The reality of it is that books -- novels, I mean -- are competing with all other “entertainment” media, including You Tube, Twitter, video games, pop music, movies, television, and a few things I’m sure I haven’t heard of yet. And if this really is the case, novels probably don’t stand much of a chance against these more visual, more interactive, and less time-intensive activities (though in the aggregate, people spend much more time, or waste it, doing these things than they do reading novels). The question is, can writers find a way to refashion the novel so that it would appeal on a more visual level, or an interactive one, and pump up its competitive chops in the almighty marketplace?
I’m skeptical, to a great degree, because there’s no getting past the fact that consuming a novel is to read, not to view. And to insert, say in an ebook, video clips, musical excerpts, other sounds and images, or even the voices of characters, would be to push the novel beyond its own “novelness” and into the realm of performance.
One quintessential thing about the novel is that it is writtten by a single person; it’s not a collaborative effort. Introducing video and sound would involve other participants in the creation of the book -- directors, videographers, designers, actors -- and that would make it more of a hybrid thing, multimedia. Novels would need a production budget to get completed, and that would be a shame since writing a novel is probably the cheapest creative endeavor anyone can undertake. I happen to appreciate art that comes from the mind of a single person as opposed to a committee. Collaboration is often an avenue toward dilution, corruption (in the “less than it could be” sense), and sacrifice of quality in favor of marketability.
But it occurred to me, while reading a sample of David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, that well-placed and relevant graphics can enhance a novel in a way that might attract more readers. A hundred years ago, many novels were illustrated, a practice that probably ended because of the expense of an illustrator, but I wonder now if there isn’t such an enormous stock of public domain images available that a novel could easily be illustrated with them for next to nothing. Authors could also create their own illustrations with photography or drawing, with collage, or even their own handwriting. From what I can tell, Mitchell uses illustrations to depict certain actual things or events in the book, such as what appears to be a seventeenth or eighteenth century drawing of a breech birth. In many ways, it supports his already vivid description by showing the reader how accurate his description is.
I remember the Griffin & Sabine books of the early ‘90s, when I was impressed by the tactile experience and the vivid detail and color of the materials Neil Bantock used to accompany his words. Not every illustrated novel could be that lush.
Nor could the illustrated novel approach the comic-style graphic novel -- an entirely different beast. The idea wouldn’t be to show every moment in images, only to highlight, enhance, pique, and lead, surprising the reader every now and then with something visual to contemplate.
For instance, I’ve written a novel that takes place in California in the late 1800s, and while working on it I came across a number of photos, maps, drawings, and portraits that enabled me to visualize scenes and locations much more clearly. It would be interesting to include some of them in the book, if it ever gets published (unlikely, it seems), not so much to show a reader what a particular character looks like or to dramatize a moment but to evoke a mood and subtly guide the reader toward a certain way of interpreting the language. W. G. Sebald famously used photographs in his novels for this purpose, and one of the best examples I can recall is Kurt Vonnegut’s drawings in Breakfast of Champions. There were times when his simple Magic Marker artwork made me laugh harder than his brilliantly funny writing.
It’s been a tough task for me to admit that today’s reader is largely different from the reader I was taught to be thirty years ago. Whereas I was encouraged to use my imagination taking in a novel, readers today, especially younger ones, seem to need visual cues because they are less attuned to (or less impressed with) the language. Raised on movies, TV, music videos, and the Web, they appreciate a more literal kind of stimulation. Books, and sentences, are getting shorter. Authors are putting promo clips on You Tube, as if seeing the author is more important to readers than hearing about a book from friends or reviews. And nothing sells books like a movie version, with a major star or two. These days, the experience of a novel has to encompass things beyond the novel itself -- how it came to be written, the author’s life story, how the book relates to the reader’s life. These are elements that weren’t much of a consideration before, or at least the lack of detail in these areas didn’t prevent readers from picking up any given novel. J.D. Salinger would have died in obscurity if he’d come of writing age today.
As I acquaint myself with the Nook, and compare it to the iPad’s bling factor, I can see that the publishing industry will be forced into a more aggressively multimedia approach in the future. The image has displaced the word as our primary unit of communication, though I’m not convinced that means the novel will become obsolete. As long as there is a demand for storytelling, or I should say sophisticated storytelling (and it’s debatable that there is such a demand), there will be a pool of readers for novelists to reach.
The problem will be how to reach a larger audience that will make the novel economically viable in the competitive media marketplace. Appealing to the visual might be one way novelists can evolve with the culture.
All of this is not to say that tossing a few illustrations between a novel’s covers will bring about a renaissance of the written word. Novelists will have to be as careful with the images they use as they are with words. But when the audience has changed, and the survival of the genre itself is at stake, it seems logical and even necessary to adapt.
I don’t mean to say that all novels must have images in them from now on. Only that, sometimes, and maybe more often than we’d like to think, readers will have to be drawn in and compelled to buy a book not because the prose of the opening page is so riveting and lucent but because a picture catches their eye and speaks to them in a way -- subliminally, subtly -- that words don’t achieve on first pass anymore.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Consternatio
Being told by my agent that I’m more or less blacklisted among editors because my first novel didn’t sell well enough to give me a second chance. This is like sending a rookie up to the plate and taking him out of the game after he fouls off the first pitch. In publishing, there’s no such thing as three strikes you’re out. Now it’s one strike and you’re finished -- for good.
I’m livid. It flies in the face of the perseverance instinct every writer is supposed to have. I’d never have gotten the first book published if I’d been inclined to give up after a hundred rejections. Make that a thousand. And so my inclination now is to fight this apparent fact of life and keep going. All of us who have struggled at any kind of serious art don’t like to think that there’s no point in carrying on, and yet, the older I get, the more obvious it is that editors don’t judge a work on its merits. They judge the writer. A seven-year-old “track record” is more meaningful to them than the quality of the book in front of them and whatever potential it might have.
I’m thinking a lot of that old Woody Allen movie, The Front, lately. He plays the public face of some blacklisted writers in the 1950s, during the McCarthy purges, helping them continue to write and earn their livings. It might be time for something like that for me. If I have to outsmart the publishing industry in order to persevere (as I’ve been taught and encouraged to do all my writing life), then, what the hell, I’ll do it. And I’m not thinking of a pseudonym either, because, for one thing, my agent seems cool to the idea. For another, there’s something ironically pathetic about assuming a fictional identity to publish fiction.
No, instead I’m thinking about my wife as my front. She’d be terrific. She’s my best editor and my best reader. She gets my slant, my approach, my style, and my intentions. And to be completely honest about it, she’d be a much better public persona than I am (was). I hated readings and appearances, radio interviews, the constant BS of marketing. She was an aspiring actress when she was younger. Now’s her chance.
I suppose there are potential legal issues that could get me in trouble. I don’t care at this point. It’s the make-or-break moment when I either dig a way around the system’s obstacles or I quit. I’m not quite ready to quit.
In fact, there’s a new idea I want to start writing notes for today...
I’m livid. It flies in the face of the perseverance instinct every writer is supposed to have. I’d never have gotten the first book published if I’d been inclined to give up after a hundred rejections. Make that a thousand. And so my inclination now is to fight this apparent fact of life and keep going. All of us who have struggled at any kind of serious art don’t like to think that there’s no point in carrying on, and yet, the older I get, the more obvious it is that editors don’t judge a work on its merits. They judge the writer. A seven-year-old “track record” is more meaningful to them than the quality of the book in front of them and whatever potential it might have.
I’m thinking a lot of that old Woody Allen movie, The Front, lately. He plays the public face of some blacklisted writers in the 1950s, during the McCarthy purges, helping them continue to write and earn their livings. It might be time for something like that for me. If I have to outsmart the publishing industry in order to persevere (as I’ve been taught and encouraged to do all my writing life), then, what the hell, I’ll do it. And I’m not thinking of a pseudonym either, because, for one thing, my agent seems cool to the idea. For another, there’s something ironically pathetic about assuming a fictional identity to publish fiction.
No, instead I’m thinking about my wife as my front. She’d be terrific. She’s my best editor and my best reader. She gets my slant, my approach, my style, and my intentions. And to be completely honest about it, she’d be a much better public persona than I am (was). I hated readings and appearances, radio interviews, the constant BS of marketing. She was an aspiring actress when she was younger. Now’s her chance.
I suppose there are potential legal issues that could get me in trouble. I don’t care at this point. It’s the make-or-break moment when I either dig a way around the system’s obstacles or I quit. I’m not quite ready to quit.
In fact, there’s a new idea I want to start writing notes for today...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Et alia
Some time ago, I read an item here or there that suggested maybe I (and a lot of other people) was tying my shoes the wrong way. At first I pshawed the idea, but in a little while I recalled some instances when my shoes had come untied for no apparent reason.
If you're like me, you learned to tie your shoes when you were about five or six, and nobody ever said you were doing it wrong. If you made a bow and got the ends of the laces more or less the same length, you were a pro. But as it turns out, most of us have been tying granny knots all along, and everyone knows a granny knot will work itself loose and come untied. Sailors don't use granny knots for just that reason. Why use them on your shoes?
So, the solution is to tie your shoes with square knots, i.e., to make that loop from the other direction (too hard to explain) than the one you've been using your entire life. It takes some practice, but I've found that I can't tie a granny now if I try. And my shoes don't come untied anymore.
All this at the age of 53.
If you're like me, you learned to tie your shoes when you were about five or six, and nobody ever said you were doing it wrong. If you made a bow and got the ends of the laces more or less the same length, you were a pro. But as it turns out, most of us have been tying granny knots all along, and everyone knows a granny knot will work itself loose and come untied. Sailors don't use granny knots for just that reason. Why use them on your shoes?
So, the solution is to tie your shoes with square knots, i.e., to make that loop from the other direction (too hard to explain) than the one you've been using your entire life. It takes some practice, but I've found that I can't tie a granny now if I try. And my shoes don't come untied anymore.
All this at the age of 53.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Consternatio
Holy Humbaba, I think my dear old friend might be a Tenther!
You know the Tenthers, right? They’re the Tea Party types (shit, he’s probably a Tea Partier too!) who think that the tenth amendment to the Constitution essentially nullifies most if not all federal programs. Usually they point to programs like Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, and the EPA, claiming that these tyrannical mandates are beyond the scope of federal power as described in the amendment. The amendment says just this: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Without doing volumes of research, I’ve learned that the Supreme Court has generally not swallowed the conceit that only powers named in the Constitution are due the federal government. There have been tenth amendment movements in the past, but seldom has the Court found in favor of the argument, instead landing on the strength of the Commerce Clause to justify the constitutionality of the challenged laws.
My friend -- the evangelical -- has been making Tea Party noises lately, which doesn’t surprise me, since he’s always been archly conservative. What does surprise, and trouble, me now is that this remarkably smart man is using the remarkably unsmart arguments of the TP, the Tenthers, and for all I know the Birthers to defend his positions. When I questioned his interpretation of the tenth amendment, though, he claimed he didn’t intend to imply that Social Security and Medicare were illegitimate; his beef, he said, is strictly with the new health care bill’s individual mandate. If that were the case, however, he should also be against the employer’s share of Social Security, a mandate that covers all states and all businesses.
If I had any faith in the Supreme Court’s respect for stare decisis, I wouldn’t worry about a tenth amendment challenge to the health care bill. But the Tenthers have introduced a meme, and if my friend is beaming the meme, I’m sure the Court (I mean the five conservatives) is tuned into it as well. It would provide cover for a decision that would open the door toward ending the landmark social programs of the 20th century, which, against their best interests, a large portion of the U.S. population would applaud. As I pointed out to my friend, without Social Security and Medicare millions of elderly folks would be living with their adult children and relying on them to pay for their medical needs. That would sure cramp the style of our consumer economy, wouldn’t it?
It seems to me that the Tenthers are in search of a single button to push that would relieve all their frustrations with our political system, first and foremost of which is the fact that the country is something of a democracy. They’re angry that things aren’t the way they want them, and I say, Join the frickin’ club! But what they want is capitulation of all our institutions, by means of the tenth amendment, so that we become nothing but a conglomeration of states with independent societies and fifty different sets of standards.
It’s unworkable. And I hope my friend doesn’t really see things the way those twerps in the tri-cornered hats at the Tea Party rallies do.
You know the Tenthers, right? They’re the Tea Party types (shit, he’s probably a Tea Partier too!) who think that the tenth amendment to the Constitution essentially nullifies most if not all federal programs. Usually they point to programs like Social Security, Medicare, the minimum wage, and the EPA, claiming that these tyrannical mandates are beyond the scope of federal power as described in the amendment. The amendment says just this: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Without doing volumes of research, I’ve learned that the Supreme Court has generally not swallowed the conceit that only powers named in the Constitution are due the federal government. There have been tenth amendment movements in the past, but seldom has the Court found in favor of the argument, instead landing on the strength of the Commerce Clause to justify the constitutionality of the challenged laws.
My friend -- the evangelical -- has been making Tea Party noises lately, which doesn’t surprise me, since he’s always been archly conservative. What does surprise, and trouble, me now is that this remarkably smart man is using the remarkably unsmart arguments of the TP, the Tenthers, and for all I know the Birthers to defend his positions. When I questioned his interpretation of the tenth amendment, though, he claimed he didn’t intend to imply that Social Security and Medicare were illegitimate; his beef, he said, is strictly with the new health care bill’s individual mandate. If that were the case, however, he should also be against the employer’s share of Social Security, a mandate that covers all states and all businesses.
If I had any faith in the Supreme Court’s respect for stare decisis, I wouldn’t worry about a tenth amendment challenge to the health care bill. But the Tenthers have introduced a meme, and if my friend is beaming the meme, I’m sure the Court (I mean the five conservatives) is tuned into it as well. It would provide cover for a decision that would open the door toward ending the landmark social programs of the 20th century, which, against their best interests, a large portion of the U.S. population would applaud. As I pointed out to my friend, without Social Security and Medicare millions of elderly folks would be living with their adult children and relying on them to pay for their medical needs. That would sure cramp the style of our consumer economy, wouldn’t it?
It seems to me that the Tenthers are in search of a single button to push that would relieve all their frustrations with our political system, first and foremost of which is the fact that the country is something of a democracy. They’re angry that things aren’t the way they want them, and I say, Join the frickin’ club! But what they want is capitulation of all our institutions, by means of the tenth amendment, so that we become nothing but a conglomeration of states with independent societies and fifty different sets of standards.
It’s unworkable. And I hope my friend doesn’t really see things the way those twerps in the tri-cornered hats at the Tea Party rallies do.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Et alia
Recently I had a moment of weakness in my stand against electronic book readers and ordered a Barnes & Noble Nook when the price dropped. I paid $149 for the new Wi-Fi version, a damn sight cheaper than the original price of the Nook, Amazon’s Kindle, and the Apple iPad. My opinion of these machines has changed.
The thing arrived the other day, and I’ve been playing around with it obsessively. Over the holiday weekend I was able to download a bunch of American classic literature for free at the Barnes & Noble site, a great way to familiarize myself with the Nook’s features and quirks. It does have a number of each.
First of all, the experience of reading on this little pad is quite different from reading a book. The screen is only 4” x 5”, smaller than the print width of the average hardback. Even smaller than a mass market paperback. Depending on the font size you choose, the text can look more like a newspaper column than a book page. I imagine this is something I’ll get used to.
Navigating the Nook’s menu system is a little tricky too. You can return to the main menu, which appears on the backlit touchscreen at the bottom of the unit, by tapping a touch-sensitive button just above it, yet I often find myself getting yanked out of the book I’m reading when I push a back-arrow on the touchscreen, thinking it will take me to a control panel instead. This is mainly due to my learning curve, but also partly to the software that controls the Nook. It isn’t all that user friendly, but this too shall pass. Users adapt.
B&N is touting the cover flow feature -- you can show the covers of your personal library or of books you might buy -- but I find the images to be so tiny that using them to I.D. books is almost laughable. It’s true that an image you select by touching it gets a little bigger, yet the type is still mighty small. Still, it gives you an idea of what the actual book looks like, if you were to hold it in your hands. You can imagine it while reading the electronic version, if that makes you happy.
I do appreciate the built-in dictionary and the ability to highlight passages and enter notes on the text. The control panel that handles these functions, though, along with the itty bitty touchscreen keyboard, are a bit sluggish and funky, since there’s a slight delay between your touch and the cursor’s movement. Even so, these are nice features that enhance the reading experience. If you’re the type to write marginalia in your books, this lets you do it without marring a perfectly pristine copy. You can also hide or delete any comments you’ve made.
Buying ebooks via B&N is a breeze using the on-board Wi-Fi, which communicates with your home network or any AT&T Wi-Fi hotspot (or even B&N’s in-store Wi-Fi). Once you tap the “Buy” button, the book is delivered electronically and you can start reading. Searching for books to buy is another story, though. If you know the specific title or author, you’ll have no trouble, but I tried a few searches that yielded either thousands of hits or none at all. Maybe I’m too used to the web-based approach, where I can change the search criteria more quickly.
One attraction of the Nook, or any ebook reader, is access to the hundreds of thousands of texts that have been digitized by Google. They’re all free, and they include most if not all of the Western canon going back to the ancient Greeks. I have a very hard time reading Google books online, so the Nook is a valuable tool for that purpose. The only problem is that sometimes the formatting can be odd, or special characters are misunderstood. This isn’t Nook’s fault; it’s the Google text-recognition software that reads, for instance, 1806 as 180G (in John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography.) You get what you pay for, ultimately, but at least you can stock up on the classics if you’re willing to overlook the tics.
I don’t mean to be comprehensive in this little review, but despite the minor flaws I find the Nook strangely impossible to put down. Knowing that I already have fifteen or twenty books in it, I’m giddy to think that I can take a break from Lady Chatterley’s Lover and dip into Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations for a while. Or buy something new because I feel like it. (I have my eye on Mr. Peanut.) Gradually the reading experience itself will feel completely natural, and I can foresee spending a lot more money on books than I have over the last few years.
Ebooks won’t displace tangible books for a long time -- probably not till paper gets too expensive to use for all those schlocky thrillers and vampire novels -- and not everybody will come to appreciate them. But think about what a book really is: words painstakingly arranged to deliver information or art to the reader. The ebook is as capable of that as traditional ink-on-paper. We can romanticize the physical book, just like we romanticize the neighborhood book store, but both are slowly becoming obsolete the same way hand-copied books became irrelevant after Gutenberg. There was a time when people were nostalgic for the parchment scroll, after all.
Should we fight it? Or should we accept that this is a transitional age in which new technologies will actually make it easier for people to read what they want, when they want? Or simply to read more. This is good.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Observatio
Photo: Syracuse Cultural WorkersEveryone’s growing vegetables in their yards around here. Even I’m doing it, and I’ve never been the type to follow the crowd or, for that matter, to care whether a specific plant lives or dies.
In the past, I always concentrated on tomatoes, because it’s true what they say: you can’t get a tomato in a grocery store like the ones you used to have when you were a kid. Grocery store tomatoes are red styrofoam seed-delivery devices. A tomato -- a really good one -- should bring you close to a juicy lingual orgasm. Always eat the good ones in private.
This year I’ve branched out into peppers, zucchini, green beans, beets, carrots, radishes, lettuce, cucumbers, and melons. If I’m lucky I’ll get two or three edible samples of each by the time harvest comes around. Because it’s a daily struggle to keep these goddamn things alive. The gophers, the insects, the snails, the diseases, the cats, the heat, the weeds -- my God, it feels like all of Nature wants my garden dead, and it’s only my constant, obsessive intervention that spares it. Now that I’ve eaten a few of my own carrots, I’m devoted to its survival.
What I don’t like about the home-vegetable movement, though, is how some people are going a little wild with it. A lot of our neighbors around here have dug up their front yards, installing raised beds and irrigation systems, compost heaps, trellises for the climbing plants, and even deer fencing to keep out the foragers. As practical as the idea might seem, these micro-farms are universally eyesores, especially when the “farmer” doesn’t have quite the green thumb he thinks he has. As far as landscaping goes, I’d lean toward a carpet of blooming dandelions over some of these little experiments in locavore living.
This all seems like a fad to me, and I’m guessing that this one will last another year or two, till people have a chance to compare the costs of maintaining a vegetable patch with the amount of food it actually produces for them (see Manny Howard’s cautionary tale, My Empire of Dirt). Looking at my own humble operation, I think I’ll have saved about eleven bucks all in all.
I’m not sure it’s worth it, but, damn, will those tomatoes taste good.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Et alia
If this isn't the craziest f&%$#*g thing I've ever heard. The Candwich. A sandwich in a can. You know -- for the kids!
Apparently it's not on store shelves yet, and might never be, since the creator is in some legal hot water, according to the Daily Mail. Still, I feel better just knowing a product like this might exist one day. Something to live for.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Et alia
How is future technology affecting us today?
Here and there you’ll read science fiction or speculative articles that wonder aloud about time travel and other technological advances that might come about one day. You can think yourself into dizzying loops over this stuff.
For instance, it’s conceivable, if you believe time travel will become possible in the future, that our present world -- the only one we have access to -- is being manipulated by time travelers. That would explain a lot, when you think about it (George Bush? President? Two terms?). Everyone knows, given our state of understanding, that you don’t go back in time and start changing things, because you can’t control the ripple effect that will carry forward to your own time. It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences at work, like nuclear fallout. But who’s to say that future engineers haven’t found a way around that trap? Maybe they’ve discovered how to isolate particular changes, like taking one puzzle piece out of a jigsaw and replacing it with another. The rest of the puzzle remains the same, with only the single element altered.
If this is the case and some of the weird wild stuff going on in the world today is caused by “chrononauts” (for want of a better term), all we can do is hope that their interests coincide with ours at some point, since there’s no way to engage them or negotiate if they don’t want to be detected. (Colbert and Michio Kaku went into this the other night. Invisibility cloaks!) Even if someone stood up and identified herself as a time traveler (let’s say women are the the dominant gender in the year 2525), we’d quickly have her certified and locked up in a mental hospital, no? One day, word of her escape would hit the news, but the truth is she’ll have vanished from a locked cell without a trace...
Another possibility I heard of a while back is that computing might become so advanced in the next thousand years or so that we can’t trust that we are “actual” human beings but rather avatars in a virtual reality constructed to test some theory or complex algorithm. Our behavior is being analyzed by a programmer (this would be God, one way of looking at it), who is trying to solve an existential problem in her own era.
Or we could be figures in some goofy teenager’s video game. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.
I wish we could have faith that the people of the future will have their priorities straight, but if human nature doesn’t evolve much over the next millennium, I’m afraid these chrononauts and software engineers will be as blind and self-destructive as we are.
Here and there you’ll read science fiction or speculative articles that wonder aloud about time travel and other technological advances that might come about one day. You can think yourself into dizzying loops over this stuff.
For instance, it’s conceivable, if you believe time travel will become possible in the future, that our present world -- the only one we have access to -- is being manipulated by time travelers. That would explain a lot, when you think about it (George Bush? President? Two terms?). Everyone knows, given our state of understanding, that you don’t go back in time and start changing things, because you can’t control the ripple effect that will carry forward to your own time. It’s the Law of Unintended Consequences at work, like nuclear fallout. But who’s to say that future engineers haven’t found a way around that trap? Maybe they’ve discovered how to isolate particular changes, like taking one puzzle piece out of a jigsaw and replacing it with another. The rest of the puzzle remains the same, with only the single element altered.
If this is the case and some of the weird wild stuff going on in the world today is caused by “chrononauts” (for want of a better term), all we can do is hope that their interests coincide with ours at some point, since there’s no way to engage them or negotiate if they don’t want to be detected. (Colbert and Michio Kaku went into this the other night. Invisibility cloaks!) Even if someone stood up and identified herself as a time traveler (let’s say women are the the dominant gender in the year 2525), we’d quickly have her certified and locked up in a mental hospital, no? One day, word of her escape would hit the news, but the truth is she’ll have vanished from a locked cell without a trace...
Another possibility I heard of a while back is that computing might become so advanced in the next thousand years or so that we can’t trust that we are “actual” human beings but rather avatars in a virtual reality constructed to test some theory or complex algorithm. Our behavior is being analyzed by a programmer (this would be God, one way of looking at it), who is trying to solve an existential problem in her own era.
Or we could be figures in some goofy teenager’s video game. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.
I wish we could have faith that the people of the future will have their priorities straight, but if human nature doesn’t evolve much over the next millennium, I’m afraid these chrononauts and software engineers will be as blind and self-destructive as we are.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Consternatio
In another perfect metaphor for our times, I learn today that The Beatles Complete on Ukulele has come to an abrupt end. Son of a bitch!
Oh, it was an ambitious project, to be sure, to write about and perform (on ukulele and other assorted lo-fi gear) every Beatles' tune in time for the Summer Olympics in London, '012. Roger Greenawalt and Dave Barratt, the inspired ones, have been making my Tuesdays special ever since I read about them on Boing Boing.
Israel and the Palestinians will never achieve peace in our time. Barack Obama will never fill the suit we imagined him in. The Cubs will never win the World Series, but please, boys, R & D, give me something to hope for in this wasteland of a century we're slogging through!
You know what they say: "Life is very short, and there's not ti-i-i-i-ime for fussing and fighting, my friend."
Oh, it was an ambitious project, to be sure, to write about and perform (on ukulele and other assorted lo-fi gear) every Beatles' tune in time for the Summer Olympics in London, '012. Roger Greenawalt and Dave Barratt, the inspired ones, have been making my Tuesdays special ever since I read about them on Boing Boing.
Israel and the Palestinians will never achieve peace in our time. Barack Obama will never fill the suit we imagined him in. The Cubs will never win the World Series, but please, boys, R & D, give me something to hope for in this wasteland of a century we're slogging through!
You know what they say: "Life is very short, and there's not ti-i-i-i-ime for fussing and fighting, my friend."
Monday, July 5, 2010
Observatio
It occurred to me last night that I can’t remember a lot about many of the houses I’ve lived in since I was a kid. I can easily, and in plenty of detail, recall certain parts of them all, but I can’t seem to do a mental walk-through and point out where closets were, what the baseboards were like, the window hardware, how many steps to the second floor. It’s as if my brain has erased the transitional spaces, in particular, the nooks and crannies and all those little things we take for granted every day because they’re in the background.
One house in particular is a real blur. My family lived there for only a few months when my mother couldn’t afford the mortgage on the one home we’d really gotten used to. (Not her fault, by the way.) The new place was a rental in a different part of the county, meaning that we’d be going to a different school on top of the fact that we didn’t much like the house itself. I can remember a strange divider between the living room and kitchen, a bizarre red (or amber?) Plexiglas thing, but I can’t remember which side of the room it was on. I can’t recall the kitchen cabinets or the tile -- a dull beige vinyl more than likely. I can’t remember what the front window looked like, or the color of the living room walls (white, I’m assuming), nor do I see much detail heading down the hall toward the bedrooms, of which I think there were three. How they were laid out I have no idea whatsoever. Odd.
The thing I remember most about the house was the garage, which had been converted to a bedroom. I dibbed it because I liked the idea of extra privacy, and I thought the Persian rug in there was exotic. The walls were of a rough gray stone about to waist height, then a cheap, dark-wood paneling took over to the ceiling. Where there’d once been the garage door was now an entire wall of that stone.
The unforeseen problem with the room was that it was unheated. Mom got me a second-hand space heater to use on cold nights, but I was always afraid it would burst into flames while I was asleep and I usually turned it off after a while. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I offered the room to my brother Joe, who was excited to take it off my hands.
That’s when I took over a bedroom in the back corner of the house, which I only remember because it had a window on two walls. Or did it? Maybe I’m mixing it up with another room from another house. I do know its walls were painted a sickly shade of sky blue. I hated the color but didn’t want to spend a lot of time painting it myself.
The bath tub in that house was infested for a few weeks with roly poly bugs. We had to scoop them out and flush them down the toilet before we could take a bath.
Another thing I definitely remember is the adhesive carpet squares Mom got to cover the bedroom floors, which were linoleum, I think. The carpet squares were a pukey moss green the texture and consistency of thick felt. I think I can recover the smell of them too. Not good. Armpit soup.
There are other places I’ve lived that I can’t piece together in their entirety, but this place might as well be a ghost house. Probably says more about my state of mind when I lived there than anything else. A strange feeling, though, all these years later, to realize that I walked through that door a few hundred times and remember so little about it.
A blessing?
One house in particular is a real blur. My family lived there for only a few months when my mother couldn’t afford the mortgage on the one home we’d really gotten used to. (Not her fault, by the way.) The new place was a rental in a different part of the county, meaning that we’d be going to a different school on top of the fact that we didn’t much like the house itself. I can remember a strange divider between the living room and kitchen, a bizarre red (or amber?) Plexiglas thing, but I can’t remember which side of the room it was on. I can’t recall the kitchen cabinets or the tile -- a dull beige vinyl more than likely. I can’t remember what the front window looked like, or the color of the living room walls (white, I’m assuming), nor do I see much detail heading down the hall toward the bedrooms, of which I think there were three. How they were laid out I have no idea whatsoever. Odd.
The thing I remember most about the house was the garage, which had been converted to a bedroom. I dibbed it because I liked the idea of extra privacy, and I thought the Persian rug in there was exotic. The walls were of a rough gray stone about to waist height, then a cheap, dark-wood paneling took over to the ceiling. Where there’d once been the garage door was now an entire wall of that stone.
The unforeseen problem with the room was that it was unheated. Mom got me a second-hand space heater to use on cold nights, but I was always afraid it would burst into flames while I was asleep and I usually turned it off after a while. When I couldn’t take it any longer, I offered the room to my brother Joe, who was excited to take it off my hands.
That’s when I took over a bedroom in the back corner of the house, which I only remember because it had a window on two walls. Or did it? Maybe I’m mixing it up with another room from another house. I do know its walls were painted a sickly shade of sky blue. I hated the color but didn’t want to spend a lot of time painting it myself.
The bath tub in that house was infested for a few weeks with roly poly bugs. We had to scoop them out and flush them down the toilet before we could take a bath.
Another thing I definitely remember is the adhesive carpet squares Mom got to cover the bedroom floors, which were linoleum, I think. The carpet squares were a pukey moss green the texture and consistency of thick felt. I think I can recover the smell of them too. Not good. Armpit soup.
There are other places I’ve lived that I can’t piece together in their entirety, but this place might as well be a ghost house. Probably says more about my state of mind when I lived there than anything else. A strange feeling, though, all these years later, to realize that I walked through that door a few hundred times and remember so little about it.
A blessing?
Friday, July 2, 2010
Observatio
On the same subject, and in light of my ongoing conversation with a lifelong friend about faith and atheism, I sometimes wonder if the truth of the matter is that whatever we believe the afterlife to be is what it will appear to be to us as we die. I’ve always thought that those near-death experiences some people have border on autosuggestion, i.e., they expected, subconsciously, to encounter a tunnel, a light, and dead loved ones, and that’s exactly what they saw when their hearts weren’t beating and their brains were flat-lining.
If you’ve ever seen David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, you must have considered the possibility that illusion could be a huge part of the experience of dying. The entire movie takes place in the moment Naomi Watts’ character is dying. I can imagine that a person of deep faith, like my friend, would drift into a dream of everlasting life in the presence of Jesus simply because that is sewn into his very identity. I, on the other hand, will more than likely fade to black, since that’s what I expect the afterlife to be. A lot of nothing.
Religious ideas -- which are really all about immortality -- could well be a kind of archetypal message from our ancestors telling us that we are in control of our own afterlife. Peter Pan style, all we have to do is believe. Who wouldn’t want to train themselves to live forever?
But that introduces a very tricky dilemma. How can you brainwash yourself to believe in eternal life at the hem of Jesus when science and philosophy -- if you’re paying any attention -- point instead to a definitive end? Is living a lie the smoothest way to dying in peace? Can it even be accomplished, given our tendency to doubt? What if you are burdened with doubt at the very end -- does your fond vision of heaven evaporate with that small, badly timed chink in your faith?
I’m not the kind who would be able to hedge my bets by signing up with the outfit that has the nicest eternity plan. This is not like buying a car or getting a time-share. No, I’m afraid that even if I knew my dying thoughts would dictate my afterlife, I’d wind up devoted instead to the truth as I see it at the time.
Maybe if they come up with a drug -- some kind of Pearly Gates opiate that guides you along to your ideal eternity. Maybe I’d give that a try.
If you’ve ever seen David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, you must have considered the possibility that illusion could be a huge part of the experience of dying. The entire movie takes place in the moment Naomi Watts’ character is dying. I can imagine that a person of deep faith, like my friend, would drift into a dream of everlasting life in the presence of Jesus simply because that is sewn into his very identity. I, on the other hand, will more than likely fade to black, since that’s what I expect the afterlife to be. A lot of nothing.
Religious ideas -- which are really all about immortality -- could well be a kind of archetypal message from our ancestors telling us that we are in control of our own afterlife. Peter Pan style, all we have to do is believe. Who wouldn’t want to train themselves to live forever?
But that introduces a very tricky dilemma. How can you brainwash yourself to believe in eternal life at the hem of Jesus when science and philosophy -- if you’re paying any attention -- point instead to a definitive end? Is living a lie the smoothest way to dying in peace? Can it even be accomplished, given our tendency to doubt? What if you are burdened with doubt at the very end -- does your fond vision of heaven evaporate with that small, badly timed chink in your faith?
I’m not the kind who would be able to hedge my bets by signing up with the outfit that has the nicest eternity plan. This is not like buying a car or getting a time-share. No, I’m afraid that even if I knew my dying thoughts would dictate my afterlife, I’d wind up devoted instead to the truth as I see it at the time.
Maybe if they come up with a drug -- some kind of Pearly Gates opiate that guides you along to your ideal eternity. Maybe I’d give that a try.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Observatio
I’ve been working out in my layman’s way these thoughts about mortality brought on by my dad’s death. Nothing makes sense -- either way you care to read that phrase.
I keep coming back to the religious idea that we might exist after this life in some eternal, nonphysical state, since that’s the default belief. But, like I said before, eternity is the absence of time by definition, so to “exist” is not really a correct way to refer to such a state. Existence is tied to space and time.
Only a state of nothingness can ever be thought of -- given the limits of our imagination -- as eternal, yet our physical lives are proof that nothingness is not eternal. It was perking right along in all its non-existential glory until we were born, or at least till our self-awareness kicked in, at which time nothingness ended. Therefore, we can say that nothingness isn’t eternal because it came to an end when we came into existence. If even nothingness isn’t eternal, then there’s no other kind of state that can have that characteristic because all other conceivable states depend on the presence of the “self” or a subject, an I (eye), or change of some kind (like the transformation of dead dinosaurs into oil), and that implies time. Since eternity is the absence of time, no state that requires those kinds of things can be eternal.
But if nothingness ended when we came to be, it’s not eternal and must have a beginning too, since anything that ends has been in existence for some period of time -- an unfathomably long time, but some estimable length -- implying that it also had a beginning. Anything with a beginning and an end can’t be said to be eternal, so nothingness can’t be said to be eternal.
Now that that’s settled...
If we accept that no consciousness-based afterlife can be truly eternal, and nothingness is not eternal, then what are the possibilities for the state of our “selves” after death?
Well, we might imagine existing in a non-physical state after death, but not eternally. In other words, if our identities are somehow preserved after death, then we still exist in time (if not literal space) because we’ll still be subjects and observers of (and in) the universe. This kind of existence is hard to imagine because we can’t quite grasp what it is to have a mind but no body. Are our bodies just suits of clothes during life, prisons of our true spirits? Or are mind and body really one neurobiological system, with the mind dependent on the physical body for its own existence? If it’s the latter, as science seems to be concluding, then any afterlife will have to be tied to some other system we don’t yet know about that provides a platform for the mind to retain its integrity. That means it will be “physical” in some sense, or at least anchored to time and space.
Another possibility is that we cease to exist altogether, entering the same nothingness we must have inhabited (in the form of a potential being) before birth. This state, though, isn’t eternal either, according to the rules of the game, so it might well be interrupted again, by other periods of consciousness, other lives, or other states of awareness of space and time, whether via the mind we’re used to or a new one, and presumably with some kind of body. (By the way, Seneca touches on just these points in Letter LXXXVIII, way back in the first century A.D.)
And still another possibility is that this life will be the only interruption of nothingness that we will ever experience and our state after death will be as if eternal. After all, eons passed before we were born, and we weren’t aware of ourselves in any way. It’s easy to imagine that eons will pass after we’re dead too, with no interruptions to make this nothingness anything but a de facto state of eternity, even if it’s constantly interrupted by other people’s momentary awareness.
But there’s one big difference between the prior state of nothingness and the one that’s ahead for each of us. We will have existed. We will have possessed a consciousness, a viewpoint, and that consciousness is something that did not exist in the prior state of nothingness.
We deduce that the universe existed during that state, though. We accept that the stars and planets existed, that life on Earth existed, that all of it wasn’t created out of nothing when we were born just to give us a context. So something existed in the midst and in spite of our personal nothingness. And something existed before there were any subjects or observers to notice it.
I’m not sure where this leads. Heavy drinking, probably. What I do know is that life certainly gives us plenty to chew on during the brief time we’re wading through it.
I keep coming back to the religious idea that we might exist after this life in some eternal, nonphysical state, since that’s the default belief. But, like I said before, eternity is the absence of time by definition, so to “exist” is not really a correct way to refer to such a state. Existence is tied to space and time.
Only a state of nothingness can ever be thought of -- given the limits of our imagination -- as eternal, yet our physical lives are proof that nothingness is not eternal. It was perking right along in all its non-existential glory until we were born, or at least till our self-awareness kicked in, at which time nothingness ended. Therefore, we can say that nothingness isn’t eternal because it came to an end when we came into existence. If even nothingness isn’t eternal, then there’s no other kind of state that can have that characteristic because all other conceivable states depend on the presence of the “self” or a subject, an I (eye), or change of some kind (like the transformation of dead dinosaurs into oil), and that implies time. Since eternity is the absence of time, no state that requires those kinds of things can be eternal.
But if nothingness ended when we came to be, it’s not eternal and must have a beginning too, since anything that ends has been in existence for some period of time -- an unfathomably long time, but some estimable length -- implying that it also had a beginning. Anything with a beginning and an end can’t be said to be eternal, so nothingness can’t be said to be eternal.
Now that that’s settled...
If we accept that no consciousness-based afterlife can be truly eternal, and nothingness is not eternal, then what are the possibilities for the state of our “selves” after death?
Well, we might imagine existing in a non-physical state after death, but not eternally. In other words, if our identities are somehow preserved after death, then we still exist in time (if not literal space) because we’ll still be subjects and observers of (and in) the universe. This kind of existence is hard to imagine because we can’t quite grasp what it is to have a mind but no body. Are our bodies just suits of clothes during life, prisons of our true spirits? Or are mind and body really one neurobiological system, with the mind dependent on the physical body for its own existence? If it’s the latter, as science seems to be concluding, then any afterlife will have to be tied to some other system we don’t yet know about that provides a platform for the mind to retain its integrity. That means it will be “physical” in some sense, or at least anchored to time and space.
Another possibility is that we cease to exist altogether, entering the same nothingness we must have inhabited (in the form of a potential being) before birth. This state, though, isn’t eternal either, according to the rules of the game, so it might well be interrupted again, by other periods of consciousness, other lives, or other states of awareness of space and time, whether via the mind we’re used to or a new one, and presumably with some kind of body. (By the way, Seneca touches on just these points in Letter LXXXVIII, way back in the first century A.D.)
And still another possibility is that this life will be the only interruption of nothingness that we will ever experience and our state after death will be as if eternal. After all, eons passed before we were born, and we weren’t aware of ourselves in any way. It’s easy to imagine that eons will pass after we’re dead too, with no interruptions to make this nothingness anything but a de facto state of eternity, even if it’s constantly interrupted by other people’s momentary awareness.
But there’s one big difference between the prior state of nothingness and the one that’s ahead for each of us. We will have existed. We will have possessed a consciousness, a viewpoint, and that consciousness is something that did not exist in the prior state of nothingness.
We deduce that the universe existed during that state, though. We accept that the stars and planets existed, that life on Earth existed, that all of it wasn’t created out of nothing when we were born just to give us a context. So something existed in the midst and in spite of our personal nothingness. And something existed before there were any subjects or observers to notice it.
I’m not sure where this leads. Heavy drinking, probably. What I do know is that life certainly gives us plenty to chew on during the brief time we’re wading through it.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Observatio
Mouse is a syllable, a mouse nibbles cheese, therefore a syllable nibbles cheese. -- SenecaDescribes, fairly well, the state of our political logic these days.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Consternatio
A disturbing sight last weekend, while we were hiking in the Sunol Wilderness, near Pleasanton. On the busy trail heading back to park HQ from what they call Little Yosemite, we spotted a dog with a Safeway bag of his own poop hanging around his neck.
My God, what kind of sadistic creep would do that to a pup? We all know that a dog’s sense of smell is something like 400 times stronger than a human’s. Can you imagine having to walk a few miles with your own feces hanging in a pouch a couple inches from your nose? Worse, it was a hot day...
It’s almost cute when people put bandannas and sunglasses on their pooches. I like when I see a dog carrying his own leash in his mouth too, but for the love of God, making a creature as noble as the family dog wear a shit sachet is just plain vile.
My God, what kind of sadistic creep would do that to a pup? We all know that a dog’s sense of smell is something like 400 times stronger than a human’s. Can you imagine having to walk a few miles with your own feces hanging in a pouch a couple inches from your nose? Worse, it was a hot day...
It’s almost cute when people put bandannas and sunglasses on their pooches. I like when I see a dog carrying his own leash in his mouth too, but for the love of God, making a creature as noble as the family dog wear a shit sachet is just plain vile.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Opinatio
Laura Miller at Salon has written a piece about the coming revolution in publishing, which will make it possible -- and already has, to a great extent -- for anyone to publish a book. She likens this to a colossal slush pile, that mountain of unsolicited writing that only agents and editors (or their interns, more likely) have had to contend with till now. It’s not a pretty thing, the pile of slush.
As a writer, I’ve always respected the publishing professionals who sift through all that gravel to find a shining nugget. I’ve always hoped they’d see the value in the nuggets I send in, but the more I’ve participated in this game the more I’ve come to realize it’s essentially a lottery. Now and then a talented writer gets lucky, but not very often. Miller’s point is that, if anyone can publish using e-books or print-on-demand self-publishing outlets, it will be the hapless reader who has to do her own slush pile sifting. There is no reasonable way to judge the quality of millions of potential titles -- even the professionals don’t receive millions of submissions -- so the reader will have to dip randomly into the swamp or rely on trusted blogs or other book enthusiasts to figure out what’s worth reading, worth paying for. As Miller makes clear, not much in a traditional slush pile meets either description. “Crapola” is a polite word to use to refer to these brain droppings.
I promised myself a long time ago I’d never self-publish. Even when it became easier and cheaper to do it, I turned my back to that option because the odds of being read are just as astronomical via that approach as through the old system, plus there’s a tinge of pathos surrounding the whole thing. Especially after I had a book published through the old system, I decided that I would live or die as a traditionalist and let others try out the new way. So far, it doesn’t look to me as if self-publishers have found a way to overcome the real obstacle between them and literary recognition: anonymity.
People buy books by authors they’re familiar with. Or that their friends have liked. Or that repetitive ads or cultural references have thrown into their view. They can’t buy books that they don’t know exist, nor do they often drop twenty-five on a title by a complete unknown. As long as these are the facts of life, self-publishing is going to be an exercise in futility, even if, for a little while, you get a buzz over seeing your words in print and an ISBN code with your name on it.
Miller thinks not very much will change with this new model. I’m not so sure. I have a feeling that traditional publishers will find a way to exploit the seemingly universal American desire to publish. For a fee, and not a comfortably small one, they’ll take your .doc file and park it on a server somewhere in New Jersey, and you’ll get to say that your book is available through HarperCollins. Nobody who doesn’t know you will ever be able to find it, and you’ll never get a dime of your investment back, but by Jove you’ll have had a book “published.”
The sad thing is that there’s never been a shortage of people who think they can write, nor of companies that will be delighted to take their money no matter how lousy the writing is. The technology is changing, but I’m afraid the natural dynamics of writing and publishing will always be the same.
As a writer, I’ve always respected the publishing professionals who sift through all that gravel to find a shining nugget. I’ve always hoped they’d see the value in the nuggets I send in, but the more I’ve participated in this game the more I’ve come to realize it’s essentially a lottery. Now and then a talented writer gets lucky, but not very often. Miller’s point is that, if anyone can publish using e-books or print-on-demand self-publishing outlets, it will be the hapless reader who has to do her own slush pile sifting. There is no reasonable way to judge the quality of millions of potential titles -- even the professionals don’t receive millions of submissions -- so the reader will have to dip randomly into the swamp or rely on trusted blogs or other book enthusiasts to figure out what’s worth reading, worth paying for. As Miller makes clear, not much in a traditional slush pile meets either description. “Crapola” is a polite word to use to refer to these brain droppings.
I promised myself a long time ago I’d never self-publish. Even when it became easier and cheaper to do it, I turned my back to that option because the odds of being read are just as astronomical via that approach as through the old system, plus there’s a tinge of pathos surrounding the whole thing. Especially after I had a book published through the old system, I decided that I would live or die as a traditionalist and let others try out the new way. So far, it doesn’t look to me as if self-publishers have found a way to overcome the real obstacle between them and literary recognition: anonymity.
People buy books by authors they’re familiar with. Or that their friends have liked. Or that repetitive ads or cultural references have thrown into their view. They can’t buy books that they don’t know exist, nor do they often drop twenty-five on a title by a complete unknown. As long as these are the facts of life, self-publishing is going to be an exercise in futility, even if, for a little while, you get a buzz over seeing your words in print and an ISBN code with your name on it.
Miller thinks not very much will change with this new model. I’m not so sure. I have a feeling that traditional publishers will find a way to exploit the seemingly universal American desire to publish. For a fee, and not a comfortably small one, they’ll take your .doc file and park it on a server somewhere in New Jersey, and you’ll get to say that your book is available through HarperCollins. Nobody who doesn’t know you will ever be able to find it, and you’ll never get a dime of your investment back, but by Jove you’ll have had a book “published.”
The sad thing is that there’s never been a shortage of people who think they can write, nor of companies that will be delighted to take their money no matter how lousy the writing is. The technology is changing, but I’m afraid the natural dynamics of writing and publishing will always be the same.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Consternatio
This age needs rather men like Shakespeare, or Milton, or Pope; men who are filled with the strength of their cultures and do not transcend the limits of their age, but, working within the times, bring what is peculiar to the moment to glory. We need great artists who are willing to accept restrictions, and who love their environments with such vitality that they can produce an epic out of the Protestant ethic ... Whatever the many failings of my work, let it stand as a manifesto of my love for the time in which I was born. -- John UpdikeWhat consternates me is that this is Mr. Updike, at age 19, writing to his parents. Doesn't sound much like a chap I could identify with.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Opinatio
In all seriousness, the destruction of Touchdown Jesus somewhere in Ohio -- by a lightning bolt, no less -- is a big deal. I can’t think of a better demonstration of the irrationality of faith.
Think back to when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans (or rather, the Army Corps of Engineers destroyed NOLA), and the first thing out of Jerry Falwell’s mouth is that God was making a statement about “the gays.” Enough with the debauched lifestyle, the fabulous wardrobes, the outrageousness, the uppity desire to get married just like normal people, God appeared to be saying. I strike you down, Homo Town!
Never mind that there are other more recognizably gay watering holes in this country, my own SF among them. And never mind that the real victims of the flood were thousands of poor blacks who lived in the sections of town deepest below sea level, as you might expect from free market capitalism. The Rev. Falwell declared that it was queerness that had moved the Almighty to smite.
But now God has zapped the kitschiest of all kitschy Jesus representations, using his weapon of choice (lightning, just ahead of heartbreaking irony). If Jerry were still with us, he’d have to conclude that God was angry because we rendered his only begotten son in such a crass and tasteless way, or that he was angry with Jesus himself for an extravagant end zone celebration (always meant to show up the other team). Surely this was an omen, lo.
And yet, I have a feeling that the faithful folk out there are probably just chalking it up as “something that happened.”
This is how the religious mind works. When something supports their fantasy of a great and powerful being in the sky, they embrace and amplify it. When it doesn’t support the fable, they ignore it. This is one of those times. Lightning striking that particular structure was an accident caused by immediate meteorological conditions -- don’t you know anything about science, you dipstick atheist? Doesn’t mean nothin’.
Now, if the lightning had struck Elton John, on the other hand...
Think back to when Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans (or rather, the Army Corps of Engineers destroyed NOLA), and the first thing out of Jerry Falwell’s mouth is that God was making a statement about “the gays.” Enough with the debauched lifestyle, the fabulous wardrobes, the outrageousness, the uppity desire to get married just like normal people, God appeared to be saying. I strike you down, Homo Town!
Never mind that there are other more recognizably gay watering holes in this country, my own SF among them. And never mind that the real victims of the flood were thousands of poor blacks who lived in the sections of town deepest below sea level, as you might expect from free market capitalism. The Rev. Falwell declared that it was queerness that had moved the Almighty to smite.
But now God has zapped the kitschiest of all kitschy Jesus representations, using his weapon of choice (lightning, just ahead of heartbreaking irony). If Jerry were still with us, he’d have to conclude that God was angry because we rendered his only begotten son in such a crass and tasteless way, or that he was angry with Jesus himself for an extravagant end zone celebration (always meant to show up the other team). Surely this was an omen, lo.
And yet, I have a feeling that the faithful folk out there are probably just chalking it up as “something that happened.”
This is how the religious mind works. When something supports their fantasy of a great and powerful being in the sky, they embrace and amplify it. When it doesn’t support the fable, they ignore it. This is one of those times. Lightning striking that particular structure was an accident caused by immediate meteorological conditions -- don’t you know anything about science, you dipstick atheist? Doesn’t mean nothin’.
Now, if the lightning had struck Elton John, on the other hand...
Friday, June 18, 2010
Observatio
In that same realm, it’s fascinating to wonder whether consciousness is nothing but a biochemical accident in the first place. Living things, over eons, gradually became more complex so that their moment-to-moment actions were not automatic, like a one-celled organism’s, and their survival came to depend on an awareness of themselves in the environment. You can see how evolution would have favored individuals that had the biochemical advantage of, for instance, being able to detect changes in light or temperature, which would help them find food more easily or avoid predatory organisms and other dangerous thingys. Eventually, the more advanced these biochemical systems became, the more aware some species became. Is consciousness, the way we humans understand it, just a terrifically advanced level of awareness?
The kicker is that an advanced awareness of ourselves in the environment has also given us an awareness of mortality, self, time, and space. We have come to see ourselves as the reason the universe exists -- the ultimate subject -- which is probably a mistake of enormous magnitude. Instead, what if our consciousness is really just part of a larger system? We might be like the leaves on a tree, collecting energy and feeding something larger that we can’t perceive. Or we might be sensors, our consciousness a means of transmitting information back to a central brain or intelligence undetectable because we are too small or too close. (We’re soaking in it!)
You can’t be much of a narcissist when you contemplate this stuff.
The kicker is that an advanced awareness of ourselves in the environment has also given us an awareness of mortality, self, time, and space. We have come to see ourselves as the reason the universe exists -- the ultimate subject -- which is probably a mistake of enormous magnitude. Instead, what if our consciousness is really just part of a larger system? We might be like the leaves on a tree, collecting energy and feeding something larger that we can’t perceive. Or we might be sensors, our consciousness a means of transmitting information back to a central brain or intelligence undetectable because we are too small or too close. (We’re soaking in it!)
You can’t be much of a narcissist when you contemplate this stuff.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Observatio
I’ve just read a short column about what happens to us when we die, theoretically. It seems a pretty good time to contemplate such meaty stuff, since my father died three weeks ago. Where he is, how he experiences his being, if at all, and whether his consciousness has survived intact are all on my mind. If there is an overriding justice in the universe, though, he has probably returned as a little black baby in Detroit.
The column -- I forget where I saw it -- tied the idea of consciousness to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which makes sense in a way. If time and space depend upon an observer, then the absence of the observer implies the obliteration of time and space. The writer said that time “reboots” at our death, though I’m not quite sure what he means by that. Sounds like a nod toward reincarnation, because if time reboots it means there must be a new subjective observer. In that sense, time begins when we’re born, or when we start to perceive the world as a subjective observer, and ends when we die. It is easy to imagine, along with a million other possibilities, that “I” will inhabit another consciousness after this one fades away -- a new one, or maybe even an older one embedded in another time. Who knows? All I know for sure is that it’s impossible to experience nothingness, so either my ability to experience at all comes to an end when I die, or “consciousness” is somehow renewed. It will be interesting to find out, though I’m happy to wait as long as possible for the news.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I had no consciousness prior to this life. Nothing comes right to mind. Maybe this life is my first appearance, or maybe, if time does reboot, the observer’s script is erased and there is nothing to be remembered of earlier struttings on the stage.
I’m willing to give Einstein the benefit of the doubt. He thought that the time-space bullpen we find ourselves waiting in -- the present -- is an illusion. That seems as realistic as anything I’ve heard on the subject.
The column -- I forget where I saw it -- tied the idea of consciousness to Einstein’s theory of relativity, which makes sense in a way. If time and space depend upon an observer, then the absence of the observer implies the obliteration of time and space. The writer said that time “reboots” at our death, though I’m not quite sure what he means by that. Sounds like a nod toward reincarnation, because if time reboots it means there must be a new subjective observer. In that sense, time begins when we’re born, or when we start to perceive the world as a subjective observer, and ends when we die. It is easy to imagine, along with a million other possibilities, that “I” will inhabit another consciousness after this one fades away -- a new one, or maybe even an older one embedded in another time. Who knows? All I know for sure is that it’s impossible to experience nothingness, so either my ability to experience at all comes to an end when I die, or “consciousness” is somehow renewed. It will be interesting to find out, though I’m happy to wait as long as possible for the news.
On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I had no consciousness prior to this life. Nothing comes right to mind. Maybe this life is my first appearance, or maybe, if time does reboot, the observer’s script is erased and there is nothing to be remembered of earlier struttings on the stage.
I’m willing to give Einstein the benefit of the doubt. He thought that the time-space bullpen we find ourselves waiting in -- the present -- is an illusion. That seems as realistic as anything I’ve heard on the subject.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Observatio
My wife has purchased shampoo that makes my head smell like a Junior Mint.
This is not a problem.
This is not a problem.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Consternatio
Yesterday, while walking the dog in town, I was across the street from our old post office building -- a nice 20’s era Carnegie-type edifice -- when I spotted a petition table in front. The first words on the poster I glimpsed were “Impeach Obama,” and only after I registered that did I see the photograph that accompanied the caption above: Barack Obama with a Hitler mustache. At that point, one of the young pea-brained, neo-fascist dudes manning the table looked over and gave me a shit-eating grin -- proud of himself and full of adolescent, testosteronical voltage -- and all I could think to do was flip him the bird. Which I did.
His reaction was to take offense. Imagine that.
What I did, in retrospect, was immature and even stupid -- who knows, he might have chased me down and beaten the crap out of me with a bike chain hidden in his camouflage cargo pants -- but it was instinctual and reflexive. What he did was equally offensive but backed by intention and forethought. He meant to offend. He thought he was cute as hell with his Hitler photo and his barely concealed racism (I want to know where these turds were when Bush was up late every night shredding the Constitution). He’d downloaded the petition from some Larouchian web site, no doubt, and picked the day to set up in front of the post office -- and in a dominantly liberal part of our little town, too. He wanted to provoke, and he provoked me into acting like a moron.
I’m not proud of it, but that I offended him for a split second gave me a burst of adrenaline and, maybe too, testosterone, though I realize that this kind of reaction is exactly what, on a larger scale, makes violent conflict the human mode of attacking disputes.
We see how well that goes. The Israeli raid on that humanitarian flotilla is just one recent example.
His reaction was to take offense. Imagine that.
What I did, in retrospect, was immature and even stupid -- who knows, he might have chased me down and beaten the crap out of me with a bike chain hidden in his camouflage cargo pants -- but it was instinctual and reflexive. What he did was equally offensive but backed by intention and forethought. He meant to offend. He thought he was cute as hell with his Hitler photo and his barely concealed racism (I want to know where these turds were when Bush was up late every night shredding the Constitution). He’d downloaded the petition from some Larouchian web site, no doubt, and picked the day to set up in front of the post office -- and in a dominantly liberal part of our little town, too. He wanted to provoke, and he provoked me into acting like a moron.
I’m not proud of it, but that I offended him for a split second gave me a burst of adrenaline and, maybe too, testosterone, though I realize that this kind of reaction is exactly what, on a larger scale, makes violent conflict the human mode of attacking disputes.
We see how well that goes. The Israeli raid on that humanitarian flotilla is just one recent example.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Opinatio
Recently Andrew Sullivan collected at The Dish a number of responses to his question: What do atheists think about death? It’s been interesting to read the thoughtful replies, which run the gamut from “Not much” to “Terrified, but whataya gonna do?”.
I’ve been an atheist since before I had to shave, but it’s always bothered me that believers seem to think that death is the great fly in atheists’ ointment (that’s one troubling image). I beg to differ. If anything, death is the fly in anybody’s ointment because there is no getting around the human tendency to question and doubt. I know of no honest Christian who has been completely free of doubt, brought on by both the trivial and the profound. Mother Theresa famously suffered from it for long periods of her life. My own mother, as devout as a Catholic can be, has moved in and out of deep faith many times, more often than not because of her view of death. Where there’s doubt, there’s fear. It’s there in the human genome.
Sullivan does not appear, in his various writings on all this, to admit that he could be wrong about the glory of Christ’s love, so I detect a certain pity in his tone when he asks us non-believers how we’ll face the end. In an online debate with Sam Harris, I believe, a few years ago, he reminded Harris that we’re all going to die eventually, and without belief an atheist’s search for salvation in the truth derived through science would leave him high and dry. “What will save you then?” he asked, which is nothing but a stark expression of fear, the fear of annihilation.
Harris’s answer isn’t recorded, but like most of the atheists writing in at The Dish, I would say, “Nothing.” There’s nothing to be done. If consciousness ends, then there is nothing but nothing, and that’s nothing to be afraid of, as Julian Barnes might put it.
We atheists always raise the point, in response to these questions, that there was nothing before we came into the world and it wasn’t so bad. We expect to return to that level of awareness when our brains are no longer oxygenated. As impossible as it is to imagine nothingness, eternity is cut from the same inconceivable cloth. In fact, if eternity is the absence of time, as it must be, there can be no perception of reality or being in it. The only reality we know is that of inhabiting a body and moving from birth to death through time, so to be transformed into a “soul” detached from time is to become nothing we can imagine or identify with. If we attach to it our living personality, it must perceive itself to be somewhere and to be experiencing something. But experience is tied to time, and time doesn’t exist in eternity. Checkmate.
For a year or so I’ve been having this very conversation with an old friend of mine, who is an evangelical Christian. We’re never going to understand each other, but I’m always stunned when he answers a philosophical question by quoting the Bible. I respond that the Bible is man’s work, and no living man has ever known what comes after death. He says, No, it’s God’s work, and God promises eternal life to the faithful. Naturally, I think he’s deluding himself and he thinks I’m willfully refusing to see what’s clear to him. On that front, I guess he has a better fate than I do, since if he’s wrong he’ll experience nothing and if I’m wrong I’ll be tormented forever in God’s eternal barbecue.
I understand the desire for eternal life. I can’t picture it, but I understand it. The sad truth, I’m afraid, is that wishing doesn’t make it so, and neither does believing.
I’ve been an atheist since before I had to shave, but it’s always bothered me that believers seem to think that death is the great fly in atheists’ ointment (that’s one troubling image). I beg to differ. If anything, death is the fly in anybody’s ointment because there is no getting around the human tendency to question and doubt. I know of no honest Christian who has been completely free of doubt, brought on by both the trivial and the profound. Mother Theresa famously suffered from it for long periods of her life. My own mother, as devout as a Catholic can be, has moved in and out of deep faith many times, more often than not because of her view of death. Where there’s doubt, there’s fear. It’s there in the human genome.
Sullivan does not appear, in his various writings on all this, to admit that he could be wrong about the glory of Christ’s love, so I detect a certain pity in his tone when he asks us non-believers how we’ll face the end. In an online debate with Sam Harris, I believe, a few years ago, he reminded Harris that we’re all going to die eventually, and without belief an atheist’s search for salvation in the truth derived through science would leave him high and dry. “What will save you then?” he asked, which is nothing but a stark expression of fear, the fear of annihilation.
Harris’s answer isn’t recorded, but like most of the atheists writing in at The Dish, I would say, “Nothing.” There’s nothing to be done. If consciousness ends, then there is nothing but nothing, and that’s nothing to be afraid of, as Julian Barnes might put it.
We atheists always raise the point, in response to these questions, that there was nothing before we came into the world and it wasn’t so bad. We expect to return to that level of awareness when our brains are no longer oxygenated. As impossible as it is to imagine nothingness, eternity is cut from the same inconceivable cloth. In fact, if eternity is the absence of time, as it must be, there can be no perception of reality or being in it. The only reality we know is that of inhabiting a body and moving from birth to death through time, so to be transformed into a “soul” detached from time is to become nothing we can imagine or identify with. If we attach to it our living personality, it must perceive itself to be somewhere and to be experiencing something. But experience is tied to time, and time doesn’t exist in eternity. Checkmate.
For a year or so I’ve been having this very conversation with an old friend of mine, who is an evangelical Christian. We’re never going to understand each other, but I’m always stunned when he answers a philosophical question by quoting the Bible. I respond that the Bible is man’s work, and no living man has ever known what comes after death. He says, No, it’s God’s work, and God promises eternal life to the faithful. Naturally, I think he’s deluding himself and he thinks I’m willfully refusing to see what’s clear to him. On that front, I guess he has a better fate than I do, since if he’s wrong he’ll experience nothing and if I’m wrong I’ll be tormented forever in God’s eternal barbecue.
I understand the desire for eternal life. I can’t picture it, but I understand it. The sad truth, I’m afraid, is that wishing doesn’t make it so, and neither does believing.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Consternatio
Now and then I get curious about people I used to know. I Google them. Nine times out of ten there’s no reference whatsoever to their names, or anybody sharing their names (there are dozens of guys out there with my name), and I always find that hard to believe. How can the interwebs fail to locate some minute mention of nearly every living American? Or dead, for that matter. You’d think that all of us have done something, written something, participated in some generic event, or had our names listed on some roster that would pop up (in pdf form, no doubt) in a broad search.
Recently I finally got results for a woman I worked with long ago. I’d always been curious about her, since we were both fiction writers and we’d become pretty good friends in our three-and-a-half years together in a cramped La Jolla office. When I moved to San Francisco and she moved to Long Island, we lost touch -- a few letters exchanged of the newsy sort, announcing the births of her daughters and more pack-up-and-moves. Her husband is a neuroscientist with a lengthy resume; they’ve moved a lot. The truth is, though, that along the way I got tired of her lack of interest in me, so I stopped writing back, and that is why I’ve felt a little bit guilty over the intervening years. I know I could have kept our friendship going if I really wanted to. I could have let her go through her phases, even while I managed my usual enthusiasm. I always expected to hear that she had won some fiction award or had had a novel published, but no. Instead I was the one who published a novel, but I never heard from her about it. Maybe she was never moved to Google me.
This time, after I typed in her name -- her husband’s actually -- some links popped up that guided me to her. She had moved again, thanks to her husband’s career. Briefly, a couple of years ago, she had a blog. About knitting.
I wasn’t sure it was her, once I popped in on the blog. This woman didn’t sound anything like my old friend. She sounded, somehow, wounded, tragic, lost. She’d found God somewhere in there, her idiosyncratic version of Christianity, anyway. She was doing good works, though: collecting people’s unwanted knittings -- blankets and things -- for the homeless. I had to admire that. I often think about doing such good works, but the quotidian always seems to interfere or distract, or, more likely, provide a ready excuse. She was actually doing something.
But in her voice was a tone of emptiness. It was the voice of someone who had been searching for herself or her rightful role in life and was surprised not to have found it in motherhood. She’s been in therapy, in Al Anon, deep in church activities, and I’m sure she’s been a terrific mother too. Yet she hadn’t found it. The one thing. Now she’s doing another blog with her sister -- a very personal back-and-forth that I’m not sure they mean to be public -- and her slow-burning desperation is coming through there too. She revealed that her husband is a year out from a cancer diagnosis. There is a worried edge to her writing, but an elder sister’s confidence too, an “I’ve been there” message between the lines. It’s obvious that she loves her family and her church, she’s fearful for her husband, and she’s trying to keep a fun face on the outside. But I’m stunned at how needy and damaged she seems now, when twenty years ago she was a bright, light-hearted, talented, hilarious young woman who had a chance to do big things with her writing.
It seems to me, from this huge distance, that something went wrong for her. On the inside. But I’ll never know, and I’ll never try to find out either, because she has moved too far from my reach (Christ isn’t in my bag of tricks, I’m afraid). We’re nearly opposites now.
Strange, how two people in their early thirties have taken such different paths to fifty.
Recently I finally got results for a woman I worked with long ago. I’d always been curious about her, since we were both fiction writers and we’d become pretty good friends in our three-and-a-half years together in a cramped La Jolla office. When I moved to San Francisco and she moved to Long Island, we lost touch -- a few letters exchanged of the newsy sort, announcing the births of her daughters and more pack-up-and-moves. Her husband is a neuroscientist with a lengthy resume; they’ve moved a lot. The truth is, though, that along the way I got tired of her lack of interest in me, so I stopped writing back, and that is why I’ve felt a little bit guilty over the intervening years. I know I could have kept our friendship going if I really wanted to. I could have let her go through her phases, even while I managed my usual enthusiasm. I always expected to hear that she had won some fiction award or had had a novel published, but no. Instead I was the one who published a novel, but I never heard from her about it. Maybe she was never moved to Google me.
This time, after I typed in her name -- her husband’s actually -- some links popped up that guided me to her. She had moved again, thanks to her husband’s career. Briefly, a couple of years ago, she had a blog. About knitting.
I wasn’t sure it was her, once I popped in on the blog. This woman didn’t sound anything like my old friend. She sounded, somehow, wounded, tragic, lost. She’d found God somewhere in there, her idiosyncratic version of Christianity, anyway. She was doing good works, though: collecting people’s unwanted knittings -- blankets and things -- for the homeless. I had to admire that. I often think about doing such good works, but the quotidian always seems to interfere or distract, or, more likely, provide a ready excuse. She was actually doing something.
But in her voice was a tone of emptiness. It was the voice of someone who had been searching for herself or her rightful role in life and was surprised not to have found it in motherhood. She’s been in therapy, in Al Anon, deep in church activities, and I’m sure she’s been a terrific mother too. Yet she hadn’t found it. The one thing. Now she’s doing another blog with her sister -- a very personal back-and-forth that I’m not sure they mean to be public -- and her slow-burning desperation is coming through there too. She revealed that her husband is a year out from a cancer diagnosis. There is a worried edge to her writing, but an elder sister’s confidence too, an “I’ve been there” message between the lines. It’s obvious that she loves her family and her church, she’s fearful for her husband, and she’s trying to keep a fun face on the outside. But I’m stunned at how needy and damaged she seems now, when twenty years ago she was a bright, light-hearted, talented, hilarious young woman who had a chance to do big things with her writing.
It seems to me, from this huge distance, that something went wrong for her. On the inside. But I’ll never know, and I’ll never try to find out either, because she has moved too far from my reach (Christ isn’t in my bag of tricks, I’m afraid). We’re nearly opposites now.
Strange, how two people in their early thirties have taken such different paths to fifty.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Observatio
Barry Hannah died not very long ago. He was one of those writers I was glad to have discovered, even if most of the time I didn’t quite grasp what he was trying to say through his madcap, absurdist, even bizarre tales. Often I laughed as I read him, but when I finished something like The Tennis Handsome, I’d shake my head and say to myself, That was interesting. It never occurred to me to emulate him, just as I’d never try to emulate Tom Robbins or Salman Rushdie, or Nabakov, or Twain. You can’t emulate the utterly unique.
But last night I read a short piece in Harper’s: “Why I Write,” by Barry Hannah. It was a speech at Bennington College in 2002, and it touched on what I think are the two most important drives any serious novelist must possess and cultivate. One is the drive to own the past in a comprehensive, personal way, and the other is the drive to venerate language. In the past lay the details and resonating emotional spikes that get deep into what it is to be human, the triumphs and humiliations we can’t forget, the seemingly inconsequential moments that somehow manage to form us though we may shrug them off at the time. Like Hannah, I can remember things my father said to me forty years ago, which, when he said them, had no context but the moment in which he said them. All these years later, they are draped with significance and large meaning, they deepen my sense of human contradiction and self-preservation, and they help to define him in a way he couldn’t have meant to project at the time. The past is where all your material comes from, even if you write about the here and now.
Language, Hannah says in the speech, “still strikes me as a miracle, a thing the deepest mind adores. At its best, when you lose your arrogance and are least selfish, it can sing back to you almost as a disembodied friend.”
You might have in your junk box the picture fragments of the time you found a young rabbit at the bottom of the basement stairs, its pink bowels protruding from a belly no thicker than the skin of a balloon. The cat did it, failed to finish the job out of boredom. You can’t let the thing die there like that, in a slow way, not with its dark, soap-washed eye looking up at you in something between fear and pleading. You will have to kill it, but how? And how do you tell the story of killing it, retaining every detail so that someone else can know what it was like?
Only language, with precision and surprise, is up to the task. Mr. Hannah knew it. All true writers do. And that is why there will always be a need for the writer who is first an artist (as distinguished from those who are first entertainers): so that we will know what we have been through and what it meant, and means.
But last night I read a short piece in Harper’s: “Why I Write,” by Barry Hannah. It was a speech at Bennington College in 2002, and it touched on what I think are the two most important drives any serious novelist must possess and cultivate. One is the drive to own the past in a comprehensive, personal way, and the other is the drive to venerate language. In the past lay the details and resonating emotional spikes that get deep into what it is to be human, the triumphs and humiliations we can’t forget, the seemingly inconsequential moments that somehow manage to form us though we may shrug them off at the time. Like Hannah, I can remember things my father said to me forty years ago, which, when he said them, had no context but the moment in which he said them. All these years later, they are draped with significance and large meaning, they deepen my sense of human contradiction and self-preservation, and they help to define him in a way he couldn’t have meant to project at the time. The past is where all your material comes from, even if you write about the here and now.
Language, Hannah says in the speech, “still strikes me as a miracle, a thing the deepest mind adores. At its best, when you lose your arrogance and are least selfish, it can sing back to you almost as a disembodied friend.”
You might have in your junk box the picture fragments of the time you found a young rabbit at the bottom of the basement stairs, its pink bowels protruding from a belly no thicker than the skin of a balloon. The cat did it, failed to finish the job out of boredom. You can’t let the thing die there like that, in a slow way, not with its dark, soap-washed eye looking up at you in something between fear and pleading. You will have to kill it, but how? And how do you tell the story of killing it, retaining every detail so that someone else can know what it was like?
Only language, with precision and surprise, is up to the task. Mr. Hannah knew it. All true writers do. And that is why there will always be a need for the writer who is first an artist (as distinguished from those who are first entertainers): so that we will know what we have been through and what it meant, and means.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Consternatio
It's raining in mid-May. That's unusual for this part of the world. It scares me.
Then there's this giant X that appeared over my house a while back. It scares me too. There a many things out
there that scare me.
Et alia
So I took a two-year sabbatical. What of it? And in the interim other people seem to have pilfered my title for different bloggy endeavors, but I had it first so I’m going to keep it. I raised my flag back in 2006, with a whole ‘nother thought in mind about what this might be. It’s not that anymore, but I can’t say what it is either.
What brings me back now I’m not all that sure of. A certain restlessness that produces ideas I want to save or highlight? Maybe. A notion that if I keep everything I think to myself I might as well not think it? A narcissistic desire to claim a tiny bit of space on the interwebs as my own and decorate it however I want? That’s pretty close. All of the above, even closer.
Since January 2008, I’ve been every bit as observant, opinionated, and consterned as before, but I held back because I didn’t think anybody was listening. The difference is that now I don’t care if anybody’s listening.
A few items that have come to mind along the way:
Conservatives really have a problem with their own suppressed homosexual tendencies. Most of their “values” are more in the category of self-loathing.
John Edwards goes down in history as one of our major douchebags. Then again, so does Mark. Sanford of SC.
Tiger Woods too.
3D technology will not be saving the movie business. Avatar was cool enough to watch, but the story was warmed over Little Big Man.
Enough with celebrity chefs. I happen to know one, or an aspiring one anyway. He’s a pompous ass with no redeeming qualities.
There will always be one natural (or man-made) disaster or another to amuse and entertain us. Quite a few came and went while I was away. Most of them are quickly forgotten, or at least displaced by the next one. I hate to think of what will displace the BP oil spill.
We can’t let the Tea Partiers off the hook so easily. They strike me as lazy thinkers who believe that having read the Constitution once or twice and a handful of the Federalist Papers makes them patriots. It doesn’t. I suspect my father is one of them.
One day we’ll be able to admit that there’s no point in going to the moon again. Not when we can’t even have an intercity bullet train, or true universal health care, or food that’s guaranteed free of E. coli. That day hasn’t yet arrived, though.
This vegetable garden craze -- sometimes I wonder. For the cost of seeds, soil and soil amendments, tools, water, fighting gophers and other annoying wildlife, and my time, I could buy all the produce we can possibly handle. Something tells me I’ve been had. Still, there’s no better way to get your hands on a tomato like you had when you were a kid.
We believe what we want to believe. I’ve read a lot of atheists vs. the faithful tracts these past two years, and it has finally sunk in: These two groups don’t live in the same universe. They live in parallel ones that overlap, so do yourself a favor. Whichever one you’re in, they don’t speak your language in the other one. Not worth it to try and convert the savages.
On that note, disce pati.
What brings me back now I’m not all that sure of. A certain restlessness that produces ideas I want to save or highlight? Maybe. A notion that if I keep everything I think to myself I might as well not think it? A narcissistic desire to claim a tiny bit of space on the interwebs as my own and decorate it however I want? That’s pretty close. All of the above, even closer.
Since January 2008, I’ve been every bit as observant, opinionated, and consterned as before, but I held back because I didn’t think anybody was listening. The difference is that now I don’t care if anybody’s listening.
A few items that have come to mind along the way:
Conservatives really have a problem with their own suppressed homosexual tendencies. Most of their “values” are more in the category of self-loathing.
John Edwards goes down in history as one of our major douchebags. Then again, so does Mark. Sanford of SC.
Tiger Woods too.
3D technology will not be saving the movie business. Avatar was cool enough to watch, but the story was warmed over Little Big Man.
Enough with celebrity chefs. I happen to know one, or an aspiring one anyway. He’s a pompous ass with no redeeming qualities.
There will always be one natural (or man-made) disaster or another to amuse and entertain us. Quite a few came and went while I was away. Most of them are quickly forgotten, or at least displaced by the next one. I hate to think of what will displace the BP oil spill.
We can’t let the Tea Partiers off the hook so easily. They strike me as lazy thinkers who believe that having read the Constitution once or twice and a handful of the Federalist Papers makes them patriots. It doesn’t. I suspect my father is one of them.
One day we’ll be able to admit that there’s no point in going to the moon again. Not when we can’t even have an intercity bullet train, or true universal health care, or food that’s guaranteed free of E. coli. That day hasn’t yet arrived, though.
This vegetable garden craze -- sometimes I wonder. For the cost of seeds, soil and soil amendments, tools, water, fighting gophers and other annoying wildlife, and my time, I could buy all the produce we can possibly handle. Something tells me I’ve been had. Still, there’s no better way to get your hands on a tomato like you had when you were a kid.
We believe what we want to believe. I’ve read a lot of atheists vs. the faithful tracts these past two years, and it has finally sunk in: These two groups don’t live in the same universe. They live in parallel ones that overlap, so do yourself a favor. Whichever one you’re in, they don’t speak your language in the other one. Not worth it to try and convert the savages.
On that note, disce pati.
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