The Pnakotic Manuscripts

Mariya Magdalena (1858)

2009-11-21T01:26:00.007-04:00

Frederick Sandys, 1829-1904

(Image from wikipedia.org.)

Looney Toons

2009-11-13T16:40:00.026-04:00

If my lover can be struck
And crushed
To mush stuck to a truck
And if
My dog can fall
From a forty-foot cliff
(Beloved pet)
What’s next?
An anvil? A piano?
An exploding cigarette?

[Image from media.photobucket.com.]

False Start

2009-11-10T17:34:00.015-04:00

Hell’s not just pain, it’s triviality—
A play that no one else would come to see.
Null dimension; crushing gravity.

“We suffer when we can’t let go,” they say,
“The self’s all just attachments anyway.
Unclench your heart and learn to love today.”

“Just bondage” seems reciprocal to me.
I’ll pay my creditors before I’m free—
To “let it go” would mean my bankruptcy.

Still others preach, “For us it has sufficed
To think about what Jesus sacrificed.
Repent your sins and give your life to Christ.”

If praising God with practices devout
Can free the soul from pain, regret, and doubt,
Why does it feel so much like “selling out?”

A colder voice sneers, “Fuck it, let’s be blunt:
Life is death. You don’t get what you want.
God’s a fiction; Gaia is a cunt.

“You won’t give up your dead biologist—
Her mangled hands, those dry, cracked lips you kissed.
You cursed God then—admit it, don’t resist.”

It’s true, and I’m addicted to that pain—
The wormy muse’s singular refrain,
The eggs it lays inside my beating brain.

I’ll rest awhile and then I’ll try again—
It’s hard work setting fire to these straw men.

[Image from walletmouth.typepad.com.]

What Are We Learning in English Class?

2009-10-25T02:10:00.040-03:00

I suspect the taste for self-consciously ironic cliché and the general paucity of intellectual and moral brilliance in the North American media these days has something to do with 20+ years of increasingly bad “language arts” and English classes, among other things. While English inevitably has to be taught as a basic communicative tool at the lower end of the student ability spectrum, the increasing focus at the higher end on “media literacy” and “cultural literacy," i.e. thematically organized “critical thinking” about commercial and political rhetoric, seems to have occurred mostly at the expense of actual literacy, i.e. learning to read and write well by studying the work of a variety of excellent and challenging writers while reading and writing as much as possible. Speaking from my own experience and biases, I'd like to suggest that the latter inculcates a healthy and respectful skepticism; the former, cynicism and paranoia. One helps create an individual who is judicious, imaginative and capable of appreciation as well as critique; the other implicitly associates sincerity with gullibility, and fosters a reflexive (defensive?) attitude of boredom and incredulousness--of having "seen it all" already. One teaches the value of informed opinion and reasoned argument, while the other is incapable of distinguishing between the two, and tends to breed adults who have no time for either insofar as these concern anyone unlike themselves.

Among participants in the North America Media Experience, the only phrase that could possibly be uttered more frequently than "That's offensive!" (which differs from "That hurts my feelings" in subtle but important ways) is "It's funny because it's stupid." Both are hostile to whatever it is that elevates human life above the naked horror of two-thirds of a fairy tale followed by a bloodbath, or, worse, a melodrama in which churlish and self-righteous crybabies live and die in banality, hounded by institutions they are powerless to influence or understand. Whatever the soul is or isn't, a human being isn't much without a brain, a heart and a backbone.

In any event, it's probably a good idea to encourage exceptional students to become exceptional readers and writers, rather than ostensibly average coasters who are exceptionally mad at Dead White Males, Coca Cola and the cosmetics industry. Some of them will probably figure this stuff out on their own, but many of them won't. And if English class must have a political agenda, maybe it ought to be dictated by great books and not the other way around. Shakespeare, Austen, Joyce and Tolkien will be here long after today's "constructivists" and tomorrow's "connectivists" have been buried and forgotten.

(Image from www.urbanarmy.org.)

Talking to Texans: At the Shoe Store

2009-10-22T17:55:00.004-03:00

ME: Well, if my new sneakers are a whole size too big, I'll be tripping over those big gaps in the Texan sidewalk.

IRATE WOMAN AT SHOE STORE: You're damn lucky we have sidewalks!

ME: ...

(Image from www.johnsondesigns.com.)

Homesick on a Thursday Afternoon

2009-10-20T18:09:00.016-03:00

I miss my home. The people there
Mix grudging hope with sweet despair.
They’ll have your company, not just your money.

They’re mongrel Scots, Acadians,
And other good Canadians
Who get when life is sad and when it’s funny.

I find it hard, try as I might,
To understand the Dallasite,
That prairie heat-bred strain of local fauna—

The way he always shouts his news,
The way he pushes through the queues,
His citizen’s contempt for marijuana.

The people never “hang out” here—
They make a date to have a beer!
The Dallasite means business—work or play.

I’m sure someday I’ll miss this place.
I’ll mourn all that I can’t replace
When time, that old, bald cheater, slips away.

(Image from cdn.stereogum.com.)

Bad Satire at The Onion

2009-08-21T22:48:00.012-03:00

The Onion's "Our Dumb World" is an online map of the world on which users can scroll around and read satirical factoids located at various points on the map. When a country is "featured" for the week (or month, or whatever) the blurbs proliferate within its borders. The problem with "Our Dumb World" is similar to the problems with The Simpsons' "Africa" episode or Hostel's handling of its Slovakian setting: it tries to pass off the writers' ignorance of the subject matter as a satirical critique of America's ignorance of the rest of the world. This week's featured country is Romania, and the various jokes include a spooky castle, a spooky path, a picture of Nicolae Ceauşescu dressed as Count Chocula on a box of cereal, a used coffin dealership (bored with the vampire schtick yet?), a gymnast in a Bride of Frankenstein fright wig, and some 11 other jokes about mad scientists, werewolves, vampire bats and reanimated corpses. What is conspicuously absent is evidence of any research whatsoever concerning Romania past or present, despite an abundance of such information on websites an 8-year-old could use. The Ceauşescus, for example, were killed in their dotage by assault rifles on Christmas Day. Or a one-step Google search for "Romanian jokes" yields this communist-era gem:

Q: What's big, black, noisy, makes a lot of smoke and cuts carrots in five?
A: The Romanian machine for cutting carrots in four.

Good satire is supposed to critique ignorance and injustice, not celebrate them. The worst of it is, The Onion's writers (like too many other North Americans) aren't even "dumb"-- they're just too lazy and complacent to care.

(Image from www.swingingpuss.com.)

Virgin of the Grapes (1640)

2009-05-01T23:29:00.008-03:00

Pierre Mignard, 1610-1695

(Image from en.wikipedia.org.)

Freedom and Responsibility

2009-04-29T12:29:00.011-03:00

To the extent that we're responsible, life is tragicomic and we are free. To the extent that we're not responsible, life is a melodrama or horror story and we are not free. If we want to be able to laugh at ourselves and forgive others, it seems to me that we should cultivate self-discipline and generosity, not excuses.

(Image from media.photobucket.com.)

Time Clipping Cupid's Wings (1694)

2009-03-27T16:08:00.004-03:00

Pierre Mignard, 1610-1695

The Courtesy of Intellectual Debate

2009-02-22T02:48:00.071-04:00

Critics of postmodernism and poststructuralism, such as Alan Sokal, Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt, Frederick Turner, Joseph Carroll, etc. have been criticized themselves for making straw men of their opponents' arguments. I think this criticism is valid to some extent: Turner's pointed critique of the postmodern avant garde in Culture of Hope and Carroll's treatment of "textualism and indeterminacy" in "Theory, Anti-Theory and Empirical Criticism" do tend to reduce much of the past 40 years of literary theory to grouchy caricatures. However, after reading some of the Marxist New Historicists on Shakespeare, such as Stephen Greenblatt, Jean Howard, Stephen Orgel, and Richard Levin, I couldn't help but notice that they also rely heavily on constructs such as the bourgeois straw man, the Western metaphysical straw man, the positivist straw man, the formalist straw man, the capitalist straw man, etc. Orgel and Greenblatt, in particular, see fit to mock and sneer at these as well.

Intellectual debate should be conducted like a martial art. Boxers touch gloves before striking their first blows, and often hug when a match is over. Karate fighters bow, showing mutual respect and proud submission to their tradition. Such games involve serious risk, but are as much an art and a dance as a "fight" per se. All martial arts have rules against hitting below the belt, and specify serious consequences for unsportsmanlike conduct. Once upon a time, scholarship had a similar code of conduct, if not camaraderie, that involved disinterestedness, objectivity, self-effacement, and neutrality. In recent years, this has been criticized (sometimes with good reason) as an ideological mystification "naturalizing" racism, sexism, the covert pursuit of class interests, and political partisanship.* Regardless, I think that, at the very least, scholars of all stripes can and should work harder to be courteous, civilized, and to acknowledge their own biases without resorting to demagoguery.

Politics, schmolitics--we're humans first and ideologues second. If the 20th century taught us anything, it's that even the most apparently humane political ideologies can end up machine-gunning each other into a ditch. If humanities scholars, of all people, can't have a civil conversation, then we might as well all give up and go home to pursue biochemistry degrees or sell carpet cleaner and credit cards over the telephone.

-------------------------------------------------------------

*"Argument," according to a related line of thinking, is symptomatic of patriarchal aggression and ought to be replaced by "discussion," wherein no one, presumably, attempts to advance a logical position with the aim of changing another's mind.

(Image from chas-ma.com.)

Love, Personified

2009-02-18T02:22:00.007-04:00

I suspect love finds its highest expression in the family. Here's mine.

Eva and Jeronym

2009-02-18T02:14:00.014-04:00

Just needed a link to your picture, you old goat. Having met you even once, how could anyone ever forget you? Moc mi chybí.

(Eva Kronusová 1980-2006)

Jack

2008-11-20T00:50:00.011-04:00

He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter;
Now my sworn friend, and then mine enemy;
My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all.
He makes a July's day short as December,
And with his varying childness cures in me
Thoughts that would thick my blood.

--William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale

Ideological Critique

2008-11-13T11:02:00.011-04:00

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses the word "nigger" over 200 times. The Merchant of Venice depicts the humiliation and ruin of a Jewish villain at the hands of a Christian majority; Othello, a negro who strangles his perfectly innocent wife. The famous first line of Pride and Prejudice can be read as a blatant formula for prostitution, if one so chooses. The women of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight inspire and manipulate their men, but don't engage in any decapitating contests themselves.

It's relatively easy to point one's finger at a work of art, especially challenging art, and denounce it as ideologically unsavory in some way. Anyone can (re)apply this or that political formula (e.g. the "Woman in the Refrigerator," or any of the dozens of other ways to reduce a story to who's-doing-what-to-whom) and bandy about the -isms of the day in a denunciatory fashion. There are people with tenure right now who have made entire careers out of little else. It's a lot harder, however, to make a sincere effort to participate in an artist's world view, to try to give him or her the benefit of the doubt, to make an honest and uncompromising critique that nonetheless adds value to the world rather than merely taking it away.

I'm talking about imaginative generosity, not apologia. And I'm not always great at taking my own advice--I talk more lazy, cheap, snide, cynical shit than a lot of people I know. I'm just saying I'd rather watch Othello than Gothika.

(Image from mincer.en.alibaba.com.)

Yahoos on Yahoo

2008-11-06T21:04:00.029-04:00

So I was reading this news story about a fat man who killed his wife on Yahoo news today, and I impulsively clicked on the "comments" section. What I found there was worthy of part 4 of Gulliver's Travels:

"Throw the fat prick in jail!"

"omg!"

"These people are a threat and menace to our society!"

"U FAT FK" (my favorite)

I was so inspired by this sparkling commentary that I decided to leave one of my own:

When I want quality conversation, I go to the comments section of Yahoo news. Where else could I find so many people willing to share their informed, measured and enlightening opinions? Keep up the great work, folks!

When I tried to post it, however, I got the following message: "Oops! The comment you entered contained abusive language. Please re-enter and try again."

I can't tell if Yahoo's abuse filter is stupid or really smart.

(Image from www.lqart.org.)

I Like Starbucks

2008-11-03T20:41:00.011-04:00

A lot of people hate Starbucks. They've been accused of using anti-competitive business strategies, like allowing certain locations to operate at a loss in order to run smaller, independent competitors out of business. They're also often disparaged, at home and abroad, as representing the metastasis of American-style consumerism--an aesthetically repulsive, morally dubious, homogeneous, tacky and inauthentic update on the same old mercantile "bourgeois" culture that populists and aristocrats alike have been hating on, in one form or another, since feudalism ended.

Permit me to digress for a moment: I have 2 coffeeshops in my hometown. One (let's call it "Rim Rorton's") has plastic booths and stools bolted to the floor, a 30 minute time limit in their seating area, and miserable employees who make minimum wage and wear humiliating fast food-style uniforms. The other ("B***** Street Cafe") is an independent establishment wherein a staff of slouching, moody undergraduate hipsters (who also make minimum wage) complete orders at their leisure, get stoned at work, and generally act like their customers should be grateful to get their coffee at all.

I like Starbucks. They're friendly, professional, relatively consistent, and not too expensive. Sure, they're only asking, "How are you today?" because they want my money, but that's better than a "Fuck you, Jack" from people who are still taking my money. If Naomi Klein and Kalle Lasn wanted to serve me better coffee for cheaper, and maybe throw in a heartfelt hug or handshake and a hot meal for the homeless in the bargain, then I'd happily throw my $1.70 their way. In the meantime, I'll get my morning coffee at Starbucks, and I won't feel guilty about it.

(Image from www.therealestatebloggers.com.)

Hipsters Hatin' on Hipsters

2008-11-03T18:56:00.048-04:00

I just finished reading Adbusters' July 2008 article, "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization", and I think Douglas Haddow got it mostly wrong--the counterculture hasn't lost its values at all. The beatniks, the hippies, the punks, the hip-hoppers, the ravers, the anti-consumer movement, etc. all concern(ed) themselves with an elaborate system of in-group fashion semiotics and justifications for having a good time (i.e. looking good and having fun) couched in contemporary political terms. Today's kids may just want to party without feeling as obliged to justify it as "subversive" or "revolutionary," but if they still want to be different from (i.e. cooler than) the kids across the street, then the aforementioned "countercultural" values are intact, minus some of the political pretension. I say good for them. Posers will always be posers, but posers who think they're activists are worse.

I can sympathize with Mr. Haddow's disappointment that the hipsters of 2008 aren't into the same militant anti-consumer pseudo-activism that the hipsters of 2000 were. Before too long, there might not be anyone left to buy Adbusters.

(Image from kidsnpets.files.wordpress.com. Read Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter's book for a better discussion of this subject.)

The Meaning of Life

2008-10-10T01:54:00.012-03:00

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

--Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions pp. 208-9.

(Image from "universe-review.ca.)

The Paranoia of Political Correctness

2008-10-09T00:02:00.047-03:00

Most people (e.g. me) whose parents weren't active in the KKK grew up thinking, rather naively, that racism is the belief that one's own race is superior and other races are inferior. By contemporary standards, this is not exactly true--the inner logic of political correctness is more convoluted than that. For example, a positive opinion of another group expressed for the wrong reasons is still racist (e.g. "orientalism," "white guilt"), while a sweepingly negative statement denigrating all members of a particular group is not necessarily racist: if the target group has more members and/or a higher average socioeconomic status than that of the person uttering the statement, it's "reverse racist." It can also be tricky to tell "ironic" racism from the real thing, especially in our present cultural climate, wherein edginess is valued over intelligence, and low quality satire often reinforces the very ideas it's intended to critique.

I imagine that people who are members of minority groups (most of whom actually belong to majority groups, in an extra-American context) feel just as frustrated, if not more so. They could probably describe the same sensation of walking on eggshells, the same feeling slightly guilty awkwardness whenever the issue of "race" comes up, and the additional fear that just maybe a group of 5 resentful crackers are going to be waiting in the alley with sticks in their hands and pillowcases over their heads.

Maybe the way we're all looking at the issue of "race" right now seldom makes anyone feel happy or secure. Maybe identity politics isn't a zero sum power game, and "race" (whatever that actually means--minor statistical variation in a single actively communicating global gene pool, maybe?) is less of a big deal than people seem to think. Perhaps racism isn't necessarily a hideous social cancer or a deeply entrenched, self-perpetuating "regime of power and knowledge" but rather a lazy and complacent in-group superstition that most people would happily give up upon learning that it's intelligent and profitable to do so. I suspect our current efforts to combat racism usually only make it worse, and the sooner we figure that out, the better off we'll all be.

(Image from www.reggie.net.)

$70 Worth of Five Dollar Words

2008-10-08T18:12:00.035-03:00

I ran across this charming passage on a section of the ACLA website titled Diasporan Ecofeminisms: Towards a Nomadology of Eco-Ethical Resistance:

As contemporary ecofeminist scholarship asserts, the trajectory of globalization is predicated on an inherently patriarchal ethos that creates environmentally racist and misogynistic geopolitical spaces, spaces that systematically divide the population according to racial and gendered hierarchies. Consequently, it is essential we expose the corporate geopolitical hegemonies that are causal to the worldwide spread of human suffering and environmental destruction.

This isn't just bad writing, it's also untrue. The global emergence of free markets is probably the most efficacious antiracist, antimisogynist phenomenon on the planet right now. If "contemporary ecofeminists" did any serious, competent field work, they would find that the vast majority of indigenous populations have the same kinds of racial and gendered hierarchies as the rest of us. Environmental pollution and destruction of biodiversity are indeed worrisome, but history has shown that non-market systems (e.g. Chinese and European socialism) tend to be even worse for the environment--at least in market economies efficiency is profitable. Regardless, such a opaque, jargon-heavy style virtually guarantees that no one but "contemporary ecofeminist scholar[s]" will take this gobbledygook seriously.

John Brockman, in short piece titled Edge: The Third Culture, predicts that the traditional literary intellectual will soon become marginalized to the point of irrelevancy. Given the current state of affairs in literary theory and criticism, it's not hard to see why.

(Image from farm2.static.flickr.com.)

The Onion: Humor in Shackles

2008-10-08T04:21:00.013-03:00

This week The Onion is experimenting with an 18th century period theme. This is quite tedious to begin with, but the hateful and spectacularly unfunny "Humor in Shackles," which features mock jokes about the torture and killing of black slaves, is in the worst possible taste. Mark Twain's classic anti-slavery novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn uses the word "nigger" over 200 times, yet still manages to depict its black and white characters as deeply human. "Humor in Shackles," despite its PC language, merely exploits horrific imagery in order to turn the knee-jerk mechanism of dehumanization back onto the white slave owners, committing itself to the same mentality of tribalist hatred and oppression that permits atrocities like slavery in the first place. Shitty satire* merely perpetuates the kind of thinking it purports to criticize, and this week's issue of The Onion is a case in point. Boo-urns.

*Also see Stuff White People Like, Wonder Showzen, etc.

(Image from bbb.videokitchen.tv.)

The Vocative Case

2008-08-07T21:45:00.011-03:00

Thankfully, we don't have to worry too much about the vocative case in English, because our nouns don't change depending on what prepositional jigger they're paired up with. It's still there, though, even if we can't see it, and one thing we have to remember to do is use commas to set off any noun that we're addressing directly. This can be a person, as in the following example:

"I really think you should read more prose, Glenn, because Crime and Punishment isn't a fucking poem."

Or it can be an object:

"How do you feel about being sat on by that morbidly obese woman, chair?"

Or a pair of abstractions:

"You're a painted whore, Justice, and you, Truth, are a metaphysical chimera."

You should also use commas to set off the construction you x when you're calling someone a name:

"You keyed my car, you piece of shit."

In old school English (which, if it's recognizable at all, is probably Early Modern English), like in the King James Bible, the vocative case is sometimes marked with an O, as in the following sentence:

"O God, thank you for creating Pan's Labyrinth, the best movie ever."

(This is not to be confused with the interjection "Oh!" as in, "Oh! Pan's Labyrinth was such a good movie that my balls are still tingling!")

In some other languages, like Czech, for example, it's a little more complicated, because the ending of the noun changes as well. My friend's name is Ondra, but I have to change it to Ondro in the following sentence:

"You're still my friend, Ondro, even though you screwed my girlfriend after you both got drunk at Skleněná Louka that time."

Some people lament the abuse of commas. Well, I say, "Don't forget--neglect is abuse too!"

(Image from www.realtorwives.blogspot.com.)

Damien Hirst

2008-06-25T13:56:00.009-03:00

Damien Hirst is a British artist who's famous for installation pieces featuring dead animals floating in formaldehyde that sell for exorbitant amounts of money. He also does "spin paintings," which are created by someone (not Hirst himself, but one of his employees) dripping paint onto a flat, revolving surface. His piece For the Love of God, pictured here, was fashioned from a real human skull to which he affixed 8,601 diamonds. Whenever I think of Damien Hirst, I'm reminded of the painter Rabo Karabekian from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, who "with his meaningless pictures had entered into a conspiracy with millionaires to make poor people feel stupid" (Vonnegut 214). Hirst doesn't even paint most of his own pictures, and I think the idea of the mastermind conceptual artist taking all the credit for merely signing his name on the work of others, especially as some sort of "ironic" critique of capitalism and mass production, was fraudulent and boring when Andy Warhol did it 40 years ago.

Damien Hirst's work is smug, nihilistic, and morally and aesthetically disgusting. He's not an artist, he's an artiste, and celebrity bullshitters like him are the reason why most people don't visit art galleries.

(Image from myartspace.com. Originally posted at Reviews! Reviews! Reviews!)

Big Bottle O' Pee

2008-06-01T19:23:00.025-03:00

The worst thing about collecting a 24 hour urine sample is that you can't leave the house for very long.

YOU: Whatcha got in the bag?

ME: Oh, nothing, just 2 litres or so of cold, frothy piss. Mind if I put in in your fridge for an hour or two until I have to go again?

YOU: No problem, as long as I can still get at my 8-pack. Maybe I'll call some ladies and we'll have a party.

Fucking nephropathy. In the next life, I want to come back as a powerful cyborg, or maybe a nematode.

(Image from Land Line Media Blog)

MTV's 16 and Pregnant

2008-06-01T18:29:00.032-03:00

According to MSN News, MTV is making a reality show called 16 and Pregnant. The programme was apparently inspired by the popularity of Juno (a film I hated) and will feature pregnant teenagers whose experiences are documented on camera and aired on MTV.

As any mother who takes her job seriously will explain, getting and being pregnant are the easiest parts of being a mom. The real challenges (and rewards) come afterward, along with late-night feedings, diaper changes, fevers, diarrhoea, trips to the emergency room, headaches, tears, frustration, a thousand tiny betrayals and reconciliations, frequent disagreements with one's partner (if he's around), disruption, improvisation, constant second-guessing, and, most of all, an often crushing and nearly overwhelming sense of total responsibility for the life of another human being.

A better idea for a show would be to send cameras to document the lives of 19 year old single parents of toddlers, who work all day at dead end service sector jobs while mouth-breathing daycare staff raise their kids for them, or their conversations with patronizing social workers who don't have an iota of genuine feeling for these women or their children. Maybe the show could also interview young fathers who have abandoned their kids and ask them how it feels to know that their children will grow up wondering why their fathers didn't love them, or that they are unlikely to ever meet their grandchildren, who also stand a decent chance of growing up fatherless.

Of course, MTV would never encourage today's teens, pregnant or otherwise, to grow up and take life seriously. Teenagers and childish twentysomethings can be persuaded to buy all kinds of crap they don't need, while hard-nosed adults who actually have to think about where their money goes probably give far less of it to the vacuous, opportunistic fashion peddlers at MTV.

I wonder if we'll see 16 year old girls getting pregnant in order to have a shot at making it onto national television. Let's hope today's young women are smarter than that.

(Image from Jupiter Images)

Juno Was a Lousy Movie

2008-06-01T11:45:00.054-03:00

SOAPBOX ALERT: I usually try to avoid both preaching and critiquing movies at TPM, but sometimes a guy's just gotta harangue. So here I go:

Juno is only barely a movie about bringing new life into the world. It's primarily a postmodern moral experiment to see if ironic, near-weightless characters can have their cake and eat it too. To achieve this, it has to abandon the traditional stuff of reproductive drama, like territoriality, responsibility, and the powerful, conflicting bonds that exist between lovers, parents and offspring, in favour of an idealized grrl-topia where men behave like passive, indulgent milquetoasts or sexual predators, and mothers-to-be are somehow empowered by acting like selfish, irresponsible babies themselves.

The infant that arrives at the film's end is passed off to Garner's character with hardly a tear (says Juno in the voiceover: "She was never really ours, anyway"), and comes off more like an afterthought or prop than an actual human being. This child is inexplicably delivered from a promising domestic situation in which both parents are present (and in love!) along with three biological grandparents and a committed step-spouse, and into the hands of a single mother who has demonstrably poor taste in men--the equivalent of this in poker would be to throw out an entire royal flush for a queen and a joker. No one with any real-life childbearing experience could write a movie in which allegedly sane people think and act this way.

Juno tacitly encourages young women to think that pregnancy is all about them. It isn't. Juno also falsely suggests that giving up a baby after carrying it around for 9 months isn't much harder than getting one's appendix out. Whether one is pro-choice or pro-life is irrelevant--everyone should be pro-responsibility and pro-reality, and Juno is neither. It is a travesty, a celebration of narcissism and immaturity, and it's sad that real teenagers who don't know any better are going to take cues from this ridiculous film.

Blinkered selfishness and intelligent self-interest are not the same thing at all. The sooner more feminist-influenced artists figure this out, the sooner they'll stop making shitty movies like Juno.

(Image from www.dorkgasm.com)

Happy Victoria Day

2008-05-19T08:52:00.004-03:00

Since 1977, the spirit of Queen Victoria has probably kept more Canadians home from work than whiplash and sciatica put together. I plan on staying in my pyjamas until at least noon, and I'm raising a coffee and Bailey's to the old girl right now. Cheers!

Ornithorynque

2008-05-05T00:15:00.012-03:00

My daughter Caitlin taught me a new word: ornithorynque. Name and animal compose a weird and fantastic totem.

(Image from www.ryanphotographic.com)

Goodbye, Albert Hoffman (1906-2008)

2008-05-03T12:21:00.044-03:00

Albert Hoffman died of a heart attack on April 29, 2008. He was 102. Hoffman was the first scientist to synthesize LSD. He also conducted research into the chemical composition of chitin.

Psychedelic technology, including drugs, has likely played an important and poorly understood role in human evolutionary history, and I think there is a place in the future of humankind for responsible psychedelic aesthetics and epistemology. However, the widespread use and abuse of LSD and similar drugs since the 1960's has resulted in numerous injuries and deaths. It's also helped propagate a superficial, irresponsible culture of "junk spirituality" that arguably paved the way for the worst excesses of the New Age movement. Hoffman, in any case, was a scientist rather than a drug guru. His gift to posterity is ambivalent but potentially very valuable as well.

(Alex Grey's wonderfully kitschy painting appears courtesy of www.reason.com)

Caitlin and Chloe Talk Gnostic

2008-05-02T13:30:00.021-03:00

I overheard this hilarious bit of conversation between my daughters Caitlin (8) and Chloe (6) as they sat on the floor drawing this afternoon. It came right out of the blue:

CAITLIN: Mother Nature is God's wife.

CHLOE: If we have God in our hearts, then he had a ton of babies. In God's world, boys get pregnant.

CAITLIN: They'd be like, "Is it Mother Nature Junior, or God Junior?"

(Image from www.membres.lycos.fr)

Milton's Satan

2008-04-22T09:02:00.019-03:00

...Thus far these beyond
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed
Their dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture stood proudly eminent
Stood like a Tow'r; His form had not yet lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruined and th'excess
Of Glory obscur'd: As when the Sun new ris'n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclipse disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs. Darken'd so, yet shone
Above them all th'Arch Angel: but his face
Deep scars of Thunder had entrenched, and care
Sat on his faded cheek, but under Brows
Of dauntless courage, and considerate Pride
Waiting revenge: cruel his eye, but cast
Signs of remorse and passion to behold
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather
(Far other once beheld in bliss) condemn'd
For ever now to have their lot in pain,
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerc't
Of Heav'n, and from Eternal Splendors flung
For his revolt, yet faithful how they stood,
Their Glory wither'd. As when Heaven's Fire
Hath scath'd the Forest Oaks, or Mountain Pines,
With singed top their stately growth though bare
Stands on the blasted Heath. He now prepar'd
To speak; whereat their doubl'd ranks they bend
From Wing to Wing, and half enclose him round
With all his Peers: attention held them mute.
Thrice he assay'd, and thrice in spite of scorn,
Tears such as Angels weep, burst forth: at last
Words interwove with sighs found out their way.

"O Myriads of immortal Spirits, O Powers
Matchless, but with th'Almighty, and that strife
Was not inglorious, though th'event was dire,
As this place testifies, and this dire change
Hateful to utter, but what power of mind
Forseeing or presaging, from the Depth
Of knowledge past or present, could have fear'd,
How such united forces of Gods, how such
As stood like these, could ever know repulse?
For who can yet believe, though after loss,
That all these puissant legions, whose exile
Hath emptied Heav'n, shall fail to re-ascend
Self-rais'd, and repossess their native seat.
For me, be witness all the Host of Heav'n,
If counsels different, or danger shunn'd
By me, have lost our hopes, but he who reigns
Monarch in Heav'n, till then as one secure
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute,
Consent or custom, and his Regal State
Put forth at full, but still his strength conceal'd,
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought our fall.
Hence forth his might we know, and know our own
So as not either to provoke, or dread
New war, provok't, our better part remains
To work in close design, by fraud or guile
What force elected not: that he no less
At length from us may find, who overcomes
By force hath overcome but half his foe.
Space may produce new Worlds; whereof so rife
There went a fame in Heav'n that he ere long
Intended to create, and therein plant
A generation, whom his choice regard
Should favor equal to the Sons of Heav'n:
Thither, if but to pry, should be perhaps
Our first eruption, thither or elsewhere:
For this Infernal Pit shall never hold
Celestial Spirits in Bondage, nor th'Abyss
Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts
Full counsel must mature: Peace is despair'd,
For who can think Submission? War then, War
Open or understood must be resolv'd."

He spake: and to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty Cherubim: the sudden blaze
Far round illumin'd hell: High they rag'd
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasp'd arms
Clash'd on their sounding shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heav'n.

(Paradise Lost 1:587-669. Image of Gustave Doré's woodcut from www.all-art.org)

We're Apes

2008-04-05T00:42:00.003-03:00

No One Wants to Look Dumb

2008-04-03T19:42:00.026-03:00

Faze (v.): to disturb, daunt, or unsettle, from the Middle English fesen, meaning to frighten or drive away.

This word is not spelled p-h-a-s-e. If a young child, a supermarket cashier with a grade 6 education or a non-native speaker of English made a mistake like this, I wouldn't bat an eyelash. To find it on MSN News, a site that has recently taken to advertising itself with the arrogant slogan "No one wants to look dumb," is just irritating.

If you don't want to look dumb, MSN, perhaps you should encourage your editorial team to crack a book once in a while.

(For the record, it's not pronounced "fizz," either. Image from thechaly.files.wordpress.com)

Black Box Pluralism

2008-04-01T14:03:00.023-03:00

"Despite its claims, 'pluralism' is in itself, paradoxically, a unifying perspective, but a rather procrustean one. What it does is reduce all cultural differences to a sort of grid of cultural black boxes laid out over an infinite plane, boxes whose external form is safely measurable but whose contents are incommensurable and thus unknowable, and which are, as it were, the fundamental monads or quanta of reality. Geometrically it resembles the characteristic grid-design of the American city, or the relationship between departments in the American multiversity. Though pluralism forbids any attempt to perceive one cultural box as containing another, and thus revealing a comparable and measurable internal structure, it is itself a kind of gigantic box containing all other boxes as its subordinate material. Thus, like relativism, it contains a subtle hegemonic ambition of its own.

"One way of describing what is the problem with pluralism is to say that if the universe is curved, even a simple sphere, no grid of equal rectilinear blocks can cover (or 'tile') it without overlap. Specialization, and the definition of smaller and smaller cultural units, might be seen as the desperate resource of an intellectual culture trying to solve exactly this problem. If the world's squares are small enough, perhaps the distortions of the world's curvature will somehow go away" (Frederick Turner 1991, Tempest, Flute and Oz: Essays on the Future pp. 30-1).

(Image from blog.jovoto.com)

Mantra For Conscious Life

2008-03-30T02:09:00.027-03:00

Inhale (please).
Exhale (thank you).
Repeat x 65, 700, 000.

(Image from www.timboucher.com)

The Cremaster Cycle: Treading Water in a Sea of Retarded Sexuality and Bad Poetry

2008-03-21T15:52:00.108-03:00

Matthew Barney's film series, the Cremaster Cycle, is a cognitively retarded and symbolically barren exercise in tedium and bad taste. Barney's take on biology is more of a superficial pose than a serious exploratioin, and the sexual logic underlying his artistic vision is not evolutionary (i.e. human) but rather postmodern and Freudian. He throws around terms like "system" and "entropy," but makes no effort to link his use of these concepts to the notion of complex dynamical systems as they are now understood to occur in nature and culture (see James Gleick's Chaos and A Blessed Rage for Order by Alexander Argyros, both of which predate the Cremaster Cycle, for an introduction to this topic). Sport, likewise, appears in his work as a pseudo-theme, but since there are no distinct players or rules (not even the dynamic, evolving ones described by game theory), the treatment, again, is superficial.

What I can't understand is why Barney gets such rave reviews--his work appears on the covers of art history textbooks, and people seem to be throwing money at him to slop vaseline all over the Guggenheim (only an American artist could be so self-consciously Eurotrash). I guess the sophistos and trendoids of the moneyed academic art world have mistaken his vagueness and obscurity for depth, so no one wants to be the poor benighted rube who asks why the emperor isn't wearing any clothes.

The film series' only (dubious) value, it seems to me, is as a study of how an ill-conceived "closed aesthetic system" quickly succumbs to entropy, resulting in artless and sterile mutations like a grotesque half-sheep/half bagpipe or a rubber tire from which a pair of testicles dangles uselessly. It may be argued that this is the point, and that Barney's work succeeds as a depiction of aesthetic schizophrenia and metaphysical failure, but it's surely foolish to praise bad art for its ability to express bad ideas. Serious art, whatever its form and content, gives expression to enduring human themes like hope, promise and gravity--ideas which are absent from Barney's inane films.

Here's a link to a documentary-length interview with Barney that shows some of his work, and here's another to a Cremaster trailer. See if you can figure out what he means by terms like "mythology," "narrative," and "character"--I don't think he even knows.

Rather than releasing his films in a low cost, mass-market format like everyone else, Barney has pressed a limited run of 20 DVD's and auctioned them off in gussied up packaging for over $100,000 each. The unwashed philistines and non-cognoscenti will have to settle for a 30 minute excerpt from Cremaster 3, or maybe they will be able to find Neville Wakefield's overpriced book in a public library. Walter Benjamin, (the Marxist author of "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" whose ideas about art and mass production have influenced 3 generations of "anti-establishment" elitists) would be impressed, no doubt, but I suspect Barney's marketing strategy has more to do with the fact that on some level he realizes that the common consumer, who is unburdened by a Yale education in postmodern pretension, would quickly see the Cremaster films for the malarky that they are.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If civilization fails when art and culture stop being sexy, then the Cremaster Cycle is a crime against humanity. I, for one, would rather watch a clown die of cancer than sit through all 7.5 hours of Barney's incoherent, self-indulgent, desperately ugly horseshit.

(image from www.soundopinions.org)

Goodbye, Arthur C. Clark (1917-2008)

2008-03-19T21:58:00.008-03:00

Arthur C. Clark had a very good run. In addition to being an excellent science fiction writer, he was also an accomplished scientist. Childhood's End is probably my favorite of his books, although I also liked Songs of Distant Earth for more sentimental reasons.

(Image from latimes.com)

Happy Early Easter

2008-03-13T19:31:00.003-03:00

My friend Ondra sent me this:

Bass with Balls #1: Music Man Stingray

2008-03-10T12:13:00.025-03:00

The Music Man Stingray was first produced in 1976. Its physical similarity to the Fender Precision bass can be explained by the fact that it was designed by disgruntled former Fender employees, including Leo Fender himself, who sold his company to CBS in 1965. The classic Stingray, like the one pictured here, boasts a single humbucking pickup in the bridge position and an active 2 band EQ. Fingerstyle players who are used to anchoring their thumb on a neck pickup will have a tough time with the Stingray, as the strings have less springiness and punch when plucked way down by the bridge.

The Stingray sounds like a sabre-toothed tiger in heat humping a hive full of honeybees. Not only are its low mids thicker than Ricki Lake's ankles, but their complexity is fractaline, layering a piano-like clarity and sustain and a fret-buzzy growl to create a tone that's almost synesthetic. Properly amplified, the Stingray will cut through any racket made by even the noisiest guitarist like a knife through warm butter, without the honking and blatting characteristic of its Fender cousins. Its tone is perfect for funk, rock, punk, or metal, but the single pickup limits its tonal range, and if I were playing soft jazz, R&B or country I would probably reach for a different bass (likely a Fender Jazz). Although the Stingray's quality is legendary, it sacrifices versatility for personality, and some bass players just don't like it. I respect this. it takes more balls to be original, warts and all, than to be some kind of half-assed chameleon.

This bass is famous for its rugged construction (its body is solid ash and its neck is attached by six fat bolts--that's 2 more than are holding my Fender Jazz 5 together) as well as its quiet electronics (it's called a "humbucker," after all). Lower-end manufacturers have recently started copying it more often, but it still trails far behind the P-bass in terms of how often its design is ripped off. The most noteworthy budget Stingray clone is probably the Ibanez ATK, which, in my opinion, is a stylish piece of junk like everything else built by Ibanez.

Famous rock bassists who play a Stingray include Cliff Williams of AC/DC, Flea (who has since switched to a signature model Modulus Stingray clone that costs as much as a used Toyota), Tim Commeford of Rage Against the Machine (who switched to the Fender Jazz bass after Rage's first album) and Justin Chancellor of Tool (who switched to Zon basses about halfway through the recording of Aenima). I don't know why all the Stingray players are jumping ship--my guess is their great bass tone made them famous enough to afford fancier axes like Zons and Moduli. Even Kurt Cobain traded in his trusty Volvo for a Lexus in the end.

Here are some videos featuring the Stingray: The Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Aeroplane" (the Stingray's forte is slap-and-pop, and it really stands out in this song) and Rage Against the Machine's "Bomb Track."

H.R. Giger

2008-03-02T02:59:00.026-04:00

The biotechnological aesthetic in H.R. Giger's work is interesting, but I think its pessimism, its reptillian coldness, and its distorted or ugly faces and figures keep it from being beautiful. I'd love to see something similar with more emphasis on the informational rather than the mechanical and industrial, and on consciousness over blindness and violent manipulation. Some arboreal and mammalian (i.e. human) motifs might open up the possibility of a narrative with more than one or two dimensions (an exploration of evolutionary [dis]continuity, or self-reference, maybe?) while still allowing room for the treatment of the tragic and the grotesque. Too bad I can't draw or paint, so I all I'm basically doing is complaining that no one will make this art for me.

A Blast from the Past

2008-02-23T16:27:00.026-04:00

My friend Furlong tagged me in this photo today on Facebook. Please forgive the gratuitous vulgarity. I did a lot of tasteless things for no good reason when I was younger.

In retrospect, 2000 was a pretty good year. I partied a lot, stayed up late, read Kafka's The Castle, Henry Miller's Sexus, Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut and Benjamin Kuras' Czechs and Balances. I only got 3/4 of the way through The Idiot, and I haven't returned to it. I spent Christmas 1999 in Svratka and New Year's Eve at Stara Osada in Brno, where I was drunkenly hugging the toilet by 12:30 AM. In April I got a sweet job working the backshift at the Ultramar across the street from my apartment on Chebucto road (where this photo was taken) and I'd get off work at 8:00 Monday morning (which was my "Friday night") and sit on the front steps in flip flops and a straw hat, watching all the commuters on their way to work and drinking moonshine out of a 3 litre jug (it took me over a month to drink all 3 litres). Caitlin was born that June.

Part of me asks, "Has it really been 8 years?" but another part wants to know, "Has it only been 8 years?"

Nature mort au crane

2008-02-22T14:58:00.014-04:00

Pablo Picasso 1945. Oil on canvas. Click to enlarge.

(Anyone know how to get diacritics on Blogger?)

The Radiant Abyss

2008-02-22T14:18:00.033-04:00

Orpheus loses Penelope when, as he makes his way back from the world of the dead, he looks back to see if she's actually following him. Likewise, in the Clive Barker story "Hell's Event," the humans competing in the foot race against Hell's runner are lost, one by one, when they look back over their shoulders toward the apparition at their heels.

An older woman I respect for being at peace with herself and the world once said to me, "You have to turn the page--move on." It seems like good advice, but I find it difficult to accept.

If we don't look back, then we forget. If we forget, then we betray the dead, even as we die ourselves.

(image from www.duniho.com)

Bass with Balls #2: Rickenbacker 4003

2008-02-20T23:28:00.040-04:00

The Rickenbacker 4003 bass was introduced in 1980 and is still in production today. It is the only Bass with Balls to feature neck-through-body construction, which means that the guitar's neck is built directly into the body instead of being bolted on. This gives the instrument better sustain due to its greater rigidity, and Rickenbacker players are notoriously contemptuous of bolt-on basses. The 4003 is the most unconventionally shaped bass on the list. It's also the most expensive, and usually retails for around $2200 U.S.

The 4003 has two single coil pickups, one at the bridge and another at the neck. An interesting feature that comes standard on the 4003 is the "Ric-O-Sound" stereo output jack. Basically, the bass has 2 output jacks instead of the usual 1, and these can be used to connect the neck and bridge pickups to separate amplifiers or effects loops.

The 4003 is famous for its treble and its sustain, as well as the combination of "click" and "boom" made possible by its stereo outputs. It has a distinctive cold, brassy, bright, not-quite-distorted "space gun" tone, which can be further emphasized by playing with a pick. Fingerstyle players like me really have to wail hard on the Rickenbacker's strings (not that I've had more than a handful of opportunities to play one over the years), and of the 4 basses on the list, the 4003 is probably the most physically demanding to play. It also has the nerdiest prog-rock stigma, and goes extremely well with fluffy sideburns, flared cuffs, and silver pants (not like I'd say that to Lemmy's face).

Some famous Rickenbacker players are the aforementioned Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, Paul D'Amour (Tool's old bassist) and the late, great Cliff Burton of Metallica fame. If anyone's dying to see Geddy with a Rickenbacker, they can go to youtube and check out the video for "Subdivisions".

Here's Tool's "Sober," in which the Rickenbacker sound carries the entire song (it almost sounds like 2 basses at once, which is probably the stereo output in action), and Motorhead's "Killed By Death," which is the greatest metal video ever made.

Bass with Balls #3: Fender Jazz Bass

2008-02-20T19:57:00.016-04:00

The Fender Jazz bass, also called the" J-bass," came on the market in 1960. It differs from its older sister, the Fender Precision bass (to which it is ceaselessly and favorably compared, in this review and elsewhere), in that it has a thinner, rounder neck, a more asymmetrical body, and two single coil pickups instead of one split single coil. The J-bass, for whatever reason, is not imitated nearly as often as the P-bass by low end manufacturers, although higher end luthiers (the guys who make guitars) who build custom basses sometimes copy its "waist contour" body style.

The Jazz bass has a greater range of tonal variation than the Precision due to the two single coils. The neck pickup has a warm, soft-edged, woody whump, whump sound, while the bridge pickup has a bright, nasal, throaty honk (the Precision bass is nasal too, but it sounds kind of like beyrm, beyrm, while the J-Bass goes glonk, glonk, glonk). When both of its pickups are turned up, the J-bass produces a scooped mid tone that is excellent for slapping (the P-bass makes an unattractive "farty" sound when slapped due to a mid frequency spike), and this also has a hum-cancelling effect. I would call the Jazz bass more of a bass player's bass: it's more reliable, more versatile (despite its name, it's great for rock, metal, and funk as well as jazz), sexier, and it stands out better in the mix. Basically, it has more balls.

Many famous bass players own and play Jazz basses, but the only rock musicians I can think of that play them consistently are Geddy Lee of Rush and Tim Commerford of Rage Against the Machine. So here are two videos in which the Jazz bass is particularly audible, Rush's "Stick It Out" and "Bulls On Parade" by RATM. Give 'em a listen and see if you can hear the glonk.

Clean Air for Kids Campaign

2008-02-20T13:13:00.033-04:00

Today is International Pipe Smoking Day, and I'd like to take a moment to discuss the Clean Air for Kids campaign. This is an initiative by the Lung Association of Canada, the aim of which is to make it illegal for people to smoke in cars when there are children present. This Canada-wide campaign is advertised on television all the time here in New Brunswick, and, I assume, elsewhere in Canada as well. The basic idea is that smoking in a car when children are present would become an offense punishable by a ticket and a fine.

I think this is a terrible idea. This is not to say that parents should be "free to choose" whether they want to expose their children to such hazards. On the contrary, they should be prevented from doing so by the filial bond , which is the strongest, oldest, and most culturally universal of all constraints on human behaviour. As far as the state is concerned, however, people not in public employ should be allowed to chain smoke all day in a car full of kids, puppies and emphysema victims if they want to. Protecting children from lung diseases caused by tobacco smoke is primarily a job for parents or other adults into whose care they have entrusted their children, and secondarily for education and the moral pressure of public opinion--never, in any case, for armed police, who should have better things to do with their time.

I'm proud to be a Canadian, and I support my country's decision to provide universal basic health care for its citizens, but this does not make my children wards of the state. If civil society can't be left to its own devices in relatively minor matters of conscience (after all, it's not like smokers are butting their cigarettes out in kids' eyes), then how can it be trusted with the task of democratic self-government?

On Natural Selection: Letter to The Argosy

2008-02-20T11:39:00.056-04:00

Dear Argosy:

This letter concerns G.H.'s review of On Natural Selection by Charles Darwin in the February 14 2008 issue of The Argosy. I will start by applauding Mr. H.’s choice of book for review. Charles Darwin is often overlooked and misunderstood by otherwise educated and perceptive readers, and it made my heart glad to see his face in The Argosy. However, as I see it, the review itself had 3 major problems:

1. Mr. H.’s description of ONS as “a scientific publication meant for an audience of science nerds, not literature geeks” is a glib mischaracterization of both the literate public and Darwin’s work. The Origin of Species, from which ONS is taken, is widely regarded as a literary landmark as well as a scientific one. It requires no specialized scientific knowledge in order to understand it, and may serve as a paragon of thematic focus and argumentative integrity for any serious humanities student. Darwin was not writing for “nerds,” but for the whole human race, and the theory of natural selection—his gift to posterity—is one of the most profoundly original, true and beautiful ideas in the living world.

2. An “elegant” prose style is characterized not by aesthetic gush, but by graceful refinement, clarity, economy, and dignity: this is precisely the kind of writing found in Charles Darwin’s fine book. While there is nothing wrong with Mr. H.’s admission that he found the book difficult, he crosses a line by suggesting that Darwin, rather than Mr. H. himself, is at fault for this. It is boorish and incredibly arrogant for a student reviewer to hold a classic work of literature, even an abridged one like On Natural Selection, to his own self-indulgent standard of “readability.” He should instead consider measuring his own skill as a reader against the challenge such a work offers.

3. If Mr. H. understood Darwin’s ideas, he would be less eager to place them in proximity to so-called “social Darwinism.” Far from being a mere “extrapolation” of the theory of natural selection into the human realm, social Darwinism is fundamentally a misunderstanding, not a misapplication, of Darwinian evolution. Even the most basic understanding of human biology is actually incompatible with pseudoscientific racism. The all-too-human urge to evaluate something negatively before we fully understand it, however, has been responsible for, or at least complicit in, many of the bloodiest crimes in human history.

Mr. H. and self-styled “literature geeks” interested in the humanistic implications of Darwinian ideas may find the following works of use:

Carroll, Joseph. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. New York: Routledge, 2004.

Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 2002.

Storey, Robert. Mimesis and the Human Animal: On the Biogenetic Foundations of Literary Representation. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Tooby, J. and Cosmides, L. “The Psychological Foundations of Culture.” In J.H. Barkow, Tooby J. and Cosmides L. (eds.). The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture (pp. 19-136). New York, Oxford University Press.

Turner, Frederick. The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit. New York: Free Press, 1995.

Wilson, Edward O. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage Books, 1998.

Regards,

John

(image from www.northernsun.com)

Bass with Balls #4: Fender Precision Bass

2008-02-19T08:04:00.045-04:00

The criteria a bass must meet in order to qualify as a "bass with balls" are simple: it must be able to cut through the ungodly racket made by the average guitarist playing with distortion, and it must have a distinct tone that is instantly recognizable as belonging to it and no other bass. Incidentally, any of the 4 basses on the list could bludgeon a 300 pound Hell's Angel into a coma and then play a 2 hour set. This doesn't count toward their Bass with Balls ranking, but it's nice to know that classic style, rugged construction, and great sound seem to converge in the world's greatest rock basses.

(I regret the sexist connotations of "balls," but I'm afraid there's really no equivalent politically correct metaphor. If it's any consolation to feminists, a person's body doesn't need to have balls in order for them to play music that does. For example, Janice Joplin, Heart and Blondie have a surfeit of balls, while George Michael and James Blunt have no balls whatsoever. But I digress.)

introduced by Leo Fender in 1951, the Fender Precision Bass, nicknamed the "P-bass" was the very first mass produced electric bass guitar. Its pickup configuration, which consists of one split single coil, and its body shape, which looks like a Fender Stratocaster's heavyset, dowdy sister, have been imitated by about 85% of introductory (i.e. cheap) model basses in the last 55 years.

A real Fender P-bass, when strung with new stainless steel strings of a decent gauge and played through a good amp, will yield a full, warm, snarling, crisp, woody, slightly nasal tone that is excellent for rock and punk but only passable for metal (Ozzy can get away with it, Pantera probably couldn't). With older or nickel strings, poorly EQ'd or played through a bad amp, it can become mushy, bland, inobtrusive and pedestrian, like the bass you can't remember from every McDonald's commercial you've ever seen. Unfortunately, the Fender brand name attracts more enthusiasts than it does actual musicians, and about half of the yahoos playing one don't realize that there's a real art to getting it to sound good.

For those who would like to listen to what a P-Bass sounds like when things go right, I suggest listening to Ozzy Osbourne's "I Just Want You" through headphones (while watching the video--it's great). And In celebration of music with balls, here's Heart's "Barracuda."

Lord Brain 1895-1966

2008-02-19T07:27:00.016-04:00

This post remembers eminent British neurologist Dr. Russell Brain, 1st Baron Brain, aka The Right Honourable the Lord Brain (1895-1966), author of Brain's Diseases of the Nervous System and longtime editor of the medical journal Brain. He was knighted in 1952, and cared for Winston Churchill on Churchill's deathbed in 1965 (Wikipedia).

Lord Brain must have looked in the mirror every morning and said, "I have the best name in the whole world."

Charter 77 and Moral Responsibility

2008-02-18T21:32:00.021-04:00

In January 1977, a document titled Charter 77 (Charta 77 in Czech and Slovak) was published as a manifesto in a West German newspaper after being circulated within communist Czechoslovakia. It was signed by 243 Czechoslovak citizens, including well-known signatories Vaclav Havel and Jan Patocka. The document criticized the Czechoslovak communist government's "systematic violation of human rights and freedoms" and its failure to uphold the human rights laws it had agreed to follow in the Czechoslovak constitution, the Helsinki Accords of 1975, and in various United Nations covenants. The authors of the document took great pains to emphasize the informality of their association and the fact that it in no way formed a basis for political opposition to the communist regime.

The Czechoslovak government dealt severely with the signatories, who were publicly denounced as traitors and imperialist agents by the communist party and its state media apparatus. Many of them were fired from their jobs, their children were denied access to higher education, privileges such as their drivers' licenses and passports were suspended, and some dissidents were even exiled or imprisoned. Their lives were essentially ruined because they signed a document which, in so many words, asked the Czechoslovak government to follow its own laws. Although many more of the Czech people sympathized with the signatories, they did not sign the Charter, and thus they bear part of the responsibility for the suffering of those who did.

Likewise, critical or inflammatory blog comments posted anonymously, unsigned emails, letters, and other such messages are the recourse of the coward. If one cannot take responsibility for one's opinion, then one does not deserve to have one. Even in the face of severe reprisals, people who author these kinds of statements anonymously must realize that in choosing not to sign their name they are undermining the possibility of living in truth that forms the bedrock of civil society, and thus they become morally complicit in the wrongdoing they seek to criticize. This is not to say that people should always throw their lives away needlessly, but rather that it is not possible to be both brave and cowardly at the same time. Sometimes a coward is the sensible thing to be, not only for one's own sake but for the sake of one's children: this is why the various totalitarian regimes of the 20th century were among the worst indignities ever inflicted upon the human race.

Naked Baby with Book

2008-02-18T20:56:00.010-04:00

Two things you can say about my family: we love to get naked and we love to read. In this instance, Jack climbed up into the orange easy chair, peed on it, and then sat down in the puddle to read Robert Munsch's wonderful Love You Forever (we don't normally let our son wallow in his own urine, but somehow it just happened). This picture now resides in a special file titled Pics to Show the Prom Date.

C'est une Pipe!

2008-02-18T17:53:00.021-04:00

February 20th is International Pipe Smoking Day (here's a link to a fancy brochure). I'm not sure why my fellow pipe smokers would choose to celebrate pipe smoking (an outdoor activity if there ever was one) in the dead of winter, but I'll play ball. I encourage anyone and everyone of legal age to grab a briar on February 20th and light up in celebration of civil liberty and the responsible use of a noble and oft-maligned plant.

The pipe, in one form or another, has been a trusty human companion for a very long time. I think it's a potent symbol, both of our miraculous self-domestication and of the gods' generosity.

(image from www.psychogarage.freeserve.co.uk)

Natural Classical Manifesto

2008-02-17T23:05:00.019-04:00

The following is taken from Frederick Turner's The Culture of Hope, pp. 225-8:

1. The Reunion of Artist with Public

Art should grow from and speak to the common roots and universal principles of human nature in all cultures.

Art should direct itself to the general public.

Those members of the general public who do not have the time, training, or inclination to craft and express its higher yearnings and intuitions, rightly demand an artistic elite to be the culture's prophetic mouthpiece and mirror.

Art should deny the simplifications of the political Left and Right, and should refine and deepen the radical center.

The use of art, and of cheap praise, to create self-esteem, is a cynical betrayal of all human cultures.

Excellence and standards are as real and universal in the arts as in competitive sports, even if they take more time and refined judgement to appreciate.

2. The Reunion of Beauty with Morality

The function of art is to create beauty.

Beauty is incomplete without moral beauty.

There should be a renewal of the moral foundations of art as an instrument to civilize, ennoble, and inspire.

True beauty is the condition of civilized society.

Art recognizes the tragic and terrible costs of human civilization, but does not abandon hope in the civilizing process.

Art must recover its connection to religion and ethics without becoming the propagandist of any dogmatic system.

Beauty is the opposite of coercive political power.

Art should lead but not follow political morality.

We should restore reverence for the grace and beauty of human beings and of the rest of nature.

3. The Reunion of High with Low Art

Popular and commercial art forms are the soil in which high art grows.

Theory describes art; art does not illustrate theory.

Art is how a whole culture speaks to itself.

Art is how cultures communicate with and marry each other.

4. The Reunion of Art with Craft

Certain forms, genres and techniques of art are culturally universal, natural, and classical.

Those forms are innate but require a cultural tradition to awaken them.

They include such things as visual representation, melody, storytelling, poetic meter, and dramatic mimesis.

These forms, genres, and techniques are not limitations or constraints but enfranchising instruments and infinitely generative feedback systems.

High standards of craftsmanship and mastery of the instrument should be restored.

5. The Reunion of Passion with Intelligence

Art should come from and speak to what is whole in human beings.

Art is the product of passionate imaginative intelligence, not of psychological sickness and damage.

Even when it deals, as it often should and must, with the terrifying, tragic, and grotesque, art should help heal the lesions within the self and the rifts in the self's relation to the world.

The symbols of art are connected to the embodiment of the human person in a physical and social environment.

6. The Reunion of Art with Science

Art extends the creative evolution of nature on this planet and in the universe.

Art is the natural ally, interpreter, and guide of the sciences.

The experience of truth is beautiful.

Art is the missing element in environmentalism.

Art can be reunited with physical science through such ideas as evolution and chaos theory.

The reflectiveness of art can be partly understood through the study of nonlinear dynamical systems and their strange attractors in nature and mathematics.

The human species emerged from the mutual interactions of biological and cultural evolution.

Thus our bodies and brains are adapted to and demand artistic performance and creation.

We have a nature, that nature is cultural, that culture is classical.

Cultural evolution was partly driven by inventive play in artistic handicrafts and performance.

The order of the universe is neither deterministic nor on the road to irreversible decay; instead, the universe is self-renewing, self-ordering, unpredictable, creative, and free.

Thus human beings do not need to labor miserably to despoil the world of its diminishing stockpile of order, and struggle with one another for possession of it, only to find that they have bound themselves into a mechanical and deterministic way of life.

Instead they can cooperate with nature's own artistic processes and with each other in a free and open-ended play of value creation.

Art looks with hope to the future and seeks a closer union with the true progress of technology.

7. The Reunion of Past with Future

Art evokes the shared past of all human beings, that is the moral foundation of civilization.

Sometimes the present creates the future by breaking the shackles of the past; but sometimes the past creates the future by breaking the shackles of the present.

The Enlightenment and Modernism are examples of the former; the Renaissance, and perhaps our own time, are examples of the latter.

No artist has completed his or her artistic journey until he or she has sojourned with and learned the wisdom of the dead artists who came before.

The future will be more, not less, aware of and indebted to the past that we are; just as we are more aware of and indebted to the past than were our ancestors.

The immortality of art goes both ways in time.

(Image by Eduardo Risso, 100 Bullets )

Time to Get Serious

2008-02-16T11:58:00.020-04:00

It occurred to me at the Protest the Hero show the other night that although I've been playing bass for 12 years (and I was a quick study, I might add), I've hardly improved at all for at least 10 of them. Since I started in grade 10 I've played bigger shows with progressively better bands, but I haven't built a repertoire of cover songs, I haven't learned to read music on the bass (it should be a cinch, since I can read it for piano and trumpet), I can't slap well, I can't tap at all, I can't count out odd time signatures or polyrhythms, I can't solo or play with a pick to save my life, and when it comes to improvising, I'm hamfisted, slow and limited to three scales. I've always embraced the "less-is-more, deeper-is-better" philosophy of bass playing, and it's served me well, but, truthfully, part of why I denouce flashy bassists as masturbators is because I'm envious of their skill.

I've always said to myself, "Well, if I just practiced more, I could be better if I wanted to," but now I'm starting to think that I'd learn more, faster if I started taking lessons from a competent teacher. Following one's own inclinations can only take the learner so far, because the best knowledge, skills and techniques in any field are rare, hard-won and often counterintuitive. Some people might argue that any kind of "true" classicism violates the spirit of the rock ethos (this is probably the only point in the known universe that Alan Bloom and punk rockers would agree on, and I hope to return to Bloom's ill-tempered but philosophically interesting critique of rock music as irresponsible, vulgar and onanistic in a future post), but I think this is balderdash. It may seem paradoxical that submission to the rigours of tradition would be profoundly liberating, but I believe it's nonetheless true. I just hope I can find the time and the self-discipline to go as far as I can with this, because I really am getting too old to be a poseur or a dabbler.

I was thinking I'd find some inspiration if I spruced my old Fender Jazz 5 up a little bit with a truss rod and intonation adjustment, lighter strings and a fancy new pickguard, but I need to get a goddamn job before I start worrying about all that.

(Image from www.gand.com)

Protest the Hero

2008-02-15T17:44:00.010-04:00

Robyn and I went to see Protest the Hero at Manhattan in Moncton last night. They're touring in support of their new album, Fortress. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it was a great show. I don't think their recordings or videos do justice to the heaviness and energy of their live act, and in real life they're a lot more metal and a lot less "emo" than they might seem in the video below (which is still pretty good and worth a watch). Anyway, it was probably the best show I've seen since we saw A Perfect Circle in Toronto in 2004 and I'd go see PTH again in a heartbeat. My only complaint was that their set seemed kind of short given that tickets cost $15.

(Image from www.punknews.org)

Smoking Pot Causes Early, Serious Lung Disease

2008-02-13T19:33:00.014-04:00

According to an article at Science Daily, a paper published in the January 2008 issue of Respirology claims that marijuana smokers incur lung damage at a faster rate than do tobacco smokers. The study, titled "Bullous Lung Disease due to Marijuana," found that the mean age for marijuana smokers to develop billous lung disease (a condition whereby air becomes trapped in the lungs and causes breath blockage and destruction of lung tissue) was 41, compared to 65 years of age for cigarette smokers.

I'm not saying smoking weed is right or wrong--sitting on the couch, eating a bag of chips and going to bed early is probably healthier than sticking a needle in your arm or getting curb-stomped down at the local watering hole because you were dancing with Leroy's girl, and it seems fair to say that pot smokers rarely wake up in jail or the hospital. But still, who wants to be a 41 year old with a debilitating lung disease?

My Babies

2008-02-05T20:28:00.001-04:00

Chloe, Jack, Caitlin

I Can't Even Beat Up a 17 Year Old Kid

2008-02-05T14:35:00.000-04:00

Boxing is hard. I fought a high school student yesterday who I probably outweighed by a good 80-100 pounds, and I landed 2 (wussy) punches on him in 3 minutes. This was as long as I could go before being reduced to a ragged, gasping, sweaty mess. The other guy had been in the ring all night, but he's been boxing for a lot longer than I have.

It's good to get some exercise. I'm sure the 10 years of heavy boozing, smoking, and other toxic foolishness that I have only recently (and imperfectly) put behind me will catch up to me sooner or later. My intent is not to "save myself" by becoming a fitness nut, but rather to try to enjoy my residence in my body while I still can.

I used to think that I hated sports, but now I wonder if I just had a bad attitude. Misfit sports, like boxing at Bob Edgett's Boys' Club in Sackville, can be a lot of fun.

I wonder if jocks get together for misfit reading groups (my guess is they don't).

(Image from blog.simslearningconnections.com )

The Metaphysical Cast of Mind

2008-02-02T01:28:00.001-04:00

Joseph Carroll writes in his book Literary Darwinism that the "metaphysical cast of mind" is characterized by a "naive humanistic faith in the supreme efficacy of grandiose abstractions" and a "credulous susceptibility to 'Big Words.'" He contrasts this with the scientific approach (exemplified, according to Carroll, in Robert Storey's book Mimesis and the Human Animal), which places its faith instead in a "cumulative and self-correcting body of empirical information" (Carroll 59).

I love the turn of phrase (said the rambling humanist) and I think he has a point. Sobriety of style is something all serious writers should strive for. On the other hand, if philosophy and literary criticism could be fully assimilated into said "cumulative and self-correcting body of empirical information," we'd probably call them physics, biology and information theory.

I will continue to put my own (possibly naive) humanistic faith in the curious gods of our universe, science among them.

(Image from www.bilkent.edu.tr)

I Went to See Hayden and Shotgun Jimmy at Mount Allison Last Night...

2008-02-01T13:57:00.000-04:00

...and behaved like an obnoxious ass. Here's a representative sample of the evening's conversation:

ME (Loudly): Are you guys here to see Weezer? Oh man, this is gonna be so AWESOME! ROCK AND ROLL! WHOO-HOO!

CLEVELAND: Three of my ex-girlfriends walked in just now.

DAVE: I thought London was pretentious and expensive.

It isn't that Hayden was bad--he's a gifted songwriter, and his piano stuff was especially impressive. But the place was full of undergrad indie kids in scarves, argyle and tight corduroys, and I was feeling insecure about my age and belligerent about the fact that Sackville music scene has lately been overrun by lethargic, shoegazing faux geek androgynes.

Anyway, here's a Hayden track (with balls) that used to be on Muchmusic when I was in high school--back in the days when Much actually played things we used to call "music videos" from time to time. It takes a minute to load, but it's worth the wait:

(Image from www.hfxnews.ca)

Worst Game Ever

2008-01-17T12:05:00.001-04:00

Think you've got what it takes? Here's a challenge for you: while writhing and groaning on the couch in the throes of food poisoning (on your 28th birthday, no less), try as hard as you can to not think of the sensual, visceral, exquisitely nauseating details of the salmon, rice, and raw broccoli (the latter not pictured, thank God) you ate the night before.

Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself. Wouldn't you?

(Image from www.biggestmenu.com)

Question:

2008-01-17T01:15:00.001-04:00

A globe of blood
A snapping rose
A vaguely heart-shaped manifold
A small red line of code
What is it?

(Image from www.liquidlearning.com)

How About Post-dated Posts?

2008-01-16T13:06:00.000-04:00

It takes, on average, 2-3 days from the time I put a substantial post up for me to edit and change it around enough that I can live with it. I've tried prewriting in MS Word in order to get around this problem, but to no avail. I just don't notice mistakes, errors, non sequiturs, and statements that make me sound pompous or fatuous until they're up on TPM. Once a post is up, I have to force myself to imagine reading it through someone else's eyes, and my logical and stylistic shortcomings become much clearer.

This isn't to say that my finished posts are jewels of wit, wisdom, and editorial skill by any means, but rather that the few existing readers of my blog might want to wait until a couple of days after the post date before checking out any of my longer entries.

I can remember, back in the day, when I would stay up all night writing a paper, jacked on coffee, and send it off immediately after putting the last period on the works cited page. Ugh.

Purgatory will probably have me presenting all those papers to a panel of 5 unsympathetic professors while an audience of undergraduate girls giggle and roll their eyes at the sweat stains under my arms.

(Image from www.themoderatevoice.com)

The Golden Turd: Philip Pullman, Hide Your Face

2008-01-14T11:07:00.000-04:00

I try not to rip up movies too often on my blog. For one, it seems like every dime-a-dozen blogger thinks s/he's a film critic. Also, I prefer to read posts which point out and praise admirable creative efforts (like this week's post at Quammy Blog) rather than those that just growl and complain. However, I've been holding this in for weeks so as not to pollute the Christmas spirit, and I have to get it off my chest.

I love Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass series, and everyone knows that the movie is never as good as the book. So when I went into the cinema, I was expecting to be a little bit disappointed. Instead, I was disgusted, enraged, and insulted. I hope Pullman got paid well to let Chris Weitz molest and butcher his beautiful story, because molest and butcher it he did.

Almost everything that makes the book believeable--all the subtle and clever touches, the wonderfully realized characters, the politics, the intrigue, and the philosophy are completely left out. Weitz is an inept writer and a lousy director. He also obviously thinks the average moviegoer is an imbecile.

Take the film's depiction of the Magesterium, for instance. In the book, the master of Jordan College at Oxford tries to poison Lord Asriel because he (Asriel) is a dangerous megalomaniac, and the aleithiometer has indicated that his actions will have dire consequences. In the film, a snivelling representative of the Magesterium tries to poison a far more heroic (and physically dimunitive) Lord Asriel, played by Daniel Craig at his most smug, because he's heroically insubordinate and they're craven and power hungry. Realpolitik has nothing to do with it--instead, we get a simplistic, cooky cutter villain/hero relationship that we've all seen a thousand times.

In the book, Iorek Byrnison's armour is hidden in the basement of a local priest's house. In the movie, it's hidden in the basement of the local office of the Magesterium. This would be splitting hairs if the Magesterium represented the church, the heart and soul of any community, like it does in the book (it doesn't). Rather than contrasting the innate honour of one species (armoured bears) with the opportunism of another (humans), Weitz inexplicably lets the baaaad Magesterium take the moral fall for the townspeople, sparing his audience from having to ask itself any questions about human nature, right or wrong.

The role of the Magesterium in the film is much like that of Snidely Whiplash from Dudley Do-right, or of Shredder and Krang in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon: if it's bad, they're behind it, and they're behind it because they're the bad guys. In the book, the Magesterium are convincing because they honestly think that they're protecting humanity from itself. Their actions are politically and morally complex, unlike in the movie, where they're just greedy and evil. This is essential to the problematizing of authority that forms the backbone of the books' argument, including its critique of organized religion (it's still a little postmodern for my taste, but Pullman is such a good writer that it just works somehow). The movie dumbs all this down until it's unrecognizable, and by making the Magesterium generally responsible for every bad thing that happens in the film, Weitz removes the emphasis on human free will that is so important in a story supposing to be about the Fall of Man.

Another example: Iorek Byrnison is supposed to have been banished from Svalbard (the kingdom of the Panserbjorne, who throughout the movie are annoyingly referred to as "ice bears") for murdering a fellow armoured bear who was drugged by Iofur Rakinson, resulting in his refusal to back down from a fight to the death over a female bear. In the movie, Iorek is banished because he was defeated in single combat by Iofur Rakinson himself (with a different name, more on that in a moment). Not only does this make Iorek out to be a weakling, it doesn't even make sense--a society in which rank were determined by single combat and all the losers were banished would quickly end up with only one member. Would it have been all that hard to take an extra 20 seconds to get the back story right? They could have easily shaved the time off the silly, predictable 10 minute ice bridge crossing scene.

Changing Iofur Rakinson's (the evil bear's) name to "Ragnar Sturlusson" in order to avoid confusion with Iorek Byrnison (the good bear, voiced by an Ian McKellan who sounds like he should be put to sleep) insults the audience's intelligence further. Imagine if the Hollywood developers of Lord of the Rings had changed Sauron's name to "Beastor" in order to avoid confusion with Saruman. Any child who is morally and cognitively able to handle a character's jawbone getting ripped off and sent flying through the air in slow motion can probably manage the task of keeping track of that character's name, even if it does happen to start with the same letter as another character's name.

TGC cost $180 million to make. That's more than The Fellowship of the Ring, which was a far better movie. The two films are at polar opposites of the fantasy adaptation spectrum: the developers of LOTR cut corners by using a director and actors who were talented but (then) relatively unknown, and spent their money instead on state of the art special effects and a fantastic script that was accessible but faithful to its source. New Line spent what looks like their entire budget on an attempt to subdue TGC's viewers with the eminence of its cast, resulting in what may be the most expensive and star-studded B movie in cinematic history. The cheap CGI effects therein make Garfield 2 look like a cinematic masterpiece.

Philip Pullman should be ashamed, and Chris Weitz should be fired. The Golden Compass movie is vapid, tedious, confusing, violent, melodramatic, and dumb. It is poorly scripted, poorly conceived and poorly edited, and its sense of time is so badly out of synch with its sense of space that it feels more like a ride at Universal Studios than a theatrical release. It's the Cutthroat Island of children's fantasy: it misses the mark in every possible way. It mangles a beautiful and serious story to the point where it comes across as a cut-rate Harry Potter knockoff, and it is in no way worth the fuss kicked up by religious groups at the time of its release.

Anyone who decided to boycott this movie did Phillip Pullman a favour.

I'm a Liar

2008-01-13T17:35:00.000-04:00

For the time being, I've given up flour, refined sugar, booze, coffee, tobacco, yeast, vinegar, tropical fruit and just about everything else fun (except sex--I gave that up when I got married ha ha). However, I just can't seem to stay away from the Internet. Ah well. I'm only a man, after all. Life gets cleaner and simpler one step at a time.

Happy New Year, Detox, etc.

2008-01-08T11:34:00.000-04:00

The black hole in my blog over the holiday period represents me enjoying Meatworld as God intended and avoiding the Immateria (mostly because I was stuck with dial up half the time). I intend to continue this trend for a little while.

I will be doing a ritual cleanse for the next three weeks to a month or so. The herbal detoxification kit only takes 12 days to complete, but I intend to abstain from toxic treats and nonessential media until at least February 1st. During this time, I intend to stretch, exercise, and read J.T. Fraser's Time as Conflict and Fred Turner's Shakespeare's 20th Century Economics. I'm thinking about starting a new blog for reading responses, but if I do it will be in February.

Until that time, thanks for reading, every/anyone, and I hope the new year finds you well.

The Fat Celt Wept

2007-12-20T13:11:00.000-04:00

We're studying Japan and Korea in my grade 7 social studies class and this week, among other things, we've been talking about the atomic bomb. Yesterday I thought it would be a good idea to read Eleanor Coerr's Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes aloud to my students. Since I was in 4th grade the last time I read that book, I had forgotten just how sad it is. It's probably the saddest kids' book I've ever come across, after Charlotte Graeber's Mustard. So anyway, I got to the end, where it reads

The next time she awoke, the family was there. Sadako smiled at them. She was part of that warm, loving circle where she would always be. Nothing could ever change that.

Already lights were dancing behind her eyes. Sadako slid a thin, trembling hand over to touch the golden crane. Life was slipping away from her, but the crane made Sadako feel stronger inside.

She looked at her flock hanging from the ceiling. As she watched, a light autumn breeze made the birds rustle and sway. They seemed to be alive and flying out through the open window. How beautiful and free they were! Sadako sighed and closed her eyes.

She never woke up (Coerr 63).

and of course I had tears streaming down my face like a goddamn girl. Gah! I'm 6' tall, 240 lbs with a shaved head and a chinstrap beard and I'm crying like a baby in front of a bunch of preteens. All I could think to say was, "Sorry, guys, It's a sad book." It's part of my nature to be a sentimental mangina on the best of days, but I'm good at covering it up with my relatively scary appearance, deep voice and witty faux cynicism.

But not yesterday.

I'm not a "new age" guy. I'm not "emo." In fact, my wife can probably testify as to how insensitive I am. But I'm easily moved to tears by literature. That part in Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale" when a dying Aricte cries, "Mercy, Emilie!" gets me every time. Never before, however, have I gotten all weepy in front of a class full of kids.

I guess the point of this story is twofold: a) I'm a big, bald pussy; and b) If you're going to read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes to a grade 7 class, practice in private and make sure you can get through it first.

Jezis Maria.

The Golden Compass: Atheist Propaganda?

2007-12-14T17:39:00.000-04:00

I just read The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked, a 23 page tract by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights about how Phillip Pullman wants to turn my kids into atheists. I get the impression that this is the kind of controversy he's been looking for all along, but the stupid things people are saying about his books still get under my skin.

According to the Catholic League, the point of The Golden Compass movie is to slip a camouflaged, diluted form of atheism in under parents' radar to get kids hooked. These brainwashed youngsters will then ask for the trilogy of novels for Christmas, and their atheist indoctrination will be well underway. I haven't seen the TGC movie yet, and I've heard Hollywood has watered it down and omitted some of the more explicit connections between the Magisterium and the Catholic church in order to give it a broader appeal. If this is true, it's unfortunate, but the filmmakers obviously did this to placate Christians (who probably comprise the majority of the film's U.S. target market), not hoodwink them.

I wonder what the halfwits who are up in arms about The Golden Compass would make of the works of William Blake or John Milton. If they can't even get through 3 children's books, relying instead on secondary sources like the "synopsis" in the aforementioned pamphlet, it's probably safe to assume that it won't ever become an issue.

Rupert Kaye, chief executive of the Association of Christian Teachers, claims it is "revealing... that Pullman chose not to add Allah to his list of names" (for God, depicted as a mendacious angel called the Authority in the books). Now that's food for thought: the atheists in league with Islam. Mr. Kaye has obviously considered this scenario carefully.

Says Caroline Moore, comparing TGC to Narnia in The Spectator: "Lewis's version is informed by his Christianity; Pullman's driven, far more explicitly, by militant atheism." Apparently Christians are informed but atheists are driven, just like the animals they believe we're descended from. When Richard Dawkins compared atheist and homosexual politics in The God Delusion (a book I found snide and disrespectful of religion and which, incidentally, sings Pullman's praises), I thought he was being melodramatic. Now, I'm not so sure.

I support Philip Pullman unequivocally and I will continue to encourage my students to read his books. Censorship, ignorance and hysteria are enemies of truth and beauty, of civilization and of God.

It's Monday Morning Again

2007-12-10T13:25:00.005-04:00

I hate Mondays. The following is a small but representative sample of what my morning has been like:

ME: Turn to a clean page in your notebooks. I'm going to put our Venn diagram up on the smartboard.

GRADE 7 GIRL: I don't have my notebook.
ME: You can go to your locker and get it.
GIRL: I don't have a notebook in my locker, either.
ME: Then take out a piece of paper. I don't care, you need to get this down.
GIRL: I don't have any paper.

At this point, the homunculus who sits in my frontal lobe and keeps me from getting fired (or arrested) most days caught me getting ready to shout, "Are you goddamn fucking RETARDED or something? This is SCHOOL!"

Fortunately, what actually came out was, "What did you think we were going to be doing today, [name omitted]? Get some paper from someone else. Now, please."

After class had ended, I found she had left me an origami crane on my desk (made out of paper) with a note (written on paper) that read as follows: "To Mr. Mac: Sorry about the silliness today in class. I'm just trying to make friends. I only have two good friends like I said SORRY!"

If I had any hair, I'd be tearing it out today.

Time to Stop Wasting Time

2007-12-06T10:13:00.000-04:00

(Image found here)

Rest in Peace, Daniel Pearl (1963-2002)

2007-12-03T23:19:00.000-04:00

I just watched the film A Mighty Heart, which tells the story of the abduction and murder of journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002. After I watched the movie I went online and found the actual video of Pearl's beheading here. Warning to anyone who follows that link: it's pretty graphic.

Human life is sacred, and so are its remains. I only hope Mr. Pearl's murderers get the chance to meet their God.

(Photo found here).

Let's Pretend Our Kids Are 20% Smarter

2007-12-03T09:22:00.001-04:00

Where I'm from (Nova Scotia, Canada) the minimum passing mark is 50%. Here in Maine, it's 70%. At first glance, it seems like students are being held to a higher standard, but in reality the kids simply receive easier tests and assignments so that few or none of them get low marks. A 70% pass makes it harder to encourage struggling kids to put more effort into their studies (what student will believe hard work pays off when her score of 16/20 earns a C grade?). It also makes it harder to convince high achievers that it's OK to take risks and make mistakes (the two best ways for gifted students learn to think critically and self-critically) when a 2% loss drops their scores a full third of a letter grade. Most gifted kids are smart enough to see "the game" for what it is, but they are less likely to experiment with changing the rules or pushing the envelope if their college applications are at stake.

Now, I'm no information theorist, but it seems to me that a complex informational entity (e.g. what a given student has learned over, say, a 5 month period) can be more subtly and accurately represented by 50 smaller units of information than by 30 larger, more blocky chunks of information, just as a greater number of smaller pixels can draw a more detailed character in a video game. There is an elementary concept at work here that even a mathematical ignoramus like me can grasp.

When the minimum passing grade is high, educators have 2 options: they can give out more failing grades, or they can make the work easier. Since more failing students cause a teacher to have to deal with more headaches and meetings after school with concerned or angry parents, I'd be willing to bet a lot of teachers just inflate grades (Sally's project was great so she gets 105%, but Leon's was mediocre so he only gets a 92%) and dilute the curriculum (What are 10 things about Japan that everyone in the class will be able to memorize at least 7 of?).

According to the principles of "differentiated instruction," it's practically undemocratic to fail a student anyway.

After spending some time working in public schools, I am seriously considering sending my own children to private schools, if and when I can afford it. These may well breed elitism, but at the end of the day I'd rather my kids end up elitists than complacent illiterates.

H.P. Lovecraft on Church

2007-12-02T13:36:00.000-04:00

This passage is taken from H.P. Lovecraft's short story, "The Silver Key":

In the first days of his bondage he had turned to the gentle churchly faith endeared to him by the naive trust of his fathers, for thence stretched mystic avenues which seemed to promise escape from life. Only on closer view did he mark the starved fancy and beauty, the stale and prosy triteness, and the owlish gravity and grotesque claims of solid truth which reigned boresomely and overwhelmingly among most of its professors; or feel to the full the awkwardness with which it sought to keep alive as literal fact the outgrown fears and guesses of a primal race confronting the unknown (Lovecraft 54).

I don't go to church. I find Christianity philosophically and aesthetically interesting, but in my experience its public practice, at least in this part of the world, is rather uninspiring.

Never Send a High School Teacher to Do A Middle School Teacher's Job

2007-11-30T13:25:00.000-04:00

At least not if you want to keep the educational content G-rated. I put together a slideshow on the Yakuza for the unit on Japan that I'm doing with my grade 7 social studies classes, and apparently some of the images that I used were too risque for the age group.

Here's the first one. I cropped it once already, but there's still too much crack according to my gentle but emphatic elders.

Here's the second, which I didn't think was that bad. Half of those kids will probably go home and play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas tonight, anyway.

(I found these images at Illegal Economy and Flickr.com respectively via a google image search)

How Embarrassing!

2007-11-28T23:12:00.001-04:00

In terms of personal style and musical taste, I guess I've always thought of myself as an occult-leaning metalhead/rocker. My iTunes top 25 playlist, which I just discovered tonight, reveals the shameful truth:

1. "Digital Bliss" by Underground Bass Masters.
2. "Transcendental Bass Journey" by Underground Bass Masters.
3. "The Spirit of Gaia" by Underground Bass Masters.
4. "Jesus Walks" by Kanye West.
5. "UBM Subwoofer Test" by Underground Bass Masters
6. "Verdis Quo" by Daft Punk.
7. "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley.
8. "The Slasher" by The Adults.
9. "The Blood of Cu Chulainn" from The Boondock Saints soundtrack.
10. "Da Funk" by Daft Punk.
11. "In Your Room" by Depeche Mode.
12. "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley.
13. "Jazzy Belle" by Outkast.
14. "Gaelic Morn" by Celtic Destiny.
15. "Kimdracula" by the Deftones.
16. "Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)" by Outkast.
17. "Around the World" by Daft Punk.
18. "In Your Room (alternate version)" by Depeche Mode.
19. "Stay and Drown" by Finger Eleven.
20. "The Hollow" by A Perfect Circle.
21. "Schism" by Tool.
22. "Lateralus" by Tool.
23. " Hexagram" by the Deftones.
24. "Natural Blues" by Moby.
25. "Ruiner" by Nine Inch Nails.

Holy sentimental metrosexual, Batman. I guess that's why I cry at weddings.

Correggio's Parma Frescoes

2007-11-28T21:24:00.001-04:00

"Assumption of the Virgin" (+ detail) by Antonio Da Correggio (1489 –1534) is painted on the dome of the Parma Cathedral in Florence, Italy. How could anyone deny the existence of (a) God upon experiencing such beauty?

Of course, with a little imagination, one may notice Charles Darwin in the choir.

(Clicking on the pictures makes them bigger and even more lovely).

Old Dog, Old Trick

2007-11-28T19:19:00.001-04:00

It's a shame the creationists and the evolutionists can't get along, because I think they could find a lot to agree on concerning the value of family.

I'll have to sober up a bit before I can render this one defensible. Colt 45 stimulates the heart rather more than the mind, alas.

Internet Wallowing

2007-11-27T16:30:00.000-04:00

It feels good to bask in information like a manatee in water warmed by a Florida power plant. It's light but dense, ethereal yet efficacious. It's also easy to waste time in: browse, but don't actually read; poke, but don't say anything.

Shakespeare's 7 Ages of Man

2007-11-20T13:25:00.001-04:00

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
(As You Like It 4.7.143-70)

(Image is of Da Vinci's famous "Virtuvian Man").

I Just Finished Books of Blood 4-6 (Sickest Post Ever)

2007-11-18T18:23:00.000-04:00

I just finished reading the Books of Blood 4-6 omnibus by Clive Barker. The final story in Book 6, entitled "The Last Illusion", contains what might just be the most twisted passage I have ever read in any book:

Though he tried to form the simple word, "No", the music was gaining influence upon him with every note played. He began to hear melodies in the caterwauling; long, circuitous themes that made his blood sluggish and his thoughts idiot. He knew there was no pleasure to be had at the music's source--that it tempted him only to pain and desolation--yet he could not shake its delirium off. His feet began to move to the call of the pipers. He forgot Valentin, Swann and all ambition for escape, and instead began to descend the stairs. The melody became more intricate. He could hear voices now, singing some charmless accompaniment in a language he didn't comprehend. From somewhere above, he heard his name called, but he ignored the summons. The music clutched him close, and now--as he descended the next flight of stairs--the musicians came into view.

They were brighter than he had anticipated, and more various. More baroque in their configurations (the manes, the multiple heads); more particular in their decoration (the suit of flayed faces; the rouged anus); and, his drugged eyes now stung to see, more atrocious in their choice of instruments. Such instruments! Byron was there, his bones sucked clean and drilled with stops; his bladder and lungs teased through the slashes in his body as reservoirs for the piper's breath. He was draped, inverted, across the musician's lap, and even now was played upon--the sacs ballooning, the tongueless head giving out a wheezing note. Dorothea was slumped beside him, no less transformed, the strings of her gut made taut between her splinted legs like an obscene lyre, her breasts drummed upon. There were other instruments too, men who had come off the street and fallen prey to the band. Even Chaplin was there, much of his flesh burned away, his rib-cage played upon indifferently well (Barker 142-3).

Clive Barker is a talented writer, but I wonder how he sleeps at night.

(Image enlarged from "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch courtesy of Wikimedia)

A Broken Heart Still Beats

2007-11-12T00:05:00.003-04:00

There is a budding, a blossoming, a brief fruition (the texture, shape and significance of which the mind must go over again and again, vainly trying to discern exactly when "it" happened), then cooling, wilting, failing, falling, dying and rotting. So it goes.

Cliches become classics by virtue of sacrifice. Life isn't a pose (although it is a performance). It can't be faked.

Young people have their whole lives ahead of them. The tedium and anticipation are agonizing. Old people have theirs behind them, and the days go by like hours, the years like months. In between, life gradually gets colder and harder. It crystalizes.

It hurts to remember but it also hurts to forget.

There might be a seed or a sequence of letters hidden somewhere in/out there that has the power to redeem everything. It would be tiny, like a drop of blood in a Dali painting or a poppy pinned to a lapel (endorphins, enkephalins and dymorphins are opioids, after all).

(Evicko, chybiš mĺ).

Darwinians Don't Have to Be Jerks (or Clap If You Believe in Fairies)

2007-11-11T15:01:00.002-04:00

I believe in Darwinian evolution. It does the most thorough and convincing job of explaining who we are and how we got here. It also prompts men to say some pretty ignorant things. Consider, for example, Richard Dawkins' thoughts on polytheism in The God Delusion:

How did the Greeks, the Romans and the Vikings cope with such polytheological conundrums? Was Venus just another name for Aphrodite, or were they two distinct goddesses of love? Was Thor with his hammer a manifestation of Wotan, or a seperate god? Who cares? Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many. Having gestured towards polytheism to cover myself against a charge of neglect, I shall say no more about it (Dawkins 35).

The sneer is one of the ugliest human expressions. Frederick Crews, in his foreward to The Literary Animal, takes a similar tone:

Although I am not a champion of evolutionary criticism, I do happen to be a committed Darwinian... Those of us who embrace Darwinian knowledge without cavil are convinced that all existence is unplanned and therefore quite pointless, leaving humanity with the task of rendering its life dignified in moral, intellectual and aesthetic ways scrounged and adjusted from our evolved heritage of repertoires. When the gods have been shipped back to fairyland to rejoin the Easter Bunny, we can direct our awe toward beings who actually deserve it--Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Beethoven, Einstein--without cheapening their achievements by ascribing them to mysterious infusions of spirit (Crews xiii. Let's leave aside the question of how a literary critic who who "embrace[s] Darwinian knowledge without cavil" can fail to espouse evolutionary criticism).

In my opinion, it's the "mysterious infusions of spirit" that make life worth living. We humans render our "pointless" lives meaningful and dignified with our techne and our poeisis, including religion. The Bible, the Q'uran, and the Bhagvad Gita are no less great works of art than Hamlet or "Bathsheba in Her Bath". If Occam's razor can dispatch the gods to fairyland, it can do the same to Antony and Cleopatra, or to Florestan and Leonore and every other character in Beethoven's Fidelio. If this so-called "fairyland" is the world of stories, dreams and myth (i.e. information), then the gods probably never left it in the first place. Unfortunately, some Darwinians have grossly misappraised its value and efficacy and have adjudged themselves exceptionally clever for doing so.

Darwinian atheists who see fit to ridicule the spiritual practices of most of the human species would do well to remember that natural selection, the preeminent explanatory model of life's origin, does not automatically confer its elite status to its adherents. Darwinian discourse should enlighten and instruct, not abuse and alienate. Snide rudeness and narrow-mindedness are unbecoming to Christians and scientists alike.

Also, the uber-Darwinian claim that scientific and religious truth will be forever incompatible may be jumping the gun somewhat, although it has provided some thinkers with a kind of "bad boy" notoriety that undoubtedly boosts book sales. As Hamlet said, "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" (Hamlet 1.5.166-7). Conflicts insoluble in their own terms are among the most universal structures in existence, and history has proven again and again that such snarls and double binds can eventually be worked out, provided time and imagination get the chance to embed them in a richer and more comprehensive informational framework.

With effort and luck , the great theme of the 21st century might turn out to be syncretism--the transformation of humanity, the reenchantment of lovers, the Alchemical Wedding, the mapping of Tifareth, the Great Work. Subsequent generations of scientists, scholars and clerics will hopefully be able to see the appeal and necessity of renaissance, and will work on the fringes and underground, if necessary, to bring such a future to fruition while waiting for the (tenured) hard-liners to die off.

Of course, if no one believes in fairies and no one claps, then no fairies emerge. The philistine is then justified in his denial, and Tinkerbell dies before she is even born. If we dismiss the great human virtues of faith and imagination as mere credulity and delusion, then our lives will become "pointless" indeed, and we might very well while away our miserable hours by taking potshots at people who seem more whole and happy than ourselves.

And that would be a shame.

E.O. Wilson on Civilized Termites

2007-11-10T15:27:00.001-04:00

Our cultures and values seem highly variable to us but in fact are very specialized and very epigaic [living and foraging above ground] and diurnal [active during daylight hours] mammalian. Here, for example, are several of the values that we could expect to characterize termite cultures if they had attained the intelligence threshold of civilization: loving dank darkness, photophobic, with a refined taste for lignin and cellulose and for music consisting of sophisticated phermonal song, faithful to the taboo against reproduction by any caste but royalty, and devoted to the duty of consuming injured and dead nest mates. Civilized termites...would consider the very conception of human existence a nightmare.

From E.O. Wilson's foreward to The Literary Animal (p. ix).

I Started a Tobacco Cellar

2007-11-09T23:57:00.001-04:00

I discovered a few weeks ago that it's possible to buy high quality pipe tobacco in bulk online at a fraction of what it costs per tin. So, I ordered an 8 oz bag of McClelland's 2015 and another of 2035 from Mars Cigars down in Pennsylvania. When the two big zip-lock bags showed up at the house, I felt like Tony Montana.

The 2035 is really impressive--it's cut into big, flat, jagged black chunks that smell like ketchup and look like the shredded tire of an 18 wheeler. Apparently, the ketchup smell comes from the ongoing fermentation process of the sugary virginia leaf. This stuff is basically a bulk version of Dark Star, except the pressed flakes are gigantic. For days, I couldn't stop taking them out of the bag and playing with them.

2015 looks like a much more ordinary broken-flake virginia blend. There's perique in it too, but it's the same mottled brown colour as the virginia. From perique's reputation as a strong, spicy condiment leaf I figured it would have a distinctive tangy aroma, but 2015 actually smells quite bland in the bag, like bran flakes and apricots laced with a little vinegar.

The tobacco was wet, wet, wet. Both blends required about 8 hours drying time to become smokeable. They burned fine after that, but both had an acidic, "green" bite to them. One of the reasons why bulk tobacco is cheaper (at least in the case of McClelland's blends) is because it hasn't had much aging time. Needless to say, my dreams of sitting atop a pile of pipe weed like Smaug on his pile of treasure, smoking at my evil leisure, were dashed when I realized that this stuff will have to age for another 6 months to be really good.

My wife bought me a box of mason jars, which I filled with tobacco and labelled with names and dates. I put them all on the shelf in the closet, and just like that I had my very own tobacco cellar. I'm hoping I will be able to hang onto at least one of each jar for 5 or 10 years. Virginia ages well.

Lots of great companies sell tobacco in bulk, like GL Pease, Samuel Gawaith, Esoterica and the aforementioned McClelland's, and I think it's the way to go. I like the idea that one day, 10 years from now, I might pack a bowl of 2015 '07 and think back to a time when my son had just turned one year old, Stephen Harper was prime minister, styrofoam was still legal and I lived 400 meters from the U.S. border and could still get the old "Quebecois discount" on American contraband.

It's nice to have warmth, comfort, and a little something special, whether it's a cup of coffee, a bottle of wine, or a smoke of some kind or another. "The good life" sounds insufferably bourgeois, but it is, at least for now, a good life.

(Photo is of Mark Twain smoking a calabash, which is a pipe made from the dried gourd of the calabash vine capped with a meerschaum bowl).

I don't wanna sound gay or nothin

2007-11-05T21:43:00.000-04:00

but Depeche Mode are a pretty sweet band. These were the only 2 decent tracks on Exciter (2001), but they're fuckin A.

I Promised Wotan He Could Have My Left Eye

2007-11-04T19:34:00.000-04:00

Seriously.

Happy Birthday, Jack

2007-11-03T14:08:00.000-03:00

My son John Charles MacEachern turned 1 year old on Friday, November 2nd. He shares this birthday with his maternal grandfather, Charlie Hunter.

November 2nd is also All Soul's Day, or the Day of the Dead. I bought a little mickey of Crown Royal to dump out on the lawn for the people who didn't make it this far, but I never actually got around to doing it. Oh well. I'm sure the dead llke Crown Royal just as much on November 3rd or 4th.

Review of Mac Baren's Virginia No. 1

2007-10-28T16:57:00.003-03:00

I smoke virginia flake tobaccos almost exclusively. Since I can only buy the good stuff in Halifax, which is 7 hours away from Northern New Brunswick, I am occasionally forced to choose between doing without (never!) and dabbling in the locally available brands of tobak. I was initially pleased that there was a VA blend to be found in Edmunston. However, after getting the stuff home and smoking it, I was less than thrilled.

Virginia tobaccos are naturally sweet. More sugar makes tobacco burn hotter, and thus virginias are more apt to bite the tongue than any other blend. Also, they burn cooler when pressed into flakes (strips of tobacco that look like beef jerky), which is what most manufacturers do with their VA blends. Mac Baren should know this--they've been making pipe tobacco for decades now. But, for whatever reason, they have seen fit to soak Virginia No. 1 in a cloying, hot-burning, honey-flavoured casing, utterly ruining what at first glance looks to be high quality, tasty leaf. Fucking Danes and their candy-weed. They also chop it up into itty-bitty pieces, so it burns even hotter.

Needless to say, one bowl of this stuff will blister you so badly you'll think you smoked a cigarette with the lit end in your mouth. The molten sugar in the smoke sticks to your tongue like napalm, too. I've never been burned like this by a 'backy before.

UPDATE: Cooking this stuff in the stove for a while (20-30 minutes or so at 150 degrees) and then rehydrating it seems to take some of the sting out of it, but it's a pain in the ass for a smoking experience that's at the low end of mediocre.

I wish I had four hands, so I could give Mac Baren's Virginia No. 1 four thumbs down.

Ani DiFranco, Joni Mitchell and The Problem with Feminism

2007-10-28T14:28:00.002-03:00

I was surfing the Internet today (as I do from time to time when I'm putting off doing real work), and I came across an online piece on Ani DiFranco in The Guardian entitled "I'm Considering a Revolution" (October 10, 2007). The article references an earlier piece DiFranco did for the LA Times, in which she interviewed venerable female artist Joni Mitchell, in the following paragraph:

Last year, the National Organisation for Women (NOW), America's largest feminist advocacy group, honoured DiFranco with a Woman of Courage award. She has always been outspoken about her feminism; in that same Joni Mitchell interview she suggested that her subject, who has been disparaging of feminism, might embrace the concept. Mitchell simply responded, "I prefer the company of men." DiFranco went on to write that "Either you are a feminist or you are a sexist/misogynist. There is no box marked 'other'" (Emphasis mine).

This isn't "courageous," it's narrow-minded and hypocritical. In fact, it's exactly the kind of aggressive dichotomizing and intolerance of diversity that feminists are always saying characterizes patriarchal thinking. I thought the cardinal sin of "phallogocentric" patriarchy was its tendency to sort the world into binary oppositions (like, say, feminist and sexist/misogynist), one of which (feminism, in this case) is privileged over the other.

Unless there is a kind of feminist logic at work here that is subtly "subversive" on a level beyond the understanding of a petit-bourgeois white male rube like me.

DiFranco's attitude is remarkably patronizing, bullying, and arrogant towards women who are unsympathetic to feminism's goals and aims, which profess to be about improving women's quality of life, but are (in my experience) more often locally and immediately concerned with securing status and opportunity for upwardly mobile career-feminists. This bears repeating: Feminist interests and women's interests are not identical. Feminism's support of women is "universal" only in the sense that it regards all women as targets for prosyletization, and DiFranco's treatment of Mitchell illustrates this point.

I love women, and I support them in their struggle for equality. It's ironic and disappointing that feminist discourse is so often characterized by bitter and virulent intolerance of any point of view other than its own.

I think the next frontier for women's liberation will be the freeing of the mature female worldview from the worst tonal excesses, political reductionism and skewed logic of 20th century feminism. These may then be consigned to the historical scrap heap with the rest of the rusting avant garde intellectual apparatus.

One can always hope, anyway.

2007-10-25T20:01:00.000-03:00

"My only grudge against nature was that I could not turn my Lolita inside out and apply voracious lips to her young matrix, her unknown heart, her nacreous liver, the sea-grapes of her lungs, her comely twin kidneys" (Nabukov 165).

"It is not the artistic aptitudes that are secondary sexual characters as some shams and shamans have said; it is the other way around: sex is but the ancilla of art" (259).

"The moral sense in mortals is the duty
We have to pay on mortal sense of beauty" (283).

Post-Mortem Photograph

2007-10-23T22:59:00.000-03:00

One of the nice things about the modern era is that infant mortality rates have been dropping steadily around the world. Overpopulation is a concern, but there's nothing sadder than a baby who doesn't make it.

Photo from the Kircher Society via a google search by the folks at Blog Supergroup.

Bacchian Morbidity

2007-10-20T14:42:00.000-03:00

Today I woke up feeling like a gang of pineapple-wielding ogres had clubbed me into unconsciousness and shat in my mouth. I think I lose three years off my life for every goddamn volcano bowl I drink.

Dinosaurs' Prayer

2007-09-26T11:39:00.001-03:00

"Lord, a little more time!"
-Arthur Koestler

Sergio Leone + Arcade Fire

2007-09-25T22:34:00.000-03:00

This clip is awesome. My old flophouse comrade Quammy read about it on The Onion's A.V. Club and posted it on Quammy Blog. Someone edited together a bunch of cuts from Sergio Leone's Once Upon A Time In The West to sync up with Arcade Fire's "My Body is a Cage." I was like, "Ho hum" when I read about it, but then I watched it and it blew my mind. (Contains spoilers)

The Parting of the Sensory (Carbon's Anniversary)

2007-09-25T11:33:00.001-03:00

Whoever said that mind/body dualism is only a Cartesian fallacy was either young, high, or otherwise unusually free of regret. My own experience suggests that the body is pulled kicking and screaming into the future, while the mind (miracle of nonlinear computation that it is) is compelled to return to the past, like a fly to shit, like a tongue to a cut on the roof of its mouth. The body wants to return, but it moves on; the mind wants to move on, but it returns. Somewhere in this wretched in-between-ness, this Indian rope burn on the soul, the human subject can be found.

Death (hers) is irreversible, at least in this sad, dirty little stretch of monkey time that I inhabit. Some days it's light but grave, like a crow's wings brushing against my skin. Other days it's a fish hook in my guts, dragging me away from the people I love and need. Most of the time, though, it's just a guilty, impotent feeling--full of rage, shame and regret, and a terrible, terrible sadness. A ghost with a voice but no recognizable face. An exquisite and tuneless agony.

Thank God for family, without whom a disturbed and grieving mind might tear itself to pieces.

Fast & Dirty

2007-09-23T00:11:00.001-03:00

On the way home from the Tool concert in Portland, we stopped in a New Brunswick town to get food (this was probably the first stop all weekend at which Andrew "Jailbait" Wood didn't get ID'd). After contemplating a number of greasy, unwholesome choices, we ended up at ***.

Cleveland was the first to notice the lewd sub-text of their drive-through menu, which featured items like "whistle dogs," "chubby strips," and (our favorite) "family gravy."

Ten bucks says their copyright-protected mascot is naked under that suit.

The Hopeful Monster

2007-09-15T22:17:00.001-03:00

Saltation
n.
1. a dancing, hopping, or leaping movement.
2. an abrupt movement or transition.
3. Biology.
a. a sudden discontinuity in a line of descent.
b. a single mutation that drastically alters the phenotype.
4. Geology. intermittent, leaping movement of particles of sand or gravel, as from the force of wind or running water.
(From Latin saltare, meaning to leap. [Dictionary.com])

Saltation is the idea that a new species can emerge in one big mutational jump, rather than as a result of many tiny evolutionary steps. The idea isn't popular these days, as scientists have mostly debunked the hypothetical divide between macro and micro mutation. In evolutionary biology, it's colloquially referred to as the theory of the "hopeful monster," a charming term coined by German geneticist (and saltationist) Richard Goldschmidt (1878-1958).

Did reptiles dance, and dream of birds?

Neo-human Clip from Waking Life

2007-09-13T20:06:00.000-03:00

I thought Waking Life was pretty good, although some of the shorts were better than others. This one is my favorite:

We Thought Pierre Got a New Car

2007-09-11T17:15:00.001-03:00

Robyn: Ooh! Did you get a new car?

Pierre: No.

Robyn: We thought since it was the same colour as your old one that you might have decided to get another one like it.

Pierre (puzzled): It's not the same colour. My car is orange. This car is burnt orange.