The Dissenter Witchcraft Blues

2012-02-12T08:07:00.000-08:00

"The future is not so distant. Technology has advanced exponentially the effects of technology."

Steven Schlozman

2011-11-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

[But] zombies just don’t care. Can you think of a better metaphor for waiting on hold to talk to your health insurance representative, or sitting in an airport staring at the bars on your computer in the hopes that they’ll signal a functional internet, or for the deadened way you feel staring into the tired, blank eyes of the clerk at The Registry of Motor Vehicles as you shamble forward and are given a number that represents you in the most impersonal of ways for the next two or three hours that you are trapped under the auspices of fluorescent lights and low ceilings.

Wouldn’t it be strangely better if all these battles were in fact personal? What if everyone got on the phone with their health insurance representative and got exactly what they needed except you? What if no one but you got stuck in traffic? At least then you would have a better defined gripe. At least then you could take uniquely personal action.

A Bit of Religious Anxiety

2011-10-30T06:57:00.001-07:00

A bit is necessary. Only, though, if its source is the purest spiritual sort. Too often, though, anxiety of this kind is optional, or, in most cases in my life, not present in any shape or form. Religion is dead among my peers and in my culture. It is a sort of faux pas to even mention it, or betray any inclination towards, or thought of religion.

This is true: spiritual thought is necessary. This is the real tragedy of this trend--that spiritual thought is being banished from the minds of the people. I mean thinking about dying and the universe and metaphysics, and what is beyond ourselves as individuals, animals, and living creatures.

For the most part, religion distracts from this essential thought. Religion is political, not spiritual. Still, I was raised in the Baptist church, and so any spiritual thought that I endeavor in includes some amount of religious anxiety for the ideas that I was raised with. The bible, the new testament, and the commandments of Jesus Christ are to be seen as absolute truths. This I can't rationalize with certain passages, pivotal moments in the gospel, that are so human. Commands to loyalty sound to me like the orders of a ruler to maintain his authority. Authority and dominance of ideas are devices of this world, but aren't the stuff of the spirit.

Another idea of interest is the chance of dominance of the catholic (christian) church. Christ died and his apostles went out into the world. Churches sprung up, but it was a time of religious turmoil, and there were many religions vying for dominance. To what degree of chance do we owe the catholic church being adopted by the late Roman Empire? And then, it is more to the political force of that empire that we owe the spread of this religion, its survival of the Dark Ages (and some diligent monks) and the whole course of events that leads eventually the protestant reformation and the religious identity that I was first inculcated with.

One last point about the political nature of religion. Thinkers throughout the years have pointed to the power of religion as a force for keeping populations in check. Dostoevsky sees the religious imperative to control men because they are incapable of moral and spiritual self-governance. How many others view it as an essential function of the state that social order might be maintained through the religion of the populous. My question, then, if so many historical thinkers have viewed religion as providing an essential function of social control, what has replaced it in our non-religious age? Certainly this trend to non-religion, or non-religious social control began after the French Revolution, and whatever political organ acting in the absence of religion has been honing its function and efficacy since then. Is it high rates of employment? economics? culture? Surely the state would not let go the reigns it has held for so long, so what form do they masquerade under today?

A Word to the Meek

2011-10-25T18:59:00.000-07:00

I hadn’t had much sleep and I was driving late at night with my new wife asleep in the seat next to me—I can’t even begin to explain what it is like to love her—and we were going out of town down this shitty two-lane country road with absolutely no lights except for the brights of oncoming traffic and there were tons of those stupid deer that lift their heads up when they see you and dare. So anyways there were four hours ahead of me and I thought about them. There were four hours, 240 minutes, of concentrating on the road. That means keeping the car from flying into a ditch, or into oncoming traffic, which was, I’ll mention again, only about four feet away from our car, and concentrating on keeping those deer from driving me into a suicide pact with them. Concentrating fully. Concentrating without fail at 60 miles an hour.

I started to get nauseous.

When you drive, it is necessary to forget the fear of death. It’s just part of the contract. Because when you remember it how easy it would be for your explosion powered ton of steel to turn instantly into an execution carriage, it makes driving difficult.

I wasn’t giving the road my full attention because my imagination was taking me step by step through an intersection with one of those deer. How its horns would pierce the windshield and plunge at 60 miles an hour into my beautiful sleeping wife’s breast. How I would see it after it happened because my eyes would be closed during the impact and how we’d have swerved off the road. And I would be all alone under the darkness of the sky trying to figure out what to do without any cell phone reception. How my shirt would turn red as it soaked up her blood, bright with oxygen from her lung.

It’s almost enough to make you stay home. Lock all the doors and spend the day under the bed.

I know, I know. This is imaginative faculty. It’s up there to create situations and send us through them so that we’ll be prepared for real life, like that holograph chamber on the Enterprise. I know that it can get out of control if you don’t have sufficient discipline, and that the kind of thinking I was engaged in on that road trip was irrational, something verging on the territory of stress thinking, which everyone agrees is harmful.

But it’s also not all in your head. Growing up means knowing that you aren’t invincible, you aren’t lucky, and you aren’t magically impervious to harm. Bad things do happen, and some day everyone that you know will die. Imagination is life that you’re sifting through.

And life is uncertain.

But also, uncertainty is life. The big mystery. You have no idea what the fuck will happen tomorrow. And in the end, you don’t have any control over any of it either.

We walk in this cloud of uncertainty that bounces off all of our predictions and ideas, that gapes in front of us with its riddling smile wherever we go, arbitrarily spitting out the good with the awful in doses diluted by the mundane.

I couldn't let anything happen to that beautiful woman in the seat next to me. And I couldn't pull over or be toppled by all of those fears of uncertainty. So I faced into that howling something and denied what might be with the audacity to demand what I wanted out of the uncertainty of life. We had plans to keep.

There is some kind of power in not knowing. In being the person who perseveres blindly through that shimmering black cloud that leads to the future. It is a bold act to butt up against all of that uncertainty. But living is facing uncertainty. You have to bear up against all of those death traps set in life and walk into it. You are bold every minute of your life.

We should take that power and remember it in the small tasks that don’t require us to be bold at all by comparison. Telling the truth, saying what needs to be said, or sticking up for someone who needs it risks a lot less neck than you already did by opening your eyes this morning.

And when you really do need it, these small acts prepare you for dignity and courage, to have boldness when you need it most.

It's About Time

2011-10-23T19:32:00.000-07:00

I write about Occupy Wall Street. I haven't been following it, because I haven't been paying much attention to the news in general lately, but I have been talking to people and I have been slowly growing an opinion about it. The first thing that I have learned is that the best question, the most relevant question to ask is "why are you going down there?" Because the nature of this event is that there is no clear agenda. When people try to create an agenda they are considered to be sabotaging the event, or at the very least their momentum gains no following. That is because, from my observations, everyone going down there does so for a different reason. And the only unifying factor, far above the 99% slogan, is a general unrest, disgust, unhappiness with the powers that be. I talked to a guy and his wife at a party and they had some interesting takes on the event, and I've been talking to a co-worker, so I'll try and describe their ideas here.

The guy. "Consolidation of wealth into corporations. When a single corporation has more power than a country we are in trouble. It gets even worse. Take the situation with greece. Corporations are investing in insurance against Greece defaulting on its loans. The more money that is invested in this insurance, the lower confidence there is that Greece won't default on its loans, and the more likely that country is to default. When a corporation has the money and power to do this single handedly, we are in trouble. When money is to be made in this fashion, we have a large problem of our moral scruples. New technology (computerized trading) and deregulation of the stock market has led us to trouble. The ideal of the stock market, and this was true up until several decades ago, was that it is there in order to generate money for investment into a company. Today you don't have that. You have people who have found a way to make enormous amounts of money by skimming off the top, and who invest none of that money into the businesses. The stock market is operating in a faulty manner. We need to get it back to its original intention. Originally corporations were granted the right to perform some business venture according to a charter. This charter was granted by a king and after a certain amount of time it expired and had to be reapplied for. This was completely top down. Mercantilism. Eventually corporations gained the freedom to organize of their own behalf, without the consent of the government, and conduct business freely. I think this was a good thing. We have come to a point that businesses operate so freely that they are beholden to no governmental laws or regulation. Globalization has created an environment in which, if a corporation does not like the laws somewhere, then it can just move somewhere else. In this way they are not answerable to anybody for their actions. Corporations are global while governments are still local. We need to recognize this problem and address it with some kind of international regulating committee. A lot of people are scared by this idea, but I think it is necessary."

His wife had a different take. "When I went down there there were a lot of people that I felt like represented the freegan movement. At least these are the hard core people who are able to go down there every day. I ended up feeling kind of isolated. Finally a woman got on a microphone and started talking about middle class problems. I agree with a lot of the freegan issues, but I draw a line somewhere. I mean, I still want to go to work, and drive a car and things like that.

"Something else that I found interesting was in this slogan 'we are the 99%.' I started thinking, who are the 1%. I went to the 99% web site and found a lot of disturbing things. A lot of Fox News style arguing, very emotional. Then I went and did my own research and figured out that the 1% are people who make $350,000 a year or more. When I think about this 1% I'm thinking about these dangerously wealthy and powerful people. $350,000 a lot, but that's not that much. Those people are still living, relatively similarly to us. What a lot of the anger is towards is really the .1%. I want to go to these people in the 1% and somehow make them realize that it is them that all of these people are angry about. These people need to recognize that and do something about it.

I'm going to have to talk to Peter again. He has a complicated and interesting view of history, capitalism, and anarchy. Much of what he sees in this is a traditional power struggle. In this general movement he wants to take the time to point out older issues. That power struggles have taken place between groups for a long time, that they need to be addressed here, now. That's not it, or nearly all of it.

A Short Description of How Time Travel Is Possible

2011-10-20T15:48:00.001-07:00

"Since you are a capitalist from the 21st century it will be difficult to explain our history after a certain distance from your history, and our technology, which would be completely incomprehensible to you if I were to describe it directly, leading you into all sorts of misconceptions and contradictions that would ultimately confuse you. Take, for example, the computer. What we know as a computer is a radically different tool, fulfills a radically different role in our society, and performs actions of a nature radically different to the binary analysis machine of the 21st century, but symbolically we recognize it as the same thing. So of history and technology I will be brief and intentionally vague, so as not to mislead you, but of causes, which emerged out of your time, I will expound in great detail. Consider this the condensed, or simplified version, but in no way should you feel patronized by that.

"Around your time a group of min invested a great deal of resources into the creation of a machine that could track all of the movements of the global stock market, every trade of every share, with inputs of a variety of economic causes and influences on those trades with a function of determining the flow of market values down to the specific share. In the beginning the process was a complete failure, mostly because the secrecy of the project denied collaboration. Eventually an act of corporate espionage revealed the project which, despite its failures, was by this time showing great promise, and another group began competing to complete the machine first. Once the knowledge was out it leaked almost immediately and ubiquitously. Smaller nations were investing almost all of their GDP into the project and espionage among groups was almost so total as to have created a situation of violating collaboration.

"Eventually the project was successful. Once again, scarcely had the project been completed than was the blueprint copied and available ubiquitously. What had been created was a fair prediction device. All available economic data from as far back as was reasonable was fed into the machine, and a program traced the chronology intuitively up to the present, where economic data from a variety of sources (credit/debit, bank reports, corporate ledgers, all global, national, local economic analytics, not to mention stock activity, etc) was used to determine what the flow of values would be in the future, as determined by what happened in the past. The beauty of the machine was its specificity. The attention to detail. And the fact that it was self correcting. At first the prediction rate was around 30%. Within a few months the margin had closed to a fraction of a percent.

"Part of that success was that depicting decline is a blunt art. There was an almost immediate global economic melt down. Vast resources of capital were moved with such rapidity that the turbulent effect was immense. Companies doing poorly sank almost immediately. Successful companies were unable to respond quickly enough to changes and usually overcompensated to disastrous results.

"Faith in the market based systems was virtually non-existent. This was not due to this event alone, but events leading up to it earlier in the century. Popular upheaval was imminent on a global scale. Drastic measures were taken. Stock markets were shuttered. Crediting institutions were taken over by large multinational interests, and credit was dolled out by them. There was rioting in the streets. Most of the countries that had been struggling their way out of the third world for the better part of the 20th and 21st centuries were reduced to majority unemployment. The top countries suffered no less. Bankers and executives disappeared by the hundreds, usually found asphyxiated on some semi-precious object. Mercenaries were as popular in affluent neighborhoods as they had once been in other areas of the world. Martial law was declared. Anarchy and civil war were imminent.

"Somehow in all of this chaos a few ideas wormed their way into power. First, it was realized that the whole system of crediting and of fluctuating stock markets could be used, not as a way to hedge power and bets, but to regulate business with the aid of the machine, which could make adjustments to a global business model on a scale specific to individual units of production, even to parts per production. In that action all of upper and middle management became obsolete. Now that economics were beginning to stabilize, politics would follow. The second idea was a complete rejection of capitalism in favor of a form of meritocracy. This was the model in which humanity would flourish. Specific goals for the human race were decided. There were many goals, and they were ranked in tiered levels. Foremost were goals to the end of poverty, hunger, disease, resource exploitation, in another tier down was the advancement of beneficial technology, improvement of communication and transit networks, and on all the way down to systems for better heating and ventilation in buildings globally. In this way all of human endeavor was harnessed towards achieving ends beneficial to itself. For the individual, personal economic interaction appeared more or less the same as it did before. Bank notes were printed and distributed for work. Yet, this time the currency was backed by collaboration towards a set of goals. A person was rewarded based on the work that they did, and how much closer it got us towards achieving a particular goal. There was much discrepancy, and much debating, but councils were set up to judge those disputes, much like a system of law courts, different levels handling different degrees of severity.

"Under these conditions we kept up with Moore's law, even as the line appeared more and more vertical. The original machine was dwarfed by its current counterpart, which could take account of much more numerous and diverse subjects. The motions and currents of the molecules in a single body were studied. Then the sample was enlarged. As technology advanced, atoms were the object of study, the body of study was widened. Eventually the atoms of the body of a man were studied. Cancers were revealed in infancy, etc. Then the job of prediction came into the fore. It was not long before the body of study was all of the atoms in a room, then in a reserch center, then in a city and so on.

"It worked like this: a single atom was observed by the machine. It made a prediction as to how the atoms around it would interact with it. Then it tested this and observed the reaction, and adjusted for any discrepancies. Knowing how those outside atoms interacted with the original the machine then predicted how a further edge of atoms would interact with the known ones, then tested, adjusted and repeated.

"The universe was mapped based on the recoil of energy of particles on earth, though the map was only made at the rate of the machine and energy recoil, a rapid enough speed, but given the relative size of the universe the mapping of the solar system on an atomic scale took a long time to complete.

"But we had accurate maps of all of the atoms and how they interacted with one another on earth. Reactions from atoms bumping into one another at the edge of the universe were constantly interfering with the predictions, but these were taken into account when they occurred and the universe map was made larger. Completely accurate predictions were therefore impossible, but a great degree of accuracy was achieved for some things. Predictions were made for the weather, and they came back correct. Agriculture hit its peak. Strangely, when predictions of the actions of individuals were made, based on their atomic recoil, they did not have a high accuracy rate nor did those improve with increased data from molecules at the edge of the mapped universe. Predictions of reality, it seemed, could only be so accurate. The machine had reached a plateau, even though the technology running it continued to advance.

"Scientists began to play with the input variables. The machine was capable of mapping out entire, if only hypothetical, lives on the atomic scale, and broadcasting them on a scale viewable to a human being. One scientist input the atomic history of his life, but changed the atomic inputs for the woman who had left him during his graduate studies by deleting her atoms from the history (or rather scattering them so that they never formed her) and played out the reaction. The result was disconcerting. He saw on a scientific monitor his life, but changed, playing out the actions of his body. It was both enthralling, and horrifying. Thus the machine was used to see lives, deaths and what could have been in many lives, but could not be used to see this life. Those predictions became an item of kitsch, like mythical prediction calendars of older civilizations.

"It was hypothesized that these predictions, alterations and the like were not calendars, but visions into alternate realities. If a universe could be imagined down to the last atomic detail, then it could also exist. Places where these things actually did take place. Alternate reality scenarios were played concurrent to each other and merged. The merging was studied. We divined how to leap from one reality to another this way, how to plant ourselves in any location in any place in another reality. How to arrange particles so that a sort of bridge was created, and our atoms and our consciousness was dragged through it. Thus we could time travel, only not in our own time.

You Must Leave the House

2011-10-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

I was driving late at night with my new wife dozing in the seat next to me down a winding country road with no lights and lots of deer. There were four hours of driving ahead of me and the pressure of concentrating for the duration about bowled me over. I felt nauseous, unsure whether I'd be able to make it there or not. Then there were the other cars on the road. Trucks towing tractors shaking on their hinges. When you drive it is necessary to forget the fear of death. It is quite possible to never imagine the worst possibilities. In my state of mind I was tracing out those horrors viscerally. The horns would plunge through the windshield at 70 miles an hour and into Victoria's breast. The tractor would fall off of its hinges, bounce and spin on the road a few times before coming down on our subcompact and crushing us. Except crushing isn't so simple as the word. It bends metal all around you, broken glass into you, bones compact upwards in a horrible instant until the whole roof caves in and the cavern of the car swallows you up. And supposing I did survive either of these. What would I do if my wife was injured? Drag her out? And if I didn't have cell phone service? Wrap my shirt around her and watch it turn red as she died in my arms? These were some of the possibilities facing me in that car ride. This is life. Anything can happen. There is no rule that says horrible things can't happen to me. They can. In as many ways as there are to live. It is almost enough to make one stay home to know that all of these death traps are waiting in the world. But you can not stay home. You must leave the house, because the uncertainty of what will befall you is also that of what won't. Though there are unavoidable dangers in the world, it is not in your power to control them. And knowing that you have no control and no foresight means that you also have no power to change what happens. In this way it is a bold act to leave the house, to live. But we must be bold. We are bold in every thing that we do, most of the time without even recognizing it. Bold because of the things that we can't control, which in darkened imaginations are the demise of all that we hold close. This makes the other tasks in which we toil seem meek in comparison. Speaking up for someone risks a whole lot less of your neck than getting in your car and getting on the highway. And when we do face disaster, it is these minor acts of boldness that prepare us to act with dignity and courage, to have boldness when we need it most.

2011-10-13T18:10:00.000-07:00

Several critics have been taken hostage. They are forced at gun point to write incredibly dense texts, invent new modes of readership for these texts, and submerge those modes (the means of gaining access to them) in the original dense texts.

Some of the critics wish to escape this bondage, wish to subvert the work or antagonize their captors, some are so afraid that they work tirelessly in the hopes of survival, and others see the whole ordeal as the most genuine form of flattery.

Transtromer

2011-10-13T17:20:00.001-07:00

The funerals keep coming

more and more of them

like the traffic signs

as we approach a city.

Sci/Spec Fi. ideal

2011-09-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

Setting opens up in a grand roman hall. A great decree is about to be proclaimed. Suddenly men appear from nowhere and begin blasting away with phasers, causing a great amount of casualties and even greater confusion. They snag a famous historian, Livy? and are gone just as quickly.

A double story line is created here.

Livy is in some far and distant future aboard a space ship. It is explained that he was taken into the future because they need him. There is a war going on among another group of people across time. The killing your grandfather paradox is solved by these people saying that when they go back into time and alter things, they don't alter their own time, but generate an alternate dimension in space and in time through their intervention. The people who they are battling are capable of the same technology, and so their fight spans multiple dimensions and times. They need Livy because he was a great historian and they need absolutely accurate data from his time in order to plan their attacks. Much of the information written by him did not survive to their time. And they need it to make exactly accurate military plans. They need all information from all times, a veritable map of all existence, or human action anyways, in order to coordinate their plans against their enemies. Another paradox occurs here. If they have time travel, couldn't they travel into the future when they already have Livy and recover him there, or couldn't the future send Livy to their current present and deliver the information necessary then, or when did they grab Livy, since logical ordering of time no longer is a factor, and wouldn't they be vulnerable since their enemies could anticipate their snatching and be there waiting for them in the roman hall in ambush. To this there are multiple answers. Yes, in some dimensions their enemies are waiting for them in ambush, but not in all, since it is impossible to dominate all dimensions. Another, it is necessary to create temporal artifacts--events, otherwise nothing could happen--which are exciting and dangerous, because they are the stuff of living, but also take on the airs of formalities for the people doing them, since you know that in another parallel dimension or in the future that event has already taken place and all of its consequences have been played out. The effect on Livy is thus: He is dismayed at being kidnapped and at the brutal manner in which it was done, but he is simultaneously fascinated with this place that he is now. Then they ask him to work for them. Not only do they need all of the information from his time, but they need him to track changes and record events across many dimensions. He was chosen for this in addition to his knowledge of the time because of his excellent record and detail noticing ability. This information is their military intelligence, and their battleground information. The time that they will need him to keep track of is relatively short, four months or so. He asks why this period was so crucial and they reply that it wasn't, but that they have another Livy on another ship (possibly in another dimension) tracking the next four months, and another Livy elsewhere tracking the previous, and so forth. He asks why that number, why that length of time when they could get an infinite number of Livys since with the parallel dimension crossover ability and time travel ability resource exhaustion is no longer a factor and neither is labor, and get each Livy to study a single day. To this they reply that there is a computer algorithm or anomaly that beyond their current operating number of Livys the data store becomes too huge and unwieldy and effectively useless. Livy agrees and stays in the time and ship, and then his work concerns the effort on his part and learning the technology associated, as well as considering his position--uncertain about aiding these people in a war that he has no reason for and and justifiably irritated about being abducted, but also in a very helpless position and in addition fascinated by the technology and culture and what these people are doing.

Battle tactics are very much more complex, since arriving at an enemy ship and destroying it has no real effect on an enemy that exists in duplicates across multiple universes, and you have to plan your attack to have significant effects across those other universes in order to inflict any real damage. It is, in no sense, traditional warfare. But very much like a complicated chess game.

The second story line considers these battle tactics. Back in rome, shortly after the first group beams away a second group arrives. These people assure the romans that they intend no harm, but wish to offer them a means to revenge. They provide the romans with the technology and information for future jumping, thus enabling them to do the battling for them, or teaching a new group to fight their enemy. This battle strategy is one of arming the past and making it fight the future. This way the future enemy has more enemies on its hands. It is also a way to imagine the romans in spaceships.

A possible ending, or deepening of the intrigue could involve the motives behind the war. First, there is no enemy. The war began as an internal decision to attack themselves out of 1. boredom 2. motivation to a)travel to other dimensions, b)advance technology, and c)create a thorough rendering of all times across multiple dimensions. (since a race that has overcome inter-species competition stagnates) This war, or internal motivation strategy has gotten out of control and can not be stopped because it has gotten too complicated and the original agents can not be contacted and ordered to desist. Even by going to the original meeting where this plan was decided and saying no don't do that because a future dimension already exists where the agents have gone on, and furthermore may pop out there and shoot everybody as a means of furthering the motivation. Also since the present people are hunting the original agents and the original agents are starting a war against themselves and enlisting people from all times and dimensions to do it, it is difficult to figure out which agents and who to influence and at what point in time to strike or influence to have the desired outcome. Now this group's motive may be in orchestrating an end to the original motivation, or returning everything to a neutral position. This war is fatiguing. But they are also facing the complex machinery of their own eschatology or survival as a species here.

2011-09-01T07:59:00.000-07:00

I love Kierkegaard because he leaves room for the unexplained in his philosophy.

2011-08-30T07:29:00.001-07:00

I would not wish to go into politics because I think it is a meaningless game with severe and long term real life consequences, but as long as I can remain emotionally detached, I think that it is a fascinating contest of human relationships.

2011-08-30T05:54:00.001-07:00

I saw V checking out a guy in the supermarket the other day. I wasn't angry at all, because I'm not very careful about looking at girls when she's not around. Really, I was curious, because I'd never caught her doing that before, and I also don't know what kinds of guys she would be looking at. Who she is attracted to. I didn't get a very good look at him, all I could say is that he was the hoodie type, because the other thing I was curious about is what face she would make when she saw me looking at her, catching her. Again, not out of spite, or any kind of posessive malice, but because I know the excuses I make with my face when I'm caught, and I wanted to see if there was any of that there on hers, or if there would be something completely different. It was, both surprised, and causal, and a very quick moving on without any acknowledgment.

2011-08-30T05:33:00.001-07:00

The problem with a lot of popular travel literature is that it tries to make adventure out of trivial stuff. Even though I consider P. Theroux's train book a complete failure and discredits him as an author for me, at least he keeps reminding the reader how mundane travel is. Instead, a lot of the books I come across now sound like this, "Aghhh, haggled by a taxi driver!" "Noooo, another line," "May god have mercy on our souls. Outdated infrastructure," (though this can pose a serious risk, I think it is blown out of proportion a lot of times).

2011-08-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

"Scourge of capitalism you will burn, not only forever in hell, but here today, too, in this chair of light."

How Would This Happen

2011-08-03T20:09:00.000-07:00

A woman wants to know what perscription drugs a coworker is on because she thinks that they will improve her life, but she is afraid of risking the taboo of asking someone a personal question like that.

Here's how I got to it. I was eating lunch at work and a woman walked into the break room to ask a question. After she left one of my coworkers said, jokingly, "I want whatever she's on." The woman in question is always positive to an extreme that it seems insincere, though by looking at her and hearing her say "awesome," you know that she isn't. Something about the look on her face, the way she carries herself, and a few of the things she says lead me to believe that she has had a hard life, a life that would only lead her to be forcing those emotions. Add to all of that she is a little bit spacy, and you could easily imagine that she's on the perfect cocktail of mood enhancing pharmaceuticals.

The story I have in mind involves taking that original question made in jest seriously. Either taken seriously from the get-go, or later on, after a bit of misery. Then the miser debates asking the woman what drugs she assumes she is taking. A lot of modern social taboos here, if you're like me and feel uneasy breaking people's personal boundaries like that.

2011-07-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

It was a a kind that doesn't exist anymore, bright and empty at 4am a bare wood landing composed the second floor, was wreathed in smoke, filled with destroyed couches and some sculpture grad-student's thesis, 4 sets of gray plate steel tables and chairs designed in the brutalist tradition, a matching spiral staircase connected it to the ground level and cold stares from the bearded help where you exploited the never ending cup not because of taste, or ethical trademarks, but because caffeine gave you the jitters, and a window that that made a wall and loomed over everything and that took on an impressionist air when dew dripped and streaked the city sweating outside.

2011-07-27T20:35:00.000-07:00

Is the New Testament more appealing than other religious texts because it features stories that ordinary people can relate to--stories of fishermen, tax collectors, ordinary fucking people--as opposed to other texts telling stories that are told from a hyperbolic perspective such as a king or a divine being?

The Philosophical Novel

2011-07-24T13:14:00.000-07:00

, or the one's I'd like to read:

Iris Murdoch

The Mind-Body Problem, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

Omensetter's Luck, William H. Gass

How to Sell, Clancy Martin

George Santayana

Thomas Mann

Robert Musil

Wittgenstein's Mistress, David Markson

All from this article.

"how we tackle intellectual problems depends critically on who we are as individuals, and is as much a function of temperament as cognition"

The Iliad

2011-07-06T19:13:00.001-07:00

Violence is never an end, only a beginning to more violence.

Teenage Music

2011-06-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

Listening to music alone in your room you feel that there is something deep and unique and profound in the music and you know that it is something that is not always there, at least not right there at the surface of the sound, and you understand that not all of it is the music, that some part of that power in the music is you, because it is you who understands these things, like the secret ingredient an alchemical process. But the other part to this great understanding up there in your bedroom is that this great thing will never leave you, that what you are experiencing could never be explained or expressed to another person, because words could hardly even let them know the outline of your experience. So it happens that this great and infinite thing is ultimately capped inside of you.

On The Books

2011-06-20T17:13:00.001-07:00

Dust

2011-06-20T17:06:00.000-07:00

Dust lies, of course, at the very edge of human visibility: it is as small as the unaided eye can see. And dust is not strictly terrestrial. “Amorphous,” Amato continues, “dust is found within all things, solid, liquid, or vaporous. With the atmosphere, it forms the envelope that mediates the earth’s interaction with the universe.” But dust is found, too, beyond the earthly sphere, in the abiotic vacuum of interstellar space, a freezing void of irradiated particles, where all dust is the ghostly residue of unspooled stars, astronomical structures reduced to mist.

2011-05-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

I'm treating myself to getting in bed at 9 and reading my book until I fall asleep. I want this so bad that I'm even skipping drinking a ginger ale, which would take too long to drink since I drink it slow and taste the whole bottle. This day I went to work, drank a beer with a co-worker, came home and cooked dinner, and now I'm even getting that reading in. Is this what steady working life will be?

2011-05-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

Ride With the Devil

2011-05-05T21:02:00.001-07:00

“After that, the universe will simply continue to expand and dilute, and that will go on forever,” he says.

Smells

2011-03-25T06:35:00.001-07:00

Sandalwood, Bay Rum, Rosemary, Hops

Eucalyptus.

Paolo Ventura

2011-03-22T20:18:00.000-07:00

I found this photographer again because a photo set of his that appeared in Harpers stuck in my mind forever. When I first saw his work I couldn't tell what was happening, but I did feel that it was haunting and erie and empty. In the interview he describes trying to create a fantasy time period somewhere between the 1960's and the beginning of the century. I really like that idea.

Travel Literature

2011-03-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

Invisible Cities

and

The Travels of Marco Polo

2011-03-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

The man was set in prison inside of me for forgery or perjury I don't remember. Sometimes I can hear him singing he sings about how dark it is next to my vital organs sometimes when I lay outside in my bikini he sings about a faint red glow. He does not like it inside of me pressed into my organs in the shapes inside of the human body it is not all soft in there the bones. I do not like him inside of me I can feel him move sometimes or once even claw and sing often I do my part I want to make things better.

Do I know that he claws to get out? No. I can not say that for sure. That this is the best way to rehabilitate our criminals I can not say for sure either. You must ask wasn't I convicted once and what was I thinking then to put a criminal in my body what changed do you feel regret. Sometimes I am at a party and I have to talk about keeping a prisoner in my body. I was only convicted on one account--I want to do my part to make things better. I do not feel regret for overcoming inaction. I could not say that a man is punished unjustly and be no part of the punishment. Yes I agreed to put a man a criminal in my body. Action is only just.

A man at the party takes off my blonde wig and puts it on his head. The prisoner in my body tickles my ribs it would be like clanking a steel dish across prison bars the man believes I am laughing at him it is a painful laugh he wants inside of me I tell him that is only figurative we go to his house to have sex he asks me do I feel regret.

I do not know that putting the man in my body was the correct measure for the crime I cannot remember. You must not feel regret for having acted only for having acted wrong which is a deficiency of thought a failure of spirit which is laziness.

"Forgery or perjury is a moral crime, and infliction against the character of our identity a viscous skewing of our shared reality."

The man in my bed tries to impress me I do not know that he cares the prisoner is gone so deep inside of me I do not know he will ever come out. When I drink my liver floods him with fluids of the poison directly is this excessive is it a matter of punishment or the course of the punishment it is bile he is covered in bile and he wouldn't be if I didn't drink and once I didn't know this I didn't know that when I drank I covered him in bile but it came upon me I realized this is what happens this is the result of my drinking I know for all future drinks that this will happen am I responsible for the drinks I had before I knew?

"Do you regret putting this man in your body?"

Internet Truths

2011-03-19T12:06:00.001-07:00

The internet is almost like the real world. If I discover something here, and fail to remember it, it fails to exist. But if I write it down, or record what I find in light, then I may have a chance of seeing (creating) it in the real world. This is the step that removes it from the real world, but discovery is the same, and with pictures and light, it is one step closer to me than a picture in a magazine in the fact that it is possible for this picture in light to respond to my presence in a way that a static physical picture never could.
Here

2011-03-16T21:56:00.001-07:00

This is where the tow truck driver told me to go:
Hill Country State Natural Area

2011-03-05T07:39:00.001-08:00

2011-03-04T19:55:00.001-08:00

2011-03-04T19:46:00.001-08:00

2011-03-04T19:36:00.001-08:00

2011-03-04T19:30:00.000-08:00

Spring Break

2011-03-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Austin - San Angelo--4 Hrs.

San Angelo - Balmorhea--4 Hrs.

1 Day, 1 Night

Balmorhea - White Sands--4 Hrs.

White Sands - Casa Grande--6 Hrs.

1 Day, 1 Night

Casa Grande - Sedona--3 Hrs.

1 Day, 1 Night

Cottonwood

1 Day, 1 Night

Cottonwood - Austin--18 Hrs.

5 Days 4 Nights

2011-03-03T21:01:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure why, but I need them.Gotta know more about Grenson.

Buy me

Don't know what I could wear with this. White denim summer? Only if I had curly hair.

Tango

2011-03-03T20:30:00.000-08:00

In preparation for our trip to B.A. V and I are taking tango lessons. There was another lady at class tonight who had the same idea. This is what we covered in our first class:

Finding the beat
The tango walk--everything smooth, the musical phrase begins with a lot of energy and generally calms down (smaller steps) towards the end of the phrase, don't emphasize the step on the beat, don't bob your head
Partner positions--man has hand high on partner's back, woman gently rests arm on man's arm and allows for movement there
The tango walk with a partner--sense the step
Tango square--1)back 2)side 3)forward and outside (as close as possible) 4)close
Tango square with a flourish--1)back 2)side 3)forward and outside 4) forward and outside again, woman crosses her legs 5) Close and shift weight to opposite foot 6)forward 7)side 8)close

Ad Nauseam

2011-02-24T19:43:00.000-08:00

referring to something that has been done or repeated so often that it has become annoying or tiresome.

I always forget that one.

Unfriend

2011-02-24T19:38:00.001-08:00

I searched for you today because I thought of you and it occurred to me that I hadn't thought of you in years and that we probably shouldn't call each other friends, but at the end of my search I found that you already didn't think of me as a friend and that you may have had the same thought but months or maybe even years earlier, and the feeling I had from all that wasn't quite betrayal but something more like jealousy.

from The Outpost

2011-02-14T19:26:00.000-08:00

Mission: to be where I am.

Even in that ridiculous, deadly serious

role--I am the place

where creation is working itself out.

from In the Open

2011-02-14T19:15:00.000-08:00

The letter in my pocket. Desperate furious striding, it is a kind of pleading.

with you, evil and good have real faces.

With us, it's mostly a struggle between roots, ciphers and shades of light.

2011-02-14T19:02:00.000-08:00

"I don't know much, but I know something... women and shoes, that's a special area."

--David Ball

Some things

2011-02-13T12:36:00.000-08:00

are striking because you've never thought of them before.

15 "Participant" means a person approved by the Department as meeting applicable criteria guidelines to receive services under this Policy.

Minus Coffee

2011-02-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

It starts at birth. You are born with a life. It is up to you what to do with it. After this, it becomes incomprehensible. I began this line of thought on the top floor of a parking garage overlooking downtown Austin. I could see people in a park and stuck in traffic and the idea sprang on me like a locomotive. They were down there, and from where I was positioned, it was easy to look at them as animals. Running around. Playing, practicing. Their clothes gave them some distinction beyond animals, but what are clothes besides straps of fabric on a continuum of time. Or rather, what meaning is bestowed on the particular fashion trends exhibited below when they changed in the past and I know that they will change again in the future. How were these clothes (the best visual referent from my perspective) supposed to set those people apart from the animals when I know that they are a functional, tactical piece of equipment adjusted across the scale of time. The vehicles I saw were even less convincing. A tool to help exert a desire. What animal wishes for anything less.

Here I was on a roof top under a perfectly clear day after a bad-weather-week. I felt like I was walking through a dream. Feeling like every instant I was realizing that I was looking at what I was looking around at and the realization was surprising as if I hadn't been looking at it the instant before. Except that I had my eyes open the whole time. It must have been a perpetual feeling--the feeling of being surprised with reality.

After that it was all surprises. Everything. This is what, I think, passes for epiphany most of the time: seeing an everyday event or occurrence free of all the emotions (signifiers) that you have attached to it, and beginning to construct new feelings and biases about that event based on this empty perspective.

I went to lunch with a friend. In all honesty I was a little bit nervous driving there--besides the fact that there were so many people driving crazy, breaking laws, valuing their time and effort higher than conventions, myself included--because I didn't know how to bring this, bring my state of mind to lunch.

Familiar routines are helpful that way. We talked and we didn't talk about anything new. Politics, city culture, future plans. And it was genuinely enjoyable. After lunch I was worried. A very mild anxiety descended. What are friends for if we didn't do anything new? If we didn't do anything at all. If we didn't build anything or really connect (because connection is sublime; human connection is the ideal above animalness) what did we do? Stroke our mutual desire to talk about ourselves, think fondly about the future, prove that we know something about the other. It didn't really seem to make a whole lot of sense. Or seem to have much point. Ahh, but this particular friend is a bar friend and we had never met for lunch before or at least not in a very long time and the social conventions of lunch are much more restricted than the par, particularly in respect to time where at lunch the time is restricted, though there is some variable freedom about how much time you get to spend at the table after all of the food is all gone, where at the bar the windows of time are unhinged and let free to expand until the bar man says that it is time to shut everything off and you have no other choice but to say good bye and hug and hopefully don't crash your car or somebody else's on your way home or the fast food place.

Here was where I started thinking about plans. On my way home. What were all of these other people in the other cars doing? What were they thinking? What were my friend and I doing and thinking? Were we acting according to some kind of plan? Was there a greater framework that we were a part of that we were agents within and crucial parts of? (According to physics, the new religion, yes). Was there any reason behind all of the things that we were doing? Individually, probably no. Impulse directs doing. Also, what we did yesterday is a good indicator of what we will do today. If you went to work yesterday, then you'll probably go to work today. If it's the weekend then you will stretch your imagination and do something in response to what you did last weekend. If you're the type, then maybe you made a plan. Maybe you're going to go to a park out of town. What's the reason behind that plan? Probably that you don't want to spend another weekend waiting around at home for the weekend to be over. Then what's the point of these plans? Why are we doing the things that we're doing? Is there any reason guiding it? Probably a lot has to do with the seemingly infinite number of days that we have ahead of us. If I was to count up the number of days in 80 years and tell you the number what would you do? If I put 80 years on a time line and marked the number of days gone by in your 80 years in red would you be horrified? I'm not going to do it to myself because seeing that would be too horrifying. Then what's the alternative to whiling away our days? Plans seem to be the answer. But our plans don't seem to mean anything other than ways to more elaborately while away our days. There are bigger plans out there with science and understanding and reasoning behind them. These are generally plans of the state, or the state's predecessor, corporations. There is some comfort in knowing that these massive plans involving each one of us have a bit of sense guiding them, but there is still uncertainty there. What is to determine if those plans are not in error? History has shown us that time and time again those plans are frequently wrong, or misguided, or horrible.

In a sense the kings of medieval Europe were more advanced than us. Their plans were backed by divine authority. There was no uncertainty. But an understanding of human psychology gives me new doubts. How many kings truly believed that they were under the authority of god, and not the ultimate authority themselves?

All of the ideas that I've heard about time are echoing faintly in my head. Who said that time was an illusion and that all we really know of is this one perpetual instant and that the past is a delusion or at least function of memory and the future is only imagination or an aspect of planning, or maybe he didn't say much more than that time was just an illusion. I'm imagining some kind of all devouring worm inching (or not moving at all?) through time (nothing) and destroying everything in front of it and rendering everything behind it null and thus with it's slow illusion of movement represents the abandonment of time and a false conception. And who else wondered what it would be like if we viewed time in reverse, knowing all that would happen in the future (our deaths, etc.) but edging towards a past which we were completely ignorant of, our past and history and what brought us to the present and tells us everything about ourselves. Whoever said that had something to do with the movie Momento. And Mark Twain quipped that we would be infinitely happier if only we were born at 80 and slowly inched our way towards 18.

2011-01-30T20:08:00.001-08:00

Kropotkin

2011-01-30T20:07:00.000-08:00

Dunbar's Number

Words

2011-01-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

sub specie aeternitatis- viewed in relation to the eternal, a universal perspective

hyperbole- exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally

superlative- of the highest quality or degree

It makes sense that I would think of each of these words in sequence because they are variations of each other, and in some sense are representations of an error of thought, or rather that error is in our ability to imagine something that is beyond our powers of conception.

2011-01-28T05:20:00.001-08:00

Technology and telecommunications companies receive thousands of subpoenas and court orders every year in which the authorities demand a broad range of information about their customers, from the content of their e-mails, to the Internet Protocol addresses of their computers, to their files that are stored online and location data from their cellphones.

This Is How It Is

2011-01-28T05:07:00.000-08:00

If you mess with ATT, they will sick the long arm of the law on you.

Also, are hackers getting older? In the next generation, will they not be around any more? Will we loose the type that attacks large corporations out of political motives, and be left with the ones who steal credit card information out of greed or desperation?

Internet and Privacy

2011-01-27T06:46:00.000-08:00

Digital Due Process--be aware that this group was founded by internet providers and large internet companies. Largely a response to government and police snooping justified by the Electronic Communications Privacy act which was created in 1986, the year I was born, and has no idea what the internet is. The Center for Democracy and Technology is part of this coalition as well. Any reform of legislation is difficult because of security measures enacted after 9/11 and henceforth justified as well.

A bunch of articles in the NYT. I heard most of this on their Tech podcast.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/technology/10privacy.html?_r=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/business/media/10link.html?ref=technology

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/

Middle Generation

2011-01-27T06:42:00.001-08:00

Too young to remember the 80's, too old to be part of this childhood technology phenomenon. Nobody gave us a name, like Gen-X, or tween. We're the middle child of generations, mostly forgotten, kind of not really a part of anything that goes on around us, a little bit disenfranchised, but mostly wide eyed and blinking and trying to figure out how to stand and where we figure into everything.

More Net Neutrality Stuff

2011-01-15T06:57:00.000-08:00

Open Rights Group-- The UK's Net Neutrality defense group. They've got some petetitions on their page, but they're for GB. Doesn't mean you can't copy and paste to make your own quick petition.

The Oxford Internet Institute-- Not just NN, but a whole trove of useful and interesting information here.

2011-01-13T16:01:00.001-08:00

Political speech writing is a lot like SEO. More important than what you say are the words that you use to say it. Look at any politician's words. Generally they stick to a party line. It isn't hard to figure out where they stand on an issue in relation to everybody else--on side or the other--thanks to the polarization of our political process. They can go on and on and get flowery or historical or whatever, but that doesn't matter. The real meat of their speeches is in a few key words. You always have to look for key words when you listen, because that's where they're getting their message across. These key words correlate to larger issues and they way they use these key words is how they choose to relate to those issues. The goal of a political speech is a high frequency of key words to make the speech easy to follow, clear.

SEO is similar. When you create content for a website, you want the content to be good, of course, but the real value in the content is its ability to rank higher on a google search. You do this by including a high frequency of key words which you believe will be entered into a search bar by a potential customer. If you out rank your competitors, then there is a good chance that you will win the consumer game.

How similar are these two writing devices?

An Essay

2011-01-13T15:58:00.000-08:00

That has a bunch of books in it.

2011-01-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

Solomon saith: There is no new thing upon the earth.

So that as Plato had an imagination, that all

knowledge was but remembrance; so Solomon giveth

his sentence, that all novelty is but oblivion.

Francis Bacon, Essays: LVIII

2011-01-02T20:20:00.001-08:00

"Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism."

Theodore Alois Buckley

in his introduction to

Pope's Illiad

Pope's introduction to

Homer's Illiad

Low Pole Lit Mags

2011-01-02T14:00:00.000-08:00

Glimmer Train

Front Porch (by the MFA program where I got my undergrad)

I'm Looking for Work Online

2011-01-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

vworker

Guru.com

motownwriters.com

worldwidefreelance.com

fundsforwrtiers.com

writersmarket

mediabistro.com

My friend Stacy Muszynski showed me the way.

Thinking New

2010-12-28T16:41:00.000-08:00

Isn't that a beautiful thing, to think that we are all being recorded and as such elegized continually?

I think that a poet is really just a way of perceiving and interacting with the world. For fun, I would like to call it an interface, though more often than not it is considered an identity. Poetry is the expression of whatever comes out of that perspective in language. Of course, the term artist may best evoke what I'm describing, a person who is deliberate in her observation, and revelatory in his actions, but in regards to our world of technology I think the term poet fits better. Html is, after all, a string of numbers and letters, not pigments. A person who perceives and interacts with the world wide web in ways of significant insight may or may not be classified as a poet. Physicist, mathematician, engineer, may also be appropriate terms for people who choose deliberative language as their mode of expression, even if that language is actually a non-lingual iteration of latinate-aribic forms.

Tom Bissell makes the case for video games in his book, and what is clear from his analysis is that information technology, when it produces art will be something more than a composite of previous art forms, and may even border on something new. In his book, he lobs complaint against the gaming industry for failing to produce a legitimate work of art. I believe his blame is only halfway accurate. Before logic can take on the form of art there must be a sensitivity for consuming it. Imagine, how will that even come about? A purely logical, hypothetical reality construed as the part of us so completely irrational, numbers impregnated with affirmation and doubt.

All of the new technologies may be simplified as masses of information, tricked through metaphors into modes of interaction. (I could simplify information to basic operations, and from basic operations to elementary arithmetic--1,0) These are constructions of logic. They were created by and for people who, at least according to the mythic stereotype didn't care for, or understand art. It has been shudderingly whispered that the new technologies are incommensurate with art. Another way of saying that our future is incommensurate with art. Which, if you ignore the obnoxious art world image that the word connotes and imagine instead a word that conjures up fundamental questions of consciousness, gives cause for great concern. Now that we have finally accepted technology as our common denominator route to the future there has been a scramble to figure out what this perfectly logical construction means for the illogical mess that is the rest of us. The gap is enormous. But in a world where so much personal meaning resides in these machines, the imperative is huge.

What Bissell is asking for isn't possible from a design side only. It will only arise out of our shared experience with these logic devices. Once we exchange intellect that is bound up in unmediated organic experience, and receive one that is inextricable from the visceral experience of hypothetical logic we will find out that we can perceive meaningful art in our experiences with technology. Simply put, it will take a new way of thinking.

What will that new way of thinking be like? It is impossible to say. But rest assured that the work is underway. Every day millions of people interact with the new technology and make personal connections between the logical underpinnings of the data they see, and the illogical complications of their own lives. Every day the paradigm shifts and we split our reality between a world governed by subterranean calculations and a world governed by unknowable calculations. The new thinking is inevitable.

Unfortunately there is no consolation in inevitability. Because it is inevitable that our consciousness will be altered by our experiences with technology does not mean that the resulting consciousness will make beautiful things. Or even be aware that that is a possibility. Or even be aware that there are possibilities beyond vanity, pop-culture, and unrestrained consumerism. In fact, without some effort being made, there won't even be any awareness of the new consciousness. It will take a poet. By this I mean a person whose mode of expression is language, or any string of letters and numbers governed by semantics. It will take a person with a particular sensitivity to their environment to perceive the world of information and render it in a way that is evocative and meaningful, and perhaps, with luck, establishes some modicum of understanding for what the new thinking is, or at least points us in the direction of perceiving it ourselves. Who will we be calling poets in the next 10 years? Programmers, engineers, Sony?

Ander Monson is a traditional poet exploring a new medium. So far as I can tell he isn't writing poetry in html or making code haiku. But he is intending to innovate with the internet. What I've seen is pretty primitive, some hyperlinking between poems, an evocative interface. But he is a poet, which presupposes a certain sensitivity, and he is publishing on the web. Assume that means that he is paying attention to his experiences, perhaps even tracking what happens to him as he commits day by day to the new paradigm. It is this work of using the new technologies while trying to understand them that will bring the humanities a revelatory presence on the net.

2010-12-23T13:14:00.001-08:00

But when it came to rules that might boost network neutrality -- the notion that end users (you and me) should decide what content and services we want without interference from the ISPs -- the FCC's order paid lip service to the concept while enshrining its eventual demise. In theory, land-line carriers (traditional phone and cable companies, for the most part) won't be allowed to play favorites. In practice, the new rules invite them to concoct new kinds of services that do precisely that.

But even that fuzzy concept won't apply to mobile carriers, which means that discrimination will be explicitly permitted by companies like AT&T and Verizon for customers of the iPhone and iPad, among other devices that are increasingly the most important entry point to the Internet.

In Friendship

2010-12-22T23:18:00.000-08:00

There is an affection that becomes the heart of the relationship, and everything else is accessory to that fact. Conversations are only a means to facilitating it. Speaking is only a way of keeping time, because time is what is important.

Gov't vs BigBusiness (and everybody it's got to do with)

2010-12-21T20:47:00.000-08:00

I've always admired radicals, who I believe are at the vanguard of our civilization and necessary (and sometimes not so necessary) social change although I don't consider myself one, because I believe my place is in fostering cooperation and advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of existing structures.

This comes from some getting lost on the internet. Tonight's reading sprang from the cypherpunk article on wikipedia. Early hackers were the brainiac cowboys of the really wild days of the internet. Did the sun set on those days with the FCC ruling today? Or maybe that sun was preserved. My vote isn't cast yet, as it seems the ruling was set in place only to give the FCC an arm over broadband providers, who, as big business, are generally regarded as the enemies in the net neutrality debate. Though, if it is merely a pipeline issue, then who is this ruling really protecting? Does the average user really generate enough content to be put into a higher price bracket, or are these rules really protecting internet entrepreneurship and established businesses that ply their trade in huge bandwidth, sites like facebook, netflix, and the like. The latter seems the more believable, since language around the bill praised it's ability to preserve innovation on the net. My own fear as a personal user wasn't so much for the restriction of large bandwidth so much as it was the restriction of specific sites and a pay for use plan for the internet. If an ISP could charge you for the amount of internet that you used then your internet bill wouldn't go down, thought I'm sure that's what they would advertise. You would end up paying the same for the internet as you do now, only with the added fear that without a strict limitation on your bandwidth, you might slip into a more expensive bracket and have your bill go up that month, like a cell phone service plan. That is, by the way, where all of this is headed. The FCC regulation was vague about cell phones, which already have data plans that charge you for use. And as they become the primary means of access, the broadband argument will become irrelevant. Then in that case, who wins? ISP providers? Wireless carriers? Certainly not the consumer. And will the result be restricted content use or restricted data flow or both? I have been witness to two separate accounts of ISPs calling and threatening lawsuit if the user doesn't discontinue illegal downloads. I think the worst case scenario would be giving ISPs a framework for totally restricting that activity by limiting the nature of their internet provided to constituent groups. But that doesn't seem likely because that would defy the nature of the internet as being vast and interconnected, not closed networks of constituent consumers. What does a more likely scenario look like, and how long will we have to wait before it becomes a reality? Much like the current reality. Strong efforts to, if not able to block access, discourage use of certain types of websites. BitTorrents being the main target because of the money hole that they create for everybody in business. Would there be good cause to restrict alienate websites where forums conducted by hackers are hosted? For public safety. Then what about anarchist forums, since most of those operators blend with the former crowd. Well then you're getting into a first amendment issue since blocking those sites could be construed as a form of censorship of free speech. By the private sector. On the behalf of public safety because, after all, identity theft is no joke. And before long the entire outskirts of the internet where pirate cowboy hacker banditry exist is marginalized, fenced off and blocked by ISPs. And the vocal portion of the internet is silenced. Of course they can regroup elsewhere, but with the framework in hand ISPs will be much more effective at shutting these groups down. Perhaps I am a bit Big-Brother paranoid, but because a primary ideology of the major innovators of the internet is to keep the dissemination of information on the internet free, and since this means movies and music, which translates into dollars and lawsuits, I see a major incentive by the ISPs to go on a witch hunt. Can any FCC regulation keep this from happening?

1. Access to Computers - and anything that might teach you something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total.

2. Always yield to the Hands-on Imperative.

3. All information should be free.

4. Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.

5. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race,or position.

6. You can create art and beauty on a computer.

7. Computers can change your life for the better.

-Steven Levy

Links:

Crypto Anarchist wikipedia

Jim_Bell wikipedia

the cyphernomicon

cypherpunk on wired

Steven Levy on wired

net-neutrality at mediaaccess.org

Who is writing the book that describes the migration of radical left-wing geniuses from poorhouses and printing-shops to bay-houses and blogs?

Christmas Notes

2010-12-19T13:16:00.000-08:00

No sleep

Waking up with the babies

Staying up late with my cousins

Lots of drinking

Almost as much eating: cookies, candy, green beans, cookies, coffee, this morning we all pitched in and cooked a feast of breakfast tacos

Stories: On the morning of my mother's wedding her brothers were on a boat and off one. He wanted to see what the highest speed was that he could jump off before it really hurt. After the wedding my mom got an MG with a convertible top. Her brothers took it out on the highway and with one sitting on the back of the car they would switch lanes and try to throw each other off. In high school my cousin fell ojk;ff the back of a car and into a coma. She spent a week in ICU. She's all better now. "How's work Brenda?" Ringworm (is a hug that follows you home) running havoc in my room. Grandfather's there in spirit and a champagne toast to family in the morning.

LIST

2010-12-13T18:47:00.001-08:00

Figure out how to travel and where to go in Patagonia
Figure out what to take

Quick dry undergarments:

Quick dry towel

Rain jacket

Figure out how to fly there

2010-12-13T08:19:00.001-08:00

I vow never to wear a scarf again.

This is what it's like:

2010-12-12T19:32:00.000-08:00

You need money. You always need the money because you're in debt but nothing's new about that because we're all in debt and together we're in it up to our ears, but that community feeling doesn't change the fact that you really need the money. So you go back to taking shit jobs for now. Always for now because you don't want to put up with this forever, but just for the time being it'll keep clothes on your back until something better comes along. Or rather, until you find something better anyways. Strangely enough, it turns out that this something better comes in the form of this shit job. They want to promote you to shit manager. Lots of better pay. Like crazy good money. Not that you're wealthy and you'll be driving a beamer any time soon, but you're on time on bills and you don't need to worry about rent anymore. You really shouldn't be worrying about rent anymore because you're at this job something like 60-70 hours a week, but that's only humor. You need your apartment to go home to, to sleep a good eight hours before you shower brush and go back to it again.

It's weird being on the other side of the manager's pin. Everybody knows customer service jobs. We've had them since we were 16 since they were the easiest, most visible jobs to get. Everybody knows the shit that you have to put up with to work there. "This is the phrase that you have to say to every customer who walks through this door," and "I don't see enough smiling," and "no more than 4 ounces of cheese and you're taking too much time slicing the bread and you're making a mess with the mustard." But now you actually find that it's your lips that these words are issuing forth from. And you like it. Not because you give a shit about perfect mustard rings, or even making the rich assholes who came up with this not-so-novel franchize idea richer, but because you can actually excel in this environment. The rules are laid out clear. There isn't any nuance in what they want. Sell more sandwiches, spend less money doing it. You can hit the mark every time. And even if you don't have time to sleep, or time to call your friends back, it's ok because for once in a very long time you're doing something exactly right.

It's easy to understand your employees, those kids you used to be, never on time, always trying to scam a sandwich for a friend, confusing a corporate stranglehold with their own laziness. They're pretty simple, you see. The profile doesn't include much more than conceit and shortsightedness. It's this side of the pin that's much more difficult to comprehend. Because once you stop hating that hierarchy for actually making you work before they give you money you begin to see how complicated and ingenious it is. All of those silly acronyms that seemed made up to make your life more annoying before are actually intricately wrought strategies for increasing efficiency. Somehow the Byzantine layers of corporate regulation actually streamline the place. It is fascinating to see how statistics can cut waste, how a computer algorithm will be able to predict correctly 9 out of 10 times how many customers will walk in that door on any given day, down to the hour. The training program that you went through that seemed so much like brain-wash at the time is actually a device they use for manipulating their labor pool without having to change it, for spreading talent around, to make your skills reach the furthest.

And this is why it is so much easier to understand the corporate regulations towards employees. It finally makes sense to fire someone for being a minute late, or to refuse to hire someone with tattoos because it actually has so little to do with them. You're perfecting an invisible machine that only happens to require people and sandwiches to run properly.

2010-12-12T19:29:00.000-08:00

I periodically need to assert control over my life by abandoning certainty and embracing uncertainty.

2010-12-02T04:47:00.000-08:00

Imagine you have this friend who keeps dropping names about this new job that he got. You don't remember him doing this in the past, but now he can't seem to talk about anything else. You aren't clear whether he is trying to brag, impress, or if he is just excited about his new job. All that you are sure of is that he is annoying the living piss out of you. Call him out, right? But this friend doesn't take criticism well. It's not that he'll throw out his chair and walk away. Rather, he'll get real quiet there and kind of sulk. Plus you haven't seen him in a while so it is exactly this kind of catching up that you're supposed to be engaged in. Making him a silent "not offended" friend would be counter productive. And while you're sitting there weighing this out in your head, on he goes making more irritating references to famous people you've never heard of and don't care about. You're distracted now so it takes more concentration to follow the course of a conversation that you find annoying in the first place, which makes you even more irritated. Eventually you decide that it is madness--trying to figure out how to nicely criticize that friend, which the combination of trying and caring are making you more infuriated than the original annoyance in the first place. So you decide to drop it. It doesn't matter much anyways. People get excited about new jobs.

Does this constitute defeat? When you make this decision, is there some kind of universal tally that marks a point in your friend's favor, that takes a point away from you. Are you at a loss of some limited quantity of victory in the universe because of this decision that you made in your head?

2010-12-01T18:36:00.000-08:00

As all archival researchers know, there is a special quality of understanding that comes from exposure to a large body of sources, be it a novelist's letters, a ministry's papers or diplomatic traffic – even though much of the material is routine. With prolonged immersion, you get a deep sense of priorities, character, thought patterns.

Timothy Garton Ash

2010-11-29T10:30:00.001-08:00

I guess my ideal form of travel involves a constant readiness to be floored by something and loosing myself in my surroundings. Loosing yourself sounds as dumb of a phrase as finding yourself, so lets sound it out. I believe that your surroundings define you. Objects are really just thought associations in your head, and things like house, car, grocery store, bar have strong associations with my identity, they are primal ideas that form some core of my values because they've been there shaping future emotions since I was young, started listening, watching movies, absorbing my culture. There are a zillion other objects that we have ideas of in our brains. When you see them every day they constitute a major part of living. It's what we interact with. And what we interact with is one definition of living. Certianly there are others, and there is more diversity to identity and living than that, but you take this one thing, objects, throw them all out and replace them with a whole bunch of unfamiliar ones, or familiar objects that have been altered and you are left with only that core part of your identity that takes up residence solely in your brain and you begin to form new associations and a new identity with these objects. Don't mistake this for a material-capital association. I'm not talking only about the things that you buy. You can't buy skyline and you can't but the mountains. A rock and a road are equal objects in this assessment.

So we travel with a different identity of ourselves. For most people this identity is the traveler. It is a scratch pad identity which can be picked up at the beginning of a journey, manipulated how the journey will take it, and then allowed to slowly fade away after the journey ends.

2010-11-29T08:49:00.000-08:00

Man working in a light bulb factory. The old fashion kind. You must work at night in order to effectively test the bulbs. Those kinds of light bulbs are being phased out. He's out of a job. Thinks that maybe it is a good idea to get rid of the old kind of light bulb because that will encourage industry competition and result in a better CFL.

Idea is a way to write fiction about my interpretations of the news.

Traveling Without a Guidebook

2010-11-28T19:55:00.001-08:00

Maybe there are some good ones out there. Admittedly I've only tried a fraction of what's on offer. And while I'm making admissions, I must say that there is usually some essential information contained within the guidebooks that the traveler must have before departing.

That said, I want to cultivate an idea of going out there without the Lonely Planet. My reasons are twofold. First of all, the guidebook is by definition part of the global travel industry. From my experiences this has been a synthesis tool which takes local elements and combines them with a generic framework and employs itself in reducing the monetary possession of the traveler to zero while inflating its own multifarious coffers. If a guidebook lists something it becomes, out of necessity, a part of the industry infrastructure--there is too much foot traffic not to service the need. These are Hotels, Hostels, Restaurants, Bars, and Activities catering to an affluent, typically western, sensibility. Everybody looks for the place that hasn't been in the guidebook for long and still has sufficient attractions. These people can see that it only takes a couple of years for the new addition to be worked over. The economy adjusts itself, and a quick, safe barrier of distinction is erected between the town that existed there before, that always existed, and the new tourist infrastructure. This fact makes traveling to a place in the guidebook a less than enchanting experience.

Which leads me to my next reason. Traveling with a guidebook eliminates the sense of discovery that is behind the impetus for travel. When you can read about everything before you go and see it, it reduces the trip to something little more than an act of verification. As well, the guidebook which so efficiently lists out the attractions of a particular place limits the options of the traveler to places on that list. This eliminates chance, which eliminates a certain amount of risk and reward. But most importantly it limits the spatial possibilities of the traveler to a line. A connect the dots game, where the birds eye view from a map should reveal the possibilities of a pancake dropped from a high flight.

The most rewarding experiences that I had in Panama were, with the exception of Kuna Yala, which I found the guidebook entry on confusing and didn't read it anyways, not in the guidebooks. They were the result of a concoction of nerve impulses resulting in a decision that landed me in an amazing place whose images imprinted themselves on my brain and taught me how to think on different regions at a later date (travel is an experience, but so remote afterwards it's purpose can not be in anything at the present, but rather in instructing or cultivating a sense of wonderment which can later be generated outside of the quest situation because wonderment is useful as a mode of thought and essential as a resource for being). Part of this was because I felt like I was discovering something, and when that happened, I felt like I was really traveling.

In North America we embrace information culture (I have recently stopped calling this a worldwide phenomenon because the slum lifestyle is growing around cities growing at the pace of the internet and as a collective experience rivals that of the internet), and so wish to be informed completely on a subject before encountering it. Maybe we rob ourselves of something this way.

A guidebook is helpful. It is a good organizing tool. It is also efficient. It is a good way to trim trip-time down and pack as much into the allotted space as possible. Again, maybe this isn't a good thing. I think that you need some down time between seeing utterly novel and having amazing experiences. Otherwise the act of wonderment becomes common place. These places which should hold some emotional or spiritual or whatever kind of meaning can not dispense them on the traveler because he is still adjusting, sorting through the experiences of the last one.

The answer of course isn't one that is compatible with busy committed lives. Travel longer. That's all it takes. Without a guidebook, you just ask other people questions. They send you somewhere and you discover something amazing on the power of the spoken word, words from a stranger. Or you look on a map and see what draws you. In between inspiration towards inspirational places, walk the streets of the unfamiliar city you're using as a base. As long as you're surrounded by the unfamiliar you'll be traveling, and the brain process will make it all the more worthwhile.

Bookstuff

2010-11-17T09:46:00.000-08:00

Prior to S. America

In Patagonia

The Aleph and others

Roberto Bolano

Something by Isabel Allende

Open Veins of Latin America

Queer

Chasing the Sea

Some History?

The Gaucho Martin Fierro

Mario Vargas Llosa

The Teachings of Don Juan

Travel as a Political Act

After S. America

Lord of the Rings

Kafka on the Shore

Moby Dick

Don Quixote

A big Tolstoy

Wittingstein

Death with Interruptions

Faulkner

Get romantic: Shelly, Keats, & (maybe) Byron. Then Read some MFn' Blake to get to the pre-raphs.

Iliad, Aeneid, Odyssey

Louis L'Amour

Neil Stephenson

Bruce Sterling

Books about Time, Memory, and Identity

Native Art from Kansas

2010-11-17T09:07:00.000-08:00

Nelson Atkins museum Kansas City

From the Native American Art Section

manta-dress

hopi, arizona

diego romero

a true tale

jason garcia

This is what I'm thinking.

Non/Belief

2010-11-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

I have found it necessary at times to create absurd conspiracies in order to believe the incredible. For instance, once I was walking across a particularly nasty stretch of Texas scrub land, all sharp rocks, vertiginous rises and unfriendly succulents. No way, I thought, there is no way that people in settled wagons drove across this land and then made cities on it. It must have been done some other way. I then proceeded with my creative search for an alternative truth. They were flown out to california in airplanes, or the United States was always here, and all of history was a carefully concocted lie to fill us with myths and substances of past. These were the alternatives, and in a way, they seemed more convincing than the brutal truth which was always known to me. Convincing because they were the genius of my own imagining, as well as because they were created with a pin of logic that was sharp against all angles towards itself. Eventually those absurd imaginings fell in on themselves. They couldn't stand the push of reality for more than a day or so and I succumbed to the realization that these hard lands were traversed by determination, that the desire for a plot of your own land was enough to make the thousands do the unbelievable. And after doubting it I finally became aware of what an accomplishment it was, and how it is something that very well may not have happened because the odds of that were so great. It is through disbelief that we can find the incredible.

Kierkegaard tells us that true belief can only be found on the strength of the absurd. That is, through logic we find nothing but skepticism, but for a true conviction, we must deny logic, and accept that one thing is beyond all evidence to the contrary. I think that is what I am getting at here. An absolute incredulity is necessary for understanding the really wonderful things in life. It must be formulated into our perceptions in order for us to maintain a sense of wonder about the world. For what is wonder but that magical sense of unreality. When you see a waterfall what are the phrases that come to mind, "I can't believe it," or "oh my god." Both expressions signal the outer-worldly, we beg for rationalization that can't be found in our current reality because wonder is an expression of unreality.

Back to my point. The cultivation of disbelief can help us get a better grasp on our sense of wonderment. An act of disbelief is an assertion of personal logic. The, "I believe," of "from my personal account of knowledge I assert that X can not be true." Allowing that logic to fall in on itself, realizing that it is wrong is humbling. Admitting that there are some things in this world that are beyond the grasp of your understanding. That is the most wonderful thing of all.

(take that Vienna Circle)

2010-11-16T20:00:00.000-08:00

On the way back from Cerro Punta I rode the bus for 9 hours. It was too dark to read but too early to sleep. So I sat there and thought. After a while it became thrilling. I realized that I had enough time. I could let my mind expand in whatever directions I wanted and I wouldn't be rushed to finish. Eventually the bus became like a cocoon. I was safe, unmoving, just my thoughts and how they wandered. I followed every thought that came to me casually until some association took it another way. Afterwards I couldn't remember everything, but I felt refreshed, and what I did remember was profound and helpful.

In In Praise of Idleness Bertrand Russell urged people to give themselves up to this from time to time and he called it a leisure and a luxury. It was to be an event where you weren't working to create something or become employed in an industrious task. But in our manic lives we rarely, if ever at all, recognize this option, and scramble constantly from one task to the other without ever giving ourselves a break. Even when we go to the beach we are "working" on a tan. I read somewhere else that the mind needs time to process information, and that staring into space can be a boost to the thinking process, because in this idleness we are making unconscious connections. When we cram our ears full of Ipods every waking hour we aren't giving our brains the opportunity for mental expansion.

In normal life I don't allow myself that luxury. Time must be spent more efficiently. Even if I do sit down with the objective of casually thinking in mind, the second that I come up with an interesting thought I derail it and begin writing it down. In that way I am not engaging in thinking luxury, but i am doing work. There is purpose to that thinking because I need it to write. And the only way that I will allow myself to indulge in the pleasures of thinking is if I am unable to reach a pen.

Reading Kathy Acker

2010-11-16T19:28:00.000-08:00

i've always feared most that someone will destroy my mind

Say there's two theories of time.

absolutist theory of time: the world is in time. the world, events occur in moments. these moments can be mapped on a time line.

relativist theory of time: time is in the world. time is the temporal relations of events. an event can be earlier (later) than or simultaneous with another event.

the first theory suggessts that individuals (subjects) are the true substance. the second theory suggest that temporal characters are the true substance of the world.

If I'm an individual and I persist over a period of time, I'm a substance. If I'm an individual and not a moment, I'm an ordinary individual. Right now (t1) I'm picking my nose. Right now (t2) I'm not picking my nose. "Picking my nose" is a relation between t1 and me. "Not picking my nose" is a relation between t2 and me. But what if there aren't distinct moments? If t1 isn't distinct from t2? (Relativist theory of time.) I'm an individual who is picking and not picking his nose. Contradiction. I can't be a substance, an individual who persists in time.

If I'm not an individual or if no individuals exist, no temporal relations exist. (In a world without individuals, any character can exemplify any other character. If temporal relations exist, a character could be simultaneously nose-picking and not-nose-picking. Contradiction.) By "I," I mean an unknown number of individuals. Each individual exists for a present duration and exemplifies one or more characters. These characters exist out of time. Example: "I change." "I" exemplifies "change" ; "change" exists, is timeless.

This can't be totally accurate because when I remember, I remember an awareness, not an object. I don't remember my hamster, I remember seeing my hamster. Or: I remember seeing my hamster, I remember my hamster directly as I became my hamster, I go back and forth. If I do at any time remember (imagine, think about, etc.) an awareness, I must be a continuant. But when I remember an awareness, I don't repeat that awareness. My remembering seeing my hamster, I'm aware differs from my seeing my hamster. Or "repeating" doesn't exist

If by "substance" I mean an individual who exists (continues) without change and totally independently, I'm not a "substance." Change (temporal relations) is substance. If I'm not a substance and yet am a subject, I'm an individual or number of individuals. An individual happens only within a present duration; an individual doesn't change. Therefore I'm composed of an unknown number of such individuals: I is a (predicate) relation.

Kathy Acker is important. Her literature is an experiment that teaches us about literature and thought. She proves that writing isn't just a thing in books. Her writing is something that also takes place in the world. Her life as a writer and her actions are proof to this fact. A writer isn't just someone who sits in front of a desk and thinks. Kathy Acker lived in the world and lived her words. She even wrote fiction.

Her books aren't fun to read. Maybe they are at first. But that bleeds away quickly. It isn't something that I get excited about, and even find myself avoiding her work. Because there is so much to think about in there. It isn't something that can be read for pleasure. Every word must be thought over, otherwise you are skimming the page. Her words will resonate long after I have resold this book.

I don't like how self-centered her characters are, and I don't think that it needs to be so. I don't like her anger, but I believe that for her it was necessary. Otherwise, I am either unsure, or have no complaints.

2010-11-16T14:39:00.000-08:00

First you have to allow yourself to be inspired by someone. This requires some humbling of the individual self.

2010-11-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

Thoreau makes me want to sleep outside. I'll start in my own backyard. Once a week I'll set up the tent and make a night of it. Maybe not a big night. Just something to break the routine, but waking up and jumping into the groove in the morning anyways, rising from the grass and washing the dew off in the shower, and before I know it I'll be making coffee and heading to work. These will be shallow sleep nights at first, so I'll need plenty of coffee, but soon I'll be used to it. The sounds won't wake me and the feel of the hard earth against my body will be one of enveloping gravity. Then on nice nights I'll eschew the tent, eventually even the sleeping bag, everything except for a hat over my face. One shouldn't need a whole bunch of equipment just to sleep outside. Especially in Texas. Some of the idea is liberation, after all. But not the whole idea. Once I'm comfortable with the bugs and the night sounds and the cool of the evening, I'll expand my territory. Ideally there will be woods nearby for my nocturnal nesting on the weekends. But the real step is a bold one. Riding my bike around town I'll be vigilant. When the night falls I'll stake my claim among the cardboard box sleepers. Nothing serious, not like joining their ranks, although I wouldn't mind being friendly. A foray into sleeping outside in the city. Soon I'll get an eye during the daytime for spotting the most ideal spots for the nighttime. And before long I'll know what it looks like when one of those spots is already occupied. Then with this eye a whole different world will emerge. A subterranean current as it has been described, the network of pathways above and in-between the commerce of traffic and business that occupies a city during its hours of operation, one that supports a whole different human ecosystem during the nighttime.

Thoreau isn't the only one to blame. So's Kerouac, for a long time. And those couchsurfers who bugged me but who I can't get out of my head, and which bugs me more.

Urban Camping. About a million hits on google. It's part of the greater movement. Less.

THINGS I will do

2010-11-09T00:29:00.000-08:00

It is good, perhaps even essential, although a dependancy on it could prove extremely problematic, to know that you can drop down and leave the life that you have made for yourself. During daily interaction with habits it is difficult to apprehend how much I am dependent on these habits, what function they serve, and whether they make me happy or not. To be a little less vague, before I moved to Panama I was drinking too much, stressing about money constantly, and driving my car as much. I sold my car so that I could move to Panama, I don't have any friends around to go out to bars with, and as a consequence of that, and as a determined decision, I just don't really worry about money that much. I don't look at the stack of bills growing smaller because I know that some day it will be gone, and I already know what I will do then so it's no use rehearsing it again.

Strip these things away and I am able to look at myself again. The things that I care about, my values resurface because they aren't hidden in daily tedium. For a long time I held certain values and wanted to live a certain way but didn't. I'm tempted to say couldn't, but that isn't true. In reality, I had stopped seeing those values, didn't realize that I was contradicting them with my lifestyle, and when I did notice that glaring omission, felt like my life was too rigid to allow for the alterations that would bring these values into action. Thinking about it like this makes me feel like a character in a novel. I never used to understand them when they so clearly wanted to do something, or there was some obvious decision that they knew they needed to make, but resisted, instead did the opposite and suffered under their own intention. This makes so much sense now. People must do it every day. It is so difficult to have control over your own life. Observation is key. And then taking the time to alter things when necessary, but only when necessary to evict from your life what is contrary to yourself, and bring into line your decisions, your actions and daily existence into what is good and what you want.

The accumulation of stuff has always been for me a kind of mirror of this stifling habit forming behavior. When I live in a house I slowly start to amass stuff, and without realizing that it is boxing me in, filling up the space in my house I keep bringing in more. It never occurs to me that I can throw it all out until I am moving and I decide that I'd rather trash half of my stuff than move with it to another apartment. One of my plans is to live with less stuff so that I can have a clearer eye over my belongings, and through extension the decisions of my life. I'm not saying that it is bad to have anything, or that interesting artifacts should be discarded, but, just like the formation of habits, they should be taken with care. When bringing a new object into the home, just like forming a new routine, care should be taken as to how it will affect the other objects or habits in my life. This includes space, whether it will fill up my house and my life more than I would like, and a careful weighing of the object to see if I really do need it, or if I am just accepting it because I don't know what else to do with it. It will help to strip down to the bare essentials, because then comparison can be made--if it seems silly in comparison to these utter necessities, or these things that stand in direct relation to my personal ethics, it will be easy to get rid of.

I will do these things when I return to Texas

Set aside more time for reading

Set aside less time for drinking

Drive less

Bike more

Write more

Charity

Take more trips by myself

Look for other ways to travel besides on airplanes

Find some way to speak more spanish

Go to mexican bars

Hang out with Bandy and Luna

Live with less stuff

And the corollary of this last one is that I will create less waste

I can't say that I won't worry about money, but I'm working out a system that will do the major part of the worrying for me.

2010-11-01T21:27:00.001-07:00

I keep trying to put down Kierkegaard and I keep picking him up instead.

Whole Books

2010-10-24T09:08:00.002-07:00

Eagle and the Raven

Portrait of an Eye

The New York Trilogy

The Big Sleep

Fear and Trembling

Lonesome Traveler

Ficciones

Lost on Planet China

The Old Patagonian Express

Snow White

World War Z

Idoru

Foucault's Pendulum

The People of Paper

The Trial

Endgame

The Tin Drum

Metamorphoses

I, Claudius

3 Plays by Sophocles

Curse of the Spider Woman

Timbuktu

Riverworld

2010-10-24T09:08:00.001-07:00

2010-10-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Some fields of philosophical inquiry are dedicated solely to the discovery of alternatives to capitalism. My suspicion is that Deleuze and Zizek are the most visible proponents of these ideas. Like all things, time is a barrier to my understanding and discovery of these alternatives. I'll get there soon. In the mean time, I've found an interesting website. The writing is awful and filled with grammatical confutations, but he posts some interesting links.

http://boiteaoutils.blogspot.com/

Civil Engineering

2010-10-20T15:27:00.000-07:00

So, I've always been interested in civil engineering. The kind that you find behind the grocery store, or underneath bridges. Only, I didn't realize that it was civil engineering, or that it was an interest that could be pursued like an interest in film, or stamp collecting. Bridges are an obvious example. Everybody loves bridges, so you can understand this fascination. If you think about it, you can probably name off at least 5 bridges without trying very hard, Golden Gate, London Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, Puente Centenario, um, the bridge over the river Kwai. But this isn't exactly what I'm talking about. Frankly, my feelings for bridges are at the same end of a ten foot stick as my feelings for lighthouses and porcelain dolls (although I've always felt a strong attraction to the 360 bridge in Austin, most intensely during the depths of my high school depression where the bridge figured centrally in my plot to bring about the destruction of the world with a giant electromagnet, but those details are for another post). I mean ordinary bridges. I'm also talking about the most mundane civil engineering. Not that I believe communist architecture should dominate, but there is an ambiance to concrete construction that I find particularly appealing.
Some notable examples are the architecture in Stanley Kubrick's movies, and the LBJ Library on the UT campus. But these are just figures to illustrate the feeling that I get just from standing under a highway overpass. I can remember being a child and thinking that these places looked especially suitable for exploring, and that hermits and trolls had it made getting to live under there. Vast and airy, the great faces of the slopes which might run into one another in dizzying complication, and above all, the supreme logic of it all, the extreme utilitarianism, that somehow conjures fantasy, the exact opposite of those principals. If I wasn't able to play underneath the highway overpass, I definitely made my way to as many sewer exposures as possible. Drainage ditches in suburbs were a beautiful blighted contrast to the orderly, precious organizations above where people bought their homes. In there was domesticity, but here, where trash flowed in heavy rain was the possibility of adventure. The primary school mythology of these places flourished. Gangs conducted their secret rites here by campfire at night, and in the day time the only sign they left was their cryptic calligraphic handwriting in bright colors on the walls that, try as I might, I could never make out.

So there was the seed that would in later adolescence lead me to break into abandoned and under construction buildings, not to smoke pot, or even to have sex (although I can't really say that was my choice), but to see these forms stripped bare, down to their concrete skeletons, which isn't all that different from civil engineering. I still spend a lot of time in sewage ways, maybe not quite admiring, but still looking for that sense of adventure, and doing a bit of fantasizing in the process. My last house had a large ditch behind it. It had a concrete bottom, sealing any water that might make its way there above the ground, and a terrace of rock filled chain length cubes about 20 feet high. I think was the site of a former creek. I was thinking about that today. There was always water running through that area, but it was nasty. This was, after all, the area where all of the trash and slime on the ground that could move as runoff was deposited before flowing into our wonderful lake. Is there anything that could be done about this? An annual sweep through to clean out all of the tires and litter would be a good first step. But was there anything to do about that water? I've read on the internet before about constructing artificial wetlands, and that, if done correctly, these can purify contaminated water.

Would it be possible to construct one of these in a drainage ditch? The benifit would be multiple fold. First there would be less contaminated water flowing downstream, the construction of a wetland would mean the creation of a habitat and thus a strengthening of the natural ecosystem. I would have to read more about the purposes and design principles of these spillways before I implemented any kind of system to make sure that I wasn't contradicting their purpose. One consideration is that these artificial wetlands would need some maintenance. The immediate purpose of these constructions is to move water out of the streets and downstream to avoid flooding. Any impediment to the flow of water would be a contradiction of that purpose. These areas are designed to be barren so that water may flow as easily from one place to another as possible. My wetland idea would be a snag in that, because for a wetland to function, it must retain some water. To remedy this, my wetlands would have a spillway system that, after a certain amount of rain has fallen, water passes easily over them and flows unheeded downstream. Also, rather than filling an entire drainage area with artificial wetlands, I would build them at intervals. There would be a maximum width to the wetlands, and a proscribed space between, with flora downstream of earlier intervals differing based on the amount of water that would reach it. This would keep the flora from growing too wildly out of control and tangling and diminishing the drainage capacity of the ditch. Another benefit of this design method would be to limit the habitation of some fauna. In most suburbs people enjoy their wildlife at a distance, where they can choose to visit it when they want. A wild outgrowth of artificial wetland could mean a boom in pest population. If the wetlands were built in small strips as I have outlined, this would limit the potential habitat for some of these animals, with some specific modifications made to suit individual circumstances. Although, with the development of an ecosystem, natural predators would return to keep these populations in check.

Some maintenance would be necessary. Trash and other inorganic compounds would end up caught up in the artificial wetlands. These would naturally have to be removed by hand to maintain habitat health and aesthetic quality.

One of my other fantasies as a child was to see the overpasses turned into great hanging gardens. That was one of the ancient wonders of the world. It could be possible in the modern world. Otherwise, it will remain a wonder, but who wants to claim a system of superhighways as their pyramids?

Book Review

2010-02-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

My friend Sarah made a picture book. She let me review it. You can buy it online if you want to.

Imagination can be trouble. Relationships, drugs, boredom are all testament to this fact. Sarah Welch’s first book, "Misseen" describes a novel way that imagination can go wild and ruin your day. In life with her eyes, Sarah sees things that aren’t there. Part of the fault is her eyes—they’re bad eyes—the rest can be blamed on her imagination making an opportunity out of that.

There’s a laundry list of problems that amount to Sarah being considered legally blind. The names her doctor gave to her are: nystagmus, astigmatism, myopia, strabismus. But it is obvious from the cover of the book and the rich detail inside that this definition of blindness does not mean the absence of a sensation of light. This blindness is not empty or dark. Nor is it complete. No doubt Sarah’s sight is fractured, irreconcilably. But she can see, and what she sees is not exactly what we see.

Whenever a sense becomes weakened, another strengthens to make up for that deficiency. In Sarah's case it is her imagination that comes flooding in through the cracks and makes up what her eyes don’t see. What that amounts to is something like life as described by a stereogram. A blinking, cross-eyed struggle to find out what’s there, only to find out that what she finally saw was what she expected to see—the imagination part—and what was actually there was something else entirely.

These miss-seen events are drawn with a loose, shaky hand. Not unconfident. This is what Sarah sees. Biographical, cherry picked from young adulthood, these images give the viewer an exclusive look into Sarah’s subjective experience: her sight, as well as the emotional tumble that it creates in its wake. She mistakes one thing for another, she can’t tell things apart, she has a hard time deciding exactly what something is. The material is supposed to be light-hearted, but it is impossible to ignore the contradiction (blind, visual artist) that every page of this book implies. This is a first book, and an artist’s statement of sorts. Everything that Sarah produces in her lifetime of art will be affected and shaped by what is described in this book.

Underlying the lighthearted humor of the book is the incredible frustration that Sarah felt during her formative years where her eyes seemed out to get her. In a mature retrospective of those events, there’s also something of an apology to her eyes. Sarah explains that her eyes used to be the cause of much insecurity. All of the pictures describe a kind of geeky awkwardness that might leave one embarrassed afterward. It’s clear though that she should be enjoying them now. Because, of all the mistakes that Sarah’s eyes have made, they have also done something else. That is, they have gone on to imprint her with an undeniable uniqueness of vision, and passed that imprint into her work.

I went to the Farm!

2009-12-13T07:18:00.000-08:00

I saw goats and pigs and roosters and turkeys and cows and dogs. Good lord, I want a goat.

This adventure was the brainchild of my cousin. He saw Food Inc. over the week and wanted to price the alternative. Our plan was to visit White Egret, Boggy Creek, and Springdale farms. The latter two are produce farms that are only a short bike ride from my house. White Egret is a livestock ranch, and so by virtue of necessity, is out in Webberville. Coincidentally this is just a few miles down the street from my house.

Where I work, there are goats. They belong to 4-H Austin. Where I work, people often talk of finding a happy place to suppress the urge to flip out. My place is making fog clouds on a window watching goats stand on top of stuff.

There wasn't much question of where to go first, especially considering that I'd never heard of this place. The drive to Webberville was short, probably about 10 minutes from my house, and easy--down MLK past the toll road and the water tower in Webberville that, because of the angle that it faces the road, reads "Austin's Colon." Driving out there is strange because of how quickly the city turns into farm land. Neighborhoods break away to scrub and abandoned strip malls, and these quickly break away to scrag trees and open rolling pasture land. This probably isn't a permanent condition, so go see it now.

White Egret farm is right off the main road about a quarter of a mile past the only gas station out there. There is a sign, but I still missed it because I was going too fast. Once in I faced the perils of gravel roads, mud, and the unlikeliness of a Honda Civic interacting with either. Unstuck, I made it around the final curve in the road and I was greeted by the songs of all of the animals on the farm. It was loud. Loud through my windows, through the sound of soft jazz that is my soundtrack on adventures. And when I pulled up I got a quizzical look from a woman with a quart of Borden in her hand who told me to park anywhere if I wanted.

We went over to the woman and told her our mission and she replied that she didn't sell any produce. Then, fumbling for the right words, we tried again and explained that by produce we meant that we wanted to pet her goats and maybe eat some of their cheese. That seemed to click with her. Because it turns out that White Egret isn't a farm, but a goat dairy, out preaching the good word of the healthful benefits of drinking unpasteruized goat's milk. Ok. I think goats are hella cute. The woman told us we could look around and that she would be back with a catalogue.

The goats live under a large pavilion, open at both ends with a walkway up the middle and pens on either side of this. The pens seemed to function only to keep the straw in place, because the goats came in and out of these at their leisure. And by leisure I mean that one goat with little horns on his head would sprint by and shortly after about 20 other goats would chase after him, bleating. Then they would all get outside and stand on top of things.

Scattered up and down the hall way were these big white fluffy things. After I was finished petting the goats, these fluffs stirred and came to get theirs. I was actually kind of terrified by this, because the big fluffy things turned out to be Great Pyrenees. Heads the size of bowling balls, paws larger than my outstretched hand. And they had to bend their heads down to rub it on my thigh. So of course I obliged. And as I did, more showed up, loafed up from under piles of hay, coming and going to get a scratch, so that I was constantly surrounded by three or four dogs. It was hard to distinguish one from the other, the way their loafing and fluffing morphed into one another, but I was sure that I counted no less than ten of them under the pavilion.

This whole time around us we were surrounded by noise. I couldn't believe how many animals there were. And they were all making noise. Roosters flew in and out of everything around us, and then fell clumsily in the middle of their shows of bravado. Cats mewed from the coziest corners of the pens and far off in the distance in the hog wash came the noise of unabashed hedonism. That would be, the pigs. Or hogs. Big, huge black things.

On the way out to look at the pigs we ran into the woman we had seen earlier. She handed us an order form and explained how things worked. We didn't actually have to go out to the farm to pick stuff up because they delivered. There is no limit to how much you have to buy, and only a four dollar delivery fee. All you have to do is place the order and leave an ice chest outside of your door and they bring the goods on ice.

After this we introduced ourselves. The woman's name was Lee, or Leigh. She is a small woman with glasses and a careful, observant look to her face. She has a serious manner that betrays business ownership and animal husbandry, and a sophisticated vocabulary that places her somewhere outside of the manure and mud and grey leafless trees of this farm outside of Austin. On her finger is a large opal, which I clued as a tale-tale sign of an adolescence in the 60's.

Farming was, for her, "a hereditary problem." Her grandfathers on both sides had been farmers in Iowa, but her own father had wanted nothing to do with "anything that could turn four legs up and die." She had received a degree in Biology and then after doing some biological consulting for farms had began her own farm in 1978 in Illinois. In '91 she packed up the whole operation and moved to Austin.

I asked her if a background in biology meant that she had a different approach, more scientific, to farming. But she told me no, that it was much more intuitive than that. She could walk through a farm and look around and tell you everything about the farm, and even to the point that she could do it over the phone. She does read scientific papers, but knowing the entire proper functioning of a farm must be something organic that you feel right and wrong, and then proceed diagnostically, because an organized scientific readout would trail on into inanity.

Then she told us about the farm as it is now now. There are about 400 goats. Many of which were pregnant. She pointed those out for us to see. If we were lucky, she said, we might even get to see one give birth today. This never happened. I don't know if we were lucky or not. At one point in our conversation she politely told us to excuse her, and she ran off into a clump of goats who were not standing on top of things. Returning, she told us that she had only seen an optical illusion, that she thought she had seen a leg sticking out of the back of the goat. I don't know anything about animals, because for a second I was wondering what they must be putting in the goat's milk that enabled her to see legs sticking out of goats, and how that might be kind of cool, until I realized that expectation as much as anything can control your expectations.

All of her animals exceed organic certification, because they eat in a pasture, but she is not certified as so. Achieving organic certification for grazing animals involves a process of certifying the pasture land that can take several years, and from what I understand many ranches forgo this measure.

Then Lee showed us the pigs, and explained that if a pig is not properly contained (in this case behind a triple row of electric wire) it will route out any water lines on the property and make a new wallow for itself. As if to concur with this, the biggest, ugliest of the hogs bellowed out a squeal and began to harass a smaller, more demure pig that seemed to be going through some issues at the moment. She's in heat, Lee said, and this big one, that's the male, he's trying to mount her.

On the way out to show us the turkeys, Lee turned to the state of modern farming. What she owns would be considered a medium sized integrated farm. Larger than a hobby farm, but significantly smaller than the corporate farms where most of the food I eat comes from. Integrated means that the animals eat together, live together, and sustain each other--a simple construct that attempts to mimic the success of an ecosystem. When they go out to pasture all of the animals go out together. But, Lee told us, this farm is a dying breed. Especially with summers like the last. During drought weather plants retain high concentrations of nitrates from the soil, which in turn acts like a toxin to the animals that eat it. Watering is expensive, and even with that, her goats were still dry. That means no milk, on a dairy farm.

But it was a rainy day when I was there and goat babies usually come during christmas time. They make all of the cheeses on site, and in fact vertically integrate everything on site, and were planning on having completely replenished stocks of everything in four weeks.

The turkeys were a large cluster of white around two very large red turkeys. They were two types. Lee pointed to the cluster and explained that they bunched like that because they were hungry. The gate opened and a slow flood of turkeys engulfed our feet. They shit with excitement and covered our ankles. Lee was unfazed, and I tried to hold my breath without showing it. The red ones were antique turkeys, an interesting flavor; the white, double breasted turkeys. They are capable getting 50% of their food through foraging, and this also improves the flavor, as well as sustaining the other animals. Tomorrow, Lee told us, the people from the TV show Friday Night Lights were coming to film a scene with these turkeys. Lee asked us if we were from UT, and we told her no. Lots of people from the schools come out here, she said. Then she asked us the time and told us we could look around as long as we wanted, but that she had to leave. It was dump day, one of the least glamorous days on the farm.

Before she left I asked her where the goats grazed and she pointed to some 400 acres beyond the trees. "The dogs work at night," she said, "I don't really understand it. They laze around all day and then work at night, two or three at a time, but goats won't go out in the rain. They don't like mud."

2009-12-12T08:43:00.000-08:00

I think sometimes that with the amount of new material being created and uploaded onto the Internet every day that we'll have to just loose any proof that there was anything else ever before the Internet. But as any intrepid YouTuber' knows, there are these relics from an innocent, personal computer free youth that somehow still make it into circulation.

Does this make me happy? Is this something that I need in my life? Not at all. But it does remind me of what it felt like to be a kid. The best place to interact with pop-culture then was on TV, and the only commentary that was available to me then was by my parents, who pretty much disapproved of anything cool that kids might talk about at school. Pop culture was just confusing to me then, though, this video is still pretty confusing to me now. I didn't even start dropping culture references until high school. Didn't know how.

So if pop like this video was the main current of style and information that people subscribed to (or that was available), I felt fringe subscribing to a weird mix of southern baptist conservatism and a rejection of anything that was produced under the Clinton administration. But we lived in the south, so that shouldn't have made us fringe.

But so anyway that's why 90's nostalgia makes sense.

This Is a Blog Post

2009-11-18T14:18:00.000-08:00

So I'm going to go ahead and skip the compulsory disclaimer detailing my feelings about narcissism and necessity and get right down to the big daydream idea that had me paralyzed in my car and maybe had the woman whose house I was parked in front of calling the cops on account of all the staring and not blinking I was doing.

I was deeply affected by Plato's allegory of the cave. And it's a big deal to get that off my chest, because once I was old enough to really get a handle the idea and what it means after a few thousand years in the context of this 21st century's pop-culture, I was a embarrassed by all of the cheese admitting that meant owning up to. But it's true, in the 10th grade when my World History teacher explained the allegory to us during the fist few weeks of class. Philosophy was almost completely foreign to me at that point, in its void the eminence of the Baptist Church. After i heard the allegory, I literally couldn't stop thinking about it. I was determined to see more than shadows. And by like token, I was determined to point out the shadows that I did see. But more of that came later in its own form of mistrust and the conviction that anything established was some sort of lie. In the early days, though, I was only concerned with finding the truth--what was real, and what really mattered.

Maybe I didn't ever really stop thinking about the cave. I got older, I started doing more things, I read Nietzsche, but always with me was this affinity for the word reality. Then there was also this awkward relationship with reality. A firm belief in shadows. Conviction that most of the things that I could do in a single day--high school, work, driving, going to shows, wearing clothes, most forms of talking--weren't real, but that they meant something, and that the meaning of those things needed to be discovered, understood.

That's why I started writing--to explain things to myself. Writing has come to mean a lot of things to me, but I think that deep under all of those meanings I still want to do it to explain things to myself.

Now enter the professional arena. I want to write for bread, job, occupation, career. But my current definition of writing doesn't jibe with that aspiration. Or at least, I'm not sure how I'm going to convince somebody to pay me a whole bunch of money for explaining things to myself. Work writing is much different, its essence found in the preposition for. For audience; for boss; for subject. For is secure in its purpose. I, on the other hand, am not. I've been talking to a real writer, though, and that has been helpful. I don't lay awake in bed thinking about things before I go to sleep, so I've been waking up before my alarm goes off to do it. Much more successful that way because I can think about what I find up there all day long. Organizations need somebody to explain what they are doing for them. And there are different organizations doing different interesting things. Good thing, because I've never been able to make up my mind about one interesting thing to care most about. Interesting like ||||

But I can understand how write for an organization because I have no trouble in explaining it to myself. I might even be able to understand what it means to do something like that, and why it happens. Much more difficult for me to adapt to this professional transition is the part of my personality that comes from Plato and that wants me to believe that everything is a shadow. Because it's hard to go to a job, or a boss, or a person who might be potentially in a position to give me a whole lot of money for doing something that I like, and convince them to do this nice thing for me when in some part of my consciousness I realize that I am doing this elaborate imitative act, shadow puppetry if you will, since what they are doing, what they are asking of me to do, and the procedure for me getting to work for them is not part of the serious stuff in life, doesn't really matter, and as a result of all that, shouldn't be taken seriously.

I think maybe a lot of people my age are hiding similar relationships with Plato's allegory, because it seems to me that a large part of irony comes from that.

Now, it's not that I'm laughing in the faces of future employers. No, I just feel weird because of some perceived separation between myself and professionalism. Like I've got to fake it because I'm really concerned with this other thing that has more to do with books and rocks than asking someone for something when they might say no. Of course, an accusation of overcomplicating something that could be much, much simpler wouldn't be new to me. I've been reading these books that claim to codify the whole professional gestalt, and preparing strategies of meaningful and confident impressions, because the whole professional thing is actually this game thing that most people do and that has nothing to do with reality. But that's been confusing the hell out of me and making me clumsy, insecure, and awkward.

Now I'll fault in the direction of simplicity and think of professionalism as part of reality and nothing more than asking somebody for something when they might say no.

First Notes from EAST

2009-11-14T14:10:00.001-08:00

"Go East."

That's what I heard from the bus driver. I don't know his name, I should. He works the night owl route down 11th and Oak Springs from Down Town. He had pulled the bus to a stop and was shouting out the doors to a man in a wheel-chair who was trying to get on the bus. The bus was heading west.

For the rest of my ride I had distinct convictions about who exactly should run the country. The bus driver had barred the wheel chair man entry to the bus, and then, in a jovial manner, had lowered the ramp and gingerly strapped the man into a seat space. The whole time he was making jokes and commenting on the affairs that he shared between himself and the regulars of his route. At one point he even broke up a fight between some riders with a few choice terse words. I was humbled, afraid to speak to him. I told him thank you when the bus had reached my destination, waited a few moments eagerly and departed.

I thought of this because I didn't see anything like it at my first afternoon at the East Austin Studio Tour. A celebration of a certain culture in East Austin.

Twin Oaks For Library Time Out

2009-11-09T19:11:00.000-08:00

Nobody knows that there is a Twin Oaks Branch library in Austin. That's why it's special. It's built for the surprise feeling you get when you're wandering around behind the buildings in an old and crumbly shopping center while you're waiting for your girlfriend to get her eyebrows done and you look up and realize that they've hidden a library there.

Except not exactly. When Twin Oaks was built in 1956, it was the first "shopping mall" library in Austin. These are libraries built with the intention of integrating with the routine of the community. The term is more accessible to the community, but the idea is to put a library in the way of people's shopping habits and needs, and hope that they bump into literacy, civic involvement, education and the wonderful humanitarian service that a library provides to its community here in this 21st century. At convenience, or at least with greater frequency.

They're also cheaper to set up, since they usually occupy empty commercial buildings, and quicker to open too, in the range of months, rather than years.

And it works. At least from what I observed. There were open computers, parking, desks, and books.

Walking through a new library doesn't inspire in me quite the feeling of Disney princess-hood that I am imagining right now so much as it does a feeling of suction, or a digging, or a gnawing at me to walk through the entirety of the stacks as quickly as possible as slowly as I can bear to figure out the layout, to spot as many familiar titles as I can, and make my way from front to back, around computers and pamphlets, calendars and the folks who look at home crumpled and weary at 5pm on a week day in front of laptops, up to the librarian's desks and past the art on the walls, and finally back into the stacks where I am seized by impatience, anxiety, and distraction all at once, whereupon I fall on some section of books, clawing them out onto a table I make with my knees. And I read, right there with one leg stretched out behind me, like I am actually going to make up my mind and take one to an actual table to read.

Where I fell today was the children's section. I was victimized by a bookend that promised all of the illustrated gore of ancient Greek warfare. Before I knew it, I was reading about Mr. Roger's special friends, and as I put that book back on the shelf, my hand swept across this tome.

Trembling, I flipped open the book to a page near the middle. I was greeted with this smiling face.

The caption reads, One of the many celebrities whose lives were cut short by drug abuse is John Belushi, who rose to fame as one of the early members of Saturday Night Live. Shameful though it was, I laughed uncontrollably, and justified the awkward feeling that had come over me when I first crouched down in the children's section.

Maybe it's time for me to defend John's legacy and make a case against bad books.

It's About Time

2009-11-09T18:43:00.000-08:00

I missed the Book Festival, but I'm embracing book culture. Here's the steps: In five easy steps:

1) Back your car into a light pole.

2) Wash it once, ever.

3) And plagiarizing.

4) Vandalize.

5) Cut people off for the sake of literature!

Central Library

2009-10-27T15:00:00.000-07:00

Our city is building a new central library. It'll be in the Seaholm District, next to that Gotham looking power plant where they've started turning on red lights to get attention. This area just got the 'district' moniker. It's been slated for revitalization--a Winn initiative to increase the downtown population. So far that initiative has included a handful of condo towers placed conspicuously out of the median income bracket.

Lake|Flato, the architects in charge of building the library want it to represent the character of Austin. They described this as 'essential,' but they had no idea what to reference the character of Austin off of. Library architecture is a big deal. It's one way to judge a city. With the city emphasizing the downtown revitalization, it'll be certain to find itself as a central figure in the community. As much as the architects attempt to represent the character of the city through the library, it's going to end up defining the city in the future.

So far, the architects' idea of the character of Austin comprises some combination of civic participation, diversity, and culture--as represented through music and film. Basically, that's three different definitions of a city. Admittedly, by the architects, a nebulous concept. So they're hosting a series of public input meetings in order to get a better idea. No telling how much these three hour information sessions will actually influence the design of the building, but ostensibly they're a chance for the public to help create the new library. It is, after all, our 90$ million.

I was at the first meeting. Suggestions on the culture of Austin included insights into the city's laid back culture, the presence of a tangible artistic community, the existence of both the old and the young, and the combined hatred and embrace of the homeless who populate the current central library in the afternoons. There were other suggestions that echoed the architects' presumptions about the city, with equal clarity.

The meeting took place in a half empty room with the majority of that population wearing city or library affiliate name tags. I was undoubtedly the youngest person there, and, I think, the only person who really knew how to indulge in free food. Two rows in front of me were empty, in front of them was a not-too-sophisticated Powerpoint presentation.

Undoubtedly it's a chance to publicize the building--to give the public a stake in the enterprise. The project is still 26 months from construction; bidding for contractors has only begun; the design of the library hasn't even been started yet. My camera stayed lonely in my pocket--I had hoped to be able to take snap shots of miniature buildings. In the scope of this project two weeks of three-hour public information sessions seems negligible. The people behind our city have an obvious strategy in mind for this building. Nonetheless, these information sessions are available. So far the character suggestions have been general, and have sounded a lot like uncool assessments of travel magazines. Go. Tell them something about the library. You read don't you? Go to a bar before you go. Austin has been embarrassing as far as I can remember it. Talk about the Bundestag. Talk about a few sections of trout stream. Just go. Don't let them build a library that is boring or annoying without putting some word in about it.

It's Time For the World to Know

2009-10-25T12:16:00.001-07:00

Sometimes the OED uses really bizarre sentences to demonstrate appropriate usage of a word. It's enough to make one really wonder about the folks behind our language.

recoil:

the soothsayers agreed that all the dangers would recoil on the heads of those who were in possession of the entrails.

I've been finding these for a while. Now I'm going to start posting them.

My Festival

2009-10-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

And since I woke up this morning feeling like watching videos online, I'm going to call it an alt-festival, counter to the Austin Film Festival.

Skhizein, by Jérémy Clapin who, from what I can gather in french, is an animator that has worked on commercials and finally made his move to short films for cinema festivals with Skhizein. He has done well. I like the idea of small, impractical changes to reality as we understand it. I can see this movie taking its inspiration from incongruent coordinate points in animation software. I would have liked the movie to explore more of that adjusted reality, rather than concentrating on lamenting it. The overall effect is nice. Reality is funny, even when it is a lonely and dangerous place.

Speaking of festivals, I read this really awesome article in the Chronicle a while ago that considered the meaning of film in the digital age. One of the problems they brought up was the democratization of film via cheap digital equipment. Since the advent, submissions into film festivals have become nearly unmanageable. Which means they have to look at low budget submissions the same way that fictions readers at literary magazines have to look at submissions.

For my alt-festival, the entire Internet is my slush pile.

There are resources out there. Delicious is kind of like an active digital memory. It is a bookmarking tool, but online, so it isn't limited to a single computer. Plus it allows you to tag and note the bookmark, as well as share your bookmarks on a social web. But learning this website and incorporating it like a reflex into my browsing habits isn't quite as alluring to my scarce attention as, say, what the UN thinks about cell phone chargers. Or what happens when you stick a Polaroid in the microwave. Or what other videos there are out there.

I've watched music videos, movie trailers, short animated film, and a remake of star wars. Not quite as ambitious as I had hoped, but I also kept my horizons in check by deciding not to change out of my pajamas. Oh, also, rather, I got distracted and my alt-festival veered into other mediums. It just can't be contained.

I'm going to keep thinking of myself when on the Internet as a festival. I have prizes. Like self justification. When I spend 4 hours on facebook it means that I have been doing the good work of judging in a people watching festival. That's a good idea for a thing in real life. Sometimes I get the Internet and reality confused.

Brazos

2009-10-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

When I worked at a convenience store in college the singer from the band Brazos used to come in and buy things. He was always nice and said hello to me, so I was impressed. I got the chance to see him play at a house party once. His band played fun rock music, but I didn't pay too much attention. The rock thing that he was doing seemed too much like the rock thing that The Doors already did.

Today the radio played a new song by Brazos. I didn't get bored one bit. In fact, I was on the way to tuning out when my day dulled brain noticed something special. This was good music. This was nothing like the boredom that I had experienced listening to a rehashing of dead yesterday. It was calm and exciting, and even though it sounded just like the rock of today, it was a good sound.

Listen to this music.

Summermoon Coffee

2009-10-08T15:45:00.001-07:00

I work right off of South First Street. Every day when I drive down that street I see cool businesses that I want to go into. It is a cool street. I want to get into it. Sophie is what the people in the coffee shops call the area when they feel like using an affectionate term. Actually they only call the street Sophie when I'm in the coffee shops and I'm for some reason referring to myself in the third person plural. And my tone is not so much affectionate as it is reproachful at the thought another monosyllabic nickname for a street I like. But my point is that there are coffee shops on this street and sometimes I visit them.

Summermoon is the first coffee shop that I pass on my way home, but I hadn't ever stopped before because their name is too fanciful for my tastes, and because their sign, though cleverly designed as a coffee cup, is awful and gives the impression of a lemonade stand. Once I got over that and read the sign I saw that they roasted their own beans over wood. Then I stopped. Two reasons that this piqued my interest: if they roast their own coffee, it means that their beans are going to be fresh, the operation is going to be more localized; also, the idea of coffee being wood roasted sounds exotic and special.

Well, the amateurish sign isn't the only place where I squirmed over design. The interior design in the place had the feeling of a living room's atmosphere stretched over a business. It also had the feeling of someone trying to make something work. The sitting area is made up worn matching tables and the occasional garage sale pilfering. Where there isn't sitting room there are shelves packed with merch made in the area. The counter is barely visable beneath all of the local business it is supporting. But what Summermoon looses in appeal for cluttered decour, it makes up for in strong display of independent business ethos. Because if the inside of your store is ugly, then it means you don't have enough money to hire an interior designer. That's about as good as a middle finger raised at the business elite (at least according to Adbusters).

Eventually I got over my foibles and ordered a cup of coffee. My barista turned out to be the son in-law of of the man behind the operation. He was friendly and told me about their beans. Daddy In-Law had decided that he wanted to roast beans like they did a long time ago. A long, long time ago, as I learned. Infact, since the advent of gas and electric cooking people don't really use wood fueled fires to roast their beans, unless they have to. Unless they are in a place remote and inaccessible to the novelties of modern cooking. Like the people growing and harvesting the beans. And cooking like these people gives the coffee a symbolic connection both in place and in time.

The beans are not roasted on South First Street, but out in Oak Hill. The menu has pictures of the wood fired roaster in a bright open space with people in old timey clothes loading coal or beans. The space actually looks beautiful. I realized that one of the sepia colored men in the photographs was actually my barista after he told me that the roaster was not actually very old, though in the photograph its bricks appear weathered and beaten, and was designed and constructed by his father in-law, who I assumed was one of the other old timey men in the photograph.

The beans are roasted weekly, though he did not tell me the day. I got the last of a batch of Nicaraguan in a big cup for two dollars.

On two occasions I have had coffee that was roasted in the store. Once was in Philadelphia, and the other was in San Francisco. On both occasions I could not believe that I was drinking coffee. Coffee starts to go bad a week after it is roasted. Most mornings I drink coffee that comes out of a 7lb bag from Panama that I get deliveries of a few times a year and that takes up most of the room in my freezer. But on these two mornings I actually had to look into my cup and wonder what I was drinking, such were the flavors. What I drank at Summermoon was definitely coffee--not bad coffee, but coffee without any surprises. I have been warned against such expectations, though. Time and place have their stake in taste, and checking out a new coffee shop on my way home from work isn't exactly the same as waking up confused on the second day after the new year in San Francisco and wandering into a coffee shop still giggling about that thing that I still couldn't remember.

But time and place doesn't account for everything. I had hoped for something special out of wood fired coffee. If anything, the difficulties of roasting beans with a wood fire should require some technique. I was hoping to taste the effort of controlling the fire. At the very least, I had expected a more smoky flavor, or the flavors of some local wood, hickory or mesquite. But what I got tasted like a safe cup of coffee. There weren't many outstanding flavors, the blend was smooth, and the depth of taste didn't strain my taste-buds in the search for their end.

I tried again on another day, but the result was more of the same. Good coffee, but a roast that doesn't live up to its name.