Saturday, December 20, 2008

For Posterity

I spent a whole lot of time typing this comment out for this post on I am TRex, but since I am having trouble posting there, I will post it here:
Why do we always have to be the bad guys?

I think it all comes down to your approach to social change, whether you are a pragmatic incrementalist or an uncompromising idealist. Pragmatists try to get done whatever is possible, working with the conditions on the ground, and probably compromising their ideals in the process. Idealists state their ideals, loudly and repeatedly, hoping that others will sometimes come to their side, although often not worrying about who they alienate from the other side, or their own, in the process.

Now, I am left-wing. I would like to see single-payer health care (with abortions covered), unionization of all workers, fair trade, gay marriage, equal pay, ACLU-style free speech, decreased income inequality to the point we practically have income equality, the nationalization of various industries that are not reliant on innovation (it works for mail carrying!), the legalization of all drugs, you name it. And once that's all done, I plan look around and ask "What's next?"

But that won't all actually happen in my lifetime. If I voted my conscience I wouldn't vote. So I am an incrementalist by necessity. I vote for people who seem to have a chance of moving things in my direction, and I will support policies that will, over time, move the country in my direction, like getting a healthcare system that isn't single-payer. I don't think this compromises my ideals, or is dishonest, as long as I am upfront about what my ideals really are. And it isn't a betrayal either, since I view these compromises as steps on the road to getting what I really would like to see.

In this framework, I think the Warren choice, though disagreeable, definitely, is not too objectionable. Now, if Warren was the only preacher speaking, that would not be that case, since it would be as if to say that this is best representation of religious thought in America that can be presented. But, and this is important, Joseph Lowery, an old-school civil rights badass who supports gay marriage and rails against homophobia, is giving the benediction. So Warren isn't the be-all end-all of religious representation, but one of two nodes on a spectrum of religious thought being represented, a spectrum that includes gay marriage. Not preferable, yes, but not as bad. And considering there is hardly any difference between Warrens views on gay and reproductive rights are no different than the Catholic Church's, I don't think you can equate him to David Duke, those views aren't exactly fringe psycho views, but pretty widespread(The Church is much better than him on war and evolution, of course).

Now, you could argue that just because those views are widespread doesn't mean they should be accepted. That's where the pragmatic angle comes in. While it's true that difference in Warren and Dobson is one of tone, as he said, it's important to note what that tone is. Warren wants to spend time talking about fighting global warming and poverty and AIDS relief in Africa, things Dobson has shown no predilection for bringing up. I think it would be great to get some evangelical support for those issues. It provides cover from political risk, maybe force Republicans to go along with those efforts, and would make whatever action that would take place happen sooner and with more force.

Also, I think if Liberals found common ground upon which to work with Evangelicals, it would lessen their hostility, and make it easier for them to accept some of our other ideas when they see we aren't really Satan. I don't want to beat the other side, I want them to join us! Turn all their kids into democratic socialists and make them meet gay people that are just like them—that they might actually be. Mutual hatred doesn't really do our side any good. (No, I am not worried about movement in the other direction. Our ideas are right, theirs are wrong. They just need to be convinced, while we will not unlearn truths once we have learned them.)

Now, if you are an uncompromising idealist, none of that means anything. They are the bad guy, and they must be fought and kept from advancing their agenda. Opposition to them must be stated at every stage, and their advancement in public life discouraged. There's probably even some utility to this approach, since it forces people to make a choice on the issue, and gets the message out there in a very direct way, adding veritability through its passion. Maybe it forces other people to declare what their beliefs in this actually are. But if that's the approach you choose, then yeah, you have to be the bad guy. But I don't think you have to be.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Owning Cogitamus

I feel like it is necessary to bookmark this post, since I am pretty sure I will be using it for gloating purposes for a long time to come.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

The reunification of the persistence of memory

Have you ever had a memory that hits you out of nowhere? Just comes at you, and you have no idea what sparked it, but there it is, and sometimes, it's not even distinct enough to count as a memory?

Earlier this week, while driving late at night, I think*, I suddenly remembered this other time when I was driving, probably also late at night, and this one song came on the radio. I remembered the vocal hook of the chorus, and the soft sadness of the music, and the beautiful sound of the female singer's voice, and the DJ saying something over the intro about how the song was the closest aural equivalent to sex, or something like that. I had no idea when I had heard it, either back in McHenry, or down at U of I, or driving between the two, but it had been years ago. I had no idea who the artist was, either; I didn't know if if had been said on the radio or not. I couldn't even remember any of the lyrics. All I remembered was the feel of the song, and thinking, at the time, that it was fucking awesome, though not the aural equivalent to sex or anything like that. It really seemed more sad and wistful.

The point being, I had absolutely no clue to who did this song, absolutely no information to go on to find it. And that hook was just stuck in my head. I needed to know, and had no idea how to find out. I knew, I was fucked. It's not like I could go up to anyone and say "hey, you know that song that goes...." I didn't know how the song even really went! What if I was misremembering the bar?

So, over several days, I hummed that bar to myself, in my head, trying to think of any lyrics that could go to it that felt right. It would go away, and then come back again. Eventually the one word I kept coming back on was "strange." So I tried searching Wikipedia, YouTube, and Google with some combination of the words strange, lyrics, female, singer, sexy, 90's, alternative (I thought I might have heard it on Q101, based on the DJ's voice and comment). I got nothing. I watched the video to that Sneaker Pimps song. Kind of the same era, thought definitely not the song. I kicked around Q101's website, to see if there was some database of songs there I could search. I gave up. The hook stayed hooked in my head. It stayed there all week, popping up and taunting me. I didn't know what it was, and there was no way to find out.

Anyways, earlier today, I tried searching for it again, trying to set words to the music. I tried concentrating on the fact that the song was supposed to be sexy, so I tried thinking of phrase implying longing or lust or something like that. Two bodies connecting. I thought up the phrase "drift into you." I searched for it. I got a song that definitely wasn't it. I tried just searching with "drift" plus combinations of all the other words. I got a fucking Uncle Cracker song. Q101 again. Nothing.

Reformatting, I focused the phrase "into you." I think I decided to do this because the phrase sounded familiar, like it related to the concept of the song better than the word "drift". I might have had the first word wrong. Also, I seemed like the phrase into you had been on the tip of my tongue, or at least my mind, the first time I was searching, but since the phrase "strange into you" makes no sense, I dismissed it and forgot about it.

I typed "into you" (no quotation marks) into Youtube, and fourth down was "Mazzy Star - 'Fade Into You'". Mazzy Star? It didn't sound familiar, but somehow it felt right. I could definitely see how "fade" could work for "drift," in fact work better. I clicked on it:



I knew within seconds that this was what I was looking for. I laughed in a mixture of relief, and disbelief. Isn't the Internet amazing?

...Also, as it was playing I looked up the lyrics on some lyric site. The lyrics to the chorus go
Fade into you
Strange that you never knew
I actually had it right, both ways! Somehow, the memory remained, it was there, buried deep in my brain, and I just had to unearth it. It took a week, but somehow it came up, and I could put it back together. It's all in there, somehow. Strange.

*It might have actually been while reading this.

Stocktaking.

You know, I can't really tell if my productivity is psychological or environmental. It will be four posts a day for three days in a row, and then nothing for three weeks. It will be three pages in a day, then not a word typed in three days.

I think I have been in a funk for the last few weeks. I know I have been in a funk since the election. You spend eight years on fucking eggshells, and then the thing you have been hoping for for the last four years comes true and, well, the relief! But also listlessness, and that does me no good for writing, or thinking. I feel like I haven't been able to marshal my thoughts lately, and if I can't get it together, I can't write effectively, or get up the urge to write at all.

That post on Mitch Mitchell crippled me, or at least let me know I had been crippled. Mitchell was someone who I cared deeply about, who meant an immense amount to me, and I couldn't think of anything to say with any depth, nothing past a generic "Oh, man, bummer" type of sentiment. That caused a real crisis of of confidence, and it's been hard since then for me to devote the necessary time to an particular writing endeavor. I have thought of tons of things to write, tons of things I would like to comment on, organize my thoughts about, but they all seem to stay unwritten, kicking about my head and fighting for airtime.

Then I printed out the story I am working on, printing two pages per sheet, to condense it, and get a better, more objective sense of what I was working on. And it read wrong. The words were all the same notes that I knew would be there, but it was like listening to a recording of your own voice*. There's just this revulsion. "Oh God! Do I really sound like that?" It's why I hate editing, which is a hatred which does not help a writer, either. I have been getting over it, and have been doing a fair amount of editing, but I have edited this one so much, and it still sounds like a recording, instead of live speaking.

I have been trying to read some fiction lately, but it hasn't worked. I tried reading Moby Dick, and I was liking it, but I didn't get much farther than I did last time. The narrative drive went away, and I set it aside, meaning to pick it up soon, and then it was overdue. I checked out Quicksilver, by Neal Stephenson, the first book in the Baroque Cycle, and read the first 40 pages or so really really fast, but nothing really happened, and I just haven't had the drive to pick it up in a while. I have been reading The Solitudes by John Crowley, originally titled Ægypt, Book I of the Ægypt Cycle (what's with all the Cycles?). I've probably been reading it for longer than I attempted either of the other books, just off and on, and while I am not entirely engaged in it, the prose is inventive in that peculiar literary fiction way, (I think it's called "lyrical realism," at least that's what Zadie Smith calls it) as you would expect from a Yale professor. The plot hasn't really caught me yet—after the really interesting prologue, which has yet to have something to do with the rest of the story—so I am just costing along on the shiny pretty words.

But really, I think I just can't stand fiction these days. All their voices are measured against the voice I hear in my head, and found inferior, and all the plots are less interesting than the one I want to write. I want to read that story, but it's not written, and that makes writing it very frustrating.

This frustration is carrying over into my social life, or what counts for a social life out here, anyways. When at work I am always angry, always on edge, and that has been noticed now, and I have been gently admonished to chill out. I just find myself hating it there, hating every second, and every day. I just want to explode in shrapnel shards of expletives at everyone, at the smallest bit of grief that they give me, the littlest twitch of emphasis in their tongues, and when they are angry, all can't respond, all I can do is quiver, try to keep from going off. I fantasize about quitting all time—wouldn't it show them? if I did right before Thanksgiving?—but that's just an outlet, an outlet to a little space for the dreams to explode in. Maybe it's because I am drinking too much caffeine. Maybe it's because I'm not drinking any beer**.

Whatever it is, the psychological has gone psychosomatic. I've had an outbreak of exema which, if there is any pattern I'm able to detect, it's not due to some physical irritant***; it seems to come after I have been on edge mentally for a couple days. It's almost a relief, though irritating as all hell. Like a little kick telling me "Ok Matt, chill the fuck out, You are off the reservation right now." I am probably going to call in tomarrow.

Good. I need this moment to take stock of it all, though it's kind of sad how often I seem to need to take stock of it all. My apartment is a mess. The floor is littered in unwashed clothes, washed unfolded clothes, hampers of unfolded washed clothes, open books, closed books, notebooks, plastic bags of pop cans, empty boxes from pop cans, pillows, papers, plastic bags, drumsticks and dust. The sink is full of dishes. Every other surface is covered in wrappers, cracker boxes, emptys pasta packets, glasses, beer bottles, pop cans, cartons, more papers, cd cases, tupperware, tissues, monitor wipes, cards, and dental floss. I need to clean this place up. Clean up, get centered, and get back to getting out. That means thinking more, writing more, organizing my thoughts more, engaging more, and projecting more positive vibes.

And my fridge is empty. I need to go shopping. Nothing gives you a worry like an unstocked larder.

*I think the entirety specturm of an artist's craftsman's creative difficulties can be summed up by this analogy.

**Hey, a man needs to depress now and then, and cast aside his inhibitions for an hour or three.

***Well, the caffeine probably doesn't help.

Friday, November 14, 2008

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Castles Made of Sand

Goddamnit. Apparently, Mitch Mitchell has died. That makes all of the original Experience. The Jimi Hendrix Experience is no more.

********

Mitch Mitchell was, in my opinion, one of the three best rock drummers of the sixties, along with Moonie and Bonzo. When I bought my first Hendrix album, I listened to the drums even more than the guitar. He had a much lighter touch than Bonzo, wasn't was chaotic as Moon, and didn't hit as hard as either of them, but he had great, jazzy finesse that they both lacked, and could at times be more creative than either. See the opening drum break in "Fire."

He was Jimi's prefect compliment. Listening to some of their live material, it's amazing how much they seem to be anticipating each other's move. There was a weird kind of mind-meld going on with those two. It really speaks to their skill that they were both able to solo together. Jimi's guitar-playing exists on its own level, but I can't beleive how lucky he was to get such a drummer. It elevates music that should be simply great into EPIC.

So long Mitch. Hope you are jamming with Jimi somewhere in the sky, or a Spanish castle.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Ecstatic

Ecstatic. I am just ecstatic. I just caught the tail-end of his speech. There were tears in my eyes. They might keep coming. I have not been this happy in so, so long.

Now I am crying.

I have waited four years for this. The moment is so large.

Monday, November 3, 2008

God, this is sad.

Madelyn Dunham passed away today. One day before. Sometimes, the universe is so unfair, it just seems spiteful.

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Early voting.

I have voted for Barack Obama. It took about an hour, all told.

Stuck on my printer, within my line of sight, there is a sticker that says:
OBAMA
Democrat
U.S. SENATE
When I voted for the man four years ago, I already wanted this. But I never imagined it would come so soon.

Friday, October 3, 2008

Wisom Teeth are, in fact, not very wise, and actually have a tendency to repeat themselves.

It appears that, several years after having my wisdom teeth removed, I have another wisdom tooth growing in in my upper left gum. This sucks. I wonder if my shitty dental plan covers this thing, when it finally pops through my gum.

Seriously, there is something surreal about having a tooth grow in that you had removed several years ago.

Friday, September 19, 2008

The Other Player

I feel great. Last night, after feeling like I was getting nothing out of History of Magic, I set it aside and went back to Colin Wilson's old trust The Occult, which I had never finished, picking up right where I had left my bookmark, (by a description of the Tunguska incident). Later, in the middle of a section trying to explain a theory about the nature of precognition, I set the book down and sat at my computer. I booted up Word, and just sat there for a moment, clearing my mind and letting the story that I had been thinking about form into place. When it was there, when I knew what must happen, I began to write. I kept writing, until I was too tired to keep going. So I went to sleep. And when I woke up, I sat right down and started writing, and didn't stop until I finished the story. Now it is done, and printed off, and I am sitting here enjoying a glass of 1554 Enlightened Black Ale, and feeling good.

I won't read the story yet. I am going to sit on that a bit, and get a bit of a critical perspective on it, before I tackle the task of making changes. But right now it is good to know that I got to the end, and loved doing it.

It was easy. It was also hard, but it was easy. It was like, I realized that the point was not to worry about the words, but so "see" the story, to know it, and just let it flow out of you, onto the page. I knew what came next, because that is what had to come next. It was a wonderful feeling, akin to the descriptions of out-of-body experiences I had just been reading about. There was something truly occult about it. For a time, I felt that I had tapped into forces...not beyond me, but deeper inside me. Every so often, a part of me would correct something, reach in and say that was the wrong word, but for the most part he was just standing by, that editor of me, and let the other me take over the task. Like when I am playing the drums, and feel totally at peace with every beat and bang and clash that I make, and voice is yelling from somewhere, "isn't this wonderful?!" But it is my voice, and I am reveling from a distant, the person who is playing.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

More Seeds

Getting a comment from the famous Neil Sinhababu on this post reminded me of something. War or Car, which is Neil's awesome website about the cost of the Iraq War, which I totally forgot to ever link to, and which I totally don't read regularly, thought I really should. It's way more awesome than the Palin Truth Squad site, because it has tons of awesome factoids, and yet is ultimately really, really depressing. (I personally, would much rather have me free car than a war.) It's amazing how many ridiculous things we could have done with that money. In fact, such factoids always kind of make me wish we could just pick some fundamentally awesome thing to spend 3 trillion dollars on that wasn't a war, just for the hell of it. I think it might be the one where I get a car, but I haven't read the sight in a while, so that might not be the case anymore.

So, I am adding a link to it in my very barebones links page, so I keep coming back to it. And you should too.

Who Watches the Watchers?

Though I have been reading The History of Magic for a around a week now, I have only gotten to page 168, and that's after starting in page 55, skipping Waite's preface and Lévi's introduction. (the last time I tried to read those they had scared me off the book, so I just wanted to skip to the good stuff.) The reason it's been taking me so long is that I keep getting distracted. Since starting it I have taken pages and pages of notes and ideas, trying to draw connections between ideas I am reading now and have read or had before. Also, Lévi's writing is very allusive, and often refers to ideas of concepts I am not really familiar with, and often I find myself getting lost in Wikipedia trying to catch up, or trying to get an idea about something else just because I have been thinking about it. The text has really sent my brain off in a bunch of different directions. Last night, I broke my vow of not reading other stuff and read started reading the bible. I got up through all the stuff concerning Abraham and Isaac, stopping before it started into Jacob (that's about half of Genesis). It's very hard to read a book grounded in a Judeo-Christian worldview without having read that stuff!* While most of it I knew, I had no idea how all those stories fit together. I didn't know, for example, the relation between Lot and Abraham, or that they were contemporaries.

One section that I found very interesting was a little blurb about beings coming down from heaven to mate with mortal women and creating giants.

...Okay, I just got back from a little breather, because what I am going to launch into is quite complex, and textual. It concerns a topic which has been bothering me ever since I started reading Lévi: the formation of early religious pantheons.

Here is the text beings mating from my dad's old bible, Genesis 6:1-4, translated by Theophile J. Meek.** This is right before the story of the Flood:
Presently when men began to grow numerous over the earth, and had daughters born to them, the sons of the gods noticed that the daughter of men were attractive; so they married those whom they liked best. Then the LORD said,

"My spirit must not remain in man forever, inasmuch as he is flesh. Accordingly, his lifetime shall be one hundred twenty years."

In those days, as well as afterward, there were giants on the earth, who were born to the sons of the gods whenever they had intercourse with the daughters of men; these were the heroes who were men of note in days of old.
Pretty odd, huh? "Sons of the gods?" What's that doing in a the bible? It seemed like a clear example of some earlier version of the story getting left in the text and not edited out. In fact the entire section seems out of place stuck as it is between the ancestry list from Seth to Noah and the story of the flood. It has a lot of tropes in it that pop up in other religions, the existence of Giants before the flood, the existence of heroes who are the descendants of gods (Although usually the giants are separate from the heroes and the heroes live after the Deluge, not before it.) Then there was the fact that this passage is basically the same story that concerns the apocryphal Book of Enoch, which Lévi discusses in chapter one of The History of Magic: Basically, rogue angels leave heaven and mate with human women and then teach them the secrets of magic and technology. This corrupts men, and Gods casts those angels out of heaven and causes the flood to get rid of these pernicious influences. It seems to basically be a more fleshed out version of this story.

But who are these beings, then? Are they son's of gods? Sons of God? Angels? What's the deal with this story. So, I checked Wikipedia.

Now, according to the the section on the Book of Enoch, the beings that come down from heaven are the Watchers, or Grigori, angels "dispatched to earth simply to watch over people." The beings they father are called the Nephilim. This title is also accorded to them in some translations of the section from Genesis. The section on the Nephilim quotes this version of the same passage, from the New American Standard Bible:
Now it came about, when men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them, that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they took wives for themselves, whomever they chose. Then the Lord said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men, and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.
Here we have sons of God and Nephilim being the two groups being mentioned, instead of "the sons of the gods" and giants. Obviusly Nephilim is the actual word coming from the bible, and giants is just an equivalence, the same describing the Jotun of norse myth as giants. Wikipedia actually has a page on the phrase "sons of God," which outlines some theories about what the phrase means, but also includes the detail that is is a translation of "b'nei elohim." Elohim might mean Children of El, who was the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, and possibly is the source of the Judaic god. So this phrase means something like "the sons of the children of El." Elohim is also a term used only for God, which seems like a plural form meaning "The gods" that has been grandfathered in to mean only the one God, as if the one God is legion, or something. I think this explains why Meek translated the phrase as "sons of the gods," then.

Now, what's furtherly interesting, to me at least, is that in Canaanite mythology, El has many sons and children including Ba'al Hadad, Yam, and Mot, gods of storm, sea, and death, thus corresponding to Zeus, Poseidan and Hades, making El correspond to Cronus. And of course Ba'al, which means lord, pops up all over the bible as a false god. So it seems as if El is the future god of the Old Testament, and all these signs of the past religion litter the history of the Bible. And what seems especially ironic is, there seems to have been some type of war between Ba'al Hadad and his father, just like with Zeus and his father Cronus, but this time, the father won, not the son.

So were the sons of god in the original story the sons of El, Hadad and Yam and Mot? Or were the they fallen angels? In the book of Enoch, they are given names, none of them the names of Canaanite gods. The leader is Samyaza, whose name means "infamous rebellion" and might just be another name for Satan, and includes among their number Azazel, who is a pretty famous demon. Are the Watchers the first version of the story of the fallen angels, or are they another group of fallen angels? Are the watchers supposed to be the others gods in El's pantheon, who have been kicked out. What is going on here?

Who are the Watchers?

*In fact, one of the things that I have contention with in Lévi is his insistence on viewing occult phenomena from such a perspective. I mean, for argument's sake, a lot of the stories relating to evil, satanic spirits may simply be stories formerly involving pagan spirits. Those devils that aid St. Chaldean when he's a magician might have simply been tutelary gods, or nature spirits. I find it odd to talk about magic while leaving out all mention of the Celtic and Nordic mythic systems. Druids seem to me like they would be a pretty large portion of the occult, yet Levi doesn't really deal with how they relate to his system.

**That's one hell of a Christian name, no?

A History of Magic

So lately I have been feeling like I need to commit myself more firmly to reading and finishing books. So I have taken upon myself the slightly off-kilter choice of reading The History of Magic by Eliphas Lévi, translated into English and with footnotes by A.E. Waite (yep, as in the famous Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, that guy). What with all this talk about the death of David Foster Wallace, I have had to resist the urge to go out and read some of his stuff, or at least make another attempt at Pynchon's behemoth Against the Day. But it's okay. My will is good.

Lévi is really an Frenchman named Alphonse Louis Constant, writing in the mid-nineteenth century. He writing style bears a lot of the stylistic tics I associate with that period by way of Marx: a circumlocutory style that talked around a subject without through line or goal, that manages to encompass its topic without elucidating it, and totally bereft of conclusion, instead relying upon bald, unsubstantiated statement or opinion*. It's really an horrible, horrible approach to approaching a non-fiction topic.

About that non-fiction topic. Lévi believes vampires exist. Vampires, dude. Among other things. There is actually something quite exhilarating about reading an old book that believes thing nobody does today. It's like traveling back in time and finding yourself in a another universe as well. I suppose I could spend all my time trying to debate Lévi's worldview and form one of my own in opposition to it, but at the moment it's enough to simply enter that world and get a taste of it before returning to my own.

More troubling is dealing with Lévi's worldview. It's kind of weird, because one doesn't usually think of magicians in these terms, but Lévi is very "traditional," in a sense. He thinks that hierarchy in knowledge is necessary for a properly functioning society, that it is not possible for the people to all be fully informed, and metaphysical knowledge must be held by a select few. However, this doesn't mean that he thinks all hierarchy is good; he thinks it's easy for it to be corrupted, and has no real suggestions for how to make things function better (at least not yet), beyond believing that those in possession of have the necessary training to use it wisely. Constant was Catholic, and a failed priest, so this view is probably a mixture of the support for the priesthood as a source of divine knowledge and of Transcendental Magic's approach to magical initiation.

Lévi also seems to have a pretty old idea of the roles of the sexes. He talks much about how Goëtic, or Black Magic, is magic used outside the proper priestly initiation and thus most magicians and all witches really are trafficking with the devil. I was kind of expecting some kind of defense of people that had been persecuted as witches throughout history, but no, Lévi seems to really seem to think these are women who don't know their place. He also has a chapter, albeit a short one, devoted to the sacred power of virginity and chastity, and it seems to go without saying that men just be chaste, but women need to be virgins. There is also quite a bit on how evil spirits, incubi and succubi, are drawn to and created by repressed sexual energy and bodily emissions (that's some old-school terminology right there). Basically sexual energy is tied up a lot with bad things and evil and stuff, and there is definitely a gendered component to it all.

I am still trying to figure out what Lévi's basic view of things is, but there is a lot of talk of the Astral Light, which isn't precisely light but seems to be the building block of physical reality, and also the form of spirit (you can definitely see here the building blocks of the connections people draw between magical thinking and quantum theory). This Astral Light, however, is tied to the serpent from the Garden of Eden somehow, and is juxtaposition to some other force, with is the more "divine" force. And the Devil, in the section on him—well, Lévi isn't really clear on what the devil is, precisely, although he seems dismissive of the conception of the devil as an actual figure and seems knowledgeable of the origins of the character of Lucifer Morningstar. But the personage of Lucifer Morningstar is somehow connected to the idea of the Astral Light, the source of it, so the Light seems somehow tied to "evil," as, to a certain degree, magic itself, or Black Magic, which seems to be manipulation of Astral Light in such a way that it corrupts the soul and make it hard to communicate with God, somehow. (I wish he would spell this stuff out clearer, I feel more like I am hunting and pecking for little bits of information from a cloud of verbiage.) This seems to be basically consistent with Lévi's opinions of mediums, which is that they are people whose souls are so tied up in knots that they draws other spirits to them like a whirlpool, and thus should be avoided by the rest of us.

It's weird. Lévi was a magician, yet he seems to have a very low opinion of most magicians, and not in an egotistical sense. I suppose at some later point in the book Lévi will will give a fuller account of Transcendental Magic and how this relates to other occult phenomena; I'm only around halfway through, after all.

*Though the work is translated by Waite, the style seems to carry through the specific level of word choices; it's more a matter of construction than diction. However, it probably exists on the level of word choice as well. Waite's various footnotes, incredibly useful, as they often correct Lévi's errors—and yes it is a bit annoying reading a book knowing you might be getting the wrong information—are much more direct and concise than his translation of Lévi's French, leading me to believe that his diction in translation is more a manner of capturing Lévi's tone than exchanging it for his own.

Planting Seeds, People, Just Planting Seeds.

It appears that over at Cogitamus, Neil's website for the The Palin Truth Squad is moving up the ranks of the Google search, so I thought I would post a link for it, to help it along. I think that does something. That's what a Google Bomb is, right? I am so poor at this.

Anyways, hope this helps.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

RIP, Rick Wright

Rick Wright, keyboardist for Pink Floyd, has died. I am listening to "Great Gig in the Sky" as I type.

I haven't really been listening to Pink Floyd much in recent years, but I was really, really into them in high school. I bought every single one of their studio albums, which is quite a feat, considering I wasn't using drugs. So, this seriously bums me out. He wasn't really prime mover in the band ever, but after Syd got kicked out, he was the bands main space cadet, and was responsible for all the really trippy, childish songs, songs like "Paintbox," "Remember a Day" and "See Saw," that lent the later incarnation of the band some of their earlier vibes. And of course, he wrote "The Great Gig in the Sky," an absolutely superb song about death with no words. Not trippy or childish at all, just eerie and beautiful.

Shine on, Richard Wright. We'll miss you.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Two Things

I did two interesting things today, one that felt really bad, and one that felt really good.

The first was the bad thing. Remember a while back when there was reports about how Walmart was screening videos decrying how, if Obama was elected, the fair pay act would allow unions to run rampant, and this would destroy not only poor little defenseless Wal-Mart, but America? Well, see, I work for "The Other Guy," and today I had to watch a video that was basically the same thing. Following in the standard, "the same as Wal-Mart, but classier" approach, it was just a incredibly distorted video about how unions are bad, and are evil businesses (Yes, businesses!) that ruin life for workers. The only reference to recent events was about "coming changes in our labor laws." So no direct references to the campaign or the candidates, just some anti-union propaganda before the election.

If I understood the the basic argument of the video, it was that unions are not able to make them pay you more, and joining them will break up the big happy corporate family that you belong to that pays you minimum wage. The guy across from me snortled and chuckled throughout at the videos epic failure, and at one point, to afraid to do anything overt, I just looked over, and we shared a look: the kind that says, "yeah, this is bullshit." Another guy and I shared a good laugh afterwards, as well. (Op! Just wanted to make sure there was none of those evil unions around the corner!" he said) My heart goes out to you both.

It made me feel bad. I like the work atmosphere there, but now I am going to trust the managers's there a little less.

The other thing was, after coming home and perusing the blogs to the wave of bullshit that has been rising since the Republinca Convention (and will hopefully soon crest), and just being disgusted and feeling helpless about the whole thing, I got a call out of the blue from the Local Obama campaign, asking if I wanted to volunteer. So I did. I spent two and a half hours today calling phone numbers of college students who didn't answer and talking vaguely about politics with the interns. In a way, it was an edifying esperiance, except I think all I managed to was to knock out some pages of people they would not need to call again.

A couple anecdotes, though, that I bring back to the blog world (Sir Charles, ari, are you reading this?): the PUMAs are very real, and Sarah Palin means something to them. All the interns seemed to have had encounters with women, even pro-choice women, who were voting for McCain-Palin, because they wanted a woman in office. One person was even told that "a vote for McCain is really a vote for Hillary." This was not funny to them. One person spent much time talking with pro-choice women, and trying to discuss things with a McCain supporter. Apparently, they don't like to bring up abortion over the phone (I asked, and then was forced to admit it was all outside my area of expertise), so they focus on McCain not supporting the Fair Pay Act. Many of us noted that we had encounter with enthusiastic 80-year-old Obama fans, of both sexes, and I wondered why it seemed to be more the 60 or 70 age group that was so pro-McCain. One woman opined that it's because that age group wasn't tuaght to be "rebellious" like the slightly younger ones were (read those quote-marks as signifying contempt).

But yeah, Pumas: a very real, and annoying phenomenon, people. The grunts have to deal with it day in and day out.

Friday, September 5, 2008

The Last Gasp of the Right

After reading the first little bit of this John Cole post, something occurred to me, a thought that I had had previously, but entirely forgotten about.

In the Democratic party, the base, the people who constitute the solid source of support and votes, are basically Good Democrats, normal citizens who aren't really all that involved in politics, but know which side their bread is buttered on, and show up to vote for them. Then there is the activist, politically inclined types, who are really into politics, and are always threatening to stay home or vote third party, and really claim to have no real oyalty to the Democratic Party itself (*cough*).

But in the Republican party it's basically the opposite, because the base is the Religious Right. That's where they get their votes, not from libertarians or free-market types. There's a huge chunk of the country that is basically votes on spreading an image Christianity across our apolitical culture. And like the far-left liberals, these people don't really care about the republican party itself, they want to republican party to start doing more of what they want, it doesn't, you know. And like the far-left liberals, they have no problem staying home or voting for a third party. They do not care about the party per se, they just care about what it has done for them lately. And in terms of distance from the American Center, the religious right is really just as extreme, if not more extreme, than more on the liberal left.

This basically explains the difference between the two parties, and their approaches to constituencies. The Democratic Part is always balancing between ignoring the left and doing some things in their favor, for the most part seeing how much they can just ignore them to gain swing voters without losing the election entirely by turning to many of the left away. So, the democrats often seem hesitant to embrace their left. Hence them almost never using the word abortion in ads. The right, on the other hand, can't afford to stick it to their fringe, because their fringe is their base. So that's why you get John McCain bending over backwards to court the religious right, because he automatically has no chance without them. I suspect that if John McCain had his druthers, he would be running the kind of moderate, idea-based campaign that he said he would. But the base hates him; he represents everything that they hate in the republican party, and there is an actual chance that they wouldn't show up to vote for him. So here he is turning himself into their ghoul, to protect their votes.

Personally I suspect that after this election the religious right will be done. Obama's triumph will prove once and for all that they are outside the mainstream, and are lethal to electoral success, and they Republican Party will soon dump them wholecloth, and start running on small-government libertarian and civil libertarians. It will be something like the party of Goldwater again. The Religious Right will go back to not caring about electoral politics, and slowly shrink as the combined forces of modernity and liberalism slowly tear their children out of the fold. These people are simply living in an outdated social model, one that cannot really exist in the first world, and the only reason it has been useful to these people—the sense of community, the social programs and daycare— is in dealing with the hardship caused by the party they have voted for. As those causes disappear, their children will drift away, seeing their parents' culture as not one they need to hold onto for themselves, and not worth preserving for posterity.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Biden II



The transcript from this video has been making the rounds as proof that Joe Biden is going to start putting his foot in his mouth. But having watched it, it has finally cured of any doubts I might have had about Obama's pick. The guy is hilarious! I mean, just insanely good sense of comic timing. Very very likable. And his openness and ease with a crowd....

I think this pick confirms what is fast becoming the iron rule of the campaign: Obama Is Better At This Than You. Anytime someone comes up with some criticism of a decision that the Obama campaign has made, they end up being proved wrong. These guys are just the best in the business. The rest of us, we should just sit back and enjoy the ride.

via.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Dreams

I am in the process of just tearing through Barack Obama's Dreams From My Father. It lacks the formality and diplomacy of The Audacity of Hope, so I think it gives you a better sesne of Obama as a writer.

His writing is a weird mix of master and novice. His descriptive skill is incredibly compact yet extremely vivid. Rarely does he not come up with the exactly the words and details to draw a picture in the minds eye, and when relating events, every phrase builds towards the scenes point. There is an ambiguity to his writing as well. Barack is much more of a shower than a teller. Scenes are often related, and though he often explains the effect some scenes had on him emotionally, like when Auma tells him about the fate of his father, other scenes receive no discussion and analysis. This actually, can often be aggravating. When A black Reverend tells him that his congregation won't work with Barack's organization because they don't want to work with some jews and Catholic churches, and besides the mayors black and he's friends with him, so why work with them now, You kind of want to know what this scene means, what it signifies of Obama, but he doesn't really say anything particular about it, just leaves you to draw your own conclusions.

On the novice front, Barack seems to have some difficulties maitaining the verisimultude of the memoir genre. The long passages of conversation are fine. You can just assume that he is recalling the broad outline of something that was once said, and he renders the character's voice acutely enough that we can buy that even if these are the exact words they said, they were in tis same voice. Besides this is just a nessesary convention to keep such writing interesting. But he has the tendency, expecially in earlier passages (you can feel him improving as the book goes on) on having the speaker state information that both characters know already, like in comic books with two old foes restate their entire origins to each other while fighting. It pulls you out when you know a character wouldn't say something like that. Also, remembrances prompted by other events are other framed as things he is thinking of at the time. I can accept that the conversations are somewhat the product of invention, because i can beleive you know the outline of it, or at least the gist. But expecting me to buy that you remember not your train of thought from several years ago is just asking to much of me, I think. It's a convention of narrative that I just can't buy as realistic.

Also, there is a fragmentary nature to the narrative, which is somewhat reminiscent of Joyce. The chapters, especially the earlier ones, jump over whole points of experience. To a degree, this is ok, since you can fill in a lot of details yourself. But sometimes it just seems fragmentary. Its hard to connect the anrgy, young, semi-militant black man of his first two years of college relates to the young boy growing up. It's kind of hard to figure how someone who relates to Malcolm X can reconcile that with being raised by entirely by white relations. Sometimes, his showing, not telling approach means he stops even showing. This would be eaiser to deal with, I think, if each of the chapters had a more cohesive whole, some kind of conclusion, but they don't They are more like breaks in the narrative. Cliffhangers. And then the narrative jumps ahead, and you are left wondering what the significance of the last chapter was. If he is going to encapsulate one period in his life, then he needs to give the capsule some sense of completelyness. The book lacks any degree of closure or conclusion. In a sense this is a good approach, because he keep reading, hoping for the various threads to come together by the end, but I am kind of doubting that Barack is going to pull this all together at the end, and make all the chapters retroactively fit into a concrete worldview. It's more like he is just offering up his experiances for perusal.

On that front though, the book is pretty devastating. The depiction of race relations in 1980's Chicago is just about the most depressing comment on the subject I have read. its just an endless series of ethnic rivalries, with all sides working against each other, making it impossible for anything to get better. I hope it's not still like that.

Which brings me to another point. This book is obviously not the work of someone who was planning on eventually running for president, or even really any political office. There's just too many details that people wouldn't want on the record, and no politician would want to be caught leaving such harsh depictions race relations. They certainly wouldn't structure an entire chapter around sitting up at 3 a.m. (heh) after a wild party, drunk and stoned and miserable. Or throw in all this cursing, including passages where he calls people motherfuckers. (There is a great novelty to thinking of the Eloquent Hopemonger saying "motherfucker." Is there an audiobook? Read by him? If so, I NEED it.)

And yet the book also makes me more trusting of him, because the image of him that emerges is very, very familiar. Take this passage:

In 1983, I decided to become a community organizer.

There wasn't much detail to the idea; I didn't know anyone making a living that way. When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds. Change in Congress, compliant and corrupt. Change in the mood of the country, manic and self-absorbed. Change won't come from the top, I would say. Change will come from a mobilized grass roots.

That's what I'll do, I'll organize black folks. At the grass roots. For change.
Sound familiar? That's Obama writing in 1995, before he ran for public office, about himself in 1983. He all but says "change from the bottom up." And he knows what he is thinking is slightly nuts; I am pretty sure that last sentence is a bit of self-deprecating irony. But he does it anyways. And now here is that guy, years later, running for the presidency, and he is espousing the exact same things. That's stunning. There is a dreamer running for president.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Update II

I am starting to feel better than I was last night—listening to the Offspring and generally chilling out. Maybe all that Slipknot was getting to me. (Also Dreams From My Father, which I have been tearing through. Incredibly well-written, incredibly depressing. The community organizing sections leave me feeling profoundly depressed about the nature of the human race.)

But what I have realized just now is, thinking about Susanna Clarke, I don't need to concentrate on writing short stories. Susanna Clarke wanted to write her novel. So she worked really hard on her novel. It's what drove her. Sometimes, she stopped and wrote a short story, and got it published, but the novel is what she was concentrating on.

It SK is what I want to do, what I need to do, then that's what I should do. if some other idea comes to me, I will do that. But I need to be writing, and that means working on what drives me. That means SK. So that's what I will work on.

I have two scenes to work on.

Update

I haven't really been writing anything lately. I feel like I am in some kind of post-Gibbon funk. The thing I want to work on is SK, but I feel like I need to do more research, but I have worked on two separate scenes, and don't feel like picking them up again. I feel like I need to figure out the overall structure, like I need to do an outline, but I feel like I need to do more research, but don't feel like reading anything more. I just finished the third volume of fucking Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire! Unless I didn't, which is even more depressing.

And I want to write something. An actual story, with a beginning, middle and end. I just tried starting on something from the M stuff, but it wasn't working. I just don't feel connected with that thing right now, or I feel like it there is something sophomoric about the whole enterprise. I just can't think of a short, simple story that I want to tell (well, maybe not simple, but something not tied up in some huge megaplot that I am working on).

Maybe I should just continue trying to work on my scenes, see where that leads me, I don't know. I just know that I am starting to go antsy out here. This state is getting to me, and I don't feel like an am getting anywhere. There's all these questions and desires and thoughts kicking around in my head about things and stuff and big questions and little errands and dreams and I can't sort and of it out and feel like if I don't make some progress on something in this whole life thing soon, within a couple of months, then it will just never fucking end and I will just keep spinning my wheels here forever and ever and ever. I need something, some valediction, some sign of accomplishment, but I have done nothing to earn any, and right now, I just feel directionless.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Biden

I found out about the Biden as VP announcement last night while up late, read more about it this morning, thought about it at work, and read some more about it when I got home (late). And I have to say, the more I think about it, the more I like it, and I think it's because I think a lot of the criticisms of it are wrong.

The main criticism seems to be that they think Biden is, as Kos put it, fills a gap: that Obama is covering a percieved criticism with the pick, either a lack of foreign policy experiance or an inability to attack his political opponents. Maybe Obama was thinking of these things, but I doubt it. I don't think the guy who won the Iraq Debate—when the leader of Iraq endorses your plan, you win—is looking for someone to bolster his foreign policy cred. I think that Obama actually went with Biden because he actually reinforces a lot of Obama's appeal.

The reasons are have supported Barack Obama are these: 1)He is the only politician who has articulated a version of America that I can belong to, the accepts and welcomes me. 2) He comes across not as a politician, as some weird amorphous creature that shifts form with every new round of polling data, but as an actual person for whom being a politician is simply his job. 3) While his political views are not as far to the left as I would like, they are far enough that I don't feel he is really on the other side, like I do with anyone in the DLC, and they represent a clear and present shift from present centrist opinion. 4) He has the mad political skills to actually get those policies enacted. Getting Obama's politicies in place is better than failing to get Kucinich's or Nader's in place. The perfect may be kept in mind, but always work for the possible.

With Biden, I feel he works to strengthen Obama's vision of America. Biden is a working-class kid who made it to the senate at an impossibly young age, and dealt with reams of personal tradgedy, yet worked through it all. He's actually kind of inspiring. And like Obama, he comes across as human, not a politician. Biden has been a senator so long the man is just completely comfortable in his skin. The guy you see on stage is not an act, and he doesn't try to put on airs or change his rhetoric to acomodate anyone. He is who he is, and that's good. If I am going to be putting the Button in someone's hands, or putting them heartbeat way from the Button, I would like to know them as a person a bit, becasue robots are scary. I don't have to like them, in fact it's very possible Biden is a huge asshole, I just have to know they aren't lying to me. Coming across as real, as an actual person, means coming across as someone who isn't lying, as someone who is honest. Biden seems to be honest. After Clinton and Bush, and Gore, who, god love him, couldn't keep those goddamn advisors off him enough, and only really flowered once he stopped giving a fuck and it was too late to get elected, I need that.

Concerning Biden on the issues, he seems to be pretty good. A couple of big disagreeances, but for the most part he seems to be a solid Good Democrat, and while I would of course like a Good Social Democrat, I am not feeling to greedy right now. The fourth point, eh, obviously Biden isn't the political phenom Obama is, but the guy is obviously a policy heavyweight, in a way Hilary Clinton can only wish she was, so even if he isn't a political phenom, the guy can run the show, which is really the VP's main qualification.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Finished?

The Christmas before last, in 2006, My mom got me, at my urging, the box set of the first three volumes of Edward Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: the Everyman edition, in hardcover. Though I started reading it that very day, it was an off and on affair, and I just finished it today. Yay! I have read the first three volumes (out of six) of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire!

Or did I? See, after finishing reading the book, I wanted to know what happened next. So after checking out a used book store, I went to the Library and checked out the lamentably abridged version of the whole work, and I was suprised to find that this volume includes chapters 36 and 37 as part of Volume III. But my Everyman edition ends on chapter 35! So, did I miss out on two chapters? Did Everyman gyp me? If so, for shame, Everyman! On the other hand, maybe there is no clear consensus on the division between the Volumes. So now I have the abirdged version checked out, which does not excite me the way the unabirged version does. It seems to basically just be Gibbon, and it's nice that it interposes the dates of events that happen, something that Gibbon doesn't actually bother to do, so you have to keep checking the table of contents or just allowing events to floating in an etherous solution of possible years. But it baiscailly condenses by just leaving huge chunks of texts out, and I see the brackets denoting the omissions and think, I would like to read that! The Everyman edition is selling for 45 dollars or so on Amazon, which is kind of a pretty penny. But it's just hard to work myself up over an abridgement.

On the other hand, at the used bookstore I splurged and spent 17 bucks on four William Gibson novels, just because they were there and I haven't read them. Gibson is right now the only author other than Joyce (A few nights ago I read the first ten pages of Finnegans Wake out loud to myself. It's actually becoming more and more clear wat's supposed to be going on, which is both kind of cool and kind of scary) that I like to read just for the texture of the prose, and not having fresh, new Gibson around to read is kind of stifling, so I wanted to have the books here, as a kind of rainy day type of thing. This means I am now only missing two Gibson books, All Tomarrow's Parties and Spook Country. And I have listened to the audiobook of Spook Country. Need to get that one. I really like Hollis, but the narrator's voice gets in the way, I feel. He does this deep breathy voice whenever he does her dialogue, which sounds off, and the intonation is also all wrong. Really, audiobooks are annoying if it's not the author. Gibson in particular, seemed to really nail Neuromancer the one time I heard him read the opening. It sounded perfectly realized and evoked, even thoughGibson sounds nothing like the characters. He just has the emphasis in the sentences all right.

And sometimes audiobooks just seem to comepletely miss the point. I kind of wanted to hear the audiobook for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I found the authorial voice of the novel so feminine, somehow, that I didn't want to listen to it read by a male voice. I mean, sure, most of the characters are men, but it seemed important that most of the men be funneled through a feminine voice; it seemed like the narrator's humourous tone towards the male character was very much the things women find funny about men, not the things men find funny about men. Whenever I read it, I always hear a woman's voice. But maybe that's just knowledge of the "author" playing with me. I know the writer is named Susanna, I hear a voice that could come from someone named Susanna.

Funny, I don't feel like a hear a specific voice whenever I read male author's. I don't feel like that is a tone of voice in books written by men at all.

Monday, August 11, 2008

Casting Couch: Neuromancer

So, they are making a Neuromancer movie. I don't know how I feel about it. Apparently the director is the guy behind the "Toxic" video and the movie Torque, which is bad, but he also did the video for "Knights of Cydonia", which was pretty awesome. My general opinion of most music video directors is that they are hungrey young things taking work to get work who dream of getting their personal dream project. Hey, maybe this will be Joseph Kahn's personal dream project.

Hayden as Case? Eh, I don't know. Christiensen seems more just incredibly uneven to me than necessarily bad, but I don't like his track record. Case is either an incredibly easy character to play—blank, empty brooder—or an incredibly difficult role to play—just what is going on under that blank exterior? Can it be conveyed while still being blank? (Oddly, despite much belly-aching from the io9 commenters, I actually think that (a younger) Keanu would have been just right for Case. I have always thought Keanu is less blank than stoic; there's things going on in his head, but it's hard for it to get across—exactly like with Case. And Case seems kind of gruff and short with people, and Keanu's gruff voice would seem to fit really well for that.) I am just not sure Christiensen can pull off the more complicated version of Case, and his tendency to come off as petulanet would work against Case's gruffness. But then, Case isn't exactly tough either. That's Molly. He's at least naturally pretty enough to buy that Molly would take an interest in him even though he's a half-dead drug addict. (Although I think one of the reasons that Molly became "interested" in him was as much a part strengthening their ties to each other compared to their ties to their controller. Molly was creating an insurance policy against a possible double-cross from Armitage).

Speaking of Molly, that's the casting decision that I see as crucial to the movie's success. cast the wrong pop starlet and the character will just not work. Change the character to fit the actress and the story on't work. Personally I my tentative pick would be Nora Zehetner, who was on Heroes for a while. Her character wasn't for the most part any like Molly, except in the flashbacks, where despite being petite she was able to convey coldness. I think she could do Molly's casual cruelty well, and the voice fits, all casual and low-pitched. Basically, she seems capable of conveying both Molly's maks as well as what is going on underneath (mostly occasional regret, not remorse). Also she has the correct, dancer's frame. Molly just doesn't work unless you cast someone who looks a bit like an acrobat. Someone like Hayden Peniatierre would just look wrong. Too tiny and stumpy.

Also, she has big eyes, would give the make-up department plenty of room to work with in coming up with permanent mirrorshades that don't restrict facial movement. More important than you would think.

For the rest of the cast? I would go with William Fichtner, (last seen getting perforated by the Joker) who does brooding military man intensity on the edge of snapping better than anyone. Thomas Haden Church would be an acceptable substitute. The Finn seems like a no-brainer Steve Buscemi role. Old Julie would be a fun Peter O'Toole cameo. Or maybe Michael Gambon? Maelcum? Um, Malcolm Jamal-Warner? He has dreadlocks. I think that Owen Wilson would be great as Riviera. Beautiful with a broken nose? Also, he once played a serial killer in something, (The Minus Man?) and I heard he was good. James Franco would also be good, (I still remeber that smile as he's eating pie in the mostly crappy Spiderman 3) as would Heath Ledger, if he wasn't dead. Actually, Franco would be fun as Lupus Yonderboy. They better have Lupus Yonderboy!

God, I hope they don't fuck this one up.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Edwards

So today during break at work, I find the channel, previously set to the awesome Batman Begins (goddamn I am loving those Nolan/Bale Batman movies these days) set to some news channel, reporting on the latest news, the Edwards controversy. I am still a little uncertain of all that has occurred, but I gleamed then, and gleamed later, that Edwards admitted to having an affair with the woman from the whole love child rumors, that he is denying that the baby is his, and that his family has known about it since 2006. Shit. As I said to my co-worker, I guess this means he's out of the running for vice president.

I have been kicking around a bit of the left blogosphere, and a couple of broad motifs are poping up. 1) Fuck Mickey Kaus (even though he was (generally) right about all this). 2) I feel sorry for Elizabeth. 3)Fuck Edwards, this was politically risky. 4) Fuck Elizabeth too, I can't beleive they ran a campaign knowing this was out there. 5)Goddamn, we dodged a bullet. 6) Various asscovering excuses for verbal assults on espousers of the rumor before it was confirmed.

Personally, in my own small petty way, I feel kind of vindicated in that, though my faith was often tempted, Obama was always my favorite of the Big Three in the Dem primary. Sure, it's probably just the Illinois bias that did it, but still, I picked not only the winning horse, but the right horse. Bill had to many shady business deals for Hillary to be viable, and if Edwards had been the nominee now, we would have been fucked for no reason. Somehow, we lucked out and got the super devoted family man. Seriously, for a bit of hubris, here, I will go all in (mark it!): There will never be a personaly scandal involving Barack Obama. The man simply cares to much about the concept of family. I read his book, trust me. My take is that Barack Obama, because of his own upbringing, and because, I think, he was conditioned to approahc situations as a kind of objective, analytical observer, places unquantifiable value on his family unit as a source of identity. It's the value of the impossible dream. I think Barack Obama thought he would never get a stable, "normal" life, and so he feels incredibly blessed that he was able to get one. Watch that father's day speech. The man really really cares, on an almost primordial level, about his role as the father in his family. And hell, Michelle? The accumulation of anecdotal evidence I have come across leads me incontroveribly to the conclusion that those two are just incredibly protective of one another. I just don't see anything coming between them. They are a team.

But then, I thought John and Elizabeth were a team. And maybe they are. But still, this completely changes the understanding of the dynamic at work. We are no longer dealing with two faithful soulmates. So what are we dealing with? The quality was changed.

And I think the anger, or sense of betrayal, in the blogs is right. Whether or not it is fair, adultery is something that must be factored into politics, and the hiding of it is dangerous, and can effect the lives of other people. Whether it is fair or not, had this come out now , it would had lost the election, and that makes it irresponsible. Sure, it's a double standard for democrats. But if you want to be a democrat, that doesn't mean you can have affairs. It's that nature of the Game that you can't. Complaining about it at this point is like plaing chess and complaining that White always gets to go first. Of course white gets to got first! That's the rules asshole. If you don't like it, don't play black! Me, I like to play black. I like getting something to react to right off the bat. I like the limitations. But if you don't, you are playing the wrong game. Go play something else. And for God's sake, don't play something that might fuck up my life when you lose.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

Casting Couch: Neverwhere!


Is there anything as fun as trying to figure out who should play the characters in one of your favorite books? Yes, but those are not things I have been doing since I woke up. Today, Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman!

While Neverwhere actually kind of started out as a BBC television miniseries, meaning it has already been filmed once, that show doesn't really capture the grandeur of the book version. Meaning there's space for a big-budget Hollywood movie version. But who to play in it?

Richard Mayhew—I kind of see James McAvoy in this part, although I think when I first read it a I saw someone like Ben Chaplin, I think he is too old for the part now. Lots of points for McAvoy, though. For one, he's Scottish, just like Mayhew, so no need to fiddle with his accent. Also, he has a kind of unassuming disposition, and though I haven't seen Wanted yet, I assume he can carry of the role of the unlikely action hero, or the role of the almost but not quite an action hero. Also, it's the lead, and he has some star power that could launch such a project.

Door—A tricky role, since age is appearance is so important. You need someone who simultaneously possesses childlike innocense and some degree of muturity, and is actually quite possibly an adult. Also, she has to be kind of pixieish, without being a manic pixie dream type or anything. Oh, and red hair. Really, really, red hair. So, though I haven't actually seen her in anything, I am going to go with Rachel Hurd-Wood, who played Wendy in that last Peter Pan remake, and was in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, a movie I really want to get around to seeing sometime soon. Basically, she looks exactly like Door, seems, from the Perfume photos on IMBD to possess the self-possession necessary to play the actual hero of the story, and hey, she worked opposite Alan Rickman, so she has to be pretty good, right?

The marquis de Carabas—Hmm, a theatrical, cunning black Englishman of uncertain motives with hints of casual cruelty? Really, this part is so Chiwetel Ejiofor I was picturing him as I read it. It's like someone was just trying to come up with the ultimate part for Chiwetel to have fun with.

Hunter—Um, I really don't know who should play Hunter, but she is kind of important, so I still wanted to include a spot. You could really cast Halle Berry for all I care with this part. Sophie Okonedo? Freema Agyman?

Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar—Hard. My two favorite characters in the book. For Mr. Vandemar, I would go with Ian Whyte, the 7'2" Welshman who played the Predators in the recent Predator movies. For one, he's 7'2," and not as a result of Gigantism. He seems perfectly porportioned. I calculated once that, since Mr. Vandemar is described as two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup, and if Mr. Croup were, say, 5'6," and a head was about eight inches, then Mr. Vandemar is 7'2." In other words, in the book Mr. Vandemar is huge. Ian Whyte seems to be identitcally huge, and that is fortuitous. Also, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar are described as looking like a fox and wolf together, and Ian looks suitably wolfish, even without makeup.

Mr. Croup is distinctly harder for me, as he is my favorite character in the book, and consequently the most higly focused in my mind, and no actor really looks like that image. However, having given it some thought today, I think Michael Sheen would do the part justice. Like Ian, Sheen is Welsh, and I have always thought it preferable that these two have similar accents. They are a duo! (And I always found it disconcerting in the BBC version that Mr. Vandemar had the same accent as Richard Mayhew; there should be no familiarity between those two.) Sheen is also not to tall—IMDB lists him as 5'9," so he would probably have to take his shoes off when doing scenes opposite McAvoy—that the height differential between Croup and Vandemar wouldn't be lost. He can obviously play vicous characters, as he did in Underworld, as well as cerbral types, so I see him as perfectly capable of pulling off the specific quirks of Mr. Croup. And damn if he doesn't look like a fox.

Islington—Sinead O'Connor. I love Sinead O'Connor. Islington needs to be larger than life, ethereally beautiful,yet neither female nor male. Reading the book, I always pictured it as bald, white-skinned almost to the point of translucence, and with a voice that was as ethereal as it was. Sinead is very good as pulling of the bald look, has the beauty for it, and there is no realy reason to cast one sex or another with androgynous characters. But really, I am also kind of thinking about character here. Though I haven't seen her turn as a foul-mouthed virgin Mary in The Butcher Boy, He songs are actually really well-played emotional peices, and display the exact range needed paly both angelic gentleness and angelic wrath. Anyone who can sing "Troy" the way she does can play the former angel of Atlantis. I can't wait to hear her scream "They deserved it!"

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Robocop

I just got done watching Robocop for the first time. Good movie. Fun movie. Slight movie. Actually, I was kind of amazed how insubstantial the plot was; the film only clocked in at 104 minutes, which compared to something like The Dark Knight, around 150, is pretty short for an action movie. I mean, the movie is basically about a guy who dies in the line of duty and then becomes and empty cyborg, get revenge on his killers and reclaims his identity, even though he has no real contact with it. There really isn't much plot, just a bunch of setting that subtly satirizes modern America. The kind of critiques that, unfortunately, are still very very valid, although probably a bit simplistic for our times. There is definately room for a sequal, which I think is written by Frank Miller, and I kind of want to see, since I saw it already, but years ago, and I remember liking it, although I think it didn't get the best reviews. It's just that the first movie doesn't really do much other than setup, though in an enjoyable way, and you leave it kind of wanting to see more of the concept.

Unrelated to anything, I got kind of a cyberpunk feel off of the issues raised in it, or at least in the issues that could have been raised by it, but were really just kind of hinted at. The whole mind-body kind of thing, and what is the self: could it be downloaded, or is there something more emepheral about it? What makes a person a person, and not just a robot? That kind of thing.

Shit. Now I need to start watching that Ghost in the Machine series.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

The Dark Knight

I saw it back on opening weekend, and saw again last Tuesday, and have been meaning to write a post on it, once I got my thoughts together, but nothing got in the way. Some points:

—This was the most realistically set Batman movie yet. Begins was set in a substantially more realistic world than the Burton-Schumacher films, with their art-deco city models and candy-colored villains, but even Begins has an ancient secret society, fear-inducing flowers, fancy e-trains and a cityscape that is obviously invented. This film, on the other hand, is just completely filmed in Chicago. (I remember thinking during the opening shot, when the camera draws in close on a large, black monolith of a building, how this must be a symbolic portant of the coming tradegy of the story or something, and remember that I have seen that building before, while driving around Chicago.) The characters are drawn as professionals working within the halls of power in an incredibly corrupt city, with the shadings such real people carry, not as broad caricatures. There are no secret societies mentioned, the fear-compound makes only a brief cameo in the beginning, the Joker as portrayed, has none of the science fiction elements from the comics. No white skin and naturally green hair, or lethal laughing gas leaving a rictus grin. Just a psycho with knives, guns, and bombs. With all these changes the major casting change, replacing Katie Holmes with Maggie Gyllenhal, didn't really bother me at all. the films almost seemed to be taking place in different worlds.

—There has been a lot of writing trying to pick apart the films message or politics, which is fun and all, but I think that reading the film has having any kind of positive suggestions about society misses the point of the story. The film isn't political, but personal; it is a tradegy. The plot of the movie is: three guys try to take on a force of chaos, and fail. That's it. In fact, though a first viewing kind of obscures this, the conclusion of the movie is the moment [SPOILERS!!!] where the bombs go off in the warehouse, and Rachel Dawes dies. In fact, if I were to pin the climax to any one moment, it is the shot of the Joker sticking his head out of a cop car in the dawn light, with redlights flashing behind him. Not only has he won, destroying all that the characters care about, but he has gotten away with it. Everything that happens after that shot is denoument; just the characters sorting out the after effects of the Joker's victory. Dent goes insane and accepts the chaos, Gordon realizes he is impotent, even with his newfound powers, (he can't even save his family) before it. But Batman, to his credit, and making him the ultimate hero of the story, decides to just keep on battling the chaos anyways, even if he can't stop, and just might be destroyed by it. It's less a story about political systems than the cruel whims of fate, set within the halls of power.

—Ah, the Joker. Like just about everyone, I think Ledger was amazing in this movie, and totally deserves the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, if not just Best Actor. Damn, he is good. Every choice he made was sublimely creepy, and he still managed to be funny while menacing, which doesn't seem like it is possible. I have replayed the pencil trick in my head hundreds of times now. Also, Nolan did just a superb job in shaping the character. This Joker, while differing from the comics version drastically in surface details, still managed to fit in all the thematic touches of the Joker of the comics. There was the Joker as needing the Batman as a reason for being (which I think comes mostly from Dark Knight Returns), Joker as psychoterrorist trying to drive the world as crazy as he is (Killing Joke), Joker wearing ridiculous costume while on assignment. They got that the Joker's entire shtick is doing things that are violent and cruel, while using the rhythms of comedy to suggest they are supposed to be funny. Sometimes it is funny, like with the pencil trick, and then sometimes it just seems mean, which is really all it ever is.

Argh!

The problem with being a mercurial bastard is that you can go a long time not doing anything because you are too busy devoting time to doing everything.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Deep Thought

Providing everything goes as planned this November, by late January, the three most powerful people in The United States government will be a black guy, a woman, and a Mormon.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

"with a comprehensive strategy for victory."

I think comprehensive is one of those words which has lost all meaning to me. It just always seems to be an empty adjective used in polspeak to mean that something is double-plus good, but I never hear it used elsewhere.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

Forms of Narrative

I have been thinking, off and on today, about the various forms of writing in narrative fiction, and have some preliminary thoughts.

The latest book I have been reading, The Belgariad by David Eddings, seems to be written in a form that I would call straight narrative. For it is basically a straightforward description of events placed in chronological order. The depiction of the internal thoughts of characters is kept to a minimum, usually only used to explain why a particular character acted in a certain way.

Most fiction is probably written in this manner. It's the standard approach of paperback airport novels. The Harry Potter books certainly are, and I think you can throw Dickens in there too. Probably Jane Austen too. You can certainly produce great works of literature in this style, but it's also exceedingly hard. There isn't really any room for flights of fancy or lyricism. You are fairly constrained to the description of events as they occur. As a result most straight narrative, and by extension most novels, tend to read kind of dryly, at least compared to poetry and most other forms of novel writing.

Stream of consciousness is not so much a form independant as a form that gets grafted onto other forms, but it's important enough in itself. The depiction of the pathway of the thoughts of of one or more characters. Joyce mixes straight narrative with stream of consciousness in many of the earlier sections of Ulysses. The last section, the Molly Bloom one, is probably the purest example of the form imaginable. Updike used it a lot, I think. It is probably easiest to contruct an entire narrative in this fashion when using 1st person narration. Probably easier to write a more "literary" work in this fashion.

Then there is what I would call distorted narrative, more a number of approaches than a single technique. This is when the story is told within a certain frame, or narrative technique, or the authors freely uses poetical devices that distort or control the narrative that results. Many of the later chapters of Ulysses use this. The hospital section, which events are passed through the prism of diction presenting the evolution of English; the penultimate section, set up as a catechism. Finnegans Wake is all distorted—so distorted it might actaully cease to be narrative—through a haze of dream language and reasoning. I think this form pops up most in Modernism. Brecht's Epic Theatre is probably related to such experiments. Pale Fire definately qualifies.

Then there is what I would call fractured narrative. Stuff like Gravity's Rainbow. It's when the narrative is deliberately obscurred and strambled. Events are depicted out of order, or are left out. It often overlaps heavily with distorted narrative. Often poetic or lyrical techniques are used, details accumulate and shove aside the passage of events. Important items are related offhandedly, far froom thier necessary context. It's basically the house writing style of post-modernism. Try to obfuscate the point that you are telling a story. Often, reading such stuff feels more like an exercise in technique than storytelling, and can often be used to hide the writers inabilty to tell an actual story.

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Just a lazy nowhere kind of day.

Just been sitting around all day, cooling off from the crazy topsy-turvyness of the last week or so. More emotional than situational, but also some serious geographic leapfrogging as well. Went out to buy beer earlier. Trying out some Harp lager (made by Guinness!). Recently I have been buying a variety of differnt beers whenever I go out beer drinking, trying to broaden the horizens of my drinking habits. Also bought pop, A&W cream soda and root beer, Sunkist. The Moutain Dew products were not on sale where they sold beer (why I went). And I feel I need to tone down the caffeine intake for a bit. I think I am cycially chemically dependant. I like my cheap legal drugs—caffeine, alcohol—but every so often you just need a break from them, you know? Sometimes, all you want to drink is water. I went a while without beer, and now that's back in my life (yay!). Now, caffiene is mostly something for breaks at work. Maybe I will switch to lemonade.

I am reading the Belgariad right now. Recommended at work. Is good. Like characters. Enjoyable read, but not strenuous, which is a welcome respite from that last couple things I read. And it is kind of fun watching Garion's world get torn apart.

Am on second Harp's. It seems to be a good beer, but honestly most lager's just blend together for me at this point. It might was well just be MGD right now. I think I prefer the darker beers, the ales and the stouts.

And Guinness. Mary's friend Ben likes Guinness. Probably even more than I do. He named one of his cat's Guinness. All I did was buy comemmorative glasses on clearance. (And buy a lot of Guinness.) One time, after drinking a lot of Jameson's, I went to the Trail of Dead show with Vahid. I got him a Guinness. He let me have a sip of it. It tasted like candy. God, I love Guinness.

What the hell was this post about?

Factory Farming

My friend Boyle swung by here on his way back form somewhere out west last Sunday, and during our brief catching up encounter, he mentioned that by something like the largest Cattle hard farm in the country, where there was something like 100,000 cattle, all in one place, and that is was something like the kind of thing that that mind just can't process. Boyle said, and it is important here to note that Boyle is about as far was you can get from a vegetarian animal activist, that it made you not want to eat beef ever again. And then he proceeded to rant briefly about the horribleness of the conditions animals are often kept in.

Which reminded me of something that has been bothering me recently, which is the political organization surrounding factory farming. Factory Farming is probably pretty close to to child labor on the things that, when acquainted with, people immediately turn against. People just don't like the idea of keeping animals in confined quarters 24/7 and cutting off parts of their bodies that interfere with the eventual harvesting of meat. In fact, many people start refusing to eat meat solely due to their disinterest in having any part of this process and it's pursuant economic transactions.

I bring all this up because I think the political aspect of dealing with Factory Farming is completely fucked up.

I remember, when the living family was in Rome and eating with Mary's awesome vegan friend Bernie at the awesome restaurant on the street Anne used to live on (whose front step was literally, literally three strides from the Pantheon, and that fact is truly more visually awe-inspiring that you can imagine), Bernie said that the main reason he was vegan was not opposition to the killing animals, exactly—he had no problem with hunting—but was a rejection of the cruelties of factory farming. This was noble, in it's way, but because I really liked Bernie (Bernie really is awesome) I didn't want to mention that just not eating meat didn't seem like a very effective way of putting a stop to factory farming. I mean, if you want to end factory farming, the problem really isn't people eating meat, but having government regulations lax enough to allow such things to be economically profitable. The thing to do would be to pass legislation that made such conditions inadmissible. And boycotting an industry seems to be a poor way of getting them to do something. They just right you off; you are not in their target audience.

But no one else is going to take the lead on this issue, so it would probably have to animal rights activists. And I think they could get a lot of external support in ending factory farming, enough to make it an actual political issue, up there with guns and gay marriage, if they tried reaching out to groups not affiliated with vegetarianism/veganism. Environmental groups for a start, but also just setting up coalitions on that single issue separate from the broader animal rights groups. (I don't really know the specifics of who is active on this stuff.)

The problem with this is that I think much of the animal rights crowd doesn't want to work with others on this. People who care really intensely about this stuff probably don't want to compromise on their cause. Plus, factory farming is probably the main draw for vegetarianism. Anyone who cares about vegetarianism in itself (and such people are probably in leadership roles) are not want to get rid of the main draw for their cultural cause. Adn so factory farming sticks around. There is really no incentive to end it, but nobody except the meat industry has any reason to support it.

Slightly less disapointed.

Thanks Nathan Newman!

Friday, July 4, 2008

Birthday

today is my birthday. happy birthday to me.

bah, I am 25.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Sigh.

You know, I always kind of figured that I would eventually become disillusioned, and my youthful idealism and hope in a better future would be crushed. But I didn't think that it would happen so quickly.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

"He turned."

I seemed to be typing this sentence a lot. Or variations on it. People seem to be doing a lot of turning in my story. I don't know if this is some weird tick in my writing that needs to be hunted down and eliminated, or some motif of some sort, something going on that I am not yet aware of. I do seem to be focusing very heavily on vistas and views, and the turning seems to be about people taking in some new tableau that comments on the last one. And the way I seem to be heading in this opening section is to relate the beginning of the story in a bunch of short sections told from various characters perspectives. So maybe it means something. I am feeling, kind of, after some of my attempts on M ended up feeling as if all the life had been sucked out of them, to to not worry to much about editing at this point. If I edit to much I might just draw all the vitality out in my urge to streamline it. Better to let the quirks lie for now, until I figure out what they all mean. Any changes should concern themselves with getting stuff that is plainly shit out of there, providing I can find something better to replace them with. Oh, and typos and awkward sentences, of course.