against the modern world

on feta

2012-02-09T21:11:00.004-05:00

Note to major grocery store chains: "Feta" is not another word for "styrofoam." Look it up.

Note to consumers: There is no such thing as "Fat free feta." Anything with that label is lying to you and is most likely (not so) cleverly disguised styrofoam.

heathers

2012-02-09T00:02:00.003-05:00

On rewatching Heathers recently, I was shocked / dismayed / pleasantly surprised (?) that I seemed to have missed (?) / forgotten (?) the monocle. In the words of Ferris, the monocle is "so choice."

snoop on paul

2012-01-30T18:07:00.003-05:00

Snoop Dogg has endorsed Ron Paul.

Question 1: is the assumption that it must be (or that it is solely) due to Paul's stance on drug legalization legitimate?

Question 2: does this help or hurt Paul?

müller on mary

2012-01-26T15:29:00.002-05:00

If, moreover, we imagine a man to be from his birth surrounded merely by external objects destitute of all variety of colours, so that he could never receive the impressions of colours from without, it is evident that the sense of vision might nevertheless have been no less perfect in him than in other men; for light and colours are innate endowments of his nature, and require merely a stimulus to render them manifest.

~ Joh. Müller (1840) Elements of Physiology

manga editorial techniques

2012-01-25T20:51:00.002-05:00

[This is a response of sorts to musings by The League on the abysmal relationship between creators and editors in the US comic book industry.]

In the summer of 1997, I spent six weeks in Tokyo interning at the publisher Kodansha. For the second half of that period, I worked in the non-fiction translated straight-to-paperback department. In the first half, however, I spent each week interning at a different "Magajin," or manga magazine.

One of the most interesting of these was Weekly Shonen Magazine, or 週刊少年マガジン. "Shonen" here means something like "young men's" (literally = "few years"), and I believe the readership was largely young men ranging in age from 15 to 30 or so. This experience was interesting partly because, at the time, Weekly Shonen Magazine was the best selling manga publication in Japan, selling significantly over 2 million copies every single week. Each issue of the magazine was something like 300 pages long, comprising 20 page episodes in serials by a different creative teams.

That's right, contributors to Weekly Shonen Magazine generated 20 pages of a story every single week.

At the time, the chief editor for Weekly Shonen Magazine was Ishii-sensei (I believe, I hope my memory isn't going out on me here, but if anyone knows differently, please correct me). Ishii-sensei had previously edited Monthly Shonen Magazine, and his particular editorial style had succeed in pulling that magazine out of a long term slump and rocketing it to relative popularity. This success prompted his promotion to editor-in-chief-ship of Weekly Shonen Magazine, and it was under his direction that the magazine moved into the most popular slot, against its long time competitor, Weekly Shonen Jump.

Now, what was Ishii-sensei's strategy for extracting 20 pages of story each from a large number of creative teams such that the combined product would be read by millions of young men every single week? The answer is of interest in the context of the present state of US comics as it involved intrusive and overbearing editorial oversight.

Of course, I didn't see Ishii-sensei himself engage in this process, but I witnessed it multiple times by his underlings in various meetings with manga artists.

First, the basic schedule. My understanding is that scripts were worked out one week in advance, and I assume editorial intervention worked the same way during that stage of the process, although I never witnessed it. The artists received the script at the start of their week. Two days later, they met with the editor assigned to their story. On the basis of these meetings, they'd spend the next couple days finalizing pencils, then perhaps go through a final meeting before spending the rest of the week inking.

(Yes, these artists worked hard! I remember talking to one who worked at home, but still complained he never got to see his kids. Editorial meetings with artists might happen any time of day or night, as needed to meet the deadline.)

OK, so what happened in an initial meeting? The editorial intervention was complete and domineering. Change the shape of the panels on this page; show an event from this angle, not that one; give us more of this kind of feeling (usually: excitement, urgency, passion, whatever). No aspect of what the artist had done was immune to editorial intervention. The 20 pages generated at the end of that 2 week period (one for writing, the other for drawing) was very much a team effort, as much the product of the editors' tastes and vision as of the writer and illustrator.

So, why is this interesting? Well, as The League has pointed out, a similar kind of editorial interventionism has been having a disastrous effect on US comics. Titles have been killed, good ideas shelved, bad ideas promoted—all because the editors put their decisions about comic book writing / illustrating on a higher plane than that of the creators.

OK, so what was different in the Weekly Shonen Magazine case, as opposed to (oh, I don't know, say) the current state of DC comics?

Well, the answer is really very simple. One thing which was patently obvious from observing the editors under Ishii-sensei at Weekly Shonen Magazine is that they were all themselves ultra hardcore manga fans.

I mean, these guys were hardcore. If not ultra-otaku, then some kind of refined badass version of the comic fan, high on his power. Not because it was mere power, but because it was power over comics.

I remember, for example, one afternoon, I was traveling around with an editor, and we had an hour to kill before a meeting with an artist. What did we do? Stop at a nearby toy and model store, so he could browse through large scale robot / godzilla / ultraman models. Here, work and play coincided.

Another incident, an editor (much less otaku, more badass) meeting with an artist at midnight in a cafe, then talking to her for hours about the comic, pushing her to improve the art, layout, the "kanji," or "feeling," conveyed by every single page.

Do you think Dan DiDio spends his spare time buying Giant Robot toys? Does he meet with creators in the middle of the night for as long as it takes?

So, I think the difference here is attitude. Interest. Caring.

The interventionist editors for Weekly Shonen Magazine didn't intervene on the basis of some idea about what would sell, or imagination about what goes on in the mind of a teenager. They intervened on the basis of their own fandom, on the basis of what they wanted to read personally, themselves, for real.

This does not seem to be the case for some of the "Big Two" editorial horror stories we've heard in the US.

Not that I'm entirely in favor of interventionism—I'm in general very much a fan of creator control, and letting the idea man (or woman) follow his (or her) vision.

But I also think editorial oversight can be good. Editors can make a novel—or a comicbook!—better . . . so long as their feedback comes from the right place (genuine knowledge and caring) rather than mere fantasy and greed.

seen in philly

2012-01-19T17:17:00.001-05:00

A large African American man selling girl scout cookies out of the trunk of a pristine black Lincoln town car.

oh, america

2012-01-19T13:00:00.002-05:00

You bitch:

"The role of government is to secure for citizens the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In that order. It's like a filter. If the government wants to do something that makes us a little unhappy, or takes away some of our liberty, it's okay, providing they're doing it to save our lives. That's why the cops can lock you up if they think you're a danger to yourself or others. You lose your liberty and happiness to protect life. If you've got life, you might get liberty and happiness later."

~ more disturbingly realistic "irony" (= documentary) from Doctorow's Little Brother.

I bolded the naughty parts to help you out if you've drunk the koolaid. God help us all you fuckers if you don't see that this fiction has come true and we live in a fucking police state.

The most important point, though, is to notice where the flag waving happens: if you're pro Obama's shit-on-the-public-and-spend-their-money-in-Africa-beating-up-on-random-dictators-and-replacing-them-with-America-hating-Islamists stance OR you think beating up on foreigners is a higher priority than helping / feeding / employing American citizens in this hemorrhaging economy then you are equally anti-American in my books. Don't believe the Republican v. Democrat hype but look at actual differences (or lack thereof!) in policy.

The good Lord said, "first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye." We'd better get our own backyard in order before we get back to telling the rest of the world how to mow theirs.

Vote Ron Paul.

good news at last

2012-01-19T01:21:00.003-05:00

Some evidence that God still exists. Now those shystering, crap-producing, freedom-hating, audience-cheating fucks in LA can join the poor, the lovers of peace, the African-Americans, and everyone else Obama made promises to during his campaign but whom he has since let down. Of course, unlike those groups, the producers of excrement like Jack and Jill don't have a legitimate complaint, but it's hard to see how this isn't good news.

If both SOPA and Obama lose, we might wake up in a slightly better (i.e. more American) country. I'm in a patriotic mood tonight:

lawyers for sopa

2012-01-18T13:36:00.005-05:00

Guess who supports SOPA? In addition to the obvious suspects (e.g. Time Warner or the Screen Actors Guild), there appear to be a large number of law firms. I guess that tells you who's really going to benefit. The culprits:

Baker & Hostetler LLP
Covington & Burling LLP
Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman, P.C.
Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
Irell & Manella LLP
Jenner & Block LLP
Kelley Drye & Warren LLP
Kendall Brill & Klieger LLP
Kinsella Weitzman Iser Kump & Aldisert LLP
Lathrop & Gage LLP
Loeb & Loeb LLP
Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp LLP
Morrison & Foerster LLP
Phillips Nizer, LLP
Proskauer Rose LLP
Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi LLP
Shearman & Sterling LLP
Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
White & Case LLP

Do what you can to stop SOPA, however insignificant.

ghetto d ~ master p

2012-01-17T21:56:00.003-05:00

After SOPA, gems like this will be lost forever, like tears in rain. Do what you can, however insignificant.

sane approach to terrorism

2012-01-16T23:01:00.002-05:00

I'd never really believed in terrorists before—I mean, I knew that in the abstract there were terrorists somewhere in the world, but they didn't really represent any risk to me. There were millions of ways that the world could kill me—starting with getting run down by a drunk burning his way down Valencia—that were infinitely more likely and immediate than terrorists. Terrorists kill a lot fewer people than bathroom falls and accidental electrocutions. Worry about them always struck me as about as useful as worrying about getting hit by lightning.

~ Cory Doctorow (2008) Little Brother

don't worry

2012-01-15T02:03:00.001-05:00

~ paper rad

christopher hitchens, rip

2011-12-16T18:49:00.006-05:00

Passing of another great orator / writer / reformed-communist-revolutionary.

I strongly recommend Hitchens' biography, Hitch-22. In all likelihood, given his slow death from cancer, Hitchens will be remembered most for his vocal pro-atheist stance, and his consistency in maintaining and defending his beliefs even in the face of a fatal disease. For me, however, the more interesting and compelling side of Hitchens was his political metamorphosis from left-wing radical to staunch pro-interventionist supporter of both Iraq wars. Like great left intellectuals of the early 20th cent. (e.g. Aldous Huxley or George Orwell) Hitchens gradually grew to realize the inconsistency between the rhetoric of the left (pro-worker / underdog) and its actual policy choices and implementation of those policies (Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, or take your pick of any practicing communist country out there). Amongst many other amusing anecdotes and diatribes, Hitch-22 details Hitchens gradual realization that the libertarian and collectivist tendencies of the "left" (communist?) ideology were in profound and inherent conceptual conflict. Facing a choice, he chose liberty, freedom, and the autonomy of individuals over the dogmatic adherence to collectivism, developing a surprisingly (disappointingly!) idiosyncratic, but internally consistent and well-motivated, stance, unique on the political scene.

He will be sorely missed, both for his courage to hold consistent and reasonable views, and for his eloquence in defending them.

Explaining what the "left" would have to be like for me to identify with it.

If there is a heaven based on merit, Hitchens will go there; and if it is based on faith alone, it won't be worth going to . . .

tabula rasa

2011-12-07T22:50:00.002-05:00

burn this mf down

2011-11-29T21:22:00.002-05:00

~ Killer Mike, apparently keeping it real despite my worries . . .

footnote to a reference

2011-11-20T23:36:00.005-05:00

In Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys (1995) there is a scene where Bruce Willis awakes in the present (our future) after his second time traveling episode (to 1995) to find the "scientists" who sent him on his way arranged around his bed singing "Blueberry Hill." The scene is referred to by Wikipedia as "a direct homage to the 'Dry Bones' scene in Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective."

Scientists sing to Willis.

It strikes me, however, that the scene is more of an homage to Dennis Potter himself (and his work as a whole), a talent who, upon reflection, shares much with Gilliam and surely must have influenced him greatly.

Dennis Potter wrote a sequence of powerful teleplays for British TV, including Pennies from Heaven, Brimstone and Treacle, The Singing Detective, Lipstick on Your Collar, and Karaoke. He had a cunning knack for combining powerful drama (often drawn from his own personal experience) with fantasy and humor. A trademark of all his teleplays is the thorough integration of music into the story, often involving lip-synced routines during hallucinatory or revelatory experiences by the primary characters.

In the Wikipedia referenced "Dry Bones" scene, doctors are indeed arranged around a patient (a standin for Potter himself, who also suffered from a debilitating skin condition) experiencing a combination of nervous breakdown and dissociation from reality, much as in the Twelve Monkeys scene. In Twelve Monkeys, however, the song being sung is not "Dem Bones," but "Blueberry Hill," a song referenced by Potter in the later teledrama Lipstick on Your Collar (where the Fats Domino version is lipsunc by a young, debuting Ewan McGregor):

[For completeness' sake, it's worth noting that in Gilliam's scene the doctors actually sing (relatively poorly) the classic tune, while in both Potter scenes, the songs are lipsunc.]

A crucial datum here is the dates: Potter died in 1994, succumbing to pancreatic cancer a mere 9 days after his wife's death from breast cancer. Given that Twelve Monkeys appeared in 1995, it was likely being shot or written in 1994 when Gilliam must have heard of Potter's demise. What better way to memorialize him than to insert scenes (not just the singing itself, but the setup when Willis hears "Blueberry Hill" in 1995) combining Potter's love of period music with his realization of that love through musical numbers?

Most telling of all, however, are the thematic continuities between Gilliam's work and Potter's. Of course, Gilliam is a mature artist in his own right, with a very distinctive style, so it would be a mistake to attribute too much of his voice to the influence of Potter. Nevertheless, there are telling similarities—at the very least, Gilliam must see himself as participating in the same tradition, realizing the same spirit, as Potter.

Most compelling to me is the example of Brazil (1985). Brazil, in both theme and execution, is strikingly Potter-like. Gilliam combined personal experiences of a harrowing sort (albeit with bureaucracy rather than disease) with a passionate love story, all transported to a fantastical setting. He unifies these diverse thematic elements with a compelling musical subtext, in this case the song "Brazil":

Brazil is notable for a) the smooth juxtaposition of humor and horror, and b) the rich inner life of the main character, as illustrated through numerous surreal episodes indicating his dreams / fantasies / imaginations. Both elements are found in all Potter teleplays, yet are (unfortunately) rare in cinema as a whole.

Of course, only Gilliam himself could tell how great Potter's influence, and the exact significance of the telling scene in Twelve Monkeys—what seems clear is that the scene serves as an homage to more of Potter than just The Singing Detective, and that the deep thematic coincidence in the works of Gilliam and Potter deserves further scrutiny.

I1-3DB

2011-11-16T19:36:00.001-05:00

New from Eye of Infinity!

. . . . I recommend downloading each page and the combining for ease of reading.

life is life

2011-11-08T19:58:00.000-05:00

i'm sure they didn't mean that

2011-11-01T06:56:00.001-04:00

"No smoking regulations are enforced."

~ Sign in a Philadelphia subway station

jack-o'-lantern

2011-10-31T00:09:00.002-04:00

oops

2011-10-29T16:58:00.002-04:00

Apparently the original videotape of the first moon landing was inadvertently erased by NASA.

ask confucius

2011-10-22T21:58:00.001-04:00

assaf sharon on west bank settlements

2011-10-19T18:24:00.002-04:00

no comment

2011-10-19T10:00:00.002-04:00

How things get done in Shanghai.

thank you california

2011-10-04T22:52:00.003-04:00

California Proposition 65 Warning:
WARNING: This Product May Contain A Chemical Known To The State Of California To Cause Cancer, Birth Defects Or Other Reproductive Harm.

This trivially true, completely uninformative, and anticonstructive, unorthodoxically capitalized scaremongering was found attached to a rather nice new piece of luggage.

not

2011-10-04T00:03:00.001-04:00

If you've seen the ad for the new Transformers movie on dvd, you might be asking yourself what ignorant idiot could possibly describe it as "the best action movie ever." Apparently no one. Liars.

holy terror, batman!

2011-09-30T19:53:00.003-04:00

Frank Miller's response to 9/11 was finally released this week. Originally conceived as a Batman tale, but repurposed to involve a generic Batman-like vigilante (the "Fixer") after DC nixed the ultra-violent spree of bigotry, hate, and inappropriate sex, the end result is still unmistakably Batman, albeit the Batman of Frank Miller.

Reviews so far have focused (perhaps unsurprisingly) on the objectionable political content. Muslims are portrayed without subtlety as evil terrorists; the heroes are devoid of character except for their righteous indignation and glee in slaughtering terrorists.

But "content," whether it be plot, character development, or political commentary is not the level of which this book was meant to work. Miller himself has described the project as "propaganda," but there is no pretense here to affect the views of the reader, to manipulate him into any particular view.

Rather, Holy Terror is a passionate rant, an explosion of pure emotion onto the page—in some cases, quite literally.

In the aftermath of the first wave.

The comic works on a purely visceral level; as much a cathartic purge for Miller as anything, the reader nevertheless feels the sweep of Miller's rage, even if he can't quite grasp its target. Of course, Miller's targeting Islamic terrorists, also terrorism in general, also (perhaps) something political? Cultural? Some pages filled with caricatures and random evocative images are clearly not narrative, just splatters of Miller's scattered thoughts.

What exactly is this supposed to mean?

Some reviewers have criticized the lack of characterization of the Fixer. Supposedly, since he isn't Batman, we need backstory, characterization, some reason to sympathize. Despite certain deliberately non-Batman moments (the Fixer uses guns, he explicitly says he suffered no childhood tragedy at the hands of crime), the Fixer is unmistakably Batman—not the Batman of lore and continuity, but Miller's Batman. Miller has earned the right to tell stories with that icon, and he clearly does so here, even after discarding the baggage the historical DC Batman has accumulated over the years as part of his mythos.

Miller's Batman was a Batman pushed to the breaking point, turning his frustration at the world into violence. Unabashedly taking justice into his own hands, a vigilante in the purest, truest sense—however ugly such a thing may be. Targeting fascists, he himself was also a fascist. Just the right fascist. This was the message already in Dark Knight Returns, and the Fixer is in many respects the logical extension of this idea.

"Jihad!" . . . "Gesundheit."

In Holy Terror, the climactic terror event, the proxy for 9/11 (after a sequence of nail bombs explode all over the city), occurs when terrorists fly an airplane into a large statue on the city's waterfront. Reviewers have commented on the obvious similarity with the Statue of Liberty, and one even claimed a simplistic liberty-oriented symbolism: "The terrorists somehow scramble fighter jets (several of them) to blow up a thinly veiled Statue of Liberty (because they hate us for our freedom)."

But this interpretation is bizarre. Although it obviously references the Statue of Liberty, Miller's statue is of Blind Justice. And this is no mistake, for liberty is not a virtue in Miller's world. It is not freedom, but justice which reigns supreme in the world of the vigilante, and it is the destruction of justice for which Miller faults the terrorists, not of liberty. Likewise, it is not even the defense of justice which motivates and explains the actions of the Fixer, but rather the realization of justice. It is just that the terrorists die, the consequences of the Fixer's actions to eliminate them and their collaborators beyond their deaths are simply irrelevant.

Oh, you're surprised / offended by this?

Who are we kidding here? How short is your memory?

Ultimately, Holy Terror suffers from many defects. Criticisms of plot and character are not at all misplaced. But the book works at the level of a rant, and it is a rant of beauty and passion. The art is indeed uneven and schizophrenic, but here again, every style has its moment. More importantly, the unevenness of the art strengthens the feeling of raw power. It's as if Miller is blinded by his own emotions, he can't even see straight while caricaturing Obama, or Michael Moore, or whoever those are supposed to be; he can't even put into words his response because it occurs at gut level. There is no reason, no rationality behind the response, just an intense feeling of injustice and a fantasy to respond and correct.

And in this sense, Holy Terror is more honest and true than many responses to 9/11. There's no pretense here, for better or worse. And let's not forget that Miller is still (at least) a profound talent with images. However chaotic the emotions, facile the story, or uneven the storytelling, Miller can still make the jaw drop with his neo-noir blasts of black and blood and light and shadow.

i mock verbatim

2011-09-26T18:18:00.001-04:00

from Zap, no. 10

safety

2011-09-03T20:30:00.003-04:00

"8. Do NOT attempt to deep fat fry in your oven."

~ microwave instruction manual

new jersey sux i

2011-08-30T23:05:00.002-04:00

In New Jersey, all gas is full service. Before visiting New Jersey, the last full service gas station I saw was 25+ years ago, riding in the car with my mom. Apparently, there are still some backwaters where they exist.

save batman: odyssey

2011-08-20T21:33:00.003-04:00

Neal Adam's Batman: Odyssey is one of the most bizarre, surreal, hilarious, incomprehensible vomit-splatters of excess ever committed to the comic page. After running 6 issues, it disappeared from shelves, after revealing in issue 5 a plot twist that (contra the insanity of surrounding events) illustrated a (I thought) very clever insight into the nature of Batman.

[Spoiler? ~ the idea that Batman is being "distracted" (by "clowns" (Joker, Riddler, etc.) who "escape" (yeah right) on a regular basis from so-called Arkham Asylam) from some real, deeper (implication: non-clown) problem / conspiracy / evil.]

Why did the series disappear? It appears from dropped sales and (more specifically) a lack of solicits. Neal Adams himself put out a plea to fans to encourage their local stores to solicit the rest of the story. Help the cause! Don't you want to see the "neanderthals, evolved dinosaurs, magicians, war, death, gnomes, trolls and tests, the like of which Batman, the modern Ulysses has never faced in his life... all happening in a real underworld" ?

If you doubt, check out this extremely entertaining review / summary / homage.

jon on ron

2011-08-16T15:39:00.000-04:00

here.

impending doom

2011-08-11T01:09:00.001-04:00

message in the mountains

2011-08-06T15:45:00.001-04:00

smith on station

2011-07-23T14:36:00.005-04:00

The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.

~ Adam Smith (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments

dictatorship of security

2011-07-16T18:48:00.001-04:00

berlin scene

2011-07-10T16:04:00.003-04:00

Dan Fib with Aaron Jonah Lewis in Berlin.

philosophers are poor company

2011-07-09T17:22:00.002-04:00

It is for a reason of the same kind, that a certain reserve is necessary when we talk of our own friends, our own studies, our own professions. All these are objects which we cannot expect should interest our companions in the same degree in which they interest us. And it is for want of this reserve, that the one half of mankind make bad company to the other. A philosopher is company to a philosopher only; the member of a club, to his own little knot of companions.

~ Adam Smith (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments, 33-4

the other side

2011-06-24T21:19:00.000-04:00

Here.

the economy

2011-06-23T22:51:00.001-04:00

who will say it?

2011-06-22T02:54:00.001-04:00

I will.

tosefta

2011-06-12T23:33:00.001-04:00

reefer man

2011-06-10T21:06:00.002-04:00

Cab Calloway

so you think you're an anarchist?

2011-06-09T21:15:00.006-04:00

Hmmm, Bilderberg in Switzerland . . . Alex Jones wants a protest, of course:

And, of course, Europeans don't know Alex Jones, but I find some of their responses puzzling. Two from this forum:

1. "I don't know who Alex Jones is, but he asks me to protest against a group that came up with the ideas for the EU and the carbon tax. I like the EU and the carbon tax ideas... but I like his line 'in the remote village of St. Moritz'."

Um, yes, remote to the rest of the world, though I know the Swiss hate to think globally. And, um, the point is not the policies, but their source. Agreeable policies laid down by an authoritarian force is the way all dictatorships arise (Hitler, Mussolini, Quaddaffi, . . . ). Maybe the Swiss are just so ready for slavery, they don't care if they have any say in their own domestic affairs (um, so why resist the Euro? Do you even know your own country's policies?).

2. "Someone has to be in charge, so why not our elected people taking advice from a group of unelected experts?

If you are British, do you remember Prime Minister Edward Heath twisting the Queen's arm and making her sign up for the EU? She wasn't elected either. Did you protest at that? No.

Haven't the IMF and World Bank been "lending" money to the elected governments of Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland ? Did you protest at that? No.

Has the world changed since President W. Bush went to Evian? A friend of mine is a Swiss union leader, her son is an anarchist. They both went to Geneva to protest, and were both beaten up by the Geneva police, both requiring hospital treatment. Did that change anything? No.

Sorry I won't be going. Save yourself the train fares and watch it on TV."

Um, so I don't protest either. And I also don't think it changes anything in general. But the attitude here seems to be, let it all slide. Other people are in control, deal with that. Seems unacceptable to me. I may not believe in protests, but I'm not a fatalist. And I may think those who protest are naive, but I'm not going to ridicule them for getting beat up.

And why the fuck are we fighting in Libya?

Um, cause if we don't oust Quaddaffi, then we "lose"? WTF?!?!?!?

on inception

2011-06-06T18:03:00.003-04:00

Lucid dreams can sometimes produce the illusion of reality. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), for example, was based on a series of articles about young men who experienced terrifying dreams, refused to go to sleep, and later died in their sleep. For them, the terror of their dreams became so real it killed them.

More recently, Inception (2010) used a similar setup (entering the dreams of others) in order to explore the possibility of an idea being implanted in one's subconsciousness while one was asleep and dreaming (the "inception" of the title). In this more focused investigation, it is argued that dreams within dreams ("deeper levels" of dreaming) provide access to deeper levels of the subconscious, and thus facilitate the planting of a new idea.

I've experienced dreams within dreams on several occasions, and there are two features of the phenomenon which Inception certainly got right: 1. the dream within a dream tends to be more surreal / bizarre / "unrealistic"; 2. after waking from it, there is a feeling of reality, one has just woken up, which may then be subverted by further dream weirdness. This is a feature which has been exploited to great effect in a variety of places in popular culture—not just the aforementioned movies, but also genre pieces such as Neil Gaiman's Sandman (e.g. the character trapped in an eternal sequence of nightmare wakings at the end of issue #1).

But there is a weakness with the dream within dream approach to inception—if one does succeed in convincing oneself that one is awake, then whatever is remembered of the levels of dreaming that had occurred is judged a part of dream land.

Compare this with another phenomenon: dreaming about dreams. Suppose for example, one experiences a rather vivid and lucid dream, which closely adheres to an actual event, changing it in relatively small respects. Then suppose, as sometime happens, after brief awakening, one dreams a more surreal and bizarre dream, a subconscious response to the incidents of the earlier one. When one awakes from the second dream, the certainty that one is in fact awake, and that the preceding events were in fact dreamed, is not evidence against the reality of the previous dream (in the way it is when dreams are embedded). In fact, if the second dream was sufficiently vivid, one can become uncertain about whether the incidents which inspired it were produced by reality or a previous dream . . .

Of course, the effect depends crucially on the plausibility of the first dream. The essential point here is just that arbitrarily plausible embedded dreams receive an evidential refutation which arbitrarily plausible dream-inspiring dreams do not. Suggestion for a future inception technique?

eating

2011-06-05T23:52:00.001-04:00

Eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

~ Don Delillo (1985) White Noise

macho man randy savage, rip

2011-06-03T01:29:00.000-04:00

ゆらゆら帝国

2011-06-01T22:07:00.000-04:00

john-a-dreams

2011-05-30T21:22:00.003-04:00

Dreams are imperfections of sleep; even so is consciousness the imperfection of waking.

Dreams are impurities in the circulation of the blood; even so is consciousness a disorder of life.

Dreams are without proportion, without good sense, without truth; so also is consciousness.

Awake from a dream, the truth is known: awake from waking, the Truth is—The Unknown.

~ Aleister Crowley, The Book of Lies (1913)

more slave training

2011-05-25T19:03:00.003-04:00

Another sad day for liberty. Thank God someone cares.

memories . . .

2011-05-25T02:31:00.001-04:00

Memories were meant to fade . . . they're designed that way for a reason.

~ Strange Days (1995)

bilal's evolving revolutionary

2011-05-22T17:44:00.005-04:00

Finale to The Hunting Party (1983)

Enki Bilal is a comic book illustrator/writer and movie writer/director who was born in Yugoslavia in 1951 and emigrated to France at the age of nine.

Bilal's art and vision are magnificent, both on the page, and on celluloid, but a theme which runs throughout all his major works (including those he only illustrated) is the role of the revolutionary. It's natural to assume that the atmosphere in post WWII Belgrade influenced this trend, plus perhaps, and more personally, his own family's history (apparently, his father was once a tailer to Tito; more importantly, his father was Bosnian, while his mother was Czechoslovakian).

For whatever reason, the revolutionary, the anti-establishment anti-hero, has featured as a leading character in all of Bilal's significant works. The role of this character, however, has evolved over the course of Bilal's career: from hopeful successes, to temporary victories, to pessimistic post-heroes, doomed to relive the consequences of their revolution(ary act), without even the recollection of its motivation.

Anti-gravity town making trouble for authority figures in The Cruise of Lost Souls (1975)

The initial phase is clearly visible in Bilal's work with Pierre Christin, who wrote a trilogy of fanciful political commentaries for him, eventually collected as Townscapes. In each of these three stories, a mysterious stranger interferes in some bizarre way to bring about a surreal political statement, heartily endorsed by local disaffected townspeople. In the first two, Cruise of Lost Souls (1975) and The Ship of Stone (1976), there's a strong sense that change is achieved, if only on the local level.

With the third book in the trilogy, however, The Town that Didn't Exist (1977), a strange foreboding appears. The local factory has been shut down, and the workers protest for better wages and benefits. When the old man who owns the corporation dies, his crippled daughter inherits his wealth and his business. She employs her financial resources and political influence to construct a utopian dream city for the inhabitants of the old town—here they may do as they please without worries about finances or security.

Here, the progressive social goals of the trilogy's enigmatic protagonist appear to have been achieved, yet when he leaves the new city, he is joined by several of the former factory workers, one of whom proclaims "that town doesn't really exist." Interpretations abound here—is utopian success a dream? Is philanthropic behavior such as that of the daughter in principle impossible in capitalist society? Or is it the workers who are blind to what they can achieve, who doubt the validity of the Marxist utopia that could await them if only they found the right resources? The text is silent on interpretation, but the darkness and ambiguity of the ending casts a long shadow over the earlier stories.

Horus chats with Nikopol about godly matters.

Perhaps the most optimistic of Bilal's revolutionary stories can be found in the first volume of the Nikopol trilogy, his most famous work. The titular character, Alcide Nikopol, unlike almost any other Bilal hero, is not actually a full-fledged revolutionary, but a mere deserter, sentenced to life-long hibernation. When incompetence awakes him on a corrupt future earth, he is partnered with Horus, a "revolutionary" figure in the pantheon of Egyptian gods. Horus wields his supernatural powers to place Nikopol in political power over the Paris of 2023. A fascist dictatorship is overthrown, Nikopol is free to implement the progressive policies of his choice, and Horus abandons control of him for more godly matters.

Yet, despite La Foire aux immortels (1980) evincing the first instance of widespread political control and change achieved by a revolutionary (albeit a reluctant one), the atmosphere at end is far from optimistic. Nikopol goes mad and his son (who looks like his twin due to Nikopol's period of government mandated suspended animation) is placed in control in his stead. By volume 3, Froid Équateur (1982), just a few years later, we learn that Nikopol's son's progressive government has been overthrown by the fascists: revolution is short lived. And Horus himself, the revolutionary deity, is on the run throughout the entire trilogy, defeated multiple times by his peers. (Though in the final scenes of volume 3, after the Egyptian gods' pyramid-shaped space ship is accidentally destroyed, Horus' leadership is finally welcomed.)

Horus takes control.

During the decade+ it took to complete the Nikopol trilogy, Bilal collaborated again with Pierre Christin on The Black Order Brigade (1979) and The Hunting Party (1983) (collected as The Chaos Effect). Both books paint a much bleaker picture of the revolutionary than Bilal's earlier work with Christin. The Black Order Brigade, in particular, features the first introduction of a common theme in Bilal: the ex-revolutionary. Here, a group of passionate progressives who had fought in the Spanish civil war, reconvene in their old age to combat the titular "black order brigade," a fascist death squad with whom they had had many skirmishes during their glory days.

The "Black Order Brigade" assassinate a leftist politician before the eyes of our "heroes."

Unlike in the war itself, however, when the young progressives had been suffused with idealism and optimism, they find their new quest quickly sours. The pains of old age, the indifference of the general public, and the futility of correctly conveying their message (in the media, they are treated as terrorists, no different from their fascist counterparts) drag down their spirits and motivation. By the end, they succeed in eradicating the black order brigade, but at the cost of all lives but that of the original organizer and narrator. In the final panels, as he relates the conclusion to their saga, he mournfully proclaims "I . . . got all my friends killed for a reason I can't even really remember anymore."

Ironically, the mysterious traveling revolutionary of the earlier Bilal / Christin collaborations makes a brief appearance as an accomplice—sympathetic to the cause, but largely outside the specific plans and woes of our heroes. This war is not for him, and its Pyrrhic "victory" hints at the impossibility of radical social change. Idealists cannot succeed, and, more importantly, they cannot even maintain their idealism should they try.

Bilal appears to be obsessed with cobalt blue . . .

In The Black Brigade, ex-revolutionaries choose to resume their activities, with ambiguous, arguably disastrous, consequences. In Bilal's films, e.g. Tykho Moon (1996) and Immortal (2004), the lead characters are ex-revolutionaries forced back into revolutionary action. In the case of Tykho Moon, the title character is a former revolutionary suffering from complete amnesia. He recalls neither his revolutionary acts, nor why he engaged in them.

Nevertheless, Tykho is forced into transgressive acts anew by the bizarre lunar dictatorship of the Mac Bee family, whose degenerative disease demands organ transplants, and with whose genetic code Tykho is uniquely compatible. Although Tykho eventually succeeds in executing the last of the Mac Bees and escapes the moon with his love interest (herself a hired killer and former employee of the dictatorship), the motive is never revolutionary change, but mere survival. An actual revolutionary (from earth) who assists him is spurned on the the topic of political idealism and dies in the violence of the finale.

Another Bilal obsession: the Eiffel Tower, not only appearing here on the Mac Bee's moon (alongside some other faux monuments and the rocket launching pad), but also in Immortal's NYC!

In Tykho Moon, we see the personal details of life (survival, love, the chance to dance with a beautiful woman) overwhelm revolutionary priorities. One who simply lusts for a life to himself is forced into revolutionary action, and consequently, his actions are drained of idealism, and suffused instead with necessity. Obligation, unavoidable and personal. At the end, although the dictators are overthrown, we are given no promises about the future political situation on the moon. Our heroes do not aim at reform, merely survival.

Similar themes can be found in Immortal, Bilal's screen adaptation of his own Nikopol trilogy. Unlike the Nikopol of the comics (and much like Tykho Moon), the Nikopol of Immortal is an ex-revolutionary. He has been sentenced to 30 years imprisonment in suspended animation on a floating prison. A freak accident sets him free prematurely. The fascist NYC in which he finds himself is ruled by a "medical dictatorship," but his name survives as a rallying cry (the "spirit of Nikopol") amongst those who oppose the regime.

Jill learns about humans (since she's quickly becoming one) in the "Human Museum."

Just as in the books, a large chunk of plot is devoted to Horus' attempt to impregnate Jill via Nikopol. Just as in Tykho Moon, the very personal goals of love and survival motivate Nikopol's actions, and the execution of fascist dictators and general social upheaval which take place along the way are largely incidental. In Immortal, not only the whims of the fascist elite, but also those of the gods force Nikopol and Jill into a sequence of bizarre situations. No longer is the blame for the revolutionary's actions foisted solely upon the state—here fate, or at least its proxy, are equally, if not greater to blame.

Horus and Nikopol's first meeting—Nikopol's reciting Baudelaire (as usual), but how does Horus know the words?

So, while Bilal has continued to focus on the revolutionary as character throughout his career, we see a gradual evolution from the revolutionary as active instigator of social change to the revolutionary as accidental instigator of social change. The reluctant revolutionary is at first forced into this position by the very authority figures he eventually destabilizes, though later, it is fate, or forces beyond his control generally rather than merely political forces which motivate his actions.

Amir's lover tries to turn him on to their next mercenary assignment.

The most recent chapter in Bilal's evolving depiction of revolutionaries is the so-called "Hatzfeld tetralogy." Unfortunately, only the first two volumes are available in English (as The Beast Trilogy: Chapters 1&2), so the overall trajectory of the work is as yet unclear to those of us who are linguistically limited. So far, many similarities emerge with Bilal's earlier works. Just as in the Nikopol trilogy, the backstory is elaborate, involving various layers of authoritarianism and fascism. Religious dictatorships, terrorist NGOs, evil policemen, bizarre alien intrusions, all make an appearance, buffeting the world our characters inhabit.

Unlike in the works discussed above, the protagonists are not (yet) explicitly terrorists themselves, but rather mercenaries, scientists, and prodigies for hire to the various competing forces which shape their world. No longer is there an "evil" authoritarian power force, and a "progressive" outsider revolutionary, but rather a sequence of authoritarian forces with various religious and political motivations. There is no "right" side for the would be mercenary to choose, and given the trajectory of alienation from idealism we've seen in Bilal's previous works, it's perhaps unsurprising that the protagonists here do not begin with an ideology, but rather a skill set of interest to ideologues.

The Hatzfeld tetralogy draws more explicitly on Bilal's Yugoslavian heritage than any of his previous works. The story centers around a trio of "Yugoslavians" of different ethnic and religious backgrounds. Their origin is retold by the protagonist Nike Hatzfeld, who's gift is a complete photographic memory (contrast with Tykho's amnesia!) which dates back to his very first days of life, when he and Amir and Leyla (the other two Yugoslavian orphans) lie next to each other in a Sarajevo hospital as it is ripped apart by violence.

Shades of Nazi death camps (and the terror camps of the Yugoslav wars are mentioned explicitly in Nike's recollections).

The chaos of the future world inhabited by Nike, Amir, and Leyla somehow mirrors the violence of the dissolution of Yugoslavia. Bilal focuses on individuals buffeted by larger political and religious forces beyond their control. The revolutionary becomes an employee when there is no right or wrong, but only conflict.

[If we're lucky, the re-emergence of Humanoids as a North American publishing force will result in new editions of the Nikopol trilogy (now, sadly out of print and exorbitantly priced) and the Hatzfeld tetralogy.]

cannes = nazi

2011-05-20T07:52:00.003-04:00

What does it mean to sympathize with an ideology? Does saying you sympathize with it qualify you as sympathizing with it?

(Even if you are obviously joking, say? And you say you are joking, and you are referencing the particular details of your personal life (say, you are raised by a Jewish father and told by your mother on her deathbed that he was not in fact your biological father)? And you explicitly reject those features of the ideology which are damning (e.g. WWII) and emphasize your sympathy for the human being (no matter how "evil") who inspired the ideology rather than the ideology itself?)

Or is sympathizing with an ideology acting upon it, say by demonstrating fascist ideology through the censure and control of the speech and acts of individuals? Who here is acting "contrary to the ideals of humanity and generosity"? Who here is the real nazi?

all is not right with the world

2011-05-15T02:00:00.003-04:00

snow in may . . . .

martyrs . . .

fascists . . .

soulbook

2011-05-11T18:26:00.001-04:00

Here.

how to film the dark tower

2011-05-09T22:13:00.002-04:00

Apparently, there are / were plans to make a trilogy (+ TV series?) of the Dark Tower books by Stephen King. I will now tell you how to adapt the Dark Tower books to the screen effectively. Any deviations from this plan will be atrocious, I assure you.

First, a caveat: I have not actually finished the series. I read the first book many many times, and it is tied very closely in my memory to various experiences during my formative years even my love of reading itself. I read the second and third books hungrily and was quite excited by them, but did not resume consumption of the remainder until some time after the fourth was published and the series resumed.

After the third book, my experience was with audio books. I listened through about a third into the final book. I still have the audio book on my computer, but doubt I will ever be able to stomach going back to it.

The success of the first Dark Tower stories lies entirely in their imagery and atmosphere, the old west, the Beatles, dark magic—these elements seamlessly blend into an organic whole which evokes a magical picture in the reader's mind.

By the last few books in the series, however, Stephen King had fallen in love with his characters. For a storyteller, this is the death of their craft, in particular, the death of arc and character—after he fell in love with his characters, he was scared to kill them off, and, correspondingly, unable to produce legitimate tension in the story; after he fell in love with his characters, he was unable to make them cruel, and, consequently, Roland the anti-hero became Roland the kind and wise uncle whose supposed willingness to sacrifice his loved ones for the quest was given lip-service, but not realized in any convincing or tension-inducing way.

Furthermore, King's near-death experience induced him to force a post-modern turn on the series, emphasizing a multiverse perspective, fatalism, and introducing himself as a character. Fatalism kills suspense, it kills character, it removes the incentive for motivation, which drives both character development and plot—fatalism is the the bane of modern genre storytelling.

So, fuck the end to the last Dark Tower book: King, you had your chance and punted—if a Dark Tower movie adaptation is going to be any good whatsoever, it will have to follow the first rule of adaptations in a very serious way and feel free to violate the source material.

Usually this means feeling free to replace features of the source material inappropriate for the relevant new medium. For example, the Harry Potter films erred on the side of including incidents from the books rather than developing characters in the spirit of the books. Less time spent on including all the scenes from the first books in early movies, and more time spent on showing us in a manner unique to the medium of cinema the same character features that were demonstrated in the books in a manner unique to the medium of text would have greatly improved the quality and efficacy of the early movies. (I refrain from commenting on later ones as I am unqualified.)

So, the rules for adapting the Dark Tower books to the screen effectively are

1. Ignore the NYC plotline; ignore the multiverse aspect; ignore everything that is self-referential.

If the multiverse is included, everything will become convoluted, in-joke, inaccessible, and directed only at the fans or King himself. If it is abandoned, then there is some hope of telling a story which stands on its own, and is compelling to the viewer whether he has read the books or not.

2. Ignore cutesy references to other Stephen King books / The Wizard of Oz.

Same reasons as above for the first; for the second, it ridiculously undermines the atmosphere.

3. Acknowledge you cannot tell the whole story.

Making a good (series of) movies about the Dark Tower series means acknowledging you cannot reproduce every detail and nuance of the series of seven (sometimes very long) books. Confront this fact and meditate on it. If you do not, you will fail. Begin with the idea that only a very very tiny fraction of the material will make it to the screen—in the case of a series of this magnitude, we're looking at less than 1/20th, even if, say, a trilogy is green lit. Probably less.

4. Once you have meditated on 3, pick moments from the book to collect in each of the films which (a) will stand alone, (b) are cinematic, (c) will constitute a compelling story for someone who hasn't read the books, and (d) allow for an organic and internally consistent development of the characters. How many and which moments you collect will depend crucially on the scope of the series which is funded.

For example, suppose a trilogy is funded: you might break the story down such that:

I. includes the first story in detail, the discovery of the boy, and the Gunslinger's sacrifice of the boy.

II. The Drawing of the Three? Introduce the coherence of the quest, and the secondary characters? Culminate, perhaps, in the grand train journey across the radiated countryside?

III. Some kind of climax - combining features of Wolves of the Calla, and Song of Susannah with an actual confrontation with the Man in Black at the actual Dark Tower. If the cutseyness, the NYC scenes, the meta-fictional world crossing are left out, and one focusses entirely on a) scenes crucial for character development, and b) cinematic imagery which also advances story, one may be able to compress key elements together into a coherent conclusion to the story.

Then, keep the flashback story in Wizard and Glass in reserve, to use as a prequel if one hits financial gold with the trilogy.

Key point: Don't bring "the boy" (Jake) back!!!!!! Bringing back Jake was the beginning of the end for The Dark Tower—it is the abandoning of consequences, the undermining of Roland (the Gunslinger)'s character, and the introduction of multiverse, metafictional, self-indulgent, character-loving idiocy.

Follow these rules, and a powerful adaptation could be made. Abandon them in favor of the full details of the story, and you court pathetic, self-referential claptrap. Tell a good story! This is more important than faithfulness to the exact text of King's novels. Remember that it only takes one man to create a novel, but an entire team of individuals and millions of dollars to create a movie. There is much less room for ego and self-indulgence in the realm of cinema. This brings us to

5. If Stephen King doesn't sign over the rights and agree to 1, 2, 3, and 4, then don't waste any of (our) time or (your) money, just forget about the project, and go reread the books instead.

rip osama bin laden

2011-05-07T21:36:00.002-04:00

For some reason, a large number of Americans seem to find the death of Osama bin Laden cathartic. Now, I'm no friend of islamic fundamentalism, and 9/11 has cast a long long shadow over my life and thoughts, but I have a hard time feeling anything other than ambivalence about Osama's demise.

For one thing, glee at the death of someone else, no matter how "evil," seems in poor taste. More significant, however, is the mistake of thinking Osama was the enemy, or the ultimate cause of 9/11.

9/11 was caused by ideas—the radical fundamentalist muslim idea that the murder of non-believers is permitted + the terrorist's central idea that creation of fear in one's enemy is a means of bringing about political change. If I'm going to feel some kind of catharsis about 9/11, if I'm going to feel "we did it!" or "at last!" or "victory!", then it's only going to occur when I see evidence we've done something to combat these ideas. Are there fewer people today who hate the US? Who think that violence against citizens of the US is both permitted and righteous? Who believe that the suppression of alternate belief systems is both permitted and righteous? If there's evidence to this effect, then I haven't seen it.

With respect to the death of bin Laden itself, the source of my ambivalence is uncertainty about the effect of his death, and the manner in which it was achieved, on the propagation of these dangerous ideas. Whatever guidance (financial, conceptual, or spiritual) bin Laden gave to al Qaeda and related terrorist elements, the fact of the matter is that terrorist acts require hardly any resources at all. Bombs can be built in the kitchen from household chemicals. The most important commodity for terrorism is willingness. If the (manner of the) death of bin Laden creates a greater willingness in potential terrorists to carry out violent acts / sacrifice their personal wellbeing in the name of islam, then it is not a victory, but a mark of increased danger for the American people.

Of course, I already think the real dangers of terrorist attacks are overblown—I'm not advocating public fear here or (heaven forbid!) increased security measures of any kind. The point is that this is a question we should be asking ourselves. If your glee at the death of bin Laden is simple revenge fulfillment, fine, I sympathize. But if you think it has somehow reduced the terrorist threat, lessened the influence of radical islamic ideas, or made America safer, then you presume to a far greater insight into the psychology of the muslim world than I do.

de sade on law

2011-05-03T00:10:00.002-04:00

The divine Marquis observed that all men are different in temperament, and consequently that "to seek to impose universal laws would be a palpable absurdity: such a proceeding would be as ridiculous as that of the general who would have all his soldiers dressed in a uniform of the same size." If there is then to be law, however, what form should it take?

That we cannot devise as many laws as there are men must be admitted; but the laws can be lenient, and so few in number, that all men, of whatever character, can easily observe them. Furthermore, I would demand that this small number of laws be of such a sort as to be adaptable to all the various characters; they who formulate the code should follow the principle of applying more or less, according to the person in question. It has been pointed out that there are certain virtues whose practice is impossible for certain men, just as there are certain remedies which do not agree with certain constitutions. Now, would it not be to carry your injustice beyond all limits were you to send the law to strike the man incapable of bowing to the law? Would your iniquity be any less here than in a case where you sought to force the blind to distinguish against colors?

~ de Sade (1795) La Philosophie dans le boudoir

e k station

2011-04-29T07:28:00.003-04:00

A sci-fi epic seen in a dream. Blue faced prison guards, metal corridors jutting chaotically with unnecessary rivets and never used equipment. A prisoner roughly handled (they're worried he'll be boring in white). The warden - a head with two bodies, awkwardly placed one before the other below his blue face. An uncomfortably looking special effect - he prances awkwardly before a black curtain. Suddenly, an incongruously slick space battle, lasers blazing, a large asymmetrical orange hulk of wires and bulkheads pursuing a fleet of tiny winged spheres, slick and shiny galvanized steel-blue, sharp contrast to the matte rust of their awkward combatant. Star Wars as envisioned by Georges Méliès.

on being "well read"

2011-04-22T21:28:00.002-04:00

Recently, The League wrote a very interesting post, inspired by an NPR article, which itself was inspired by a Roger Ebert post. The topic at issue is what it means to be "well read" in an age when vastly more has been (and is now being) written than any one person could possibly read. Obviously, a similar consideration limits the consumption of any media (film, TV shows, music, etc.).

The NPR article describes two strategies:

1. culling - reject large categories of items as not worth consuming

2. surrender - acknowledge that time is finite and one just won't get to some items which are (nevertheless) worth consuming

As The League and some of his commenters pointed out, in practice most people utilize both strategies, and both indeed seem necessary in this era of information oversaturation. But it still leaves the question of whether or not it is still possible to be "well read," and if so, what that would mean. The suggestion of the NPR writer seems to miss the point of the original phrase.

If "well-read" means "not missing anything," then nobody has a chance. If "well-read" means "making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully," then yes, we can all be well-read. But what we've seen is always going to be a very small cup dipped out of a very big ocean, and turning your back on the ocean to stare into the cup can't change that.

"Well read" when said of Thomas Jefferson (The League's example) or David Foster Wallace, or a witty conversationalist one meets at a cocktail party certainly does not mean "not missing anything." And "making a genuine effort to explore thoughtfully" doesn't seem very helpful for those who wish to be "well read."

A natural way to interpret the phrase is in terms of a list of must reads, works anyone must have read in order to be "well read"—as The League points out, however, if this list is identified with the canon as taught in high school, it seems problematic. How was it chosen? Why Thomas Hardy, whom every schoolboy hates?

If custom, or even whim, dictates some of the members of the high school English class canon, how can we separate out the wheat from the chaff? I think there is definitely a unique set of problems which arise post-20th century for this endeavor.

1. Maybe sufficient longevity of popularity is enough to ensure the read-worthiness of some works (e.g. The Iliad or Shakespeare), but this process is open to artificial corruption (e.g. continued "popularity" of Thomas Hardy as measured in sales of books to students for whom it is required), requires culling itself (e.g. must one today have read Caesar's Gallic Wars to be well read? Even if that might have been the case 200 years ago in England?), and, perhaps most importantly, does not apply to contemporary works which one must read to be "well read."

Strangely, Ebert's musings are set off by reminiscing about authors considered required reading in the mid-20th century, but whom have become forgotten, irrelevant, or both:

"Consider: who at this hour (apart from some professorial specialist currying his "field") is reading Mary McCarthy, James T. Farrell, John Berryman, Allan Bloom, Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Edmund Wilson, Anne Sexton, Alice Adams, Robert Lowell, Grace Paley, Owen Barfield, Stanley Elkin, Robert Penn Warren, Norman Mailer, Leslie Fiedler, R.P. Blackmur, Paul Goodman, Susan Sontag, Lillian Hellman, John Crowe Ransom, Stephen Spender, Daniel Fuchs, Hugh Kenner, Seymour Krim, J.F. Powers, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Rahv, Jack Richardson, John Auerbach, Harvey Swados--or Trilling himself?" [Ebert quotes Ozick]

But this brings us to:

2. Being "well read" seems context specific. Certainly, temporally context specific—if Ebert's discussion is presumed to be relevant, than a greater onus falls upon he who would be "well read" to pursue the top works of his own time, than those of the past. Or, to put it in the above terminology, his culling of contemporary works is assumed to be less severe.

Also, here, one might want to add cultural or geographic context specificity. Can the "well read" Englishman and the "well read" Spaniard be expected to read the same (or even largely the same) books? Surely one is to read Shakespeare in the original and the other to read Cervantes. But in an age of increasing informational contact between cultures, how much from outside and how much from within is the "well read" supposed to consume? Am I expected to read every Nobel Prize winner? Has anyone? What if their works have not been translated into my language? And also here, one must temper the value of such works by the cost of translation: a lesser work by a writer of one's native language may have a greater positive effect in improving one's rhetorical and linguistic skills (marks of the "well read"?) than a superior work translated from the original.

3. The problems of media and genre. The League rightfully defends the value of cultivating genre interests. Part of the benefit of being "well read" comes in uncovering layers of meaning in new works, of spotting allusions, of recognizing influences and references, of fully understanding the language they use—yet this endeavor seems possible today only within a narrowly defined genre / medium. Although I cannot grasp all the languages in communicative use today, I may be able to grasp the language of film, of poetry, of comics, of the mystery novel, the sci-fi novel, the pot-boiler, or some other one or handfull of the myriad niche markets which have arisen.

As the amount of available information increases, inevitably, the expected overlap in background knowledge diminishes. While a British novelist in the nineteenth century might have been able to assume a broad familiarity with Shakespeare and Chaucer and major Latin works amongst his readers (hmm, here also contextualization by class?), the modern writer can make no such assumptions. Within the confines of genre, however, expectations are heightened. If you would only be reading this piece were you a fan already, and being a fan implies reading such and such other pieces, then the writer / creator can assume you've read them, and reference them and build on them. Ideally, heightening the complexity of their work (and also your enjoyment of it). Not that things always work out this way.

I think these worries speak against the possibility of a list of canonical works for the "well read." I don't think this defeats the possibility of being "well read," though. To me, the word refers to one who has read widely, but also has digested and internalized the information he consumed. There must be a familiarity with classics, particularly those which shaped modern thought and language (Shakespeare on every list here). In terms of contemporary works, allowances for culling must be made. I would not withhold the term "well read" from someone just because they had not read (say) David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, even though that work is superior to most of those on Ebert's list. It's simply too much to expect.

Perhaps, though, the bottom line is just that to be "well read" is no longer meaningful. One could read the works that made one "well read" once upon a time, yet not achieve the same effect—understanding the context of every remark, catching every reference, spotting and understanding every allusion. And no alternative strategy seems able to achieve that effect either.

a roof

2011-04-19T17:00:00.001-04:00

on reading unfinished novels

2011-04-17T02:27:00.006-04:00

There's no reason to read an unfinished novel if the author is alive. He just might finish it, for instance, and then that finished product would have the stamp of approval from an artist (presumably) one is already interested in, or at least, one has heard is worth being interested in. If that artist has produced an unfinished work worth consuming, one might as well wait until he/she is dead before consumption in order to ensure that one doesn't eavesdrop on notes and ramblings when a mature work is imminent.

[Exception which proves the rule: the recent trite crap "completion" of the Star Wars saga. nuff said.]

[Of course, in media other than the written word, unfinished status can be conferred by situations other than the writer/creator's death: go watch post haste if you have not already, Andrzej Żuławski's On the Silver Globe, the greatest unfinished movie of which I am aware—and be moved.]

There are, of course, famous examples here, e.g. Kafka's Amerika or Nabokov's Dying is Fun—although in both cases an ethical question arises since the respective authors requested their unfinished works destroyed upon their deaths.

In the case of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King, I know of no such request. The question does, nevertheless, arise: what legitimates publishing this unfinished work and distributing it widely?

Apparently, upon Wallace's suicide from depression, he left behind on his desk "a neat stack of manuscript, twelve chapters totaling nearly 250 pages" and "hundreds and hundreds" of additional pages and notes for the novel scattered about his office. (There was, however, no outline, or explicit description of the novel's intended structure and ordering of events / written sections.) His editor on Infinite Jest, Michael Pietsch, was tasked with assembling this chaos into something that could be published, and make money for the publisher / the estate.

Graciously, the details of these circumstances are described in an introductory editor's note.

So, when reading the book, there are many questions: is this the right order of the information? Would this chapter have even been included? In this form? Questions which, when reading a completed work, are not raised. And worries (questions / confusions / imaginations) about the structure of the work are no longer criticisms of the author (and, perhaps, only on some occasions criticisms of the editor), but rather merely circumstances under which one might imagine one's own perfect version of the work, or extrapolate its completion into the ideal work for you, the reader (even if not one that's realistic for the author to have produced, editor to have approved, etc.).

Was it right? ( . . . to publish this unfinished, to charge $27.99, etc.?) In the case of The Pale King, I know of no countervailing demands expressed by Wallace, and I emphatically agree with Pietsch's assessment that there is plenty here for the reading public to enjoy / value. (Even if there is some sense in which the dead are being taken advantage of, you, the $27.99 reader are not. I say this only a fifth of the way through the book, and already having earned back the cost through insight, amusement, and beatific and sublime experiences.)

The first chapter (only a page and a half) is almost worth the price of admission alone for sheer beauty. There are ups and downs, but chapter 9, the "author's forward" definitely confirms the value and insight of the work, no matter how disjoint, and (ultimately, despite the fact that only Wallace's name appears on the title page) collaborative the work in this form is. (Look, chapter 11 is just notes, it would not have appeared in a finished novel by Wallace. And the influence of its content on the novel would not have been felt at the precise place in the ordering in which it was placed. Pietsch knows this. But he acknowledges it and, more importantly (consequently?) you the reader know it as well: this affects your processing and interpretation of chapter 11.)

I have to admit, however, a spooky feeling, when reading passages like

. . . this right here is me as a real person, David Wallace, age forty, SS no. 975-04-2012, addressing you from my Form 8829—deductible home office at 725 Indian Hill Blvd., Claremont 91711 CA, on this fifth day of spring, 2005, to inform you of the following: All of this is true. This book is really true.

Of course, even in this "autobiographical" section, there are deliberate obfuscations and falsities. But from the style, from the circumstances, we know that one day Wallace sat down and wrote these words, and he wrote them from a perspective in which the novel was finished, and published, and it had only taken 3 years to write. We know that he put himself in that frame of mind, and "talked" to the potential reader. But within 3 years he had become so completely unable to find this frame of mind in which the novel was done again that he committed suicide.

This is a man talking directly to you, the reader, from beyond the grave, yet it was not him who decided that you would hear him, but his estate and publisher and editor. Again, not that that's wrong (this is the start of the aforementioned chapter 9, well worth the price of the book alone in terms of insight and depth), but that it's certainly spooky. And you allow yourself to imagine Wallace cutting it, or rephrasing it, or (more likely, my imagination), dropping the conceit that the work is real, and introducing the (admittedly, startlingly profound) discussion of the history and nature of American taxation into it in a more organic way. To imagine that this was an exercise in the style of his popular nonfiction essays to bring together information that ultimately would be more effectively (?) conveyed through fiction.

But then that's just my fantasy of David Foster Wallace, and what he might have done. But to even take the first tentative steps on this staircase, to even find a direction in which to look, is not only worthwhile, but strangely creative as a reading experience.

from the pale king

2011-04-16T00:24:00.004-04:00

The next suitable person you're in light conversation with, you stop suddenly in the middle of the conversation and look at the person closely and say, "What's wrong?" You say it in a concerned way. He'll say, "What do you mean?" You say, "Something's wrong. I can tell. What is it?" And he'll look stunned and say, "How did you know?" He doesn't realize something's always wrong, with everybody. Often more than one thing. He doesn't know everybody's always going around all the time with something wrong and believing they're exerting great will power and control to keep other people, for whom they think nothing's ever wrong, from seeing it. This is the way of people. Suddenly ask what's wrong, and whether they open up and spill their guts or deny it and pretend you're off, they'll think you're perceptive and understanding. They'll either be grateful, or they'll be frightened and avoid you from then on. Both reactions have their uses, as we'll get to. You can play it either way. This works over 90 percent of the time.

~ David Foster Wallace in The Pale King:

Tru Dat.

idols of the tribe

2011-04-10T11:30:00.001-04:00

helen mirren plays john gielgud

2011-04-09T16:31:00.004-04:00

Some kind of strange Russell Brand connection, perhaps, but in two recent movies, Helen Mirren has reprised roles formerly played by John Gielgud:

Mirren plays Prospero ("Prospera") in Julie Taymor's The Tempest (2010), played by Gielgud in Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (1991).

Mirren also plays Hobson in Arthur (2011), originally played by Gielgud in 1981.

. . . perhaps that's why she's a Dame and he's a Knight . . .

cherokee nation

2011-04-05T21:38:00.002-04:00

The Cherokee Nation will return.

rowlf

2011-04-04T20:32:00.003-04:00

Richard Corben's Rowlf kicks some demon soldier ass to save his mistress

semantic "rhyming" slang

2011-03-29T21:39:00.006-04:00

Cockney rhyming slang uses a phrase, or more cryptically the first word of a phrase, the last word of which rhymes with a target word, to stand in for that word. For example, "trouble and strife" for "wife" or, more tricky, "have a butcher's" for "have a look", since "butcher's hook" rhymes with "look."

Of course, understanding the intended referent depends crucially upon viewing the phrase as salient. If one doesn't think "hook" upon hearing "butcher's ___," it will be awfully difficult to conclude the intended meaning is "look." As such, cockney rhyming slang has inspired some awfully amusing parodies. For example, 1 min. in or so, Reginald Perrin's son begins using completely obscure and ridiculous rhyming slang:

including, for example "chitty chitty" for "rhyming slang" (since "chitty chitty bang bang" rhymes with "slang").

More recently, Stephen Fry has had his bourgeoise way with rhyming slang:

using, for example, "bulletproofs" for "guests" (from "bulletproof vest") and "Barney" for "double" (via "Barney Rubble").

Now, the difficult trick with rhyming slang is that the sound of the unspoken word is relevant for determining the meaning. But we can see a similar effect, when it is the meaning of an omitted word which gives a compound meaning. For example, consider the sequence "cyberpunk," "steampunk," and "icepunk." The foremost was coined by Bruce Bethke in 1983, and combines the terms "cybernetics" and "punk." The basic idea, of course, was a mixture of the information-flow, artificial intelligence, computer programming nerd priorities associated with the computer age (for some early sci-fi writers, cybernetics was synonymous with AI (e.g. Stanislaw Lem)) with the hip anarchic attitude of 80s punk rock.

But once the term caught the public imagination, "steampunk" was coined. Steampunk still assumes a technological acumen, but now focuses on counterfactual developments, including in particular the possibility that sophisticated technology might be developed with an alternate power source, such as steam. The funny thing here, of course, is that there's more of the "cyber" at issue than the "punk," even though the latter half of the term was preserved while the former dropped. "Cyberpunk" as a whole came to stand for hipster technology, and the "technology" part could be replaced with the word "steam," and yet the new compound could retain the technological connotation. As such, "steampunk" is a kind of semantic rhyming slang, depending upon the missing morpheme (cyber) to imbue it with the appropriate meaning.

But then we reach the back jacket of the recent (first English language) reprint of Jacques Tardi's The Arctic Marauder, which describes it as: "a vintage 'icepunk' graphic novel."

No, not "ice," nor even "steam," but electricity!

First, what might "icepunk" mean? And why the scare quotes? Certainly not because a preexisting word is being quoted; though it's almost as if Fantagraphics wishes to imply they're merely picking up the lingo of the "hip" kids. Except they aren't. And the meaning? Well, there's nothing "punk" in the sense of "hip" or "anarchic" about the story, at least not in an 80s kinda way. In fact, it's a deliberate homage to the sci-fi style of yesteryear, esp. Jules Verne. The story is set in 1899, and ostensibly features technology which barely supersedes that in theory possible during the late 19th century.

But, whereas "cyber" (the style of information flow idea) had previously been replaced with "steam" (power source for the technological device), now it is replaced with "ice" (merely stuff that's around for most of the story). The whole thing makes no literal sense; nor does it make strict analogical sense.

Instead, the sense depends upon semantic rhyming slang. Only someone familiar with the previous terms cyberpunk and steampunk could piece together then intended meaning (anarchic (in the 19th, not 20th cent., style) sci-fi (in the Verne, not Gibson, style)).

Of course, if you're into Verne, and beautiful art, and the 19th century style of anarchy, the story is awesome and highly recommended.

lynch the icons

2011-03-27T23:46:00.001-04:00

farrakhan on libya

2011-03-20T15:36:00.001-04:00

white trash art comment

2011-03-19T00:00:00.010-04:00

How to comment on the degeneration of American society, the gaping interstices in which the poor, the cultureless, the callous, the consumers of kitsch, the fans of heavy metal, the drinkers of cheap beer fall? Where is their voice? What is their voice? What should be their voice?

One strategy: found object, synthetic documentation from within the void.

trash humping

The "fanzine" which accompanies the DVD of Harmony Korine's latest movie, Trash Humpers begins with a "synopsis" of the film, which ends:

Crudely documented by the participants themselvs, we follow the debased and shocking actions of a group of true sociopaths the likesof which have never never been seen before. Inhabiting a world of brokendreams and beyond the limits of morality, they crashagainst a torn and frayed aAmerica . Borderin on an ode to vandalism, it is a new type of horror - palpable and raw.

(Typos reproduced as accurately as possible.) Trash Humpers features 4 "elderly" protagonists with identical faces who vandalize, crack cheap jokes, mingle with white trash eccentrics, and, most frequently, "hump" trash (cans, bags, also electrical poles, trees, and pretty much anything else at hand).

Later in the "fanzine" (mostly nighttime photos of the films protagonists) we find this phrase (scrawled in deliberately childlike handwriting, like much of the document):

this movie is more like an artifact, its like something found somewhere and unearthed an old vhs tape that was in some attick or buried in some ditch

Now, Trash Humpers does seem to be shot on video, and it's clearly been run through several generations to of vhs copying to degrade the image quality and introduce the familiar analog noise of an old videotape.

On the other hand, before its video release, it was shown on the big screen in 35mm. The DVD packaging lists New York, Toronto, AFI, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, London, and SXSW festivals. This is hardly a screening pattern typical of a found object. The supposed "fanzine," is clearly not made by any fans of the film (as the fallacious and self-aggrandizing quotations above should indicate)—one can only hope it was not made by Harmony himself given the flagrant inconsistency of vision and message between the movie and the packaging / "fanzine" insert.

Compare this with August Underground, a film which also was deliberately degraded by several generations of video copying, also was shot handheld, simulating the homemovies of socio/psycho paths, also features them marauding through a desolate suburban landscape, and also features faux-snuff (though this plays a much more prominent role than in the few scenes in Trash Humpers). Arguably, if there is a purpose to August Underground (beyond its status as gore-exploitation (and maybe there isn't any such further purpose)), then it is as a commentary on a disaffected portion of society, with no sense of social boundaries, a lack of respect not just for law and property, but for human beings themselves, a complete selfishness and entitlement which permits all, at the cost of permitting only the most base repetitive and meaningless actions. (i.e. the exact same purpose we might plausibly attribute to Trash Humpers)

[Tellingly, it appears that once one rejects boundaries and respect, once one rejects the humanity of one's fellows, there isn't much of interest, value, or complexity left for one to do.]

August Underground: eating chips without paying for them, prelude to a grisly crime

August Underground, however, rather famously, preserved the appearance of found object in its initial distribution. It was mailed in neutral packaging on an unmarked VHS tape to likely reviewers of extreme gore, and thereafter passed through the underground amongst aficionados of the genre.

Of course, if Trash Humpers attempts to create appearance of a found object and fails, this in itself isn't a criticism unless the success of the movie stands or falls on this illusion. And in order to answer this question, we need to understand the point of the endeavor: what would it mean for Trash Humpers to succeed?

We could go to the director's own comments on this point, but they're largely unconvincing:

Much more convincing are the comments he makes in character, while driving the other trash humpers to a new location for humping, presumably (note, this monologue is completely out of character with the giggling and leering which characterizes the rest of the film, amply demonstrated in the first 1:12 of this vid):

Safe to say, there's to some extent a glorification, and to some extent a recrimination of a certain type of devil-may-care, libertarian rejection of social norms and morays. A "do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" attitude that originates, not in mystical visions, but in a combination of a permissive society, devoid of overseers, and a lack of motivation to instill the order / structure that such overseers might themselves have implemented.

Of course, the classic source for this attitude is an explicit rejection of authority. I hump trash because it is forbidden, and because the powers that forbid it are too ineffectual to prevent me. A sense of rebellion and degeneracy which appears in all of Korine's works, though perhaps the closest in spirit here is his Gummo.

If this is correct, though, then the motivation behind the serial killing in August Underground is actually more complex than that in Trash Humpers—yes, there's the libertarianism, yes there's the "because I can," but there's also a de Sade power-trip, a getting off on using others as objects, as means rather than ends. The trash humpers, however, seem oblivious to the owners of the trash, or the effect their actions have on them, they are merely amusing themselves through juvenalia.

So, suppose both the point is correctly identified, and that the criticism is warranted (i.e. there is a degenerate and selfish libertarianism at the heart of the American experience), then how does the "found object" strategy serve to make that point? The idea here is to produce an artifact of that degeneracy, and comment on it through immersion: you the viewer are forced to confront a side of society which you do not (yourself) participate in, recognize their practices, and reflect on the circumstances which brought them about.

Fair enough, but then the crucial element for creating the desired effect is authenticity. To the extent that the viewer is not convinced by the purported found object, he is divorced from the experience, and no longer reflects upon the circumstances which produced said object, but upon the filmmakers own ineptness and confusion in thinking he understood it.

Which brings us to acting. The primary characters in Trash Humpers are four supposed old folk, all played by quite young folk (e.g. Harmony and his wife Rachel) wearing old folk latex masks (the effect being all the more disturbing because the masks are all identical). To be fair, these characters are quite compelling and, besides the obvious surrealism of their faces being identical, are convincing as demented artifacts of a corrupt society. Unfortunately, the secondary characters they interact with are totally unconvincing, bombastic in the delivery of their lines like any second rate actor, and clearly the products of Hollywood and not the suburbs. As such, their presence undermines the authenticity of the film and destroys any purported status it pretends to as found object, and thus also as insight into the American experience.

Unconvincing second-rate actor smirking and breaking character when supposedly he is being threatened by a humper

For comparison, Harmony's first film, Gummo, brilliantly combined professional actors with local amateurs caught candidly engaged in their usual white trash activities. Although it didn't purport to be a found object (using voice overs, still frames, and other clever filmmaking techniques), it succeeded far better in immersing the audience in a particular experience.

Much more convincing than anything in Trash Humpers

Likewise, the August Underground series succeeds in immersing the viewer in a plausibly naturalistic scenario. Of course, not all films from Toetag have succeeded equally, nor does the extremity of the content reflect as widespread a social disease (although, one must assume here the trash humping stands in for a broader category of social pathologies—trash humping itself may actually be more rare than serial killing for all I know), nevertheless, the abstract point, about subversion of libertarian values in an American wasteland, is even more effectively conveyed. In fact, I'll go one step further—not only is the acting more convincing in the August Underground series, but the characters themselves (when not engaged in their pathological behavior) are more like us. Ordinary folk one might see walking the streets.

Bumfights, a true found object

Better even still, both on the realism front, and the social commentary front, however, are the actual found objects of the nihilistic American suburbs. I'm thinking here of the countless shock / trash videos to be found in underground music stores, or available for cheap download—actual documents of social deviancy, not faux documents of such by an alienated and pampered NYC art house elite. A prime example for comparison are the Bumfights videos.

If you want to know the sickness that lies in the interstices of the libertarian American dream, then Bumfights will certainly show it to you. Of course, videos such as this exploit the poor and homeless (arguably true of Gummo as well?—even if to a significantly lesser degree). Certainly, it would be reprehensible to encourage videos such as Bumfights by purchasing them or in any way allowing more money or power to end up in the filmmakers' hands. And to watch such videos with glee, to empathize, not with the desperate, the victims, but with the psychopaths, the filmmakers, the de Sadian exploiters, would be sick sick sick.

On the other hand, what to think of the audience for a film like Trash Humpers? Its protagonists are also killers and vandals and exploiters. It also has no plot, but is just a sequence of degradation-glorifying vignettes. Only, unlike in Bumfights, or August Underground, the exploited are unconvincing, are absent or patently in league with their supposed exploiters. Wink wink, nod nod—we're all really intellectuals here! And the cost? No empathy, no redemption. At least the goal of depicting the anarchy in the interstices succeeds with the true found object, or the authentic found object. But without that authenticity, there can be no empathy, and without empathy, there can be no redemption: neither spiritually, nor aesthetically.

Personally, I'm much more worried about whatever head-up-his-ass pretentious nihilist dickwad who awarded Trash Humpers the grand prize at a documentary film festival than the skate punk degenerates who paid money for Bumfights. At least the latter feel something.

el gaucho

2011-03-14T21:26:00.006-04:00

J. H. Williams III's El Gaucho

Morrison's run at DC has focussed on permuting the features of iconic characters through a sequence of confrontations with their doubles of various stripes. His All-Star Superman, for example, faces other strong men, bizarro Superman, a "Super" Louis Lane, Supermen from the future, from alternate universes, and even Lex Luthor as Superman. In his run on Batman, we saw Batman confront secret vigilante Batman replacements, Batman in the future, Batman junior, and, eventually, Batman 2: Robin. One of the most amusing sequences (667-9) features an international group of Batman variants, which Jog helpfully points out are distinguished by J. H. Williams III's imitation of various artistic styles. In particular, the Argentinian mirror of Batman, El Gaucho, is drawn in the style of Howard Chaykin.

Of course, he's not a direct copy of any particular Chaykin character, but his disguise does closely mirror that of the (very briefly mentioned in Midnight Men (1993)) El Sombra.

Howard Chaykin's El Sombra

More important than the costume, however, is the square jaw and Chaykin personality (i.e. kick ass and don't take shit from no one). Jog wonders if Yanick Paquette's art for Batman, Inc. could perform the same imitation. Although the style is not matched, the square jaw and epic attitude are certainly still there. Not the least of which reason being that El Gaucho (who's already saved Batman's life more than once) (i) immediately identifies Bruce Wayne as Batman (amusingly believing Batman to be impersonating Bruce Wayne) and (ii) turns down Batman's offer to join his international team (well, upon initial request, we'll see what happens next issue).

Yanick Paquette's El Gaucho—still badass

Of course, Chaykin's prone to strong Jewish heroes, frequently busting Nazi / fascist butt in one shape or another. But he's no stranger to the swarthy mustache / machismo of El Gaucho, that's for sure. For example, his recent run on Rawhide Kid: The Sensational Seven left ample opportunity for mustachioed macho, in both a variety of villains, and also "heroes" such as Wyatt and Morgan Earp:

Howard Chaykin's Earp brothers

[This frame appears after Morgan has violently induced Wyatt to vomit when told by their cellmate that Wyatt has been eating more than his fare share of the scorpions. In the previous frame, Morgan has counted the scorpion corpses in his brother's vomit, only to discover the accusations are true.]

J. H. Williams III's El Gaucho has a different attitude toward scorpions

Of course, badass as a Chaykin tribute in the pages of Batman is, we shouldn't forget that Chaykin is alive and well, even penciling his own occasional Batman outing (square jaw and attitude and all). Personal wet dream: Morrison scripted, Chaykin penciled, Batman / El Gaucho team up—now when will we get to see that?

the current state of philosophy

2011-03-10T17:32:00.003-05:00

Granted, much literature produced under the head of linguistic philosophy is philosophically inconsequential. Some pieces are amusing or mildly interesting as language studies, but have been drawn into philosophical journals only by superficial association. Some, more philosophical in purport, are simply incompetent; for quality control is spotty in the burgeoning philosophical press. Philosophy has long suffered, as hard sciences have not, from a wavering consensus on questions of professional competence. Students of the heavens are separable into astronomers and astrologers as readily as are the minor domestic ruminants into sheep and goats, but the separation of philosophers into sages and cranks seems to be more sensitive to frames of reference. This is perhaps as it should be, in view of the unregimented and speculative character of the subject.

This passage appears near the end of W. V. O. Quine's "Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People?" (1979) in Theories and Things. I'm tempted to suggest removing the qualification "linguistic" in the first sentence and endorsing it as a valid perspective on the current state of philosophy.

Certainly, the trend has shifted away from "linguistic philosophy," and Quine's epithet, which arguably applied to the lion's share of the discipline shortly before he wrote these comments, does not characterize the majority of published philosophical work today. But at least during the period of the linguistic turn, there was some kind of discipline-wide consensus upon what constituted a legitimate target for philosophical analysis (language), even if there was no universal consensus about what to do about that—we might group under this movement positions as diverse as those of Carnap and the logical positivists on the one hand, and Derrida and the post-structuralists on the other (with interesting points of overlap, e.g. Wittgenstein).

Today, however, the lack of consensus on how to separate the wheat from the chaff extends beyond methods (where it certainly still exists) to the subject matter of philosophy itself. Metaphysics, for example, relegated definitively (by both formal analytic philosophers and continental postmodernists, no less!) to the scrap heap "astrology," has reemerged as a dominant subject matter in formal analytic philosophy proper!

Mind you, Quine is right that "the unregimented and speculative character of the subject" motivates a laxity and pluralism of approach which distinguishes it from (say) the natural sciences. Nevertheless, one begins to doubt the integrity of a discipline if there are whole schools of approach supposedly within it which completely dismiss each other's work. And I'm not talking here about the continental / analytic divide (which is at least reasonably well canonized in a division of journals, etc.), but about divisions within analytic philosophy itself. Arguably, the "philosophers of physics," the "contemporary metaphysicians," the "ancient philosophers," etc. have absolutely nothing to say to each other—what legitimates their presence within a single discipline? And can we bring some helpful norm to bear on this issue to kick out the pretenders and save philosophy?

A helpful comparison perhaps is linguistics, which similarly has been split into (at least) two, uncommunicative, camps since the late 60s / early 70s. The split was initially in terms of syntax vs. semantics—those following Chomsky believed in the precedence of syntax for governing surface structure, while those who split from his camp (e.g. Lakoff) believed in the precedence of semantics. Today, those who favor the Chomskian, intuition-based, approach, and those who favor empirical methods (arguably a natural offshoot of the semantic split, though certainly not aligning directly with cognitive linguistics) have different journals, different standards of evidence, and hardly communicate at all.

Still, in the case of linguistics, there is one subject matter (language), and there are a natural set of success conditions (empirical adequacy, ability to manipulate / generate relevant phenomenon (e.g. machine translation, natural language processing)). Examining the current state of the art, it's easy to see that, while sharing a subject matter, Chomskian methods are failing, while empirical methods are succeeding, on the relevant success conditions.

If philosophy as a discipline is to maintain the "unregimented and speculative character" which Quine identifies, yet nevertheless make some progress towards separating the "sages" from the "cranks" (more urgently: identifying informed, relevant, progressive work and distinguishing it from poor scholarship / noise), then it cannot limit itself to a single object of study (metaphysics, the mind, ethics, these are simply different), nor can it limit itself to a single set of success conditions (at the very least, there can be hardly any overlap between those for normative and those for descriptive branches of philosophical inquiry). But perhaps it can do this: distinguish and define success conditions within each particular subject matter.

For, if, when reading a paper in (say) metaphysics, I have no sense whatsoever of what it would mean for the project to succeed (how am I to evaluate it?), then how can I even provisionally suspect it to count as "astronomy" rather than "astrology"? And if authors within these subfields work on narrow technical questions without any sense themselves of what the success conditions of their endeavor are (and believe you me, this is widely in evidence—perhaps one can be forgiven in a paper for not listing these, since one might assume to be addressing a community which already knows, but if, when asked point blank in a talk, one cannot so provide, one demonstrates the deep vacuity of one's project), then one's subfield (and one's work) should (rightly!) be relegated to the realm of "astrology" and crank-ism, and one shunned and derided accordingly!

guarding against abuse of power

2011-03-06T17:19:00.003-05:00

Robert A. Heinlein's first novel, For Us, the Living, was finally published posthumously in 2004. Most likely contributing to the reasons it was not accepted for publication in 1939, is that there is hardly any plot, just a sequence of political and economic suggestions for Utopia laid out in relative detail.

Many of Heinlein's suggestions here are compelling, and would find their way in various forms into his later, more novel-like novels. One particularly interesting suggestion concerns a means for guarding against government abuse of power.

In Heinlein's future history, the gradual accrual of power by the government comes to threaten fundamental liberties when a radical evangelist luddite comes close to coercing himself into the whitehouse. Once the freedom-loving recognize they still have the majority, and defeat his election, a new constitution is adopted, one very similar to the original, but with several provisions designed to prevent future abuses of power. Of particular interest is this clause suggested by Heinlein:

Every citizen is free to perform any act which does not hamper the equal freedom of another. No law shall forbid the performance of any act, which does not damage the physical or economic welfare of any other person. No act shall constitute a violation of a law valid under this provision unless there is such damage, or immediate present danger of such damage resulting from that act.

Here's Heinlein's gloss on the significance of this clause:

Do you see the significance of that last provision? Up to that time, a crime had two elements; act of commission and intent. Now it had a third; harmful effect which must be proved in each case, as well as the act and the intent. The consequences of this change can hardly be exaggerated. It established American individualism forever by requiring the state to justify in each case its interference with an individual's acts. Furthermore the justification must be based on a tangible damage or potential damage to a person or persons. The person damaged might be a schoolgirl injured or endangered by a reckless driver or it might be every person in the state endangered by the betrayal of military secrets or injured by manipulation of commodity prices, but it must not be some soulless super-person, the state incarnate, or the majesty of the law. It reduced the state to its proper size, an instrument to serve individuals, instead of a god to be worshipped and glorified. Most especially it ended the possibility of the majority oppressing any minority with that hackneyed hoary lie that `the majority is always right.'

Personally, I'm a fan, and I endorse the sentiments whole-heartedly. Would this clause do the trick, though? Of course, the dangerous wiggle room here is the "immediate present danger"—just how immediate does it need to be?

Take Heinlein's own example of reckless driving. His intended interpretation seems to be that there have to be particular people in danger if one is to be convicted of reckless driving. Not some schoolgirl, but this particular schoolgirl has to be shown to have been in danger. But how long would it be before someone tried to argue that reckless driving poses an immediate present danger to people who live near the road, say, even if they don't happen to be standing on their lawns when the car barrels by? And if that passes, how long until everyone in the city, or everyone in the state, is argued to be in "immediate present danger" from reckless driving?

And how is statistical evidence supposed to be used here? Consider second-hand smoking laws: is the waitress who works in a smoking environment in "immediate present danger"? Even though, she may never actually contract cancer?

I wonder what Heinlein would think of the escalating removal of liberties associated with air travel? Are these invasions justifiable under the new clause because every man, woman, and child of the United States is under "immediate present danger" of terrorist attack? Even though these measures have never caught a single terrorist? Nor has any empirical measure of their efficacy ever been provided?

I'm pretty sure he would weep, but I wonder what he would suggest as an alternative . . .

reflections on woodstock

2011-03-04T04:47:00.003-05:00

I hate hippies. I hate the aesthetic, the lack of personal hygiene, the naivete, the self-righteousness, the simplistic mouthing off of communalist ideals without any sense of the realities of what a real follow through would require. I hate hippies.

If there's anything I hate more than hippies, it's the overblown and dishonest nostalgia for the 60s that one finds in old hippies, some young hippies sober enough to have read a book, and any frat boy who's ever had an argument about "greatest guitarist of all time" (to my knowledge, this is all frat boys, but I don't want to be dogmatic). If there's anything worse than being a hippie, it's aggrandizing the hippie movement as if something were accomplished, or somehow the 60s were a better time.

But there's something about Woodstock, there's something about naivete in its pure form, there's something about ideals innocently followed, even without a hint of possible realization, there's something about that hope and faith and aspiration that just gets me.

As a cultural event, Woodstock is unique in so many ways, and this even the detractors must recognize. It was a planned event, that deviated radically from that plan (number of people, from commercial event to charity, lack of appropriate facilities, etc.), and this deviation was captured extensively by media (not least of which being the masterful documentary).

But unlike most deviations from plan (or like them?) the result was not catastrophe, but beautiful success. Where riots, starvation, and filth might have resulted, instead there was peace and beauty. And that isn't just propaganda, it's what the people who were there (even the straights) thought while it was happening. And surely thinking makes it so.

The most profound statement of this sentiment was recorded in the documentary when Max Yasgur himself, the farmer who provided the location for the festival, takes the mic. He graciously acknowledges the achievement of Woodstock as a demonstration to the world that "a half a million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music, and have nothing but fun and music, and I God bless you for it."

And this is indeed an accomplishment, one that subsequent Woodstocks, with their rapes and chaos failed to achieve.

But the accomplishment here is twofold: not just hoping that man can rise above, can be better than the morass that is well-familiar "human nature," which hope is in itself unique enough when expressed sincerely, but also the doing, the openness toward a brotherhood of man which, frankly, is lethal in most practical contexts. The essence of the spirit is captured in the absentee song-poem "Woodstock," stirringly rendered by Joni Mitchell at Big Sur:

In the words of the chorus, which she so touchingly emphasizes:

We are stardust,
We are golden,
and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.

The idea here, at the time, is not one of achievement, but of attention and attempt: we've got to get ourselves back to the garden, back to the innocence of Eden. Not that we are there, not that we can assume it, but that if we see what is within ourselves, then we can achieve.

Of course, hope and effort are better than the empty nostalgic complacency of the elderly hippie and Woodstock worshipper. But are they empty? Are these seeds really within us? And if so, is there any value in the efforts made by those at Woodstock, and keeping the memory alive, as in Mitchell's performance at Big Sur?

Perhaps what is so striking about Joni Mitchell's performance here is the sense of possibility, of earnestness - if only the audience can hear and understand (why else explicate the chorus beforehand?), then something can be achieved. And it was only at the start, as such attempts were made for the first time (at least as far as any participants were aware) that such earnestness could be sincere. After the crash of the 70s, and the violence of Altamont, the hope for a change in human consciousness based on the right combination of music, willpower, and drugs was demonstratively misguided.

A too little emphasized strategy for bringing about true radical social reform, and one unfortunately at which many hippies failed miserably, is the instillation of progressive values in one's children through attentive and careful rearing. Of course, any failure here on the part of the hippies is probably not due to a lack of good intentions, but more just a lack of skill and insight—to say nothing of the selfishness which comes from engaging in one's own consciousness expanding drug odyssey. The essence of the problem is perhaps captured by John Sebastian's touching performance at Woodstock. He clearly recognizes the importance of imparting the new values to the next generation, and his eyes are glassy with the beauty of childhood, but his lyrics clearly confuse the strategies for consciousness expansion appropriate to the self-conscious adult with appropriate strategies for effective child rearing.

Not to mention, of course, he's so out of his skull on something he can't even remember the words to his own song.

quantitative easing explained

2011-03-01T19:54:00.001-05:00

the modern city

2011-02-27T13:13:00.003-05:00

A modern city is an almost incredibly helpless and delicate organism. It has lost its power to produce the actual essentials of life. In spite of its transportation systems, it cannot move as they found out in the evacuation of London. It is like an overgrown idiot baby in an incubator. It is completely helpless without the aid of the many servants that succor it. It cannot even think except in a slow ponderous collective fashion and it cannot think at all in an emergency. Its individuals can think, but a city is an organism in itself and must have a directing brain and nervous system. Destroy its waterworks, it dies. Stop its food supply. It dies. Remove its directing intelligence, it commits suicide.

~ Robert A. Heinlein (1939) For Us, The Living

tight shadrach

2011-02-22T02:21:00.001-05:00

6:00 pm

2011-02-21T18:42:00.002-05:00

I will inquire into no man's reasons for taking a drink at any hour except 6:00 P.M. They are his affair and he has a rich variety of liquors to choose from according to his whim or need; may they reward him according to his deserts and well beyond. But when evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the cocktail hour. It marks the lifeward turn. The heart wakens from coma and its dyspnea ends. Its strengthening pulse is to cross over into campground, to believe that the world has not been altogether lost, or, if lost, then not altogether in vain. But it cannot make the grade alone. It needs help; it needs, my brethern, all the help it can get. It needs a wife (or some other charming woman) of attuned impulse and equal impatience and maybe two or three friends, but no more than two or three. these gathered together in a softly lighted room and, with them what it needs most of all, the bounty of alcohol. Hence the cocktail. After dinner you may, if you like, spend an hour or so sipping a jigger of whiskey diluted to any attenuation that matches your whim with soda or branch water. But at 6:00 P.M. we must have action. When we summon life to reveal forgotten benisons and give us ourselves again, we do so peremptorily. Confirm that hope, set the beacon burning, and be quick about it. So no water.

~ Bernard DeVoto (1948) The Hour: A Cocktail Manifesto

quantum cryptography

2011-02-20T16:56:00.009-05:00

Suppose I want to send a message to you in complete secrecy—is there an unbreakable code I could use?

First, notice that any string of symbols can be coded via a string of numbers, and any string of numbers can be represented by a string of 1s and 0s. So, for the remainder of this discussion, let's assume that the message is a sequence of 1s and 0s.

An unbreakable code is provided by the one time pad. This is a randomly generated sequence of 1s and 0s as long as the intended message. If both you and I have access to the same one time pad, then I can take my message and add it to the pad mod 2 (i.e., 1+1=0, 0+0=0, 1+0=0+1=1) before sending it to you. When you receive it, you subtract the one time pad from it to recover the message. If the signal is intercepted, however, it is impossible to decode, because it is completely random, i.e. it contains no information about the contents of the message.

Although a code using a one time pad is unbreakable, it is not necessarily secure. The one time pad must be written down somewhere and communicated from me to you. In the act of getting the one time pad to you, I expose it to interception by whomever we are trying to conceal our communication from.

Is there a completely secure means of establishing a one time pad for us to use?

Before answering this question, let's answer a more general one—is there a completely secure means of transmitting a sequence of 1s and 0s?

One answer is provided by quantum cryptography. Photons (and other quantum particles) have an odd set of properties. One of these, called "spin" has these useful features:

1. It can be measured at any orientation, but at only one orientation at a time.

2. When measured at a particular orientation, there are two possible outcomes ("spin up" or "spin down"), which can only be predicted probabilistically, and therefore constitute a source of randomness if no prior information about the photon's history is available.

3. If the photon is measured again at the same orientation, it will satisfy the same value.

4. If the photon is measured at a different orientation, then it's outcome will again be inherently probabilistic. Furthermore, if, after being measured at a second orientation, it is measured again at the first orientation, it will no longer satisfy the original outcome, but will have returned to behaving probabilistically.

So, suppose I want to send you a sequence of 1s and 0s. I could measure the spin of photons at a particular orientation. If I want to send a 1 and the photon has spin up, I let it stream to you. Likewise for 0. If the spin of the photon disagrees with the digit I want to send, I merely intercept it and prevent it from passing to you. If you know the orientation of my spin measurement machine, then you can measure the photons as you receive them and reproduce my message.

Any potential interceptor who does not know the orientation of our spin measuring machines will get a random signal if he attempt to measure the photons at the wrong orientation. Furthermore, you will know that he has intercepted the message since when you measure the photons at the correct orientation, they will behave probabilistically, instead of reproducing my [meaningful] message.

OK, but suppose the interceptor knows the orientation of our photon machines? Here is where a one time pad would allow us to still send a completely secure message. But how can I transmit the one time pad to you given that our communication channel has been compromised.

Now we reach the beauty of quantum cryptography.

Procedure for transmitting a secure one time pad, courtesy Simon Singh's The Code Book.

You and I use two orientations for our spin measuring devices. We can communicate these exact orientations over an unsecure channel if we'd like—I could simply call you on a telephone and tell you what they are, for example.

Now, I measure a large number of photons, randomly switching between the two orientations of my spin measuring device. You receive the photons and measure them with your spin measuring device, also switching randomly between the two. Obviously, you don't know the random sequence of orientations I used, so sometimes your choice of orientation matches up with mine, and sometimes it doesn't. When it does, you measure the same value for the photon's spin as I did; when it doesn't, you get an outcome which is random and meaningless.

Next, I contact you on an unsecure line (e.g. the telephone), and tell you the sequence of orientations I used. After each one, you tell me whether the orientation you chose at random matches with mine, or not. If they match, we keep that digit; if they don't we simply discard it. This produces a sequence of 1s and 0s that we both know, but are known by no one else. I know them because I measured them, you know them because you measured them. Furthermore, they are completely random because the initial measurement outcomes were random, my choice of orientations was random, your choice of orientations was random, and, consequently, the instances of match between these choices of orientation were also random.

This sequence of 1s and 0s can now be used as a one time pad to send a completely secure message.

What about our eavesdropper? He knows the two orientations we chose, because he can certainly tap our unsecure phone calls. He also knows the sequence of instances in which our choices of orientations matched up, so he knows which photons in the sequence established the one time pad. But he doesn't know from eavesdropping on our unsecure line the outcome of these measurements, so he doesn't know the sequence of 1s and 0s, so he doesn't know the one time pad.

But what if he had tried to intercept this pad-establishing sequence? Since both you and I chose our machine orientations randomly, he could not know this sequence while intercepting the photons. If he likewise chose a random sequence of orientations for his machine, then he would invalidate any of your measurements at a different orientation. But this won't help him decode the message I send—he'll simply

What's the best case scenario for our eavesdropper? He'll be able to decode those characters in my message for which all three of us chose the same orientation of measuring device (the agreement between you and me meant it was added to the one time pad, the agreement with him meant he knows the correct value and didn't convert the photon to gibberish). Assuming we're all choosing between 2 orientations at 1/2 chance, this should only occur 1/2(1/2)(1/2)=1/8 of the time. But you and I are only using digits when we've matched up, so our chances are removed from this equation. Ultimately, he'll potentially be able to decode 1/2 the characters in our message. However, after sending a single message via this method, we'll know there was an eavesdropper, since half the characters will be gibberish.

We can diminish the eavesdropper's ability to decode a single message by increasing the number of possible orientation we switch between. With 3 orientations, he should only be able to decode 1/3 of the characters, with 4, 1/4, etc. Of course, increasing the number of possible orientations means sending a significantly longer string of photons in order to establish the one time pad, but if the process is automated (and the intended messages sufficiently short), this trade-off in time might be trivial compared to the gain in security. In principle, we can reduce the percentage of characters the eavesdropper could decode (again, from the first message sent, since after that, we'll know he's eavesdropping) indefinitely.

"homeland security"

2011-02-17T17:02:00.004-05:00

The US Government continues to abuse power under the misleading rubric "homeland security." This time, they've illegitimately seized 84,000 domain names, inserting a pointer to a child pornography warning.

Although the mistake has since been reversed, one wonders about the legitimacy that allows a department supposedly intended to protect the security of the homeland to replace tens of thousands of websites at a time (apparently with unobjectionable content) with an implicit accusation of child pornography.

I'm as against child pornography as the next guy, but surely this is not a matter of "homeland security"? The point of dividing a governing body into different bureaus with different powers is to ensure a modularity to the assessment of the means required to achieve different ends. The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are disjoint departments, for example, and surely enforcement of child pornography laws is a matter for the FBI? An interesting question here is: if the procedures / powers of the FBI had been followed rather than those of the DHS, would the innocent web sites have been shut down? Would the offending sites still have been shut down?

how vision works

2011-02-13T19:06:00.004-05:00

M, P, and K refer to the magnocellular, parvocellular, and K information streams flowing from retina through the LGN. Diagram courtesy van Essen and Gallant (1994).

rip ~ tura satana

2011-02-06T09:54:00.000-05:00

johnny 23 ~ full "translation"

2011-01-30T18:10:00.002-05:00

Charles Burns' has "remixed" his excellent recent book, X'ed Out, into a new story, Johnny 23. Johnny 23 is written in a monoalphabetic cipher of English, i.e. a single "alien" character has been used to replace each letter / number in the traditional English alphabet. Since we are given a crib (in the form of the title), deciphering the text is not too difficult, although there are a large number of "typos" which can slow the process a little.

The text is surreal and filled with non sequiturs. In X'ed Out, the main character Doug performs in a Tintin mask under the name "Johnny 23." His performance involves reading abstract surrealist poetry generated using William S. Burroughs' "cut-up" technique. Visually, Johnny 23 implements this technique with images, and many segments of the text seem to be similarly generated. There are however several moments where distinct pieces of a story connected closely to the visuals emerge.

Some of the apparent "misspellings" and "errors" are surely due to whatever mash up technique was used to generate the text. Many, however, are clearly typos of the form generated by quick typing (e.g. "teh" or "adn"). In the following "translation," I have chosen to correct as many of these as possible, and to add appropriate punctuation where obvious. In some cases, however, where apparent ungrammaticalities due to cut ups allow multiple interesting interpretations of the text, I have omitted punctuation.

Reading the text of Johnny 23 is a strangely disorienting experience. Deciphering as you go along, typos take on interesting new meanings, and it is difficult to tell how much of this was intentional. Take "Dally forth . . . " on p. 32, surely a typo, yet allowing for an interesting double reading given the sexual content of previous pages . . . or p. 24, is "word" in "from a word away" a misspelling of "world," or a pun on the Burroughs theme of the word virus which pervades the book? Anyone interested in the text at that level of detail should simply decipher it themselves.

For those who are impatient, however, here is the full deciphering of Johnny 23. Text is given by page number. Each line denotes a text box or speech balloon. Ordering is the obvious left to right, top to bottom. There were only a couple characters which I was unable to decipher, which I presume to be numerals. These are indicated with a _ when they appear.

2.
Nothing good will come of this.

There will be tears.

Nothing can become of nothing.

All hearts will grow cold and weary.

3.
The residue of a sad dream.

zzzzz

23 OK

4.
zzzzz

5.
Tan wane her.

One more try at the bing a 23 swollen.

Even in the end, 23.

6.
Let me find the new shivering sac a hard version of this.

The center won't hold, and nothing comes down from on high. Nada.

Blurred muttering and a soft white hiss; early spring with the wind blowing hard.

Don't try white.

Fall into a hard an bent end.

zzzzz

7.
bzzzzzzzzzzz

bzzzzzzzzzzz

How could you even think about coming up here and shtupping Eliza?

You can't go thinking in hard manner!

Pink blankets keep turning up in this story, don't they now?

8.
Shooting these in normal daylight is the only way this is going to work out.

You can run, but I don't think you will heal.

Find it in the back of another sadness.

23 it's going _ _ 3 1

Always with the photos, it seems to be the vital 23.

10.
I saw my baby get in. Get lost.

Why is it the only 23?

23 or another number.

By now I know them all. They smother me too.

11.
zzzzzzzzz xj 333333333

. . . llers with fift . . . ab follow your . . . the corner of a . . . leaking blood.

3333mmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyy

looking at ant . . . zipper you have . . . that the only way . . . venerable in t...

uuuuuuuuiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

. . . f in the only . . . the normal way . . . ual in vintage . . . ournt in a loc

Come on inside and see the usual shit unfold in the most saddening way imaginable. Come see 23!

12.
Jesus fucking Christ, does this really have to be the end of it?

If you read this and are sick of heart, there's nothing I can help you with.

Cause the night is long and I'm still waiting for you. Think 1.

13.
We found ourselves sitting in banks of squeeling monitors hissing head with swollen fingers.

Thanks for checking me out and all.

Try as i may i could not find my way out of the torrent of shit flowing out of me.

zzzzzzzzzzzzz

Blaring petal . . . hive in a deep . . . gaping wound . . . most hallow . . .

I come up with new petal effects split into three parts . . .

Your lame hippy shit is so don't get [it]. Fucker.

I wouldn't mind him spitting down my throat today.

14.
She looked down at me from . . . sad my raging brain as it really is.

They call this guy Nitnit and I have no idea who he thinks he is.

Doug.

Keeping it to myself, finding another mark on the back of my hand.

Do [what] you like; your time is up. It's over.

23 as in the word virus in everyone.

15.
[ ......... ]

On the back of angels hot on the heels.

[ ........ ]

16.
Call me 23.

It's not hard.

[ ....... ]

17.
[ ....... ]

Hey you big dumb, move it!

Don't listen to the slug, he don't [know] shit all!

[ ....... ]

18.
Twixt 12 and twenty, you'll see another way to fill your heart.

[ ....... ]

Seems like I'm there.

It all shakes out the same in the end. You just need the guts to know when to quit.

Not that I know too much about that kind of stuff, you savvy?

There he is again!

Oy!

19.
Found out at last, you little runt!

Full load.

Yeah, she's a looker and then some.

20.
Forced into the open broken arrows coming out of the flesh.

Trying to bring back a feeling of random sex.

And again.

Nearly extinct blunt sex vision.

21.
Coming up from below in a hurry.

Focus.

Weepy gash torn up with endless tears.

Broken, bent out of shape like a song from in the air. Massive.

22.
The odors rising slick and slippery in the dark space between her thighs.

Her heart swollen. _3_ _ 2

My guess is you're trying to inject meaning into it.

I'm not try[ing] to inject shit, you dumb fuck!

I try to touch the photo cause I just know there is skin stuck in there way down in the core.

23.
Maybe the cat is the main clue, I just can't solve it.

Dirty sweet and falling off of the page in heat.

24.
Again with the random shit from a world away!

Nothing will be safe for you ever again.

Mace yourself at home, because I'm heading out to the void.

So when I look at you my breath gets sucked away, my eyes roll up in my head, and I know my time is almost up.

You'll never realize the lengths I had to go, the endless spilling of my guts and rending of my garments, you dig?

bzzzzz

25.
You can try to capture my image.

When the long day is done thats not what I'm really interested in, alright? Get it?

Did you read that in some sort of a comic book? I guess it sounds like something.

26.
Looking for the end but nothing present itself.

The word virus replicates and shifts into another vessel 23.

23 slides into into another 23.

Last prayers, last look.

My heart opens wider to . . .

. . . find the missing puzzle.

27.
Come on baby, you can light my fire, okay?

Fuck that noise! In this world we have to grab for all the gusto we can, and you're a little slack!

Furthermore, you need to work out your whole look a little better, you know what I mean?

I'm afraid the sad big-eyed look can't cut it anymore.

28.
Run that by [me again]. I don't get it.

Who the hell am I to tell you what to do with your sad little life? The last time I saw you, you were in way over your head.

Keep you sour mouth shut for just one second!

A typical patter like objects left in a hotel drawer, bits of a puzzle to try to fit into an impossible form.

Here's where it all falls apart. Nothing holds.

29.
We're doomed. The fat is in the fire now.

Basta! Basta!

31.
He faded in cigar smoke. There was a knock inside.

The penis rose out of the jock and dissolved in pink light back wearing a clitoris in white hot.

Hanging gimmick death in orgasm gills no nerves left no impressions of secondhand daylight _ _ _.

Dead young flesh in stale underwear. I have the impression of vending iron repetition. Ass and genitals broken.

Orgasm addicts stacked in the attic like muttering burlap woke up other flesh hooded dead gibber thrown off.

32.
Sally forth into a bold new world as it all flips.

And I repeat: Fuck that and the wagon you rode in on alright? Lit form within holding out.

You see it in the prize.

Distant muttering; a world in white heat.

Entry gimmick of the spawning death dwarfs seething in lust.

Distant star in another galaxy spins in another pattern.

All alone. I say unto thee, hide it deep inside. Dig the hole and slide it in up to the hilt.

33.
The sign reads: Last stop, last chance for falling hanging gimmick inside.

Part of the problem and the solution is linked to the safety of orgone.

34.
Another abortive attempt.

Eyes rolled up into the dark of my head.

Looking for the worthy vessel.

Radium pain an iron box covered in human skin.

36.
"Smile and shake it off," that's what he told me.

You think it's going to last for ever, but you're so wrong. I mean it.

Don't bring your sad shit around here.

I mean the end comes sooner or later, but you're never ready. unn.

If you think you're going to get out alive, good luck.

We got enough of our own to to hold us for a while.

37.
why doe he have to show up? All I want is some time to myself.

Every word out of his mouth is empty.

Chill the fuck out dude! Just let it go.

Does it really mean all . . .

I'll never find my way.

Remember the kingdom of heaven is within you! Right 23?

38.
What's to become of you now that you see what's on the end of your spoon, your dull dirty naked lunch?

A green river filled with refuse. The dark. A river running to the sea; a clogged vein; a tributary of silt. . .

I guess you don't give two fucks!

Why would you? This has no end.

Truth is stranger than all the lies I've told.

Save that bullshit for the marks who no longer know their ass from their elbow!

Why do you have to make this so hard? Give it up!

39.
It's coming again . . . I can feel it!

Why does it always have to be this way?

40.
Piggy pants.

It's open again, but I can't let you go.

Always crashing in the same car.

41.
Come back, Piggy!

42.
Down the hole.

Slipping in and out of sodden sloppy skin.

44.
Check it out, dude!

She's built like a brick shitter and does it all!

Does what all?

Oy vey!

45.
Slipping into the last set of shoes . . .

Hey, don't try messing with my head, okay? Don't try.

Fevers and high hard red.

It's time to turn a blind eye to the realities of the day. Dig it?

46.
Evaporate and leave a ring on the counter. Find your true heart in the void.

Another lifeless head attached to a feeble body waiting for the end, it seems.

But can the heart grow out of it?

Not too much chance of that.

Never?

Not never, but pretty fucking close! Eat your egg and turn an eye inward, 23.

47.
Finally we get to the abortion story, 23.

You can keep your crappy plate of eggs.

Tough guy, huh? So don't look too closely, and you'll find yourself in Gods gray earth.

The abortion . . . I was told this was supposed to be funny.

48.
There are times when you need to relax. Slip into the muddy water. You get it?

Eat it all up, come on!

All too soon the world will grow dark; the day will be done. Do eat up now!

Eat up indeed . . . read 'em and weep.

52.
unn.

Aw shit! Aw shit!

No more.

53.
In the shadow luster of shiny stumps. Why should I stay? What's keeping me? Daybreak. The face of a lousy kid and a cold white flesh home.

55.
Three ampoules of morphine. Blue eyes in the dark.

56.
Wait for me at the river filigree of trade winds.

Photos weather worn boys by the polluted water.

57.
City night fences dead fingers erect boys.

Girdling the pepper trees, the film is finished at last.

58.
Ice skates on a wall.

No more.

Luster of stumps washes his lavender sleep.

59.
The dogs are quiet.

Someone vague faded in a mirror.

60.
humm.

61.
If i could hold off for just a little longer and stay with my dose, I'll be . . .

62.
Christ! What's inside of screams?

The doctor's shabby sky rose tornado lost boy.

Smudge and whine of lost polluted water under the bridge, shadow of doubt.

63.
I was the smudge and face shabby table black hair.

Silver paper moving in the street lavender boy.

64.
FIN

truer words . . .

2011-01-22T23:03:00.002-05:00

"history is made at night . . .
character is what you are in the dark!"

~ Buckaroo Banzai

holy shit!

2011-01-19T22:05:00.002-05:00

bootleg big numbers #3!

. . . bit of a holy grail, not sure how I'm only discovering this has surfaced now.

it's been one of those days

2011-01-16T01:18:00.003-05:00

rip pete postlethwaite

2011-01-09T23:20:00.002-05:00

Best Friar Laurence ever, and exemplary in every other role I've ever seen him in as well. Sorely missed.

you don't know me

2011-01-09T02:42:00.001-05:00

'noc's

2011-01-06T19:07:00.003-05:00

Pinocchio's pizza and subs, Harvard Square (try the cheese steak) ~ at least some things never change.

translating oe

2010-12-26T17:36:00.007-05:00

I've read every Kenzaburo Oe book translated into English. Many of these were read several years ago (in some cases as many as 15), so my memory of the translations isn't always vivid. I'm pretty certain, however, that the recent (2010) translation of The Changeling by Deborah Boliver Boehm is the worst.

At least one review has complained about the stiltedness of Boehm's prose. Comparatively, however, Boehm's translation is easily one of the most readable of the Oe works in English. The problem is in convincing oneself that Boehm has been faithful to the Japanese original.

Early in the book, it becomes obvious that she's taken the liberty of inserting expositional material for the non-Japanese reader into the body of the text (instead of into footnotes, where it belongs). For example:

... her voice had a distinct Kansai accent (that is, typical of the Kyoto-Osaka-Kobe area). (63)

On one of the major Japanese television networks there is a popular, long-running late-night program called the Wide Show that offers a combination of celebrity chat and cultural news. One night Goro, who was still working as an actor at the time, was one of the guests. (119)

The term "kansai" and the "Wide Show" would both be so familiar to Japanese readers that there would be no need of exposition. These, somewhat awkward, explanations have clearly been inserted by the translator into the text. Now, for the purist, this would probably already be enough of an offense. The real problem, however, is that there are indeed many asides and oblique references and parentheticals in Oe's writing anyway. So, sometimes, it's unclear whether an aside is his or the translator's.

For example, there is a passage where the main character, "Kogito," a clear stand in for Oe himself, discusses the New Testament's Book of Mark at the dinner table. In particular, the incident where an angel appears to women who have gone to the tomb and tells them to spread the word that Jesus is risen. The women, however, are too scared to tell anyone, and the sequence ends abruptly. Boehm gives us this sentence:

Kogito was particularly intrigued by the writers—the authors of the Bible—whose work seemed to parallel his own, and although he didn't think his own novelist's opinions had any bearing on the interpretation of the Gospel, he felt, personally, that the original author's ambiguous way of ending this particular tale was an effective literary technique. (412)

There is no definite article in Japanese, and it is tempting to think the first part of the sentence originally made the general claim "Kogito was particularly intrigued by writers whose work seemed to parallel his own". In its current form, the parenthetical either identifies the authors of the bible specifically as writers whose work parallels Kogito's own, or quantifies over them. Does Oe intend to tell us that Kogito finds, amongst authors of the bible, those whose work parallels his own interesting? Or that Kogito feels this way about all authors and identifies some of those who wrote the bible as falling into this category? Since the reader is unsure whether the aside is inserted by Boehm or in the original, the author's intent is unclear.

The intent of Oe in terms of what information he chooses to reveal and what not is especially important in understanding The Changeling. This is because Kogito is clearly a stand-in for Oe, and Goro is clearly a stand-in for Oe's brother-in-law, Juzo Itami, who committed suicide in 1997. This book is a very personal memoir about the relationship between the two, and Oe's reaction to his friend's unexpected death. Many many incidents described in the novel occurred almost identically in real life. For example, the attempt on Itami's life by yakuza thugs after his film Minbo no Onna, which ridicules the yakuza attempts at extortion, was released is described exactly as an attack upon Goro. Far more interesting (and helpful) than explaining what the Wide Show is in the above example, might have been a mention of the date of the particular event of Juzo Itami appearing on it which Oe fictionalizes!

The Guardian review, for example, explicitly bemoans the lack of this contextual information, and singles out Boehm for hurting rather than helping the situation:

Unfortunately, the reader's sense of not possessing important chunks of the background to this allusive, personal yet political novel is amplified by Boehm's translation. Her decision to use strongly American English may or may not be defensible, but she often appears to be clumsily incorporating footnote-type information into the text: "'What I'm making here isn't Tora-san, you know,' Goro went on, making wry reference to an immensely popular series of formulaic, feel-good films about a hapless, sweet-natured vagabond," for example. She also seems to have translated book and film titles on the fly, leading to a mention of "Hitchcock's Balkan Express", which I'd guess is the Japanese title of The Lady Vanishes. This raises a question: in Oe's text, are Kogito's novels and Goro's films given subtly different titles from their real-life counterparts, as they often are here? Given the novel's games with identity, it might be useful to know that, but reading Boehm's version it's anybody's guess.

The issue raised at the end by the Guardian is an interesting one, and Boehm's handling of it indeed raises the question of how much she herself understands about the context of the novel. Certainly, at least one of the names of Oe's works has been subtly altered. The novel Man'en gannen no futtoboru (1967), in my opinion Oe's best, was translated into English as The Silent Cry. Literally, however, "man'en gannen" means the first year of the man'en era, which was 1860. "Futtoboru" is just the Japanese pronunciation of football, meant here in the sense of soccer. This, and other textual clues make it clear that Oe has altered has altered the title of this book, changing the word football to some equivalent Japanicization of "rugby" (which Boehm translates as Rugby Match 1860).

But what about other titles? The work rendered as "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away" by John Nathan is titled in The Changeling, "His Majesty Himself Will Wipe Away My Tears." Now, are the discrepancies here due to a subtle change in the Japanese wording? Or to a difference in opinion about how to translate the same words by Boehm? Given the football to rugby change, the natural assumption is that there is an underlying change in the Japanese wording—until we get to A Quiet Life.

Oe has a 1990 novel called Shizuka na seikatsu, translated as A Quiet Life by Kunioki Yanagishita and William Wetherall, which was made into a movie by Juzo Itami in 1995; Kogito has a novel called A Quiet Life which was made into a movie by Goro. Question: did Oe subtly change the name of this novel or not?

Now, "shizuka" means "quiet" in the sense of "peaceful" or "calm"; "shizuka" could easily have been replaced with a word meaning "quiet" in a more literal sense, leaving a subtly different name in Oe's novel, but the same plausible translation. If this were the case, though, then Boehm should have been aware of the earlier translation choice and picked something subtly different for consistency. Of course, it's also possible that Oe deliberately left the title of this particular novel unchanged, but then that fact itself would be significant for interpreting The Changeling. One would have wished for enough clarity in the translation that there would be no ambiguity on this point.

Of course, I've been beating up on Boehm, and certainly the issue of title translation can be pinned on her. Some of the other choices, however, e.g. intratext parentheticals instead of footnotes or Americanized language, may have been the choice of Grove, the publishers. The Guardian astutely points out that Grove has designed the packaging of this book to look much more like the those of the very successful Haruki Murakami, than like past Oe books, in particular the not very popular Somersault (1999 / 2003), last of Oe's books to be translated before this one.

So, if those choices were made by Grove, or forced upon Boehm by her editor, then the blame should fall on their head. But, surely someone needs to pay attention to the content here—the fact of the matter is that Oe is not like Murakami and will never be as accessible as him. Oe is obsessed with the obscure, and his novels are only going to appeal to those who share this interest and a certain kind of patience with over-intellectualized and convoluted prose. I mean, Somersault is a complex metaphorical novel which (a) references past Oe works (many of which have not been translated into English!), and (b) spends a great deal of time analyzing Keirkegaard's concept of the "leap of faith" in excruciating detail. This is just not going to be as broadly appealing as a hip romantic love story.

On the topic of Oe's other books, at one point in The Changeling, a character remarks to Kogito that none of his novels makes sense unless the reader has read all the other ones. And this is certainly true of Oe: his oeuvre as a whole is itself a coherent work much greater than the sum of its parts. The discussion in Somersault reimagines and dissects the events in Oe's Flaming Green Tree trilogy, which itself builds upon the mythos laid down in The Silent Cry and earlier works. Yet the Flaming Green Tree trilogy has never been translated! No wonder readers and critics couldn't make heads or tails of Somersault! If Grove wants to improve critical reception of Oe's works in English, they would do a much greater service getting his most important works of the 1980s translated into English, than by attempting to market recent works (without any relevant context!) to young hipsters.

A final note on The Changeling: the novel itself is deeply paradoxical. Knowing that so many of the events described are real, one wonders about those which are not. Particularly telling, and puzzling, is a remark made to Kogito by his wife:

I've never asked you this before, but what really happened that weekend? If you don't write down whatever you know—without telling any lies or concealing the truth with embellishments—then I'll never be able to understand what happened. At this point, of course, neither you nor I have very many years left, and it seems to me that just as we want to live the rest of our lives honestly, without resorting to lies, you would want to write that way, too . . . for the rest of your days.

It's a little bit like what Akari said to his grandmother in Shikoku, during her final illness: "Please cheer up and die!" Only in your case, I'm asking you to be brave and write only the truth, until the very end. (163)

Given how many incidents in the novel are indeed real, one has to wonder if this conversation reflects any actual interaction between Oe and his wife following the death of his friend and her brother. If so, is The Changeling's Oe telling the truth? But in what sense? Here I agree with the Guardian: we simply don't have enough information to understand.

prisoner christmas

2010-12-15T00:36:00.003-05:00

color in black and white

2010-12-10T13:20:00.002-05:00

The experience of color television doesn't require a special TV. This is because of the Benham effect, which occurs when the experience of color is produced by rapidly oscillating patterns of white and black. Differences in the phase of this oscillation produce different color experiences.

You can experience the Benham effect for yourself here.

Although we don't know exactly what causes the Benham effect, we do know what relationship between phase and oscillation speed produces which color experience. In 1968, James Butterfield employed this knowledge to broadcast color information from a black and white TV camera to black and white TV sets. The idea is to use a rotating disk, half of which is black, the other half comprising a sequence of filters (in primary colors, red, green, and blue). The filters are placed to ensure that only the relevant color signal (whatever makes it through the filter) is phased appropriately with respect to the rotating disk. The end result is a flickering image which reproduces the sensation of color in the viewer, even though it is projected on a regular black and white television.

Read more about the Butterfield Color Encoder here.

According to Arthur Winfree:

Its first public demonstration was a soft-drink advertisement over station KNXT in Los Angeles. Nothing was said about color, to the consternation of thousands of viewers who seemed suddenly to be hallucinating. Its last public demonstration was in Argentina during political advertisements by Eva Peron.

~ Winfree (1980 / 2001) The Geometry of Biological Time, 2nd ed.

real terrorism

2010-12-08T13:54:00.003-05:00

Are Julian Assange and wikileaks "terrorists" as some US commentators have claimed?

I'll reserve judgment on that point. But insofar as "terrorism" includes the use of intimidation and the interruption of normal civilized procedures in order to force one's opponents into following some particular course of action, the response by the US government and, especially, various credit card companies seems to exemplify that attitude.

Issuing an interpol warrant for Assange because his condom broke is patently ludicrous. But downright offensive is the recent decision by Visa and Mastercard to block donations to wikileaks. Of course, the claim that using Visa or Mastercard to donate to wikileaks contravenes the user agreement, in particular, the stipulation that funds not be used for illegal purposes, is completely spurious. Wikileaks has not be convicted of violating any international law—treating them as otherwise constitutes a clear violation of the "innocent until proven guilty" principle (not the first time from either the US government or its cronies - one of the very points revealed in wikileaks leaks).

Although the link for credit card donations on the wikileaks page doesn't currently function, donations can presently be made through xipwire. Donate today, or else you may lose control over how you spend your money entirely.

shirts laundered

2010-12-07T11:06:00.001-05:00

how's that for irony?

2010-12-01T01:28:00.005-05:00

So, I haven't been following the recent wikileaks fiasco closely enough to make any general comments (yet . . . ?).

Still, a quick browse immediately produced some interesting irony. This security level: CONFIDENTIAL document, 10BERLIN128, urges U.S. officials interested in getting more data from Germany (on German citizens, of course, for "anti-terrorism" purposes, of course) to reassure German officials of U.S. data security, concluding with the sentence: "We need to also demonstrate that the U.S. has strong data privacy measures in place so that robust data sharing comes with robust data protections."

'nuff said: keep your secrets Germany, we'll just lose them.

kremlin as rorschach

2010-11-27T00:07:00.000-05:00

The last volume of Brian K. Vaugn's Ex Machina was finally released last week, so those of us avoiding the single issues and reading the collected volumes could finally see the conclusion.

Overall, an excellent work, though, just as with Vaughn's previous effort, Y: The Last Man, there are two sorts of unevenness. First, digressions from the main plot into side issues which fail to maintain the same level of intensity or interest (significantly less so here, I think, than in Y, though). Second, too quick movement in the conclusion through events which have been foreshadowed for the entire series. Here, again, Ex Machina represents an improvement over Y: although the ending feels rushed, the explanations / reveals, etc. were much more satisfactory than on Vaughn's previous outing.

The basic premise of Ex Machina is that a DIY NYC superhero, Mitchell Hundred, "The Great Machine" (whose super power is the ability to talk to machines), saves the second tower on 9/11, reveals his secret identity, and wins the next mayoral election. The storyline flashes back and forth between his adventures as a superhero and his attempts to right wrongs on a bigger scale as the mayor.

The final issue of Ex Machina contains a very interesting twist, one I think really works and reflects favorably on the series as a whole. Arguably, it conflicts with the character of Hundred as revealed earlier, though it is strongly consistent with the reveal of where his powers come from, and makes for an interesting commentary on the old adage about the corrupting effects of power, especially within the context of superheroics . . .

[Now begin some fairly serious spoilers]

Hundred is assisted in his superhero career by an old family fried, a crotchety old Russian immigrant affectionately referred to as "Kremlin." Kremlin takes his moral code from old school comic books, and is profoundly disappointed when Hundred abandons his career as a superhero in order to go into politics. In the second half of the series, Kremlin's disappointment turns (apparently) radically irrational when he embarks on a plot to ruin Hundred's political career by publicly discrediting him, thereby hoping to force him back into his role as a superhero.

Kremlin's machinations have disastrous and unforeseen consequences in the climax of the series, one would think prompting him to repent. In the final issue, however, he confronts Hundred again several years later, and reiterates his dedication to ruining Hundred's public image in an attempt to force him back into NYC-based superheroics.

Hundred: I'm trying to protect the entire world, you stubborn old asshole!

Kremlin: How, by pushing papers? Politics is no different from games out on that boardwalk. Is just carney's taking money from rubes!

Hundred: That's why I'm trying to give voters another choice!

Kremlin: Ha! That is what Russians were told during perestroika . . . but nothing really changed. Choice is just illusions powerful create to make the weak think they are not. Republican, Democrat, Independent, whatever. These are just Coke and Pepsi, different names for same watered-down shit.

Here's the twist [mega super-duper spoilers]: Kremlin responds to Hundred's continued insistence he'll go one with politics by threatening suicide and Hundred kills him by telling his gun to shoot. Thereby, however, preventing the leak of the information in Kremlin's possession which would have forever ruined Hundred's chance at political office.

Here's the connection with Watchmen: one of the central (of course there are many) ethical dilemmas in Watchmen is a version of the classic utilitarianism v. deontology dilemma: is the right act the one that's best for "the greater good," or the one which follows a higher moral code? Rorschach represents deontology, unwilling to allow Veidt's crime to go unpunished, no matter what the greater good; whereas Veidt represents utilitarianism, sacrificing the entire population of NYC in order to ensure world peace.

One of the most despicable features of the movie version of Watchmen is that it completely shortchanges Rorschach's position on this dilemma. The book builds up support for the deontological position by (a) following a collection of inhabitants of NYC, building them up into sympathetic human characters before their deaths, for the entire saga, and (b) presenting the violent carnage of NYC in shockingly graphic detail. Both these key features of the central moral dilemma of the work were elided in the film.

In the case of the Hundred / Kremlin encounter, the moral dilemma is similar, though the representation quite different. In both stories, a crime goes unpunished. In the case of Hundred, however, unlike Veidt, who facelessly annihilates a city from a distance, he kills his closest, most long standing father-figure face to face and personally.

Kremlin, much like Rorschach, is clearly a nutjob. Rorschach, for most of Watchmen, at least seems to have his heart in the right place, even though his methods are perhaps too extreme. Kremlin, however, is essentially a "bad guy" for the latter half of Ex Machina, his stubbornness at the very end seems irrational, though we've already been primed for the idea that power has begun to corrupt Hundred by earlier events in the final issue.

And it's the very issue of corruption which makes the case of Hundred qualitatively very different from that of Veidt. Veidt operates outside the law with cold detachment. Hundred operates within the system, attempting to bring reason to an unreasonable system by approaching each issue with a pure heart and a level head. His power as mayor is that he isn't tied to a particular platform or agenda, he can approach any given issue with a clearheaded moral sense.

Yet it is these very features of Hundred which make his "decision" (we see him express disbelief at his own action) to kill Kremlin so much more reprehensible than that of Veidt. Cold calculation is cold calculation. But a man guided by his moral compass who lets that compass slip no longer retains the very virtue he supposedly protects with the utilitarian act.

Of course, I've always sympathized with Rorschach. I'm not sure I'd say I sympathize with Kremlin, but his final rant reflects my own views, I'm afraid. If anything, though, the lingering feeling here is emphatically not that Hundred's period as mayor was all a lie, and we have now seen his true character, but rather that it was temporary, as all periods of virtuous power are temporary. Of course, this is an old message, but one elegantly and powerfully portrayed here.

Final thoughts: Is the deontological position tenable?

In the case of Ex Machina, would "the Great Machine" really have done greater good by remaining a local hero than by pursuing a political career? Certainly not, though, he might have been more sure that his actions were in fact good. Interestingly, this is a theme throughout the story—as the Great Machine, Hundred often doubts his own choices, or fails to convince the people he attempts to help that he is in fact helping them. Of course, Hundred is also beset by doubts during his term as mayor, but he experiences periods of profound satisfaction and self-confidence unequaled in his Great Machine days. Nevertheless, remaining the independent hero would have allowed Hundred to retain a moral high ground which he surely has lost by the end of the series.

In the case of Watchmen, as with all great art, it is shocking how closely life imitates art. Though it was written 15 years before 9/11, it is difficult not to reflect on the moral aftermath of that catastrophe when revisiting Watchmen today. At the end of Watchmen, the one hope the deontologist receives that Rorschach's moral vision (and the truth of NYC's demise) has not perished is the delivery of Rorschach's journal to an obscure far right journal. Although the novel stops here, and does not portray the reception of Rorschach's journal, it surely would have been qualitatively similar to that of the 9/11 truth movement: derision, disbelief, and embarrassment. Once a belief enters the public sphere with enough conviction, the truth or falsity of a radical enough dissenting view is irrelevant, it hasn't a hope of being treated seriously.

Does that mean the radical deontological position is untenable? That there is no place in this world for principles in the face of certain failure? I sure hope not. I'd like to think that placed in the position of Rorschach, I'd have the courage to fight for truth to the end. But then, I'd have to find myself in a position where I was certain of the truth . . . an all too rare occurrence.

probability in popular culture

2010-11-25T18:00:00.000-05:00

"So you're telling me it's a matter of probability and odds; I was worried there wasn't chance involved."

"Well only if you assume the player with the best hand wins."

"So that would be what you call bluffing?"

"You've heard the term. Then you'll also know that in poker you never play your hand; you play the man across from you."

~ Casino Royale (2006)

James Bond discussing poker with his government sponsored financier. Blind faith that skill can overcome the roll of the die (or deal of the cards, as the case may be).

thoughts on andrew loeb

2010-11-24T23:02:00.000-05:00

[Spoilers, but given how long and complex Cryptonomicon is, they shouldn't diminish future reading enjoyment.]

One of the most enigmatic characters in Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is Andrew Loeb. The character pops up only occasionally throughout the sprawling epic narrative, always in connection with some extremely negative experience of the main characters. Unlike our heroes, we are never given access to the inner workings of Andrew Loeb, his motivations are never explained, and they are just as puzzling to the reader as they are to the primary characters in Stephenson's novel.

The interesting thing about Andrew Loeb is that he's not a self-interested, money-grubbing crook (like, for instance, my ex-landlords), although his actions do often take on this appearance. He sues Randy Waterhouse for the rights to software he's written (with the justification that the idea behind the software was based on Loeb's own research into the diet of hunter-gatherer societies). Many years later, he sues Randy's company at the instigation of high-powered corporate badguy "The Dentist." This frivolous law suit jeopardizes the benevolent, future-holocaust-preventing plans of our heroes. Finally, Loeb appears again in the novel's final scenes, sneaking through the jungle and shooting arrows at our protagonists as they attempt to recover stolen WWII Japanese gold.

Randy . . . looks upstream to see that a man is standing in the water about a dozen feet away from them. The man has a shaved head that is sunburned as red as a three-ball. He's wearing what used to be a decent enough business suit, which has practically become one with the jungle now: it is impregnated with red mud, which has made it so heavy that it pulls itself all out of shape as he totters to a standing position. . . . When he gets fully upright, Randy can see that his right leg terminates just below the knee, although the bare tibia and fibula stick out for a few inches. The bones are scorched and splintered. Andrew Loeb has fashioned a tourniquet from sticks and a hundred-dollar silk necktie that Randy's pretty sure he has seen in the windows of airport duty-free shops. This has throttled back the flow of blood from the end of his leg to a rate comparable to what you would see coming out a Mr. Coffee during its brew cycle. Once Andy has gotten himself fully upright, he smiles brightly and begins to move towards Randy . . . In his free hand he is carrying a great big knife: Bowie-sized, but with all of the extra spikes, saw blades, blood grooves, and other features that go into a really top-of-the-line fighting and survival knife. (892)

There are many different "evil" characters in Cryptonomicon, but Loeb's evil is qualitatively different from the rest. Loeb's motive is righteous indignation: he is convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that his cause is just. And it is this very conviction that twists his actions towards evil.

Of course, Loeb is also a nutjob, but he is not a simple psychopath. It is Loeb's misguided sense of righteous indignation that drives his pathology, to allow him to do evil with the conviction that it is good.

Painted first as a luddite, Randy is surprised to discover that Loeb has an active internet presence. This turns out to be as a militant in favor of new ideology based on the concept of a hive mind: we are all one, there is no distinction between you and me. Of course, such a view can only aid and abet his rabid sense of self-righteousness. No longer is it only for his sake that he must act (sue, shoot arrows, whatever), but for all of us, because we are all one and our true morality is that of Andrew Loeb.

Certain features of Loeb are clearly modeled on the Unabomber, but in these post-9/11 times (the book was published in 1999), he takes on a much scarier cast by analogy with muslim extremists.

Just like Loeb, the scariest muslim extremist is the paradoxical fanatic. On the one hand, he purports to be absolutely convinced in a pre-medieval cultural system and moral code; not only that it is right for himself, but for all of us. On the other hand, in order to exercise this self-righteousness, he must embrace the technology of his enemies; technology only made possible by the very value system (Western individualistic capitalism and religious tolerance) he seeks to destroy.

Both Loeb and the fundamentalist terrorist allow their righteous indignation to eclipse their own value systems. They embrace the tools of their enemies precisely so they can end those enemies. Such an "ethos" is inherently self-contradictory. It can never survive in a vacuum, but depends upon defining itself in contrast to the other. Without an object of hate, an object against which the self-righteousness can be directed, there's nothing there, no constant moral or social core upon which to rest a peaceful life.

Of course, from the standpoint of those of us who just want to get on with our friggin lives (because we do have a value system that can support and motivate performing acts without them being directed in hatred against another), the scariest thing about Andrew Loeb is that the inherent paradoxical nature of his character precludes the very possibility of rational discourse. There is no reasoning with a terrorist who already embraces contradiction. This is because reason is founded upon the avoidance of contradictions. Once one embraces them, anything follows. No argument can sway, one has simply opted out of rational discourse.

This realization allows Randy and his compatriots to kill Andrew Loeb with clear consciences: a true them or us moment had been reached. And the same reasoning applies to the fanatical muslim extremist who embraces equivalent contradictions.

So, perhaps just this is the boundary of religious tolerance, the line in the sand to draw at the end of modern relativism: your way of life, your religion, your value system can be as radically different from mine as you like. And it deserves my tolerance. But once your value system ceases to remain coherent on its own terms, once it ceases to be a value system for you and becomes just a blanket "justification" of actions against me, then it really is us or them: me or you.

a hole in the canon

2010-11-22T20:55:00.000-05:00

Why have you never heard of Andrzej Żuławski?

Or, perhaps more to the point, why had I never heard of Andrzej Żuławski until encountering his On the Silver Globe (1977 / 1987) by accident two years ago?

Not once in any of the film classes I took in college was Żuławski ever mentioned. Not once did I come across any of his films during numerous (often upwards of 8 per week) art house screenings while living in Boston for several years. Not one of the many film enthusiasts I know has ever mentioned him to me.

Yet, now I have seen three of his films. In addition to On the Silver Globe, L'Amour Braque and Possession, all three of them absolute classics: brilliant composition and editing, astonishing acting, and completely original and compelling stories. (Not to mention the appearance of Isabelle Adjani and Sophie Marceau, two of the most ridiculously beautiful women to ever walk the face of the earth.)

This director's work should have been all over my film classes, all over the art house schedules. His work is like a cross between the best of nouvelle vague and German new wave, and better than most directors in either category. Why is he missing from the canon?

Or has my experience here been totally idiosyncratic . . . ?