Saturday, December 04, 2010
Tuesday, November 09, 2010
Reflections on being a longhair
Shearing time = crying time. I'm like an infant at circumcision. Or now I know what it feels like to become a eunuch. Except in this case it's voluntary amputation, and its womanhood (of the strictly and crassly superficial variety), not manhood, to which I bid adieu.
In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.
Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.
Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.
Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.
Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.
Baaaaaaaah, shear me!
Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."
Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.
But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.
The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.
Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.
Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.
Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.
I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.
In fact, I'm saying peace to nigh two years of identity formation. How important has this longhair aberration been? And why did I pursue this path, persist, and then finally decide to give it up? These answers are not altogether clear. They're bound up with my contested and mercurial self-appraisal. Allow me to explore some thoughts in somewhat-candor.
Social influence has been instrumental on my hair habits. I am rather impressionable. Consider this sequence of events: Between January and May 2009, three long-haired men entered and exerted considerable influence on my social reality. I respected and emulated all of them in various ways. All were longhairs. After getting a haircut in February, 2009, I wouldn't trim for another 14 months. Coincidence? I think not.
I have since fallen out of contact with these gentleman. I am in Chicago. Nobody I know has long hair; some people have come out in opposition to the institution. In fact, short hair is hegemonic among men in this professionalized, rigorous academic atmosphere. This has sown doubt where secure ambivalence reigned before. Even if people like it, the bureaucracy's impersonal regulations squash atypical expression. And I fear failure. Worse, I have not done superlatively on midterm examinations and feel tenuous.
Sometimes I think that abnormality and anti-conformist expression are normatively praiseworthy. I get worked up about aesthetics, art, and all forms of cultural and personal production. Hair and fashion, in this view, are modes of public art. Even the fruits of egotism can have positive externalities.
Sometimes I eschew ostentation, superficiality, and the hubris of special-feeling. I condemn myself. Special? Like I'm superior 'cause I have a freaking weird, pac-man pufftastic frizzle fro? Oh, man! What arrogance, what overlyanalyzed hogwash. I'm an unremarkable insect.
Cutting is part of my yearning for an elusive austerity. There was a time when I thought I should enter the army (Thank you, Robert A. Heinlein, yet again, for fueling this obsession which, like so many of other social and intellectual preoccupations, never became anything other than hypothetical idealism). Inculcate in me diligence and mental power, army, society, cryptic authority. Self-help-me. I am a lemming, leaderless. A sheep without shepherd.
Baaaaaaaah, shear me!
Of course, the hair was anti-sheep. But it is no surprise that social pressure operates even among the most marginal. Social norms, fads, and fashions exert and represent power ubiquitously. Thus the bumper-stickers disclaiming "you are so alike in your nonconformity" or "nonconformity is the new conformity."
Despite the somber tone of the text, I do sincerely feel that my hair exploration has been overwhelmingly gratifying. It was a means of personal exploration and innovation. I think I know me now better for the manifold experiences it impressed on me. Cornrows cannot exist independent of long hair. Nor can the endearing acts of the strangers who found the fro inspiring enough to comment upon or poke. Most nearly everybody was positive about it. If I want to be really optimistic, I could go as far as to say that I did my part to rescue male longhairism from social denigration, just by being a model citizen in action.
But what about the stereotypes? The drug-connotation, the inherent sloppiness, the air of oddity, the look of the 'douchebag snowboarder,' skater, or young punk. I was certainly ambivalent to this kind of short-sighted idiocy most of the time, but that still left space for me to be sensitive about it some of the time.
The internal debate ranged constantly: to cut or not to cut.
Then there were the prosaic considerations: the requisite level of long-hair-care and the fact that it was always getting into my eyes, invading the screen of my camera, falling into my food, and other annoyances. These things became severe only during periods of extreme length. They also appear to exacerbate my habitual scalp scratching.
Allow me to argue something of which I am not wholly convinced: it just doesn't matter much. Hair styling is a superficial and trivial variable. Furthermore, it is not overly determinant of physical attractiveness. It makes a difference, of course, and there is some favorable person-hairstyling matchmaking, which is valuable. But even exclusively in terms of sexiness, hair is just one of a dozen important variables. And when it comes to the symbiotics analysis, what the hair 'says,' recall that I'm still floating about in academia. I could have been successful here with the hair helmet.
Nevertheless, in terms of existential and material conditions, hair has become more of a distraction than a determinant of happiness.
I need to abstract away from irrelevancies. I need an influx of confidence. I yearn for an enlightened ascetism I do not have faith I will ever achieve. At least for now, I can stop worrying about the travails and dilemmas of hair, and focus on other forms of self-improvement.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Alien insect invader
It is not often that one comes into contact with an alien creature. With a beast so repugnant and otherworldly, whose existence belies any earthly explanation. Tonight I came jaw to mandible with such a beast. Train your eye to the image above to see the creature in question. Suppress your repugnance as I relate the circumstances of my alien encounter.Consider the bathroom. Although not the most pleasant and beautiful of places, I submit that there is a special serenity to the bathroom. Not just any bathroom, but one's own bathroom. It is something of a sanctuary, a place of ritual and ablution, a place of utmost peace and aloneness. In a word, the bathroom is a safe place. Or so I thought.
This very evening, I was in my bathroom. I was in a state of Zen, brushing placidly, at peace with my surroundings. All of a sudden, to my shock and dismay, I realized I was not alone - I perceived a beast menacing me from the shower knob. If I screamed, you can hardly blame me. Not only was the illusion of immaculate security shattered, the agent of destruction was an alien creature of unparalleled repugnance. Having seen the artist's rendering, you cannot but agree with me. Obviously, the monster is not of this world.
Naturally, my second reaction was to document the happening - it's not everyday that one encounters extra terrestrials. It is thanks to this enterprising impulse that you are able to view the beast in all its glory.
I cannot look at her but experience a shudder. The obsidian bug-eyes, the mandibles, the sinuous, probing antenna, formidable carapace, and hairy legs. Note the amputated posterior hindquarter - most likely a battle wound. What kind of demonic, alien freak?!
Although it took only moments, when I had returned from examining the photos on my computer, the beast had disappeared. I suspect that it recognized my superior fighting capabilities and slunk off back down its hidey hole -the drain pipe in my bathtub.
I accepted the creature's capitulation, craven though it may be. I decided not to eradicate the beast in a horrific wave of inescapable water. Who am I to kick a living thing when it's down? Empathy is the supreme anti-sin, of which even insects are deserving. If my challenger has retired to regenerate its blighted limb, so be it: I will accept her challenge anew when she returns!
UPDATE (Nov. 3, 2010): The narcoleptic freak returned last night only to find Brad in full martial mobilization. I stumbled upon the beast apparently harvesting or sowing some unspeakable evil from or into my washcloth. I approached with a glint in my eye and she moved. For a gimp, I was astonished nearly to the point of defecation by her alacrity. You know what they say: you can't fault a guy for sharting in moral peril. After doing a somersault or other aerial maneuver too fast for my eyes to follow, our bitch (a veritable Grendel's mother) clung to the bottom of the cloth, batlike. Taking my life in my hands, I used kitchen tongs to sweep the washcloth and passenger into a bucket. Once inside the rabid roach whizzed about like a pinball in circles. It must be that she was dazed, perhaps by the light, for to have climbed out and brought the attack to my eyes would have been the work of a millisecond. Using the tongs to grasp the side of the bucket, I swiftly clothed myself in bathrobe and rushed to exit the building. Take a second now to appreciate my superhuman concern for species rights. Even in open war, I avoid murder. If I was muttering imprecations in the stairs, what of it? Admittedly, it wasn't very gentlemanly or empathetic to start screaming, "Get out! Get the fuck out of my bucket! Fuck you," when I reached street-level. As if in conciliatory response to my hysterics, the beast transported herself beneath a leaf. I picked up my bucket, and the battle was concluded. VICTORY!
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Bad habits
Surely all people have bad habits. Because I cannot presume to know other people's self-destructive ways, and I am an unabashed egotist, I'll look at my own habits only. I don't see any reason why I cannot serve as a foil for the rest of the world.
By bad, I mean "messes your shit up" or, said differently, pernicious for personal happiness and progress. By habit, I mean ingrained and chronic action with subconscious fortifications.
Alright, lets get down to the dirty:
1. Severe head scratching. This is just about the best bad habit archetype I can imagine because it gives nothing back. There is no reason nor positive reinforcement for head scratching. I've dipped deep into my bag of sophist rationalizations and come up empty-handed. I do it because I can. I do it subconsciously, constantly. It accelerates when I'm stressed out or sedentary. My life is soured on a daily basis by this irrational habit. My scalp scoured, raw, deforested. I can recollect being well aware of this scourge as early as the beginning of college. There must have been a trigger in there. I thought I was balding Freshman year because of the slough from this degrading self-hate. Needless to say, as long as I've been scratching, I've been trying to stop, to no avail.
2. Sleep habits. Now I enter the realm of the cost-benefit and the sub-optimal. My sleep habits have been wacky since adolescence. They reached their nadir during high school summers when I played a shiz-ton of Starcraft (the computer game). Starcraft was so mesmerizing and time-consuming that it impinged on sleep normalcy in a bad way. I'd stay up later and later playing and then be incapable of falling asleep afterward. I'd lie and listen to the infernal birds as the morning glow encroached on my window. I'd cry, whine, scream, pummel things. That, I say, was the nadir. This certainly sub-optimal hell was caused by the lack of parentally imposed structure, the fact that I couldn't give two craps, and the household culture - my two bros had similar sleep habits. I lacked a stable sleep schedule until summer 2010, to which you might say, "No bigs," but I say, "Bigs." I've long been pierced by the paradoxical double horns of: (1) difficulty falling asleep at night and (2) lethargy during the day. I could never find equilibrium: I'd always tilt towards the nocturnal. And getting up was always an existential struggle. The up-side was that night invoked leaps in productivity. Even during high school, I accomplished most of my good (and inspired) work during the wee hours of the morning. This would make me recalculate the 'bad' part of habit in this case if I were not now convinced that I can be equally or more fertile during the day. Unlike my owl habits, diurnal productivity must be predicated on discipline and good habits. The principal reason I was productive at night was that I could never accomplish anything during the day due to:
3. Procrastination. It would be difficult to overestimate the evil effect of this inherently irrational menace. Procrastination is the habitual manifestation of an underlying lack of fortitude, will, and 'The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.' I believe strongly that I can go heel to toe with any procrastinator out there. Of those I know personally, I'm right up there in terms of severity. Even worse, I suffer all the heinous side-effects that some souls somehow obviate: namely, guilt and stress. Anxiety is my best friend (because he stands by me always) and my worst enemy (because he stabs me in the back perpetually). If you're wondering what I do when I'm expressly not working:
4. Facebook and other masturbatory internet time-consumption. By MASTURBATORY, I do not mean GENITAL SELF-STIMULATION. Rather, I'm referring to "excessively self-indulgent or self-involved" (the free dictionary). Combine this with the characteristic of a woefully inadequate and inferior substitute, and you're getting close to my understanding of the term. I've been using it to describe my habit of engaging in all sorts of depressing internet sink-hole nonsensicality for years. Facebook is a paradigm for this kind of waste. Belonging to Facebook is useful, because of its enormous positive network externalities, but one can waste away to a human sliver in its void of superficial voyeurism. More generally, I think my brain overdoses on internet without much provocation, blasting focus and mental acuity to hell, inducing an over-stimulation seizure like Pokémon. (For my rap on Facebook from this blog, click)
5. Lateness. I detest late people and being late, yet I'm regularly that bunghole. This is intimately related to procrastination because, before failing to allot sufficient travel time, I fail to allot sufficient time to accomplish requisite pre-departure tasks (e.g., teeth-brushing, materials gathering, etc.); I do that because it's right before I have to go somewhere that my productivity peaks and I don't want to halt my progress. I usually end up scrambling, forgetting important items or occasions and then running, bike-sprinting, or driving madly to my destination. Of course, this isn't good for my blood pressure... "Hello anxiety, my old friend."
There are more, but this is a long post. Allow me to note that I am trying to eradicate/change these bad habits. I'll keep you posted on the results of my change campaign.
By bad, I mean "messes your shit up" or, said differently, pernicious for personal happiness and progress. By habit, I mean ingrained and chronic action with subconscious fortifications.
Alright, lets get down to the dirty:
1. Severe head scratching. This is just about the best bad habit archetype I can imagine because it gives nothing back. There is no reason nor positive reinforcement for head scratching. I've dipped deep into my bag of sophist rationalizations and come up empty-handed. I do it because I can. I do it subconsciously, constantly. It accelerates when I'm stressed out or sedentary. My life is soured on a daily basis by this irrational habit. My scalp scoured, raw, deforested. I can recollect being well aware of this scourge as early as the beginning of college. There must have been a trigger in there. I thought I was balding Freshman year because of the slough from this degrading self-hate. Needless to say, as long as I've been scratching, I've been trying to stop, to no avail.
2. Sleep habits. Now I enter the realm of the cost-benefit and the sub-optimal. My sleep habits have been wacky since adolescence. They reached their nadir during high school summers when I played a shiz-ton of Starcraft (the computer game). Starcraft was so mesmerizing and time-consuming that it impinged on sleep normalcy in a bad way. I'd stay up later and later playing and then be incapable of falling asleep afterward. I'd lie and listen to the infernal birds as the morning glow encroached on my window. I'd cry, whine, scream, pummel things. That, I say, was the nadir. This certainly sub-optimal hell was caused by the lack of parentally imposed structure, the fact that I couldn't give two craps, and the household culture - my two bros had similar sleep habits. I lacked a stable sleep schedule until summer 2010, to which you might say, "No bigs," but I say, "Bigs." I've long been pierced by the paradoxical double horns of: (1) difficulty falling asleep at night and (2) lethargy during the day. I could never find equilibrium: I'd always tilt towards the nocturnal. And getting up was always an existential struggle. The up-side was that night invoked leaps in productivity. Even during high school, I accomplished most of my good (and inspired) work during the wee hours of the morning. This would make me recalculate the 'bad' part of habit in this case if I were not now convinced that I can be equally or more fertile during the day. Unlike my owl habits, diurnal productivity must be predicated on discipline and good habits. The principal reason I was productive at night was that I could never accomplish anything during the day due to:
3. Procrastination. It would be difficult to overestimate the evil effect of this inherently irrational menace. Procrastination is the habitual manifestation of an underlying lack of fortitude, will, and 'The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism.' I believe strongly that I can go heel to toe with any procrastinator out there. Of those I know personally, I'm right up there in terms of severity. Even worse, I suffer all the heinous side-effects that some souls somehow obviate: namely, guilt and stress. Anxiety is my best friend (because he stands by me always) and my worst enemy (because he stabs me in the back perpetually). If you're wondering what I do when I'm expressly not working:
4. Facebook and other masturbatory internet time-consumption. By MASTURBATORY, I do not mean GENITAL SELF-STIMULATION. Rather, I'm referring to "excessively self-indulgent or self-involved" (the free dictionary). Combine this with the characteristic of a woefully inadequate and inferior substitute, and you're getting close to my understanding of the term. I've been using it to describe my habit of engaging in all sorts of depressing internet sink-hole nonsensicality for years. Facebook is a paradigm for this kind of waste. Belonging to Facebook is useful, because of its enormous positive network externalities, but one can waste away to a human sliver in its void of superficial voyeurism. More generally, I think my brain overdoses on internet without much provocation, blasting focus and mental acuity to hell, inducing an over-stimulation seizure like Pokémon. (For my rap on Facebook from this blog, click)
5. Lateness. I detest late people and being late, yet I'm regularly that bunghole. This is intimately related to procrastination because, before failing to allot sufficient travel time, I fail to allot sufficient time to accomplish requisite pre-departure tasks (e.g., teeth-brushing, materials gathering, etc.); I do that because it's right before I have to go somewhere that my productivity peaks and I don't want to halt my progress. I usually end up scrambling, forgetting important items or occasions and then running, bike-sprinting, or driving madly to my destination. Of course, this isn't good for my blood pressure... "Hello anxiety, my old friend."
There are more, but this is a long post. Allow me to note that I am trying to eradicate/change these bad habits. I'll keep you posted on the results of my change campaign.
Tuesday, October 05, 2010
"Society is afraid of alonedom..."
Friday, October 01, 2010
Sex neutrality in game theory
The following passage (abridged) is from the preface to my game theory text book (Martin J. Osborne's An Introduction to Game Theory (2004)). To view the whole preface, Osborne's sources, and other parts of his book and work, check out his website.
The English language lacks a third person singular pronoun widely interpreted to be sex neutral. In particular, many experiments have shown that "he" is not neutral...whereas people may say "when an airplane pilot is working, he needs to concentrate", they do not usually say "when a flight attendant is working, he needs to concentrate." To quote the American Heritage Dictionary, "Thus he...is not simply a grammatical convention; it also suggests a particular pattern of thought." Like many writers, I regard as unacceptable the bias implicit in the use of "he"...Writers have become sensitive to this issue in the last fifty years, but the lack of a sex-neutral pronoun "has been felt since at least as far back as Middle English " (Webster's Dictionary of English Usage). A common solution has been to use "they"... [this] can create ambiguity... I choose a different solution: I use "she" exclusively. Obviously this usage, like that of "he", is not sex neutral, but it may help to counterbalance the widespread use of "he", and it seems unlikely to do any harm.Game theorists taking up the cause of linguistic sex neutrality? What is this world coming to?!
Wait, UChi has a humanist advisor?
I received this correspondence moments ago:
Welcome to the University of Chicago!
My name is Josh Oxley, and I am the Humanist Advisor for the University of Chicago. You're receiving this email because you, sometime in the past few months, either self-identified as secular/humanist/atheist/ect, or expressed interest in the Secular Student Alliance.
My job, as part of the Spiritual Life Office at Rockefeller Chapel, is to be a resource for secular students on campus. Often non-believing, freethinking students are ignored by universities. That's a mistake, and one I'm glad the University of Chicago isn't making. We freethinkers have questions of meaning, belonging, identity, and those other aspects of being human, and it's my role to help you in any of those conversations.
If you're wondering about any of these questions, looking for places to plug-in with like-minded people, or have other questions, feel free to send me an email and set up a meeting. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts throughout the year, and I hope to see you around campus.
Get involved, find balance, and enjoy!
Josh Oxley
Humanist Advisor, Spiritual Life Office
The University of Chicago
It's true, I have aligned myself with the Secular Student Alliance. And I do believe that I should be as proud, candid, and transparent about my (non)religious views as anybody. And yet, trepidation... Presumably, if you're here, reading, you know me, want to know me, or prefer candor to obfuscation. My agnostic atheistic non-religious humanistic doctrine ideology philosophy thing is no special revelation. My religious views come up in conversation with some frequency. I think it's important to represent (but never to impose, sermonize, proselytize (except in the regular way which is implicit in all forms of rhetorical communication)).
I digress: Josh Oxley. Humanist Advisor. Awesome! Not for the first time, and hopefully not for the last, I'm proud of my university. For the first time, I feel my perspective and loosely bound cabal is represented, welcomed, and validated. Apparently, this is the first time such a post has existed at this university, and UChi is the fourth university nationally to adopt such a program. We're not talking about a student organization. This is an officially sanctioned staff position. Granted, the Rockefeller Chapel (the Gothic awe-and-fear-inspiring masterwork) makes all other outfits seem amateur, but this is what I call progress: how splendidly legit.
It's nice to know that somebody out there is swinging for you and, it should be noted, all humanity. That is, these people are explicitly interested in aiding those who have "aspects of being human." Succor is available for all.
Of course, humanism is not the exclusive territory of secular ideology. Religious figures are often (or always?) at the forefront of humanist endeavors. Consider the Catholic church's anti-Pinochet ferment during the 1970s, or the progressive and humanistic Christian (principally Catholic, again) involvement in Argentina during the dirty wars and Operation Condor.
Even I owe a personal debt of gratitude to Christian humanist philosophers: theology teachers during middle and high school (Catholic school, y'all) who fostered my intellectual growth disproportionately and with great success. Little did Father Matt Guckin know that, while he idolized Aristotle, I was employing arch Sophistry on all of his papers. Or maybe he did know; perhaps he was proud - he taught it to me. (Thanks also to the Augustinian friars of Malvern and Paul Peterson, especially). Again, there's another side - I'll always lament that blighted year of Christian Morality - which has its own other side, and so on into a strange loop, but I'll not get into that.
For me too much religion was like too much ice-cream: brain-freeze and body-purge inducing.
I digress: It makes sense for there to be a force for secularism on this university campus, to fill breaches, to unite, to do what religious folk do for each other. This rectifies what has long seemed to me to be a dearth in social-secular movements and organization. Word up to my active Secular Student Alliance and Humanist Advisor. Stand strong, find balance, and represent.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Reflections: Chauncy's "Gay New York"
There is but one required class in the 1-year Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS) at UChicago. Namely, "Perspectives in Social Sciences Analysis." "Perspectives" intends to survey the nine different approaches - NOT disciplines - of the social sciences. These discipline-spanning perspectives have distinctive theoretical features, analogies, pioneers and lineages, and the like. They include historical narrative, rational choice, Marxism, structural functionalism, etc. By presenting this lay of the land, the program indoctrinates us with its particular, highly Chicagoan, meta-method and meta-perspective. More on this later.
For now, I want to comment on some features of one of the course readings: the first two chapters of George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1995).
Chauncey's premise is disarmingly simple: contrary to popular belief, male gay culture was not only visible during the period of survey, it was conspicuous. As far as this is the argument of the book, it is easily corroborated. Chauncey draws from multifarious and reliable sources to make his case and follows each chapter with a list of annotated sources indicating the nature and origin of the evidence. Allowing that all truth is subjective, embedded, and imperfect, Chauncey's historical narrative seems to be as capable of approaching truth or verisimilitude (truthlikeness) as well as any other method. Which I guess is my endorsement of historical narrative, albeit superlative historical narrative.
Chauncey begins his book with the visible culture of gay New York at the turn of the century. He hastens to add, however, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, the flamboyant and bold vanguard of revolution. Indeed the queerdom of underground New York was a verdant landscape featuring exhibitionists and those that more substantially valued their privacy. Interestingly, he makes the claim that "the closet" was somewhere gays were not.
Naturally, there is a lot of complexity to this metropolitan network. Class, ethnicity, and geography cleave powerfully through it. Gays are described categorically as "perverts" and "degenerates" by media outlets and mentally branded as such by the status quo. The Bowery bunch (the Bowery wasn't the limit, just the locus, of flamboyant nightclub and saloon activity) adopted, appropriated, and fashioned a complex "fairy" identity grounded largely in "effeminate" or "feminesque" "semiotics (or system of identifying signs)."
Chauncey writes, "they [Gay men] undertook artificial means to cultivate the shape, density, carriage, and texture of their bodies" (p.54). They also adopted important sartorial markers, such as red neckties, garish colors, flair, and cosmetics. It is worth noting that all of these symbolic and stereotypical signs were mutable - Chauncey writes about "the extraordinary plasticity of gender assignment" (p. 56). All in all, the sum of overt gay male differentiation amounts to identity formation of an "intermediate sex" type. For this reason, gay men were often called "inverts." This identity formation was itself composed of stereotypes which were used, for different purposes, by both gay males and their antagonists.
It is worth noting that gay appropriations came from feminine forms and norms, but not just the forms and norms of any feminine. The "fairies" adopted the dress, attitude, and actions of prostitutes and "tough women." Unconventional women. Overtly sexual women. Go-getters, risk takers, lovers. Like Mae West. Writes Chauncey: "The faries' style, then, was not so much an imitation of women as a group but a provocative exaggeration of the appearance and deameanor ascribed more specifically to prostitutes" (p. 61). As gay men assumed physical aspects of this identity, they molded a recognizable culture and oriented that culture geographically within working class districts of New York City. Chauncey makes the case that working class (white, obviously) social forces met the "fairy" phenomenon with modal ambivalence, although certainly not respect.
Of course, that still leaves room for more radical reactions. Gay men were targets of desire and violence. They were unambiguously marginal citizens, just like the prostitutes and "odd" tough women from whom they had appropriated so much of their identity (not to mention craft: much of the gay sex world - just like the heterosexual sex world - orbited around sex for hire). This meant that gay men were often objectified, brutalized, and robbed by more conventional men, gangs, and street youths some of whose homo-erotic habits might have been self-perceived as 'sporting' or 'releasing.' Gay men had little legal recourse because they were seen as "outlaws," who wouldn't want to bring official scrutiny to their "degeneracy."
Chauncey, however, sinks not into gloom over the inherently "contested" nature of gay New York. Instead his work is a revelry in the culture and collectivity of 50 years of gay life. His work is prominent for excavating and unpacking this doubly underground and obscured time period in gay history. It is lovely to get lost in the rich detail of his narrative. Subsequent challenges to homosexuality would come in the 20th century.
"To use the modern idiom," Chauncey writes, "the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it."
I strongly suggest checking out Chauncey's book. Stay tuned: he will be releasing a volume two, covering 1940-the present, shortly.
For now, I want to comment on some features of one of the course readings: the first two chapters of George Chauncey's Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 (1995).
Chauncey's premise is disarmingly simple: contrary to popular belief, male gay culture was not only visible during the period of survey, it was conspicuous. As far as this is the argument of the book, it is easily corroborated. Chauncey draws from multifarious and reliable sources to make his case and follows each chapter with a list of annotated sources indicating the nature and origin of the evidence. Allowing that all truth is subjective, embedded, and imperfect, Chauncey's historical narrative seems to be as capable of approaching truth or verisimilitude (truthlikeness) as well as any other method. Which I guess is my endorsement of historical narrative, albeit superlative historical narrative.
Chauncey begins his book with the visible culture of gay New York at the turn of the century. He hastens to add, however, that this was only the tip of the iceberg, the flamboyant and bold vanguard of revolution. Indeed the queerdom of underground New York was a verdant landscape featuring exhibitionists and those that more substantially valued their privacy. Interestingly, he makes the claim that "the closet" was somewhere gays were not.
Naturally, there is a lot of complexity to this metropolitan network. Class, ethnicity, and geography cleave powerfully through it. Gays are described categorically as "perverts" and "degenerates" by media outlets and mentally branded as such by the status quo. The Bowery bunch (the Bowery wasn't the limit, just the locus, of flamboyant nightclub and saloon activity) adopted, appropriated, and fashioned a complex "fairy" identity grounded largely in "effeminate" or "feminesque" "semiotics (or system of identifying signs)."
Chauncey writes, "they [Gay men] undertook artificial means to cultivate the shape, density, carriage, and texture of their bodies" (p.54). They also adopted important sartorial markers, such as red neckties, garish colors, flair, and cosmetics. It is worth noting that all of these symbolic and stereotypical signs were mutable - Chauncey writes about "the extraordinary plasticity of gender assignment" (p. 56). All in all, the sum of overt gay male differentiation amounts to identity formation of an "intermediate sex" type. For this reason, gay men were often called "inverts." This identity formation was itself composed of stereotypes which were used, for different purposes, by both gay males and their antagonists.
It is worth noting that gay appropriations came from feminine forms and norms, but not just the forms and norms of any feminine. The "fairies" adopted the dress, attitude, and actions of prostitutes and "tough women." Unconventional women. Overtly sexual women. Go-getters, risk takers, lovers. Like Mae West. Writes Chauncey: "The faries' style, then, was not so much an imitation of women as a group but a provocative exaggeration of the appearance and deameanor ascribed more specifically to prostitutes" (p. 61). As gay men assumed physical aspects of this identity, they molded a recognizable culture and oriented that culture geographically within working class districts of New York City. Chauncey makes the case that working class (white, obviously) social forces met the "fairy" phenomenon with modal ambivalence, although certainly not respect.
Of course, that still leaves room for more radical reactions. Gay men were targets of desire and violence. They were unambiguously marginal citizens, just like the prostitutes and "odd" tough women from whom they had appropriated so much of their identity (not to mention craft: much of the gay sex world - just like the heterosexual sex world - orbited around sex for hire). This meant that gay men were often objectified, brutalized, and robbed by more conventional men, gangs, and street youths some of whose homo-erotic habits might have been self-perceived as 'sporting' or 'releasing.' Gay men had little legal recourse because they were seen as "outlaws," who wouldn't want to bring official scrutiny to their "degeneracy."
Chauncey, however, sinks not into gloom over the inherently "contested" nature of gay New York. Instead his work is a revelry in the culture and collectivity of 50 years of gay life. His work is prominent for excavating and unpacking this doubly underground and obscured time period in gay history. It is lovely to get lost in the rich detail of his narrative. Subsequent challenges to homosexuality would come in the 20th century.
"To use the modern idiom," Chauncey writes, "the state built a closet in the 1930s and forced gay people to hide in it."
I strongly suggest checking out Chauncey's book. Stay tuned: he will be releasing a volume two, covering 1940-the present, shortly.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Memo
This is an inter-departmental fiat demanding research-based academic writing. The egregious deficiency of such writing on this publication is unconscionable, especially considering the author's lofty academic-intellectual aspirations. Sloth is the only explanation for this pathetic state of affairs. Indeed, the author is aware of the pedagogical benefit of critical commentary on, engagement with, and expansion of the ideas and arguments of others. Fortuitously for you friend followers, he has entered a soul-crushing M.A. program where critical engagement will be most integral to success. That program will make him refashion his approach to this blog and to writing in general.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Niggardly feminism
Before anybody gets the wrong idea, niggardly, as defined by the free dictionary (my favorite dictionary), means 1. stingy and 2. meager. In this case, I'm talking about the tightfisted type.
Second, fear not the feminism. It's not only an unavoidable, ubiquitous social presence, it's more maligned and mischaracterized than it deserves to be. Shed your stereotypes and caricatures and take me on for size: an unabashed modern feminist - with a penis.
Instead of delivering a feminist manifesto, which would be asinine on account of this being a blog, not a book, I will examine one case which I think is relevant: dating etiquette and paying for meals and drinks.
Nobody would deny that it has long been socially normal for the man to play the aggressive role in the courtship process, and for the woman to play the complimentary passive role. In line with these general and relative roles, the man has long been the one to 'treat' the woman, especially to dinner or drinks. That is, the man is the predominant payer. This fits in to an old matrix of social norms based on a certain gendered social, professional, and familial roles. Although this matrix has been eroding and changing, its effects are still palpable.
One more point: the feminist analysis and prescription for change, like all other social prescriptions (e.g., civil rights, human rights), is explicitly idealistic. While such prescriptions can and should be grounded in positive observation of current conditions, they are guided by normative judgments and a vision of an ideal or improved social order. Feminisms seek a more optimal world by changing manifestations of gender roles. To believe in an idealistic feminism, one must believe that there are gender roles (everybody believes this) and concede that they are sub-optimally (unjustly) organized on inadequate or fallacious grounds (this is controversial).
So, to get to the case in question: Who takes out whom? Who pays for dinner? Who pays for drinks? Why? What are the implications of this?
The first question is prickly. Women can be quite as audacious as men. And indeed there my be little to no gender divergence on this question given the state of things, at least, in the northeast United States, people and relationships being as physically (sexually) motivated, as informal, and as promiscuous as they are. But I will dare to suggest that most women would prefer to be asked out while most men would prefer, or at least feel a social pressure, to ask out. I'll leave it at that.
The second two questions or, "Who pays?", have three possible answers: (1) chicks, (2) dudes, (3) they pay equally. Although some statistics would be nice at this point, I think we can safely assume that the answer is (2). This is not controversial. The controversial question is: should things be different?
Some people would say, "Who cares?" Even an avowed feminist friend of mine took this tack, with the time-honored "pick your battles" rationalization. Other people talk about biological determinants of historically entrenched gender roles - real and inherent physiological and purported psychological differences between men and women. I believe there is a kernel of truth to this argument, but that it is dangerously versatile. I've heard it deployed by progressive feminists and reactionary misogynists alike. In the case of dating etiquette, it has no traction. Another group of people talk about their personal experience and feelings, and whether or not they like or dislike playing into these roles. This is opaque ground. Often such slippery language obscures or replaces the exploration of more selfish, candid motivation.
Personally, I think the dude buyer paradigm is a quaint and anachronistic throwback. I think it's unjustified given the independence, education, and potential of modern women. It's an impediment to "progress," to a rationally organized social-romantic interaction, to - GASP! - greater equality.
This is where idealism enters. It's not that 'absolute equality' is a goal, or even plausible (parse this post for my view on the 'absolute' or 'pure'), it's just that we can do better. And I think that better, in this case, means acting according to reason - i.e., equivalent payment or proportional payment - instead of following the well-trod, gendered, and unexamined path of traditional patriarchy.
However, it would be unfair of me if I criticized other people's opinions - the alleged opaque ones - without examining myself under the microscope. Am I merely trying to get out of having to pay for stuff? Am I just a stingy cop-out short-cutting loafer schmuck? What is this niggardly feminism?
I reject that label. I swear I'm not ungenerous or tightfisted - even if I am a student of economics, with optimization and opportunity cost constantly on the brain; even if I am personally poor; even if my parents pay my bills (Thanks Mom and Dad!). No, I just think that there's something screwy when one gender with only marginally more economic success - inconsequential in certain (limited) circumstances - is the predominant payer. Women play into this when they actively tempt or passively accept drinks from moneyed men at bars, absent any interest or intention to further the relationship. This is not beating the system, it's floozies exploiting patsies.
Ain't nothing in this life that's free.
My major point is this: there's nothing wrong with treating your significant other or some sexy stranger to a drink, dinner, movie, or whatever. There is something wrong when it's a one-way street.
Second, fear not the feminism. It's not only an unavoidable, ubiquitous social presence, it's more maligned and mischaracterized than it deserves to be. Shed your stereotypes and caricatures and take me on for size: an unabashed modern feminist - with a penis.
Instead of delivering a feminist manifesto, which would be asinine on account of this being a blog, not a book, I will examine one case which I think is relevant: dating etiquette and paying for meals and drinks.
Nobody would deny that it has long been socially normal for the man to play the aggressive role in the courtship process, and for the woman to play the complimentary passive role. In line with these general and relative roles, the man has long been the one to 'treat' the woman, especially to dinner or drinks. That is, the man is the predominant payer. This fits in to an old matrix of social norms based on a certain gendered social, professional, and familial roles. Although this matrix has been eroding and changing, its effects are still palpable.
One more point: the feminist analysis and prescription for change, like all other social prescriptions (e.g., civil rights, human rights), is explicitly idealistic. While such prescriptions can and should be grounded in positive observation of current conditions, they are guided by normative judgments and a vision of an ideal or improved social order. Feminisms seek a more optimal world by changing manifestations of gender roles. To believe in an idealistic feminism, one must believe that there are gender roles (everybody believes this) and concede that they are sub-optimally (unjustly) organized on inadequate or fallacious grounds (this is controversial).
So, to get to the case in question: Who takes out whom? Who pays for dinner? Who pays for drinks? Why? What are the implications of this?
The first question is prickly. Women can be quite as audacious as men. And indeed there my be little to no gender divergence on this question given the state of things, at least, in the northeast United States, people and relationships being as physically (sexually) motivated, as informal, and as promiscuous as they are. But I will dare to suggest that most women would prefer to be asked out while most men would prefer, or at least feel a social pressure, to ask out. I'll leave it at that.
The second two questions or, "Who pays?", have three possible answers: (1) chicks, (2) dudes, (3) they pay equally. Although some statistics would be nice at this point, I think we can safely assume that the answer is (2). This is not controversial. The controversial question is: should things be different?
Some people would say, "Who cares?" Even an avowed feminist friend of mine took this tack, with the time-honored "pick your battles" rationalization. Other people talk about biological determinants of historically entrenched gender roles - real and inherent physiological and purported psychological differences between men and women. I believe there is a kernel of truth to this argument, but that it is dangerously versatile. I've heard it deployed by progressive feminists and reactionary misogynists alike. In the case of dating etiquette, it has no traction. Another group of people talk about their personal experience and feelings, and whether or not they like or dislike playing into these roles. This is opaque ground. Often such slippery language obscures or replaces the exploration of more selfish, candid motivation.
Personally, I think the dude buyer paradigm is a quaint and anachronistic throwback. I think it's unjustified given the independence, education, and potential of modern women. It's an impediment to "progress," to a rationally organized social-romantic interaction, to - GASP! - greater equality.
This is where idealism enters. It's not that 'absolute equality' is a goal, or even plausible (parse this post for my view on the 'absolute' or 'pure'), it's just that we can do better. And I think that better, in this case, means acting according to reason - i.e., equivalent payment or proportional payment - instead of following the well-trod, gendered, and unexamined path of traditional patriarchy.
However, it would be unfair of me if I criticized other people's opinions - the alleged opaque ones - without examining myself under the microscope. Am I merely trying to get out of having to pay for stuff? Am I just a stingy cop-out short-cutting loafer schmuck? What is this niggardly feminism?
I reject that label. I swear I'm not ungenerous or tightfisted - even if I am a student of economics, with optimization and opportunity cost constantly on the brain; even if I am personally poor; even if my parents pay my bills (Thanks Mom and Dad!). No, I just think that there's something screwy when one gender with only marginally more economic success - inconsequential in certain (limited) circumstances - is the predominant payer. Women play into this when they actively tempt or passively accept drinks from moneyed men at bars, absent any interest or intention to further the relationship. This is not beating the system, it's floozies exploiting patsies.
Ain't nothing in this life that's free.
My major point is this: there's nothing wrong with treating your significant other or some sexy stranger to a drink, dinner, movie, or whatever. There is something wrong when it's a one-way street.
What the fuck should I make for dinner?
A friend turned me on to this site (click image) which is both hilarious and useful.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Chi town
Three weeks ago, I moved from the sunny exurbs of Philadelphia to the windy south side of Chicago. After escapades, explorations, and the accumulation of mundane habits, some reflection is called for.
The weather here has been clement. There was heat, to be sure. And sweat. But by and large it's been balmy, swelter undermined by brisk breeze. Chicagoans take advantage of the happy climate: biking, running, and walking along Lake Shore Drive, sailing, swimming, frolicking about. I met an Ohioan runner hanging from a tree who eulogized the lakeside; he claimed Cleveland's is overbuilt and underutilized. Consensus is that Chicago's pretty and well planned for play and commerce. At least, during the summer.
Second, there is this business of mid-western hospitality. I'm predisposed to view this thesis with some skepticism. It goes against my assumption that people are pretty generous and pleasant nearly everywhere.
I recall positing to Pedro Cuperman - eminent Argentine scholar of language and literature at S.U. - that, "People are like pretty nice everywhere, man." I then attempted to get out an anecdote about some Turkish farmers inviting my family and I, and our interpreter and bus driver, into their home for fresh natural honey, bread, and tea; we had picked them up in our van. Before I could articulate the details, Cuperman shot me down with an ad hominem of sorts - my claim was mud on the grounds that my family and I are Caucasian bourgeois chumps. And I'm a man-cherub. His point was that other people sometimes have distinctly less rosy realities. He's right.
Race affects grades of positive or negative responses. It depends on the place and person. In my limited, prosperous, educated, and white experience, Chicago people have been hospitable, helpful, and garrulous, be they white, black, or brown. I could illustrate with a yarn or two, but I'll desist. Let me mention, though, that the by chance twice-met Bahá'í cyclist who invited me over one evening for a barbecue party, spiritual chat, and music session is definitely the tops. She and her friends were heroically welcoming.
I were different, so would be my experiences and impressions.
I've been all over the city. I'm making it mine or myself it or something like that.
Cars are great for exploration and destination-achieving. My parents had one and so did a guest. They helped me penetrate Pilsen (lil' Mexico) twice. The best way to see things, however, is from the ground: engulfed in the delicious effluvium of the city, trodding the pavement, part of the masses, with edifices towering around. Walking is effective when combined with public transit (gotta love the El). Together these have helped me cross many a neighborhood, hitting destinations such as Myopic Books, Gramaphone Records, the Bahá'í place of worship, Sultan's Market, and all of Hyde Park. I also run around a fair bit. The bike is my standby most of the time. But I did take an accidental 50 mile ride which smarted of betrayal. The water in Wilmette (a northern suburb) freezes bone marrow in mid-September.
A former new acquaintance now seemingly new friend raised the issue of identity the other day. He pondered identity shifts and re-inventions. Grad school, he postulated, is a good time to do such things. Then he asserted that it wasn't quite his bag - he had found himself pretty well content with himself already.
I think I might very well have found a pretty stable me, a long-term me, but I'm not sure - I'm open to new things. I think. I hope. But instead of identity reformation or reinvention, it has been more interesting recently to adjust superficialities and then record people's book-by-the-cover appraisals.
For example, my friend gave me cornrows the other day: flat, tight, beautiful braids which hug my dome like furry snakes. This allowed my face to emerge from the lion's mane and reassert its prominence. I'm told the braids - aka Chi rows - made me more fierce and stylish looking. And when I removed them (to be ambushed by immediate hypochondriac terror at ultra post-cornrow hair loss) I suddenly became or appeared to become more approachable, friendly, amiable. In short, I went from sharp and fearsome to soft and cuddly. My imagined personality, it turns out, had taken on the physical characteristics of my hairdo! And hairdo determinism being in my power, I can now tweak my perceived personality as much as my hair allows.
In Chicago, I'm a superhairo.
Even more importantly, I'm happy.
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Mind body dialectic - postscript
In a previous post - "Mind body dialectic" - I hypothesized that mental acuity and physical athleticism might not be as different as they seem. Yet "Working out" occurs at the gym, not the library. And while studying might seem like a cognitive equivalent, it is aimed at the capture of a small set of data, not the holistic healthiness and fitness which is the objective of gym antics. My fear continues to be that mental fitness is undervalued because of the way it is typically perceived. Or rather, the way it isn't perceived.
While I have yet to stumble upon another person's thoughts or research on this topic (granted, I've done no research myself, which makes this amateur philosopher hour), one can read delicate corroboration of my thesis in this passage from an article in the New York Times - "Forget What You Know About Study Habits" by Benedict Carey:
Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.
The argument is clear: musical, academic, and physical training might operate in analogous or similar ways.
This is not too surprising. "Practice makes perfect" - a well-worn common-sense aphorism -is universal in application. That is, practicing any skill or activity - banging drums, whistling, reading, language acquisition, knockin' boots - implies improvement in the execution of that skill or activity. There are textures and particularities to each activity, of course, like degree of difficulty and incline of learning curve. But there are also more consistencies, for instance, we assume all learning curves to be asymptotic to some line we could call virtuosity.
Granted, skill-specific learning is not the same as achieving a generally fine-tuned and well-exercised mental or physical health. But the point is that perhaps there is more continuity between these modes of learning and these degrees and types of health and fitness than are self-evident or routinely understood.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
FB reg and rap
Somebody once said that greed is a fat demon with a small mouth. One could say the same thing about Facebook. It's remorseless, implacable, as addicting and pernicious as a drug. Of course, it is a drug. Like bottomless obsidian. Do I use it as a social crutch? Well, no. But that doesn't mean I'm not dependent on it. Seduced by its wiles, its convenience, and its ubiquity, I can't give up. I'm one of the die-hards, a true user. I suppose most people are, but...
I take it to the next level, a higher echelon,
like while you get all equestrian, I stampede you on my mastodon.
Dosing through the eye, I hit-it 'til my retina crinkle,
pupils dilating like pancakes, psychedelic dreams like Rip van Winkle.
The screen is a mirage, Zombie Wars populate,
lost in family-tree cultivars, I'm the number one reprobate.
[Zuckerberg's my fan, it's all part of the plan!!]
I perambulate the cyberspace with stamina,
droppin' wicked diction, breadcrumbs of discernment,
poking mothafucka's like I'm stabbin' ya.
(Feeel my wall post lacerations!)
What I do best is stalk benevolent, cruise the news feed like a stealth jet,
aloof but not hidin', not frettin' just checkin' in,
ridin' the hype until the moment is ripe.
Then I doseify! (yeah!), I like to get high!,
'til I can't decipher cyber from matter (O shit...),
space from face, book from bewitchment,
person from profile.
All of a sudden I'm feckless, (is this a test?)
Hip to nothing in this anti-social labyrinth,
No rest, no reprieve,
and ignant of my location -
Fickle-framed fantasy-land or home (whatever that is...).
...Facebook rule immediately in effect- one sign-in per day. I'll report back to the success of this campaign. Obviously, this campaign failed, now it's the future, I cancelled and resurrected the account. The future Facebook still has the gonads in a vice.
I take it to the next level, a higher echelon,
like while you get all equestrian, I stampede you on my mastodon.
Dosing through the eye, I hit-it 'til my retina crinkle,
pupils dilating like pancakes, psychedelic dreams like Rip van Winkle.
The screen is a mirage, Zombie Wars populate,
lost in family-tree cultivars, I'm the number one reprobate.
[Zuckerberg's my fan, it's all part of the plan!!]
I perambulate the cyberspace with stamina,
droppin' wicked diction, breadcrumbs of discernment,
poking mothafucka's like I'm stabbin' ya.
(Feeel my wall post lacerations!)
What I do best is stalk benevolent, cruise the news feed like a stealth jet,
aloof but not hidin', not frettin' just checkin' in,
ridin' the hype until the moment is ripe.
Then I doseify! (yeah!), I like to get high!,
'til I can't decipher cyber from matter (O shit...),
space from face, book from bewitchment,
person from profile.
All of a sudden I'm feckless, (is this a test?)
Hip to nothing in this anti-social labyrinth,
No rest, no reprieve,
and ignant of my location -
Fickle-framed fantasy-land or home (whatever that is...).
...Facebook rule immediately in effect- one sign-in per day. I'll report back to the success of this campaign. Obviously, this campaign failed, now it's the future, I cancelled and resurrected the account. The future Facebook still has the gonads in a vice.
Friday, August 06, 2010
Too much but not enough
Like hodgepodge pudding
Heterogeneous and discombobulated,
Interloped by slugs of rotten cherry,
Pit and all,
And some brackish weed,
Like a pickled bok choy.
You’d have to wonder,
How a mind can come to be,
So positively poisoned.
I suspect it has to do,
With eating habits,
Omnivorous and ravenous.
I mean, intellectually speaking,
You are what you eat,
And you are what you do.
Well, what if all you do is ingest,
And never divest, disgorge,
Produce?
Surfeit and constipated,
The brain corpulates,
Perhaps releasing now and again,
Tendrils of poetry,
False-start fictions,
An original idea, even,
But no considerable culinary delight,
Fit for the table.
I need a purge,
An aesthetic emetic,
A bout of creative bulimia,
Whose production is personal-voiced vomit,
Synthesized from the chunks,
And dollops of my predecessors,
The inevitability of influence,
Generating own artistic affluence.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tuesday reflections
Bluejays are beak-stuffing slobs, with dainty and sleek feathers, superficial cover for gluttony...
Bradleys are procrastinators, with hip-hairdos and polished noggin netherworlds, who whittle away hours twiddling internet ding dongs and doodling narcissism...
Squirrels are depraved backyard denizens, violators of all seven deadly sins, rapacious and cunning delinquents, munchers, camouflaged monsters, objects of detestation...
"Hello morning!" is betoken by 7am wake up, followed tenaciously, alarms like calls to prayer...
My hope is for luminous mornings, indefatigable days, reading evenings, and - o gosh, finally - stable habits, and reliable relationships...
Libby (canis lupis familiaris) is as omnivorous as a goat - she scarfs a morning walnut ritualistically; grapes are delicacies; chicken bones can be procured through trashcan larceny; and the evening meal is human fare - certainly a princess among beasts...
What is one to make of Pynchon, the 'postmodern' luminary? G's Rainbow is a ponderous epic, singular and difficult. Is there some concealed genius - an ironclad kernel - is he just a clever scribomaniac?
The Mars Volta would seem to follow logically, part of the frantic dialectic which cherishes beautiful discord...
Syracuse, NY, most magical at nocturnal hours/ urban air after gloaming/ from illuminated city to atmospheric gloom/ and in between, ladders of light like celestial towers...
.bmp)
Bradleys are procrastinators, with hip-hairdos and polished noggin netherworlds, who whittle away hours twiddling internet ding dongs and doodling narcissism...
Squirrels are depraved backyard denizens, violators of all seven deadly sins, rapacious and cunning delinquents, munchers, camouflaged monsters, objects of detestation...
"Hello morning!" is betoken by 7am wake up, followed tenaciously, alarms like calls to prayer...
My hope is for luminous mornings, indefatigable days, reading evenings, and - o gosh, finally - stable habits, and reliable relationships...
Libby (canis lupis familiaris) is as omnivorous as a goat - she scarfs a morning walnut ritualistically; grapes are delicacies; chicken bones can be procured through trashcan larceny; and the evening meal is human fare - certainly a princess among beasts...
What is one to make of Pynchon, the 'postmodern' luminary? G's Rainbow is a ponderous epic, singular and difficult. Is there some concealed genius - an ironclad kernel - is he just a clever scribomaniac?
The Mars Volta would seem to follow logically, part of the frantic dialectic which cherishes beautiful discord...
Syracuse, NY, most magical at nocturnal hours/ urban air after gloaming/ from illuminated city to atmospheric gloom/ and in between, ladders of light like celestial towers...
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Scribblings 1
Rain cuts the heat of the dog days of summer.
But far from serrate or slice,
the stuff drips fruitlessly into drought,
like ineffectual radiation on a redoubtable tumor.
Bitches lick skyward while pups suckle dry nips,
pigs rut in the cached earth, hardly moistened, dreaming of lascivious mud,
The dog star, imperious, from his empyrean perch, radiates pure malice.
Cutting the cheese,
is an inevitable albeit malodorous function of eating and breathing,
but not on Maslow's chart.
To cut cocaine, crack, heroine, and the like,
with speed, baby laxative, glucose, baking powder, and such,
is to dilute poison with poison,
to spur even more druggie death and decay,
to dangerously distort the high.
But who is to say how or how fast a person is to die?
"Cut it out!" implores the belabored brother,
ugly harassment in his sister's ember-eyes,'
The oafish elder',
docile and sloppy in unlaced Sketchers,
is no match for her wiles and meanness,
her smart pigtails.
She grabs and twists his tender tit-toppers while he screeches,
as sharp as a knife.
But far from serrate or slice,
the stuff drips fruitlessly into drought,
like ineffectual radiation on a redoubtable tumor.
Bitches lick skyward while pups suckle dry nips,
pigs rut in the cached earth, hardly moistened, dreaming of lascivious mud,
The dog star, imperious, from his empyrean perch, radiates pure malice.
Cutting the cheese,
is an inevitable albeit malodorous function of eating and breathing,
but not on Maslow's chart.
To cut cocaine, crack, heroine, and the like,
with speed, baby laxative, glucose, baking powder, and such,
is to dilute poison with poison,
to spur even more druggie death and decay,
to dangerously distort the high.
But who is to say how or how fast a person is to die?
"Cut it out!" implores the belabored brother,
ugly harassment in his sister's ember-eyes,'
The oafish elder',
docile and sloppy in unlaced Sketchers,
is no match for her wiles and meanness,
her smart pigtails.
She grabs and twists his tender tit-toppers while he screeches,
as sharp as a knife.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Metaphors
I am in the process of reading (and enjoying) Saul Bellow's Adventures of Augie March. The language of this prose-master excites me. Check out some of these metaphors, similies, and other language usage innovations from the maestro.
... he listened, trying to remain comfortable but gradually becoming like a man determined not to let a grasshopper escape from his hand (Bellow, p. 4, NY: Penguin).
I tried to explain something of this to your brother, but his thoughts are about as steady as the way a drunkard pees (p. 55).
Poor nails, he didn't look good...An immense face like raked garden soil in need of water...he turned death nosed, white as a polyp, even in his deepest wrinkles. (p. 95-96)
...as soon as he inherited the fortune it darted and wriggled away like a collection of little gold animals that had obeyed only the old man's voice (p. 116).
The spirit I found him in was the Chanticleer spirit, by which I refer to male piercingness, sharpness, knotted hard muscle and blood in the comb, jerky, flaunty, haughty and bright, with luxurious slither of feathers (p. 168).
Friday, May 28, 2010
World of musical medley
What in the name of shaven Shiva is World Music?
This term is generally understood, but it is also generally understood to be an egregious misnomer. It suffers from poor semantic vision and lacks usefulness, largely because it has no antipode. Nobody listens to music which qualifies as non-world. We have yet to receive melodic, rhythmic, or lyrical transmissions from alien races or species. No Martian jazz, Plotonian hip hop, or back-country bluegrass from Betelgeuse. This is lamentable, but undeniable. After this blog, it is conceivable that my next project will be to write a science fiction novel about an interplanetary musical interchange (IMI), and how music eventually defeats the human specie's knee-jerk xenophobia . O, someday... But for now, all music is literally world, or rather planetary. And, because it is planetary and distinctly human, it is all generally comprehensible.
We like our art to fit into the comfortable boundaries of our aesthetic experience, but we appreciate it when it toes the line of convention. There is a safe band of space between bland, craven convention and weird, envelope-shredding experimentation. Societal and personal change occur gradually; innovative mutation is a lengthy process. One does not generally go from the Beatles to the Swedish thrash, death, and prog metal band Meshuggah in one revolutionary leap.
Where, then, does world music fit in on the all-musical spectrum? First, we must reject the cheeky, buffoonish “All music is world” thesis, because it negates even the conventional social value of the term world music. We then move on to a new theory. Perhaps, only music which is unadulterated, indigenous and traditional should be called world music. This is a radical and untenable position. A more moderate perspective is that the mix of modern and traditional constitutes world. From that perspective, world music occupies a space between generally well-known Western modern music and generally unknown indigenous folk and traditional musical trends.
I choose the latter, because I consider purity to be a fiction. The unadulterated is sullied everywhere, especially now given pervasive globalization. Modern cultural mishmashing makes delineating useful boundaries around potential sanctuaries of pure indigenous music or art difficult and or impossible. If that sanctuary is out there, it is buried beneath the slow, drifting sands, or crouched with a spear in its hand, in some tropical jungle. From my perspective, the indigenous flavor worldizes, and the modern flavor dilutes, if you will. Creative destruction rules, and the synthetic production is our lot, and it is valuable. We live in an age of univerally worldized, slightly-othered, and obviously commercialized music.
The international hodgepodge leads to my argument about why I believe that any individual can like any kind of music. One must only put one's mind to the task. There is only the single human musical family, and human beings should be open to its widest range and scope. I am one non-discriminatory soul, with wide open acceptance for the potentiality of universal musical enjoyment. Therefore, the sonorous sounds of African or Japanese percussion, Andean folk, Brazilian bossa nova, European lo-fi electronica, and American pop-rock soothe me or excite me in ways that are completely analogous.
The underlying concerns to this discourse are the inequality of global power structures and the purported Westernization of the world. One thing can change another without itself being changed, but power differentials make meaningful cultural imperialism a real possibility. We want a variegated hybrid, not a monochrome blob.
(taken from a WERW Radio Blog posting, by me, found here).
This term is generally understood, but it is also generally understood to be an egregious misnomer. It suffers from poor semantic vision and lacks usefulness, largely because it has no antipode. Nobody listens to music which qualifies as non-world. We have yet to receive melodic, rhythmic, or lyrical transmissions from alien races or species. No Martian jazz, Plotonian hip hop, or back-country bluegrass from Betelgeuse. This is lamentable, but undeniable. After this blog, it is conceivable that my next project will be to write a science fiction novel about an interplanetary musical interchange (IMI), and how music eventually defeats the human specie's knee-jerk xenophobia . O, someday... But for now, all music is literally world, or rather planetary. And, because it is planetary and distinctly human, it is all generally comprehensible.
We like our art to fit into the comfortable boundaries of our aesthetic experience, but we appreciate it when it toes the line of convention. There is a safe band of space between bland, craven convention and weird, envelope-shredding experimentation. Societal and personal change occur gradually; innovative mutation is a lengthy process. One does not generally go from the Beatles to the Swedish thrash, death, and prog metal band Meshuggah in one revolutionary leap.
Where, then, does world music fit in on the all-musical spectrum? First, we must reject the cheeky, buffoonish “All music is world” thesis, because it negates even the conventional social value of the term world music. We then move on to a new theory. Perhaps, only music which is unadulterated, indigenous and traditional should be called world music. This is a radical and untenable position. A more moderate perspective is that the mix of modern and traditional constitutes world. From that perspective, world music occupies a space between generally well-known Western modern music and generally unknown indigenous folk and traditional musical trends.
I choose the latter, because I consider purity to be a fiction. The unadulterated is sullied everywhere, especially now given pervasive globalization. Modern cultural mishmashing makes delineating useful boundaries around potential sanctuaries of pure indigenous music or art difficult and or impossible. If that sanctuary is out there, it is buried beneath the slow, drifting sands, or crouched with a spear in its hand, in some tropical jungle. From my perspective, the indigenous flavor worldizes, and the modern flavor dilutes, if you will. Creative destruction rules, and the synthetic production is our lot, and it is valuable. We live in an age of univerally worldized, slightly-othered, and obviously commercialized music.
The international hodgepodge leads to my argument about why I believe that any individual can like any kind of music. One must only put one's mind to the task. There is only the single human musical family, and human beings should be open to its widest range and scope. I am one non-discriminatory soul, with wide open acceptance for the potentiality of universal musical enjoyment. Therefore, the sonorous sounds of African or Japanese percussion, Andean folk, Brazilian bossa nova, European lo-fi electronica, and American pop-rock soothe me or excite me in ways that are completely analogous.
The underlying concerns to this discourse are the inequality of global power structures and the purported Westernization of the world. One thing can change another without itself being changed, but power differentials make meaningful cultural imperialism a real possibility. We want a variegated hybrid, not a monochrome blob.
(taken from a WERW Radio Blog posting, by me, found here).
Friday, April 02, 2010
Radio shows FOR DOWNLOAD
Finally, for the first time, available for popular consumption: THE UNBOUNDED ONE as heard on 1570 WERW RADIO, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY.Shows (list to be added to and amended): Funk (March 10, 2010), The Kids (March 24, 2010), and Africa (March 31, 2010).
Persist my precious sweetums, be free and propagate; impregnate the fecund minds of friend-followers and music-lovers alike; be consumed and enjoyed.
Get the music at my Mediafire: UNBOUNDED
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Mind body dialectic
To maintain a physical body in 'good shape,' I believe that it takes as little as 6-10 hours per week. A more modest estimate - or a more relaxed definition of good shape - might result in a smaller lower bound of, say, 4-8 hours. For our purposes, good shape implies moderately high levels of athleticism, physical health, and success in some sport-like endeavor. Naturally, I do not mean to be overly rigorous or exclusive here: a person who does zero targeted exercise (and, instead, lives an active regularity), can be both healthy and relatively athletic. But, I am referring to developed muscle and endurance, and honed athletic prowess. I will self-indulgently assume that I have all these characteristics in order to use myself as experimental subject:I have come to conclusion range after observing my own weekly exercise formula. My range for targeted exercise is, on average, between 4 and 10 hours per week. The disparity between minimum and maximum hours is indicative of my mercurial schedule and way of life: I have no typical weekly exercise regimen, only regular activities: running, rock climbing, lifting weights, jumping rope, and stretching. I also have irregular activities: hiking, kayaking, skiing.
This week (Sunday March 14 - Saturday March 20) is characterized by consecutive days of rock climbing and running. I run for about one hour every other day and climb for about two hours every other day, resulting in an alternating sequence. With the aim of engaging in full-body workouts as much as possible, I always combine auxiliary kinds of exercises (e.g. stretching, push-ups, sit-ups, jump roping)with the primary activity. For instance, today I ran 4 miles in the succulent sunshine and also jumped rope, did pull-ups, and stretched. This week, my allotment of time to exercise is some 9 hours.
The argument that physical good shape exists and is something one achieve's through laborious and strenuous exercise is essentially intuitive and not controversial. My range of hours is both wide and relatively modest, and should, I think, be highly acceptable.
I follow this inductive, intuitive argument up with a question, whose answer is not as obvious:
How many hours must one dedicate to targeted cognitive exercise in order to be in good shape mentally?
Thursday, March 04, 2010
I am disk jockey
Did you know that my delusions of grandeur have invaded the airwaves?
That's right, I have impregnated the radio with a worldized, Bradified mix of every thang and no thang. My show is called "Brad and the Unbounded One," and is a weekly featured fixture on WERW, broadcasted on iTunes Radio out of Syracuse, NY.
A note on the name: There is no exact "Unbounded One." And, I hasten to add, it is not separate from me. It is me and the unbounded one, together, immanent, belonging to each other, composing mutually subsuming circles in a Venn Diagram. In fact, there is no limit to the seep of the show - it consumes and reproduces everything which comes in contact with me, my music, the cultures which generate, the listeners, and all of the interconnections. Pantheism would imbue this pulsating ball of yarn with the name "God" or "The Deity," but I am content with referring to it simply as "The Unbounded One." My show, my language. Nevertheless, it deserves respect.
The show, to be true to its moniker, lacks definition or limitation. It is veritably ecclectic and exploratory. Shows need not have a tight focus (e.g. can be unhindered medleys, mixes, and adult anonymous), but often do (e.g. funk, long and short, the kids, electronic and rap, South America).
I unfailingly incorporate recommendations of songs, artists, and themes into my shows, however those kinds of things are in short supply. I get relatively little support, critique, or collaboration, despite my constant petitions for such. I need it not, but assume it would make the show more truly unbounded and participatory.
I am obviously an amateur, but I put a shocking amount of time into preparing for and producing the show every week. An influx of listeners would be gratifying, and would make more worthwhile the effort expended. Then again, you cannot always have what you wish for, and sometimes you have to work to improve your lot. Shows will soon be appearing on the interweb, for ready pod-cast-like listening - hopefully. And, an ad is in the works, though highly dependent on collaboration.
For now, I march forth, creating my own weekly emission, and striving to make the show even more stellar than it already is.
As always, be unbounded.
That's right, I have impregnated the radio with a worldized, Bradified mix of every thang and no thang. My show is called "Brad and the Unbounded One," and is a weekly featured fixture on WERW, broadcasted on iTunes Radio out of Syracuse, NY.
A note on the name: There is no exact "Unbounded One." And, I hasten to add, it is not separate from me. It is me and the unbounded one, together, immanent, belonging to each other, composing mutually subsuming circles in a Venn Diagram. In fact, there is no limit to the seep of the show - it consumes and reproduces everything which comes in contact with me, my music, the cultures which generate, the listeners, and all of the interconnections. Pantheism would imbue this pulsating ball of yarn with the name "God" or "The Deity," but I am content with referring to it simply as "The Unbounded One." My show, my language. Nevertheless, it deserves respect.
The show, to be true to its moniker, lacks definition or limitation. It is veritably ecclectic and exploratory. Shows need not have a tight focus (e.g. can be unhindered medleys, mixes, and adult anonymous), but often do (e.g. funk, long and short, the kids, electronic and rap, South America).
I unfailingly incorporate recommendations of songs, artists, and themes into my shows, however those kinds of things are in short supply. I get relatively little support, critique, or collaboration, despite my constant petitions for such. I need it not, but assume it would make the show more truly unbounded and participatory.
I am obviously an amateur, but I put a shocking amount of time into preparing for and producing the show every week. An influx of listeners would be gratifying, and would make more worthwhile the effort expended. Then again, you cannot always have what you wish for, and sometimes you have to work to improve your lot. Shows will soon be appearing on the interweb, for ready pod-cast-like listening - hopefully. And, an ad is in the works, though highly dependent on collaboration.
For now, I march forth, creating my own weekly emission, and striving to make the show even more stellar than it already is.
As always, be unbounded.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
I am demiurge
If I were to have a political regime in managing this blog it would probably be a mix between authoritarianism and anarchism. But of course I am in fact a totalitarian - Machiavelli's vainglorious prince. I am sure that if somebody else were to inhabit this universe, I would prefer to "make" him, her, or it a partner and not a subject. Or would I?My self-seen legitimacy seems to comes from the post-Scholastic Christian, capitalist reverence for private property. I own this blog and most every projected morsel that crosses its digital threshold. It is my private property and my personal project. I put in the intellectual labor and harvest the paltry benefits - namely, appeasement of my graphomania and narcissism.
On the other hand, I am the only citizen of this principality. Which makes me the least and most of all things - the receptacle of all superlatives: best, worst, utmostly sexy, most hideously degenerate, most artistic, most utilitarian, at the apex of intelligence and the zenith of idiocy, and so on. All in-between gradations also belong to me. I am therefore everything and nothing.
A feat of synergy is called for: reconciling the disparate and contrary in order to assert an underlying unity and fashion a consummately inclusive approach. A more conservative, but therefore potentially handicapped, approach is known as ecclecticism: wantonly picking and employing contrary pieces of ideology, but not necessarily reconciling them. It is the keystone of the postmodern methodology and mythology.
If I am a mystic, I devote myself to the occult of the postmodern. Of course, that does not exist, and I end up fabricating, like the three editors, progenitors of the Plan, in Umberto Eco's Foucalt's Pendulum. This is the world I created, reside in, and continuously form in my own image. I am the wellspring and the archetype.
I am demiurge.
And yet, this universe is an artifact whose origin and purpose still somehow evade me. It is like the obsidian-black spire in Kubrick's 2001 (whereas Clarke provides at least an interpretation of an elucidation).
Maybe the best I can do is a sophomoric solipsism: I am that I am (Exodus 3:14).
Are people fucking with me?
Seriously. Since posting on the paranoia, I have experienced some strange encounters, which have not allayed my fears. If anything, they have vindicated the age-old sensational craziness; my monomania is flourishing.
When seeking to pass from Redfield Pl. to Walnut Av. in Syracuse, a point-to-point itinerary I pursue regularly, and given the inability to soar through empyrean spaces, one must navigate through or around Thorden Park. Conventional wisdom is firmly of the opinion that perambulation through the Thorden is folly. There are many discreet historical reasons for avoiding the place, especially at night. Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones was raped there. She immortalized her rape and recovery and the eventual conviction and arrest of her rapist in the memoir, Lucky. The title comes from the ever-clever Syracuse police, whoe purportedly claimed that she was lucky, because she was alive; another woman had been brutally murdered in the same spot, years earlier. In addition, a well-loved graduate student, Alec Waggoner, was tragically killed on Thornden Park Ave. in October 2008, very late at night, after colliding with an SUV on his bike. Naturally, these occurrences should induce prohibitive fear into all but the blithe cretin. Nevertheless, there appears to be something wrong with my reckoning ability: I regularly pass through Thorden, at all hours of the day and night, on foot and bike. Yes, I do.
Two days ago, I was meandering meaningfully down Greenwood Pl., less than a block from the edge of the park, when some ragtag youths in a parked jalopy implored me to come to the window of their automobile. They waved and turned up the edges of their mouths, as if to smile, not jovially, but with an unctuous urgency. I was actually running, but that minute sort of walking, as I had been just moments before swinging my apelike arms in concentric circles, and perhaps doing high knees. My new iPod Touch was grasped in my ham hand, and noise-emanating ear-buds plugged my upper orifices. First, I turned around 180 degress to glance at five individuals playing some esoteric kind of handball. They appeared to be deeply focused, and clearly not sending or receiving gestured messages. I wasn't really in the mood for a chat, and wanted to get back to running, so I politely rejected the invitation with a firm double shake of the head. They gesticulated, I shook again, and kept walking. It could have ended there. In fact, it could have ended before it even began. I mean, this sequence of events - recorded herein with as much accuracy as my musty brain can muster - did occur. That which follows is of less tangible stuff. I admit to being slightly shaken by these happenings, and as I converted my walk into a trot and then into a brisk jog, I looked back a couple of times over my shoulder to survey the site of the skirmish. Two of the four gentleman stepped out of the car. Whether or not they looked at me is still an open question. But they might have looked - nay, stared - and there might have been lambent licks of malice and intended harm in their eyeballs. Who knows. I continued to jog, my placidity marginally perturbed, and my adrenaline pumping a little higher than it usually does when I exercise. If you know the geography, you know that Greenwood intersects with Thorden Park Dr., which swoops down and into Beech St. Following Beech, one comes to Madison St., which then goes towards and eventually hits Walnut, precisely at the block I wanted to be on. There is a byway, also Thorden Park Dr., through Thorden, which comes one way the opposite direction I was traveling, from the corner of Madison and Ostrum Av. I took Thorden Park Dr. the wrong way, towards Madison and Ostrum, but as I cruised, senses honed and neurons firing red alerts, I saw (or thought I saw) the jalopy (which was green, incidentally) heading down Beech towards Madison and my destination. At this point, I did something unexpected. To avoid a second confrontation with the thugs, I abandoned the roadway altogether and sprinted through an obscure path, overhung by coniferous giants, in Thorden. This sacred glade, of rectangular shape, sits between Beech, Madison, Thorden Park Dr., and Ostrum. Upon reaching the other side, I had apparently shaken the amateurish stalkers and obviated ambush. This was the first event which reinforced my paranoia, but because it is so shaky and built on unsubstantiated conjecture and borderline irrationality, I decided to tell no one.
The next day - today, January 19, 2009 - any misconception I had ever had about the illegitimacy of my paranoid mania dissipated. Again, I was making the same voyage, from Red to Wall. This time, however, perhaps subconsciously to protect myself from footed rabble, I was flying on tires. The purple Rockhopper--my bike--carries my swiftly and surely, with nothing short of heroic devotion. I was cruising passively and happily through Thorden, admiring the naked branches and sullied snow banks, after a day of silly rain. Of course, a vestige of the prior day's perturbation remained, and I was unusually vigilant. My paranoia hovered like a man-moth but it calibrated my sense-perception. I am rather glad it was there, really. You see, I was rolling along, listening to Carlinhos Brown ("O aroma da vida"), and I was again going the wrong way on Thorden Park Dr.--like Alec, but on a straight, highly visible part of the road, and during the day--and I was about 100 yards from the terminus of the road, where it connected with Madison and Ostrum. All of a sudden, a gray or beige station wagon of unknown make and model, entered my roadway, and started coming towards me, with surprising rapidity, in clear contravention of the posted speed limit. Instead of staying to his or her side of the road (their right side), the psychopath at the wheel evinced a strange predilection for the left side of the street. I swear, the maniac, gaining in velocity all the time, was actually rubbing the curb - my curb - where I was also residing, moving forward on my purple stallion, anxiety building. The game of chicken appeared to me to be unfair, so I capitulated. Braking, I leaped off the bicycle, luckily directly behind a metal light-post, and threw up my arms in offended consternation. What nerve! What homicidal douchebaggery! Heinous fuckery most foul.
People are clearly fucking with me.
I need to be on top of a mountain where I can see everything, 'cause this paranoia is getting old. - Shannon Hoon/Blind Melon (RIP), "Walk".
When seeking to pass from Redfield Pl. to Walnut Av. in Syracuse, a point-to-point itinerary I pursue regularly, and given the inability to soar through empyrean spaces, one must navigate through or around Thorden Park. Conventional wisdom is firmly of the opinion that perambulation through the Thorden is folly. There are many discreet historical reasons for avoiding the place, especially at night. Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones was raped there. She immortalized her rape and recovery and the eventual conviction and arrest of her rapist in the memoir, Lucky. The title comes from the ever-clever Syracuse police, whoe purportedly claimed that she was lucky, because she was alive; another woman had been brutally murdered in the same spot, years earlier. In addition, a well-loved graduate student, Alec Waggoner, was tragically killed on Thornden Park Ave. in October 2008, very late at night, after colliding with an SUV on his bike. Naturally, these occurrences should induce prohibitive fear into all but the blithe cretin. Nevertheless, there appears to be something wrong with my reckoning ability: I regularly pass through Thorden, at all hours of the day and night, on foot and bike. Yes, I do.
Two days ago, I was meandering meaningfully down Greenwood Pl., less than a block from the edge of the park, when some ragtag youths in a parked jalopy implored me to come to the window of their automobile. They waved and turned up the edges of their mouths, as if to smile, not jovially, but with an unctuous urgency. I was actually running, but that minute sort of walking, as I had been just moments before swinging my apelike arms in concentric circles, and perhaps doing high knees. My new iPod Touch was grasped in my ham hand, and noise-emanating ear-buds plugged my upper orifices. First, I turned around 180 degress to glance at five individuals playing some esoteric kind of handball. They appeared to be deeply focused, and clearly not sending or receiving gestured messages. I wasn't really in the mood for a chat, and wanted to get back to running, so I politely rejected the invitation with a firm double shake of the head. They gesticulated, I shook again, and kept walking. It could have ended there. In fact, it could have ended before it even began. I mean, this sequence of events - recorded herein with as much accuracy as my musty brain can muster - did occur. That which follows is of less tangible stuff. I admit to being slightly shaken by these happenings, and as I converted my walk into a trot and then into a brisk jog, I looked back a couple of times over my shoulder to survey the site of the skirmish. Two of the four gentleman stepped out of the car. Whether or not they looked at me is still an open question. But they might have looked - nay, stared - and there might have been lambent licks of malice and intended harm in their eyeballs. Who knows. I continued to jog, my placidity marginally perturbed, and my adrenaline pumping a little higher than it usually does when I exercise. If you know the geography, you know that Greenwood intersects with Thorden Park Dr., which swoops down and into Beech St. Following Beech, one comes to Madison St., which then goes towards and eventually hits Walnut, precisely at the block I wanted to be on. There is a byway, also Thorden Park Dr., through Thorden, which comes one way the opposite direction I was traveling, from the corner of Madison and Ostrum Av. I took Thorden Park Dr. the wrong way, towards Madison and Ostrum, but as I cruised, senses honed and neurons firing red alerts, I saw (or thought I saw) the jalopy (which was green, incidentally) heading down Beech towards Madison and my destination. At this point, I did something unexpected. To avoid a second confrontation with the thugs, I abandoned the roadway altogether and sprinted through an obscure path, overhung by coniferous giants, in Thorden. This sacred glade, of rectangular shape, sits between Beech, Madison, Thorden Park Dr., and Ostrum. Upon reaching the other side, I had apparently shaken the amateurish stalkers and obviated ambush. This was the first event which reinforced my paranoia, but because it is so shaky and built on unsubstantiated conjecture and borderline irrationality, I decided to tell no one.
The next day - today, January 19, 2009 - any misconception I had ever had about the illegitimacy of my paranoid mania dissipated. Again, I was making the same voyage, from Red to Wall. This time, however, perhaps subconsciously to protect myself from footed rabble, I was flying on tires. The purple Rockhopper--my bike--carries my swiftly and surely, with nothing short of heroic devotion. I was cruising passively and happily through Thorden, admiring the naked branches and sullied snow banks, after a day of silly rain. Of course, a vestige of the prior day's perturbation remained, and I was unusually vigilant. My paranoia hovered like a man-moth but it calibrated my sense-perception. I am rather glad it was there, really. You see, I was rolling along, listening to Carlinhos Brown ("O aroma da vida"), and I was again going the wrong way on Thorden Park Dr.--like Alec, but on a straight, highly visible part of the road, and during the day--and I was about 100 yards from the terminus of the road, where it connected with Madison and Ostrum. All of a sudden, a gray or beige station wagon of unknown make and model, entered my roadway, and started coming towards me, with surprising rapidity, in clear contravention of the posted speed limit. Instead of staying to his or her side of the road (their right side), the psychopath at the wheel evinced a strange predilection for the left side of the street. I swear, the maniac, gaining in velocity all the time, was actually rubbing the curb - my curb - where I was also residing, moving forward on my purple stallion, anxiety building. The game of chicken appeared to me to be unfair, so I capitulated. Braking, I leaped off the bicycle, luckily directly behind a metal light-post, and threw up my arms in offended consternation. What nerve! What homicidal douchebaggery! Heinous fuckery most foul.
People are clearly fucking with me.
I need to be on top of a mountain where I can see everything, 'cause this paranoia is getting old. - Shannon Hoon/Blind Melon (RIP), "Walk".
Sunday, January 03, 2010
A phantom menace
I am sometimes paranoid.
The mania superimposes itself upon me in my house, at school, like a shawl of wariness. After having the abode burgled last November (while on Thanksgiving break), I no longer feel protected, my haven raped and ransacked. According to the dubious old wives tale, lightning desists from double-striking the same spot. However, thieves, unlike lighting, are skulduggerous sharks, who smell blood - once violated, a home is blemished as vulnerable. I know the housebreakers are out there with my roommates' X-box, iPod, camera, bag, pillowcase, and aikido gear (luck and having brought all my expensive stuff home saved me from pillaging). They are biding their time, observing, ready to strike again. Now I reside in a constant state of disquiet, serenity lost, and any minor commotion impels me to act impetuously: I stalk down the hallway, armed, ready to attack and defend the sanctuary. Nobody is there. Nobody is ever there.
Paranoia inhabits my car as well. It makes me chary of all of the other automobiles. Really, it is the motorist that I distrust - shifty-eyed, coldly calculating, potentially volatile, violent, or incompetent. Why should I have faith in their capacity to preclude collision? The texters, people exiting driveways and side-roads, buffoons on the telephone, left-lane laggards, the cretin who fails to signal, the ubiquitous white-tailed deer - Bambi with a death wish - they all worry and annoy me to no end.
It is the anonymous individual in the invisible car, nevertheless, who really drives me mad. The worst is on the back roads, of course. That is where the unseen autoist has such fun - tailgating; dallying, falling behind and then rushing up at a furious rate, to halt with frightful precision, mere inches from calamity; using the semaphores to send occult signals, many incomprehensible or openly false; blinding, and tormenting and taunting. From time to time, you get a glimpse of iridescent reflection from an external illumination. A shard of reality; of little use in elucidation. I curse these imperceptible pursuers with violence; the asperity of my vituperation poisons my composure. They rile me up, make me act erratic and devious, to utilize the same subtle chicanery, and beat them at their own game. I enact sudden pivots, circles, I run stop-signs and red-lights, I make wrong turns down forlorn byways. Sometimes I shake them, but they or their stygian compatriots always return. I find no peace.
The paranoia lingers.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Producing and consuming
Trying to be mindful of the pitfall of oversimplification, I postulate two human functions: production and consumption. I consume when I purchase, observe, take in. I produce when I make, do, impart.
It seems that production relies on consumption whereas consumption can occur somewhat independently of production. The layabout glutton comes to mind. Thermodynamics, however, would beg to differ, and on a fundamental scientific level, production equals consumption, necessarily. Science (which grasps at "what is") informs pseudoscience, but I prefer to spin a web of normative philosophy here, leaving science somewhat on the back-burner. Clearly there is a missing link between consumption and production: processing. I take that to be a minor function in the series whose role is to facilitate consumption and production. Herein are some thoughts from an idealist perspective (groping towards "what should be"), about consumption and production.
The Marxist maxim: "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need." No, I am not an explicit Marxist red Commie fellow traveler (not that that's a bad thing), nor do I think that this aphorism has much value as a determinant of public policy or as a regulation of an economic system. It does, nonetheless, illuminate the question at hand. The first part has to do with productivity and human capital endowment - everything intrinsic to us that makes us more productive (intelligence, social skills, mental stability, aesthetic beauty, etc.). The second part has to do with humanistic psychology's hierarchy of needs and personal fulfillment. The notion of "wasted talent" is a colloquial version of the principle. When the gifted, superlative, or genius person fails to surpass mediocrity, the world's population emits a collective sigh of disappointment. Underperformance is cause for lament.
Naturally, there are positive and negative forms or deployments of production. The "good" and the "bad," as determined by our reason and perceptive senses. Hence, the poetic turn of phrase and the banal imprecation, the lovely song and the out-of-tune piano, Nabakov's Lolita and the propaganda warfare manual, the mythical cure for cancer and the wonder-weapon of biological warfare, and so on. It follows that classifications of good and bad depend on the perspective (Lolita as poetry or morally deprived rot (to, say, the cultural reactionary), the biological weapon as good for inventor bad for foe, etc.). And questions of scientific advancement depend on an idea of advancement. Progress is highly contested. Even art, whose pulchritude is the most clear-cut example of innocent production I can think of, is contested and controversial. It is a grab-bag, widely encompassing, and incapable of escaping its social and human influence. Therefore, Botticelli's "The Birth of Venus" can be seen as a symbolic masterwork or pornographic, anti-Christian mythology. The above examples serve to illustrate the inherent duality of things, which qualifies only as a digression in this tract. I press on.
Taking as given that production should be "good," without tackling the question of what is good and what is bad, I suggest that production should be. I mean, people should produce, and those with more brainpower, artistic talent, energy, or any other productive force (which can all be, to some extent, developed and honed during life), should produce more. This makes for a more beautiful, richer, more interesting and inspirational world and society to inhabit. Channeling potential energy into the kinetic energy of construction, formation, manipulation provides the stuff which enkindles the spirit. Art and functionality coupled engender enrichment and amelioration.
The second part of the puzzle has to do with need. Human beings have material needs for the avoidance of death. We also appear to have social needs, such as acceptance, flourishing interpersonal relationships - in short, to love and be loved - ego-based needs, such as self-esteem, and cognitive and creative needs - we need to stimulate that gray and white matter. We need to exercise these functions in order to be "complete" human beings - to sate physical requirements and retain self-awareness, ego, cognitive function, and aesthetic sensibility.
Needs imply consumption, but I argue that they are not fully comprehensible except in conjunction with production. Consumption occurs for the sake of production. Production is naught without the fuel of consumption. However, consumption for the sake of consumption is also gratifying. Food and drink are the most immediate and accessible example - they cause pleasure. Their gobbling and glugging represent a cornerstone of the Epicurean philosophy. In addition to being desirable and pleasurable in their own right, consumption of food and drink can be purposive - directed at production. They are literally fuel and produce the energy from which all action is dependent. They can be shared, they lead to merrymaking, they are necessary. As in all things, moderation is counseled, and minimizing consumption while optimizing energy and happiness outcomes is ideal. The hedonic treadmill illustrates the point. The principle of the hedonic treadmill is that, despite increased consumption, greater happiness is not usually achieved, because, among other things, rising and mutating expectations and desires raise the stakes ever higher. Happiness has surprisingly little to do with the amount of consumption, though there is obviously a lower bound below which squalor implies such deficiency that needs are not met and happiness is elusive. I propose the principle that minimizing consumption of all things while maximizing production is the optimal model for human life.
Minimizing consumption while maximizing production is a lot like "producing more with less." Productivity is key, but so is a sense of justice, need (as opposed to want), and a recognition of the value of production. Justice implies sharing the communal endowment, giving recognition where it is due, repaying debts and dues, while valuing production means recognizing that it constructs and determines our world. A person whose consumption outweigh's their production is a leech on the productive capacity of the planet and the output of others. He or she or it whose production supersedes their consumption has a net positive effect on the world - makes it more gorgeous, more interesting, more pleasing. It seems unlikely that the exchange of consumption and production is one to one. Which makes the enterprise of comparing production and consumption vectors dubious. It is obvious, however, that more production of "good" or positive ideas, artwork, constructions, and actions, results in a more variegated planet, and that we are the communal benefactors of that production. Many productions are, in economic terms, non-rival and non-excludable, meaning it is difficult to obviate the addition of consumers, and the cost of adding an additional consumer is close to zero. Goods which are like this include murals, bridges and dams and other infrastructure, public benefits of education, music and architecture and artistic flourishes to functional constructions, books and libraries, parks, etc. In this way, a person or a small group can produce something whose benefits permeate, unbounded. The rule of thumb: Produce more, consume less.
To put it into perspective, I subject myself to the magnifying glass: What do I produce and consume? For one, I have been undeniably and continuously dependent on my parents my entire life. They satisfy my material needs, whose satisfaction has allowed me to pursue creative, intellectual, and leisurely pursuits of all stripes. They foot the bill, they nurture, they voluntarily enslave themselves to my whims. What do I give back? My progenitors certainly reap some amount of satisfaction from having produced and raised me (Indeed, I am quite stupendous). That was their goal; that it is and has come to fruition in multifarious ways must be a source of great joy and wonder for them. Not only that, but I remain close to them. I am their friend. I love them. The bond between us is mutually or communally produced. The social unit made up of people is one of self-evident interdependence, whose purpose is to satisfy all members and contributers. This unit is part of a self-sustaining and repeating system. I produce the extant unit through belonging and playing my part, and further down the line I am expected to perpetuate the social construct with my own family and offspring, and so on and so on. I consume food, drink, shelter, security of mind and body. I produce thoughts, my brain builds synapse bridges, I develop skills and objective-driven capabilities. I make art sometimes, or all the time, I influence those around me with my words and actions (as they, in turn, influence me). I prepare for the future. I am an investment; my parents and I, my friends, my teachers, and the society are investors in my human capital. I work and produce to pay dividends and repay them their dedication and contribution to my personal development. Work is production, and work has as many guises and purposes as can be formulated by the fecund imagination.
It would appear to be a shame if, with all of the tangible and intangible investments in me, I turned out to be a wastrel, a rogue, or a self-absorbed, thankless jerk, refusing to take responsibility for all that has been given (produced for) me. I am modest about what a good life is, but there are many iterations of a bad life, many of which can be characterized by an improper or unhealthy consumption to production ratio. Consider the layabout, the highly capable welfare recipient, the larcenist, the Paris Hilton, the destructor. A life leaning immoderately towards consumption might appear to be desirable, but it is lacks fulfillment. It does not stimulate the social, creative, and cognitive - the productive - areas of our being.
Happy New Years!
Resolution 1: Produce more, consume less
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