If I can't come up with an aphorism to start this review with, at least I can think of one to ignore completely: Alexander McCall Smith's The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs has a fine cover. Of course this doesn't matter in any book you're reading for literary merit, which would have the same intrinsic value whether it was read out loud, Morse'd over a telegraph or even read hunched over a Palm Pilot with a screen too small and too dim for true appreciation. But this is not a book of "literary merit". It is, at best, a good way to feed a habit of pseudo-intellectualism. When I saw this book lying on the table at Kepler's, my mouth started salivating and my neurons releasing endorphins in the same anticipation a junkie must feel at that first call of "Crack rock ho!" (ho, here, in the "Land Ho!" sense, not the Noelle Bush sense).
That I, a pseudo-intellectual on the way up would stoop to the level of paying $9.95 for 128 pages of tripe might seem paradoxical. But this is not a book to be read, it is a book to be consumed. The aforementioned cover has texture, two colors of ink, and no fewer than four well-designed fonts all selected to contrast their roles to one another. Framed in the center is a delightful illustration of a dachshund, sized up in anatomical consideration. If all this detail sounds like pretension, that is only because this is pretension of the highest kind. It is not exclusionary, it is not off-putting. It is simply something that is to be enjoyed.
My editors tell me I should, at some point, get to the book itself. The staff at my local bookorium had placed it in Sci-Fi/Mystery. But this tome eschews such a simple taxonomic view of writing, instead labeling itself "A Professor Dr. von Igelfeld Entertainment." What this means is that it has the same sort of bumbling main character, intrigue, and rich detail that a mystery has, but without any of that pesky murder, whodunit, or actual matter to be investigated. The result is a travel tale without any real root in plot, truth, history, or narrative necessity. It is as if Dr. McCall Smith is asking us to take a vacation not only from our own lives in reading this text, but to take a vacation from what we think an author properly ought to do.
Dr. von Igelfeld, the protagonist, is a hugely compelling character, and I hope to read the other two books starring him to see if perhaps he was developed in something that approached a true adventure at some point. He has the powers of neither perception nor deception. The result being that slights uncommitted are paid back in slights unnoticed. His worldview is, at times, beyond simplistic: he is the author of a scholarly text, "Portugese Irregular Verbs" and that should put him beyond reproach or question. Anyone who thinks otherwise does not understand the way the system works. His administrative prowess is best demonstrated when he asks, of a religious conflict, "If he were the Patriarch, the could he not unilaterally put an end to schism simply by expelling schismatics? That is what von Igelfeld himself would have done."
Sure, I could quibble about the narration (switches point-of-view arbitrarily and not enough to be a true device. A choice made rarely enough is only a crutch.) But why? This is an enormously fun and quick read. The intellectual equivalent of slapstick opens it up as he is mistakenly sent to lecture on the Sausage Dog (the beginning of the intertwined confusions) and, out of a desire not to offend his host, never corrects the impression. Puns in turn lead to surgery on one of the elongated beasts by our Philologist hero with the expectedly disastrous results somehow leading to an interaction between our man and (an extreme farce of) the Bishop of Rome (a caricature felt all the more deeply in this Papal intermission).
It is not hard to see how Faulkner's prose is a deep cigar. Something you sit down with for hours on end, to appreciate its complexities and how its flavor changes as you go on. Hemingway is a pipe: a completely different way of looking at the habit. Sure, you don't inhale and you smoke less less often, but it's a more potent smoke. Which is the more dangerous? Who could ever compare the two? A subscription to The New Yorker is, then, like an addiction to Camel Lights: You remember that you wanted to start, but now it's a chore instead of a pleasure and you can't quite remember *why* you wanted to start. On this scale, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs is a pack of Nat Shermans or Dunhills: you pay more for its luxurious packaging and beneficial image. In short, it can be recommended for everything but its substance.
Jugdgment: Keep one on your shelf, as a rainy-day reading list. To be opened only in times of extreme depression or boredom when even other fare as light on the intellectual scale as an Austen or a Chabon would be cerebral overload.
Friday, April 08, 2005
Sunday, April 03, 2005
The Eventual Gander
(Schiavo/PopeWatch 2k5: Mortality always wins)
Here at the Enfranchised, we read a lot. Just... not quickly. So, hitherwith, we introduce our review masthead: The Eventual Gander. That's not to say we'll review anything less than the pinnacle and forefront of pseudo-intellectual circles. As the saying goes: What's good for the prompt goose is good for the eventual gander.
Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons
When Ansel Adams passed away, he willed the negatives of all of his photographs as a tangible possession. Celebrity worship aside (in the current day and age a man of his stature could leave a receipt on a table after dinner and find it on eBay by dessert), he did this because he felt they had value. To him, taking a picture was composed of two equally important steps: first exposing the film to capture an image, and then turning this semi-Platonic abstraction into bona fide hangible art through the process of printing. Writing is like this too, and in I am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe has succeeded admirably at the first but managed to hide that fact beneath severe stumbling in the second.
Without appearing too pathetic, allow me to say that Wolfe is spot-on in many instances. Speaking of that opportunity to slip one's alma mater into conversation, he writes (of the fictional Dupont College), "Everyone, male or female, who was right now, as he was, in the undergraduate division, Dupont College, or had ever graduated from Dupont College knew that feeling, treasured that feeling, sought one way or another to enjoy that feeling daily if at all possible, now and for the rest of his life". If this sounds horribly pretentious and off-putting, well, it is. Which is why, he continues, "no Dupont man... had ever tried to describe it out loud to a living soul." He continues to observe the intermittent cycle of a freshman's life: from the heights of arrogance to the troughs of self -doubt and -pity. This, of course, while the self is trodding through a life of intellectual luxury on someone else's tab with no responsibilities to speak of. Trivial matters such as sides of the room, borrowings of discs compact, unfounded crushes are such stuff as life and death are made during a co-ed's career. Translate to the language of rap, this would best be put, "Mo' Education, Mo' Problems."
He has his other bones to pick, of course. One of the title heroine's suitors is the star of a basketball team. Wolfe has applied his expert eye to the NCAA, endorsement deals, groupies, just about every morsel of the Big Man On Campus Phenomenon. He dissects feelings of parental shame and familial denial. These are all spot on observation, etc. Thus ends the positive portion of my review, such as it is.
The imperfections, on the other hand, are many. And yet, somehow, the critics got them wrong. Many were shocked at the lurid and, quite frankly, unarousing descriptions of intimacy he includes. Wolfe took home an award for worst sex scene of the year. What the committee missed was that it was not the worst scene of sex. It was a great scene of the worst sex. He distorts his writing because that is how it is in the trenches of modern fraternity houses and two-room doubles. But he never lets up. His writing is awkward and the characters stiff throughout the whole novel, as if college is something to be experienced for all eight semesters through a lens of discomfort. The result approximates a really interesting person with bad breath: you force your way through to the end because you know you will enjoy having heard it, even if the experience itself is excruciating.
One of nine-thousand and seventy-three sayings attributed to Mark Twain is "Show, Don't Tell." Wolfe apparently decided to piss on the House of Clemens. Well, okay, you say. Sometimes you just don't have the space to do all that. But in a book that winds through 676 pages and weighs enough to take down a gazelle if the situation arises, you think he really could have pointed out that athletics is a golden ticket with more subtlety than "the sweet irony was that [basketball player extraordinaire but less-than-stellar-academician] had wound up at a better university than Eric [(the smarter but less-baller brother)]."
The bigger issue is that this is Tom Wolfe. At every turn, in every nook of prose and cranny of words, you can see the man in his white suit typing out this introduction to a new world. He shows off, dropping terms as if they were names. He clues in the reader to the lingo: "dormcest" is mentioned by an "RA" as a type of "hooking up". And yet the actual act is still "rutting", which is often preceded by simulation of the "mons veneris" and the "ilial crest". Thanks Tom. Just what I needed: a newly old man to turn his attention to my home to tell me how bad it is, all the while knowing that he really wants to be back there. To be where the culture is being made, where it is being blindly felt in the backseat of an Escalade on the way to a formal. Your criticism would mean a lot more if it weren't compensation for jealousy.
In the end, I am Charlotte Simmons should never be allowed in the fiction section of a bookstore. Instead, copies of it should be relegated to that part of a college bookstore next to a sweatshirt bearing the (trademarked) logo of these cathedrals of learning, money, and semi-anonymized semi-drunk semi-dancing semi-sex. That way, when Mom and Pop come to visit Junior and Juniess, all settled into their dorms, they can pick up a hat or fanny pack for expressing their pride in public, and a copy of I am Charlotte Simmons for abating their curiosity and empty nesting in private.
Here at the Enfranchised, we read a lot. Just... not quickly. So, hitherwith, we introduce our review masthead: The Eventual Gander. That's not to say we'll review anything less than the pinnacle and forefront of pseudo-intellectual circles. As the saying goes: What's good for the prompt goose is good for the eventual gander.
Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons
When Ansel Adams passed away, he willed the negatives of all of his photographs as a tangible possession. Celebrity worship aside (in the current day and age a man of his stature could leave a receipt on a table after dinner and find it on eBay by dessert), he did this because he felt they had value. To him, taking a picture was composed of two equally important steps: first exposing the film to capture an image, and then turning this semi-Platonic abstraction into bona fide hangible art through the process of printing. Writing is like this too, and in I am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe has succeeded admirably at the first but managed to hide that fact beneath severe stumbling in the second.
Without appearing too pathetic, allow me to say that Wolfe is spot-on in many instances. Speaking of that opportunity to slip one's alma mater into conversation, he writes (of the fictional Dupont College), "Everyone, male or female, who was right now, as he was, in the undergraduate division, Dupont College, or had ever graduated from Dupont College knew that feeling, treasured that feeling, sought one way or another to enjoy that feeling daily if at all possible, now and for the rest of his life". If this sounds horribly pretentious and off-putting, well, it is. Which is why, he continues, "no Dupont man... had ever tried to describe it out loud to a living soul." He continues to observe the intermittent cycle of a freshman's life: from the heights of arrogance to the troughs of self -doubt and -pity. This, of course, while the self is trodding through a life of intellectual luxury on someone else's tab with no responsibilities to speak of. Trivial matters such as sides of the room, borrowings of discs compact, unfounded crushes are such stuff as life and death are made during a co-ed's career. Translate to the language of rap, this would best be put, "Mo' Education, Mo' Problems."
He has his other bones to pick, of course. One of the title heroine's suitors is the star of a basketball team. Wolfe has applied his expert eye to the NCAA, endorsement deals, groupies, just about every morsel of the Big Man On Campus Phenomenon. He dissects feelings of parental shame and familial denial. These are all spot on observation, etc. Thus ends the positive portion of my review, such as it is.
The imperfections, on the other hand, are many. And yet, somehow, the critics got them wrong. Many were shocked at the lurid and, quite frankly, unarousing descriptions of intimacy he includes. Wolfe took home an award for worst sex scene of the year. What the committee missed was that it was not the worst scene of sex. It was a great scene of the worst sex. He distorts his writing because that is how it is in the trenches of modern fraternity houses and two-room doubles. But he never lets up. His writing is awkward and the characters stiff throughout the whole novel, as if college is something to be experienced for all eight semesters through a lens of discomfort. The result approximates a really interesting person with bad breath: you force your way through to the end because you know you will enjoy having heard it, even if the experience itself is excruciating.
One of nine-thousand and seventy-three sayings attributed to Mark Twain is "Show, Don't Tell." Wolfe apparently decided to piss on the House of Clemens. Well, okay, you say. Sometimes you just don't have the space to do all that. But in a book that winds through 676 pages and weighs enough to take down a gazelle if the situation arises, you think he really could have pointed out that athletics is a golden ticket with more subtlety than "the sweet irony was that [basketball player extraordinaire but less-than-stellar-academician] had wound up at a better university than Eric [(the smarter but less-baller brother)]."
The bigger issue is that this is Tom Wolfe. At every turn, in every nook of prose and cranny of words, you can see the man in his white suit typing out this introduction to a new world. He shows off, dropping terms as if they were names. He clues in the reader to the lingo: "dormcest" is mentioned by an "RA" as a type of "hooking up". And yet the actual act is still "rutting", which is often preceded by simulation of the "mons veneris" and the "ilial crest". Thanks Tom. Just what I needed: a newly old man to turn his attention to my home to tell me how bad it is, all the while knowing that he really wants to be back there. To be where the culture is being made, where it is being blindly felt in the backseat of an Escalade on the way to a formal. Your criticism would mean a lot more if it weren't compensation for jealousy.
In the end, I am Charlotte Simmons should never be allowed in the fiction section of a bookstore. Instead, copies of it should be relegated to that part of a college bookstore next to a sweatshirt bearing the (trademarked) logo of these cathedrals of learning, money, and semi-anonymized semi-drunk semi-dancing semi-sex. That way, when Mom and Pop come to visit Junior and Juniess, all settled into their dorms, they can pick up a hat or fanny pack for expressing their pride in public, and a copy of I am Charlotte Simmons for abating their curiosity and empty nesting in private.
Friday, April 01, 2005
The Sport of Geeks
Pope/Schiavo Watch 2K5: 1 down, 1 to go.
But on to the important stuff: flaunting wealth. Of course, it used to mean something to play polo. You needed steeds, a line-up of them. No mere laborer could have enough thoroughbreds, and even if he did, they'd all be tired from tilling the soil. Till-soilers. But then horses became cheap (and eventually glue/dog food). And courtesy extended so that you didn't even need to have enough to travel. Collegiate polo expanded. Of course, because of Title IX, you had to use mares. Which ins't as bad as my school's fox-hunting team, which is legally required to be half bitches.
But now we, the Enfranchised, have reclaimed this once crown jewel of superiority and elitism, and done so in a way that warms my white, electronics-oriented heart: Segway polo. Yep. Just what you think it would be. The panacea to problems of urban congestion becoming a trusty mount. For a game that none of these people would play were it not for their having dropped 5 g-spots on this scooter.
Future, we have arrived.
Oh, and also, pointless scandal du jour. (Headline: Ms. Wheelchair stripped of title for standing)
But on to the important stuff: flaunting wealth. Of course, it used to mean something to play polo. You needed steeds, a line-up of them. No mere laborer could have enough thoroughbreds, and even if he did, they'd all be tired from tilling the soil. Till-soilers. But then horses became cheap (and eventually glue/dog food). And courtesy extended so that you didn't even need to have enough to travel. Collegiate polo expanded. Of course, because of Title IX, you had to use mares. Which ins't as bad as my school's fox-hunting team, which is legally required to be half bitches.
But now we, the Enfranchised, have reclaimed this once crown jewel of superiority and elitism, and done so in a way that warms my white, electronics-oriented heart: Segway polo. Yep. Just what you think it would be. The panacea to problems of urban congestion becoming a trusty mount. For a game that none of these people would play were it not for their having dropped 5 g-spots on this scooter.
Future, we have arrived.
Oh, and also, pointless scandal du jour. (Headline: Ms. Wheelchair stripped of title for standing)
Thursday, March 31, 2005
PITW: Bread and Circuses
Pardon me if I stray from my role as moderator to smack some sense into my "peers."
To Foster: It's not that I have any strong desire for the hub-bub of professional sports to overtake the college arena. Once money is explicitly on the table, any pretense of tradition or themes or association would be lost. In their quest for players, schools would have to negotiate on cold dollars instead of warm fantasies of being say "Lady Vols" or "Demon Deacons". (Why any athlete would want to be part of these to begin with is beyond me). In a land of recruiting with contracts and bonuses instead of below-table bling would we ever find a team that could, on sheer will of consistency, compete with the Filibusters' record for single season overtimes? No. No we could not. (To those of you who take my word as gospel: don't try breaking that fact out as canon. In fact, there is no team the Filibusters. But as I write this, I realize that they sound much more like an Asian Archipelago Demoltion Unit than they do an obscure procedural trick anthropomorphized).
To 'Athan: As I was at the NCAA tournament in Kansas City (which is in Missouri. WTF? That's the kind of ill logic that belongs in Canada. Then again, so does the entire Midwest), I found the girl for you. Knowing your fetish for all things absurd and blonde, I present to you the future Mrs. PoopShit. This 6-4 mountain of a matron could make a quaker out of a presbyterian. During foul shots, we chanted "Fee Fie Fo Fum" in between the sound of her mammoth feet leaving potholes in the court. As she palmed the pig skin (I'm not confusing basketball and football her, she just brought pork rinds with her), she would engage in defense by using her gravitational influence to shape the arc of an opponent's shot, removing any hope of goal-tending calls by warping time, space, and the vision of the refs as she deftly weaved her body using calves that had as much thrust as a Pratt & Whitney 350FG Turbofan.
I mean, shit.
To Foster: It's not that I have any strong desire for the hub-bub of professional sports to overtake the college arena. Once money is explicitly on the table, any pretense of tradition or themes or association would be lost. In their quest for players, schools would have to negotiate on cold dollars instead of warm fantasies of being say "Lady Vols" or "Demon Deacons". (Why any athlete would want to be part of these to begin with is beyond me). In a land of recruiting with contracts and bonuses instead of below-table bling would we ever find a team that could, on sheer will of consistency, compete with the Filibusters' record for single season overtimes? No. No we could not. (To those of you who take my word as gospel: don't try breaking that fact out as canon. In fact, there is no team the Filibusters. But as I write this, I realize that they sound much more like an Asian Archipelago Demoltion Unit than they do an obscure procedural trick anthropomorphized).
To 'Athan: As I was at the NCAA tournament in Kansas City (which is in Missouri. WTF? That's the kind of ill logic that belongs in Canada. Then again, so does the entire Midwest), I found the girl for you. Knowing your fetish for all things absurd and blonde, I present to you the future Mrs. PoopShit. This 6-4 mountain of a matron could make a quaker out of a presbyterian. During foul shots, we chanted "Fee Fie Fo Fum" in between the sound of her mammoth feet leaving potholes in the court. As she palmed the pig skin (I'm not confusing basketball and football her, she just brought pork rinds with her), she would engage in defense by using her gravitational influence to shape the arc of an opponent's shot, removing any hope of goal-tending calls by warping time, space, and the vision of the refs as she deftly weaved her body using calves that had as much thrust as a Pratt & Whitney 350FG Turbofan.
I mean, shit.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Would you like Freedom Fries with that?
Contrary to Foster and his distaste for collegiate basketball (and penchant for JV field hockey), I'm a big fan of this topic. Unlike our recent ones, it doesn't involve eulogizing some dead white dude who used words to big for me to understand (like eulogy), or this so-called "science" or "computers" of which I've heard so much about. Finally, a topic that every freedom loving, God and immigrant-fearing American can relate to: sports. (Need I bring up the suspicious fact that when this topic was presented, Foster conveniently fled to France, possibly to molest unwitting, underage croissants...).
Anyway, Foster makes a number of points, most of them sexually perverse. We've heard them all before: athletes are stupid; they're corrupt ingrates; women have no place driving cars; and so forth. Needless to say, I disagree with most of what Foster says, particularly the part about kicking puppies for sport.
First off, are student-athletes the hyphenated beings they're made out to be? Foster thinks not, and I think so. Sure you get the occasional Jim Harrick "Coaching 101" exam that asks Varsity Basketball players on the final exam, "How many points is a 3-pointer worth?" (find the link yourself, dammit), but I'm not willing to make the blanket statement that all athletes are like that. For every Maurice Clarrett, you have a Shane Battier or Emeka Okafur, not to mention the walk-ons. I'm not naive enough to say that Allen Iverson took the most academically strenuous courseload at Georgetown, but if you change the schools from Georgetown or Stanford to Miami or Ohio St., how much more work do you think Joe Fraternity did there than The Answer at G'Town? And note, elephant-walking doesn't count as a class (if you don't know what it is, you're missing out on a good joke).
Even at the elite universities with good athletics, you'd need to extend the anti-athlete argument to all those legacy kids whose names include suffixes with numbers. I wouldn't be particularly against this extension of the argument, but you have to remember why this is done in the first place: bling.
For every generation of Winthrops or Cabots or Bush's you let into your college, you raise the chance of getting a new building erected (heh) as that trust fund amasses. Sure it runs contrary to the ideals our nation was founded upon, but colleges gotta feed their babies too. To make a rambling point short: hate the game, not the player.
Aside from the above "logical" arguments, I'd say schools gain from admitting "underqualified" athletes in non-financial ways as well. As I've theorized before, smart kids are ugly, so athletes are hot. I don't know how I could have gotten through 2 hours of psychology if not for ogling the shotputting ogre in front of me every Monday and Wed. "Damn! Look at those traps! I wonder how much she benches... I wonder how much she can drink... I wonder what her hair smells like... I wonder what her back hair smells like..." Mmmmm. Sweet memories.
Aside from the general deliciousness athletes bring to campus, I don't see how you can be against someone doing you such a big (and sweaty) favor on the curve. Lord knows I don't want to always be that lone dot all the way to the left of the peak. If letting in a few more fullbacks brings me a standard deviation closer to the mean, I say come on in.
This is all without even bringing up the school spirit argument. I've said it once and I'll say it again: you can't tailgate for a chess match. Nor can you paint your chest for a concerto, or vomit in the bleachers during Hamlet.
I really can't think of anything else to say, so let me end this with a joke:
Q: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs hanging on your wall?
A: Art.
(Same post, different blog)
Anyway, Foster makes a number of points, most of them sexually perverse. We've heard them all before: athletes are stupid; they're corrupt ingrates; women have no place driving cars; and so forth. Needless to say, I disagree with most of what Foster says, particularly the part about kicking puppies for sport.
First off, are student-athletes the hyphenated beings they're made out to be? Foster thinks not, and I think so. Sure you get the occasional Jim Harrick "Coaching 101" exam that asks Varsity Basketball players on the final exam, "How many points is a 3-pointer worth?" (find the link yourself, dammit), but I'm not willing to make the blanket statement that all athletes are like that. For every Maurice Clarrett, you have a Shane Battier or Emeka Okafur, not to mention the walk-ons. I'm not naive enough to say that Allen Iverson took the most academically strenuous courseload at Georgetown, but if you change the schools from Georgetown or Stanford to Miami or Ohio St., how much more work do you think Joe Fraternity did there than The Answer at G'Town? And note, elephant-walking doesn't count as a class (if you don't know what it is, you're missing out on a good joke).
Even at the elite universities with good athletics, you'd need to extend the anti-athlete argument to all those legacy kids whose names include suffixes with numbers. I wouldn't be particularly against this extension of the argument, but you have to remember why this is done in the first place: bling.
For every generation of Winthrops or Cabots or Bush's you let into your college, you raise the chance of getting a new building erected (heh) as that trust fund amasses. Sure it runs contrary to the ideals our nation was founded upon, but colleges gotta feed their babies too. To make a rambling point short: hate the game, not the player.
Aside from the above "logical" arguments, I'd say schools gain from admitting "underqualified" athletes in non-financial ways as well. As I've theorized before, smart kids are ugly, so athletes are hot. I don't know how I could have gotten through 2 hours of psychology if not for ogling the shotputting ogre in front of me every Monday and Wed. "Damn! Look at those traps! I wonder how much she benches... I wonder how much she can drink... I wonder what her hair smells like... I wonder what her back hair smells like..." Mmmmm. Sweet memories.
Aside from the general deliciousness athletes bring to campus, I don't see how you can be against someone doing you such a big (and sweaty) favor on the curve. Lord knows I don't want to always be that lone dot all the way to the left of the peak. If letting in a few more fullbacks brings me a standard deviation closer to the mean, I say come on in.
This is all without even bringing up the school spirit argument. I've said it once and I'll say it again: you can't tailgate for a chess match. Nor can you paint your chest for a concerto, or vomit in the bleachers during Hamlet.
I really can't think of anything else to say, so let me end this with a joke:
Q: What do you call a man with no arms and no legs hanging on your wall?
A: Art.
(Same post, different blog)
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Unbunch your panties
Normally I try to be good about responding to PITWs, but unfortunately I've spent the weekend hacking up a lung and stealing my 3-year old cousin's jelly beans at my Aunt's house. Needless to say, my mind is currently backed up with mucus and chocolate, and all I can think about is tonight's pending Desperate Housewives and going to bed soon thereafter.
So I promise to respond tomorrow. And the response will be bigger than Jesus.
So I promise to respond tomorrow. And the response will be bigger than Jesus.
Thursday, March 24, 2005
March-Madness's Arch-Badness
If the play on words in the title of this piece hangs together about as well as the diorama in Dan's seventh grade science project, cut me some slack: I'm on vacation. Or practically--I'm leaving for Frohnce and, eventually, Spain, in two motherfucking hours. And as sexy as the idea of typing this post on the Chunnel Train (Ethan Hunt style) is, I can't quite bring myself to take my laptop into a country which has already displayed great gusto for bending me over and giving me the old blitzkreig right up my Maginot Line.
Frogs aside, I'm not crazy about the flavor of this week's piss. It has a decent bouquet, fine mouthfeel, but the uric acid marches all over the fruit; the subtle notes of ginger, lemongrass, and nitrogenous waste materials are lost. What I mean to say is, its a non-question for DR. F; another pseudo-problem summarily dispatched by the finest intellect of the 21st century.
The thing about Dan's question is it breaks the FIRST rule of denial: You can't have your delusion and eat it too. Viz., as soon as we start talking about college basketball players as deserving some sort of compensation (that is, as soon as we recognize that basketball players are profitable for universities) the mirage that many of them have any right to BE at a university disappears like the Leviathan's wedding band at a nursing home (think about it). Come on, the reason college athletes are unpaid is so we who sit on the Board of Trustees (and we here at the Enfranchised sit on ALL boards-of-trustees) can keep our fingers wedged firmly in our ears and tell ourselves they're students first. But the truth is most of these kids aren't even students EIGHTH. They're ball-players, and that's a fine thing. Nothing wrong with being a ball player. (Hell, if I had a jumpshot do you think I'd be writing drivel for this rag?) Still, I've got a sneaking suspicion that Allen Iverson didn't catch all the subtleties of G. John Ikenberry's seminar's on American power while he was at Georgetown. 'Na mean?
Now, as soon as we start throwing around big, Marxy sounding words like "Labor" and "Proletariot", and wondering whether these athletes--who bring in big bucks for their schools--should get paid, why then the NCAA's New Clothes start to look an awful lot like their Birthday Suit (Look people, I can't make all the connections for you, I'm on a clock here). In other words, even asking that question should make Duke and UNC blush. The short answer, then, is that if college ballers want to get paid, they shouldn't be college ballers. What about the nearly-dead white men at the universities that profit from these amateurs? Well, that ain't right either. And just because it shows no signs of changing doesn't mean we should compound it with a further slutting-up of the NCAA. As it stands, the system works a lot like Reno, lets not make it Vegas.
Let me be the 1,242,569,382nd to say that the NBA ought to consider a farm system for developing young talent to take the place of college ball. As I'm sure that my reputation for humility precedes me, I'll humbly suggest that college athletes stay paid in the same old currency they've ALWAYS been paid in: soft grades and high-quality trim. It isn't exactly a hard-knock life for your average college jock. I had the distinction of living amongst them at a dorm RESERVED for their likes at GWU last year. Most were adequately blinged and drove sports cars, and GW didn't even make it into the sweet sixteen.
Though, I can confirm that our power forward made it into some sweet sixteens on his own...and a few baht mitzvahs.
-The Natural
Not bad for 25 minutes eh?
Frogs aside, I'm not crazy about the flavor of this week's piss. It has a decent bouquet, fine mouthfeel, but the uric acid marches all over the fruit; the subtle notes of ginger, lemongrass, and nitrogenous waste materials are lost. What I mean to say is, its a non-question for DR. F; another pseudo-problem summarily dispatched by the finest intellect of the 21st century.
The thing about Dan's question is it breaks the FIRST rule of denial: You can't have your delusion and eat it too. Viz., as soon as we start talking about college basketball players as deserving some sort of compensation (that is, as soon as we recognize that basketball players are profitable for universities) the mirage that many of them have any right to BE at a university disappears like the Leviathan's wedding band at a nursing home (think about it). Come on, the reason college athletes are unpaid is so we who sit on the Board of Trustees (and we here at the Enfranchised sit on ALL boards-of-trustees) can keep our fingers wedged firmly in our ears and tell ourselves they're students first. But the truth is most of these kids aren't even students EIGHTH. They're ball-players, and that's a fine thing. Nothing wrong with being a ball player. (Hell, if I had a jumpshot do you think I'd be writing drivel for this rag?) Still, I've got a sneaking suspicion that Allen Iverson didn't catch all the subtleties of G. John Ikenberry's seminar's on American power while he was at Georgetown. 'Na mean?
Now, as soon as we start throwing around big, Marxy sounding words like "Labor" and "Proletariot", and wondering whether these athletes--who bring in big bucks for their schools--should get paid, why then the NCAA's New Clothes start to look an awful lot like their Birthday Suit (Look people, I can't make all the connections for you, I'm on a clock here). In other words, even asking that question should make Duke and UNC blush. The short answer, then, is that if college ballers want to get paid, they shouldn't be college ballers. What about the nearly-dead white men at the universities that profit from these amateurs? Well, that ain't right either. And just because it shows no signs of changing doesn't mean we should compound it with a further slutting-up of the NCAA. As it stands, the system works a lot like Reno, lets not make it Vegas.
Let me be the 1,242,569,382nd to say that the NBA ought to consider a farm system for developing young talent to take the place of college ball. As I'm sure that my reputation for humility precedes me, I'll humbly suggest that college athletes stay paid in the same old currency they've ALWAYS been paid in: soft grades and high-quality trim. It isn't exactly a hard-knock life for your average college jock. I had the distinction of living amongst them at a dorm RESERVED for their likes at GWU last year. Most were adequately blinged and drove sports cars, and GW didn't even make it into the sweet sixteen.
Though, I can confirm that our power forward made it into some sweet sixteens on his own...and a few baht mitzvahs.
-The Natural
Not bad for 25 minutes eh?
Pissing In The Wind: March Madness
Well, my bracket's shot. The Leviathan's, imbued with the results of hours of careful study, bears about as much resemblance to reality as, well, The Leviathan. Foster replaced basketball teams with philosophers on his, and unless Sartre makes it to the Final Four, he's fucked. So, we need something else with which to amuse ourself. Hence, pissing.
So, let's keep it simple: Why should NCAA student-athletes be amateur? Is this jsut another excuse to exploit the wage-labor of a teenaged proletariat? Or is it a genuine attempt to make them love the sport and the program?
Do your worst.
So, let's keep it simple: Why should NCAA student-athletes be amateur? Is this jsut another excuse to exploit the wage-labor of a teenaged proletariat? Or is it a genuine attempt to make them love the sport and the program?
Do your worst.
Sunday, March 20, 2005
Sexistentialism
This Saturday, I had occasion to sojourn (with a group of visiting Americans) to what, according to my source, was a "cocktail bar" called the Walkabout. We found it in one of the less couth corners of Leicester Square--for those unfamiliar with London's topography, Leicester (Leh-ster) Square is just northeast of Piccadilly Circus, which is about as garish and loud as London gets; think 42nd and Broadway meets Japanese gameshow. Anyhow, we came upon the place, and waited in the queue, where the shadows ran from themselves. At this point something crazy happened. I handed five quid to a bald Northman with an ill-favored look about him; and in exchange he lowered a velvet rope and urged me into what, if you pressed me to guess, was either the third or the fourth circle of hell.
It seems that--on a good day, in the smoke-wisped darkness with a few sickly-sweet, overpriced cocktails in you, hell looks an awful lot like a night club. Or, if not a "club", then a "cocktail bar" so closely resembling a club that the distinction is academic at best. Dark, dank, desperate and deafening--it sucks the English youtharazzi down into a place not so closely resembling London.
I took off my jacket, ordered a pint, took some half-measures towards dancing with my girlfriend, and settled in for some people-watching. Much to my disappointment, though, I didn't manage to spot any people. Instead, I caught a side-long, strobe-lit glimpse of what Kierkegaard mornfully labeled "the Public"...what Nietzsche contemptuously dubbed "the Herd"...what MTV CEO Judy McGrath ruefully calls "the Audience".
Somewhere between the seventh and ninth movements of 50 cent's Harlem concertos, I got to thinking about sensory deprivation torture--a little bag of tricks dabbled in by the CIA and Mossad, but raised to the level of an art form by the KGB. No, I'm not talking about the Five Techniques the marines at Git-mo have so recently been pooh-poohed for using--no black hoods or "stress positions". What I have in mind is the much softer, and more diabolical, form of deprivation first studied by D.O. Hebb at McGill University (fucking Canadians). Hebb's and others' findings described a family of techiques aimed at muting the senses, at cutting off the brain from external stimuli. One of the more complex deprivation apparatae has its subjects sealed in a soundproof, pitch-black tank, and placed supine in a solution of water and epsom salts so saturated that it makes one neutrally bouyant. This sensory desert robs from a person even her experience of gravity, and since the air and the water are kept at the same temperature, even tactile sensations are dulled. Alternative medicine freaks herald the tank as a tool for acheiving higher-consciousness and creativity through the prolonging of semi-conscious theta-states, but Hebb and his colleagues originally had quite a different use in mind: that of 'prepping' subjects for brainwashing.
Just imagine you're a Komrad Kolonel in the KGB's Second Chief Directorate. You've recently discovered that a Party boss's daughter has been passing-off state secrets to the American consulate between ballet lessons. Now, she's too high-profile to "take care" of that way, but nevertheless her behavior needs to be...corrected, and her future loyalty to Mother Russia ensured. Your solution: slip a mickie into her Stolichnaya, pump her full of muscle relaxers and Sodium Pentathol, and have her wake up to find that she's lost her body and now exists solely as a free-floating consciousness, alone in timeless, endless, blackness. Chances are she'll be open to...rehabilitation.*
So what does all this have to do with my Saturday night with the Herd at Walkabout? Only this: the Western night club is sensory deprivation in reverse. Instead of withdrawl, it gives you inundation; instead of lulling you into acceptance, it beats you into supplication. Ambient light is taken from you, compressed with a sickening crunch, and torpedoed through the darkness at a hundred miles an hour. Music is boiled; the distillate is NOISE at your eardrums and BEAT in your shoes. Sweat, booze, and ashes, all doused with cheap perfume, play a sort of olefactory zero-sum game, each fighting the others off, resulting in a kind of nasal static. And touch...Well, next time you're in da' club, you make your way through thirty yards of dance floor to the bar, and you tell me that the corridor of slippery fabric and slipperier flesh through which you burrow isn't like unto a birth canal. And like a birth canal, you come out the other side confused, disoriented, upset, and out of breath--and inexorably covered in the sticky residue of humanity.
But to what end, this sensory superfluity? To me, it's obvious. We overload our perceptual gear because we want to forget--to forget what we are: awkwardly embodied selves; weak, contingent, little epistemic beings, unsure of everything, endlessly aware of the schism between Me and You. As Trent Reznor vis-a-vis Johnny Cash sang it: "You are someone else/I am still right here".
So we swim, not in water and epsom salt, but in bodies and ethanol. We close off the dicey world of physicality and endeavor to become timeless, spaceless consciousness, or--since our end in the club isn't higher knowledge of the self but carnal knowledge of others--we aim to unleash pure consciousness of the Id, unfettered by self-consciousness (for how could we grind so arhythmically, kiss so sloppily, or grope so violently without quite literally forgetting ourselves). For a few fleeting moments, wrapped in the Walkabout's burlap bag and beaten with popular culture, we manage to transcend the insecurities, the idiosyncricies, the pockmarks and the sneaking suspicion that there's more to the opposite sex than the crude utility of their flesh.
But, lo, there is nothing sadder than when the effect has run its course: the young chap who's sobered up enough to surmise that the spasmic contortions of his extremities have failed to amount to 'dancing'; the candy-girl who realizes she's been giving our friend just enough of her lips to keep him from wondering off between songs; the older chap who hovers around the periphery, five years too-old to be here, clutching his lager and keeping the beat from the neck up. These are all freshly awakened individuals; bona fide persons--for all the lonliness and ugliness that that entails--broken off from the pack, from what Sartre would call the "Group-in-Fusion" whose neurotic mass have checked their very selves at the door with their coats. They've woken up to the absurdity of these dark, noisy rituals and realized, perhaps only temporarily, that transcendence isn't in cranking up the volume on sense-data, no more than it is in muting it.
And the die-hards--whose stamina and denial keeps them gyrating through the fourth repetition of that Black Eyed Peas jam--call those of us who fall ass backwards into our selves squares or "wallflowers". But I'm fairly sure the Cosmic Joke is on them: we're all wallflowers, some of us just forget where to stand.
NOTES
*If this sounds like a subplot from a Tom Clancy novel, that's because it is.
It seems that--on a good day, in the smoke-wisped darkness with a few sickly-sweet, overpriced cocktails in you, hell looks an awful lot like a night club. Or, if not a "club", then a "cocktail bar" so closely resembling a club that the distinction is academic at best. Dark, dank, desperate and deafening--it sucks the English youtharazzi down into a place not so closely resembling London.
I took off my jacket, ordered a pint, took some half-measures towards dancing with my girlfriend, and settled in for some people-watching. Much to my disappointment, though, I didn't manage to spot any people. Instead, I caught a side-long, strobe-lit glimpse of what Kierkegaard mornfully labeled "the Public"...what Nietzsche contemptuously dubbed "the Herd"...what MTV CEO Judy McGrath ruefully calls "the Audience".
Somewhere between the seventh and ninth movements of 50 cent's Harlem concertos, I got to thinking about sensory deprivation torture--a little bag of tricks dabbled in by the CIA and Mossad, but raised to the level of an art form by the KGB. No, I'm not talking about the Five Techniques the marines at Git-mo have so recently been pooh-poohed for using--no black hoods or "stress positions". What I have in mind is the much softer, and more diabolical, form of deprivation first studied by D.O. Hebb at McGill University (fucking Canadians). Hebb's and others' findings described a family of techiques aimed at muting the senses, at cutting off the brain from external stimuli. One of the more complex deprivation apparatae has its subjects sealed in a soundproof, pitch-black tank, and placed supine in a solution of water and epsom salts so saturated that it makes one neutrally bouyant. This sensory desert robs from a person even her experience of gravity, and since the air and the water are kept at the same temperature, even tactile sensations are dulled. Alternative medicine freaks herald the tank as a tool for acheiving higher-consciousness and creativity through the prolonging of semi-conscious theta-states, but Hebb and his colleagues originally had quite a different use in mind: that of 'prepping' subjects for brainwashing.
Just imagine you're a Komrad Kolonel in the KGB's Second Chief Directorate. You've recently discovered that a Party boss's daughter has been passing-off state secrets to the American consulate between ballet lessons. Now, she's too high-profile to "take care" of that way, but nevertheless her behavior needs to be...corrected, and her future loyalty to Mother Russia ensured. Your solution: slip a mickie into her Stolichnaya, pump her full of muscle relaxers and Sodium Pentathol, and have her wake up to find that she's lost her body and now exists solely as a free-floating consciousness, alone in timeless, endless, blackness. Chances are she'll be open to...rehabilitation.*
So what does all this have to do with my Saturday night with the Herd at Walkabout? Only this: the Western night club is sensory deprivation in reverse. Instead of withdrawl, it gives you inundation; instead of lulling you into acceptance, it beats you into supplication. Ambient light is taken from you, compressed with a sickening crunch, and torpedoed through the darkness at a hundred miles an hour. Music is boiled; the distillate is NOISE at your eardrums and BEAT in your shoes. Sweat, booze, and ashes, all doused with cheap perfume, play a sort of olefactory zero-sum game, each fighting the others off, resulting in a kind of nasal static. And touch...Well, next time you're in da' club, you make your way through thirty yards of dance floor to the bar, and you tell me that the corridor of slippery fabric and slipperier flesh through which you burrow isn't like unto a birth canal. And like a birth canal, you come out the other side confused, disoriented, upset, and out of breath--and inexorably covered in the sticky residue of humanity.
But to what end, this sensory superfluity? To me, it's obvious. We overload our perceptual gear because we want to forget--to forget what we are: awkwardly embodied selves; weak, contingent, little epistemic beings, unsure of everything, endlessly aware of the schism between Me and You. As Trent Reznor vis-a-vis Johnny Cash sang it: "You are someone else/I am still right here".
So we swim, not in water and epsom salt, but in bodies and ethanol. We close off the dicey world of physicality and endeavor to become timeless, spaceless consciousness, or--since our end in the club isn't higher knowledge of the self but carnal knowledge of others--we aim to unleash pure consciousness of the Id, unfettered by self-consciousness (for how could we grind so arhythmically, kiss so sloppily, or grope so violently without quite literally forgetting ourselves). For a few fleeting moments, wrapped in the Walkabout's burlap bag and beaten with popular culture, we manage to transcend the insecurities, the idiosyncricies, the pockmarks and the sneaking suspicion that there's more to the opposite sex than the crude utility of their flesh.
But, lo, there is nothing sadder than when the effect has run its course: the young chap who's sobered up enough to surmise that the spasmic contortions of his extremities have failed to amount to 'dancing'; the candy-girl who realizes she's been giving our friend just enough of her lips to keep him from wondering off between songs; the older chap who hovers around the periphery, five years too-old to be here, clutching his lager and keeping the beat from the neck up. These are all freshly awakened individuals; bona fide persons--for all the lonliness and ugliness that that entails--broken off from the pack, from what Sartre would call the "Group-in-Fusion" whose neurotic mass have checked their very selves at the door with their coats. They've woken up to the absurdity of these dark, noisy rituals and realized, perhaps only temporarily, that transcendence isn't in cranking up the volume on sense-data, no more than it is in muting it.
And the die-hards--whose stamina and denial keeps them gyrating through the fourth repetition of that Black Eyed Peas jam--call those of us who fall ass backwards into our selves squares or "wallflowers". But I'm fairly sure the Cosmic Joke is on them: we're all wallflowers, some of us just forget where to stand.
NOTES
*If this sounds like a subplot from a Tom Clancy novel, that's because it is.
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Punks for Christ
Jesus on the Half-Pipe
::blink::
Apparently... There are now youth ministers... The Jesus kind... who do their evangelizing... by doing skateboard tricks.
I say this all with what must seem like a great deal of hesitation because before every phrase I double check my sources to make sure that's right. But yes, in fact, the idea seems to be to "Ollie for the Lord." Pop shove it, then pray.
Quoth one Right Reverend Skater: 'You can skate and not be a punk. You can be about respect for parents, and abstinence, and no drugs.'
'Or, as Mr. Moore put it: "I knew God had given me this gift, and I knew I wanted to glorify him with my skateboard. I wanted to stoke God out."'
To stoke God out?
What happened to the good old days? When you could have more than one characteristic. Skate on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and alternate Fridays. Be known as a Christian on the others. But in these days of specialization the only way to be understood is to have one trade, no matter how specific or unrelated the trades in which you jack.
I guess I just fear for what comes next in the realm of confusing religious/secular mergers. Fire-eating Friars? Buddhist Car Salesmen? A pope who surfs? Heck, a pope who's alive would be enough of a change. Quaker Seismologists? Jews for Jesus?
::blink::
Apparently... There are now youth ministers... The Jesus kind... who do their evangelizing... by doing skateboard tricks.
I say this all with what must seem like a great deal of hesitation because before every phrase I double check my sources to make sure that's right. But yes, in fact, the idea seems to be to "Ollie for the Lord." Pop shove it, then pray.
Quoth one Right Reverend Skater: 'You can skate and not be a punk. You can be about respect for parents, and abstinence, and no drugs.'
'Or, as Mr. Moore put it: "I knew God had given me this gift, and I knew I wanted to glorify him with my skateboard. I wanted to stoke God out."'
To stoke God out?
What happened to the good old days? When you could have more than one characteristic. Skate on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and alternate Fridays. Be known as a Christian on the others. But in these days of specialization the only way to be understood is to have one trade, no matter how specific or unrelated the trades in which you jack.
I guess I just fear for what comes next in the realm of confusing religious/secular mergers. Fire-eating Friars? Buddhist Car Salesmen? A pope who surfs? Heck, a pope who's alive would be enough of a change. Quaker Seismologists? Jews for Jesus?
Friday, March 18, 2005
Thoughts from a Finals Week-addled Brain
There I was, minding my own business, just reading about the implementation of Relational Database Management Systems (RBDMS's). Y'know, as I am wont to do. Now, computer scientists are funny people. They live in a world of abstraction, and view as the primary skill one can learn in life the ability to forget the trees for the forest. And then have the forest need to be restarted every 10 minutes.
But this is not a lesson about computer scientist's people skills (it would already be over) nor forestry, and considering what I ended up getting on that final, certainly not one about RBDMS's. Instead, I quote a very learned source (Database Systems, The Complete Book, by Garcia-Molina, Ullman, and Widom), talking about the order in which to take computer statements and save their results. (this is on page 973, section 18.8.4) It says that in certain situations the type of software it describes must "[abort] T (if T would violate physical reality)".
::blink::
If T would violate physical reality? What? if I do this wrong, are monkeys going to begin flying out of my butt? Or stop flying out of The Leviathans? Would Foster start being funny? How could that result from the sequence of pretend actions a typewriter-on-steroids chooses?
The answer, of course, is that this is just an example of a poorly chosen metaphor. But, y'know, so is my typewriter-on-steroids one. So is, in fact, almost everything about computers: windows, mail, sites, engines, mice, the information superhighway, Al Gore. These are all like their real-life counterparts, but slightly different, off-putting and boring.
It is only when we get to IM'ing, xanga'ing, googling, dot-coms that we find a place where the computers are willing to forge truly new paths. They are not replacements for everything from the ploughshare to the stapler, they are computers. They are not HAL, they are not WOPR, they are not Microsoft Bob. They are computers.
And if you still feel the need to anthropomorphize computers (please don't: they hate that), then just think about one thing a computer can do that no human ever could:
If you tell a computer not to think about a pink elephant in a magenta tutu dancing the tango... it won't.
But this is not a lesson about computer scientist's people skills (it would already be over) nor forestry, and considering what I ended up getting on that final, certainly not one about RBDMS's. Instead, I quote a very learned source (Database Systems, The Complete Book, by Garcia-Molina, Ullman, and Widom), talking about the order in which to take computer statements and save their results. (this is on page 973, section 18.8.4) It says that in certain situations the type of software it describes must "[abort] T (if T would violate physical reality)".
::blink::
If T would violate physical reality? What? if I do this wrong, are monkeys going to begin flying out of my butt? Or stop flying out of The Leviathans? Would Foster start being funny? How could that result from the sequence of pretend actions a typewriter-on-steroids chooses?
The answer, of course, is that this is just an example of a poorly chosen metaphor. But, y'know, so is my typewriter-on-steroids one. So is, in fact, almost everything about computers: windows, mail, sites, engines, mice, the information superhighway, Al Gore. These are all like their real-life counterparts, but slightly different, off-putting and boring.
It is only when we get to IM'ing, xanga'ing, googling, dot-coms that we find a place where the computers are willing to forge truly new paths. They are not replacements for everything from the ploughshare to the stapler, they are computers. They are not HAL, they are not WOPR, they are not Microsoft Bob. They are computers.
And if you still feel the need to anthropomorphize computers (please don't: they hate that), then just think about one thing a computer can do that no human ever could:
If you tell a computer not to think about a pink elephant in a magenta tutu dancing the tango... it won't.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Dan and His Discontent
Whew-- So I don't read and/or post to my blog in a little over two weeks and just LOOK what happens: Dan goes on a tear; a tour de force; a dimestris mirabilis of consistent sexcellence. In the space of mere days he publishes the tender and pensive "Retrospective"; "Why the internet will never replace being smart" and "The Powers of Ten that Be" with their anti-platonist technological skepticism, their dystopian echoes and their underlying humanism; and, of course, the two charged, angry fragments against the cultural logic of late capitalism that together would come to be known by generations of critics as "The Douche-Bag Papers." Of course, saddled amidst these seminal works of ontoblogical exegesis are two rather unfortunate forays into fiction, which most scholars (perhaps with justice) are prepared to forgive as the overextension (or, to some, the hubris) of a great mind.
From time to time, I here at The Enfranchised like to take a few moments and reflect (aloud) on the work of my colleague. I do this in the spirit of dialectical rigor; and also because it saves me from having to think about my own thoughts (as George Bernard Shaw so famously quipped: "Those who can't do, quote George Bernard Shaw.") So, to this end, here's some comments and conjectures:
-In "My SAT score is now average", Dan makes an elliptical allusion (by means of a pun-deployed URL link) to what, I can only assume, is a letter-to-the-Editor of his once published by the New York Times. Of course, as any of you who were curious enough to follow the link in the hopes of it leading to a pictorial essay on the hernia examination can attest, the URL belongs to a section of the Times website inaccessible to non-members. Is this an oversight on Dan's part? Or has it deeper meaning as some kind of audience-participation analogue to the general elitism of the piece? Perhaps neither. My own hypothesis (sadly unconfirmable, since Dan and I haven't been on speaking terms since that May in '68, in Paris) is that it speaks to his conviction that adding the place-name "New York" to anything makes it sound posher and more worthy of our chin-stroking. Observe: "The Hackensack School of Air Conditioner Maintenance and Repair" sounds dull and provincial; but hehold "The New York Institute for the Edification of Interior Climate-Regulation Apparatae." I know what you're thinking, 'Didn't Chomsky study there?' The answer, of course, is yes, he did.
-In "The Powers of Ten that Be", Dan again reveals in print his two minds about the Enlightenment thesis that the rational sciences and their progeny hold the key to human progress. Sadly, Dan himself commits one of the all-time worst logical blunders: the Phallus Fallacy. He says:
From time to time, I here at The Enfranchised like to take a few moments and reflect (aloud) on the work of my colleague. I do this in the spirit of dialectical rigor; and also because it saves me from having to think about my own thoughts (as George Bernard Shaw so famously quipped: "Those who can't do, quote George Bernard Shaw.") So, to this end, here's some comments and conjectures:
-In "My SAT score is now average", Dan makes an elliptical allusion (by means of a pun-deployed URL link) to what, I can only assume, is a letter-to-the-Editor of his once published by the New York Times. Of course, as any of you who were curious enough to follow the link in the hopes of it leading to a pictorial essay on the hernia examination can attest, the URL belongs to a section of the Times website inaccessible to non-members. Is this an oversight on Dan's part? Or has it deeper meaning as some kind of audience-participation analogue to the general elitism of the piece? Perhaps neither. My own hypothesis (sadly unconfirmable, since Dan and I haven't been on speaking terms since that May in '68, in Paris) is that it speaks to his conviction that adding the place-name "New York" to anything makes it sound posher and more worthy of our chin-stroking. Observe: "The Hackensack School of Air Conditioner Maintenance and Repair" sounds dull and provincial; but hehold "The New York Institute for the Edification of Interior Climate-Regulation Apparatae." I know what you're thinking, 'Didn't Chomsky study there?' The answer, of course, is yes, he did.
-In "The Powers of Ten that Be", Dan again reveals in print his two minds about the Enlightenment thesis that the rational sciences and their progeny hold the key to human progress. Sadly, Dan himself commits one of the all-time worst logical blunders: the Phallus Fallacy. He says:
"Allow me to quote a sage mentor: "How do you make my dick 8 inches long?" "Fold it in half." This 2/3 foot phallus is still only 4 times as long as D.R.F.'s semblance of an organ: less than an order of magnitude separates us.
Instead, it is McCormack's Reaper, Whitney's Gin (Cotton, not the Christmas Tree liquor), McCoy's Not a Bricklayer, He's a Doctor, and such contraptions of the 19th Century that introduced the idea that one man, no matter how great, even if he were John Henry, could not match up against machines measured in Hundreds of Horsepower. (I don't believe in posthumous medal ceremonies).
Can anyone make sense of this second paragraph? Neither can I. But this is to be expected: utter an absurdity (in this case, one about the righteousness of my Johnson, which in truth is as long and distinguished as the list of universities from which Dan received rather thin envelopes) and patent nonsense follows.
-Lastly, in "The only Mechanics...", Dan is a bit unfair vis-a-vis International Relations majors. Therein he says: "how many times have I seen an International Relations major (in my fraternity, we called them IR unemployed majors) try to woo a girl at a party with long, soft elucidations on the nature of the cosmos only to learn that she was herself a physics major...)". Now, I'd like to tell you what's wrong with Dan's thinking here, but unfortunately I am strictly speaking unable to mentally parse and process any string of symbols that follows directly after "in my fraternity".
-Bigus Dickus
Monday, March 14, 2005
My SAT score is now average
Andy Warhol once... well, thinking about it, I suppose there are few things he didn't do. But we all know that "In the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes" quote. Well, the thing about exponential population growth and the societal onset of Adult ADD/ADHD is that 15 minutes was optimistic. Instead, figure you get maybe one good mention in a semi-prestigious source. (*cough*) So, man, wouldn't it suck if you got that one fleeting shot at renown before your voice (and other parts of anatomy) lowered?
Cf. this review of the new SAT. Specifically,
"Jacob Chase, 16, a junior at Roslyn High School, gathered with parents and test-takers around a group of cars. He said he had scored 'extremely high' last year on his PSAT, and on yesterday's SAT, the essay played right into one of his academic strengths: writing.
Cf. this review of the new SAT. Specifically,
"Jacob Chase, 16, a junior at Roslyn High School, gathered with parents and test-takers around a group of cars. He said he had scored 'extremely high' last year on his PSAT, and on yesterday's SAT, the essay played right into one of his academic strengths: writing.
'One of my stronger points is writing, because in the future - in college or anything you do - it's a skill you're going to need,' said Jacob, adding that he had studied 15 hours a week for the test. He said that a good score would complement his résumé - he plays basketball and runs cross-country - and might help him get into colleges like Cornell."
This guy obviously deserves to be stuffed in a garbage can. And then rolled down a hill. After being set on fire. I like his commentary on the correct pedagogy, informed by his considered opinion on the progression of American industry. Let's be honest, "Jake": are you really going to find those writing skills in demand during the 7-10 years you spend as Bubba's Butt Bitch after your inept attempt at white collar crime is exposed? At least, (for Bubba's sake) you've spent all your time A) preparing for sports that create the lankiest of inmates (a good 2-mile time and the ability to drain 3's does little good in the shower) and B) memorizing the difference between a homonym and a homophone. Oh, and don't kid yourself: you're going to end up in the "prestigious" Honors Program at a mid-tier state school for exactly a semester and a half before your low-level meth addiction distracts your studies and you end up eking out after 5 years with a 2.3 GPA in Criminology.
-D"Go big or go home. I'm not attending any interventions until my friend has shown me he at least has the commitment to OD"an
Sunday, March 13, 2005
Silver, Part 2
(continued from part 1)
And so he cooked her dinner. She came over to his place, expecting a wooing: posters of her (all taken *after* she turned 18, of course) decorating the place, newly-bought décor to evince a certain level of glamour. What she got was a typical twenty-something apartment, any and all style courtesy of Ikea's budget racks, with most of the t-shirts consolidated into one pile. The tablecloth was the only visible attempt to clean the place up, and it was the sort of thin plastic that one buys last-minute in the grocery store. For someone so used to the red carpet, it was new to walk into a space whose philosophy of interior decoration was afterthought.
Brian poured both of them a glass of wine. She took it and, as was polite, offered him the opportunity to show off his purchasing power and prowess. "What kind of red is this?" She settled in for a discourse on varietals and their respective bouquets--
"Umm, red?" And he went back to chopping the tomatoes. In the background he was playing a new pop tune. The band wasn't that great, and certainly weren't famous, but the song was catchy, reminded everyone who heard it of some tune they liked, and they were willing to do a cross-promotional music video. Of course, quickly, the table was set and light conversation was had. Comfortable and invigorating without being intellectually exhausting. The sun set and then the light was by candle. Of course, other dates happened later. They went ice skating (both of them were awful and said yes in the hope the other would be able to coach them as cute couples did, but instead just stumbled around the rink for an hour before succumbing to their mutual coldness). She convinced him to go jogging with her, and he survived only because she stopped to sign an autograph at the same intervals as he stopped to check if he was, in fact, as he believed having a heart attack.
As a romantic comedy fixture, Cindy had filmed many a montage and came closer than the next guy to understanding their purpose. Most people think a montage is used to show passage of time. How else would the audience understand that it was now a month later and a relationship was cemented? And this is wrong because the average audience member is not willing to accept the simple fact that audiences, of any medium are, by and large, stupid. They are willing to accept development wildly disproportionate to elapsed time.
No, the montage is the only way movies can hope to turn reality into real life. Real life is where we live. In real life, your girlfriend is the most beautiful woman on the face of the earth. Your in-jokes are the funniest, your love life the greatest. There is a spark between you. Tangible. No one in your presence could deny it. Reality, however, is that you are two clothed primates drawn together by one of yours deep-seated feelings of insufficiency and the other's ticking biological clock.
Writers cannot craft a universally compelling narrative of love because no love is universally compelling. No compliment, no matter how loaded with adoration and praise means half as much as "nice sweater" coming from a beloved. No insult, no matter how laden with profanity and tales of sexual obscenity, hurts one-thousandth as much as a lover's uncertain glance. The reason for the montage is because it is impossible to write down, in all its particulars, a relationship. No imagination, even one infinitely better than reality, can match real life.
And so, we settle for a montage of scenes of pretty people doing activities we almost believe could lead to emotion. Only teenage girls and virgins could ever truly fall in love based on what they see on the screen. The rest of us leave the theater confident in our superior capability to engage in emotion. All because of the magic of cutting from scene to scene without allowing us to see what is actually going on.
Back at dinner (for despite talking about the running and the subsequent dates, dinner hadn't really ended), dessert, a nice crème brulee that was perfect to both of them despite its objectively obvious technical shortcomings, was finished they slowly drew together, a single whisper's distance from the other's cheek--
They kissed. They smooched. They necked. And soon (by now the pop song previously alluded to had hit its romantic climax) there was nudity. And there was sex. Not the kind of gratuitous nudity so popular in today's romantic comedies where all we get is a hint of buttocks or perhaps a passing frame of nipple. Honestly, whose first post-coital instinct is to (as Meg Ryan's characters invariably do) pull the sheet up to cover precisely enough of their breasts to attain a PG-13 rating while still leaving the promise of cleavage? No, they left the sheets scattered on the floor and basked in their mutual warmth. Their relationship was not built exclusively on the sex, but it was certainly a part of it.
Of course, the montage has to have distinct start and end points, or else the audience will perpetually fear their vantage point might jump out from under them. The best technique for signaling the end is a quick and drastic change in tone, to make it clear that the emotion (i.e., the beginning of a relationship) has crescendoed and should now move on. The more abrupt and surprising the zig and/or zag, the better--
"You're Cindy Whittaker!" came a voice out of the fog of disturbed sleep.
"What? Huh?" She rolled over and quite quickly refound her bra and indignation. "Who are you?"
"That's Tony, my roommate," said Brian. "Back from Philadelphia early? Right, no matter." Brian reached for his boxers, more calmly than Cindy's frantic grabbing at items of clothing. "Do you think maybe you could give us some, y'know, privacy?"
"You're Cindy Whittaker!"
"Out!"
Tony compromised on turning around and continuing with his droning. "I'm your biggest fan, I know everyone says that, but I really am. I even saw--"
"I have to go," said Cindy, to Brian. She turned to Tony, "I'm sorry, I appreciate your fan--"
"--you in that sleeper film noir feature you did: 'Café on the Brink of Sorrow'--"
"Don't mind him," Brian said. "He won't even notice you're gone for half an hour. He does this sometimes."
"You sure, cause, I don't want this to get weird?"
"Just go." They were both clothed, and Tony had turned back around to regale her with his Cindy Whittaker fan club bona fides. "I'll see you later?"
"Umm, yeah." Then came the moment of maximum awkwardness in any social interaction: the good-bye physical contact. The essential question of which is: What is appropriate given your history and current surroundings? Though it sounds trivial and unimportant, many men have gone crazy trying to learn its calculus and reasoning.
She extended her hand right as he went to kiss her. He backed off and took her hand, right as she leaned in towards him. The two seemed doomed to a vaudevillian back and forth (over the soundtrack of Tony's recounting of her filmography) before he pulled her in to him and kissed her. Really kissed her. A kiss that was hello, goodbye, and how you doing all in one. What more was there to do? She left.
Tony slapped his roommate on the back. "Pretty fucking incredible. You're sleeping with Cindy Goddamn Whittaker. My roommate is balling Cindy Whittaker. I mean, you have to wonder what she's thinking, right?"
"What? No."
"I mean, no offense. I think you're great. But you must know what I mean. She's--" he accented each syllable as if talking to a foreigner who had a solid grasp on English only when spoken slowly and loudly "Cin-dy Whit-a-ker."
"And I'm Brian Seston."
"Are you just messing with me? She's a movie star. She could have any guy she wants." He paused. Tony had a habit of pausing right before he said the wrong thing. In many people, this would be when they reevaluate whether it was actually worth saying, but somehow Tony still always said what was on his mind. "You-- you gotta figure she's just slumming it, right?"
"Is it really so foreign a concept that she might actually like me for me."
"No, I mean, you're a cool guy. I hang out with you. I live with you, it's great, really. But, you're a video store clerk. You have been for 5 years. You're not even a manager. I know, I know, you don't have ambitions to the bourgeois. But she's famous. She's on the internet."
"Yes, she's on the internet. And that palace of urban legends, inane email forwards and videos of white guys dancing is never incorrect in deciding societal importance."
"OK, ok. I see your point. Sure, she's no different than the rest of us." Tony paused. Again. "So, her breasts-- they real?"
Saturday, March 12, 2005
The Powers of Ten that Be
In the beginning, it was simple. I'm better than you. But then, we got numbers. So the question became, how much better am I? Those Greeks with their love of division but ignorance of zero and decimal points could say, quite simply, I'm half again as good as you. There, you were ahead of someone else by an almost insurmountable margin. But then you start learning about incrementing. The simple act of adding one to one. And then you need to be twice as good as someone.
This of course becomes an arms race of integers. My love for the woman whose hand I'm seeking can not shine merely twice as bright as the sun (for then I might leave her in the event our Sun becomes a Red Giant and consequently that much brighter), but thrice will secure our position in the eternal book of couples. And then, not thrice but quat... tetr.... four times better. Four leads to five, and six is afraid because seven ate nine.
Soon, we're in double digits. And you're slapping zeroes on willy nilly. Ten times better. 100 times stronger. Samson slayed One Thousand men! (With the jaw of an ass, no less. Keep that in mind, all those who tell me to shear myself in real life. If I ever find a jaw of an ass, I will be your worst nightmare.)
We all know what madness lies down this path. Millions. Billions. English Billions. Trillion. Googols. Googolpleces. Plaid. Ludicrous.
The real culprit, of course, is the machines. Men do not work in terms of thousands. Allow me to quote a sage mentor: "How do you make my dick 8 inches long?" "Fold it in half." This 2/3 foot phallus is still only 4 times as long as D.R.F.'s semblance of an organ: less than an order of magnitude separates us.
Instead, it is McCormack's Reaper, Whitney's Gin (Cotton, not the Christmas Tree liquor), McCoy's Not a Bricklayer, He's a Doctor, and such contraptions of the 19th Century that introduced the idea that one man, no matter how great, even if he were John Henry, could not match up against machines measured in Hundreds of Horsepower. (I don't believe in posthumous medal ceremonies).
And it was their 20th Century progeny, the computer, that delivered the final blow. That chip in your current computer can add billions of numbers every second. You could add, in that same span, what? 2 single digits and a Roman Numeral?
But towards what end? That chip could challenge a grandmaster at chess, but only if it has a friend to move the pieces. It cannot fell trees, it cannot heave coal. It cannot even solve tic-tac-toe until the climax. It may be a trillion times superior to you... at what you don't care about.
So, say it with me and say it simply: I'm better than you.
This of course becomes an arms race of integers. My love for the woman whose hand I'm seeking can not shine merely twice as bright as the sun (for then I might leave her in the event our Sun becomes a Red Giant and consequently that much brighter), but thrice will secure our position in the eternal book of couples. And then, not thrice but quat... tetr.... four times better. Four leads to five, and six is afraid because seven ate nine.
Soon, we're in double digits. And you're slapping zeroes on willy nilly. Ten times better. 100 times stronger. Samson slayed One Thousand men! (With the jaw of an ass, no less. Keep that in mind, all those who tell me to shear myself in real life. If I ever find a jaw of an ass, I will be your worst nightmare.)
We all know what madness lies down this path. Millions. Billions. English Billions. Trillion. Googols. Googolpleces. Plaid. Ludicrous.
The real culprit, of course, is the machines. Men do not work in terms of thousands. Allow me to quote a sage mentor: "How do you make my dick 8 inches long?" "Fold it in half." This 2/3 foot phallus is still only 4 times as long as D.R.F.'s semblance of an organ: less than an order of magnitude separates us.
Instead, it is McCormack's Reaper, Whitney's Gin (Cotton, not the Christmas Tree liquor), McCoy's Not a Bricklayer, He's a Doctor, and such contraptions of the 19th Century that introduced the idea that one man, no matter how great, even if he were John Henry, could not match up against machines measured in Hundreds of Horsepower. (I don't believe in posthumous medal ceremonies).
And it was their 20th Century progeny, the computer, that delivered the final blow. That chip in your current computer can add billions of numbers every second. You could add, in that same span, what? 2 single digits and a Roman Numeral?
But towards what end? That chip could challenge a grandmaster at chess, but only if it has a friend to move the pieces. It cannot fell trees, it cannot heave coal. It cannot even solve tic-tac-toe until the climax. It may be a trillion times superior to you... at what you don't care about.
So, say it with me and say it simply: I'm better than you.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
The only mechanics they're used to deal with their Bimmers
It ain't easy being a pseudointellectual. It's of course de rigeur to subscribe to the New Yorker and at least one of the Atlantic or Harper's. But once you factor in perusal of McSweeney's, consumption of a drink at least as pretentious as a free trade shade grown mochaccino latte, you start to see why it's tasking. But at some point, every up-and-coming would-be Stoppard-quoter finds him/her/itself at a critical juncture: needing more science.
Somewhere on the scale of knowledge after learning the difference between Hindenburg and Heisenberg and before "learning" about string theory (yeah, metaphor's great, but how many times have I seen an International Relations major (in my fraternity, we called them IR unemployed majors) try to woo a girl at a party with long, soft elucidations on the nature of the cosmos only to learn that she was herself a physics major and he was laying Lipton instead of lepton?), there's early-20th Century quantum theory to be tackled.
The problem is that it makes no sense. I mean, it does if you have a Ph.D. in physics. Or the ability to think. But quantum theory does not jive in any way shape or form with the world we experience. Its most famous analogy, involving the possible attempted murder (or is it attempted possible murder?) of a feline was originally proposed to show how ludicrous the whole get up was. This failed attempt at satire (and I know how that feels) was followed up by a play written by Michael Frayn, a playwright principally known for choreographing an amalgamation of staging gone wrong. The best analogy he presents is a skier going both to the left and the right of a tree simultaneously, which is obviously false because it doesn't account for the more compromising routes of Michael Kennedy or Sonny Bono.
Mythology, having the benefit of being crazy and hence accounting for any possible though, affords us several examples. Orpheus and Lot's Wife both looked back at the lost of, respectively, their beloved and their not-being-a-pillar-of-salt. But, this hardly counts, for the true pseudointellectual must have progressed with 2000 years of thought, instead of finding inspiration in the same fire and brimstone that Calvinists have been spewing for centuries.
But, finally, I have found an example of Heisenberg's principle in a way that even the most blatant of tidbits-of-knowledge seekers can understand. ApplyYourself is a way that people apply to Business School. Well, entities like people but without souls apply to Business School. But ApplyYourself was Holier than the bastard lovechild of John Paul II and a Sieve, so applicants could look at their status before it was reported to them. Several hundred people did so. Several hundred people are now not going to Business School.
That's right, most of the schools affected (Harvard first among them) decided to reject anyone who looked at their status, even if their status was admitted. Why! Perfect! Observing the value of a variable affects it! Just what Heisenberg was talking about. So take some solace, Mr. Looky McGlancerson, in the fact that your downfall will help is the comprehension of others' physical goals.
(Seriously, though, this is an important lesson in ethics for would-be businessmen: If you can do something unethical in a forum as anonymous as the internet, do it to your competitor. If only Enron had forged ExxonMobil's books instead of their own, they never would have lost their futon in the Lincoln Bedroom.)
Somewhere on the scale of knowledge after learning the difference between Hindenburg and Heisenberg and before "learning" about string theory (yeah, metaphor's great, but how many times have I seen an International Relations major (in my fraternity, we called them IR unemployed majors) try to woo a girl at a party with long, soft elucidations on the nature of the cosmos only to learn that she was herself a physics major and he was laying Lipton instead of lepton?), there's early-20th Century quantum theory to be tackled.
The problem is that it makes no sense. I mean, it does if you have a Ph.D. in physics. Or the ability to think. But quantum theory does not jive in any way shape or form with the world we experience. Its most famous analogy, involving the possible attempted murder (or is it attempted possible murder?) of a feline was originally proposed to show how ludicrous the whole get up was. This failed attempt at satire (and I know how that feels) was followed up by a play written by Michael Frayn, a playwright principally known for choreographing an amalgamation of staging gone wrong. The best analogy he presents is a skier going both to the left and the right of a tree simultaneously, which is obviously false because it doesn't account for the more compromising routes of Michael Kennedy or Sonny Bono.
Mythology, having the benefit of being crazy and hence accounting for any possible though, affords us several examples. Orpheus and Lot's Wife both looked back at the lost of, respectively, their beloved and their not-being-a-pillar-of-salt. But, this hardly counts, for the true pseudointellectual must have progressed with 2000 years of thought, instead of finding inspiration in the same fire and brimstone that Calvinists have been spewing for centuries.
But, finally, I have found an example of Heisenberg's principle in a way that even the most blatant of tidbits-of-knowledge seekers can understand. ApplyYourself is a way that people apply to Business School. Well, entities like people but without souls apply to Business School. But ApplyYourself was Holier than the bastard lovechild of John Paul II and a Sieve, so applicants could look at their status before it was reported to them. Several hundred people did so. Several hundred people are now not going to Business School.
That's right, most of the schools affected (Harvard first among them) decided to reject anyone who looked at their status, even if their status was admitted. Why! Perfect! Observing the value of a variable affects it! Just what Heisenberg was talking about. So take some solace, Mr. Looky McGlancerson, in the fact that your downfall will help is the comprehension of others' physical goals.
(Seriously, though, this is an important lesson in ethics for would-be businessmen: If you can do something unethical in a forum as anonymous as the internet, do it to your competitor. If only Enron had forged ExxonMobil's books instead of their own, they never would have lost their futon in the Lincoln Bedroom.)
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Why the Internet will never replace being smart
We've all heard "The More The Merrier." You hear it when your friends are going somewhere and you want to tag along, or when your friends are organizing an orgy and you want to tag along, or... You get the idea. What a great saying...
Except that's not the whole story. The saying actually goes "The more, the merrier/the fewer, the better fare." Amusement comes with a price, and it is this trade-off that gets to the heart of inclusion/exclusion. Sure, wikipedia may be an excellent reference for all things computer or math-related. It may devote pages of idolatry to the comedy of Idle. It may even have decent reporting on nerds' favorite history event. But look at their description of characterization, see that half of it discusses the use of characterization in fan fiction, and realize that their world view is and always will be skewed.
Why, even just a search for [ the fewer the better fare ] brings up mainly airplane ticket options (better fare) and health care studies (fare better). Computers will never be able to edit, and the people who use computers will never see the need.
Oh, you might be wondering: where did *I* learn the complete turn of this phrase? From an old media type of edited information source. (It was on Jeopardy! when I was a kid)
Except that's not the whole story. The saying actually goes "The more, the merrier/the fewer, the better fare." Amusement comes with a price, and it is this trade-off that gets to the heart of inclusion/exclusion. Sure, wikipedia may be an excellent reference for all things computer or math-related. It may devote pages of idolatry to the comedy of Idle. It may even have decent reporting on nerds' favorite history event. But look at their description of characterization, see that half of it discusses the use of characterization in fan fiction, and realize that their world view is and always will be skewed.
Why, even just a search for [ the fewer the better fare ] brings up mainly airplane ticket options (better fare) and health care studies (fare better). Computers will never be able to edit, and the people who use computers will never see the need.
Oh, you might be wondering: where did *I* learn the complete turn of this phrase? From an old media type of edited information source. (It was on Jeopardy! when I was a kid)
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Retrospective
When I was a kid, I always confused Dan Rather and Ronald Reagan. Since then, my white male discernment sense has evolved, and I am no longer confused by why a president would be reporting about himself. (Though, with the FCC's stance on television ownership, it won't be long until Big Brother Murdoch decides and announces everything himself). Well, Reagan is dead, Rather is retiring tonight, and Zombie Reagan isn't even a shoo-in for the VP nomination in 2008. What has happened to the world?
My summary of the last 20 years, and how they are reflected in the coming about of these events:
My summary of the last 20 years, and how they are reflected in the coming about of these events:
- Stem Cells. Look, I'm no biologist, but the fact of the matter is that these are as close to ambrosia as we can ever come. Ambrosia made from fetuses. Distasteful (and bad-tasting), I know. But these contain the secrets to eternal youth, curing cancer, and the Colonel's secret recipe. As long as they don't team up with nanotechnology and fusion, we will continue to be the dominant species of the planet.
- Someone, I forgot whom, managed to convince Americans that your choice of anchor was like inviting this person into your home. Of course Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings are more personable and more likeable and handsomer and probably better-smelling. But you shouldn't look for a father figure in a nightly news anchor. You should look for the same sort of enjoyment you get from Crazy Uncle Fred. Except that Rather can't mess up your carpet by spilling his drink during Thanksgiving and then vomiting on the spot to try to clean it up. Cause he's in your TV. Also, that's not the side of the garage he's rattling incoherent analogies at, it's Madeline Albright.
- The stagnation of Constitutional Law. With the current Supreme Court more full of near-deads than a Sunday Matinee of Maltock Made-For-TV Movies, no one can ever be sure how they will decide. Will Rehnquist see the logic of your arguments, or be too embarrassed to ask you to pause for a second so he can replace the battery in his hearing aid? But the fact of the matter is, any decent reading of the 22nd and 25th amendments make it quite clear that Zombie Reagan could move from the Naval Observatory to the White House. The only ticket from the Left that could beat him would be Vampire Howard Dean / Werewolf Hillary Clinton. (I almost made it Werewolf Howard Dean / Vampire Hillary Clinton, but then I realized that was too close to the truth.)
Monday, March 07, 2005
New Tricks
Here's the thing about growing older: You have more laurels to rest on. In today's installment of The Enfranchised, I'm posting the beginning of a short story I originally wrote more than a year ago and recently revised (special extended director's cut). Things I'm proud of in this story: the different impression the reader gets of the narrator than he has of himself, and some of the ideas. Things that need to work on: well, this is where you come in.
(the first page is here, and I've provided a link to the full text)
"Gerald, did you hear me? You've, uhh, gone somewhat catatonic." As my boss blathered on I prepared the cogent response that I knew would save my skin and impress my peers.
"No. No I'm not." Damn. It had sounded better in my head.
"Yes you are." He sighed. "No one wants to fire you, Fred. It's just something that happens. Now and then. In these hard economic times."
"If no one wants to fire me, then how is it happening?"
He was silent for a moment before saying, "Fine. Very few people wanted to fire you." He shuffled papers and looked at his watch. "Look, Fred, we both know this isn't the end of the world for you."
"Damn right it isn't." This wasn't the end of the world for me. "What do you mean?"
"You're a respected, preeminent researcher in your field. Everyone in the Labs has a copy of your book on their shelf." It's true: my book was a veritable litmus test for economists the world over. Any schmuck can name-drop Einstein or Hawking (that publicity slut of an author. You think he really needs the wheelchair? I've seen him get drunk at conferences and do karaoke). Only the truly initiated, those who've dug deeper, know my name.
"Great, you're right. Thank you Ari. So, I'll just submit my resume, excuse me, my CV, to a few search committees. I'll start my new appointment next fall, and formally retire in, say, October." From January 2nd, that was 9 months to start a new life: swift, but doable.
"Well, Gerald, you do have six months vacation saved up. We were thinking maybe you could take it starting now." That sounded fine. "Oh, and if you could have your office cleared out, we have an intern starting tomorrow."
(the rest)
(the first page is here, and I've provided a link to the full text)
"Gerald, did you hear me? You've, uhh, gone somewhat catatonic." As my boss blathered on I prepared the cogent response that I knew would save my skin and impress my peers.
"No. No I'm not." Damn. It had sounded better in my head.
"Yes you are." He sighed. "No one wants to fire you, Fred. It's just something that happens. Now and then. In these hard economic times."
"If no one wants to fire me, then how is it happening?"
He was silent for a moment before saying, "Fine. Very few people wanted to fire you." He shuffled papers and looked at his watch. "Look, Fred, we both know this isn't the end of the world for you."
"Damn right it isn't." This wasn't the end of the world for me. "What do you mean?"
"You're a respected, preeminent researcher in your field. Everyone in the Labs has a copy of your book on their shelf." It's true: my book was a veritable litmus test for economists the world over. Any schmuck can name-drop Einstein or Hawking (that publicity slut of an author. You think he really needs the wheelchair? I've seen him get drunk at conferences and do karaoke). Only the truly initiated, those who've dug deeper, know my name.
"Great, you're right. Thank you Ari. So, I'll just submit my resume, excuse me, my CV, to a few search committees. I'll start my new appointment next fall, and formally retire in, say, October." From January 2nd, that was 9 months to start a new life: swift, but doable.
"Well, Gerald, you do have six months vacation saved up. We were thinking maybe you could take it starting now." That sounded fine. "Oh, and if you could have your office cleared out, we have an intern starting tomorrow."
(the rest)
Friday, March 04, 2005
It had to happen, sooner or later
They say bad things come in threes. Of course, there were 7 Police Academy movies (plus one, I shit you not, in production), so maybe they're wrong. But assuming they're not: We sold our soul to commemorate Arthur Miller's passing. We did a stuntman (tequila shooter where you snort the salt and squeeze the lime into your eye) to mourn Hunter S. Thompson's on-the-phone suicide. So we were just waiting for the next death of an old beast the ASPCA just wouldn't let us have for dinner.
Enter Bubba. A 22-pound lobster invariably referred to as Leviathan (pushing our co-blogger from being the 372nd most popular entity called "Levi" back down to 373rd), Bubba warmed hearts and gave pots everywhere size anxiety. CNN says he was 80-100 years old, while biologists pegged at closer to 50. Of course, CNN probably thinks the way to tell a lobster's age is to count his rings, so let's say it's 50. Of course Bubba would be awful to eat: tough, aged, and, well, by this point he had a face.
So the fish merchant "graciously" release him into the wild by selling him to Kipley's Believe It Or Not. Oh, a feel good story. What a great thing for me to have told you and you to have heard he's free as my prose in this sentence and certainly nothing could--
Oh, except he died. (Chicago Sun-Times obit headline: "It was shell of a life for 23-pound lobster." I'm sure if Bubba's family members were alive, sentient, and close to an internet connection or Sun-Times distribution venue they'd be offended at your finding levity in his death. Also at your making him 1 pd. fatter in death than in life). This tragedy, however, is an English Major/Joseph Campbell's wet dream. A hero struck down right as he's gaining prominence. He bowed at what we all realized was the peak of his career, without even inflicting upon us a tragedy of a 1-hour finale.
Now, though, I wonder about his new job being a shell at an aquarium. I'm not saying he's not up to it, I just have... reservations. First off, won't this give the millions of children who pass by his edutainment grave every year some skewed ideas about the immensity of your typical crustacean? To say nothing of nightmares? (I'm still unable to get a decent night's rest after I heard about using miniature horses as seeing eye dogs! Though that might be more from perpetual laughing than true fear.) But, really, I guess the biggest tragedy in all of this is that every epic hero (and I think it's obvious Bubba falls into this category) deserves a funeral pyre.
With maybe a nice Hollandaise?
Enter Bubba. A 22-pound lobster invariably referred to as Leviathan (pushing our co-blogger from being the 372nd most popular entity called "Levi" back down to 373rd), Bubba warmed hearts and gave pots everywhere size anxiety. CNN says he was 80-100 years old, while biologists pegged at closer to 50. Of course, CNN probably thinks the way to tell a lobster's age is to count his rings, so let's say it's 50. Of course Bubba would be awful to eat: tough, aged, and, well, by this point he had a face.
So the fish merchant "graciously" release him into the wild by selling him to Kipley's Believe It Or Not. Oh, a feel good story. What a great thing for me to have told you and you to have heard he's free as my prose in this sentence and certainly nothing could--
Oh, except he died. (Chicago Sun-Times obit headline: "It was shell of a life for 23-pound lobster." I'm sure if Bubba's family members were alive, sentient, and close to an internet connection or Sun-Times distribution venue they'd be offended at your finding levity in his death. Also at your making him 1 pd. fatter in death than in life). This tragedy, however, is an English Major/Joseph Campbell's wet dream. A hero struck down right as he's gaining prominence. He bowed at what we all realized was the peak of his career, without even inflicting upon us a tragedy of a 1-hour finale.
Now, though, I wonder about his new job being a shell at an aquarium. I'm not saying he's not up to it, I just have... reservations. First off, won't this give the millions of children who pass by his edutainment grave every year some skewed ideas about the immensity of your typical crustacean? To say nothing of nightmares? (I'm still unable to get a decent night's rest after I heard about using miniature horses as seeing eye dogs! Though that might be more from perpetual laughing than true fear.) But, really, I guess the biggest tragedy in all of this is that every epic hero (and I think it's obvious Bubba falls into this category) deserves a funeral pyre.
With maybe a nice Hollandaise?
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