This Oblate Orange

The Internet does it again

2009-11-26T23:07:00.000-08:00

...Ropes me in, that is. O Internet! Foul pit of creativity and fun, discussion and debate. I was considering getting into a whole discussion of my ambivalence about the Interwubs here, but now I think I won't. That'll show the Internet who's boss!

Suffice to say I finally got a conduit for Internet juice (an ethernet cable) after a month at my new apartment without one (more on that later) and after writing a hefty email to a friend I read webcomics and various writings related to webcomics for nigh unto three hours: MS Paint Adventures, Pictures for Sad Children, Dinosaur Comics, and the new-to-me Dresdan Codak (which is utterly gorgeous and brilliant and I can't believe I haven't read it yet).

What really drew me in were a long blog post from MS Paint Adventures' Andrew Hussie about his creative process and a chat log from Dinosaur Comics' Ryan North. The discussion with Ryan was so clever and funny that I wished I could be as clever and funny online for others to read and admire as the writers I was reading and admiring. And that brought with it a wistful sense of what-might-have-been: What if I hadn't eschewed online culture? What if I'd found playful ways to create wonderful things for an appreciative audience of fellow screen-starers? Maybe I would be happier, wearing attractive hipster gear and surrounded by attractive urban types, saying clever and wonderful and imaginative things all the time.

Well so anyway I guess I'm doing a little more of that kind of thing now that I live with two fabulous theater-improviser types. In my last post I mentioned being happy, healthy, and wearing blaze orange pants. Unfortunately, even before I got around to posting that, my new-roomie situation went from polite-but-rather-tense acquaintanceship to openly hostile. In April I'd moved in with two women, who I'll call Melanie and Edith. Melanie had been in the apartment for two years and Edith had just moved in the month before. After about three months it became clear that Edith had major issues with Melanie, in part because Melanie had more issues than she'd let on in the first place. I got delightfully stuck in the middle. We spent another three months on increasingly futile and strained attempts to resolve everyone's differences, and then decided to go our separate ways. I'd love to tell the whole sordid story, but I think that's enough. Also, I ripped a fatal hole in my beautiful blaze orange pants. It proved unrepairable. My health remained okay, though.

So anyway, now I live in a new and lovely place with four other people in a funky house at the top of an egregiously big hill. Here's my backyard:

Pictured here are the glorious hills of the large open space just past our fence; our fence that sometimes deer walk past; a ruddy colored plant from outer space (or looks like it anyway); and the most wonderful cat in the world, Carmel aka Carmellie. She sits on my lap a lot and puts me into altered states of consciousness, mainly relaxed ones.

Here's some more backyard and hills:

Some more backyard foliage:

And the deck outside the room across from my room:

Note that I took these from my own small deck, which my room opens onto, a feature of which I am most fond.

I guess that's about it for now. Happy remaining ten minutes of Thanksgiving! (For those on the West Coast, or at least anyone who sees this at the exact time I post it, and I suppose for anyone reading this in Hawaii exactly however many hours from now...)

The blaze orange pants have happily enjoyed one more wearing since their rupture, and here they are as part of my Halloween costume. That's right, I am HUE MAN, a dude whose superpower is his embracing of every color of the rainbow, baby:

My Life Up Till Now, Part 3

2009-08-29T22:35:00.000-07:00

(Welcome back once again! This recap of my recent life and times began here and continued here.)

Time passed uneventfully until one Sunday in April, when I hiked up to a secluded spot near the Civic Center and sat on a log for a long time, looking at the bugs and leaves and trees, and enjoying the calming energy of nature. I daydreamed about living somewhere closer to open natural space, maybe even in a log cabin in the mountains. Afterward, I went to Whole Foods to get some groceries, and I saw a poster on their bulletin board from someone looking for a new roommate. "Less than a mile from amazing hiking trails. We can see deer from our balcony! Quiet, peaceful space." They'd included pictures of beautiful open hills.

And that's how I came to live at Redwood Glades. The ad was right on: I can reach the following sights with about a fifteen-minute walk from my apartment:

I don't have pictures of my room or my housemates, but I do have a picture of one of my most exciting projects since moving in — making lasagna:

So anyway, now I live in Fairfax, where you can count on passersby to take pictures of you when you need them:

Ta-da! I have no doubt that this photographic series has answered all your questions about my life. I think this last photo sums it all up nicely: I'm happy, I'm healthy, and I'm wearing blaze orange pants.

love,
Jonathan

My Life Up Till Now, Part 2

2009-08-29T22:14:00.001-07:00

(Welcome back! This recent-life recap began here.)

Later in August 2008, I went to the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock desert, where I practiced the art of foot massage in a six-hour dust storm:

...and visited astonishing outsider-art buildings:

(Note the caption "Love is Real" at the bottom left: when I saw that I got all weepy.)

In the fall, I studied massage at the Diamond Light School of Massage & Healing Arts. Here's a picture of our class, all full of joy on the last day:

Massage school was challenging for this bookish type, but very rewarding. I learned a lot and met wonderful people. I didn't do enough practice hours to get my certification, though; perhaps sometime soon I'll get my healing hands back into in the habit.

For Thanksgiving, I took a trip to Los Angeles, which is when a friend gave me the 2000-era digital camera that these pictures are taken with (his dad bought it for a dollar at a garage sale). They turned out pretty awful, but you can still tell that Southern California is pretty:

Apparently it is the place to go for thoroughly rusted cars:

And we passed by squalid cattle fields that stretched on for miles and stank up everything. Poor cows! You can barely see them but you can tell they're sad:

For the next major holiday, I flew back to Minnesota, where I took a great picture of my mom:

...a not-so-great picture of my dad:

...and a pretty surreal picture of my friend Heise:

He looks like he's a demi-god about to open the book of my fate, but it's actually just a menu at Perkins.

I whipped out the camera on the drive up from the airport, as well. Here is an enticing display at a rest stop in St. Cloud, suggesting that you...

Outside, some snowy park benches were enjoying the sunrise:

Toward the end of the trip, after a blizzard, I caught a lamppost looking dapper in its fresh new hat of snow:

I took Amtrak all the way back to San Francisco after the visit. Here's a picture of my train in Minot, North Dakota, with one of the many Amish passengers:

When I got on the train, it was 2008, but when I got off, it was 2009. Happy New Year! Luckily I found people to share over-priced beer in the lounge car at midnight.

(Stay tuned! Things have happened in 2009 and you will not want to miss them.)

My Life Up Till Now, Part 1

2009-08-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

At last, I return to the blogosphere! My sister's blog has inspired me to write more about my adventures, even though they're not as exotic or as well-photographed as her Nicaraguan exploits. If you haven't checked out her site, I implore you to click the link in the previous sentence posthaste.

Now that I have developed some long-languishing rolls of film, I can bring you all up to speed on the past two years, in a snappy photo-documentary format. As we progress through this three-part series, see if you can distinguish between the three different types of equipment used:

(a) Disposable cameras bought at Walgreen's
(b) Nine-year-old digital camera (from the year 2000, baby! — the Edsel of digital cameras)
(c) Other people's digital cameras (photos stolen to fill in gaps in my poorly documented life)

In July 2007, I found an affordable single-bedroom apartment in San Rafael, which allowed me to shave half an hour off my bus commute and live by myself. The apartment building had a great name — La Casa Grande ("The Big House"):

It was basically low-income housing converted from one of the oldest buildings in San Rafael, a hotel built in the 1860s. So one of the selling points was its unsettling lobby and entrance, which always reminded me of The Shining:

Unfortunately, I never saw any ghosts there.

In March 2008, I visited a friend in New York City. I didn't take many pictures, but here are a couple to prove I was there. These don't prove much, because I'm not in them, but you can tell they're mine because I love libraries...

...and parks!

Overall, New York stressed me out a lot. Whenever I realized I was surrounded for miles and miles by metropolis, I got claustrophic dread. It gave me a new perspective on why it's so difficult for so many people to have a meaningful connection to nature and wilderness.

That August I had a near-miss with everyone's favorite pastime: jury duty. I didn't get picked, luckily, and the upshot was that I got to visit the beautiful Marin County Civic Center, the last building Frank Lloyd Wright designed. I was pretty delighted with it. I loved all the circles built into the design: the round windows, the many archways, and the golden spheres decorating the balconies' overhangs. This gorgeous seat of government is also famous for starring alongside Ethan Hawke in the movie Gattaca.

I don't have any wide shots of the whole thing, but here's part of the facade:

...and a shot of the roof, blends in with the sky:

I really liked the spire in the center:

The top floor has a sun roof:

...and they even fit trees inside:

Outside of the cafeteria is a paradisiacal garden and fountain pool:

...complete with ostrich sculpture:

Have I mentioned how rich Marin County is?

(Stay tuned for next week, when I continue to explore the photographic delights of the year 2008. What's the rush, right?)

"I VOTED"

2008-11-04T09:17:00.000-08:00

My best friend in the third grade had a copy of "The Death of Superman," the series of comics in which Superman fights an implacable man-machine to the bitter end. On the cover of the collection was an extreme close-up of Superman in his death throes. His head is thrown back and his eyes squeezed shut as he yells in rage and agony. Next to Superman's bared teeth, my friend had stuck a big, red "I VOTED" sticker.

For some reason, I have never forgotten that image, and it is what I think of every election day — the most powerful man in the world on his last legs and thundering like Marlon Brando: "I VOTED!!!!!"

Finally, a wee Burning Man post

2008-10-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

I'm sorry I haven't posted anything about Burning Man since I got back. The trip definitely gave me a wave of energy, inspiration, and new things in my life, a wave which swept me up andhas kept me spinning (aka, away from tasks like blog-posting and emailing) since then. Also, one of the new things in my life is a massage therapy training course, which is rather time-consuming and exhausting — but it's great for me, as well.

In general, Burning Man was amazing, though full of internal frustration and general discomfort for about the first 2/3rds of it. Being there is like being on a different planet: you're in the middle of a desert made of semi-toxic dust and surrounded by tents, RVs, a wide array of creative camps, and almost everyone is wearing bizarre costumes, doing unusual things, or just existing in an off-kilter space due to the unusual substances coursing through them. It throws you for a loop until you get the hang of things, at least it did for me, since I like to have a solid sense that I have the hang of things.

It's so hard to know where to begin to describe something like Burning Man. The good conversational standbys seem to be the weather highlights: on Saturday we endured a 6-hour dust storm. It lasted from just after noon until just before dusk, and covered everything in our camp (including the insides of our tent) with dust.

The second dust storm was after the "Temple burn" on Sunday night, as crowds of people were walking back to their camps. Our group got separated when I stopped to give some people a pack of cigarettes I'd found earlier that day, and we almost lost each other. We reconnected, admired an amazing art piece made of glowing dildos (that's right, dildos), and ended up crashing at a camp called Deep Heaven. It had tons of futons, pillows, and blankets, and Kim and I stayed there all night while the dust storm gradually lessened. We skipped out to pee on the playa every couple of hours, and eventually watched over our pillows as the sun rose. It was heavenly!

One of the fabulous parts about Burning Man is the spontaneous connections that can happen. In Deep Heaven we talked to random people, including a boy called Oliver who was there by himself. He was originally from Malaysia, had only been in the U.S. for 9 months, and had come to Burning Man all by himself, hitchhiking from the airport with his tent. He needed a ride to Reno to catch his flight, so he helped us break camp that afternoon, rode with Kim to Reno, and we offered him a place in our hotel room to sleep that night.

Well, I'm out of time, but at least one story made its way out! Here are some links to pictures my campmates took:

Pics from Kim (our fearless leader, 11-time Burner, beginner of a national skipping movement in the 90s [see iskip.com] and the publicity manager at the press):
http://tinyurl.com/64d7t3

Pics from Michael (an out-of-body explorer and intuitive reader who I befriended through a submission he sent to the press.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7187847@N02/

Pics from Ryan (one of our campmates, fiance of my friend Tracy, who's a cover designer at the press, a painter of beautiful naked fairy ladies on pieces of driftwood, and all around sweet lady)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30294573@N02/sets/72157607169243924/

Just Another Day in Pants Publishing

2008-09-24T16:37:00.000-07:00

Here’s Jonathan on an ordinary day at the office:

But then: a coworker!

“Jonathan, could you give me your pants? I need to ship them to the proofreader today.”

“Certainly!”

Another job well done!

Happy Birthday, Zdanna!!

Burning Man

2008-08-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

(We interrupt this long-stretching serial for a word of update from our author.)

This Wednesday I take off for the Nevada desert for Burning Man 2008! What the heck is Burning Man, you may ask? (Or, if you know something about Burning Man, why the heck would I want to go?) Summing it up is a notoriously difficult task, especially for me, since I've never been there before, but here goes: Burning Man is a wild combination of extreme wilderness camping, an anything-goes carnival, an art gallery, an experiment in grassroots community, and a fully functioning city.

About 50,000 people will camp in the desert and share their art, ideas, and gifts, and explore and participate with others. It sounds too huge to be true, of course! Here's an aerial view of Black Rock City (the name of the camp as a whole) in 2006:

http://www.sciy.org/MAINPAGEPHOTOS/BurningMan06.jpg

Perhaps I'll have a bit more time to talk about it before I go, but for now, here are some pictures that might be worth 10,000 words:

Amazing art and architecture:

http://www.yowazzup.com/blog/images/burning-man-trucks.jpg
http://mark.marroe.net/images/2006082801074829_DSC_3406.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/244705379/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1387293639/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1387322943/
http://majorlycool.com/media/1/20080314-burning-man-festival-art.jpg
http://www.celebratebig.com/burning-man/burning-man-2007/burning-man-crude-awakening.jpg

Theatrics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1388211186/

Large structures are burned:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1388264884/

...including the eponymous Burning Man (burning not pictured here!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/244717431/

Beautiful scenery:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1388130636/

...and dust storms:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/241261114/

Bohemian living and marvelous attire:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1387138689/
http://www.mccullagh.org/db9/1ds-10/burning-man-rabbits.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1388228600/

And all-around goodness:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cofi/1387131731/

You might also be interested in these links, of an art/psychology installation, and of a "village" (large group of people camping together and collaborating on a large project, in this case a temple) that a friend of mine will be camping at:

http://www.mindsshrine.com/theMindsShrine.html
http://www.entheonvillage.com/

If you want to learn more, check out their website, or Wikipedia!

http://burningman.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man

Under the concrete and through the hills, to changing the world we go – five-hour tour part 2

2008-08-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

(Continued from last post)

The trail to the mall feels really off-the-grid: it runs parallel to the freeway, maybe a hundred yards away, next to fenced-off grass fields and under a couple of overpasses. It doesn't go straight to the mall; I have to either walk my bike down a dirt road or climb through a hilly area lined with dirt-bike trails, and then walk through a construction area set up for the workers who have been doing an addition for Costco, which has stretched on at least a year so far.

I've never seen anyone else on the path. I have seen, however, starling nests tucked into the crevices where the overpass’s struts meet the overpass’s underside, and some thirty starlings swarming around the nests, looping in and out of them and chirping crazily. They seemed a little worked up. I was worried they’d start dive-bombing me from three stories up, but I don’t know how common dive-bombing is among starlings, or among swallows, which these birds could just as likely be. I don’t know the frequency of dive-bombing among any smallish gray birds. Let’s face it: I don’t know much about birds in general.

I lugged my bike into the little hilly area because I knew there was a tree at the top that would be good to sit underneath. I would eat my burrito and watch the sun set, or, if not watch it set completely (because I was impatient, and because it would be darker by then), at least watch it slope toward setting. Sheltered underneath a tallish oak, surrounded by amber grass, and facing the crimson sun head-on, I felt like a 18th-century oil painting of a Hispanic-food-loving Wordsworth dallying in a pastoral scene. It was pretty idyllic.

Except for the pile of styrofoam packaging and trashed electronics – television, VCR, and radio – that was only yards away. Wordsworth would not have seen anything like that. The mall and its parking-lot moat sat stout and gray nearby, and motorcycles roared on the freeway, but hey, what can you expect from this planet right now? I was happy I could still eke out a bit of wonder from nature’s soft touch.

Now that I’m writing this, it reminds me of another time when I sat under a tree. I was a student at Carleton College, and it was autumn, and the tree above me was bursting with beautiful colors. I was reading Walden. My friend Laura came up and said “What are you supposed to be, an admissions brochure?” I can’t say I hadn’t noticed how perfectly collegiate I’d felt sitting there, and perhaps a friend’s self-aware sarcasm was the cherry on top of my own self-aware contentment.

Back then we read important books and tried to think of suitably important things to say about them to justify our feelings of our own importance and the way these important books would surely be formative to our even-more-epically important future lives. Am I sounding jaded here for no good reason? We’re still important. We’re all important. We’re essential, even, Bill Plotkin would say, “to the world’s flowering.” But it’s harder to maintain that feeling of importance outside of the intensified bubble of potential that a liberal arts college creates; it’s often easier to play down that feeling, the feeling that you were full steam ahead on the way to changing things and being somebody. After all, most people you meet in “the real world” have never been given the luxury of feeling important.

(To be continued once again)

Boy embarks on 5-hour tour, buys rice cooker, shirts — Part 1

2008-07-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

I forgot my wallet at work on Thursday.* It had all my cash and my ATM card, and I had a writing group meeting today** at a cash-only cafe. I could have gotten by at the cafe by buying a cookie with quarters, but then I might not have had enough quarters left to do some laundry today. So no problem, just go get the wallet, right? The downer is that my office is in Novato and I live in San Rafael, 30 minutes away by bus, 45 if you count the walk to and from the bus. These are the puzzles I get to navigate as a car-less fellow in Marin County.

Luckily, I have a bike! A bike, a bike, many would give their kingdoms for a bike. A bike, a need for exercise and for my wallet, and a need to buy some things from Target were the perfect combination to get me out of the house and up to Novato yesterday.***

It takes a little less than an hour to bike to Novato, and it's totally worth it. Physical exertion is invigorating, and who knew? Somehow I missed the bus on this fact until I was about 21, or else no one ever told me, "Hey, Jonathan, exercise feels good!" The message I remember most clearly was "Stop playing video games! Get outside!"

This is part of the reason I'm car-less, because I need exercise but I've never gotten into a habit of exercising just to exercise. The last place I want to go is a fluorescent-lit gym with lots of other sweaty people in workout clothes. Everyone says no one pays attention to you when you're at the gym, so don't be self-conscious, but all my workout clothes come from Goodwill, so I kind of stand out wherever I go. So anyway, if I don't have a car, I have to walk to the bus or bike to the bus or bike all the way wherever I'm going.

To make a long story short, I get to the office, let myself in, and turn off the alarm, feeling a bit sketchy the whole time. I drink water, stretch, call the nearby tacqueria and order a burrito, and fool around on the Internet a bit (I do this whenever it’s convenient, because I’m the only 20-something in a 15-mile radius without an Internet hookup in my apartment. Can you tell this post is all about the things that make my life unusual?) I re-set the building alarm, pick up my burrito, and head for the trail that connects Bel Marin Keys (the area where I work) with the Vintage Oaks mall.

To be continued… Even though it’s already been continued… But I hope that breaking it up will prevent your Google-shortened attention span from short-circuiting (I know mine would be at this point - I only got through half of the article about Google I just linked to...)...

* By “Thursday” I mean Thursday the 3rd.
** By “today” I mean Sunday the 6th.
*** And by “yesterday” I mean Saturday the 5th. Time gets away from me pretty quickly out here.

Shine, Perishing Republic

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

In honor of Independence Day, here’s a little poem by Robinson Jeffers. I wish I could call this poem patriotic; the dictionary denies me that irony. There is no love of America here, no admiration for America’s qualities. Jeffers’ love and admiration lay elsewhere. But I believe that the values that fuel this poem are more helpful than patriotism.

Shine, Perishing Republic

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops
and sighs out, and the mass hardens,

I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
mountains: shine, perishing republic.

But for my children, I would have them keep their distance
from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the
monster’s feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,
a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
—they say—God, when he walked on earth.

I know the Fourth of July festivities are behind us, but I propose a toast. Raise your glasses, ladies and gents, boys and girls, gays and straights, blacks and whites and reds and yellows and browns and everyone in between (and we’re all “in between”). To America. To all it has made possible and to all that will come after it.

O Lord, give us hearts strong enough to smash concrete and bend iron. Amen.

If the bees go, we've got a situation on our hands

2008-06-29T20:41:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone -- I didn't think this would be my next post, but here it is: Bad, bad news about bees and so potentially catastrophic for our food supply. The only thing I want to add to this article is that I've heard of a study that found that putting a cordless phone hub in the middle of a beehive was disastrous for the bees. Naturally, one study doesn't prove much and I don't know anything more about it, but just want to add that possible explanation.

Honey bee crisis could lead to higher food prices

Take That Tablet Up Again; or: For the Love of Eat, Pray, Love

2008-04-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Let's get down to it. Let's shove all those Massively Important Ideas and Aims aside for the moment. Let's admit it freely: I love to laugh! (Why does that sound so familiar . . . ?) I love books that make me laugh! And I love exclamation points, Strunk and White be damned.

I love paying attention to things that I love. To things that excite me. To whatever gleams with promised adventure. This seems like it should be obvious, or even easy. What could be easier than loving what you love? Than following a trail of goosebumps across the horizon? But as in so many things, it takes some attention, some power against forgetting and slacking. Focus, determination, persistence, patience! (Thus I chide myself. Do I love chiding myself?) What else do I love? I love fixing my eye on a far-off landmark and heading across the desert. I also love sitting still with no compass and watching the lights of the world swim by.

To be brief[er than I could be] and to get this posted before my battery cuts out, I'm delighted and inspired by Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. It's hilarious. It's meaningful. It admits to the very imperfections and neuroses and superficial predilections I often downplay in myself lately. It keeps me glued to its sentences like a hungry fox to a rabbit's path. Rather than talk any further, why don't I read you a few bits:

Now, to the innocent eye it might appear that I already am traveling. And longing to travel while you are already traveling is, I admit, a kind of greedy madness. It's kind of like fantasizing about having sex with your favorite movie star while you're having sex with your other favorite movie star.

. . . Maria, annoyed, says this is only further evidence of the Protestant-Catholic divide. This divide is best proven, she says, by the fact that Italians—including her own husband—can never make plans for the future, not even a week in advance. If you ask a Protestant from the American Midwest to commit to a dinner date next week, that Protestant, believing that she is the captain of her own destiny, will say, "Thursday night works fine for me." But if you ask a Catholic from Calabria to make the same commitment, he will only shrug, turn his eyes to God, and ask, "How can any of us know whether we will be free for dinner next Thursday night, given that everything is in God's hands and none of us can know our fate?"

Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don't care.

(Dear Penguin Books: If my quoting and gushing ecstatically without commission about this book you have already sold a mazillion copies of bothers your lawyers in any way please let me know before suing me—thanks—love ya—Jonathan.)

So there you go: A bestseller is not such a bad thing. It feels good to be reading books again and it seems to be priming the pump of my inkpot as well.

Cheers to y'all. I'll be seeing you here again soon!

all the brass awkwards

2007-07-07T13:15:00.000-07:00

A while back I was walking out of a grocery co-op in Berkeley, when I saw a dude with a little typewriter in his lap and a cardboard-and-marker sign that read "Poems About Anything." I moseyed over to see what was up. He was writing a poem for a gaggle of girls, who looked on smiling as he joked with them and pecked away at a tiny scrap of paper, adjusting the scrap with his fingers when he ran out of space, which happened about every four words. I said I'd be interested in a poem and hung out while he pecked, looked around, said hi to scruffy hipster types ("Pacman" and "Mouth"), and called "poems about anything! would you like a poem today?" to the passing grocery shoppers.

My poem was about trombones. Here it is:

the most awkward and
forgotten of all the
brass awkwards ska
band and nineteennine
ty something means we
are participating in
culture larger bigger
than we are and back
when instruments were
expensive and strictly
for the upper crust
or those who serve at
their behest and since
then as pleasure has
become less of a what
we make of it and more
of a pervasive state
maybe the non electric
audiblast trombone makes
a comeback for its ability
to slide from sound to
sound like situational
ethics and classical music
needing modern relevance so
rich people give free sound
to willing participants

My friend Jen, who's a new music composer, had been having an existential crisis about the relevance of new music in the modern world, so this was surprisingly apropos. I mentioned this, and the poem dude said that noise music drew a solid following of punk kids, that there are indeed people out there who are interested in wild new music. I gave him a dollar for the poem. Then he was off, with his little avocado-colored typewriter, cardigan sweater, and orange beard, to try his luck in Rockville. "I'll see you again," he said.

He was a cool guy, the poems-about-anything dude.

Information Control: For Real It's Bad

2007-05-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

My friend Max, after spending a year in China, encouraged me to reconsider how good many things are in the ol' U.S. of A, especially in terms of the environment. I read the following bit of an article today about information control in China, and now I am grateful that, for all the insidious influence of the corporate media, there aren't stricter forms of thought control in place here. It's crazy -- I didn't realize just how Orwellian China could be...

Much Western publicity has been given to Chinese dissidents and environmentalists-leading one to believe that there is a large movement growing there.

Perhaps there is, but my year-and-a-half of living in China did not provide any evidence of this claim. In fact, I met few people with environmental concerns. Some have compared the level of China's environmental awareness to that of Eastern Europe before the Chernobyl meltdown, i.e. they need some kind of wake up call. Most Chinese are used to trusting their leadership utterly—so many Chinese are still not even aware the problems even exist. Consider this anecdote:

One day, I went with my students on a field trip to an amusement park. We drove through some heavily industrialized areas, where the smog limited visibility to less than a quarter mile. We drove past factories making Ikea furniture and Nike shoes as well as Chinese brands. As a Westerner, I felt a certain degree of complicity in causing their pollution problems, since so much of our stuff is made there in factories that produce levels of gunk that would never be acceptable in the US. You could barely see up the road.

"Is it always like this here?" I asked a student.

"Yes," he said. "It is very foggy here."

This was not a grammatical mistake. He actually believed that the black soot in the sky was fog. The next week, I wrote the word smog on the blackboard and asked what it meant. No one knew. I pointed out the classroom window at the darkened horizon.

"Oh, fog!" they said. After I attempted to explain to them the difference between smog and fog, most of them gave dubious looks. They didn't believe me. Obviously "smog" was just a silly Western concept. (It's worth noting that these were the children of wealthy industrialists — industrialists who provide the fodder for the Communist party projects.)

The Chinese government has very effectively controlled its citizens' access to information. You might think that would be difficult, with the explosion of computer use and Internet access in recent years. They have, to date, accomplished that by blocking tens of thousands of websites. Google? Blocked. Excite? Blocked. University home pages? Blocked. Anything relating to health and pollution? Blocked. In fact, there are censors working round the clock to limit the population's access to anything that could be considered seditious, or counter to the party line. Part and parcel of that party line is to squelch any sort of environmental awareness that will interfere with China's machination.

This bit posted on Deconsumption.

Entire story here:
http://www.abetterearth.org/Stories/id.3387/story_detail.asp

Blood Sport and "Fake" Blood Sport

2007-05-08T21:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, I hadn't realized it has been nearly six months since I last posted. Luckily, my sister, who specializes in harrassing me to do things I do want to do but am dragging my heels on doing, has saved me a day shy of the six-month mark. Though thanks to the time zone difference, it's tomorrow for her, and therefore -- happy six-month anniversary, post drought!

Today I have a longish quote from one of the books published by the publishing company I just started working for, New World Library. I expect this blog will benefit from their influence: my commas and semicolons and relative clauses will be perfectly aligned, and I will have plenty of thought-provoking and inspiring stuff to talk about here.

From The Tao of Equus:

In celebrating the opening of the Roman Coliseum in A.D. 79, Emperor Titus sponsored a series of games lasting one hundred days straight. Gladiators weren't the only attraction. Before the professional warriors fought in the afternoon, there were public executions around lunchtime, and "beast hunts" in the morning. Many arrived early to enjoy the spectacle of exotic creatures from the most remote corners of the empire running around the enclosure, dodging arrows, spears, and sabers. It was reported that during the first day alone, five thousand animals were dispatched "with the right degree of cruelty." Among the many service buildings surrounding the arena was a huge disposal pit for all the corpses produced by this brutal form of entertainment. Subsequent emperors tried to outdo their predecessors and kept statistics for posterity. One of them bested Titus by holding games for 122 days in which 11,000 people and 10,000 animals were reportedly slaughtered.

Cicero saw the carnage as much more valuable than mere entertainment. The Roman historian praised the games for their ability to desensitize people to bloodshed and prepare them for battle. The vast Roman Empire was managed by force and intimidation. During the four hundred years the games flourished throughout the kingdom, prisoners captured during these conquests provided a convenient source of ongoing amusement for the citizenry. The persecution of the early Christians also offered ready-made sacrifices for the "spectacles." Since they refused to fight back, however, these people were usually ripped apart by bears, lions, and other large predators -- just to keep things interesting.

Scholars have offered numerous explanations for blood sport, but basically they considered it a by-product of a value system emphasizing control over nature and control over your enemies.

Reading this, I surprised myself by instantly connecting it to violent television, movies, and video games. My views on violence in the media have shifted considerably since high school. Then, I was focused on the evils of censorship and hardly considered the possibility that loads and loads of dramatized violence could have much effect on my psyche.

When I first learned to meditate, though, I was tripped up by one of the ideas I encountered in the instruction book. That idea was this: just as "you are what you eat," so are you what you see, read, think, and say. For good physical health, be careful what you put in your body; for good mental health, be careful what you put in your mind.

But this does apply on even the most practical level to meditation; it can be frustrating to meditate after watching, say, Invader Zim, because demented theme music keeps leaping into the spotlight. It's also important if you're trying to be less defensive, aggressive, and bitter when dealing with people you don't like. A lot of movies are helpful for providing ways to imagine how you'd enjoy wreaking vengeance on your enemies when you feel wronged. For stepping back and trying to see the situation from the other person's point of view: less helpful.

And recently, after glimpses of the motivations and actions of those who sign up for the military, it's not tough for me to see "blood sport" making the path more inviting. My friend Heise showed me a website one of his cousins was obsessed with. It presented short videos of footage from Iraq. One began with a shot of distant buildings and soldiers talking in the background; then out of the sky a missile plows directly into the center of the frame with a huge explosion. In the background, then, come the cheers: "Whoo! Fuck yeah!" One soldier was practically post-orgasmic: "Oh, man, oh man, that was a good one. . ." This is not "War is hell." It is not even "We have to do what we have to do." It is "This is fun. Explosions are exciting, entertaining, thrilling. Anyone who is not the hero in this story, who is not us, can (as Duke Nukem would say) eat shit and die."

This is not to say that every recruit signs up out of sadism. There are plenty of good-intentioned heroes, as well. God knows we are all starved for heroism in this world: to struggle, to grow to meet your potential, to succeed in the face of adversity, to fight for a good cause. And luckily for the military, plenty of movies demonstrate the many heroic opportunities afforded by guns, bombs, and killing. Dumb luck on the Pentagon's part, I guess. (If you have any details on the sinister links I've heard about between Hollywood and the Pentagon, please throw your comments this way!)

This has, of course, turned into a much longer post than I intended. At any rate, I'm sick of violence anywhere, whether it's on TV or in Iraq, whether it's on my computer or on campus, and especially, whether or not it's supposed to be funny. I'm sick of wanting to cry or scream or puke at nearly everything I see in two dimensions and high definition picture.

Like I Just Don't Care

2006-12-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

My Minnesotan mind is blown. In the middle of December, on my way to work, I can smell roses. What is this paradisaical climate? I'm used to everything being dead and brown for at least seven months out of the year. What sort of effect will all this sunshine and foliage have on my worldview? Will I smile at random and see everything as totally fine, all day long? Will I achieve gracious contentment? Will I stop expecting the worst and being unnerved by good fortune? Who will wash my clothes when I am running around happily naked on the streets of San Francisco, waving my arms like I just don't care? How will the people live? How will the economy go on with my excess labor left unextracted? How will you, dear reader, learn of my outcome with my laptop left to gather dust? There will be no one to type away to you of my travels, you may have to find out through other, more obsolescent means, such as the telephone, letter-writing, or even travel. Though you could email my housemates, assuming I'm in this house, not wandering the beaches of the Miller-Knox Shoreline watching gulls peck at the waves. I'll be on top of the hills slowly and happily starving. Waving my arms like I just don't care. (I reiterate.) Where will the people live? Who will feed them? I'd better stay and feed them.

I'll see my things again a little blue in the mud a little white our things little scenes skies especially and paths

2006-12-02T20:16:00.000-08:00

Anyone out there still like to daydream? Keith Johnstone, writing Impro in the 60s, cited studies finding that the greater a person's level of education, the more likely they are to say that they rarely have visual mental images or even to say that such images don't exist. I remember one of my fellow students in English 111 asking the class, "Don't you visualize what you're reading?" and me being confused -- what did she mean? If I ever had I had forgotten it, and if I currently did it, it was only as a subliminal flickering in the back of my mind. The only significant memory I had of active visualizing was how difficult and confusing it was for me to imagine rooms described in books. I inevitably became bogged down as I read, as the text produced a sofa in an impossible location, or a flight of stairs demanded addition to allow the characters to exit. It was too much effort to maintain a mental image while I was trying to be carried away by the story. Apparently any consciousness of mental images had withered away completely, for in that English class I felt validated by my professor's claim that he never visualized while reading, he simply enjoyed the sense and the sound of the words.

With a little effort here and there, I've found more and more joy in daydreaming more and more since college, in the forms of:

* Actively trying to imagine the faces of people I love. (I remember in high school, while my friendship with my first real girlfriend was beginning, I excitedly tried to remember what she looked like, but met a complete blank. This pattern seemed to repeat with subsequent crushes... has anyone else experienced this?)

* Listening to music and seeing what images the music inspires. (a favorite habit of my friend Juliet, visual imaginer par excellence)

* Trying to visualize actions as a way of remembering to do them. (Pay the Rent: video clip of my hand filling in a check, audio of the pen scratching briskly; Do the Laundry: image and resonant sound of the washer lid opening, then a white bag emptying into the bin; Email Request Glenda's Address for Postcard: picture of blank postcard with Glenda's smiling face overlaid -- yes, my aunt-once-removed is the Good Witch of the North!)

These visualizations never fail to leave a little bloom of happiness after they've gone. Aldous Huxley, in his book about the Bates method for vision improvement, The Art of Seeing, claims that summoning mental imagery relaxes the eyes: perhaps this is part of the pleasure. I imagine that using one's visual, right brain must relax the left brain as well: and my left brain has ample room for relaxation after each day's workout of speaking, writing, reading, following directions and staying inside the lines. Both of these explanations are unrigorous, certainly, and I welcome any more precise attempts from you, dear reader; but for now, these thoughts are handy and intuitively satisfying to me.

I have noticed that my tendency when daydreaming is to daydream in cartoons. This isn't so surprising considering that I hardly daydreamed after approximately middle school: my visual imagination must not have progressed much since I was seven. Then again, I take that back: at times the upbubbling images are viscerally grotesque, disturbing images of violence and physical suffering instead of Disney cartoons -- or they fit both categories! One of the first vivid mental dreams I had after the long postsecondary famine was a scene reminiscent of the Itchy and Scratchy Show on the Simpsons. Tiny animated mice were cutting and killing each other in an endlessly inventive, insistently rhythmic sequence. The cutesy carnage both mesmerized and astonished me -- why was this lurking just below my usual brainwaves? Even stranger, the cartoons were inspired by the dreamy state I was in while listening to Juliet play the sitar. I would have much preferred, and been less confused by, calming visions of Hindu deities.

Most of my daydreams are pleasant, however. Imagining a friend's face during a mundane day reminds me that my life is not always so boring. And I've come a long way from my strict intellectual response to literature. Two or three years ago, I would have given Beat poet Gregory Corso nothing but a resentful scowl for his evocative nonsense. But recently, one of his poem's lines -- "I wanted to drop fire engines from my mouth!" -- made me grin uncontrollably. What a hilarious image! And it appeared accompanied by an indescribable aura, as if it triggered some long-unused, rather unsettling emotion: the sensation was as weird as first tasting a lychee.

Actually, I know the source of part of the unsettling feeling -- the similarity to the bloodshot girl with braided pigtails who barfs cars and frying pans in this Something Awful cartoon:

http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=2403

Why am I at all surprised at my sometimes grotesque imagination? I liked that cartoon, I loved Eraserhead, and I'm a sucker for "Salad Fingers":

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/salad+fingers/

I might as well keep up this link-fest: for anyone who's curious, the title of this post comes from How It Is, by Samuel Beckett. Read more bits of it here:

http://professoryeti.com/20051018/reviews-there-are-moments-they-are-good-moments.php

Vegetables are out, by consensus of all segments of society

2006-08-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

So, I often eat fresh, uncooked vegetables for lunch, and last Tuesday was no exception. As I was walking back I passed a homeless guy and said I didn’t have any change. But I’d noticed he was eating something and I thought oh yeah, I could give him some food instead of the coinage. In fact, I thought, I may not be able to eat all of it before I leave Chicago anyway. So I go back and offer him a bag of spinach leaves and green pepper. He stares at it and pauses, brow furrowed, then he shakes his head -- “uh… no thanks. You got any corn? Any fruit?” In fact, just then, another man arrived who seemed to have visited often, and this man gave him a banana and a lunchmeat sandwich, which was much more enthusiastically received.

Don't take this story the wrong way -- I don't mean it as an illustration of the "choosy ungrateful homeless guy" stereotype. It's rather that, despite many comments from housemates, family and friends over the past couple of years, the changes I'd made to my diet had been so gradual that I didn't quite realize how far I'd drifted from the mainstream. I knew I was in the minority with my raw vegetables, but apparently even homeless people don’t want to touch the greens.

Yep Yep We're the Yupsters

2006-08-11T23:09:00.000-07:00

Before I went to the Pitchfork music festival, the word "hipster" was just a piece of amorphous jargon I'd picked up from a couple of friends -- the ones who came as ambassadors from the land of indie rock. Sure, I'd collected connotations from conversational reconnaissance. "Chuck Taylors"..."bike messenger"..."Wicker Park"..."pasty white"... Intoning the word brought forth sympathetic vibrations from the clues and hints lodged in my brain, but I could not summon an image of the whole...

Until I was suddenly surrounded by some eight hundred odd flesh-and-blood hipsters -- pulsing with life, throbbing with vitality, full of the endless variety of which the best stereotypes are made. How could I have known there would be so many tinted aviator glasses, so much thrift-store cotton, such amber waves of stylish shag? Yet it all seemed so right. From the polka dot dresses in primary colors, to the young-Dylan sunglasses and jewfros, it was just the impromptu Mecca I'd been waiting for.

After fourteen hours of immersion in this hipster Brigadoon, I think it was only natural for my brain to mint a shiny new doubloon of jargon. I submit to the court the following, with a definition handily forged by Kevin Clair:

yup·ster. ('yup-st&r) noun. Slang.

A hipster with dental insurance.

It's still to be determined whether the sworn enemy of the yupster would be, as you'd expect, the yipster. I.e., a hipster who's the reason people get riot insurance.

Kakabikansing

2006-08-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

Hello, after a long hiatus. Nothing spectacular for my return to bloggifying, just picking up what I'd meant to do back in February.

For those who don't know, I grew up in a town called Little Falls. It has about eight thousand residents and is smack-dab in the center of Minnesota.

For everyone from Little Falls, I wanted to pass along these tidbits I found last winter in the Minnesota Place Names Encyclopedia:

"Little Falls: the county seat, first settled in 1848 and platted in 1855, was incorporated as a village February 25, 1879, and as a city in July 1890. James Fergus is considered the founder of the village, living there until he moved to Fergus Falls and began that city. ..."

...the children of which city proceeded to beat those of Little Falls routinely at hockey...

"Lt. Zebulon Pike in 1805-6 called the rapids or falls of the river here 'Painted Rock or Little Falls,' the first of these names being translated from the French traders."

Isn't "Painted Rock" a much more beautiful name than "Little Falls"? I think more of us would have wanted to stay in a town named "Painted Rock."

"Mill Island, a slate outcrop a quarter of a mile long, divides the river into east and west channels... "

This must be the island just south of the dam, right? Who knew it island had a name? Have any of my fair readers ever set foot on Mill Island? I've always wanted to make an excursion to it.

"The discovery in 1878 by Frances E. Babbitt, a schoolteacher at Little Falls, of artificially flaked quartz fragments in the Mississippi valley drift gave evidence of the presence of human habitation there during the closing part of the Ice Age. 'Kakabikansing,' the Ojibwe name of Little Falls, meaning, 'the place of the little squarely cut-off rock,' is the title of a memoir on this subject by Hon. J. V. Brower, published in 1902."

Knowing there were people there during the ice age, and that the Ojibwe had a name for our little hamlet's location gives it a pleasant historical aura, I think. And it helps that there's a 1902 memoir out there. Checking WorldCat, I found that I'll be able to find it in the UC Berkeley library, so I'll let you know when I've read it.

And did anyone know there's a website about the frescoes at Lindbergh Elementary? True enough:

http://www.buonfresco.com/index2.html

God-Powered Brains

2006-02-22T23:33:00.000-08:00

Leaving the swimming pool is a peak time for me for flashes of insight. A few weeks ago, the flash was this: I think that, from a psychological perspective, invoking deities or spiritual beings could actually influence reality.

I'll back up to a more staid lead-in. I think the psychological findings I've read recently could support the value of spirituality much more than science has in the past. What I've read in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, suggests that what we think consciously and what we perceive unconsciously can significantly affect our behavior. Words and thoughts can “prime” our subconscious toward acting in certain ways, whether tired or energetically, polite or aggressive, confused or smart. Prayers and religious verses likely work the same way: they immediately shift the “mode” in which the reader is thinking, and, over time, the cumulative effect is to make that spiritual mode more the norm.

One study in Blink found that a simple instruction caused one group of GRE test-takers to perform better than the control group. The first group simply spent five minutes before beginning the test thinking about Albert Einstein's achievements and character. If what this suggests is true, that the act of thinking about a genius actually makes you smarter, this is a momentous discovery. And this idea, that focusing your mind on a personification of a certain quality can enhance that quality in yourself, naturally extends to focusing your mind on supernatural beings such as spirits, saints, and gods. If it works with Albert Einstein, why wouldn't it work with Athena? Or Ganesh? Maybe “What Would Jesus Do?” is a powerful thing to keep in mind. Maybe the poetic invocation of the Muse really does make poetry flow more freely.

A natural question which arises is: if praying and thinking about Jesus makes you more like Jesus, why are there so many people full of hate in Jesus' name? My hunch is that if you chant “God Hates Fags” or dream eagerly of the fiery last days, you will miss out on the beneficial effects of imagining a more loving Jesus. I'd guess that George Bush summons the image of God the Almighty Potentate more than he does the image of Jesus supping with prostitutes.

What is perhaps more frightening to me than the thought that the religious might be right about the power of prayer – at least as concerns abilities and character – is that they might be right about the negative effects of pop culture. If imagining Einstein helps you on tests, what effect does imagining Beavis and Butthead have on your actions? Or Batman? Or the characters in Street Fighter 2?

I can remember vividly my middle school experience of reading Redwall for the first time: I dreamed so vividly of Matthias the warrior mouse that I felt differently: walking in the park with my parents, I felt like I was in an epic story, that there were heroic things in store for me. No doubt these dreams of culture have their impact, however unmeasurable. If imagining warrior mice shapes you to be more noble, is it any different than being shaped by the gods long present in the cultural imagination?

I leave the answer as an exercise for the scientists. But I believe this argument – that invoking deities has definite psychological effects – is much more powerful than the dismissive “religion as delusional crutch” argument, in terms of accounting for why spirituality would have evolved in the first place. And whether or not you think evolutionary psychology holds water, the idea is frankly magical for anyone who loves the life of the mind. What we hold in it will bear fruit. Dreaming of Socrates brings us closer to embodying Socrates. When Edmund Spenser set out to write an epic which would, by the very act of being read, transform the reader into a moral being, his scheme was not wholly crackpot. The thoughts we breathe are as tangible as the molecules in the air.

About Baghdad

2006-01-18T19:25:00.000-08:00

Carleton screenings are wonderful. Tonight, Laurel Bradley screened a documentary titled "About Baghdad," a collage of interviews filmed in Iraq in July, 2003, three months after the U.S. invasion.

http://www.aboutbaghdad.com/

As a visiting professor who introduced it pointed out, the great thing about it was that it gave voice and attention to what Iraqis were saying and feeling right after the invasion. And, wonderfully, I think this made it a documentary which could be appreciated by both sides of the American debate on the war.

It certainly reinforced the idea that Iraqi citizens were glad to be rid of the Hussein regime. The personal experiences of atrocities committed by Saddam and his family and the Ba'th party were recounted in a dizzying array. I was reminded of the fact (which I first learned from the video about the famous Stanford prison experiment) that human beings are fundamentally creative, even when it comes to devising ways to torture their fellow human beings. Cotton balls would be put between prisoners' toes, soaked in alcohol and then burned. Torturers poured boiling water on prisoners and threw lice in their cells. One man recounted a particular torturer who would ask a 70-year old woman if she wanted earrings. The woman would reply "No I don't want earrings - I'm old and going to die and separated from my daughter and grandson." And the torturer would say "No, I'm going to give you earrings," then apply electric clamps to her ears and watch her shake.

Speaking about Saddam's ousting, one man jubilantly repeated "Even the air is changed!" But at the same time, many people (often the same people) did not think things were appreciably better under American occupation, for a litany of reasons. Prominent were the lack of safety and security, the fact that the streets closed down at 5pm for fear of gangs and thieves. Also, the lack of water and electricity (can you imagine trying to live without water or electricity?), and the lack of jobs was deeply felt. Adding insult to injury was the hypocrisy of the Bush and military propaganda -- over and over in the film, people brought up the promises of the Americans, and how ridiculously far short the reality fell.

Especially painful was a story of tanks bursting through the walls of an insane asylum, thinking it was a military base. Once they realized their mistake, they promptly drove away, ignoring pleas for at least one vehicle to guard the hospital. A mob flooded the asylum, apparently to loot, but also harming numerous patients. Meanwhile, the ministries of oil were well protected. There may be geopolitical strategy behind guarding oil over guarding mental patients, but this is not how you "win the hearts and minds of the people."

Besides, the parallels to the National Library lootings are obvious. In addition, the visiting professor
(Louis Fishman, a historian who had been studying in Turkey during the invasion) pointed out an even more glaring oversight of the armed forces: leaving the intelligence offices of Saddam unguarded for eight to nine days. That is, leaving Saddam's official papers, not only historical documents but, one would think, invaluable legal evidence for the current trial of Saddam, open to be rifled through by anyone who walked in off the street. Louis said there were people walking in and saying "Oh, here's my file, here's his file."

Another common theme was the idea that a people so tyrannized by Saddam on one hand, and poverty-stricken by U.S. sanctions on the other, were grabbing at "the smallest ray of light . . . even if it were just a straw in this sea." That after enduring humiliation and desperation for the ten years of the sanctions, not to mention the years of the Iraq-Iran war previous to the first Gulf War, they were ready to "take the hand of the devil himself." This is not an encouraging analogy.

There were depressing and intriguing bits of contact with business people and factory owners. The tradesperson was excited about the ability to import products from "all over the world," whereas the factory owner who were depressed by the impossibility of competing with the"quality products from well-financed companies." Wait, scratch the first part -- I just remembered that the "tradesperson" was the head of the Chamber of Commerce, who was blatantly propagandized, denying the rampant unemployment in Iraq, and getting incredibly defensive when a man called him on it. I am depressed by the capitalistic, free-trade implications of the factory owner's perspective.

In short, the theme I heard was "Thanks for knocking off our dictator, America, now let us rule ourselves. We want stability and security." Check out the website, see the film if you can. If nothing else, order the soundtrack and support the film -- the soundtrack is traditional Iraqi music performed by an amazing, down-and-out musician whom the filmmakers discovered.

Culture and the Senses

2006-01-17T21:44:00.000-08:00

I'm excited about a recent tantalizing find at the library. I haven't looked into the book at all yet, but the back-of-the-book description is exciting as it is. Culture and the Senses, by Kathryn Linn Geurts (University of California Press, 2002). A sizeable chunk follows, and I've highlighted the bits I'm most interested in:

. . . Kathryn Geurts investigates the cultural meaning system and resulting sensorium of Anlo-Ewe-speaking people in southeastern Ghana. Geurts discovered that the five-senses model has little relevance in Anlo culture, where balance is a sense and balancing (physically and psychologically as well as literally and metaphorically) is an essential component of what it means to be human. Much of perception falls into an Anlo category of seselelame (literally, feel-feel-at-flesh-inside), in which what might be considered sensory input, including the Western sixth-sense notion of "intuition," comes from bodily feeling and the interior milieu. The kind of mind-body dichotomy that pervades Western European-Anglo-American cultural traditions and philosophical thought is absent.

Geurts relates how Anlo society privileges and elaborates what we would call kinesthesia, which most Americans would not even identify as a sense. She demonstrates this through a careful analysis of language, then by focusing on the attention given to balance and the body in childcare and the way child raising instantiates properties of balance as moral code. The body's ways of knowing extend to culturally relative ways of moving and walking, so that the repertoire of more than fifty "ways to walk," for instance, literally embodies socialization and identity, status and well-being. . . .

The phrase "ways to walk" cues in my mind a reference to an Anselm Hollo poem. I'll have to look up the exact text, but the title is, I think, "Preface," and goes something like this: "the poet Vallejo discovered new ways of walking / while living in Paris . . . / the following poems are a record of his discoveries"

Calls to action you find in the reference stacks

2006-01-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I love mundane library work, because I find things like this:

The next fifty years are a special time. Between now and 2050 we'll see the zenith, or very nearly, of human population. With luck we'll never see any greater production of carbon dioxide or toxic chemicals. We'll never see greater species extinction or soil erosion.

So it's the task of those of us alive right now to deal with this special phase, to squeeze us through these next fifty years. That's not fair—any more than it was fair that earlier generations had to deal with the Second World War or the Civil War or the Revolution or the Depression or slavery. It's just reality.

We need in these fifty years to be working simultaneously . . . on our ways of life, on our technologies, and on our population.

The period in question happens to be our time. That's what makes this moment special, and what makes this moment hard.

--Bill McKibben, from the facing page of The Complete Guide to Environmental Careers in the 21st Century, by the Environmental Careers Organization, published by Island Press, Washington D.C., 1999,

Finnegans Phrases

2006-01-16T11:58:00.000-08:00

I'm copying my friend Charles Petersen's sidebar list of recent words, with a twist. Yesterday I went exploring in the St. Olaf library, and wound up reading Joyce criticism for an hour and a half. A book called Benefictions included several essays on Finnegans Wake, and Joyce's dizzying portmanteaus often make me laugh out loud. Thus, the sidebar, which will include either words from the Wake or my own contributions to the Wake's attempt to overmaul language.

It's About Time I Became Obnoxious

2006-01-14T21:27:00.000-08:00

There's no time like the present for me to begin my new life as an asshole. Tonight I copied an article titled "Creativity and the Five-Factor Model," the abstract of which declared that my personality is not optimal for a high number of "creative accomplishments." Screw you, psychologists. Here are highlights:

Openness to experience and extraversion were positively correlated with creative ability . . . Agreeableness was negatively correlated with creative accomplishments.

There's other mumbo-jumbo which I'll have to consult with my psych major sister to interpret, but the message is clear. It's time to start kicking people in the groin. It's time to talk loudly whether anyone is listening or not. It's time to hitchhike across five counties and hustle drugs to fourth graders. I have only my future to gain.

Global Warming Fact Watch

2006-01-07T20:27:00.000-08:00

I don't often find myself in a position where I'm trying to defend the existence of global warming, but this Christmas I did. So a New Year's resolution is to be more savvy about facts I can use to make my case in conversation. Here's an article that just appeared on Discovery Channel's news site:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/afp/20060102/currents_pla_02.html

The guy I talked to about climate change, an acquaintance from high school, was using the "How do we know we're causing it?" argument. Perhaps this article could be used by him to support the idea that the current warming is mysterious.

But the article at least counteracts the "We don't know what global warming will really do" argument. It points out that there is a past example of such rapid warming, and that it caused major shifts, specifically in ocean currents. I wish it described further the havoc that such shifts could cause, or, even better, any record of what effect these past shifts had.

I'm still looking for an answer to the question, "How do you most successfully convince another person of something?" But I guess a few more facts can't hurt.

Slaves to the Marketplace

2006-01-02T22:13:00.000-08:00

...what modernism and Western capitalist expansion meant to traditional peoples. In the New World, people became items of commerce, their talents, their labors, and their produce thrown into the market place, where their best hope was to bring a decent price.

--Nathan Huggins, Black Odyssey, 1977.

I found this as one of the (three) epigraphs to The Making of New World Slavery by Robin Blackburn. It occured to me that this can extend beyond a description of slavery to a description of conditions under capitalism in general. Our best hope is still that our talents and labors will bring a decent price.

Tongue Twister

2005-12-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

Who says hanging out in bars can't be productive? Last night I came up with a tongue twister:

Menomonie anemone

Not shorter than "unique New York," and less likely to be sung during a Decemberists concert, but fun to say.

Wichmann -- The Crater

2005-12-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

As a guy who hangs out with librarians all day, I feel bound to qualify this post by saying that Wikipedia is in no way an authoritative source, and that I should probably confirm my findings in a more reputable and peer-reviewed document.

But as a giddy time-waster searching for my name in Wikipedia, I say: Look! I'm a crater!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichmann_crater

Kierkegaard sticks it to superficial evangelists

2005-12-03T19:46:00.000-08:00

I'm happy that Kierkegaard is like an old friend: even though we've been out of touch for (where has the time gone?) four years, he is just as welcoming and wonderful now as then.

I'm housesitting for the professor who introduced me to our Danish friend, and today I picked a book off the shelf with the intriguing title: "For Self-Examination." The first page rewarded me with this:

"Knowing then what the fear of the Lord means, we endeavor to win men" (2 Corinthians 5:11).

To begin at once or first of all to wish to win men may even be ungodliness; in every instance it is worldliness and no more Christianity than it is fearing God. No, let your endeavor--let it first and foremost---express that you fear God. This I have tried to do.

But Thou, O God, Thou lettest me never forget that even if I did not win a single man, if my life (for the protestation of the lips is deceitful!) expresses that I fear Thee, All is won! On the other hand, if I won all men, if my life (for the protestation of the lips is deceitful!) does not express that I fear Thee, All is lost!

Summer, 1851.

Playgrounds

2005-11-23T12:54:00.000-08:00

I was stretching my legs in the bathroom, because my thighs were sore from sitting at a desk all day, and of course someone began to enter the bathroom, so I stopped and left, thinking "I wish there were a small gymnasium in the library, where people could take breaks from work and play basketball or hopscotch or four-square or tag -- really, I want a me-sized playground.

So I looked online (where all the answers are), but to no avail. I heartily agree with these articles, but there are no adult-sized playgrounds that I could find (in a 2 minute Google search, anyway).

http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Adult_20jungle_20Gyms_20and_20Colouring_20books?op=aye
http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/dec/article169.html

It's frankly unfair. We're adults. We can vote, we can earn wages, we can run for office, we can "be whatever we want to be" and "reach our fullest potential" (thanks graduation speeches; thanks Microsoft). But we can't play on a playground? Those are for children? Bah!

There is one exception I know of -- Macalester College has an adult-sized swingset, and that is eminently satisfying. But swinging gives me a headache. I want a jungle-gym. I also want to play tag in big fields.

I think I especially want that. I want to be able to wander over to the local park and find a bunch of adults playing tag, and I'd say "Hey, what kind of tag are you playing?" and they'd say "Freeze tag, c'mon!"

Indecision

2005-11-05T14:13:00.000-08:00

I recently read Benjamin Kunkel's Indecision, which has been much lauded in the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere. I found it just as laudable! Some quotes:

Meanwhile everything I'd just thought about Natasha was something I already knew. It was like when I'd taken a trip to some foreign land and everyone asked me about it when I got back: my accounts would grow similar, focusing on this impression, that cool place, a certain funny anecdote, until there was just the one account, which then substituted for my memory. Remembering this tendency, I felt an honest fear. It was the familiar fear, made honest through sudden intensity, that once all the sensation had evaporated from my life the residue would be a cliche. I'd die, St. Peter would be like, "So how was it?" and I'd say, "Great place. I liked the food. I was sick for part of it. But all the people were really nice." And that would be it.

* * * * *

I'd already set my tray on the conveyorand said goodbye to Alexandra when Vaneetha reappeared. "Good meeting you," she said.

"Likewise." I had already pressed the down button on the elevator. "Completely." Thankfully I speak slowly, with a marijuana drawl left over from St. Jerome's--otherwise I might at times sound nervous.

"Will we be seeing you again?"

"I really couldn't judge the likelihood."

"Well we could arrange something."

I was either titillated or afraid. "All of you?"

"All of . . . me?"

"You--I meant plural, all you girls."

"It might be easier if it were just you and I."

Cross-blog dialogue!

2005-10-27T18:37:00.000-07:00

The following is the transcript of my side of a scintillating dialogue between Mssrs. Jotan Whitman and Matcha Bailey. What? You want to hear Matcha's side of things? Click here.

JW: So Matcha, how have the scenic vistas of the Badlands sculpted your soul? Is your soul hard like marble, or squishy like putty? Can you sculpt with putty? Or do you just glue with it? In that case I hope your soul is neither like putty nor like grout.

Matcha remarks on his soul and the Badlands, and my recent acquistion.

JW: It's true, I was pretty much soulless all the way through high school and then Carleton. I wish I could say it "budded softly" or "slowly unfurled" like in Joycean prose, but really, here's the true story. Last year I went to the old used bookstore in the town in which I was later employed as a gas station customer service representative of the people, and I picked up a dog-eared, chewed-on soul from the discount bin. I don't really want to talk about it. It gets me through the long nights. An entirely adequate soul. Anyway. Whatever. Matcha, where did you learn to be so piercingly trenchant in your commentary?

Matcha provides trenchant commentary, with emphasis on gas stations.

Isn't that the problem -- a confluence of too many secondhand souls. Yes, I feel the gas station gives me some sort of working class street cred. At least I've had plenty of contact with cigarettes, but unfortunately my gas station was a rather chaste one, lacking in alcohol and pornography. Sad! The gas station I worked at Previously (in high school), did have alcohol, such as Mike's Hard Lemonade, and also what I think were 40s, although I didn't know what they were at the time. This Native American guy with bloodshot eyes and flannels would come in and buy like four at a time, and my attempts to draw him into conversation (What's not to like about "Hey," and "Have a good night?") never inspired him to elaborate on his life story.

Matcha reminisces about short stories past and bemoans his street cred-less-ness.

What was the title of the short story collection? Don't leave me (us) hanging like that! Hopefully reading it won't be like reading The Sun Also Rises, which compelled me to solitary imbibement on more than one occasion. I wish one could be as trenchant in the temporary classroom situation as in the pub or bar, and no nonsense and tempermental as well. I don't know if working at the gas station helped my personal street cred in my few substitute teaching gigs, mainly because I ran into a couple of my students in said gas station. Although really that provided a more relaxed venue of conversation, and I got to see them as they more naturally were, rather than "the annoying kids who don't want to be in class." More naturally they were like most everyone else who came into the gas station. They bought beef jerky; they spoke in low manly grunts; they talked about fishing. Perhaps, they trimmed trees.

Matcha paints the South Dakotan scene, brainstorms about 'sub,' and drops reference to Catcher.

I like that you have a ritual for being at the Badlands. I read a book when I was young about a class that hates their substitute teacher, and the recurring phrase was "Sink the sub!" Which metaphor I didn't really go for. Or maybe I just was too much on the side of the authorities and not sympathetic to stupid kids. Let me tell you about trimming trees -- it's a booming business for the pothead community. The adults I saw trucking around with high schoolers down to the Cities in their pickups definitely looked like grownup stoners. People need their trees trimmed so the trees don't reclaim the earth like in some anarchic Greenpeace tract. And they're willing to pay a decent amount to prevent that. Oh, Catcher in the Rye. Your rambling paragraphs strike so many chords! What is your favorite part you remember from our dear Mr. Salinger's work? And, by the way, do you begrudge him his solitude and artistic inactivity much like my friend Browning does Watterson his? (I swear those last words make sense..... to me...)

Drugs, trees, and high school friends. The providence of memorization in oubliette-esque situations.

That's funny, my first encounter with Catcher came from a girl who did part of it as a speech, who was in a summer camp theater class with me. I don't remember which part except that his brother, baseball glove, and bloody hand were mentioned. My dad has also mentioned the reports of the benefits of knowing things by heart: specifically prayers, specifically in the midst of trench warfare-inspired terror. I hope you take up a Herculean task such as memorizing all the Sonnets, or Moby-Dick, or Finnegans Wake.

Matcha affirms the mediocre and wraps it up.

Delightful indeed! Back to the Rueb!

The two scalliwags retire.

Where do they come up with this stuff?

2005-10-24T12:06:00.000-07:00

Feast your mind on more mind-blowing poetry:

"chaplain and autistic not or lovelorn see the hettie may
on urbanite it but marcy a and spidery ! may
cowan amay lit some.
defy be pitchblende on not desecrate ! some daybreak not
on baseplate see see concerti try be splice some it
n's trymay usury see."

Again!

2005-10-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

More spam poetry!

schloss the proton it try repairman it not momenta !
a thereupon but on strand try or chromatin not may
intense andit's concocter see.
transshipping it's carpet a , sevenfold , ! bitnet it
, tuple try in anthracite not a before it's but
drexel see! cummins may.

Spam ... plus dadaist poetry?

2005-10-21T12:20:00.000-07:00

I just got a spam e-mail about a watch-selling site. This is not unusual. What is unusual is the random spew of text at the bottom:

client but cyril , it's veteran the and diagnostician ,
try whole ! a dawson try not urge see try
cruel nota quonset ,.
nightmarish it's decompile the some comprehensive not it's bungle a
, manama may ! flute the some extroversion be in
gazelle orit's surgeon or.