I have made no secret of my almost fanatical disdain of Christmas, which is sensible given that I am Jewish and furthermore do not love horribly repetitive music. People might be shocked to learn that I am, however, a fan of New Years Day. It is not because I believe that there is any significance in some arbitrary date that may have started somewhat around when Jesus was born; rather, I like it because it encourages people to better themselves, in the form of resolutions. Every year I like to have as many resolutions as possible. Some of them don't work as well as others, but at least I write them down. Here are some of my more G-rated resolutions for this year:
1. As always, don't lie to anyone about anything, ever, in any situation. I have this resolution every year, yet somehow I always manage to break it in one way or another. I can improve that probably.
2. Work out more. I need to get rid of this paunch.
3. Try to keep in better contact with friends that aren't around me. Along those same lines, try to hang out more with everyone. It's something I probably don't do enough. This poses a problem, as my next few classes will probably be very hectic.
4. Learn the entire works of Scott Joplin/Fryderyk Chopin on the piano. So I can just sit down and play something whenever I feel like it.
5. As always, keep an open and practical mind. Refuse to judge people on any specific ideas or tastes they may have. After a while this becomes hard.
6. Read as much as humanly possible, including the entire repertoire of at least 4 authors.
7. Try to keep as detailed a dream log as I can. This will probably prove to be the most difficult.
8. Regularly update this blog, at the very least once a day. Has to be a substantial blog post as well, not like this one.
9. Learn more about the following subjects, which I know very little about: sports, cars, economics, food.
10. Shave on a regular basis (very important).
Anyhow, I think 2008 will prove to be a very good year, provided that we aren't all nuked to death after President Huckabee declares Religious War II: Judgment Day. Iron Man is coming out in May. Lil' Wayne has a new album coming out at some point. Hopefully nothing by M. Night Shyamalan will be released. Most importantly, I think I will be a better and happier person, because I'm going to try a lot harder to be that way. Plus, I have all the love and support of my friends at Cornell, which matters to me a great deal. They can do no wrong in my book. Well, one of them can, but I'm not going to say who.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Give a gift that keeps on taking
I've been talking about politics too much lately. It's Iowa, I can't really help it. A short digression is in order, however.
For Chanukah this year, my uncle in New Jersey gave me a generous $75.00 gift certificate for this website called Kiva. You may have heard of it. It's been getting a lot of press lately, not the least from Bill Clinton giving it a glowing review on Fox News. Basically, it is a non-profit organization that finds flourishing businesspeople and entrepreneurs in third-world countries and puts them on this web site, and people can donate money through the internet to help get their business off the ground. Supposedly, after their business is getting going, your money is then reimbursed, and you can choose to either withdraw it or lend it to another business. Conceivably, you could help multiple businesses get going using a very small amount of money.
I've been having a hard time donating anything in the past few days, mainly because of all the press it's been getting. Every time I look for a new business it usually says something like, "Thanks Kiva lenders, together we have funded every single possible business on this site." So I have money to burn and no one wants it. Basically, it's becoming like eBay, where I have to religiously monitor the site until an opening comes up. I don't think most philanthropists have that problem ever.
Yes, Kiva is kind of a way for lazy white people to feel slightly better about themselves, but I think overall the cause is pretty righteous. I would recommend it to any of you that have any disposable income that you'd like to share, which I'll admit is fairly rare among college students. Look at it this way though: if you need some money, you can always just withdraw it at some point if you really want to. I can't really think of anything bad about this organization, unless one wants to argue that it is pushing "capitalist western values" upon the unsuspecting third-world populace, which I don't think really applies in this case.
In case you were wondering (and divulging this information absolutely runs counter to Jewish law), I donated money to Shamim Hameed's group in Pakistan, reasoning that Pakistan needs all the help it can get right now. Some day, you will know me as the man that singlehandedly saved Pakistan.
For Chanukah this year, my uncle in New Jersey gave me a generous $75.00 gift certificate for this website called Kiva. You may have heard of it. It's been getting a lot of press lately, not the least from Bill Clinton giving it a glowing review on Fox News. Basically, it is a non-profit organization that finds flourishing businesspeople and entrepreneurs in third-world countries and puts them on this web site, and people can donate money through the internet to help get their business off the ground. Supposedly, after their business is getting going, your money is then reimbursed, and you can choose to either withdraw it or lend it to another business. Conceivably, you could help multiple businesses get going using a very small amount of money.
I've been having a hard time donating anything in the past few days, mainly because of all the press it's been getting. Every time I look for a new business it usually says something like, "Thanks Kiva lenders, together we have funded every single possible business on this site." So I have money to burn and no one wants it. Basically, it's becoming like eBay, where I have to religiously monitor the site until an opening comes up. I don't think most philanthropists have that problem ever.
Yes, Kiva is kind of a way for lazy white people to feel slightly better about themselves, but I think overall the cause is pretty righteous. I would recommend it to any of you that have any disposable income that you'd like to share, which I'll admit is fairly rare among college students. Look at it this way though: if you need some money, you can always just withdraw it at some point if you really want to. I can't really think of anything bad about this organization, unless one wants to argue that it is pushing "capitalist western values" upon the unsuspecting third-world populace, which I don't think really applies in this case.
In case you were wondering (and divulging this information absolutely runs counter to Jewish law), I donated money to Shamim Hameed's group in Pakistan, reasoning that Pakistan needs all the help it can get right now. Some day, you will know me as the man that singlehandedly saved Pakistan.
Biggest pat on the back award
Aside maybe from the staff of Lucky: The Magazine About Shopping, is there any magazine as consistently hare-brained as The Weekly Standard? Maybe that's a strong word to use. They're not stupid, they're just infinitely less clever than they think they are. Look at this cover. Can you imagine all the disgusting, sanctimonious self-congratulation that went into this cover? Oh, we are so noble, we chose a good true-blood American unlike that socialist Time Magazine that dared to choose a non-American as person of the year. How patriotic we must be. A few things need to be brought up here:
-Time's choice of Vladimir Putin as Person of the Year, besides being a completely worthless award to bestow upon anyone (remember last year?), furthermore does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of that individual. The award goes to those who have done more to "influence the events of the year," as they say. The award has previously gone to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. I invite any contributor to the Weekly Standard to try to prove that Time had a pro-Hitler or pro-Stalin agenda.
-Putin, arguably, did influence the world more than any other individual. He already has a leg up on the competition in that he is president of the 9th most populous country in the world. The fact that he managed for the most part to put it in order (at the expense to some degree of individuals' specific rights, specifically journalists--back me up on this, Vitaly) is a mind-boggling achievement.
-Just because they didn't give the award to Petraeus doesn't mean they don't like Petraeus. Obviously, it is highly selective. I'm sure Petraeus would have been fourth or fifth, at least.
-Just because you give an army general your own bullshit award doesn't mean you suddenly win the patriotic award, Bill Kristol. It's still a badly mismanaged war, and bestowing Petraeus, a basically decent and noncontroversial figure, with the title of "American of the year" is basically a ploy to simultaneously undercut any criticism of the war while deflecting any criticism of your own views. Imagine declaring, say, Paul Wolfowitz or Dick Cheney as American of the year. You couldn't do that unless we were actually winning.
I was about to say something like I feel bad for Bill Kristol these days, being such a shill for the administration that he hardly counts as a journalist, let alone a decent human being. Then I found out he is now a columnist for The New York Times.
Ick, I can't believe I just defended Time Magazine.
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Against the strategy of electability
The Iowa caucus is coming up on Thursday and I have yet to really make a decision, although I am looking forward to it perhaps a bit too much (and I'm the kind of guy that likes to stick around after the voting is done to work on the party platform). The only bad part about this is that I basically can't watch any TV at all in the next few days without seeing Hillary, Hillary, Hillary, and sometimes Romney staring at me with their vacant, corrupt TV eyes in 30-second commercials. What a worthless thing, the campaign commercial. Is it even remotely possible to take them seriously? What kind of person is seriously swayed by them? Worthless.
As a result of this I've been getting into arguments with several different people, including my father, about the reasons to vote for a particular candidate. I've always had somewhat of a disdain (the more I look at it, misplaced), for people who choose to vote for their candidates based on who is most likely to be elected rather than who they most like/agree with. My dad's policy is always to vote for the Democrat he thinks can beat the Republicans. This seems to me to be everything that is wrong with American politics in a nutshell: it becomes more about winning the horse race and less about the issues as time goes on. It ends with us electing supposedly "down to earth" people that in actuality have no clue about how to be president, but boy, I could certainly drink a beer with him.
(Speaking of which, isn't Bush a former alcoholic? I would assume that means he's not allowed to touch alcohol, ever. So much for the "have a beer with" voting contingency, assuming it exists.)
In a perfect democracy, people would vote for who they thought was the best candidate. Not who they thought was most popular, not who they think will do the least amount of evil, certainly not the one with the most sanctimonious fucking commercials. It would put everyone on a level playing field and reduce the amount of fierce, completely unreasonable partisanship that grips both sides to an absurd degree. It would also allow third party candidates to have a fighting chance, which I think would be a nice change. I get angry at people who scoff at the few who voted for Nader in 2000 on the basis that he cost Gore a few thousand votes. If you think Nader is the best person to run for office, that's who you should vote for. If not, don't. But at least think about it.
I was originally planning on caucusing for Kucinich, basically because I took several online quizzes comparing my policy views with the candidates and Kucinich was my closest match in nearly all of them. For a while, this seemed to me to be the way to best gauge who I think would be the best president. Now I'm not so sure. I don't buy his UFO sightings, for one. For another, I think he has much of a plan regarding the war in Iraq (it makes Richardson look deep). But how to reconcile the fact that I agree with Kucinich on nearly everything while still being unsure of his qualifications? One of my favorite bloggers, Mightygodking, said something very useful on the subject:
"Yes, Kucinich agrees with me on certain positions, but you know who agrees with me on every position? Me! And yet, I would likely make a terrible President. Competency in the duties of the job itself is just as important as having the right agenda, and Kucinich just doesn’t have that competency."
Exactly, I figure. I was wrong to equate his stance on social issues with his ability to be, you know, diplomatic and reasonable. So I apologize, sort of.
Now I'm thinking I'm going to throw my support around Obama or Edwards, most likely Obama. They both seem pretty good to me, especially in comparison to Clinton, of whose faults I think I will write about more in depth sometime soon. Let me just say that I hope in the future that I don't have to explain to my kids that there was a time in American history when there were presidents that weren't part of some Bush/Clinton dueling dynasty.
I'll be sure to report what goes on in the caucus. This plans to be very interesting.
As a result of this I've been getting into arguments with several different people, including my father, about the reasons to vote for a particular candidate. I've always had somewhat of a disdain (the more I look at it, misplaced), for people who choose to vote for their candidates based on who is most likely to be elected rather than who they most like/agree with. My dad's policy is always to vote for the Democrat he thinks can beat the Republicans. This seems to me to be everything that is wrong with American politics in a nutshell: it becomes more about winning the horse race and less about the issues as time goes on. It ends with us electing supposedly "down to earth" people that in actuality have no clue about how to be president, but boy, I could certainly drink a beer with him.
(Speaking of which, isn't Bush a former alcoholic? I would assume that means he's not allowed to touch alcohol, ever. So much for the "have a beer with" voting contingency, assuming it exists.)
In a perfect democracy, people would vote for who they thought was the best candidate. Not who they thought was most popular, not who they think will do the least amount of evil, certainly not the one with the most sanctimonious fucking commercials. It would put everyone on a level playing field and reduce the amount of fierce, completely unreasonable partisanship that grips both sides to an absurd degree. It would also allow third party candidates to have a fighting chance, which I think would be a nice change. I get angry at people who scoff at the few who voted for Nader in 2000 on the basis that he cost Gore a few thousand votes. If you think Nader is the best person to run for office, that's who you should vote for. If not, don't. But at least think about it.
I was originally planning on caucusing for Kucinich, basically because I took several online quizzes comparing my policy views with the candidates and Kucinich was my closest match in nearly all of them. For a while, this seemed to me to be the way to best gauge who I think would be the best president. Now I'm not so sure. I don't buy his UFO sightings, for one. For another, I think he has much of a plan regarding the war in Iraq (it makes Richardson look deep). But how to reconcile the fact that I agree with Kucinich on nearly everything while still being unsure of his qualifications? One of my favorite bloggers, Mightygodking, said something very useful on the subject:
"Yes, Kucinich agrees with me on certain positions, but you know who agrees with me on every position? Me! And yet, I would likely make a terrible President. Competency in the duties of the job itself is just as important as having the right agenda, and Kucinich just doesn’t have that competency."
Exactly, I figure. I was wrong to equate his stance on social issues with his ability to be, you know, diplomatic and reasonable. So I apologize, sort of.
Now I'm thinking I'm going to throw my support around Obama or Edwards, most likely Obama. They both seem pretty good to me, especially in comparison to Clinton, of whose faults I think I will write about more in depth sometime soon. Let me just say that I hope in the future that I don't have to explain to my kids that there was a time in American history when there were presidents that weren't part of some Bush/Clinton dueling dynasty.
I'll be sure to report what goes on in the caucus. This plans to be very interesting.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Benazir Bhutto
I don't really have to say that yesterday's assassination of Benazir Bhutto, which it looks was likely engineered by al-Qaeda, is a particularly bad thing to happen right now. If there's anything I'm really pleased about, it's the surprising amount of coverage this is getting in the mainstream media. I can't remember the last time the death of any foreign leader was covered so extensively (unless it was with great fanfare, in the case of Saddam Hussein). Still, in these trying times, a bit of perspective is needed.
Bhutto was hardly a great leader to begin with. This was a woman who was elected prime minister of Pakistan twice, and both times she was forced to resign amidst allegations of extreme corruption. She had a ridiculously lavish lifestyle--not to say that that is necessarily bad in itself, but she definitely robbed her own people in order to get that way. Also, she was extremely reckless and petty, but some might see those as positive traits. If this is the closest we have to a democratic savior in the Muslim world, we have a long way to go.
I understand that things must be pretty bleak in Pakistan right now. I have no idea what I would do in this situation. I imagine things could go two ways, one far more likely than the other: either this assassination becomes a "powder keg" that leads to a full-out war between western and Muslim nations, or her death galvanizes enough democracy-minded individuals to result in something approaching an Islamic reformation. I can tell you which one I think is more likely.
Bhutto was hardly a great leader to begin with. This was a woman who was elected prime minister of Pakistan twice, and both times she was forced to resign amidst allegations of extreme corruption. She had a ridiculously lavish lifestyle--not to say that that is necessarily bad in itself, but she definitely robbed her own people in order to get that way. Also, she was extremely reckless and petty, but some might see those as positive traits. If this is the closest we have to a democratic savior in the Muslim world, we have a long way to go.
I understand that things must be pretty bleak in Pakistan right now. I have no idea what I would do in this situation. I imagine things could go two ways, one far more likely than the other: either this assassination becomes a "powder keg" that leads to a full-out war between western and Muslim nations, or her death galvanizes enough democracy-minded individuals to result in something approaching an Islamic reformation. I can tell you which one I think is more likely.
Friday Poem III
Again, I mine from the past, a true sign of creative bankruptcy. This week's one isn't that good, but it's sort of appropriate with the snowstorm outside and me being incredibly angry. I promise that next week I'll start putting new ones up.
The Cold
I can’t describe when I lose control
My frail body is no match
It is my enemy
It traps me where I happen to be
In solitary confinement
Free to leave at any time but unable
Unwilling to face something
Normal people deal with every day
I am filled with unreasonable hate
Towards this relatively mild annoyance
Clearly perspective is needed.
However, I am not a fan.
The Cold
I can’t describe when I lose control
My frail body is no match
It is my enemy
It traps me where I happen to be
In solitary confinement
Free to leave at any time but unable
Unwilling to face something
Normal people deal with every day
I am filled with unreasonable hate
Towards this relatively mild annoyance
Clearly perspective is needed.
However, I am not a fan.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Scholarship for dummies
Currently I'm in Naperville, Ill., home of my aunt and uncle, perusing their bookshelves and playing their pianos (as my uncle is a professional piano teacher, he has several). I am in between trying to finish Gravity's Rainbow and doing some Wikipedia editing (Paul Krugman, in case you were wondering). Honestly I'm not really enjoying it here right now, and I'm looking forward to going back. I decided a long time ago that I just hated any sort of trip with my family, especially long car rides. My reasons are many and varied, but let's just concentrate on one right now.
As my iPod has been dead for several months, and I am too poor/lazy/angry at Steve Jobs to seek a replacement, I was basically forced to sit in the family van and listen to whatever my parents felt like for six hours. Now that isn't necessarily bad, you think. Surely they could play some decent, non-Christmas music. Unfortunately, everyone in my family except me and my father hate listening to music. I know the very notion sounds preposterous. How can one hate music? Let's not even go there for now.
My family likes to listen to books on tape. I hate books on tape. They take forever to listen to, they're often read by horrible actors, and more often than not they are filled with stupid sound effects. Plus, I'm not really much of an auditory learner so I don't get much from them anyway. This time, however, it wasn't a book on tape I was forced to listen to but something called Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature, which isn't a book but rather an audio college course. The CDs are divided into lectures and posited as just a professor talking about a subject. This actually seems like an interesting idea if you've ever felt like learning about something but didn't want to do all that pesky reading and research.
My two younger brothers really like science-fiction and fantasy, to the point where they have absolutely no interest in the real world around them. I don't know if they'd be interested in someone talking about the fantasy book canon (which from what I was listening to, is an abysmally small one), though. Maybe they do. They seemed to not complain, and quite honestly the lectures about Tolkien were much more interesting than anything I've ever actually read from the man, but I'll get to that later.
The professor in charge of this lecture series was Michael D.C. Drout, apparently the biggest Tolkien nerd in the world as well as a professor at Wheaton College (the one in Massachusetts, not the one that just recently lifted its ban on dancing). In his first lecture, he argued that preeminent literary scholars and book critics of our day tend to ignore fantasy books or at least ghettoize them as mere "genre fiction," which I agree is unfair. However, Drout fails to come up with much in the way of fantasy books that should be considered mandatory reading, other than The Lord of the Rings, Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books, and maybe the Harry Potter books. That immediately poses a problem: of the 12 individual lectures present, seven are exclusively about Tolkien. If he wants more respect for the fantasy genre, he needs to come up with a better list than that.
I guess it's sort of unavoidable to talk about Tolkien, though. I read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings when I was very young, and I wasn't a very big fan, despite being enamored with that sort of thing at the time. It just seemed like it was chock-full of useless languages and characters. I only saw the first movie in the series, and it was so long and boring I didn't bother seeing any of the others. It just really isn't my thing. I did gain a greater appreciation of Tolkien learning about his commitment to ancient languages and linguistics, and while I'm a bit skeptical about Drout's theory that The Hobbit is even tangentially based on Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt (how?), it still makes Bilbo Baggins more interesting of a character knowing that he isn't just this fantastic character devoid of human emotion or political feeling. Too much fantasy writing is like that.
In fact, I was just trying to think of any so-called fantasy novel that I think is any good at all. The closest examples I can think of are some of the more out-there novels of Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, all of whom I think fall under the tag "magical realism," which simply isn't the same thing. Fantasy is just too fundamentally limiting of an idea, I think. I prefer my wild ideas to have a grounding in real lives and real people. But then I guess that's the exact opposite of what fantasy's normal readership would want.
As my iPod has been dead for several months, and I am too poor/lazy/angry at Steve Jobs to seek a replacement, I was basically forced to sit in the family van and listen to whatever my parents felt like for six hours. Now that isn't necessarily bad, you think. Surely they could play some decent, non-Christmas music. Unfortunately, everyone in my family except me and my father hate listening to music. I know the very notion sounds preposterous. How can one hate music? Let's not even go there for now.
My family likes to listen to books on tape. I hate books on tape. They take forever to listen to, they're often read by horrible actors, and more often than not they are filled with stupid sound effects. Plus, I'm not really much of an auditory learner so I don't get much from them anyway. This time, however, it wasn't a book on tape I was forced to listen to but something called Rings, Swords, and Monsters: Exploring Fantasy Literature, which isn't a book but rather an audio college course. The CDs are divided into lectures and posited as just a professor talking about a subject. This actually seems like an interesting idea if you've ever felt like learning about something but didn't want to do all that pesky reading and research.
My two younger brothers really like science-fiction and fantasy, to the point where they have absolutely no interest in the real world around them. I don't know if they'd be interested in someone talking about the fantasy book canon (which from what I was listening to, is an abysmally small one), though. Maybe they do. They seemed to not complain, and quite honestly the lectures about Tolkien were much more interesting than anything I've ever actually read from the man, but I'll get to that later.
The professor in charge of this lecture series was Michael D.C. Drout, apparently the biggest Tolkien nerd in the world as well as a professor at Wheaton College (the one in Massachusetts, not the one that just recently lifted its ban on dancing). In his first lecture, he argued that preeminent literary scholars and book critics of our day tend to ignore fantasy books or at least ghettoize them as mere "genre fiction," which I agree is unfair. However, Drout fails to come up with much in the way of fantasy books that should be considered mandatory reading, other than The Lord of the Rings, Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea books, and maybe the Harry Potter books. That immediately poses a problem: of the 12 individual lectures present, seven are exclusively about Tolkien. If he wants more respect for the fantasy genre, he needs to come up with a better list than that.
I guess it's sort of unavoidable to talk about Tolkien, though. I read the entirety of The Lord of the Rings when I was very young, and I wasn't a very big fan, despite being enamored with that sort of thing at the time. It just seemed like it was chock-full of useless languages and characters. I only saw the first movie in the series, and it was so long and boring I didn't bother seeing any of the others. It just really isn't my thing. I did gain a greater appreciation of Tolkien learning about his commitment to ancient languages and linguistics, and while I'm a bit skeptical about Drout's theory that The Hobbit is even tangentially based on Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt (how?), it still makes Bilbo Baggins more interesting of a character knowing that he isn't just this fantastic character devoid of human emotion or political feeling. Too much fantasy writing is like that.
In fact, I was just trying to think of any so-called fantasy novel that I think is any good at all. The closest examples I can think of are some of the more out-there novels of Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, and Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, all of whom I think fall under the tag "magical realism," which simply isn't the same thing. Fantasy is just too fundamentally limiting of an idea, I think. I prefer my wild ideas to have a grounding in real lives and real people. But then I guess that's the exact opposite of what fantasy's normal readership would want.
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
A problem I have
Recently I had the opportunity to see Bill Richardson speak twice within the span of a few days, and I noticed a few things that bother me a great deal more than I think they did in 2004, when I was wet behind the ears and gunning for Kerry (yes I was, shut up).
For the most part, I agree with what Bill Richardson says, although I don't think he has his head on straight necessarily in calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and leaving a peacekeeping UN coalition, when we all know the UN probably won't do that, or at least don't do it well. I digress. Richardson is fine, but the people who go to these things, Republican or Democrat, are kind of disgusting. The one thing I said to Mendelson upon leaving the Memorial Union after seeing Richardson was that I think that people who raise their hands during Q&A sessions in order to make statements or comments rather than questions are the worst scum on the face of the earth. It just seemed that everyone there was extremely selfish and guided by a need to find a candidate who will promote the individual welfare of themselves. "What will you do for me?" being the first question anybody ever asks.
For example, a rather old gentleman sitting behind me kept making comments under his breath that were blatantly stupid or inaccurate. In the former category, we have this (and I am paraphrasing):
Bill Richardson: We need to understand that our individual freedoms come at the cost of many people's lives.
Old Man: (muttering) I don't agree with that, that's bullshit.
I thought that point was and is still fairly inarguable, the fact that people have died in order to preserve certain freedoms. I mean, it happened during the American Revolution.
The older gentlemen would also make inaccurate statements:
Bill Richardson: When I am president I will restore Habeas Corpus...
Old Man: (muttering again) You see, he's the only candidate who will actually say he will restore Habeas Corpus without being asked...him and also Dodd.
To which I wanted to turn around and respond, "Motherfucker, I saw Obama like a week ago and he said that exact thing." But of course I didn't, because I was watching Richardson talk.
Sometimes people on the ideological left just piss me off. Someone asked Richardson the very reasonable question of what to do about the unstable situation in Iraq and the likelihood of a civil war were we to pull out, and people started booing him. The fact that he asks a reasonable question and thinks about the consequences of leaving Iraq rather than just unthinkingly pulling out must have got all these old-school "liberals" really riled up.
Oh, and the statements, the horrible statements. One woman, rather than ask a question, basically said, "Bush wants us to give up our rights to serve his own agenda, but my parents didn't raise me that way to give up without a fight," and everyone cheered. Oh yeah, my parents taught me to always be completely subservient to authority. Come on.
Actually, the single most revolting thing about these events may just be the cheering. Every time Richardson says something they agree with, they whoop and holler. When Richardson says that he believes American intervention in Afghanistan is right, absolute silence. It's appalling. When I have an argument or conversation with a friend or relative, I don't cheer loudly every time he or she makes a good point. And I realize I am being hypocritical in saying that because I did do a fair amount of clapping. Were I president, I would make audience applause illegal until the conclusion of a presidential candidate's stump speech (loud applause).
I was also perturbed that we were told to stand for the pledge of allegiance just as Richardson came out. I don't like doing the pledge of allegiance or any pledge at all, and it's not because I am anti-American, despite what Bill O'Reilly says. As I don't like the idea of living in a police state, I don't believe in pledging allegiance to anything, especially abstract concepts. I could say something about how that goes back to religion, but I'm becoming a broken record.
For the most part, I agree with what Bill Richardson says, although I don't think he has his head on straight necessarily in calling for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq and leaving a peacekeeping UN coalition, when we all know the UN probably won't do that, or at least don't do it well. I digress. Richardson is fine, but the people who go to these things, Republican or Democrat, are kind of disgusting. The one thing I said to Mendelson upon leaving the Memorial Union after seeing Richardson was that I think that people who raise their hands during Q&A sessions in order to make statements or comments rather than questions are the worst scum on the face of the earth. It just seemed that everyone there was extremely selfish and guided by a need to find a candidate who will promote the individual welfare of themselves. "What will you do for me?" being the first question anybody ever asks.
For example, a rather old gentleman sitting behind me kept making comments under his breath that were blatantly stupid or inaccurate. In the former category, we have this (and I am paraphrasing):
Bill Richardson: We need to understand that our individual freedoms come at the cost of many people's lives.
Old Man: (muttering) I don't agree with that, that's bullshit.
I thought that point was and is still fairly inarguable, the fact that people have died in order to preserve certain freedoms. I mean, it happened during the American Revolution.
The older gentlemen would also make inaccurate statements:
Bill Richardson: When I am president I will restore Habeas Corpus...
Old Man: (muttering again) You see, he's the only candidate who will actually say he will restore Habeas Corpus without being asked...him and also Dodd.
To which I wanted to turn around and respond, "Motherfucker, I saw Obama like a week ago and he said that exact thing." But of course I didn't, because I was watching Richardson talk.
Sometimes people on the ideological left just piss me off. Someone asked Richardson the very reasonable question of what to do about the unstable situation in Iraq and the likelihood of a civil war were we to pull out, and people started booing him. The fact that he asks a reasonable question and thinks about the consequences of leaving Iraq rather than just unthinkingly pulling out must have got all these old-school "liberals" really riled up.
Oh, and the statements, the horrible statements. One woman, rather than ask a question, basically said, "Bush wants us to give up our rights to serve his own agenda, but my parents didn't raise me that way to give up without a fight," and everyone cheered. Oh yeah, my parents taught me to always be completely subservient to authority. Come on.
Actually, the single most revolting thing about these events may just be the cheering. Every time Richardson says something they agree with, they whoop and holler. When Richardson says that he believes American intervention in Afghanistan is right, absolute silence. It's appalling. When I have an argument or conversation with a friend or relative, I don't cheer loudly every time he or she makes a good point. And I realize I am being hypocritical in saying that because I did do a fair amount of clapping. Were I president, I would make audience applause illegal until the conclusion of a presidential candidate's stump speech (loud applause).
I was also perturbed that we were told to stand for the pledge of allegiance just as Richardson came out. I don't like doing the pledge of allegiance or any pledge at all, and it's not because I am anti-American, despite what Bill O'Reilly says. As I don't like the idea of living in a police state, I don't believe in pledging allegiance to anything, especially abstract concepts. I could say something about how that goes back to religion, but I'm becoming a broken record.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Best album, or maybe thing, of the year
I notice that I've gotten absolutely no comments so far. I think it's because I haven't told anyone about this blog yet. I'm afraid to because the URL is so regrettable. Sacks Files? I don't know why I even did that, but I already regret it.
This past evening I was at some bar downtown talking to several friends about what they felt was the best album of the year. Greg said he thought it was the new Les Savy Fav album Let's Stay Friends, Peter has been pulling for Sunset Rubdown, and Mendelson favors Beyond, which I'm almost inclined to agree, if not for this monster of an album:
Grinderman is basically Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds stripped down to two guitars, bass and drums. It is excellent, very primal, very Stooges stuff, and Nick Cave is of course an excellent lyricist. "No Pussy Blues" is the song that everyone talks about these days, and justly so. It's just an incredible, emotional, hilarious piece of music that also rocks incredibly hard (something Nick Cave has had some trouble doing in the past). And I'm not even one of those people (rock critics) who love "No Pussy Blues" because it's so true to my life...well, the "no pussy" part yes, the "blues" part not so much. I can't do this song justice. It's the best thing Nick Cave has ever done. Just listen to it. I give it the highest accolades possible.
This past evening I was at some bar downtown talking to several friends about what they felt was the best album of the year. Greg said he thought it was the new Les Savy Fav album Let's Stay Friends, Peter has been pulling for Sunset Rubdown, and Mendelson favors Beyond, which I'm almost inclined to agree, if not for this monster of an album:
Grinderman is basically Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds stripped down to two guitars, bass and drums. It is excellent, very primal, very Stooges stuff, and Nick Cave is of course an excellent lyricist. "No Pussy Blues" is the song that everyone talks about these days, and justly so. It's just an incredible, emotional, hilarious piece of music that also rocks incredibly hard (something Nick Cave has had some trouble doing in the past). And I'm not even one of those people (rock critics) who love "No Pussy Blues" because it's so true to my life...well, the "no pussy" part yes, the "blues" part not so much. I can't do this song justice. It's the best thing Nick Cave has ever done. Just listen to it. I give it the highest accolades possible.
My letter to Ev
Here's the letter I just mailed back to Ev Cherrington. I believe the phrase you will be searching for is "fish in a barrel," but sometimes it matters a lot to state the obvious.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Everett Cherrington:
Thanks very much for your letter and comments. I can't say I appreciated them, but it certainly gave me a lot to think about. I would like to address some of the points you made, beginning with the pamphlet you gave me from the "ex-gay" organization Exodus International.
The central point I was trying to make in my editorial was that I think it is an absolutely worthless endeavor to form an argument based on what I and many people believe to be a work of fiction. We could go on all day talking about what could possibly be true and what isn't true in the Bible, but in the end it carries no moral or intellectual truths in it that I couldn't otherwise either reject or come up with myself. That's why I complain when people like Eric Chamberlin use scripture in order to prove any point: it is simply not possible, scientifically, to prove that the Bible is inerrant, but there is plenty of proof to the contrary.
The pamphlet entitled "What the Bible Says About Homosexuality," in this regard, is an absolutely disgusting and misleading piece of Christian propaganda, and I would suggest you actually try to seek out and talk to gay people in the community that do not see a need to become born-again and are happy the way they are. I know you are trying to argue that it is essentially a humanist position to want to "save" gay people rather than kill them like the Nazis did, but in my mind, a life of forced, unreasonable shame can be a fate worse than death. The fundamentalist Christian position that homosexuality is somehow a "choice" has been proven demonstrably false, and the fact that you still claim it as fact merely paints Christianity as a cultish philosophy utterly opposed to new ideas or ways of thinking. But then again, isn't that all religion, at its core?
The pamphlet bewilderingly states that members of the gay community are, "aggressively pushing for acceptance of their lifestyle." Oh, how awful that must be, the fact that they don't want to be discriminated against and they want the same rights as everyone else. Quite an agenda. It's the same agenda that Jews had in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s and yes, the same agenda that Christians had during the days of the Roman empire, when they were being fed to the lions for professing their beliefs. And yet somehow you have come to believe that your beliefs trump all others, and that it is right that certain people should be discriminated against, as long as it's not you. Some would say there is a thin line between your way of thinking and hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan; I say that line is nonexistent. It's hate, pure and simple.
You also said in your letter something that I've heard many Christians argue when I bring up the point of how simply barbaric and amoral a lot of the Bible is: you say, "the standards were high and God desired for people to obey; children to obey their parents [...] but Jesus came to die for our sins in abolishing the law. Many other commands in the [Old Testament] are not followed in modern times as they are no longer applicable." Presumably, you are referring to my aside that Deuteronomy 21:18-21 demands that disobedient children be stoned to death. To you, Jesus' sacrifice made it so that this portion of the Bible is no longer relevant. I don't know how one goes about cherry picking which parts of the Bible are still relevant and which aren't, but I know that many people have very differing opinions, and these differing opinions lead to wars and death. I tend to view death and murder as morally abhorrent, but I guess you don't as long as it's on the cause of "righteousness," whatever that means.
I have carefully considered everything you have said to me and I reject all of it, happily and wholeheartedly. I feel I am a better person for not believing the dangerous and divisive aspects of the Bible, or the Quran or anything else. As such, I can live my whole life without feeling guilty or shameful because I am afraid of some invisible, petty deity is judging me, and I can be open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new people and new activities. But it's not enough that merely I think this way, and that's why I wrote a letter to the Tribune. I believe the Bible has been a horrible impediment of world civilization and I am prepared to argue this with anyone. That doesn't mean that I hate anyone who professes a religious view, and it never did. In fact, many of the people I love the most are religious for different reasons, and many of the things I love about those people stem from their religion. However, this is not about them, this is about people like you who choose to justify hate and bigotry under the guise of religion.
I hereby extend an offer to a debate, whether in a public or private forum, so I can perhaps communicate these grievances and maybe even ask you a few further questions. In any case, feel free to write back, but please don't bother arguing with me unless you want to use logical arguments based on reasoning and observation. Otherwise I'm just not going to be very receptive.
Sincerely,
Nathan Sacks
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Everett Cherrington:
Thanks very much for your letter and comments. I can't say I appreciated them, but it certainly gave me a lot to think about. I would like to address some of the points you made, beginning with the pamphlet you gave me from the "ex-gay" organization Exodus International.
The central point I was trying to make in my editorial was that I think it is an absolutely worthless endeavor to form an argument based on what I and many people believe to be a work of fiction. We could go on all day talking about what could possibly be true and what isn't true in the Bible, but in the end it carries no moral or intellectual truths in it that I couldn't otherwise either reject or come up with myself. That's why I complain when people like Eric Chamberlin use scripture in order to prove any point: it is simply not possible, scientifically, to prove that the Bible is inerrant, but there is plenty of proof to the contrary.
The pamphlet entitled "What the Bible Says About Homosexuality," in this regard, is an absolutely disgusting and misleading piece of Christian propaganda, and I would suggest you actually try to seek out and talk to gay people in the community that do not see a need to become born-again and are happy the way they are. I know you are trying to argue that it is essentially a humanist position to want to "save" gay people rather than kill them like the Nazis did, but in my mind, a life of forced, unreasonable shame can be a fate worse than death. The fundamentalist Christian position that homosexuality is somehow a "choice" has been proven demonstrably false, and the fact that you still claim it as fact merely paints Christianity as a cultish philosophy utterly opposed to new ideas or ways of thinking. But then again, isn't that all religion, at its core?
The pamphlet bewilderingly states that members of the gay community are, "aggressively pushing for acceptance of their lifestyle." Oh, how awful that must be, the fact that they don't want to be discriminated against and they want the same rights as everyone else. Quite an agenda. It's the same agenda that Jews had in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s and yes, the same agenda that Christians had during the days of the Roman empire, when they were being fed to the lions for professing their beliefs. And yet somehow you have come to believe that your beliefs trump all others, and that it is right that certain people should be discriminated against, as long as it's not you. Some would say there is a thin line between your way of thinking and hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan; I say that line is nonexistent. It's hate, pure and simple.
You also said in your letter something that I've heard many Christians argue when I bring up the point of how simply barbaric and amoral a lot of the Bible is: you say, "the standards were high and God desired for people to obey; children to obey their parents [...] but Jesus came to die for our sins in abolishing the law. Many other commands in the [Old Testament] are not followed in modern times as they are no longer applicable." Presumably, you are referring to my aside that Deuteronomy 21:18-21 demands that disobedient children be stoned to death. To you, Jesus' sacrifice made it so that this portion of the Bible is no longer relevant. I don't know how one goes about cherry picking which parts of the Bible are still relevant and which aren't, but I know that many people have very differing opinions, and these differing opinions lead to wars and death. I tend to view death and murder as morally abhorrent, but I guess you don't as long as it's on the cause of "righteousness," whatever that means.
I have carefully considered everything you have said to me and I reject all of it, happily and wholeheartedly. I feel I am a better person for not believing the dangerous and divisive aspects of the Bible, or the Quran or anything else. As such, I can live my whole life without feeling guilty or shameful because I am afraid of some invisible, petty deity is judging me, and I can be open to new ideas, new ways of thinking, new people and new activities. But it's not enough that merely I think this way, and that's why I wrote a letter to the Tribune. I believe the Bible has been a horrible impediment of world civilization and I am prepared to argue this with anyone. That doesn't mean that I hate anyone who professes a religious view, and it never did. In fact, many of the people I love the most are religious for different reasons, and many of the things I love about those people stem from their religion. However, this is not about them, this is about people like you who choose to justify hate and bigotry under the guise of religion.
I hereby extend an offer to a debate, whether in a public or private forum, so I can perhaps communicate these grievances and maybe even ask you a few further questions. In any case, feel free to write back, but please don't bother arguing with me unless you want to use logical arguments based on reasoning and observation. Otherwise I'm just not going to be very receptive.
Sincerely,
Nathan Sacks
The Black Dossier: brilliant or terrible?
I was lucky enough to borrow a copy of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier from the library, despite the fact that it just came out a bit more than a month ago. I finished it today and I was looking at some reviews of it online, which seem to range from the usual Moore superlatives to just general confusion. It's difficult to imagine that even the most hardcore Anglophile wouldn't have at least some trouble reading this, and I suspect many people picking up this book expecting to see another admittedly eccentric but mostly linear action adventure will be very shocked: this comic book contains probably more prose than pictures, and what's more, the prose is absolutely, incredibly dense, I mean we are talking throwaway allusions to Gravity's Rainbow and Louis Feuillade films here, meaning that you will probably spend around six times as much time reading portions of the titular "Black Dossier" than you would reading the actual narrative. That is probably the ratio of how much time I spent, although I don't know if casual comic fans, who are known for their disdain of books without pictures, are even going to take the time to read Moore's uniformly brilliant riffs on some of the greatest writers and thinkers in human history.
I thought it was great. It's probably the best comic to come out all year, and it's certainly the most ambitious (it might even give that dense-masterpiece-to-end-all-dense-masterpieces Watchmen a run for its money in that regard). I scoff at those that say that it is too high-minded or too gimmicky. Yes, it does come with 3-D glasses, but they are essential to the last part of the narrative. Yes, a lot of it verges on straight-up pornography, but if you're trying to appropriate the style of erotic novelist John Cleland, what else are you going to call it? Also, the art is great, and I must give props to Kevin O'Neill for having the perfect art style to capture all this incredible detail.
There are so many great things about this book. Among them: the postcards showing the origin of Orlando (of Virginia Woolf fame); having Harry Lime pop up as the new M; making James Bond into the 1950s equivalent of a bro, complete with date-rape tendencies; the excerpt from "Sal Paradyse's" novel The Crazy Wide Forever, which is completely worthless and unintelligible just as I imagined Paradise's writing would be; Les Hommes Mysterieux and Zweilicht-Helden, the League's respective French and German equivalents, of whose members I won't give away; the fact that the German fascist dictator during World War II was Adenoid Hynkel; and the Pynchon nod, among other things. I still have mixed feelings about the ending in 3-D, which basically ends with a soliloquy by some guy who looks a lot like Moore talking about how these characters are so majestic and brilliant and will live much longer and have more of a pervasive influence than any of us will ever have. In fact, the final section sort of reminded me of a more highbrow version of the South Park episodes that took place in "Imagination Land."
Still though, this is a great comic. Pick it up if you're interested in a completely new take on the form. I understand that there will be more adventures of the League in the future. I don't know how Moore is going to top this, but I'm sure he can.
I thought it was great. It's probably the best comic to come out all year, and it's certainly the most ambitious (it might even give that dense-masterpiece-to-end-all-dense-masterpieces Watchmen a run for its money in that regard). I scoff at those that say that it is too high-minded or too gimmicky. Yes, it does come with 3-D glasses, but they are essential to the last part of the narrative. Yes, a lot of it verges on straight-up pornography, but if you're trying to appropriate the style of erotic novelist John Cleland, what else are you going to call it? Also, the art is great, and I must give props to Kevin O'Neill for having the perfect art style to capture all this incredible detail.
There are so many great things about this book. Among them: the postcards showing the origin of Orlando (of Virginia Woolf fame); having Harry Lime pop up as the new M; making James Bond into the 1950s equivalent of a bro, complete with date-rape tendencies; the excerpt from "Sal Paradyse's" novel The Crazy Wide Forever, which is completely worthless and unintelligible just as I imagined Paradise's writing would be; Les Hommes Mysterieux and Zweilicht-Helden, the League's respective French and German equivalents, of whose members I won't give away; the fact that the German fascist dictator during World War II was Adenoid Hynkel; and the Pynchon nod, among other things. I still have mixed feelings about the ending in 3-D, which basically ends with a soliloquy by some guy who looks a lot like Moore talking about how these characters are so majestic and brilliant and will live much longer and have more of a pervasive influence than any of us will ever have. In fact, the final section sort of reminded me of a more highbrow version of the South Park episodes that took place in "Imagination Land."
Still though, this is a great comic. Pick it up if you're interested in a completely new take on the form. I understand that there will be more adventures of the League in the future. I don't know how Moore is going to top this, but I'm sure he can.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
The cops are on their way
Joe just showed me this not long ago, via Boing Boing I think: the FBI is spending $1 Billion on a new database of various physical characteristics. This is kind of scary. To me, this is all starting to sound like something out of 1984, and people have been complaining about if this is the FBI way overstepping the bounds of reason. Imagine what they could possibly put into a Biometrics database:
-Fingerprints, obviously
-Iris patterns
-Face shape data
-Credit card purchases
-Library books checked out
Maybe some other stuff. What's a bit weirder is that the FBI has already taken numerous DNA samples from about 1.5 million Afghan and Iraqi detainees, which means you or I could get away with murder far easier than they could. That simply isn't American, but then again they are detainees and they have no rights because they are terrorists.
The funniest part of the article comes from the ACLU, being classy as always:
"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."
Think about that acronym for a second.
Is it about time I became a card-carrying member of the ACLU? It's long overdue. I will look into it later today.
-Fingerprints, obviously
-Iris patterns
-Face shape data
-Credit card purchases
-Library books checked out
Maybe some other stuff. What's a bit weirder is that the FBI has already taken numerous DNA samples from about 1.5 million Afghan and Iraqi detainees, which means you or I could get away with murder far easier than they could. That simply isn't American, but then again they are detainees and they have no rights because they are terrorists.
The funniest part of the article comes from the ACLU, being classy as always:
"It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."
Think about that acronym for a second.
Is it about time I became a card-carrying member of the ACLU? It's long overdue. I will look into it later today.
I have at least one fan
My dad showed me a letter I got in the mail sometime recently from a character named Everett Cherrington, also known as "the God-socks man," regarding a letter to the editor I sent to the Ames Tribune quite a long time ago (unfortunately, I can't find it on the Tribune's website, although I'm sure it's there somewhere). Basically, my very brief article addressed concerns I had about another editorial, written by Eric Chamberlin, that basically lambasted the Tribune for its supposed "homosexual agenda." I'm not kidding, there are like two people in Ames that actually believe this is true and write to the paper regularly about it.
Anyhow, I wrote a letter back, basically pointing out that those who choose to invoke the Bible to justify bigotry or anything else are wasting their time, that I don't view the Bible as inerrant truth and neither do most of the people I know, that hate speech is hate speech whether or not it is religious in intent, etc. Anyhow I got some nasty responses, far greater than what I'd expect for such an innocuous thesis, with nearly all of them stating how "angry" of a young man I must be (a comment that made me furious, of course).
Ev's took a long time to come, though. Here's his letter:
"Nathan,
I'm sorry you're so angry at the world for how you perceive gays are treated. In Deut. 21 God is just in his judgment because people were under the law. The standards were high and God desired for people to obey; children to obey their parents.
But Jesus came to die for our sins in abolishing the law. Many other commands in the O.T. are not followed in modern times as they are no longer applicable.
When Jesus died it was to fulfill the law; to pay for man's sins. We're all sinners in need of repentance. When we repent (change our thinking about God); admit we're sinners and ask him for forgiveness then we're "born again." Then when we die we can go to Heaven and not to Hell where one pays for his or her sins.
Please carefully consider what the enclosed pamphlet has to say.
Sincerely, Ev Cherrington"
Also in this letter was a pamphlet from an organization called Exodus International, a supposed "worldwide network of 'ex-gay' ministries." It basically details one man's quest to reject his own homosexuality in favor of God. It's full of revolting, misleading so-called facts:
"Today, many denominations have fully embraced homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. How did this come about? The main reason is a shift in this century from reliance on God's Word to reliance on the latest scientific findings and personal experiences."
Aaargh! I don't feel I need to comment on this right now, but I will write a swift response to him, and I will probably post it up here when I have the chance.
Anyhow, I wrote a letter back, basically pointing out that those who choose to invoke the Bible to justify bigotry or anything else are wasting their time, that I don't view the Bible as inerrant truth and neither do most of the people I know, that hate speech is hate speech whether or not it is religious in intent, etc. Anyhow I got some nasty responses, far greater than what I'd expect for such an innocuous thesis, with nearly all of them stating how "angry" of a young man I must be (a comment that made me furious, of course).
Ev's took a long time to come, though. Here's his letter:
"Nathan,
I'm sorry you're so angry at the world for how you perceive gays are treated. In Deut. 21 God is just in his judgment because people were under the law. The standards were high and God desired for people to obey; children to obey their parents.
But Jesus came to die for our sins in abolishing the law. Many other commands in the O.T. are not followed in modern times as they are no longer applicable.
When Jesus died it was to fulfill the law; to pay for man's sins. We're all sinners in need of repentance. When we repent (change our thinking about God); admit we're sinners and ask him for forgiveness then we're "born again." Then when we die we can go to Heaven and not to Hell where one pays for his or her sins.
Please carefully consider what the enclosed pamphlet has to say.
Sincerely, Ev Cherrington"
Also in this letter was a pamphlet from an organization called Exodus International, a supposed "worldwide network of 'ex-gay' ministries." It basically details one man's quest to reject his own homosexuality in favor of God. It's full of revolting, misleading so-called facts:
"Today, many denominations have fully embraced homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle. How did this come about? The main reason is a shift in this century from reliance on God's Word to reliance on the latest scientific findings and personal experiences."
Aaargh! I don't feel I need to comment on this right now, but I will write a swift response to him, and I will probably post it up here when I have the chance.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Friday poem II
This is me trying to be Bukowski, I think, which everyone should try occasionally.
The Untitled Poem About Resignation
The Untitled Poem About Resignation
“Damn, you’re calm,” they say to me,
My face a bleeding wreck from
Falling down a flight of stairs.
What I should have said is, “Fools,
Clearly I’m in too much pain
To do a fucking dance for you.”
Instead I say something else,
Something like, “Mmmphh,” which
I guess is code for, “I’m good.”
They all walk away and I
Almost grin, the fact dawned
That this was my family.
As the family fades away, I get stronger
My strength sapped by wasted days
Replaced with a decaying soup-like structure.
Oatmeal.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Back in Ames
I'm back in Ames finally, and I'm not really happy or sad about that given that I was here but a month ago. Nothing has changed since then. Still, it's a very nice place to be, my room is as cozy and hot as ever, and I get lambchops for dinner. My parents always give me a good dinner on the first day back home. I didn't go back home yesterday because I decided to hang out with remaining friends instead, and I ended up having some really intense conversations about Russia/Stalinism/Leninism/Marxism/Christianity/American voter efficacy/secularism/North Korea. It was interesting, especially given that I was having these arguments with Duncan, Vitaly, and Hainstock, all of whom have different areas of expertise. That's always good when that happens. As the English major, I was basically pulling for Trotsky, obviously.
My plan for this break is to read, obviously first of all. I have The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan and some short stories from John Updike, as well as Alan Moore's new comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, which I've noticed has been getting middling to downright poor reviews.
Also on my agenda is to continue writing down everything I do everyday for the entirety of winter break. This is a tradition I started back in freshman year, mainly because I felt that my adult self (except I am an adult--adulter self?) would be interested to know about my musings, philosophies, and lifestyle habits as a college student, especially during that two weeks of debauchery known as winter break. Looking back at what I had written, there was definitely some interesting things going on. I don't want to get too specific, it is my own damn business, but I would say freshman year was all about a lot of self-loathing and pity, while sophomore year was about boredom. What will this break be about? Hopefully something preferable to either of those.
Aaron just gave me his Chanukah present, the newest issue of the British mag Mojo. I think he chose it because it has the reunited Led Zeppelin on the cover. It occurs to me that I haven't commented on this Led Zeppelin reunion, partially because I'm not a millionaire and couldn't get tickets but also because reunion shows tend to be suspicious stuff. I have looked at some grainy cell phone video clips of the show on Youtube, and from what I can tell, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page play as good as they ever did, Plant sings probably better than he did before, and Jason Bonham does not even come fucking close. You can definitely tell the difference. It's a shame on the one hand, but that's what he deserves for making a career out of flogging his dad's corpse.
My plan for this break is to read, obviously first of all. I have The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan and some short stories from John Updike, as well as Alan Moore's new comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, which I've noticed has been getting middling to downright poor reviews.
Also on my agenda is to continue writing down everything I do everyday for the entirety of winter break. This is a tradition I started back in freshman year, mainly because I felt that my adult self (except I am an adult--adulter self?) would be interested to know about my musings, philosophies, and lifestyle habits as a college student, especially during that two weeks of debauchery known as winter break. Looking back at what I had written, there was definitely some interesting things going on. I don't want to get too specific, it is my own damn business, but I would say freshman year was all about a lot of self-loathing and pity, while sophomore year was about boredom. What will this break be about? Hopefully something preferable to either of those.
Aaron just gave me his Chanukah present, the newest issue of the British mag Mojo. I think he chose it because it has the reunited Led Zeppelin on the cover. It occurs to me that I haven't commented on this Led Zeppelin reunion, partially because I'm not a millionaire and couldn't get tickets but also because reunion shows tend to be suspicious stuff. I have looked at some grainy cell phone video clips of the show on Youtube, and from what I can tell, John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page play as good as they ever did, Plant sings probably better than he did before, and Jason Bonham does not even come fucking close. You can definitely tell the difference. It's a shame on the one hand, but that's what he deserves for making a career out of flogging his dad's corpse.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
I "beat" the New York Post to death
Check out this lovely headline: Ike Turner is dead. He was 76. I apologize for linking to anything that has to do with Rupert Murdoch, the most Hitleresque Australian ever, but just look at that headline!
A far better obit can be found in Slate, written by special guest writer Donald Fagen. Yes, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen. I've already taken way more abuse than I should have this year for my ardent support of most things Dan, and I'm sure if anyone listened to the lyrics they would agree with me. Simply put, Fagen is a great writer, and apparently pretty well-read, judging from his allusions to Faust (I mean, knowing about Faust isn't in itself that interesting, but I guess it's important because the musicians I know don't tend to read). Fagen's obit is far superior to any other I've read because he takes critically into account a) Turner's place within the spectrum of old bluesmen and b) his later boozing and wife-hitting years, which he understands are severe but also that it's quite possible that Tina had careerist reasons for implicating Ike as a wife-beater, just in time for her Private Dancer comeback. Anyhow, it's all pretty fascinating, and I come out of it feeling as if I should just be sorry for poor Ike. I listened to his performance on the Gorillaz track "Every Planet We Know Is Dead" and it's a lot sadder then it used to be.
BONUS: For anyone still doubting the genius of Becker and Fagen, I direct you to this open letter to Wes Anderson, which is one of the funniest things I think I have ever read. They basically dig into Wes Anderson's musical choices for all his films and how they are so predictable all the time, an exact complaint I have had:
"Again, each film increasingly relies on eccentric visual detail, period wardrobe, idiosyncratic and overwrought set design, and music supervision that leans heavily on somewhat obscure 60's "British Invasion" tracks a-jangle with twelve-string guitars, harpsichords and mandolins. The company of players, while excellent, retains pretty much the same tone and function from film to film. Indeed, you must be aware that your career as an auteur is mirrored in the lives of your beloved characters as they struggle in vain to duplicate early glories."
Damn. They come to the conclusion that Bottle Rocket is still Wes Anderson's best film, and that he should commission Steely Dan to write a song for Darjeeling Limited. Becker's choice for a song is called "Bottle Rocket 2." It's very funny.
A far better obit can be found in Slate, written by special guest writer Donald Fagen. Yes, Steely Dan's Donald Fagen. I've already taken way more abuse than I should have this year for my ardent support of most things Dan, and I'm sure if anyone listened to the lyrics they would agree with me. Simply put, Fagen is a great writer, and apparently pretty well-read, judging from his allusions to Faust (I mean, knowing about Faust isn't in itself that interesting, but I guess it's important because the musicians I know don't tend to read). Fagen's obit is far superior to any other I've read because he takes critically into account a) Turner's place within the spectrum of old bluesmen and b) his later boozing and wife-hitting years, which he understands are severe but also that it's quite possible that Tina had careerist reasons for implicating Ike as a wife-beater, just in time for her Private Dancer comeback. Anyhow, it's all pretty fascinating, and I come out of it feeling as if I should just be sorry for poor Ike. I listened to his performance on the Gorillaz track "Every Planet We Know Is Dead" and it's a lot sadder then it used to be.
BONUS: For anyone still doubting the genius of Becker and Fagen, I direct you to this open letter to Wes Anderson, which is one of the funniest things I think I have ever read. They basically dig into Wes Anderson's musical choices for all his films and how they are so predictable all the time, an exact complaint I have had:
"Again, each film increasingly relies on eccentric visual detail, period wardrobe, idiosyncratic and overwrought set design, and music supervision that leans heavily on somewhat obscure 60's "British Invasion" tracks a-jangle with twelve-string guitars, harpsichords and mandolins. The company of players, while excellent, retains pretty much the same tone and function from film to film. Indeed, you must be aware that your career as an auteur is mirrored in the lives of your beloved characters as they struggle in vain to duplicate early glories."
Damn. They come to the conclusion that Bottle Rocket is still Wes Anderson's best film, and that he should commission Steely Dan to write a song for Darjeeling Limited. Becker's choice for a song is called "Bottle Rocket 2." It's very funny.
An idea I've had
Lately I've been kicking around some ideas to do at student symposium this coming spring. I definitely want to do something (especially considering the amount of talking I've been engaged in lately about going into academia). The problem is, I can't think of any particular author or artist I could consider myself an expert on that no one else has. I mean, I know Kerouac almost by heart, but so does every asshole. No one wants to see a symposium project on that. I was debating doing one on Hitchens, who is not a fiction writer, so I don't know about that. None of my professors have asked me to do anything, so I assume none of them are that interested in what I have to say. Whatever.
An option for the symposium, and for English honors in general, is to write some sort of short story, but I gather that not many people do this because the professors are intensely critical of fiction work. I think I could do it though. I was recently reminded of John Barth's great short story "Click," which deals very explicitly with the idea of "hypertextuality," wherein all works of science or literature could be connected to each other via hypertext links, not unlike the internet itself. "Click" was written in 1997, but when I read it a few months back I was shocked at how prescient it seemed. Whether he was presenting an absolutely new way of thinking or a new way of literature is debatable, but in these days of Web 2.0, it seems relevant, at least considering what I know.
"Click" offers a lot of interesting new perspectives on the craft of reading, but in the end, it's just basic text made to fool us into thinking that this "hypertextuality" goes beyond the printed page. My idea was to take Barth's ideas (which I don't think are necessarily his) and elaborate it into a symposium project wherein I would create a wikistory. To elaborate, I thought that I would start with a base text, perhaps only a few paragraphs long, that would contain links to other sections of the wiki, to be read at the readers' own discretion. These separate pages or articles would contain some sort of poem or prose, or even a picture, that would complement or illuminate what I was saying on the original page. Some of these pages would branch out further into other pages--the end result would add up to something along 20 pages of actual material, but the reader is free to look at it in several different ways.
My biggest problem is that I don't know how to make a wiki. My friend Karl is a very strong proponent of wikis, so maybe I will enlist him to help. This may be way over my head though. It seems like a good idea, but what about the actual plot? What would I write about? It's important that my subject matter work as a linear piece of literature as well as a pedagogical exercise, because otherwise I could write any cryptic bullshit I wanted, and I am not the kind of person that likes to do that.
Anyway it's just an idea. I probably won't go through with it. It's better than most of my ideas though.
An option for the symposium, and for English honors in general, is to write some sort of short story, but I gather that not many people do this because the professors are intensely critical of fiction work. I think I could do it though. I was recently reminded of John Barth's great short story "Click," which deals very explicitly with the idea of "hypertextuality," wherein all works of science or literature could be connected to each other via hypertext links, not unlike the internet itself. "Click" was written in 1997, but when I read it a few months back I was shocked at how prescient it seemed. Whether he was presenting an absolutely new way of thinking or a new way of literature is debatable, but in these days of Web 2.0, it seems relevant, at least considering what I know.
"Click" offers a lot of interesting new perspectives on the craft of reading, but in the end, it's just basic text made to fool us into thinking that this "hypertextuality" goes beyond the printed page. My idea was to take Barth's ideas (which I don't think are necessarily his) and elaborate it into a symposium project wherein I would create a wikistory. To elaborate, I thought that I would start with a base text, perhaps only a few paragraphs long, that would contain links to other sections of the wiki, to be read at the readers' own discretion. These separate pages or articles would contain some sort of poem or prose, or even a picture, that would complement or illuminate what I was saying on the original page. Some of these pages would branch out further into other pages--the end result would add up to something along 20 pages of actual material, but the reader is free to look at it in several different ways.
My biggest problem is that I don't know how to make a wiki. My friend Karl is a very strong proponent of wikis, so maybe I will enlist him to help. This may be way over my head though. It seems like a good idea, but what about the actual plot? What would I write about? It's important that my subject matter work as a linear piece of literature as well as a pedagogical exercise, because otherwise I could write any cryptic bullshit I wanted, and I am not the kind of person that likes to do that.
Anyway it's just an idea. I probably won't go through with it. It's better than most of my ideas though.
The day before...
Two days without blogging this early in the game is not a good sign. I need to step up, but as always, I find myself at a loss of what to say. I was just studying for my final, one that promises to be possibly the easiest final of my college career. All night I've been reading about neoclassicism, minimalism, postminimalism, etc. in bite-size chunks, and I think I have a pretty good grasp on the classical music end of things. Regarding the popular music end? Not even a challenge, not even gonna study. A day or so back I had a quiz where I was asked to match certain musical artists to their genres, and the choices were like the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, the Bee Gees and Talking Heads. Needless to say, it was very easy.
One interesting thing I have noticed in the news is Germany's latest declaration regarding Scientology as a dangerous cult. Of course I am inclined to agree, for reasons more personal than one might expect, but this seriously infringes on anyone's right to religion. Now, I can understand that Scientology might pose a physical threat to certain people, and it is a very strange and seductive religion that has no qualms about fucking over its constituents. To a certain extent, that is their own fault, and the subjugation and brainwashing of kids is an unfortunate side effect of living in a semi-free democracy, and anyway Christians and Jews do it plenty too.
On the other hand, I understand that this is Germany we are talking about, and they know a thing or two about dangerous cults that restrict the essential freedoms and rights of humans. They must have a genuine concern, although I have yet to read what it actually is. It seems to me this all stems from Tom Cruise making some Nazi movie in Germany. Why all the Tom hate? Can someone explain this to me? Why no Travolta hate? He was the one who made the Passion of Scientology (which, I'm almost ashamed to say, I saw on opening day).
Regarding the "personal reasons" I was referring to earlier: my dad told me that a friend of his had a daughter who committed suicide as a result of monetary pressure from her Scientology church. At least that's what he said, I don't know if she readily admitted this before she killed herself. Sadly, this does seem to be how Scientology operates, at least according to L. Ron Hubbard:
"A Suppressive Person or Group becomes fair game. By FAIR GAME is meant, may not be further protected by the codes and disciplines or the rights of a Scientologist."
Basically, their doctrine is to completely destroy and demoralize anyone who dares criticize them. Well, I'll be one of many and call them out. Scientology is a crazy cult that does innumerable damage to defenseless children and adults alike. The church itself can be indirectly linked to the murder or suicide of several people within the church, yet they seem to operate outside the law. I don't care how wonderful Jerry Maguire or Road Hogs is, it is our duty to point this out.
One interesting thing I have noticed in the news is Germany's latest declaration regarding Scientology as a dangerous cult. Of course I am inclined to agree, for reasons more personal than one might expect, but this seriously infringes on anyone's right to religion. Now, I can understand that Scientology might pose a physical threat to certain people, and it is a very strange and seductive religion that has no qualms about fucking over its constituents. To a certain extent, that is their own fault, and the subjugation and brainwashing of kids is an unfortunate side effect of living in a semi-free democracy, and anyway Christians and Jews do it plenty too.
On the other hand, I understand that this is Germany we are talking about, and they know a thing or two about dangerous cults that restrict the essential freedoms and rights of humans. They must have a genuine concern, although I have yet to read what it actually is. It seems to me this all stems from Tom Cruise making some Nazi movie in Germany. Why all the Tom hate? Can someone explain this to me? Why no Travolta hate? He was the one who made the Passion of Scientology (which, I'm almost ashamed to say, I saw on opening day).
Regarding the "personal reasons" I was referring to earlier: my dad told me that a friend of his had a daughter who committed suicide as a result of monetary pressure from her Scientology church. At least that's what he said, I don't know if she readily admitted this before she killed herself. Sadly, this does seem to be how Scientology operates, at least according to L. Ron Hubbard:
"A Suppressive Person or Group becomes fair game. By FAIR GAME is meant, may not be further protected by the codes and disciplines or the rights of a Scientologist."
Basically, their doctrine is to completely destroy and demoralize anyone who dares criticize them. Well, I'll be one of many and call them out. Scientology is a crazy cult that does innumerable damage to defenseless children and adults alike. The church itself can be indirectly linked to the murder or suicide of several people within the church, yet they seem to operate outside the law. I don't care how wonderful Jerry Maguire or Road Hogs is, it is our duty to point this out.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Google Video treats
Via the "Christopher Hitchens Appreciation Society" on Facebook, on which I am a proud member and contributor, I found a link to something called "The Four Horsemen," a two hour-long discussion between the Hitch, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, the four individuals that many would consider to be the vanguard of the new atheist movement, although two of them (not Dawkins or Dennett) would probably be appalled to find that they were labeled as part of any such group or movement. Here's a link to both hours. I think this is in Hitchens' house in D.C., as I remember it from when he did a tour of it in his C-Span interview:
Hour 1
Hour 2
That Sam Harris is quite a dish, isn't he? I've read God is not Great, The God Delusion, and The End of Faith, but not Dennett's book. That's something I will do over break.
Also, I think it's about time I read a lot of books challenging all these claims and arguing for religion. Are there any books like that that I could read and take seriously and don't use the Bible as a primary source?
Hour 1
Hour 2
That Sam Harris is quite a dish, isn't he? I've read God is not Great, The God Delusion, and The End of Faith, but not Dennett's book. That's something I will do over break.
Also, I think it's about time I read a lot of books challenging all these claims and arguing for religion. Are there any books like that that I could read and take seriously and don't use the Bible as a primary source?
Horror's ultimate quantity
I watched the old-school horror flick The Brain That Wouldn't Die with Laura today, and while it isn't particularly good, and the title is very misleading, there are a few things worth writing about. Chief among them is that the big monster who appears only in the last few minutes of the film is actually a very real person with acromegaly, which causes gigantic, untreatable tumors. I merely assumed that it was a tall man with makeup. His name was Eddie Carmel; apparently he was part of some Palestinian freak show for most of his life but also appeared in a few movies.
I feel sort of weird now because I was so taken aback and almost scared by how grotesque this individual looked at the end of the film, but I didn't know that this was how the actor normally looked (I should have known better: the rest of the movie is as cheap as hell). It got me wondering about my own views regarding exploitation of people's inadequacies in art. Turns out I have no opinion, at least not as much as I used to when reality TV was among the first to make a spectacle out of doing disgusting things or being an idiot. Nowadays my soul is deadened to the point where I see no reason to condemn that sort of thing. I'm sure Carmel was paid well, and while I'm not sure he was happy to do it, it was probably a step up from the freak show. It's just one of the million aspects of being an earthling where you just have to shrug your shoulders and say, "too bad." That is, in itself, too bad.
(For those of you not in the know: a fact well-known among Cornell College students is that this campus will slowly sap away your idealism and your drive to do good deeds. This does, however, allow me to get more work done.)
The movie was part of a 12-DVD, 50-movie collection that Laura has. We've been watching quite a few of them lately. You can buy it at Wal-Mart for something like $5. All of the movies I assume are in the public domain now, and all of them have particularly terrible prints, but there are actually quite a few masterpieces, including Metropolis, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, alongside some less-regarded but still classic outings from Vincent Price and Bela Lugosi. There are also some really horrible ones too. I suggest you stay away from The Gorilla or anything involving the Ritz Brothers.
Completely random note: The label for this post is going to be "movies" rather than "film," because I believe it's a more inclusive and accurate term. I remember in 11th grade, my AP Western Civilization teacher Kirk Daddow always told us to regard anything we watched in class as a "film" (because of the intrinsic seriousness of whatever we were watching, I guess). Throughout the whole year, I wanted to raise my hand and tell him that technically these weren't "films," since they were being shown on videotape, but I never did.
Friday, December 14, 2007
I got an A+
For the first time in a very long time, I got an A+ on a paper. My professor even said it was one of the best papers he has ever gotten in his class. So, that put me in a cheery mood. In case you were wondering, I'm in Music History III: Romantic to Modern Era and I just did a paper on the banning of Richard Wagner in Israel (because of his Nazi ties, among other things). I don't think I want to put the whole thing on here because you don't really need to be interested, but here's the opening paragraph nevertheless:
The very existence of great art, however one chooses to define it, almost always necessitates a need to erect a political barrier between the work of art and the views of its artist. To take film as an example, one can be impressed and enthralled by D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation while recognizing that it is a blatantly racist and inaccurate account of the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan—similarly, that same person can agree with what Michael Moore is trying to say in Farenheit 9/11 while noting that a lot of it is misleading and propagandistic. The barrier seems reasonable enough, but as with almost all theories, problems can arise. What if this artist may have been indirectly responsible for the death of a friend or loved one? Such is the strange case of Richard Wagner’s legacy. Everybody who has studied Wagner at one point or another can probably agree on two central points: one, that he was one of the key composers in world history with a body of work that is almost unparalleled in terms of ambitiousness; and two, that many of his personal views, especially regarding Jews, were abhorrent and unforgivable, especially in light of how his views were co-opted and used by Hitler as a justification for the extermination of the Jewish race. In 1948, more than sixty years after Wagner’s death, the state of Israel was formed, partially as a response to the need of so many Holocaust survivors (many of whom were forced to listen to Wagner in concentration camps) to establish a Jewish state. Since that time, there has been an unofficial ban on playing the music of Wagner in the state of Israel, and the few attempts individuals have made to perform Wagner (notably by the Israeli conductor and composer Daniel Barenboim) have been met with a significant amount of conflict, both from Israeli citizens and public officials. The reasons Israelis offer for eliminating Wagner from the Israeli repertoire are understandable, but they reflect a certain amount of hypocrisy: Why ban Wagner and not other confirmed anti-Semites, as the majority of individuals in Europe during the late 19th century at least harbored some sort of anti-Semitic belief? The answer lies not in the works of Wagner but in the image and symbol of Wagner, as used by Hitler. The unofficial ban on playing Wagner's music inIsrael
Kind of long-winded, but essentially correct, right? If my prof asks, I might make this into a syposium project. I'll talk about that later.
The very existence of great art, however one chooses to define it, almost always necessitates a need to erect a political barrier between the work of art and the views of its artist. To take film as an example, one can be impressed and enthralled by D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation while recognizing that it is a blatantly racist and inaccurate account of the beginnings of the Ku Klux Klan—similarly, that same person can agree with what Michael Moore is trying to say in Farenheit 9/11 while noting that a lot of it is misleading and propagandistic. The barrier seems reasonable enough, but as with almost all theories, problems can arise. What if this artist may have been indirectly responsible for the death of a friend or loved one? Such is the strange case of Richard Wagner’s legacy. Everybody who has studied Wagner at one point or another can probably agree on two central points: one, that he was one of the key composers in world history with a body of work that is almost unparalleled in terms of ambitiousness; and two, that many of his personal views, especially regarding Jews, were abhorrent and unforgivable, especially in light of how his views were co-opted and used by Hitler as a justification for the extermination of the Jewish race. In 1948, more than sixty years after Wagner’s death, the state of Israel was formed, partially as a response to the need of so many Holocaust survivors (many of whom were forced to listen to Wagner in concentration camps) to establish a Jewish state. Since that time, there has been an unofficial ban on playing the music of Wagner in the state of Israel, and the few attempts individuals have made to perform Wagner (notably by the Israeli conductor and composer Daniel Barenboim) have been met with a significant amount of conflict, both from Israeli citizens and public officials. The reasons Israelis offer for eliminating Wagner from the Israeli repertoire are understandable, but they reflect a certain amount of hypocrisy: Why ban Wagner and not other confirmed anti-Semites, as the majority of individuals in Europe during the late 19th century at least harbored some sort of anti-Semitic belief? The answer lies not in the works of Wagner but in the image and symbol of Wagner, as used by Hitler. The unofficial ban on playing Wagner's music in
Kind of long-winded, but essentially correct, right? If my prof asks, I might make this into a syposium project. I'll talk about that later.
Friday poem
This is something I think I'm going to try to do every Friday. I'm starting with a rather old poem of sketchy quality, but probably next week I'll start trying to put more recent ones up. This is merely a ploy to get me to write more.
It's Teriffic!
It's Teriffic!
Wasn’t born long after the rules of “fair play”
Proved to shatter my brittle bones, those worthless lies
I saw the eyes of a man
Much bigger and stronger than me.
Smarter too (not that it mattered)
As my shattered bones and organs shifted together
To spell out a word
To point out my crimes
It hurt enough to scare me straight
(Pitter patter goes my spleen)
Till I thought of those eyes.
More toad than man, more boring than Man
It’s hard to keep one’s thoughts on it though
So I turned on the radio.
A once valid method of pulling teeth
Slowly and surely, slowly and surgically
Spineless vibrations welling up my eyes
Switch from songs to static, you might be surprised.
You insolent dolt, that’s the morphine talking
Do the nerves in your brain even bother anymore?
What’s in store for you old man
Another house and a kitchen
To make more snacks (can you even do that?)
Take a rat and a toad and make them a deal
You give them a list but
You give them no choice
It’s enough to drum along
(Stop poking at my spleen dammit)
Paradiddle. Morphine no more.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Excerpt #1 from the Eddie Hazel biography
Part of the purpose for this blog is unloading a bunch of stuff I wrote randomly at one point or another, since none of it is going to be published. For the last couple of years I've been working very irregularly on a biography of deceased Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel, most well-known for the ten-minute guitar solo "Maggot Brain" and his rampant drug use.
Anyhow here's an excerpt I thought was kind of good, completely divorced of its concept:
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Thoughts?
Anyhow here's an excerpt I thought was kind of good, completely divorced of its concept:
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Critics of popular music tend to throw around the word “virtuoso” pretty liberally when referring to musical artists of a particular expressive power. Certainly Eddie Hazel is often tagged with this admittedly well-intentioned compliment, but doing so does a disservice to the amount of craft and imagination he was able to put into his playing. Eddie Hazel was no “virtuoso,” at least not by the terms that virtuosity is often defined (like most rhythm & blues guitarists of the time, he was not one to notate his music, nor was he likely to play lightning fast scalar solos or indulge in “fret-tapping”)—he was simply a blues guitarist, and the more one looks at the Steve Vais and Joe Satrianis of the world (Guitar World-sanctioned “virtuosos” both), the more it becomes absolutely clear that blues is the relative opposite of virtuosity. At the risk of generalizing about a subject that I know way too much about, it should be noted that electric blues playing has never been about playing fast or effortlessly—on the contrary, it’s about striving, sweating, desperately searching for some sort of truth or happiness in the form of that perfect note, upon which the blues player realizes that this note is far from perfect, and the journey must continue, ad finitum, ad nauseum. The tone of melancholy that pervades 99% of guitar blues is, at its basest level, the guitarist struggling to achieve transcendence, possibly as a way of communicating with his or her audience, possibly as a way of keeping the hell hound temporarily off the trail.
But I am getting way too hippy-dippy here. On a purely technical level, and Hazel is as perfect an example as one can think of, blues guitar solos revolve around fairly simple patterns and often involve the same notes played over and over again. What gives the guitar a special edge over many blues instruments is that, as a string instrument, it allows the player to bend the string and therefore slightly change the pitch, which simultaneously provides the player with two advantages: first, it can give the note a more interesting “crying” tone, moving the pitch back and forth as if it was a weeping baby, and second, it allows the guitarist to cover up for any mistake by “bending” the note to a more pleasing pitch. From the earliest delta blues records to Led Zeppelin, even untrained ears can pick up moments on studio albums where the guitarist flubs a note and quickly covers it up by bending it or moving back to the original note.
Professional musicians wouldn’t like to admit it, but it’s pretty easy for even a novice guitarist to play a convincingly “bluesy” solo if he plays the same three or four notes in a particular pattern (I submit Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” as the absolute nadir of bendy three-note solos). But in the end, it’s not about that. Great blues guitarists have a personality and vocabulary that they make their own—they might play the same three notes over and over, but it’s three notes that no one else would play in that particular way at that particular time. There’s a reason one can tell that it’s clearly Hazel and not fellow Funkadelic guitarist Michael Hampton playing the solo on, say, “Red Hot Mama,” and it comes down to the fact that listeners over time learn to notice the particular choices that great, unique guitarists make, even on the dime (and Hazel’s solos were rarely written beforehand).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Thoughts?
Huckabee is not affable and charming, he's a jerk
In a crowded field of scumbag competitors who, among their ranks, think that the official American policy on religion is monotheism, hang out with child molesters, take campaign donations from hate groups and John Mayer, and seemingly have no brain cells whatsoever, one can almost be forgiven for thinking that Huckabee seems like an acceptable alternative. This is wrong. This is another example of how the lesser evil argument is not going to do anyone any amount of good.
For anyone in this country who thinks that people should be allowed to believe (and not believe) as many gods as they want (and I would hope that there are many of you out there), Huckabee's religiosity is appalling. I have no problem with anyone getting a degree in theology, but just take a look at what Huckabee has said about homosexuality in the past:
"The governor regards 1968 as the dawning of ‘'the age of the birth-control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.'"
Furthermore, his comments in 1992 that we should quarantine people with AIDS has gotten a certain amount of attention, as has his comment that, "Homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle." These sort of comments should not be tolerated by anyone who believes that discrimination is wrong, as opposed to permissible, which apparently these fuckers think is not a problematic thing to say.
The man does not believe in evolution. This is the 21st century. This is insane. I don't care how many profiles he gets in the Jesus York Times or Newsweek, he's still a bigot just like the rest of them (yes, including Ron Paul). I really wish the press would stop giving people like that a platform and allow non-bigoted republicans (yes, I know you're out there) a chance to say something. If I had to choose a republican candidate right now, I'd choose John McCain, despite his lame Woodstock comment (being a prisoner of war and having your balls electrocuted is sweet, I guess).
God, some of these blog posts are just no-brainers. Just be glad I didn't call this post "I hate Huckabee."
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
On the limits of Wikipedia
Here's an essay I was writing that I was originally thinking of submitting to The Cornellian, but I've since had second thoughts since I can't bear to be associated with a newspaper of such ill repute (just look at it, I dare you). Is there something wrong with that? I really would like to not be part of the problem, frankly. I justify it the way Fugazi justifies not doing interviews in corporate magazines like Rolling Stone: even if I am pushing a good idea, it will just be lost in a sea of bad ideas. It's not like anyone is really clamoring to see my writing, anyway.
This is an essay about how I think Wikipedia should be taken a bit more seriously. Feel free to comment vigorously on the subject. It is definitely a debatable issue.
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Wikipedia Should be Considered a Citable Source
This is an essay about how I think Wikipedia should be taken a bit more seriously. Feel free to comment vigorously on the subject. It is definitely a debatable issue.
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Wikipedia Should be Considered a Citable Source
Like all of the most revolutionary acts of communication, from Gutenberg’s printing press onward, the open content reference web site known as Wikipedia has weathered criticisms by traditionalists and skeptics alike, its main offense being the allowance of anyone to contribute to a worldwide body of public knowledge. By anyone, that means you, me, and millions of other people that, at some point in our lives, have contributed something of value to a Wikipedia page. Almost overnight, the standard, peer-reviewed encyclopedias of the past (such as the World Book and Encyclopedia Britannica) became obsolete. To some, that posed quite a problem, but to the rest of us, this seemed like the dawn of a new and exciting age where the promise of free information (an idea preached more often than practiced) was actually coming true.
It is obvious that a new and exciting concept like Wikipedia would be greeted with the most amount of skepticism in academic circles. There are many reasons why this is, not the least among them being that it has always been the job of the professor or scientist to not accept any idea or theory without lots of evidence to back it up. For the most part, I have observed that professors, at least at
As mentioned before, most criticisms of Wikipedia have to do with its open-forum format, which leads many to believe that it’s a site filled with inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and an emphasis on what is perceived on popular, “low” culture over more high-minded intellectual pursuits. The last point is for cultural critics far smarter than myself to argue about, but for now, it should be noted that these inaccuracies and inconsistencies aren’t as plentiful as one might think, for the reason that Wikipedia, like any good system of ideas, has its checks and balances. As you read this sentence, thousands upon thousands of administrators are patrolling recent changes to the site, verifying claims and references, and amending or even deleting these pages according to their best judgments. These administrators were chosen to have these powers as a result of the amount of time and attention each made towards making Wikipedia as unbiased and accurate as it could be. Administrators in turn choose more administrators, many of whom specialize in certain fields and become administrators of certain areas (subcategories often referred to as “WikiProjects”). These administrators are also capable of locking down articles in the event that they become frequently vandalized, and preventing users from making edits until it is deemed safe again.
Any system that rewards hard and copious amounts of work with special privileges is often referred to in a knee-jerk fashion as intrinsically American, as Wikipedia has, although I would be quick to point out that Wikipedia’s idea of governing is hardly democratic, as there is a clear divide between the normal Wikipedia editor like myself and the administrator, and while administrators are capable of checking each other, normal editors cannot easily check the power of administrators. If anything, it is, as one Wikipedia administrator explained, “an anarchy with gang rule.” While I would be loathe to say that this school of thought breeds great and lasting nations, it seems that in the realm of free information dissemination, nothing could be more perfect. Who better to charge with the task of spreading knowledge than the most knowledgeable, or at the very least the most interested?
In my experience, and I have tested this, any attempt at vandalism on Wikipedia won’t last very long. At this point in Wikipedia’s short life-span, there is always the slight possibility that a piece of information is incorrect, but any amount of double-checking on the part of the researcher would be 99% likely to set the story straight. Try it out yourself: make some specious claim on some article and so how long it takes to be removed. It’s quite a fast process. More difficult to reconcile are the claims that articles on Wikipedia are, while not technically inaccurate, certainly biased in one way or another. Most of the times this bias can be dealt with on the individual article “Discussion” pages, but it had come to the point where some felt they were unable to get their viewpoint across no matter how much editing they tried to do. Andrew Schlafly, son of anti-ERA activist Phyllis Schlafly, was so incensed by the fact that Wikipedia didn’t considered the Bible to be an unimpeachable historical document that he created his own homemade wiki: Conservapedia. On Conservapedia, you could find unbiased articles on, for instance, “The Gay Bomb,” an aphrodisiac chemical weapon that could turn its populace into homosexuals (and was apparently proposed by the
I’m aware of these limitations, so I propose that in citing Wikipedia articles, as we would with citing anything else, we should put limitations on what is acceptable. My idea would be this: In order to be considered a citable source, an article must have been considered an acceptable member of at least one of the many hundred “WikiProject” groups. So, for instance, if you are citing something about a novel, you would have to make sure that the article was part of “WikiProject Books,” which can be seen by viewing the "Discussion" page at the top of the article. If it doesn’t belong to any group, it shouldn’t be cited. Additionally, the article being considered should be rated at least above “stub-class” on Wikipedia’s internal quality scale (a ranking usually determined by committee). These criteria make the level of quality and accuracy easy to verify by both student and professor. And, in case a professor has any lingering doubts about a certain statement or citation (and he or she always should), Wikipedia makes it very easy to search through its edit history, so it would be easy to observe whether or not the information existed in the first place.
I know that this is not an issue that professors or students choose to deal with very often, and it is true that there is often no need to cite Wikipedia, as it traffics in public knowledge, which in most cases doesn’t need to be cited. However, the option must exist. There are so many exciting and interesting things about Wikipedia, among them: the fact that spread of information is no longer confined to an elite group; that the notions of “high” and “low” culture are being shown to be patently false and justly obliterated; and, perhaps most importantly, that the internet is capable of providing us with an exponential amount of material more detailed and diverse than all the public libraries in the world combined. It would be a shame to see it rejected on college campuses simply because it is used too much.
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P.S. Does anyone know how to do cuts, like livejournal cuts?
Seeing Dinosaur Jr.
I had the chance to see one of my absolute favorite bands yesterday, Dinosaur Jr. It was an excellent show, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to see the original lineup of J., Lou, and Murph. It was clear from what I saw that they weren't that happy to be there or even be around each other, but their playing was as good as ever. The majority of their set came from their recent album Beyond and while I definitely appreciate their old stuff a lot, their new album was pretty good too. I can't think of any genuine criticism I really have about the show, especially given that it was $20. Some observations:
-J., of course, was transcendent. He's exactly the kind of rock star I like and can relate to, in that he is not a good-looking person and he completely lacks charisma. He is a consummate musician's musician, though. Over the course of the 15-song set (12 songs, 3 encore songs), I would wager he played about 20 guitar solos, all of them melodically interesting and quite different from their studio incarnations. My personal favorite was "Forget the Swan" (see a clip of them playing it here!), which ended with an extended whammy-jam that was quite wonderful from my point of view.
-I was front and center the whole time, and my ears are still ringing as a result. I noticed that pretty much everyone else besides me had ear plugs, but that means they are pansies that didn't get the full frontal assault of J.'s marshall stacks. Also, I'm going to go deaf.
-In between songs, J. and Murph would often spontaneously break out into some reggae-sounding bits of music. I hope this shows up on the next album.
-After witnessing the two openers, Awesome Color and the Reaction, I came to understand why I think I like Dinosaur Jr. so much. Those two opening bands had plenty of extended guitar jams but underneath them were no songs: just riffs that they banged away for like five minutes, with no choruses or verses. Dinosaur Jr., on the other hand, has choruses, verses, and hooks aplenty, and they work well within the context of the song. Several songs, like "Freak Scene," have so many great parts to them that J. could have easily separated them into two different songs. Such is the talent of this man.
-I got a guitar pick from J. It was his birthday the day before. Earlier in the evening he was standing in front of me but I had absolutely nothing to say to him that wouldn't be incredibly annoying. Oh well. Also, I forgot to bring a camera.
-They are a hilarious looking band. J.'s head is absolutely huge, especially with that huge mop of gray hair. Murph looks like a soccer dad. Lou just looked really large. I was surprised.
-The highlight of the night? Either "Forget the Swan," or "The Wagon," or the 1-2 punch of "Kracked/Sludgefeast." Absolutely magical. No criticisms.
The closest thing to celebrity yet
I thought I'd mention this before the White House erases this from its web site. On December 10, president George W. and the White House staged a Hanukkah reception/minstrel show to prove that our president can impart understanding on at least some religions. His guest-of-honor/token Jew this year was Yehuda Pearl, the father of deceased journalist Daniel Pearl, famously beheaded in Pakistan by Muslim extremists (you may remember they made a movie about him with Angelina Jolie). Daniel Pearl also happened to be my second cousin, and while I'd never met him, my mother has, and she maintains regular contact with Yehuda.
Anyhow, cousin Yehuda called a few days back to tell my mom that he had been invited by Bush to be part of this celebration, and he asked if he could borrow the menorah that belonged to my great-grandfather, Chayim Pearl. I guess my mom agreed and shipped it off to the White House, temporarily. So the menorah normally on my kitchen wall has been touched by Bush. My mom told me that as soon as she gets it back, she's going scrub the hell out of it.
For anyone wondering, my middle name is not "Pearl" but "Pour-El," a far less interesting but more Kryptonian sounding translation that my maternal grandfather uses as a last name.
And no, I'm not good with Photoshop.
EDIT: In the interest of fair play, I should direct you to Christopher Hitchens' recent article "Bah, Hanukkah: The Holiday Celebrates the Triumph of Tribal Jewish Backwardness." He is absolutely right about everything, of course, except maybe his assertion that Greek society was inherently more intellectually vibrant than Jewish society, when I'm sure there were exceptions. Expect this to be the first of many Hitchens references.
In case anyone cared...an introduction
Giving people information about myself over the internet isn't really a good idea, but I think it is my duty as a new blogger to at least give some context to any blog-viewer who happens upon this blog (blog blog blog). So, my name is Nathan Sacks, I'm 21, and I'm originally from Ames, IA. I go to Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, IA, famed for its use of the block plan (I'm not going to explain it: look it up.) I'm a junior and an English major.
I'm starting this because I seem to be at a creative high point right now, and while I am writing prolifically in many genres, I don't really have any method of publishing my work. Yes, I am so desperate that I would start a blog to get these ideas across, which probably means that they aren't that good to be actually published. No matter. This is probably more for me than it is for anyone else. For a while, I had a livejournal account, and it's actually still there, but it's time for me to move past the insipid high school Nathan and write about some real things. Not that I won't whine a lot. Basically, this is an attempt to get all my essays, poetry, prose, musings, longings, doodles, and drug-induced rants into one place. As such, it may seem schizophrenic--I can honestly tell you I am not actually schizophrenic.
Here are some things I am interested in:
Literature: Of course. I'm an English major. My personal tastes tend to lean more towards 20th century modernists and post-modernists, subcultural stuff ( from beats, losts, stream-of consciousness, etc.), and post-colonial literature, as well as a fair amount of creative non-fiction. Of course I'm a fan of Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James Joyce, Nabokov, Ishiguro, Pynchon, Philip Roth, as all college students should be. Personally, I am of the Harold Bloom school of analyzing works by their aesthetic qualities alone rather than through the lens of feminism or Marxism or what-have-you, although I've done plenty of feminist readings of books in the past and I definitely see the value in it, and I am very actively opposed to any set idea of a "canon," and I firmly believe that great literature is possible without being intimately familiar with Shakespeare or whoever.
Film: I spent a considerable amount of my days in high school educating myself with the great films of the past, by Welles, Eisenstein, Flaherty, Hawks, the usual. My current favorite directors include Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-Wai, Abbas Kiarostomi, and quite a few more that I don't feel like listing. I regard myself as a reformed auteurist. I spend a lot of my time reading film criticism. I don't believe that popular studio-based films are intrinsically less valuable than their independent or foreign counterparts, and I don't believe in guilty pleasures (this applies to literature and music as well): there is as much intrinsic value for me in Spider-Man 2 as there is in Diary of a Country Priest or whatever, and I have no trouble saying it. For that very reason, I am often critical of critics and award-givers alike who try to distinguish what is good "art" and what is good "entertainment" and try to determine which is more valuable.
Music: I can't claim to know more than a little about classical music, but I have an endless repository of knowledge about rock music. My last.fm account can be accessed here so you can get a better idea of what music I am generally into. I took piano lessons from when I was 5 to when I was 16, and I started playing guitar at the age of 15, which became my primary instrument from then on (I have also dabbled in bass, drums, mandolin, and a few other things). In high school, I was in a punk band called Espada Rosada that had a reasonable following amongst the Iowa State crowd (although not really at Ames High School...interesting). I would wager that music is the thing I spend the most time writing and thinking about, especially regarding the politics of popular music.
Politics: I don't want to simplify my views too much, but I would say that overall I am extremely to the left on social issues and slightly (slightly) hawkish on issues of national security, so in other words basically a New Republic democrat, except I'm not fanatically pro-Israel. My interests definitely skew American, and I have been following the 2008 presidential race religiously, despite having not chosen a candidate to support. Right now I'm leaning Kucinich. As an Iowan, I have an opportunity to be part of the Iowa Caucus, so I'll be sure to tell you guys about that.
Religion: Despite being raised in a reform (later conservative) Jewish household, I have never felt even a pang of belief in any sort of higher power, even when I was a young child. I consider myself to be an atheist even as I believe a label like that is unnecessary for people who think faith is a bullshit virtue (I tend to go along with A.C. Grayling, who thinks that non-believers should refer to themselves as "naturalists" who prefer scientific evidence of our surroundings). I am, nevertheless, very interested in the subject of religion, especially in how it forms our social circumstances and creates strife where there should not be any. I am absolutely of the opinion that the world would be significantly better without religion, and a significant portion of this blog will be spent debunking people who believe that people "need" the Bible, despite its faults, as a useful moral code. How can anyone actually believe that?
Girls: Something that I will rarely, if ever, discuss in this blog.
Academia: Something that is very interesting to me, of course, as a college student. The politics of Cornell College are extremely interesting, although I'm not sure how much I will be able to divulge and still have friends at the end of the day.
Psychological disorders: Something else I'm a bit uncertain about...certainly honest exploration of emotion is a given on any blog, but I don't want this to turn into a livejournal. In any case, I have a history of depression that I might want to explore at some point.
Of course that won't be all of what this blog is about, but it's a good start. Expect a lot of half-written, perhaps even badly written stuff. This isn't going to be a particularly outstanding blog, I can tell you. But it is mine.
I know my E-Mail seems to be smedley.smorganoff@gmail.com, but that's because this confounded blogger.com makes you get a gmail account. I would prefer it if you direct all questions and comments to N-Sacks@cornellcollege.edu. Please no bullshit about how I am a heathen, please.
I'm starting this because I seem to be at a creative high point right now, and while I am writing prolifically in many genres, I don't really have any method of publishing my work. Yes, I am so desperate that I would start a blog to get these ideas across, which probably means that they aren't that good to be actually published. No matter. This is probably more for me than it is for anyone else. For a while, I had a livejournal account, and it's actually still there, but it's time for me to move past the insipid high school Nathan and write about some real things. Not that I won't whine a lot. Basically, this is an attempt to get all my essays, poetry, prose, musings, longings, doodles, and drug-induced rants into one place. As such, it may seem schizophrenic--I can honestly tell you I am not actually schizophrenic.
Here are some things I am interested in:
Literature: Of course. I'm an English major. My personal tastes tend to lean more towards 20th century modernists and post-modernists, subcultural stuff ( from beats, losts, stream-of consciousness, etc.), and post-colonial literature, as well as a fair amount of creative non-fiction. Of course I'm a fan of Kerouac, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, James Joyce, Nabokov, Ishiguro, Pynchon, Philip Roth, as all college students should be. Personally, I am of the Harold Bloom school of analyzing works by their aesthetic qualities alone rather than through the lens of feminism or Marxism or what-have-you, although I've done plenty of feminist readings of books in the past and I definitely see the value in it, and I am very actively opposed to any set idea of a "canon," and I firmly believe that great literature is possible without being intimately familiar with Shakespeare or whoever.
Film: I spent a considerable amount of my days in high school educating myself with the great films of the past, by Welles, Eisenstein, Flaherty, Hawks, the usual. My current favorite directors include Todd Haynes, Richard Linklater, Jim Jarmusch, Wong Kar-Wai, Abbas Kiarostomi, and quite a few more that I don't feel like listing. I regard myself as a reformed auteurist. I spend a lot of my time reading film criticism. I don't believe that popular studio-based films are intrinsically less valuable than their independent or foreign counterparts, and I don't believe in guilty pleasures (this applies to literature and music as well): there is as much intrinsic value for me in Spider-Man 2 as there is in Diary of a Country Priest or whatever, and I have no trouble saying it. For that very reason, I am often critical of critics and award-givers alike who try to distinguish what is good "art" and what is good "entertainment" and try to determine which is more valuable.
Music: I can't claim to know more than a little about classical music, but I have an endless repository of knowledge about rock music. My last.fm account can be accessed here so you can get a better idea of what music I am generally into. I took piano lessons from when I was 5 to when I was 16, and I started playing guitar at the age of 15, which became my primary instrument from then on (I have also dabbled in bass, drums, mandolin, and a few other things). In high school, I was in a punk band called Espada Rosada that had a reasonable following amongst the Iowa State crowd (although not really at Ames High School...interesting). I would wager that music is the thing I spend the most time writing and thinking about, especially regarding the politics of popular music.
Politics: I don't want to simplify my views too much, but I would say that overall I am extremely to the left on social issues and slightly (slightly) hawkish on issues of national security, so in other words basically a New Republic democrat, except I'm not fanatically pro-Israel. My interests definitely skew American, and I have been following the 2008 presidential race religiously, despite having not chosen a candidate to support. Right now I'm leaning Kucinich. As an Iowan, I have an opportunity to be part of the Iowa Caucus, so I'll be sure to tell you guys about that.
Religion: Despite being raised in a reform (later conservative) Jewish household, I have never felt even a pang of belief in any sort of higher power, even when I was a young child. I consider myself to be an atheist even as I believe a label like that is unnecessary for people who think faith is a bullshit virtue (I tend to go along with A.C. Grayling, who thinks that non-believers should refer to themselves as "naturalists" who prefer scientific evidence of our surroundings). I am, nevertheless, very interested in the subject of religion, especially in how it forms our social circumstances and creates strife where there should not be any. I am absolutely of the opinion that the world would be significantly better without religion, and a significant portion of this blog will be spent debunking people who believe that people "need" the Bible, despite its faults, as a useful moral code. How can anyone actually believe that?
Girls: Something that I will rarely, if ever, discuss in this blog.
Academia: Something that is very interesting to me, of course, as a college student. The politics of Cornell College are extremely interesting, although I'm not sure how much I will be able to divulge and still have friends at the end of the day.
Psychological disorders: Something else I'm a bit uncertain about...certainly honest exploration of emotion is a given on any blog, but I don't want this to turn into a livejournal. In any case, I have a history of depression that I might want to explore at some point.
Of course that won't be all of what this blog is about, but it's a good start. Expect a lot of half-written, perhaps even badly written stuff. This isn't going to be a particularly outstanding blog, I can tell you. But it is mine.
I know my E-Mail seems to be smedley.smorganoff@gmail.com, but that's because this confounded blogger.com makes you get a gmail account. I would prefer it if you direct all questions and comments to N-Sacks@cornellcollege.edu. Please no bullshit about how I am a heathen, please.
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