It's all around you, like smog. This train isn't bound for glory.
Background by Deak Ferrand, who pwnz.
If you were referred here by Technorati, please note that the entry you are looking for is probably the one PRIOR TO the one you were actually referred to, due to a bug in their indexing process. Please see previous entry.
I seem to be capable of being annoyed by the smallest things, even as the big things seem to become easier to reconcile to.
There has recently been - at least here in the United States of Yee-Haw! - a remarkable up-tick in the number of commercials using jangly, acoustic guitar indie-rock cuts as backup music.
It's seems that being earnest, aching, slightly-disheveled but full of the burning intensity of a callow-yet-righteous youth who nonetheless is still capable of really believing in the redemptive power of ballads all the more affecting because they are slightly inept, a bit awkward in the delivery, and a little unpolished in the lyric... It seems that even being this, and all that goes with it (i.e., high or hung over), is now, in the final analysis, a marketing posture.
Supposing you wanted to create a successful conspiracy - a secret society whose organizational integrity was never compromised, and whose core secret was never given away by infiltrators, spies, or traitors - how would you accomplish this?
The Free-Masons, also, have had great success in keeping their core secret away from profane eyes by this simple expedient: The core secret is that there is no secret. The organizational issue has been handled less successfully, and they have suffered losses in effectiveness accordingly.
The organization can be unconditionally protected from damage by a parallel technique - that there should be no organization.
Do these techniques impair our effectiveness? Consider that, since the American effort began in earnest in the late 1950s, in a bowling alley in Whittier, Kalifornia - a subtle allusion, by way of the pin layout, to the tetraktys of the Pythagoreans, who preceded and influenced Socrates, whose true legacy was carried forward by the Cynics, and, well, us - since then, there have been at least three successful television shows and one major motion picture featuring Eris as a character, and, more to the point, Pluto is no longer a planet, but Eris is.
There was a performance of a Wagner opera, which is odd because I'm not terribly fond of Wagner, (though Tristan und Isolde does have some lovely passages) for most of the usual reasons - it's basically heavy metal, in a bad way, and linked to romanticism, nationalism, vegetarianism, and other things that are bad, and is prejudicial against Nibelungen, who are a fine, proud people once you get to know them, and very generous in a discreet way, so long as you don't bring up das Rheingold.
But, for some reason, in this dream, there was a Wagner performance. Something in the lyric caught my attention, and, in accord with Dream Logic, I was looking immediately at a critical edition of the libretto - a thick volume, with full apparatus, including extended notes, portions left out of the canonical version of the opera as generally performed, etc. One of these ommitted arias was in the form of an opinion poll whose content dynamically changed as different audiences experienced the opera. (Which would be a great thing for someone other than me to do.)
A topic in this poll was the finest goal to aspire to in life, and the leading answer was "to be despised".
The more I think on this, the more sublime a conception it seems to me. We ought, perhaps, to be judged not by the number and quality of our friends, but the type of people from whom we tend to draw fire. Given how most people are... Besides which, seen from an aesthetic point of view, one may choose any fundamental orientation for one's life - why not something with a little flair?
DISCLAIMER: A wise man once said that Beer + Coffee = Removing the Volume Control. You have been warned. DISCLAIMER THE SECOND: I am going to attempt an invasion of the South over the next week, so I will be on hiatus during this time. DISCLAIMER THE THIRD: Jesus was way cool. Leave me alone.
Here in Washington-the-state-not-the-District-of-Columbia-already-land, the big stink du jour runs as follows:
"Nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change", the state government, in the interest of not being a collective dick about things, and perhaps of de-escalating the War on Xmas (TM), had agreed to allow Christmas (and also Chanukah, on the grounds that the other Jewish holidays are too hard to pronounce, and a bit abstract [i.e., not involving presents]) displays in the state capitol. (Discussion of what a collective dick looks like, and whether it has performance issues, are postponed for the nonce.) Atheists, feeling, as usual, a bit left out, asked for, and were granted, their own bit of real estate in the state-governmental memespace, and were - surprisingly - not killed, but allowed their own little span of Americana, in which they predictably opined that religion is, you know, lame (and also "hardens hearts and enslaves minds").
Well, this being America, (Notice my restraint in not spelling it "Amerikkka", o young turks, and learn.) a whole gaggle of assorted religious nuts shat a collective hot brick and started speaking in very, very st00pid tongues. (Discussion of the composition and properties of collective hot bricks also postponed.)
So far as I can see, the atheists in question felt that, if religious sentiments were being promoted on land owned by the people, then they, being, as it were, people, might arguably be entitled to a piece of that. The protesting faithful seem to bear the following message: We feel bad; please make people stop publicly disagreeing with us. If anyone can advise me of any other way of construing these protests, please let me know, then go fuck yourself, because you are very, very wrong.
If we can make like a basal (or rectal, depending on your proclivities) thermometer, and probe the internal composition of the two camps, we may as well be as superficial as the media, and go by their counter/protest signs. Typical butthurt Xian sign, paraphrased: Jesus loves you - now cut it out or He'll send you to Hell. Typical atheist sign, verbatim: "Get over it."
Apparently, Seattle's love of animals does not extend beyond mammals.
It has been a commonplace in our home for some years that local TV news shows love to open with a story about a sick baby and end with a story about a dog. This has held true through the several places I have previously lived (San Diego, The Greater Los Angeles Metroplex, and Central California), but Seattle is curiously intense about its dogs (it appears to have been settled by a group of nomadic dog people in the mid-nineteenth century), so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they have taken the Heartwarming Dog Story to the next level.
To be fair - and to put the dog people in their place - a cat, Scarlett, also did this. Of course, this wasn't to rescue puppies, per se... And, in defense of dog people, at least hey didn't write a fucking poem about Leo.
As Dave Berry would say: I am not making this up. I suppose I should just be grateful that the media aren't bothering us with pesky details about the Iraq War, eh?
WARNING: DON'T CLICK ANY LINKS IN THIS POST. IN FACT, JUST DON'T CLICK ANY LINKS, EVER AGAIN. IF YOU ARE OVER 18, IT'S PROBABLY LEGAL FOR YOU TO CLICK THESE (AND POSSIBLY OTHER) LINKS, BUT, LISTEN, JUST DON'T, OKAY?
Well (I hear you say) a troll is someone who aims to provoke a reaction by acting "badly", perhaps? But (I crisply retort) this wouldn't suffice to distinguish trolls from flamers or griefers. The former, crucially, believe in what they are saying, or at least disagree with the people they are abusing, and the latter, too, fail to attain to the status of trolls by essentially the same failing - they mean to do what they appear to be doing - in this case, to cause grief, or at least pique.
No, trolls qua trolls must, at heart, not have any sincere connection with their apparent actions - what they appear to be doing cannot be what they actually are doing. The will use Nazi slogans in a Jewish chat room, (or vice-versa), with predictable results, but if they meant them, they would just be a joy-riding Nazi (or anti-Nazi).
From this, I conclude that many activities not normally considered trolling may be brought into the fold - or, if you prefer, under the bridge.
Sure, someone posting a link to goatse in a knitting forum with the intent of provoking hundereds of posts to the effect that poster's granny panties are in a twist is arguably trolling, and someone posting for the hundredth time about Barack Obama not having proven he is a U.S. citizen to a liberal forum is definitely trolling (or a sincere cretin) - but so, in my opinion, is a streaker, or even someone who mails inert white powder labelled "ANTHRAX" to members of government, business or media (unless they have a Higher Motive, I suppose). The key elements are expectation of a strong reaction, an amoral streak, contempt for the targets, and, of course, the anticipation of lulz.
So, if any insincere means are allowable, and any strong reaction that amuses the troll, I hypothesize that the only rational explanation for the rapid post-intertubes growth of bizarre fetishes - vore, balloons, clowns, and so on, endlessly (and who could forget alt.butt-harp?) - is that they were deliberatly made up, in the specific hopes of getting people to adopt them. Consider the potential for trollish gratification! We must imagine that somewhere out there is a jolly troll whose heart is immeasurably warmed by the knowledge that they caused someone's entire life to veer away from work-TV-titties-'n'-beer to a full-time committment to artificially inflating their abdomen in order to produce huge - yet subtly erotic - farts. (Massive props to Xaos for that one!)
All must bow down to the master - this is clearly the ultimate form of trolling.
In an effort to bring up the intellectual level of this 'blog, I now bring to the table a question of great weight, which shall take all our collective probity to resolve. To wit: What can explain the fact that the default color for bedsheets is white?
Certainly, at one time, dyeing was a significant expense, even a luxury (what with having to harvest the snails and such) - but now? In any case, here in the First World, there is little significant difference in overhead.
So, I am forced to declare, ex cathedra, the following dharma:
That anyone who willingly sheaths their bed in white sheets is either:
Heloise - helpful hinter, who can clean gosh-darned near everything, and takes a stubborn pride in hard cases.
Single, and gripped by the demons of pessimism,
A repulsive prude,
A damned fool, or
An absolutely drooling fucking idiot - or, perhaps,
All of the above, excluding (of course) Heloise, who is, after all, one smart cookie.
Your feedback on this important issue is not welcomed, but will be tolerated with an ingratiating politeness that is subtly insulting.
Chrysippus, a favorite and very quotable Stoic, once said that poverty teaches by force those lessons that philosophy tries to teach by persuasion. In this I am inclined to agree with him. Recently, the American news media have been much agitated over reductions in consumer spending, for example, and the decline in conspicuous consumption - nakedly expressed as such even by that media - has been widely lamented. Now there are great fears about declining sales of, for example, automobiles.
Now, I am not so ignorant of economics as not to recognize the ill effects of an abrupt decline in the velocity of money. But the Stoic in me can't help but ask: Since when is it a bad thing for people not to act like morons? Any child knows that people who direct their lives toward the acquisition of things are as good as dead, and any adult knows that overconsumption, and the associated overmanufacture of crap, is the main engine driving the rapid die-off of the few surviving non-human species of Earth. Perhaps a Great Depression would be a good thing, if it would knock a few heads sharply enough to grant them some sense. Certainly, it is hard to miss the relative importance of people and life, of beauty and virtue, on the one hand, and of candy and toys, flash and bling on the other, when you have no choice but to find your satisfaction in the things that endure.
So, here's my vote for a crippling national economic crisis. No car sales at all sounds even better than fewer. I guess I should have voted for McCain after all!
I am forced to concede that my last post was, as the French would say, retarded. (Actually, when a suitable occasion arises, they probably just use the term "Americain".) I suppose that I had wanted this so badly that I had to protect myself from disappointment with that reliable balm, cynicism.
Yes, it is true that President Barack Obama has not explicitly taken every position that I wish that he would - especially on civil liberties - but the enormity of this moment has hit me like a case of anthrax; like others tonight, I must concede to him. Our president - and I can use the word "our" with a clean conscience because I did, in fact, vote for him - is, without a doubt, possessed of greatness, and deserving of the position at which he has arrived. President Obama ran a clean campaign, focussed on issues, and, moreover, on principles. He and Biden advocated openly for withdrawl from Iraq, abortion rights, and equal treatment of homosexuals. They spoke of the leaders of hostile nations such as Iran as persons to be taken seriously, and engaged with diplomatically. That is to say, they risked openly admitting to opinions that could - and did - alienate many. This is rather consistent with the possibility that President Obama may, hypothetically, be sincere - a hypothesis one can hardly make with a straight face about more than a scant fraction of the political leadership of any country - much less this one.
Consider the weight of these facts: President Obama (and yes, I am revelling in being able to type those words, finally) actually specifically included gay Americans in his acceptance speech; he failed utterly to descend to negativity in his campaign; he made no political use of the failed assassination plot against him; he opposed entry into Iraq; he has specifically addressed the environment and poverty throughout his campaign, and as recently as tonight. He was revealed to have associations with more radically-minded persons like Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers, was educated in part in a madrasah, admits to having got high in the past, grew up, in part, in Indonesia, and, ferfuckssake, has "Hussein" as a middle name. Oh yes, and, lest we forget, he is a black dude. According to every available scrap of conventional wisdom, he was more likely to end up in Guantanamo Bay than the White House.
And yet, somehow, he was elected. This collective act of discernment has actually accomplished another feat long considered impossible - I believe that I may actually be proud to be an American at this moment. That's right - me. (Granted, I still don't like my country very much.) For his next trick, I suppose President Obama will freeze Hell over and grant the San Diego Padres a World Series victory. And (though I liked Kerry pretty well) I have never enjoyed casting a vote so much as I did this one.
I honestly feel like I have lived through the equivalent of the first footfall on the Moon. The difference between this and any other election I have experienced goes much deeper than race or party - it is almost as if not everything has to be terrible - which, I suppose, is the audacity of hope.
I was going to wait until after the election, but now that it seems like a foregone conclusion, I would like to express my relief at the likely Obama victory. For the record, this is the first time I have ever felt any sincere enthusiasm for a presidential candidate for whom I have voted. Obama will probably be the most principled president we've had since Jimmy Carter, and, like Carter, will come as quite a relief compared to what preceded him. And yes, it will do the country a great deal of good to have a black president. In principle, of course, that should make no difference. Given that we are short of Utopia, it does make a difference, and it's a great step toward that sanity for which we are all striving.
Now that that's out of the way, I have to vent.
In recent memory no leading candidate for major office has taken their stand on any of the following:
That our civil liberties have been taken away. The Bill of Rights is in shreds, and the shreds are being lit on fire, one by precious one.
That peace is good. Okay, they may admit that, but none of them dare to point out the corollary: War is bad.
That the Constitution has been repeatedly violated, and the persons responsible should be punished. Impeachment is not unreasonable under the circumstances. Though the American tradition limits the offense of treason to aiding a foreign power against us, I can't help but feel that anyone working to undermine the basic principles of our form of government is a traitor nonetheless.
That our approach to poverty is fundamentally based in social Darwinism and implicit hostility toward the weak and the unfortunate, and this must stop.
That incalculable damage to our culture has been done by the ongoing effort to deny these facts, and this denial primarily explains the election of Reagan, whose presidency was an ongoing nightmare of evil from which the country has never fully emerged. Shame on Obama for ever speaking favorably of that pestilential reptilian. Because we couldn't admit what happened in Viet Nam, we continued to repeat the error - in Iran, in Latin America, and, well, you know.
While I admit that another Clinton administration sounds like paradise compared to what we have now, a lot of dewy-eyed young things are going to be pretty surprised to find that that is exactly what we're signing up for.
subscribe to my feed
