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:

"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

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.

'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

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?"

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.

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.)

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)

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.)
   

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)

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?

Pissing In The Wind: What America's next sport will not be.

Pardon me for the tardiness: My back is currently burdened by monsters of network protocols. That being said, Foster and the Leviathan urinated amply. I guess what I have to add is largely a prediction of what will not become popular. Ever. And that's webcomics. No, I mean, they might have their appeal in reading them. Occassionally. when you want to feel superior. But I mean watching them being written. And yet, this seems to be the newest league (cf. here). To add to the Leviathan's point: something is definitely not a sport if your jersey is ironic merchandise.

That is all,
DaBentley

Pissing in the Wind: Oh, Canada

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H - E - Double-Hockey-Stick (and a Handbasket)

Hockey, much like MxPx, is slowly going the way of the buffalo. I for one don't weep. As a portly young lad, I learned quickly that ice is a fickle mistress and something to be avoided at all costs. Though I did, for a time, feel a certain affinity toward Zambonis, as I thought they were a kind of Italian pastry.

But that, I suppose, is besides the point.

For those of you who worry about this kind of thing, and I have serious doubts that our readership includes many of you, I'll offer a suggestion or two about the prospects for filling those modestly-sized skates.

If our aim is to stick as closely to the spirit of hockey as possible, then it seems to me we ought to replace it with a sport I've tentatively called "kicking-the-shit-out-of-mulleted-Canadians". Its rules, I take it, are self-explanatory. Its potential, enormous. It'd no doubt be the biggest thing in Yank-on-Canuck action since the Aroostock War.

Alas, our legal department tells us that's not the way to go. So what else? Well, I care a great deal for backgammon. Unfortunately the WBA would murder us on the television-rights. But speaking of games which don't require a speck of athletic ability, what about poker? Seems nowadays every teenaged prick with a piggy bank and the rough capacity for abstract thought fancies himself a cardshark (here's where I tell you I was so ahead of the curve on this whole poker thing: I was so ahead of the curve on this whole poker thing).

Now, I happen to get a kick out of watching the ESPN coverage of the World Series, and apparently, so does every asshole with a remote control and optical nerves. The good news is these same kids pay me off when I'm at the casino, cuz they get it into their heads that they ought to try everything they see on TV (these are the same fuck-o's who shave each others asses and skateboard of their roofs; think "Jackass" without the production values). Now I'm not saying I'm a great player, but I respect the game enough to know my role, unlike every assclown with a dollar and a modicum of hand-eye coordination. I was at a low-limit hold-em table the other day and I'll be a tipsy-showgirl if there wasn't some little shit with a "NO LIMIT TEXAS HOLD-EM" t-shirt on. Now, I've seen a lot of great ball players at Yankee Stadium, and wouldn't you know it that not a ONE of them wore a shirt that said "PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL" on it. Anyway, bottom line is that the bubble has got to burst on the poker fad. Its only a matter of time before every fuckface with a pair of 3s and an opposable thumb gets tired of subsidizing the careers of middle-of-the-road players like myself. And once they realize they can't DO it, I'm thinking their interest in WATCHING it will wane.

Here in the Her Majesty's United Kingdom, they've got cricket. But let's get back to our discussion of sports. We've got to keep our audience in mind: what would satiate the hockey fan's puck-cravings in the absence of his fix? What's essential to hockey's hockeyness? Is it the rule structure? Dubious. Nary a Bruins fan will make the trek to his local middle school field hockey match to watch the girls duke it out in plaid, and any one who DOES is probably required by state law to inform you of certain things. Is it the ice, then? Unlikely. Few Philiadelphia Flyers fanatics shed a tear when Michelle Kwan took her last figure eight around the rink. But, come to think of it, they all probably got their rocks off watching the Tanya Harding take a lead pipe to the Kerigan's kneecap. Which brings me back to my original point: Hockey is about hurting people, preferably uneducated foreigners.

And thanks to Adam Smith and the Amazing Technicolor (R) Free Market, we've already got a substitute good which offers just as much xenophobic sadism, one that's waiting to sweep in and pick up the hockey fans once the NHL finally folds:

War.

That's right, I'm talking America's passtime. No, no. Not the Bud Selig one, the Donny Rumsfeld one. Hell, as far as I'm concerned, peace is what made sport necessary. Don't try to deny it--you know the pessimistic anthropologist in you agrees with me. But there's certainly no shortage of the stuff these days, so who needs hockey? I challenge the NHL to produce something as awe-inspiring and entertaining as the M1A2 Abrams tank, with its smoothbore kinetic shitstorm of a main gun. Step right up and get your tickets, war's got everything you could possibly ask for in a sport: high stakes, favorites and underdogs, zealous fans, controversey, live broadcasts, no slaughter rule.

Pfft. And you voted for Kerry?

Pissing In The Wind: What kinds of sticks, what kinds of balls?

So, hockey's over. I mean, yes, for the season. But, let's face it, hockey was barely holding on as the "fourth sport" anyway. If they do come back, it's not going to be because of puck-handling, it's going to be because they amend the rules so every goalie is now a gorilla without further equipment and you're allowed to engage in fights on the ice. With katanas. Katanae?

So, commentators, I put it to you: what sport will emerge from the icy ashes of the NHL's corpse to grab mindshare among American audiences? Ice skating? Tonsil Hockey? Steroid-testing? Inform us, O Enfranchised.

Haute Cuisine

Well, there I was, in a restaurant. A fancy French Restaurant. db Bistro Moderne. And after five years of New Providence High School French... I was able to pronounce the ingredients I didn't know about.

No, really, my meal felt like a game show: Merv Griffin presents "Garnish or Ingredient": swallow this or leave it on the plate? But, I never would have made it to Final Jeopardy, as after two courses I was definitely in the hole money-wise. Oh being fashionable, why must you be expensive?

-Dan "why did I think artichoke ravioli sounded like a good idea?" Bentley

...This is Bat Country...

The States are in danger of losing every last voice of dissent to the Great Beyond; and this blog is in danger of disintegrating into an a meta-obituary for recently deceased American literary figures. But, alas, Hunter S. Thompson (better known to some of the younger generation by his pseudonym Johnny Depp) has taken his own life with a gun that---perhaps ironically considering his long-standing NRA membership---was torn from his cold, dead hands.

Miller wrote with insight, dignity and meloncholy, and we here at The Enfranchised did our all to incorporate the same into our collective drop-in-the-bucket of a tribute. Unfortunately, to attempt to incorporate the elements of Thompson's literary genius into a blog obit presents a seemingly insurmountable logistical problem: Even if we could give you the address of a place to get the Benzedrine, Marlboro Reds, Wild Turkey, and .357 magnum (which, for legal reasons, we can't), it'd be near impossible to arrange the licentious polar bear, the seventeen year-old whacked-out blonde or the psychopathic attorney-accomplice.

My favorite piece out there so far is Tom Wolfe's. No doubt other worthwhile tributes will follow.

Pissing Into The Wind

Pardon my tardiness: I decided to take a last-minute jaunt to New York City. My hotel and office are both in Times Square. I mention this neither to brag nor to elicit your pity. Instead, it has informed my opinion: we ain't done nothin' yet.

New York is the kind of city that hands immigrants a dream, an Anglicized last name, and then starts selling you things.

Every side of any building is covered in billboards. You only know you've truly entered Times Square when the neon goes from bright to blinding. The strippers here wear pasties and g-strings not because of any sense of decency but because those particular pieces of fabric have the most impressions (read: eyeballs) to offer.

No, so long as we're merely exhuming corpses and not spray-painting them with our messages, I think we'll be all right.

Pissing in the Wind: Death of a Cliche Title

So, Arthur Miller is dead, huh? Too bad. The Crucible was good, and I thought Death of a Salesman was pretty interesting. I liked the part when Biff went postal and started shooting SCUD missiles at his office building from atop a grassy knoll, screaming "Say 'ello to my little friend" with guns ablaze, and his shirt torn open, exposing a "Thug Life" tattoo across his chiseled abs. Good times, good times.

I'm going to level with you here: I know very little about Arthur Miller and his work. To be perfectly honest, when news reports went out saying "Arthur Miller is dead," my first reaction was, "Arthur Miller was alive?" And apparently he was, and apparently now, he's not. Frankly, I was more concerned with the death of Rick James than of Arthur Miller. Not to mention ODB. At least with those you were just waiting for the autopsies of those drug-bloated corpses.

This might strike some readers of The Enfranchised as strange, since the writings and topics of choice for this blog tend to be literary, with the founders' scientific backgrounds sometimes creeping through. But since I consider myself more of a houseguest than a tenant (think the Kato Kalin of blogs), I'm sort of the odd man out. This is especially so with regards to the overall voice at The Enfranchised. As the name might suggest, the blog could be thought of as the voice of an oppressed majority. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the postings never really reflect that. And in my opinion, that's a good thing. I'd much rather read a collection of rants and articles not tied down to any ideology or common voice for that matter. And in my own, liberal-guiltish way, I find the latter preferable. Granted I'm a white male, from a middle-class suburb, educated in a New England private school, but that's about all I have in common with WASP culture. Plus I'm a gay, communist amputee. Power to the people.

But enough disclaimers. Baron von Foster touched on an interesting topic in his turn at upwind urination, namely, the role of blogs. Thanks to the internet--and kudos to Al Gore--it seems that everyone has a blog nowadays. Dan & Dan have one (of which I am a proud contributor). I have one. Even the Prime Minister of Ukraine has a freaking blog. In short, blogs are going the way of assholes--everyone has them, and mostly they smell like shit.

I could be an aspiring author and write the wittiest, most well-written (or is it best written? Obviously this is hypothetical) essays in my blog and no one could read it. I could write salacious lies about elected officials and world leaders, and I bet people would probably read it then (and believe it). For example: the Pope is actually dead. Has been for years. It's like Weekend at Bernie's in the Vatican. That, and Dick Cheney is gay.

Someone searching in google for "Dick Cheney gay" or "Pope Bernie" might come to this blog, and if I wrote an entire expose about Cheney's gayness, or the Pope's deadness, who's to stop me? My editor? My sponsors? My (laugh) sense of decency? It's sort of a double edged sword: freedom of speech, but a little too free... Or as my gay friend Dick Cheney might say when speaking Pope-like zombie-talk, "must...stifle...dissent..."

So in an internet full of blogs, how do you get your readers? Put metaphorically, if a blog falls in the forest, would anyone hear it? Put succinctly, who the fuck cares what I/we write? And should we even care if anyone does? Hence, comrade Bentley's google ad about Arthur Miller.

Maybe some people were directed to this blog and found it interesting. Perhaps more found it ungrammatical drivel and puked on their keyboards. (me no see why). Probably, a lot are wondering about the necessity for all this self-indulgent introspection. Either way, I'd hope no one would come here expecting a blog devoted entirely to Arthur Miller. What would that be like anyway? "Update: he's still dead." "Further update: Arthur Miller rocks!" "Breaking news: his fingernails have grown. Arthur Miller lives!"

So basically what I'm saying is that Arthur Miller is dead, and unless some literary psycho wants to go papal on his ass, he's going to stay that way. You should probably go read one of his plays, that way you can commiserate with the cultured community, and talk about the great scene where John Proctor throws miniature crucibles at the undead to stop them from eating all of Salem's candy. And thus, Halloween was born.

Silver

The first 1000 words of a story. Please, tell me if I should bother writing the rest:

Cindy Whittaker picked up the next DVD on the rack. Sissy Scoffield was "radiant and graceful" according to one of the reviewers. "Gives the performance of a lifetime," raved another. "Her obvious charm and endearing smile light up the screen," dared one critic (who had had one script anonymously rejected by every major studio and subsequently gave up attempting to create). Of course, Cindy knew better. Sissy was an anorexic shrew of an up-and-coming alcoholic, and not the best trailer-mate Cindy had ever had. She smiled knowingly and replaced the DVD to its--

"You're Cindy Whittaker," said a male perched on the precarious border of prepubescence and adolescence. "Oh my God, you're Cindy Whittaker."

"Hi."

"I'm your biggest fan. You are so-- I'm your biggest fan. I know everyone says that, but I've liked you since 'Heart Transplant'. Remember that? Straight-to-video, but I camped out anyway. Can I have your autograph? I have to have your autograph."

Cindy smiled. "Of course. What can I sign?"

"Oh, shoot. I don't think I have--" The youth searched his pockets, finding a pen, but no paper. He glanced at his loose shirt and, idea in mind, back up at her, a guilty look crossing his face. "Can I sign your breasts?" He was red before he finished saying. "I mean--" He stammered. "If you could, I mean, my chest. I don't have any paper, but you can write on skin. Really. Sometimes you have to shake the pen, but eventually the ink will--"

She laughed. It's not unusual for a teenage male to fumble contact with the opposite sex so disastrously. But in this case, he had good cause. Cindy started life as one of those adorable children who can light up an entire room and never grew out of it. Men who were talking to her would discreetly leave their wedding bands in their pockets while they conversed. And, what's more, she hadn't an inkling of the effect she had on people. Cindy Whittaker was born a movie star; she had no need to spend her childhood balancing books to learn posture or applying make-up to flatten out her nose. She just had to wait for someone to turn the camera on her.

"How about," she moved her hand past Sissy's tripe of a film to one she had starred in, opening its case and taking the boy's pen, "I sign this copy of 'Say It Like You Mean It.' Do you know that one?"

"Of course I do. I saw it three times in the theater with my girlfriend!" Her admirer would spend the rest of his adult life wondering why he admitted to her there was anyone else of a romantic nature in his life.

She gave him the signed disc and, knowing nothing else to say, he ran away. More men, she thought, would do well to follow his example of not overstaying one's welcome.

"I'll gladly pay for the movie, I'm sorry, I didn't even think--" she looked to the cashier, and fumbled in her purse for her wallet.

"How about," he said, a glint of a scheme in his eye, "I just let you rent it, and you forget to return it, and we forget to care."

"Thanks," she said, a bit suspicious. Living in Hollywood, she'd gotten used to seeing glints of schemes, and it had never turned out well. "I don't know what to say."

"Say you'll go out to dinner with me." Brian Seston realized (for that was the cashier's name) that sometimes clichés just are the right thing to say.

"Why?" Cindy had long ago gotten used to people wanting things from her; by now she was just curious about motivations.

"That kid won't stop smiling for weeks. When he referred to your--" Brian had lasted longer than most males, but like most males had found his train of thought derailed by--

"My breasts. You can say it."

"When he slipped up his statement, I thought he was going to end up crying into his pillow tonight. You're obviously able to think on your feet, so you get points for wit, and you're also charitable enough to put in the effort to spare him, so, points for some combination of pity and kindness."

Cindy wasn't used to so much praise that didn't mention her skills or her-- (I can say it) her assets. She knew it was an off-chance, but did he? Maybe she was being too vain, I mean, there's a decent chance, not everybody, "Do you know who I am?" Ohmygod that sounded too arrogant. She's not trying to get out of a speeding ticket--

"I work in a video store, Ms. Whittaker." He pointed upwards and at that moment, on 14 televisions throughout the store, there was Cindy sitting in a car and "having a bad feeling about this" in "Hitchhiking", a mediocre horror movie that grossed $32 million in its first weekend. "I know who you are."

It was Cindy's turn to be embarrassed. "How much did you say the video was?"

"3.25."

She blew a strand of her brown hair out of her face while fishing around for the bills. "If you know who I am, then why do you think I'm free for dinner for some video store clerk? I could have important photo shoots in Milan to get to. On a chartered jet." Off-putting was not Cindy's best or most-practiced mood, but she had seen other starlets use it to get out of situations made uncomfortable. She thrust the wadded-up dollars over the counter.

He took them gently and dropped them into the cashbox. "You may be a movie star. Everyone may know your name. And while I'd disagree with our shorter friend that 'Say It Like You Mean It' was an artistic apogee, I'll readily admit you were quite great in 'Mind Over Matter'. But, let's be honest: it's a Thursday afternoon and you're in a video store franchise paying to rent your own movie. I think you have time for a quiet meal."

Pissing Into the Wind: Pissing Into the Wind

This post is a lot like Dan's dear old mum: late, lackluster and notable mainly for its holes.

Ok, so that analogy was a bit off-sides. Truth is, I don't know how the shit to make this topic funny.

I told Dan as much when he posted it the other day.

"But, its about death!" he said. "Death is ALWAYS funny."

"No, Dan." I says to him. "Its about advertising. And advertising is the least funny thing in this and all reasonably promixate universes."

"Shit, I dunno." He scratched his head. "Imagine.....product placement on tombstones."

There is, of course, no accounting for taste.

But what's worse is that, in the absence of humor, I don't even know how to make this post interesting. It seems to me this is a non-issue. Should we be profitting from the death of a great artist and social critic, even a much-loved one? Why, no, Yoko, we shouldn't. But it doesn't seem to me that we here at The Enfranchised ARE profitting from it. We are not, for instance, selling "Death of a Playwright" t-shirts or commemorative porcelein "Cruci-bowls". Nor are we claiming to be in receipt of a homemade, super-steamy, uncensored Miller-Monroe Technicolor (R) Moving Picture, coming soon (for a fee) to your 16mm Reel-to-Reel.

No, sir. If we living white men are guilty of any crime against that dead one, it's that we deign think we've got something meaningful to add to the discourse on his demise. We've perhaps gotten it into our heads that the world, or at least the digital world, gives half-a-kilobyte about what we have to say. So we use our meagre pull with the Oracle at Google to siphon away a few well-intentioned furrowed-brow intellectual types from the standard fare at salon-dot-com and The Times, to our little den of triumphant WASPism, where we offer up only the best in self-congratulatory, obscure references (Jude the Obscure-obscure, not The Mayor of Casterbridge-obscure; after-all, we want to make you feel as snarky and clever as us). But if class-solidarity through the public-exhibition of exclusivist, jargon-filled rhetoric is a crime, then surely Michael Moore, my "Postcolonial Studies" professor, and the editorial staff at The New Yorker should all be in jail.

Unfortunately, I'm not nearly so good a writer as Dan would like to think that I like to think I am. In fact, I'm fairly sure I misused "gotten" in the previous paragraph, but I don't really know because I'm just THAT mediocre. So, I'm not too worried about the repercussions of our nontroversial choice to market to the "reader-of-armchair-punditry-about-recently-deceased-playwrights" crowd. Fact is, even with the extra Google hits, we're just a blog in a sea of blogs, no different from this one or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one or this one. And what's more, we don't even have an interesting "underrepresented" or "repressed" or "marginalized" take on things. As the name of the blog suggests, the only thing marginal about us is our talent.

Therefore I say fret not, Fearless Moderator. I doubt you'll have to wring your hands or consult your scriptures too much over this one. I think its cute and endearing that you see our convoluted method for getting the little boxes of numbers at the bottom of our page to change more frequently as presenting an ethical dilemma about the price of exposure. But if you're really convinced that our b-musings here are going to make any of us famous, well, I've got a real estate investment I'd like to talk to you about.

You're right about one thing, though. And that's that, once we've hooked the reader, once she's come this far, she can't stop. That's right, I'm talking to you. Don't even THINK about not reading the rest of this post.

Every. Last. Word. Of it.

Now they've gone and done it...

Everytime the little man has an idea, the "Man" steals it from him. Now, you'd think we'd appreciate this: being The Enfranchised, we're normally on the stealing end of that equation. We've been talking about Arthur Miller these past few days (in fact, odds are, you were directed here in search of information. Scroll down to see me follow the sordid chain of events.) But just when we're examining (in Pissing in the Wind, our crossfire-like panel discussion when my two co-bloggers try to out-ad hominem cable pundits) the ethics of getting attention from someone(else)'s death, I see this article in the Times.

A contestant in NBC's The Contender (a reference to On The Waterfront, an early version of which was scripted by none other than corpse of the hour Mr. Miller) committed suicide. NBC denies it's related to the events of the show, but you can't expect Joe Schmo to really believe that. I mean, he's dead now, by his own hand. Don't you think people would be watching his hurt feelings a little... closer. And imagine the grief of his family, forced to revisit... (If you haven't cried about it today, It's New To You! (Director's Cut joke for this parenthetical: something involving Must See. Do I really have to connect all the dots for you?))

NBC, of course, is not canceling the show. They're not even shelving it for a period of grieving. According to executives, nothing is changing.

Ha! Nothing is changing? Like this won't end up as a "Very Special Contender" or a lead-in of a Barbara Walters interview with the tear-stricken survivors (not Survivors -- that's a different network).

I guess the challenge, then, is not whether we should profit, in readership or ratings, over someone's death. But how to do it more efficiently than a unit of GE.

Pissing In The Wind: Autopsy of a Post-Mortem of an Obituary inside an Enigma

If you were reading this website 4 days ago, odds are I knew you. Today, however, odds are you clicked on an ad from google.com. You're looking for information about Arthur Miller. I followed reports of his death here. But we here at the Enfranchised have a broader vision. Part of that vision is, once a week, to argue.

And so, the question before us today is, should another part of that vision be opportunistic advertising? Bidding on keywords we tangentially discuss at best to lure readers into our spider's web of a site? Is it all right to commemorate one of our fallen comrades by using his demise as our foot in the door?

Of course, we're not alone. David Mamet banged out a tribute, just in case you forgot that he had not disappeared after Glengarry Glen Ross. (obligatory one-liner: I watched the network TV version of GGGR last night. It ran 15 minutes) Our ad was placed on google.com within 50 minutes of the news breaking, but since then such reputable establishments as NPR and the New York Times have outbid us for the traffic of mourners. So, we're at least in good company in our blatant grab at readership through morbidity.

So, commentators, tell me, is this how we want to become famous? Grabbing the eyeballs of innocent travelers wishing to console their grief over tragedy with information? Or are we, in
fact, just that desperate?

Also, in a well-structured 5-paragraph essay, choose any character from The Crucible and discuss what, if any, mistakes they make in the context of honesty, history, and the Protestant Work Ethic.

Cain was Abel and Biff was Happy

Complete non-sequitor headlines aside, we here at The Enfranchised were, like many others, saddened by the news of the passing of one of the great American writers.

Dan is joking, of course, when he suggests that Miller is to be admired most for wooing Norma Jean away from The Yankee Clipper. Though, it is perhaps sad in its own right that maybe the last man ever to have loved Monroe is gone from the earth. And sad, too, that we'll probably never see an American couple like that again---something tells me that Britney Spears and Thomas Pynchon won't marry, and that it wouldn't be quite the same even if they did.

David Mamet wrote what I think is one of the ballsier obits. In praising Miller's drama as appealing "not to the fashion of the moment, but to the problems both universal and eternal, as they are insoluble," Mamet also manages a bit of a fuck-you to the going fetishization of the "fetishization of the other" that garners MacArthur Genius Grants these days (do any of your readers doubt that when Mamet disses the "enthusiastic" "bad drama" of today he has Suzan Lori-Parks and Tony Kushner in mind?)

Truth is, I'd like to believe that Miller will be remembered as the last American playwright with any sense of subtlety. The Crucible is an ideological exorcism of America that is as scathing as it is discrete; Death of a Salesman annihilates our most deeply held illusions with such quietude that it almost feels nice.

When Simon and Garfunkel sang, famously, in The Graduate: "Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio?/ A Nation turns its lonely eyes to you..." Jumpin Joe's somewhat bewildered response was reported to be: "What do they mean? I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial."

If we can say anything for Marilyn's second husband, its that he won't be going anywhere, for a long, long time.

Post-mortem of an Obituary

Arthur Miller was as unto God to us of the Enfranchised. He made being white and male and comfortably middle-class but still ambitious something worth talking about and, more important, worth listening to. He combined rage and comedy, emotion and story. But the feat he achieved that makes him most worthy of our admiration is this: he won a girl (*the* girl, Marilyn Monroe) from a jock (*the* jock, Joe DiMaggio).

He died this morning. It will never be an event like JFK's assassination or 9/11. Instead, it's something we learn over coffee and/or donuts and then forget or remember. Well, for all of us except Arthur himself.

But how do we learn? How does news spread of this medium-sized-event? I took notes beginning with my discovery:

7:30: The NYTimes.com website has a news alert saying Arthur Miller is dead.
7:32: The Times proves itself to be twice the newspaper most others are by posting another, nearly-identical news alert. 2 minutes later, the first is gone.
7:35: ABCnews.com breaks a banner. Foxnews.com is still leading with the headline "Inside the Twisted Teacher-Student Sex Trend" (kids nowadays have no idea how good they ahve it) and the sidebar that sounds like a verse of that-song-where-you-repeat-it-each-time-using-only-one-vowel "Abbas vs. Hamas" (bonus points if you piece together how it would eventually tell of a conflict between musical-theater instruments and musical-theater lovers)
7:39: Foxnews.com updates it homepage. The banner at the top is a terse statement to the effect that Arthur Miller is dead. The image below is a burning police car in Iraq. My interpretation: if we stop "exposing the flaws in the fabric of the American Dream", the Terrorists Have Already Won(TM).
7:40: Cnn.com has the now-standard banner. A minute later, news.yahoo.com becomes the first news source I checked that acknowledged the issue, but only as the 5th article linked to, in small text. Apparently the computer that aggregates the feeds disliked The Crucible in 9th Grade Honors English.
7:42: The NYTimes.com replaces the banner with a prominently placed picture and a link to a canned obituary with date/cause of death scratched in.
7:45: CNN has paid its due fully. The banner is removed, and the demise of Arthur Miller is now the first link under "More News", playing second fiddle to an attack on a Bakery half-way around the world in an already war-torn region.
7:46: If you search on Google News, you finally get a link to an article from the Kansas City Star (ed. note: as near as I am aware, Arthur Miller never pronouned "Kansas City", let alone being a cultural institution on its Great White Way). In this article, Miller's caretaker declined to give a cause of death, compared to the New York Times, which had already reported it as "congestive heart failure" 4 minutes ago. How you gonna get a Pulitzer like that, huh, Kansas City Star?
7:49: CBSnews.com skips the banner, and links to its obituary with the heading "Death of a Playwright." I hope that if I ever die, you have the decency to honor me with a death of puns in the announcement of my demise. Thank you.

This story, I am sure, will continue to develop. But I am glad to have followed its workings thus far. I expect other news sites to give him the due he has earned in their estimation. IMDB will have a link on the right side, Amazon.com will offer you a good price on a 3-pack of his scripts (unless you're logging in on his account, in which case you're "The Page You Made" will be a great price on a coffin.

Join us next week when the New Yorker heaps praise upon Arthur Miller for precisely two paragraphs, reminiscing on his contributions to the magazine and its namesake, before explaining why he would have hated some facet of the current political administration.

I'm sorry if my analysis seems cynical, but it seems like every news source is predictable in their handling of his death: thoroughly opportunistic.

Present company included.

-Dan Bentley

The Enfranchised's first step

Foster makes many points and several good ones in his analysis of the album as an art form. But he misses the larger picture: the singles of yesteryear are different entirely in purpose and spirit than the singles we have thrust upon us today. So if Foster's was a scientific post, allow mine to be a whimsical historical journey. As with all looks backwards, there may be some anachronisms and mistakes, the erroneousness of which are now lost to the sands of time.

In the 50's, socks hopped, drives threw, and boobs were so pointy that second base required goggles. An album was released on a vinyl record disc. As I understand it, these were manufactured by artisan dinosaurs and this is why we no longer listen to them. Instead of bittorrenting an mp3 or iTunes Music Storing a single, less-catchily-abbreviated AAC, you committed to the entire concept. Let's say you started listening to this 12-inch monstrosity of information: in those days you'd be stuck listening to the entire thing. This means that if something came up in the middle (traditionally, this involved peasant rebellions, discovering a northwest passage, or something people used to do.), you couldn't just fast forward to the next track. So, to offer an alternative to support the Tower of Babble of such artists as Elvis and the Chimpanzys without fully buying in, the single was created. Take this token of musicality, it has pictures of the dreamboats, which is, we both know, the only reason you want to buy it, you horribly non-art-oriented "fan". And, while we're at it, on the B-side, we have to put *something*, so... here's some junk.

Nowadays, however, we can pick and choose. Pluck an apple of an AM/DC song or a cherry of a Green Dan tune. Album art has gone the way of Ascii art (that is to say, best taken in small, infrequent doses). The single, as it was originally conceived, is now the center. Why do they still bother, record companies? Fans have already bought the album, passers-by the tracks that were the hook.

The answer is that fans are stupid. They have no shame, wallets infinitely deep, and a thirst unquenchable. As an example, allow me to say, I like the Postal Service. I like the Postal Service the way that most people like Oxygen. If a woman, in an attempt to seduce me, were to play any track of theirs, I don't know how my pants could stay buttoned. (this is unfortunate because, to be honest, it wouldn’t have to be a woman doing the seduction, and, well, I'll continue to say that's the way the pig got into my bedroom until the day I die).

12:21 AM Tuesday, I check out iTMS's front page to find, lo and behold, a new album by them. But wait, it's a single I already own multiple times over ("We Will Become Silhouettes", a sickly-sweet rendition of our own mortality as reminded by, y'know, nukes). But wait, it has b-sides. One of these is "Be Still My Heart", a catchy jingle in its own right that's, in their vein, a sickly-sweet telling of some love story (this is one of their tracks that falls into the "with hope" category). The other two tracks are remixes that derive most of their goodness from the original.

And as I was downloading the tracks and my credit card was being charged, I realize, I would buy anything they put their name on, so long as I could get immediate gratification. No Postal Service lunchboxes until we perfect the lunchbox modem. But, sure, I'd join their fanclub to see more photos. Or, yeah, why not pay extra to hear the songs that people more versed in music than I decided were crap. I would expend capital on a (More Cowbell) remix.

And that's when I realized: I have a problem.


My name is Dan Bentley, I'm a Postal Service-holic, and B-sides are enablers.

The Discovery of Sub-Albumic Particles

Time was when the masters of Musicology practiced an archane and dark art. They wore flowing garments and charms, slept in subterranean quarters and ascended into the world of men only to bring blessings and tunes to house-parties and car tape-decks. They were melody-making medicine-men, Judas Priests if you will...Alright, they were the no-account longhair with the lazy eye at the Zeppelin concert; the roadie who could tune your Stratocaster pitch-perfect, but who couldn't play a lick himself; the guy in the garage with the headphones and the spliff; the Star Wars kid at the record store who could name all the David Bowie b-sides from the Ziggy Stardust to the foppish-fascist eras. They were the connoisseurs. They were the aficianados. They were the Tambourine Men---and they dealt exclusively in records.

Forgive me, I've just introduced a rather technical term of art without explicitly defining it. By record (record-album) will be meant, variously:

(a) A set of musical recordings stored together in jackets under one binding.
(b) The holder for such recordings.
(c) One or more 12-inch long-playing records in a slipcase.
(d) A phonograph record.
(e) A recording of different musical pieces.

There. Now, I'm sure even the most thorougly modern millie among you has come across one of these artifacts at one time or another. I remember my first find: It was at a waste disposal site about a hundred meters from from my basecamp. I stumbled upon 40 to 50 largely or fully intact specimens dating from the Late Acid-Lithic to the early Funktaceous. Most of the glyphics were too faded to be analyzed, but I conjectured from what was left of the markings on one sample that it was recorded by an artist formerly known (among contemporaries) as "Prince".

Needless to say my amateur musicological discoveries spurred me into investigating the archaeology of albums further. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a sort of faux-record shop in a local mall called "Tower Records". As it happens, "Tower Records" sells digitized plastic reproductions of record-albums, complete with replica dust jackets and liner notes! Who knew you could get mp3s for money??!?!

Since my awakening, I've become a bit of a reactionary vis-a-vis musicological theory. As those of you versed in the modern orthodoxies know, the at-the-time inconsequential discovery of sub-albumic particles ("singles"), as pioneered by the work of Casey Casem and Dick Clark in the 1950s and 1960s in particular, has led to the formulation of the radical "quantum" musicological mechanics, which explains musicological phenomena in terms of their "wave functions" (i.e. in terms of how often in a given time interval t they are broadcast over a given television or radio wave). The fundamental unit of analysis in quantum musicology (as opposed to the record-album of classical mechanics) is the "hook". The hook is not only sub-albumic, but sub-singular in nature (that is, it is smaller than a record single). Proponents of the hook mechanics claim that practical musicological systems (such as clubs, request shows, and even concerts) which at one time necessitated the time-consuming and tedious employment of singles or even entire albums, can now be recreated using only sub-albumic hooks (see the Usher World tour 2003-2004). These sympathizers further point to the tremendous explanatory power of the theory and its ability to accomodate the facts about teeny-boppers and metrosexual club-kids everywhere. Recent theoretical strides made by the collaborations of Aguilera and Daly (1998), Spears and Daly (1999), Nelly and Daly (2001) and Quddus and Kelis (2004) have only solidified Quantum Musicology's place as the dominant research paradigm of our generation.

As for me, I only wish that I didn't have to resort to such painfully overextended metaphors and third-rate wordplay to convince you troglodytes that you probably ought to listen to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or Blonde on Blonde, or Ring of Fire, or Pet Sounds, or London Calling or Born in the motherfucking U.S.A. at least once before you die from lack of novelty.

-The Man in Black

My Generation's Rodent-Catcher

Ah, one Super Bowl down. Salty snacks consumed, victors declared, predictions disproven. A fun day, and what a perfect ending it is to sit down to my favorite daily dose of pseudo-intellectualism to read that we're restarting development of nuclear warheads. Ah, a tranquil slumber I shall have tonig--

Wait. What?!

Faded legends are a sorry sight. And it would seem that we've become the elementary school bully in his first year at high school. The other bully has transferred to another school/broken up into a loosely-affiliated commonwealth of independent states (here my metaphor breaks down, just like the USSR did), and he's no longer feared/respected. Instead, he tries to show to anyone who will listen (fewer and fewer each day) that he still has it: he can still punch harder and taunt higher. But instead of doing the sensible thing and try to play along with everyone else in the schoolyard, he decides to get into a race with himself.

That's right, we're making sure we're able to respond to the threats of the 21st century with the weapons of the 20th. No longer will recent foes like "insurgents" or "Sudanese instigators of acts of horrific genocide" or "Large masses of water moving at high speed towards unsuspecting shores" attempt to threaten us in the realm of nuclear superiority.

The really amazing thing about the NYTimes article, though, is the opposition it presents. After explaining that the thrust of this program was to step back from designing sleek, sexy bombs capable of ending millions of lives to constructing stoic, sturdy instruments of mass tragedy, the Times quotes as a critic Dr. P. Leonardo Mascheroni, whose complaint is that the program... costs too much. Instead, he thinks that we should make "lighter, robust [harbingers of death and destruction]."

Now, you might think that I, as a member of The Enfranchised, should be happy about support for nuclear weapons, which are essentially a jobs program for physicists, bureaucrats, and other traditionally-white-and-male eggheads. Shouldn't I want people of my background to strike pay dirt? But I'm not just white and male, I'm ambitious. Companies already exist that want to fight over this meager pie.

Men of my sort have always had a Klondike. In the 19th Century, it was Gold or the Railroad. In the 50's, it was Nuclear Weapons (hence the staked claim). In the 60's: plastics. In the 80's: we made money selling money. That's right. You give us money, we'll invest it, and eventually give you more. S&L scandal: the genius that only an oppressive majority could create. In the early 90's we made our fortunes as expats, selling democracy. And since then, computers. Cyber this and eThat. But mark my words: computers are a dying fad, and I want to know, what next? Will we start cowering at "Big Solar" or fearing legislation written by the Pastry Lobby?

Somebody once said, "Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." The meaning of my recounting this quote should be obvious: maybe, just maybe, the lucrative trend of this decade will be aphorisms, false advice, and greeting cards.

Good Citizenship through Paranoia

I’m not a good person. I leave 12% tips on adequate service. I drink. I lust. I sloth. (slothe? Sloath? Sloth.) I don’t envy, but I’m jealous of those who can. I speed (more than the courtesy 10mph), I don’t use blinkers, and I make sure that if ever my wipers are on, my lights are off. And if I were alone, and had free time, in a room with a puppy and a knife… well… only one of us is walking out. And if you think I’m alone, well, maybe you don’t realize how evolution happened and why *they’re* *our* pets.

That being said, some things can scare me straight. The first time I meet a future mother-in-law (or as is more accurate, a soon-to-be-ex’s mother), I am on my bestest behavior with a cherry on top. I try to keep my swearing to a minimum in front of Friars, Fathers, and Nuns. And whenever I see the tell-tale markings of a lightbar on top of a caprice or a Crown Vic with governmental plates, I am the very model of Driver’s Ediquette.

The problem, of course, is that these markings are tell-tale. The silhouette of a bacon-mobile is easily recognizable, and radar detectors are a dime a dozen. This means that I am only in accordance with the laws and regulations of the road/municipality when I am being directly observed. All memory high school run-ins with the fine ladies and gentlemen of the New Providence Police Department to the contrary, cops have better things to do.

So, take this under advisement, procurement personnel of law-enforcement agencies across our fair land: branch out. Don’t restrict yourself to American sedans. Buy anything with 1.5-7 wheels, and use it to scare the shit out of us. I mean it: your job’s hard enough. Why not play with our minds?

Imagine if every Hyundai Boxy-wagon or Alfa Romeo roadster pulled to the side of a road were potentially a speed trap? No longer could you whiz by a Winnebago doing twice its speed: they might be SWAT team members on their way to see the Grand Canyon. Every impounded car or bicycle should be turned into another tool for enforcing ridiculously low limits on our ability to endanger myself and those near me.

It used to be that this was easily taken care of: every red-blooded American was decent and God-fearing. But the idea of an omniscient being who can see your every thought just isn’t as surprising in age of cell-phone cameras, surveillance photos, orbiting satellites, gossipy blogs, and attorney general Gonzales/PATRIOT act enforcer cyber-John-Ashcroft. So instead, instill fear in us with a reconstituted fleet of mopeds and Yugos with sirens hidden inside.

-D”I didn’t think I was even fighting the law, and the law won”an

The Challot

Ha! Wandering in the wasteland that is MY DOCUMENTS folder, I came across these articles I slipped under the noses of an oblivious administration in the April Fools Edition of my high school newspaper. Tell me folks, have you ever known a blogger who is so paradoxically both a smartass and dumbass?


STUDENT TOURISM TO LEBANON INCREASES 6430%
Dan Australianforbeer

Public opinion of Lebanon amongst RHS students has increased nearly seventy-fold in the past several years on the strength of a frenetic word-of-mouth campaign to encourage patronage in the war-torn Middle Eastern Nation.

"Beirut is the best! Woo-hoo!" screamed a sophomore girl who was reached for comment last Saturday night at the house of an anonymous senior whose parents were out of town. The girl’s speech was slurred and she walked with a noticeable disorientation, but even that couldn’t undercut her intense enthusiasm for Lebanon’s capital city.

"Everyone loves Beirut," remarked a prominent senior and organizer of several Beirut trips curiously referred to as ‘tournaments’. "After a hard week’s work you just want to unwind with your friends and have some fun. Beirut is the best thing for that, especially if your house is empty anyway." Trips to the Arab nation, located directly north of the troubled Israeli-Palestinian region, are sometimes planned and carried out with only a few hours notice, but some can last all night. "You don’t stop till you drop," claimed another RHS senior.

Many past and present tourists agree that all one needs to have fun in Beirut is several large plastic cups and a ping-pong ball. "Just don’t drink the Beirut water," one warned. "That’s just nasty."

________________________


ADMINISTRATION CENSORS ACTING LIKE A BUNCH OF [CENSORED] AGAIN
Smoove D

In the latest case of the incredible [censored] down in the [censored] department exerting their [censored]-like power over the ranks of RHS students, Administration officials have forbidden an article titled "[Censored] gerbils: A tale of [censored], [censored] and candlelit dinners" from running in the spring issue of The Yak.

When asked what he thinks about the re-[censored]-diculous censorship, Executive Editor Dan Foster responded, "I think it’s a bunch of [censored]ing bull[censored]." He went on to add vehemently, "If I had just one [censored] I’d grab them by their [censored] [censored] and drag them down to the nearest [censored] so I could [censored] them to the [censored] with their own [censored]. Then I’d really get angry."

This sanction is just the latest in the months long campaign of censorship by the [censored]faced administration. One senior official, clearly seen to be wearing a frilly [censored] beneath his three-piece suit, stated that the administration’s intentions are simply "to create a cleaner, more decent student-[censored] and a better learning environment." Also deemed indecent by the higher-ups was the AP Biology unit titled "The Descent of [censored] sapiens and How Man Came to Stand [censored]."

A group of students protested outside the office of one senior official, who’s home is reportedly heated by a stack of burning books, but their demands went unheard as a swarm of censors flanked them on all sides with Parental Advisory stickers.


______________________________

Why the Eagles will win the Super Bowl

The Eagles will win the Super Bowl this year. I know this not because of sports certainty or information gleaned from analysis of marketplaces acting as conglomerators of insider knowledge. No, I know it for a stronger reason: narrative necessity.

Just look at the backstories. The Patriots have... what, exactly? They're Goliath. The favorites. They've won 2 out of the last 3 years. If they win, it's just setting them up as the mini-Yankees. And with the Red Sox already sucking up all the Miracle that the greater Boston Area could expect for the next three centuries.... No magic there, my friends.

But the Eagles are underdogs writ large. Terrell Owens managed to turn his privilege into a handicap by breaking his ankle or tibia or fibumacallit at just the right time to make his return triumphant and daring. Who can imagine any ending to this day other than him pushing himself harder than he should, extending a distressed joint just a bit more to make the catch. Sacrificing his body for the game. Wait, no, sorry: Sacrificing His Body For The Game.

But the real glory is Jeff Thomason: the assistant project manager at a Philadelphia construction company is back in the saddle. We all know the story: a has-been or a never-was that is suddenly thrust into the limelight. He wasn't even expecting to be playing, and here he is... The whole stadium starts chanting "Rudy". I mean, what the Eagles have is the destiny of every cliché sports feel-good movie.

The Patriots have two options to pursue if they want half-a-shot at the Lombardi Cup. 1) They could fire all their starters and replace them with a motley mix of cripples, orphans, and three-legged puppies. This unfortunately would start a bidding war with the Eagles, and end up with next year's top draft pick being used on a 7-year-old albino forced to enter the coal-mines to feed his family asbestos (the only thing he can afford on his meager wages) who has both emphysema and pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis.

Or, 2) they could up the ante and return the Eagles' dramatic story with a buddy comedy. Hire as their new wide receiver: a midget. A funny one, suitable of being in Jack Ass or Yet Another Mike Myers Movie. And aside from the physical humor of his lowered Hummer that has platinum-plated phonebooks for him to sit on, he contributes to the playing: the quarterback gives him the ball, then engages in everyone favorite illegal sport, midget tossing, and picks up a decent 7 yards.

So, keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground, and maybe we'll find out that this Sunday, we'll see not a matchup of the NFC and the AFC, but instead of tired heart-wrenching/tear-jerker vs. odd-couple/fish-out-of-water/Adam Sandler vehicle.

-D"Oh, and of course, everyone's actual favorite illegal sport is cockfighting"an

On Porn, Psuedo-Porn, and Pornicular References.

We're never happy with what we have. And just as it's true with mates, so it's true even with fantasies. If a woman's panties are bikini, we want them thong. If they were to magically become thong, we'd be unhappy because they're crotchful (the opposite of crotchless). Why, even if a woman is going the other way, hoping to lure us with the sex appeal of the librarian-type that appeals to the bibliophile in each of us, we need her sweater's neckline higher and its fabric fluffier. Why aren't we ever satisfied?

I do, from time to time, imbibe. And Thanksgiving last, I may have hit several bottles too hard. So I did what every red-blooded pseudo-intellectual does in this circumstance: I pointed my browser to magazineline.com and subscribed to, in order of increasing trashiness: The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Playboy, and Maxim. I have yet to receive either hard-hitting journalism or cutting-edge fiction/not-nearly-witty-enough poetry/extra umlauts. But their absence has given me time a-plenty to examine the latter two.

And they lust for what they cannot show. Maxim, bless its heart, self-flagellates whenever it misses an opportunity to convey the presence of nipple. And Playboy's id comes out in cartoons that depict what its suggestive photospreads never can: that intercourse occurs. But allow me to point out a few techniques I have identified across these fine wastes of paper:

• The holding-of-boobs: What bra is sexier than other flesh? In this strategy, a model obviously has bare breasts, and you can imagine that if you were to throw a ball at her, she might instinctively catch it. And haha: tatas! Plus, if she has oversized knuckles, you might be able to make out aureola behind those slim digits.
  

• The untying-of-strings: I believe it was Xeno who first examined the paradoxes of catching motion in the still. But it was Plato who first took pictures of naked boys, so I don't know whom to credit. But in this scheme, the model is shown untying her bottom, leaving the reader to fast-forward the scene but five precious seconds, allowing gravity to exert its sworn influence and remove the offending items of cloth.
  

• The doubling-of-porn-implied: This is my favorite. The previous devices have aroused imagination (and other things, yes, you perv) by making the mind's eye envision what probably didn't actually happen in these clinical-and-awfully-contrived photoshoots. But by taking a model, and hiding her "goodies" by having her stand against a mirror, over water, or in relation to some other reflective surface, the brain behind the camera makes that literary metaphor turn into the mind's cross-eyed: in the lecher's thoughts, there are now TWO naked women! And if only one would turn, there would be doubly-exposed pubic hair! Oh paradise!

Oh, and a note to Enfranchised followers: you may have noticed that our Crossfire like segment is entitled "Pissing in the Wind", and that last week it centered around issues of gender. This produced a notable upswing in traffic, almost entirely resulting from yahoo! searches for such esteemed subjects as "women pissing", "men observing men masturbate", "johnny carson ringtone", and the ever-popular "PISSING ON MEN." Now, I am not one to take advantage of hapless travelers. So I would be the last person to advertise this as the best site for "donkey punches." But if someone were to take "free golden showers" out of context or misinterpret the occurrence of words such as "ass rape with head in toilet.mpg", would I be taking advantage of them per se, or human nature?

And on a personal note, I guess I'm a bit... disappointed in the allegedly depraved nature of the web if such oblique references can boost me to the top of the hill for such specific queries. Obviously, our nation is in trouble if the above is the best hit it can produce for "urination olympics."

On Morality, Mortality, and Mor....pality?

Death's a funny thing. And I don't mean ha-ha funny (though which of us could stifle a laugh when James Cameron inflicted blunt emotional trauma on a computer-generated passenger in Titanic by having her fall onto one of that grand ship's propellers and tumble end over end to her icy demise?). I mean it makes people act funny in that crazy-if-poor/eccentric-if-rich kind of way.

Take the case of Michael Bruce Ross, a Connecticutian condemned to die. He has decided to stop appealing and face his punishment. Sounds reasonable enough, but it has spun up positively a tizzy in this small state already rocked by gubernatorial resignations and cancer.

Catch-22: some people think he's stopping his appeals not out of a recognition of guilt, but a desire to commit suicide by bureaucracy. Of course, suicide is illegal, so if this is why he's doing it, then we can't kill him.

Catch-23: Apparently T.R. Paulding (a man I can only imagine, from his name, resembles an egg in shape and gait), Mr. Ross's lawyer, is not a good attorney. You see, a good attorney would have exhausted all his appeals, done research, established his client's sanity before this point, and so Mr. Ross could be executed without hold-up. But the chief federal judge in Connecticut chewed out Mr. Paulding for errors that I'm guessing are legalistic and mundane in detail. This means that Mr. Paulding can no longer represent the dead man walking. Which means Ross has no counsel. And so can't be executed. The end result being that the only kind of lawyer who can save your life is not a Harvard Law, Yale undergrad lawyer. Instead, if you want to get off scot-free, you should hire an alcoholic child-beater with a sub-clinical case of kleptomania who is more likely to be passed out in a bar than to pass the bar exam.