn't conflate ten percent of humanity with a pejorative. (I mean, Ian McKellen is gay, but dude, he is in no way "gay," if you see what I mean--I only wish I could be as cool as that man. Whereas Bill O'Reilly is, to the best of my knowledge, straight, but whenever he tries to talk tough, he is incredibly "gay." Michael Savage is both. Hey! Perhaps we could allow the term to be used only in reference to bigots who who go nuts at being called that term. We could have that whole "Bugs Bunny Kisses Elmer And Drives Him Into A State Of Apoplectic Sexual Confusion" thing! I loved that. Bugs Bunny--first straight guy to realize that if you want to mess with a slow-wit's head, hit on him--he won't know what to do. But seriously, we need a new word, and I call upon my brothers and sisters in the gay and lesbian community to come up with one. And hurry up--there's a lot of stuff that needs to be called by this new term. We breeders will wait for your call.)

OK, that was long and pointless digression. Briefly then, and then let's wrap this up because I've got celebratory drinking to do, I just got the call from the folks at the college where I teach and, woo-hoo!, they've renewed my contract for next year. For another year, I eat, live in a nice apartment, teach, and generally get to exist like an adult. Praise be unto to Allah and all his Saints, and to the blessed memory of Joseph Smith, his prophet and his avatar, Krishna. In Jesus's name, Amen. (Just figured I'd better cover my bases. Oh, and if you're up there Zeus? Odin? Nice going, guys. Kisses.)

OK, booze is waiting. Hold my calls; I'm off for a lost weekend...

Home Again, Home Again

2007-01-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

This won't be so much "a post" as "an explanation for a non-post"--there's nothing duller than hearing about an unpleasant journey--delays and more delays and flight cancellations at every gate but ours and horrible airport food or the lack thereof--I can, by the way, inform all and sundry that the worst coffee made with the intention of being sold to and consumed by humans is currently available in the Kansas City airport--one sip and I actually decided that I'd rather have the caffeine withdrawal, and this after getting up at 4:00 in the morning--thank God, and I never thought I'd say this, for the ubiquity of Starbucks, which was available at the far end of the terminal--anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, ze treep, she--how you say?--sucked. It was dreadful but there's nothing duller than the story of a miserable trip--except perhaps the description of 'this totally weird dream I had'--because we've all had them and they're all the same and you don't want to be bored, right?

So let's focus on the positive--big fat flakes of snow are falling as I type this--no blizzard, just plain ol' seasonal weather--I've got my coffee and a week to re-acclimate (and study up for three new courses next semester, none of which I have taught before--working without a net here, folks, no wires!) and just...sink back into the comfy chair of the Midwest and relax in the knowledge that it really is so much better here. Love my family, love my friends, miss them horribly and worse--I truly do, and it was wonderful to see them all, and in that sense, the trip was too short--but it's just so much...nicer here. (Although SoCal did take a stab or two at me in reminding me of its charms--you can't watch several pods of dolphins swim by the restaurant that overhangs the coast here in the MW, I gotta concede.) Still: sigh of general 'God's in His heaven' contentment.

The only fly in the ointment is that I slept wrong a night or two ago and my lower back--yes, I'm in my late 30s--is continuing to punish me for my unwitting indiscretion. Damn you, lumbar region...! Aspirin, please. And a whiskey chaser. Yeah, I know it's only 9:00 in the morning--don't judge!

Wordsworth Revisited

2007-01-09T14:07:00.000-08:00

I would like to say before offering this that I am completely and utterly convinced that I am not the first person to whom this revision of a classic has occurred, and that I may therefore be guilty of an appalling amount of unintentional plagiarism in what follows, in addition to the obvious hypocrisy, given the vehicle in which I've chosen to express these sentiments:

The Web is too much with us; night and noon,
Connected and detached, we lose our hours:
Why need we stop and smell the flowers?--
A virtual rose, T-lined, downloads so soon!
This Net that lures us with its siren's croon;
Sex, love, adventure, 'life' are ours,
What need for patience, guidance? Such stillness sours;
What music need we more than Ipod's tune?
Yet hungry still.--O World! We cannot see
That you are wider than the realm of Porn,
Blog, and MMORPG--
Does 'chat' make 'conversation' food for scorn?
Is reading marked for quaint antiquity?
I fear the cold, hard breed this 'gift' has born.

Spirit Journey Formation Anniversary

2007-01-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

Which is to say, Happy Birthday to me.

A time of reflection, consideration, rumination, self-assessment, self-evaluation, self-gratification, self-obsession--a bleak, miserable, bitter reflection on a waste of life. Where's my copy of Wild Strawberries...?

For someone as instinctively slothful as I am, you'd think that I'd be delighted to be amidst a month of enforced inactivity. But frankly, I'm starting to go squirrelly--I need to get back to work, because I just haven't developed that Zen/Stoic/stoner ethos that tells me that it is my inner self that truly defines who I am and that self-worth is an illusion and that the goal is to truly be and not to do or to judge. Yyyyyeah, no, that's never happened. I need to actually contribute something to the world, however small, to feel, I don't know, worth-while, and frankly, I need to work to feel that. When I make that minimal contribution, then screwing around is the pleasure it was meant to be. I think of it as the Gym/Dessert principle. If you work out, you can enjoy your dessert because you've earned it. Only my version is much less shallow. Or so I tell myself.

Point is: I've enjoyed my break, but it's time to get back to work, and interaction with the world at large, and for Chrissakes, I'm thirty-f***ing-seven (past 33, all age-defining digits must be hyphenated with an obscenity), and I need to be living the life of an adult. Which frankly, is next to impossible in Southern California, where the zeitgeist revolves entirely around maintaining the looks, tastes, and maturity of late adolescence. Screw this noise, I'm going...home.

Huh. Thinking of the Midwest as home. Interesting...

Anyway, to sum up: Birthday today. Life sucks. Wasted life. Back to work. Small ray of hope in the fact that I seem to be growing up. But very, very small indeed.

Trying Not To Channel Jeremiah

2007-01-04T15:07:00.000-08:00

The problem with three years of Bible Study in one's adolescence is that one knows, as one goes through life, that, well, there is no new thing under the sun. Also, that such gloominess and a generally morbid sense of the ugly futility of the time we live in inevitably sends you to quoting Ecclesiastes and/or Jeremiah--neither of which will get you invited to any of the really good holiday parties. (And since I have a birthday coming up, I just can't risk that. I mean, imagine not being invited to your own...no, I can't think of it. Shudder...)

Anyway, point is, one can't help, at year's end, to look back over the events of the preceding year, and goddammit, if 2006 didn't demand that we all stare fixedly at our hands for a few moments, muttering "Vanity, vanity, all is vanity," then what the hell would? I've grumbled before about it being too easy to blame certain individuals--I mean, if Rupert Murdoch didn't exist, somebody else would have done what he did--and when the Rupert Murdochs of the world control the political landscape, then you wind up with presidential administrations like our current, miserable catastrophe of an Executive Branch. Is there hope in the election of the Democrats to power in the Legislative Branch? Maybe, if the lot of them nut up and start to recognize that by serving every special interest, they serve none. But I wouldn't count on that. Republicans naturally gravitate towards power because they really only have to please two constituencies--the insanely rich, and the fundamentalist poor. Lock up those votes, and you're in. (That favoring the interests of the former invariably means dicking over the latter never seems to dissuade the dirt-poor from voting red--but then, when you live your life by faith, facts and experience have little meaning.)

So I think the Democratic ascendency will be brief and unspectacular--and really, isn't it too late? I mean, Katrina did her number on the Gulf Coast (we always focus on New Orleans, which must make the rest of the region that go slammed just as hard feel wonderful about their lot), and the adminstration said, and I'm quoting here, "Yawn." 3000 dead in Iraq is actually small potatoes compared to Vietnam (whenever people compare the two, I always roll my eyes and mutter "Body Count...")--and yet we're not going anywhere, and Bush just made terrifyingly Johnsonian decision to put more troops on the ground. (If he'd done that in the first place, it would have been shrewd and effective. Now he's just giving emboldened insurgents more targets to shoot at.) Stem cell research continues to be off the table--and Bush will veto anything that crosses his desk on that subject. And what concerns me most is not the politics of all this, but the culture of it. I once wrote about how we'd entered into an Age of "Meh"--of indifference to real world events because artificial events of internet or tabloid-like basis had consumed our attention spans and thus our ability to care. But I worry now that "Meh" will start to look like a good thing as this age of nasty mean-spiritedness grows--as no solution presents itself in Iraq and we become angrier and angrier at the frustration we must feel at our failure. As New Orleans continues to (literally) fester and hundreds of thousands of people (conveniently black and/or poor) realize that their government will never, ever help them regain their lives--and this after indirectly causing their loss by shoddy workmanship and ineffective disaster relief. As victims of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and MS--victims including the families who suffer right along with those carrying the diseases--listen to know-nothings speak about the sanctity of life while protecting the microscopic and unsentient and scorning the present and agonized. And as for global warming...well, it's just too terrifying and depressing to contemplate. How can we not degenerate into rage--and the rage of impotence? Because who will fix this? Who will care enough to organize, to march, to protest, to vote--to commit acts of civil disobedience--to face the German Shepherds and the fire hoses? I know of no one.

Jeremiah mourned a captive nation of good men and women who suffered for the sins of their fathers. I mourn for a nation that doesn't even exist--where individual suffering isolates us into our own private life of grievance and anger and loss.

Dammit, I knew I shouldn't have left the Midwest--I need to get back there--being surrounded by a sea of human decency has really softened me up, no? Normally, a trivial thing like the end of the world would just roll off my cynical back. But now, thanks to the people back there--I care again. Mostly because I think they deserve better than...well, a nation of people like me.

Heidegger Was Right

2006-12-29T21:18:00.000-08:00

Well, not about everything, the Nazi s***head, but in his assertion that the world--that Life--is big and inscrutable and amorphous and chaotic and unpredictable and that we, humanity, just can't function in such a place--that we find it overwhelming and horrifying and dizzying to the point of nausea. Who am I? Why am I here? What do I mean by "here"? (Most people don't know, but the inner monologue of the falling whale in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is actually a neat little joke on the concept of Heideggerian thrown-ness--no, really, it is! Remember, the English system of education is much, much better than ours, which is why the Pythons could do jokes about Latin conjugation/declension in Life of Brian and assume that their audience would 'get it.')

So, like that sweet, doomed whale, we create means of orientation. Points in space, time, and self about which we can say "That is There, I am Here, and This is How I Relate To It." Why else do you think so much of our language hinges on prepositions--words that exist only to articulate relations between things: "at," "from," "of," "to" and so on? Because in order to get our head straight, we have to put the rest of our world in order. Why else is moving homes so disturbing and stressful? Because it's a change of a lynchpin in how we organize the world--we think spatially--think about how every place in the world is, in ways distinct and vague, organized around the basic principle of 'where it is in relation to your home'--and not just in terms of geography. Our emotional lives are essentially matters of spatial orientation as well. Which--thank Christ--brings me to my point.

After traumatic losses, we lose our minds because we can't function without the presence of, say, our loved one--who that person was, what that person meant--that makes up too much of how we think about our lives as being ordered. Pause and consider, dear reader--don't you have someone who is, so to speak, your conscience--the eprson you consult whenever you're at a loss? Your dangerous side--the person you know you can go to for fun of the 'heh heh' variety? Your sense of humor--the person who 'gets' you and laughs at the same things in the same way and who you have to share every new joke immediately? Your something close and dear and meaningful--your sense of self in some embodied, beloved way? Bet you do. Bet you got a lot of them. I know I do. I have, for instance, one friend who is more of an achor to me than he'd ever be comfortable knowing--but he's the one I know I can go to when the s*** hits the fan (and it has, often, and he's always been there)--and I live my life a little more securely knowing that he's 'placed' in it. Such people occupy such large and orienting places in our lives--they're our maps as we navigate the feelings and thoughts created by experience--the people who occupy our time and focus and who let us know where and who we are.

And when such a person leaves our lives, we lose our sense of orientation--our sense of selves--grief is so often experienced as a sense of "What do I do now? Where do I go from here? How do I live--day to day--without this person?" And mostly, I think, we learn to function afterwards by living lives defined by absence. We leave that place in our lives--that orienting point--as empty, and function as best with can by projecting memories of that person into the empty space. Thinking about what the person would have said, would have done, what you would have felt, or thought, or done--because Having That Person There is How The World Is Supposed To Be. It's unpleasant, to be sure, but we can grow numb and make it through the day because even though our lives are defined by absence, they're still defined, which is better than chaos, right?

But of course by keeping a gap in our lives exactly the size and shape of the person means that, duh-huh!--no one and nothing can ever replace it. That our lives will forever be defined by absence. Which, as I say, is at best a numbly functional existence.

But letting go of that absent person is so goddamned scary. Because who are you without that person? How do you feel? What do you do? You'll be lost, won't you? Lost. Not good, that. And the more central the person, the more lost you'll be--the more of you there won't be, if you can follow.

But unless you can let that absence go--unless you can let the shape and space go fuzzy and let someone or something else in there--and let them be themselves, and not an awkward, forced, and ultimately doomed attempt to recreate the lost (Kim Novak falls off the bell-tower both times in Vertigo, remember)--then you'll never heal.

But it's a lot to give up--who you were, what you loved and cared for.

I have been living a life defined by absence.

But lately...less. It's good. Scary, and I keep running back every so often to check the place of the absence. But less and less often. And more and more--there are other places, one in particular, that have begun to feel like home to me. It's new. It's strange. It's exciting and uncertain and becoming less so. It's good. It's very, very good.

Enjoy The Silence

2006-12-27T23:16:00.000-08:00

(Yes, I know, I used a Depeche Mode song as the title for this post. So string me up by my thumbs.)

I've been internet-less for the better part of a week; a visit to parental digs for the duration of the holiday season came at a price: SoCal weather in exchange for a working connection. Strange to say--given my ability to jack myself in (yes, in, smartass) for hours on hours on unproductive hours on end--I've not missed it much. Nor the television. Here there's been a cessation of the noise of net and media and it's been quite...oddly...pleasant.

I normally enjoy the distraction from the voices in my head as much as the next self-accusatory neurotic, but there's something to be said for quiet. Or for the quiet of lengthy musical compositions, sustained reading, a movie watched with others from beginning to end, and discussions--no, conversations afterwards. I've grown inclined to morbidity of late--paying attention to the news and those who report and comment on it, I can't help but realize that we're living in an ugly, angry, dangerous and bullying time, when the insecure masses have realized that it's easier to be mean and thoughtless than patient and reflective. Screaming has replaced discourse, and that's OK, because it's all we have the attention-span for. It's too easy to blame single people--Bush, Rove, Clinton (if you're a liberal)--or single entities--FOX News and its pantheon of empty-headed thugs, or the New York Times and its smug confidence in its ex cathedra authority--but these are all just symptoms of a world addicted to noise. Louder, faster, more intense--we need to punched in the head to feel anything anymore.

I'm just as guilty of it as the next fellow--more so. I snap and snarl and toss off brilliantly facile remarks that give the impression of encapsulating substance and are, in fact, just an empty execution of grammar and vocabulary. I like making noise--and I like hearing it. A lot of it. Because otherwise--well, otherwise, I'd have to think. And if I thought--well, imagine what I'd have to think about. Failed marriage? Isolation? Professional stagnation? A life given over to indolence, mental and physical? Dude, who the hell needs that? Crank it now and crank it loud.

But Life's been unwilling to let me chase that dragon. The quiet of the Midwest--the kindness of the people and the gentle tones in which they speak--that's been an adjustment. Life is quiet there in the snow, under the cool white of the skies. And in the quiet, there's been thought. Pain, yes--pain I should have felt a long time ago, but pain that needed to be felt--pain that I'd been drowning out with the noise.

And here--even here--without the internet (which, obviously, I now have back, but which I view with greater distaste than I would've imagined), without television--the quiet follows me. And the thinking. And I'm beginning to remember the pleasures of silence. We'll see where this leads...

Rejection of Enforced Politeness

2006-12-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

An observation of Midwestern behavior:

People here do not stop, while driving, for crosswalks. (Unless they're stop-sign/red light based--these people aren't anarchists, for God's sake.) But the 'middle of the street'-'wildebeast-like-migratory-pattern-student" crosswalks? They whip right through them like they're not even there--though they're clearly marked. F*** you, pedestrian--I've gotta a car, and you've got a sack of meat and bones--that means I got the right of way. I swear, I think the most dangerous job out here must be Crossing Guard.

So, what? Are these people just selfish and insensitive? I think not. Because, here's the thing: when there's no crosswalk? When you just want to flagrantly jaywalk your lazy butt across the road instead of hauling it to the intersection? They stop. Every time. They stop, and wave you past. And if a line of cars forms as a result of this, no one honks. Hey, the man's walkin' here! Let him pass; he's got places to be! That old niceness comes back with an eerie vengeance.

So what the hell? Why 'f*** you' with the crosswalk and 'pass, friend' without one? Here's my theory. These people are patient, salt-of-the-earth types, and at the same time, they're independent-minded, and resent being told to be polite and kind and 'yield-to-pedestrian'-y. I think they don't stop at crosswalks for the same reason that you would lightly kidney punch someone who tells you, as you sit down to dinner, to mind your manners. F*** you, I was going to mind my manners--I was going to be polite and nice--but you know what? Since you clearly feel that I have to be told to be polite--since you clearly feel that I'm incapable of being anything other than an oblivious pr*ck on my own, why, it would be rude of me to prove you wrong! So excuse me while I plunk my elbows on the table, use my soup spoon to scratch my ass, and blow my nose in a crepe. F***. You.

But take that same guy and put him at a table when no one's there to belittle his maturity and inherent kindness, and he'll sit up straight, use the right flatware in the right order, speak in a modulated voice about inoffensive matters, treat the staff with respect, and leave a hefty tip. In short, he'll be a gentleman. Or she a lady.

There comes a point when, if you've been raised right, you don't have to be told to act like a decent human being. And when that point comes, being told to act like one is offensive. So folks around here engage in a mild form of civil disobedience (F*** you, crosswalk Nazis), and then compensate by behaving with kindness and patience in unsupervised circumstances (Well, I was kind of rushing my wife to the hospital for a complicated delivery--but you go ahead and take your time, sir!)

I like this place.

2006-12-12T08:05:00.000-08:00

A gap between postings is nothing new for me, and one should expect more in the future. In this instance, I at least have an excuse: the end of the semester, and the truck-load of grading, office hour meetings, and last-minute scrambling to file various reports and assessments that it involves. So I've not had much in the way of a chance to poke my nose about and perceive any of the cultural disparities on which I'm trying to base this blog.

Although the other day--not to get too specific and thus reveal my location, though since the only readers of this blog are presumably people who know me, and so who gives a s***, but still--there was a local bit of unpleasantness in which 3 people were killed and several more seriously injured. Unpleasant, as I say, and yet my oh my was there what seemed to me to be a severe overreaction to the event. Don't get me wrong--3 people dead and many injured is no good thing--but the words "disaster" and "tragedy" and "catastrophe" were being thrown around in banner headlines and 'special reports.' And this from a major U.S. city, mind you. Perhaps it's just my jaded, post-9/11, post-Katrina attitude, but it seems to me that is your city isn't smouldering with the remains of burning bodies or drowned beneath flood-waters, perhaps "disaster" is not the right word to use. "Mishap" is a bit too light, perhaps, but it's closer to the mark. I mean, in a city of the size in question, the deaths of three people probably doesn't create much of a bump in the county-wide death toll for the day, much less the week.

And yet, "disaster" it was. Is this self-aggrandizement? The attempt to make the relatively minor seem tragic in order to reinforce a sense of self-importance? Or are such occurrences so rare that even so small a thing appears, to these people, nothing short of calamitous? I can't say for sure. But I suspect, ruefully, that it's the former. We're not an insulated world anymore. Even in the Midwest--even in flyover country--we probably have a perspective of the world that rivals the breadth and sophistication of the coasts (hint to the occupants of those coasts--stop sneering at these people--they're every bit as well-informed as you)--and so I think that they simply succumbed to the need to make their suffering more substantial in order to make themselves seem more important. Which is understandable, but tacky. Ah well. So it's not a land of saints. Just means I'll fit in better here than I initially thought.

Eleven

2006-12-04T07:30:00.000-08:00

OK, I promise to stop bitching/remarking on the weather soon, but this is a good anecdote, so bear with me.

Alarm went off this morning, and radio was playing Loverboy, so I did the only sensible thing--I put a pillow over my head and tried to smother myself into the relatively sweet embrace of death. Didn't work, and when I pulled the pillow away, the DJ said, breezily, "It's eleven, and we'll be right back after this."

Eleven?! Oh f***! Oh s***! I overslept! How did this happen?! It's 11:00 a.m. and I'm late for...Wait. Looked around. It was still dark. Grabbed my glasses, put them on, looked at the clock. Five past 7:00. What the hell was she--

Eleven.

Oh.

Oh my.

Oh my, no.

No, no, no.

Yes. Eleven. Degrees. I think I actually crystallized on my walk from the car to class...It's so very, very cold. Make it stop. Please. Please--my heart beats faster the second I'm outdoors in a vain attempt to keep my extremities circulated enough not to fall off. It's so...COLD.

Eleven.

Eleven.

I think I'm in trouble.

Altruism

2006-12-02T08:49:00.000-08:00

My across-the-street neighbor's name is Rick S. (I will preserve his anonymity for the sake of, well--respect for privacy, even in doling out praise, is just good manners, isn't it?) How do I know this, you ask? Glad you did. I know this because, when I decided that it might be a good idea, after yesterday's blizzard (that's the National Weather Services word for it, not just my self-aggrandizing hyperbole), to see if I could get my car out of the driveway through the drifts that surrounded it, I could not. I dug, with shovel and hand, and I scraped, and the damn thing was still stuck. Wheel-spinning, you-can-gun-it-as-much-as-you-want-to-a**shole-but-we-ain't-goin'-nowhere stuck. I didn't say the words my parents taught me over vicious card-games out loud, but oh, I thought them. Hard enough to make telepaths in a 50 mile radius bleed out the ears.

Then I looked, and the gentleman I referred to yesterday--the one with the snow-blower--the one I was kind of snarky about? Yeah, I saw him coming over, ice in his beard, face red from his own exertions and the chill--which was just...remarkable, the kind that hurts to inhale--and he was grinning.

"Couldn't help noticing the California plates," he said, not unkindly. "This your first Wisconsin winter?"

I admitted as much, shame-facedly.

"Well," he said, "first you gotta know how to get a car unstuck." And he showed me the Drive-and-Reverse rocking technique. "Now," he said, "you think you could move it forward if I push?" He was offering to push my car...because...because he saw that I needed help, and immediately, unhesitatingly, moved to give it.

What the f*** is this place???

So I let him, embarassed at my own helplessness and the fact that, if the situation were reversed, I might've sat back in the warmth of my living room and laughed a little. He pushed--hard--and the car rocked forward out of the rut.

"OK," he said, "now let's get you out of the driveway." And he let fly with the snowblower and in ten minutes, it was done. I was free to go. (I didn't have the heart to tell him that all I wanted was to pull out and drive around--that I didn't have any place to be...I guiltily made a trip to a local fast-food place, just so I could be gone long enough to justify the effort on his part. Maybe the bag looked like one from a pharmacy. Prescription refills--always a good reason to have to go out.)

"You all set?" he asked. I was. I pulled my glove off and he pulled his off, and we shook hands. I gave him my name and he gave me his, and let me know that if I ever needed any help...well, you can guess the rest.

And I think--I hope--that if he ever needs any help, he'll call on me, and I'll do it--or better yet, that I'll see him needing it, and offer without being asked. It might be grudging at first--I'm Selfish Boy from Selfish Land--but I think it'll be less so over time.

This place may make me a better person. I like that.

Plus I can drive to the strip clubs now.

Pros and Cons

2006-12-01T08:45:00.000-08:00

On Blizzards:

Pro--today I woke up and the idiotic DJs, bless them, were discussing school closures. (To be fair, I'd been prepped for this by a voice-mail at work, testing the 'emergency' system of announcing just such an eventuality. Plus there'd been those pesky weather reports predicting that God was going to open a trap-door right over our heads.) And they started mentioning colleges...Hmmm...I slithered out of bed to the computer and lo and behold, on my school's website: an announcement of closure. Complete. Total. And when I looked outside...yyyyyeah, yeah, today is not an 'outdoors' day. At all. White is a beautiful non-color, but...too much of it...and more of it coming down in alarming amounts. So, no school today, and instead I'm home in my bathrobe sipping coffee after sleeping in. Jealous? You know you are. (Neurotic that I am, by the way, I also checked my e-mail AND my voicemail, both of which confirmed the banner announcement. Only then did I fully relax and believe that I wasn't going to be missing work for no reason. I'm a sad little monkey.)

Con--It's one thing to look outside and see snow. It's another to look outside and think "Donner Party." Which I did. This is a LOT of snow. A LOT. As in, it's a goddamned good thing I overstocked on frozen foods the last time I went shopping, or I'd be eyeing the cats and seeing visions of turkeys and pot roasts replacing their image. There's something a little scary about a world that transforms completely overnight, and isolates you so effectively. (Though I've seen someone out with a snowblower--mid-blizzard, mind you, which strikes me as the equivalent of someone towelling off while still in the shower. But whatever, maybe he knows something I don't.) So the con is that I'm STUCK here, and likely for the weekend. And if I owned, rather than rented...wow, I'd have to dig out. And that, too, would suck.

Pro and Con. You decide which wins. I'm going to download a bunch of TV shows I've missed and distract myself from the winter I-wonder-if-I'll-ever-get-out land that this place has becoming.

Still dealing, though.

Weather

2006-11-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

Southern Californians do not, as a rule, think about the weather. At all. (Unless it rains. Then we go completely and utterly apes*** like it's the first time that this has happened in the history of creation and engage in a state of mild panic that mostly manifests itself in the complete inability to operate a motor vehicle. Seriously, the characters in Magnolia dealt with the climactic hail of frogs with more aplomb that the average Los Angeleno does with a light shower.) True, we have our mountains and their snow--but since most of us visit those areas only briefly and voluntarily to ski, that weather is merely another special effect, no doubt created by the same imagineers who gave us the wonderful world of Disney.

Here, people think about the weather. Or rather, they don't--but they don't in a very different way. Like zoo-keepers who've worked around wild animals for years, they're aware of the threat, but they treat it with well-schooled nonchalance. I...have not yet delivered that skill. Example: the alarm went off this morning, and the airhead DJs were babbling their usual nonsense about what they'd watched on TV the night before. I squeezed my eyes more tightly closed and tried to will myself into another dimension of reality--one in which I had another two hours to sleep--someday I swear I will hit those untapped psychic powers to bend time and space, and then look out, all of you! Said breakthrough did not occur this morning, though, and I simply huddled in more deeply, semi-fetal, refusing to react to anything that consciousness had to offer.

Then one of the DJs breezily announced the current weather conditions. She said, and this constituted the entirety of her statement on the climate: "It's 28 right now."

My eyes snapped open. Wait, I thought. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. 28? TWENTY-EIGHT?!?! You do NOT just announce that it's TWENTY EIGHT DEGREES and then move on like it's nothing! TWENTY EIGHT DEGREES IS THE END OF THE WORLD!!! TWENTY EIGHT DEGREES IS ACCOMPANIED BY THE HOOFBEATS OF THE FOUR HORSEMEN!!! TWENTY EIGHT DEGREES...is nothing. Nothing at all. Much of the world lives in places where 28 degrees is just What Happens, and you get up and deal with it and move on. 28 Degrees is just...Life, and no big deal about it.

The calmness of the Midwest is clearly predicated on the fact that they realize that extremity occurs, but if you meet it with your own extremity--like, say, panicking over a cold snap--it just won't end well. So you roll with it. You deal. The End.

Needless to say, I retreated from the sanity of this lesson as best I could. But then those a**holes started playing "Bad To The Bone" and I hate that f***ing song, so I got out of bed to shut off the radio, and started my day. And dealt.

First Step Off The Train

2006-11-28T10:22:00.000-08:00

Actually, that was about 3 months ago, but it makes for a good opening, and really, that's still how I feel--that 'can still smell the diesel from the train station' feeling. Although since I'm only a few miles from a fairly busy set of tracks, maybe that's not so much an allegory as a literalism. But anyway--

A time of upheaval has seemed, for the moment, to have landed me in a place in which to take root. Shunted out of the Ph.D. mint, drop-kicked out of a marriage, and shuttle-cocked cross-country from the Southern California that's been my home for the past...few...OK, my whole life. And now, blinking through the glare of culture shock and a time change I still can't quite wrap my head around ("What do you mean, Prime Time starts at 7:00?! That's...deranged!"), I'm starting to get my bearings.

The dream job for me has always been the English Professorship At The Small Liberal Arts College In New England. I came close. I got all but the geography and the culture that goes with it. Instead of New England's Sober, Presbyterian Stoicism, I'm surrounded by Midwestern Genial, Lutheran Pragmatism. And I'm not sure but that I didn't wind up in the better of the two.

To be sure, I'm still a little confused at the ubiquitous Niceness that pervades the place at distressingly high levels--I haven't been flipped off once since I've been here, and surely that can't be normal? But perhaps it can--perhaps I am, as it were, emerging from a childhood in the asylum into the world of the square-shouldered and level-headed, and gazing in wonder at the un-self-indulgent functionality of it all. I keep waiting for a Lynchian underbelly to reveal itself--still checking my lawn for that severed ear--but so far, the Norman Rockwellian essence to the place appears undiluted by hidden horrors.

But I'm a patient and cynical fellow. Either I'll change this place, or it will change me. More about job, life, and general observations to follow...