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.

"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.

Creative Devolution

I have been trying to get some fiction writing done on SK today, but it has been going nowhere. I have been continuously falling down rabbit holes of online pseudohistory, looking for just enough information to come up with a description of some event that has taken place as background for my story, but isn't even a necessary part of the story itself, just some historical flavor to get the ball rolling, but doing that has become a kind of insurmountable task as I try to sort through all the various historical sources to find the one "correct" image of the past that should be pithily described, and the whole time I am kicking myself for not having finished Gibbon already, since that might actually supply me something of an outline to all these various quandaries. As such, my writing quickly became little more than editing that rapidly devolved into research, and I got less than nothing done. Literally: My work so far today has soncisted of removing a paragraph that I realized was historically inaccurate, but I don't know yet what to put in it's place.

I just wanted to get some writing done, to work with words and such, but it seems that that is nearly impossible to do as I am working on the bloody opening of this book.

Finished!

Le Morte D'Arthur is done. Or at least I am at reading it. Suck it, Malory!

7 Words

George Carlin died yesterday. God damn it.

Almost...there...

I am nearing the end of Le Morte d'Arthur, am in fact on the last section, the title section. Like I said, I find the work boring and repetitive, and completely removed from the kind of characterization expected in modern works. Thought a prose work, it follows the monoglossic conventions that Bahktin depicted as the product of the Epic. And on top of that, the monoglossic viewpoint is one of supreme dickitude, but with a rancid patina of Christian piety. As usual, I find myself rooting for Morgan Le Fay, and in this work she really is supposed to be evil.

Still, the work has been useful as a rough guide to the outlines of Arthurian legend, making it easier to put together how all the different strands of Arthuriana fit together. Its really interesting to see for example, that the Wasteland is likely really Yorkshire. Which makes sense, because it was actually in that region, roughly speaking, when the Arthurian period saw major attacks from Saxons, creating the Kingdom of Bernicia within the kingdoms of Ebrauc (York) and Brineich (Southeastern Scotland, Northeastern England). Relatedly, I enjoy seeing a more concrete example of the lineage of Percival/Peredur, since Goodrich had completely confused me on that matter, presenting a variety of contradictory genealogies without comment. Still, I should probably read an earlier tale to get a more "accurate" depiction of his parentage, but the one that exists in my mind at present is pretty good, as it seems to confirm to the historical record of the figure of Peredur. Lancelot, on the other hand, and Lot as well, are getting hazier as I go along. Lot should clean up rather quickly, either settling back into place or getting a few brushstrokes to satisfactorily change him, but Lancelot is shaping up to be a very complex conundrum, probably requiring a significant amount of research to puzzle out. I am probably going to have to read the Knight of the Cart now. Sigh. Of well. Chrétien de Troyes is a lot more fun to read than Malory.

Wait, what?

I had quite a string of posts back there in a short period, and then they kind of ground to a halt. I don't know why exactly. I think I was, at the time, feeling very positive about things, and going through a particularly productive phase, and then that kind of died down. I suspect that I am slightly bipolar, and that I was going through a bit of a manic phase. And then it cooled down, and I didn't post anything for awhile. All the thoughts I was having I just kind of let sit up on the shelf, instead of spitting them out rapid fire fast like I was.

Also, work was back on, and I was getting tired and ornery from that, and just too exhausted to devote time to typing. And then I have been trying to just finish already Le Morte d'Arthur, which is a completely uncompelling book.

Also, I have been feeling obligated to posting something in response to my last post, a quick off the cuff denunciation of "feminism" that was probably a bit ill considered. Well, was ill-considered. I posted it right before heading out the door for work, and meant to update it at some point, fleshing out my reasons and thought on the topic at greater length, and make the point that it was not so much the article linked to in question that was the reason for my ambivalence than a specific point made about the way feminism has been instrumental over the past forty years in consolidating the strength of capitalism. As such, I don't really feel a part of a movement or ideology that is in a sense rooted in shunting aside a viewpoint that I think needs a wider public airing, despite agreeing wholeheartedly with the fundamental ideas upon which the feminist movement is based. (And in this case I should draw a distinction between "rooted" and "fundamental." In this case, a fundamental idea is the specific concepts underlying what is in question, the self-evident truths, while rooted refers to drawing succor from something else. Feminism is a good seed growing in bad soil, and I don't like the condition of the plant all that much, thought I think it's a lovely species.)

Anyways, as often happens when I have something specific to say that involves a lot of nuance and depth in order to express fully, and that I feel needs to be expressed ASAP, I usually just put it off until later, and not do it at all (See: the Politics series, which is practically irrelevant now). So, I plan to come back to this topic at some point, and express more of what I am trying to say about it, and the paragraph above is less than an iceberg tip, but I don't really feel like doing it now. And I need to get over that particular hump.

Yeah, I think I can now definately say I am not a feminist.

This is why.

Rhetorical Iconography

I just watched the Obama Father's Day speech. I thought the Jesus bits at the end felt tacked on, mostly there because he was in a church. So, in that sense, a little discordant as literature.

I have decided to refer to such invocations of Jesus as "rhetorical iconography." It seems like there is this tendency among the religious, or those in the habit of making arguments that they try to evoke as religious, to just stick a reference to having faith in Jesus Christ as making everything all better, and why this is so is left unsaid. The speaker/writer is not really trying to explain the importance of Jesus, or how mechanism by which faith and Jesus beings about positive developments, they are simply throwing in the reference. It's a representative rhetorical flourish meant to be considered and meditated on by the audience, in much the way an icon was meant to be studied on, as if through it's consideration some truth of the depicted would dawn upon the viewer.

Now, there is probably a good reason the reference can just be tacked in there, which is that the audience as already heard all of the reasons for why they should trust in Jesus, so why said it again? But that's actually what icons are for. You look at them, and meditate on your relation to the which is pictured; it requires some understanding of the images meaning in order for the truth to emerge from it. Since I haven't internalized these reasons, these evocations always leave me cold. They don't tell me why faith in Jesus will (supposedly) help me, and as a result I just think "whatever, man."

I wonder if I should be feeling alienated that Obama seems to think that faith, and faith in Jesus, is so important, such an edifying way of living and succeeding in life, but I figure, that's just his bag. All people have some shit that they think is the the way to be, the way to do things, whether that's Veganism, Christianity, being a swinger, hippy, "traditional" family member, gay clubber, raver, anarchist, objectivist.... People all have this tendency to form some silly tribe that bolsters their particular view of How One Should Live. Obama's is no different, and his thing happens to involve Jesus. Not really something to get bent out of shape about.

Still, I hope he keeps that kind of talk in the Church. If he starts talking like that at those huge rallies, I might have to reconsider my position.

Kicks

I bought a new pair of Converse today, as my two old pairs are completely falling apart. I got a pair of midnight blue hightops. They are keen. I love how they bounce as I walk.

But they were forty seven dollars. Forty seven dollars! Forty seven fucking dollars (with tax) for a pair of fucking canvas sneakers! And I bet the fucking things aren't even made in the US, the fucking criminals. This better just be gas and shit jacking up the price of everything. Shit, I think I bought my last two pairs for 35 each. And I could have bought a pair of One Stars at the Retail Giant for 30, minus 10 percent.

I just keep telling myself that I pay twenty dollars for a pair of pants, and I wear my shoes way more than I wear my pants. Or something. Damn it, I hate spending money.

Still, they look really friggin awesome. I keep wanting to show them off to everybody. Because I spent 47 fucking dollars on the fucking things.

The Matter of Britain

As a point within my eternal studies that bounce randomly between a variety of sources, I have recently found myself re immersed in reading up about the historical and legendary King Arthur. I have recently picked up where I left off in Keith Baines' rendition of Le Morte d'Arthur in modern idiom. I am about halfway through. Before this I was copiously going between wikipedia and this site, trying to put together some idea of the known historical figures of the period. I was taking notes as I went, to try to codify the figures in my mind in some form, the way they related to each other and traveled through history, and come up with some kind of timeline of events that takes into account the various historical, semi-historical and legendary veins to the story. Heck, I even read some of Gilda's On the Ruin and Conquest of Britain. It's kind of tedious, and I really don't feel like I am enjoying reading a lot of these things, and kind of want to retreat back to doing something else, like rereading a William Gibson book or something (Pattern Recognition was looking so welcoming and inviting on my bookshelf today).

The fun of it, really, is the making up my own version of the story in my head, taking the ways others have told the story, refashioning it to the historical record, and seeing what grows out of it, trying to figure out how to work the more plainly legendary characters into the historical framework, making the more historical figures conform more closely the to the bare facts, watch them spring to life in my mind, then watching them shift in my mind as I stumble onto more facts, chortling when some stroke inspiration hits about how to connect certain dots together. It's all a lot of fun, thought a little aggravating, since everything is prone to change.

That's why I am reading a version of Le Morte d'Arthur right now. It's basically the earliest compendium of all the details of the various Arthur stories put in one place. Reading it gives a good overview of how all the different characters interact emotionally, as well as pointing out all the major legendary events one would not want to neglect in one's own telling, even if those events aren't the most important. I hadn't heard of the questing beast until I started reading this, but now I couldn't imagine how one could leave it out of their telling. It's pretty awesome. Likewise, I now can't see leaving characters like Palomides, Lamorak or Dynadan out, though they almost undoubtedly lack a historical precedent.

That said, the book is actually kind of boring. It's almost an endless stream of various knights jousting with each other. I can only get through by making unofficial rankings in my head. Oh, so and so unseated so and so, so he's better at jousting, but so and so is better at swordplay.... Right now, I think the unoffical ranking of knights in it is Lancelot, Tristam, Lamorak, Palomides, then maybe Gawain and Dynadan. I can't remember the rest, but most of them have died or not really interacted with these guys.

June 8, 1941-February 2, 2001

Today—well, yesterday now—is/was Father's Day. I don't really feel anything about it one way or another. I have, sporadically thought about dad, but not in any deep sense. I just didn't feel like it. Most of the news I have read about it is some remarks Obama made about absentee fathers, and whether it was a dogwhistle to evangelicals/social conservatives as well as a statement aimed at blacks (as they were said in a black church). All the summations I have read sound like things he already said in The Audacity of Hope, so I figure he just means them, and they probably stem from the fact that he grew up without a father, and he didn't like that. Hence, his thoughts on father's day are about absentee dads, though he probably wouldn't voice them if he thought they would be politically harmful, I guess (is anyone really gonna fault anybody for excoriating deadbeats?).

But I haven't actually read the remarks, because I don't really care that much. To me father's days is just a relatively empty day to mark the number of years since Raymond Raven left the world. It's been seven. It is a minor day, because for me, the day that I remember my father will always be February 2nd. Even though his birthday was earlier this month, on the 8th, and I remember that date so well, have internalized it so well into daily routine that I had completely sanded off it's features, so that it slipped right past me, and I didn't even notice until over a week later. In fact, the reason I am writing this right now, it's the guilt, mixed with grief coming up from that lapse, that has me thinking enough to want to write about it.

He would have been 67. God, that's so fucking old.

Elsewhere I read some blog thread talking riffing on the Obama speech, talking about masculinity, and it's changing definitions, and the standard stuff liberal types bring up and try to reason out when talking about father's and how they think of their fathers and how they want want to act as father's and how this all relates to the continuing progress of feminism. I suppose dad was fairly masculine, or macho, in his way. Mom and Dad seemed to conform pretty well to your "traditional" tropes of married couples. But there was nothing overbearing, harsh or judgmental about it. And he treated all of his kids as human beings, and didn't expect differing forms of behavior from us based on our sex. There was no, oh, you have to be polite, and you should be strong and tough, and don't show your emotion, or any of that kind of crap. And for that, I am thankful.

But it's so hard for me to care about these things. I can't really get bent out of shape these questions or concerns of cultural roles. Because, regardless of how those things affect others, the day is hollowed of significance for me. Because my father is not here, and that is all it means. It means that I might forget his birthday, and then find my self in the early morning staring off into space and feeling guilty about that, that no matter how much time passes, it still will come around every so often and settle in like a fog. And one not entirely unpleasant; sometimes, you just need to feel your parent.

So I raise a glass of rum, since i don't have any whiskey. Here's to Raymond Frederick Raven, 1941-2001. Rest peacefully father, and may we meet again in the land of eternal summer. Though hopefully not for many many seasons.

I love you.

You sound like a twelve-year-old hearthrob physicist

I don't really know how I feel about Cory Doctorow, as a writer at least. I tried starting two of his books, but didn't really find interest. Both of them started with the trope where the narrator discusses that they is telling a story, a metafictional trope that I find seriously off-putting. It put me off Midnight's Children and The Left Hand of Darkness as well.

That said, Doctorow's stuff on copyright is really interesting, Boing Boing is a fun browse, and he seems to be quite the ideasmith, so this interview for the Onion A.V. Club, courtesy the badass Tasha Robinson, is quite good. And it's long too, longer than they usually go over there, and well worth the added length.

Spring Cleaning

I have been cleaning my place on and off today, doing this bit and then that bit and stopping to take a break. The floor is mostly swept, the empty bottles and cans and cardboard cases are in the recycling bins and the car, I have wiped off the counter, and moved the table to the center of the "kitchen" to minimize the future buildup of crud on the floor. All the dirty clothes are off the floor and in the hamper and pair of plastic bags stacked on top of it. Dust mites prowl the floor, the last remnants of my sweeping. The sink of full of dishes I need to get around to washing. The bathroom floor still needs to be swept. The floor could probably use a washing, but I can't find the mop, if I even have one (I have a bucket). The shelves still need dusting, and my books are disorganized. The mail and papers on the dresser need to be gone through. The fridge should probably be cleaned, the laundry done somehow, the bottles and cans in my car taken to be redeemed, if Hy-Vee isn't underwater. I should make dinner.

I have decided to stay on here for another year. I could rarely care less about my job, and really wish I had something that paid more. But this apartment is starting to feel like home; it's my place, and I am loathe to leave it. I feel like whatever I came out here to accomplish I still haven't done, am just starting to do in fact, and I need another year to do whatever that is. I just can't imagine up and moving somewhere else in the next two months, Christ, at the end of next month. I feel a little bad about this. I would like to be closer to family and friends, I would like to feel rooted. Probably less than a mile from my house, right now, there are people laying down sandbags together, and I am not joining them. But I feel rooted here, to this room, and so I will stay, I suppose. If I up and left, I feel like I would lose my train of thought. Besides, I am not really hurting for money, living as close to minimum wage as I am. I make rent, and still manage to save some money, sometimes. I bank account is actually going up. I don't really mind all that much not having any toys, really, as long as I have my computer (I might have to buy a new one at some point, but not that soon).

A while back, I had the idea of making a post stating the intention of making at least one post a day. I decided against it. I had come to the realization that, as I have a nature that is spitefully contrary to all voiced intentions, any declaration I made I would immediately go about subverting, so best not to say anything actually. However, I am not even safe from my own mind, so this idea was immediately followed by a long dearth of posting, and a long dearth of writing in general. So, so much for playing it safe.

So now I just gotta say "fuck it." Before, I would try to hold things in, pace myself. make a post, and not make another one until the next day (when I would invariably forget to post). Now I say, I shall start just posting about any goddamn thing that comes into my head. It doesn't matter. I have been holding writing, of one form or another, as some kind of scary task, as a dragon that I fear facing. Some sacrosanct activity that must be entered like some meditative state. Well, I used to approach drumming the same way, and I now I just pick up my sticks and start fucking around. And my playing is better than it ever was then. So I just got to stop worrying about anything and just do it.

It is spring cleaning, and I need to get the old ideas out.

Fuck yeah, we're better

America: still more awesome than other countries.

In case anyone is wondering

I'm fine. Even though I am close to the river, I live in a pretty high hill. I still have power, obviously. My route to work is flooded, but I found another route which is just as fast, amazingly. It seems a lot of people took an hour getting to work. I haven't actually seen the floods. Most of the roads are blocked off. I could go out to look, but there is no where to go. Most of the roads around the city are packed; traffic is really slow.

Yesterday, My landlady went on vacation. Lucky timing, eh?

I have been commenting

I comment I posted elsewhere that i wanted to preserve in it's entirety:

Yeah, I kind of started to fly off the handles there. I actually kept going, but realized about was about to start raging against the machine, so I chopped off the last bit and posted that.

Now, about our form of government. We have a democratic republic, not a republic or a democracy. This means that the people democratically, and for whatever reasons, selects it's leaders. (Yeah, I know, heavy handed, but bear with me for a moment.) This means that the best we can do isn't to "make elected officials aware of our concerns," it's to get rid of the ones who aren't responsive, and install ones who are. The power, ultimately, rests with the people, and elected officials are the conduit through which that power is channeled. (It would be hard to have the country run by 300 million votes on every single issue).

Now, within this system, there is some leeway in terms of how this process is run, which I think basically boils down to the state of a country's political culture. The government can be run in a more democratic manner, or a more republican manner. And it is up to the people. We can elect officials on the basis of how closely they represent the popular will (democratic), or we can elect them on the basis of them being smarter than the public, and able to make decisions that are superior to those of the people (republican).

I, obviously, generally favor the former viewpoint. Not totally, of course. I see the utility of elected people with a firmer grounding in law and economics than I possess, and people who are whip smart. In fact, I think that much of Obama's support at present stems from the idea of the philosopher-king. We don't all agree with him on everything, but he seems uniquely suited for dealing with this huge mess from the last eight years, so we aim to give him the shot. But despite this, one thing I find shocking, and shocking that others have not really picked up how shocking it is, is the degree to which he personally emphasizes how political change should be the product of the people's will, and that it is his job to facilitate that will being expressed. Community Organizer. Project Vote. Change from the bottom up. Almost all of the man's political career has been devoted to getting people to realize that the government is theirs, if they would just think to reach out and take it. Of course, no one seems to notice this, and focus on the hero worship instead. (I think you can basically sum up Obama's political career with the scene in Life of Brian where Brian is speaking to the mob outside his window.)

I digress. Anyways, One of the arguments you seem to be making, obliquely, for a more republican culture in electing officials, is that "'the "people' are no more guaranteed to be right than any other group." Well, yes, true. The people can be wrong or right. The elite can also be wrong or right. But if the elite are wrong, then there is really no reason to have them around. And a lot of the time the reason the people are wrong is because the elite are lying to them. I guess I see the elite as redundant. They either lead us right or lead us astray, but either way having them makes us less free. All things being equal, I prefer to be free. And I don't think it's equal, I think the people are generally, except when lied to, right.

And I don't think your LBJ example really works either. People were not as far forward as LBJ. Because of Civil Rights, right? It lost the south of a generation. But LBJ didn't run for reelection because of Civil Rights. It was Vietnam. Take out Vietnam, and LBJ would have coasted to reelection, becoming the the 2nd longest serving president in history. He probably would have gotten his face on some money in the bargain. He may have lost the south, but what he did became vastly popular. I just fail to see how LBJ's liberal accomplishments were far out of the mainstream. I see them as a legitimate response to mood of the country that, even if more forward than the mood of the country at that moment, were on the right track. At the most is was an example of a president acting as slightly out of step with public opinion in a good way. And sometimes presidents act step with public opinion and do really bad things. It's a wash.

Oh, and my bit about the libertarians. What I meant was, if the people are not the source of political action, but elites are, then the government is a separate entity. It is not them, and should be treated as such. Distrusted, feared. However, if the people are the source of political action, than the government is nothing more that expression of the people's will. It is collective action. A communist endeavor, if you will: the product of efforts of investing in the community. Thus there is no really need to fear the government, or shouldn't be. The government is us. (Well, we still might fear it, I find myself quite frightening sometimes, to say nothing of my neighbors.)

This is nice. Keep it coming.