i am a pretentious hack.

       i'm not dead!

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

spider-man countdown blogging

count: ninety-six days, eight hours, nineteen minutes
analysis of timeline: that is way too fucking long
status: tense and fidgety; difficulty concentrating on things that do not involve webbing

i don't know how many of you are aware of this--i'm certain nobody was aware of it at the time--but my very first post was about the amazing spider-man and my enduring and immensely geeky love of peter parker and the peter-parkeresque. it is also about kirsten dunst's ability to inspire the exact opposite sentiment, but i've changed my mind somewhat about her appropriateness for this particular screen role; in a way, her single, unappealing dimension makes her a perfect mary jane. mj was always flighty and simplistic. when she spoke she did so in trite slang, and she expressed little to no intelligence or introspection for the first decade of her existence as a regular spider-man character. she toyed with peter relentlessly, even while dating other people, and sometimes by dating other people. some say it was all a desperate act she put on in order to keep peter from realizing she was aware of his superhero identity, but you have to wonder if even her creators took her seriously (witness her go-go-dancer phase), and she was every bit as pouty and helpless and irritating after she confessed her knowledge. one way or the other, i never liked her, and if someone else were playing her i might, so i retract the statement i made all those years ago. retroactive kudos to francine maisler, and infinite kudos, obviously, to sam raimi, for this and everything else he's done to better my world and yours.

so, this movie: it's gonna be big. in fact, i'm wondering if maybe the bite they've taken this time around isn't too big. first, you've got the symbiote/venom plot, which is definitely more than a movie unto itself (and which i absolutely forgive the writers for tweaking the origin of); if we're going to have a chance to really explore the psychological battle peter has to wage with himself once the symbiote starts to exert its influence--and that's, like, all the trailers are about--brock will have to be just plain brock until almost the very end of the film, and that means there won't be time to get into the deep, dark, messy dynamic that emerges between those two characters, which is maybe the most fascinating hero-villain rivalry in marvel history. an open door leading to a future film? i can't allow myself to speculate, as i'm having a hard enough time catching my breath as it is. but the idea that brock is just an egomaniacal journalist for the first three-fourths of the movie would explain why raimi felt compelled to incorporate another villain, and while i might not have chosen the sandman, he's bound to make for some bad-ass graphics. but the addition of harry's evil, windsurfing goblin incarnation on top of the sandman makes me think they're tying up loose ends; wouldn't one or the other have been enough when coupled with the good spidey/bad spidey drama? did they have to stuff everything into this sequel? maybe harry won't come around and they'll keep him as a way to bring in the chameleon in a fourth installment (OH MY GOD THAT WOULD BE SO RAD), but i can't imagine spidey fighting the chameleon and venom; that would be madness. how can they cover as much ground as they seem to be attempting to cover in under three hours? will the radioactive aspect of the sandman's origin be retained? will spidey reform him? will venom incapacitate him? it's too much! it's tooooo muuuuuuch!!!!!

aw, hell. no it's not. it could never be enough.

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

(about something that happened on) monday punch-in-the-face blogging

following stephen colbert's command last night to alter the wikipedia entry for the word "reality" so that it includes the sentence, "reality is now a commodity," wikipedia pulled up the drawbridge on "reality," "commodity," and "real." this is, i suppose, their right as an entity attempting to dispense verifiable knowledge, but it defies their marxist roots. it also makes them enormous hypocrites, one way or the other; ibm might have been able to write biased things about microsoft that could benefit ibm financially, and bloggers might have been able to rewrite those possibly biased entries while on the microsoft clock, but colbert can't offer people five bucks to write a philosophical statement about society and media that hurts no one and has zero impact on the free market? wikipedia has allowed all sorts of other philosophical explorations into the notion of reality; why not this one? do you think alexius meinong was taken at his word right out of the gate? only we can fully appreciate the nature of our own realities, can we not? perhaps your notion of reality only becomes reality once you "sell" it to someone else, or at least once it sells itself to you. and it's inarguably a mass-produced, unspecialized product (gracias, merriam-webster). so this one sentence should be permitted, even if only when prefaced with the phrase, "stephen colbert posits that . . . ." troubled, i was, and after mulling it over, i've decided that i will punch wikipedia in the face for being infofascists about an idea that no one can claim to know the definitive truth of.

i've also decided to submit the following word and definition to merriam-webster's open dictionary. don't bother trying to rip me off; they've got all my data, and the rights are mine. MINE!!!

colbereality, noun

1: a commodity
2: an entirely subjective reality in which the observer/creator manifests all of his or her desires by unwaveringly asserting the existence of such desired manifestations as truth
3: the realm in which far-right conservative pundits and all human beings between the ages of one and five exist

example sentence:
don't pester me with the findings of the iraq study group; your namby-pamby liberal delusions have no power in colbereality!

take that, wikipedia. all lexicographers accept that language is fluid and evolves over time. dare to take that flying leap into the nineteenth century and let usage dictate definition--by letting me and stephen colbert dictate usage.* that's the wiki way. become what you are.




* this statement was made by a person ensconced in colbereality.

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

from the ground up

last sunday, the queen of trees, a documentary profiling the ecosystem that has developed around africa's sycomore fig tree, aired on pbs, and naturally i was glued to the set. i've watched it twice since then, and it only gets more enthralling. forest ecology, particularly in tropical or riverbank forests, involves enough staggeringly complex and precise relationships and interdependencies, sometimes directly between the largest and the smallest organisms in the environment, to make even the most diehard pesticide enthusiast question, however fleetingly, the wisdom of raining organophosphates down on his or her vegetable garden. if you are the sort of person who ponders dynamic relationships, or anything at all beyond the mesmeric circumference of your own navel, once someone points out to you how much of the world can hinge on a millimeters-long insect that you likely would have smooshed without a second thought, it becomes difficult to see any living thing as beginning and ending with itself. i've been up to my neck in food chains since i was in the single digits, and my bug love knows no bounds, so this documentary's painstaking exploration of the life cycle of the fig wasp, the sole pollinator of the sycomore, moved me to tears and applause. (youtube has some clips, and the pbs page explains how the filmmakers, victoria stone and mark deeble, obtained some of the within-fig footage.) the sycomore fig feeds more different types of animals than any other tree fruit in africa—and there wouldn't be a single fig on the whole of the continent if it weren't for this thing right here:


how could that not be the most beautiful thing you've ever heard? of course, depending on what else you've heard, it might also be the most terrifying; human beings don't have an impressive record when it comes to preserving the minute and essential fractions of the earth's microcosms. we're a bit short-sighted, aren't we, and prone to the occasionally unforgivable opinion that anything that does not immediately benefit us is an inconvenience which should not have to be tolerated. i was reminded of another pbs program (seriously, guys, send those folks some love) about brazil nut forests, which i commented on a while ago. it explains how another itsy pollinator, the euglossine bee, is carrying the weight of the peruvian jungle on its wee, irridescent back. this is the part that gives me nightmares, though: no one knew how important the bees were until the bees and the trees were separated. fortunately, there were still plenty of bees on the planet; they just had to be reunited with the appropriate flora, and all was as it should have been. but that isn't always the case, and it's likely that as we forge boldly forth into new and thrilling realms of global development and industrialization, it will be the case less and less frequently.

while scavenging the intertubes for more pictures of and research on fig wasps, like the devoutly dweeby entophile i am, i came across a discussion of what are known as "the living dead"—plants that are alive and technically well, on an individual level, but are no longer able to fruit or reproduce because a species, or more than one species, essential to the pollination process has disappeared. the example given was that of the calvaria tree, whose seeds were thought to have to pass through the gizzard of a bird before they were able germinate. theories put forth in the 1970s speculated that the extremely small number of calvaria trees on the island of mauritius—only thirteen were known to be in existence at the time—was the result of the disappearance of the dodo, which was driven to extinction in the late 1600s by extreme overhunting and the introduction of non-native species. there's been a good deal of debate over the validity of this theory since then, and many people now believe that a more probable explanation for the trees' decline is that new plant and animal species brought to the island by settlers damaged seedlings and competed for growing space. but in the book watching, from the edge of extinction, authors beverly and stephen stearns describe close to thirty plant species on mauritius that are similarly poised for slow extinction due to breakdowns in habitats and mutualistic relationships that are the result of changes made by humans. whether you connect a disappearance to a single species or a collection of disturbances, the underlying lesson is that every environment is surpassingly fragile and relies on precise interactions between all of its inhabitants, and we can not afford to disregard any one piece of the puzzle. i am perpetually flummoxed by the fact that this is such a difficult concept for people to absorb. it seems to only be fully embraced by fringe groups at either pole of the worldview spectrum—creationists on one end, who believe only god could have created such intricate structures, and zealous natural scientists on the other, who seem to be shunned by a fair percentage of the scientific community for embracing a creationist talking point and for not believing that mankind can overcome its own stupidity by employing its own brilliance. science is promoted as a means of fixing everything we have broken, but it's a losing game of catch-up if we don't, at some point, stop breaking things, which is all the delicate-web scientists are trying to convince us to do. and if it's all the creationists are trying to get us to do, then i don't really care what their reasoning is; a common goal is a common goal, and i'll be happy to have them on my side.

sometimes preserving a continent means loving a bug. care for selfish reasons, care for altruistic reasons, care because god says so, whatever it takes to get you motivated—just care. care because you don't like getting your ass kicked, maybe, because if anything happens to this bug,


and i find out you're responsible, i'm coming for you.

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juniper pearl adores foreign film unlikely to dominate u.s. box office; nation rocked


watch pan's labyrinth. then watch it again. then watch it again. when you're done, watch pan's labyrinth. after that, watch it again. once it's over, watch pan's labyrinth. at that point you should be ready to begin sculpting a tiny idol shaped like guillermo del toro, which you will want to build a small but elaborate and tasteful shrine to in your yard or garden—some place where it will be cradled in soil and the sound of growing things. you might also want to fashion a second one, slightly smaller, that you can wear as a charm to remind you that the phrase "a fairy tale for grown-ups" is nonsensical and redundant. fairy tales are written by grown-ups, they're told and retold and embraced and remembered and passed on by grown-ups; they're only heard by children, and they aren't really important to them then. they become important later, when those children become adults and the color starts to bleed out of their lives, and they realize how essential that magic was, what all of those grown-ups were trying to accomplish with those stories. we tell our children fairy tales because we are grown-ups, and our days are so rarely beautiful or capable of inspiring hope or faith or neatly tied off in happy endings. children already believe that the world is full of brave, pure hearts and hidden miracles; we're the ones who can't keep sight of such things, in or outside of ourselves.

but we can read a story and remember, and we can watch this movie and be grateful that someone has been kind enough to remind us. and if you're afraid you'll forget that the next story starts with you, that you have to believe in and live that beauty before it can exist elsewhere, you can watch it again. and i think you should watch it again.

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Friday, January 26, 2007

it's the way w. plays the game


"the decider" would have been an excellent name for a batman villain, don't you think? he could have tag-teamed with the riddler and the puzzler, spinning our gadget-laden protagonist into tizzy of flabbergasted reeling. batman would be challenged to come up with an answer to a dauntingly complex query, and then, when he offered his answer, no matter how solidly reasoned or correct it was, the decider would cackle, "that's a presumption that's simply not accurate," and the torture would begin anew.

bush has traded in his "decider" crown and scepter for the more grown-up military uniform of the "decision maker," but in this case the clothes don't make--or reform--the man, and his antics are every bit as bullheaded and loathesome under the new design. "i've picked the plan that i think is most likely to succeed," he says, and "some are condemning a plan before it's even had a chance to work." but this is such an obscenely and infuriatingly oblivious line at this point that robin and i are left too speechless and fuming to even toss up the obligatory "holy tunnel vision, batman!" that the audience is so rightly expecting. those of us faithful to the series know that the "plan" has had myriad chances to work, but it has not done so and will not do so, and trotting it out again with a fanfare in the key of e instead of c makes one wonder if the scripts for this particular drama are being written by the ghost of chuck jones. maybe somewhere some hopelessly sensitive child is sincerely rooting for wile e. coyote's success, but the majority of onlookers have always only snickered softly, shaken their heads, and muttered, "dumbass."

of course, no one dies when the bombs being detonated in the desert are made by acme, and when your favorite fictional dc evildoer reappears after an absence with a bag full of the same old tricks you're more than happy to welcome him, confident that he'll be summarily thwarted in the end. here in the real world, though, i'm afraid that the forces of good and sensible thought may have met their match in the decision maker. who will save us? anyone? anyone? i need a hero, and cowboys need not apply.


(signal courtesy of ElvenSarah)

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friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear joseph rotblat,

thank you for trying.

juniper

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

tuesday feel-the-love blogging


so, i thought about hitting somebody on monday. i had my target all picked out and the links copied and coded and a post half finished, but then i just, i don't know . . . my heart wasn't in it. i think it was because it snowed here yesterday for the first time this winter, and watching the flakes strike and stick to the glass before they melted i realized that they actually do look exactly the way we all imagine snowflakes look--perfectly symmetrical, sharply delineated, head-of-a-pin stars, all those tiny spikes and lacy spaces miracles of architecture more precise in their geometric harmony than anything i could put together with all the measuring equipment in the world at my disposal, every single one flawless, and it was so moving, that something so hard to see could be so much more beautiful and deserving of study than any of the macroscopic objects surrounding it . . . it was like hearing a who. and i didn't want to fight with anyone. so i didn't. that thing that made me angry will still make me angry next week, and probably it was in my best interests to save my strength for the state of the union address, anyway.

of course, you might not have snow where you are. but you should have something to not fight for, too--so here's wendy molyneux telling you everything she knows about football, which is everything i know about football, which we both agree is all anyone really needs to know about football. and maybe for a second you'll want to fight with me over that--but then you'll notice how sparkly the gemstones in my earrings are and how they refract tiny beams of light all around the room, and before you know it you'll be completely hypnotized by the eensy-weensy rainbows flickering all about my head, and the fight'll go right out of you. honest. and if it doesn't, you can always yell at me later.

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i'm hit!

spine has lovingly thunked me with the meme stick, and because he's been so faithful and asks so little of me, i am taking up the baton and running like hell for the ribbon. so outta my way, suckas--this train ain't got no brakes.

1. my: you’ve heard the saying, “i’d give my right arm for . . .”--so, what would you give your right arm for?

a: a guarantee of perpetual planetary homeostasis. this would primarily require that people both realize and care when they had overstepped their bounds in a disruptively and/or destructively self-interested manner every single time they did so, so i guess i'd be sacrificing the limb for a prolonged global heightening of human empathy and other-directed awareness. a safe choice, perhaps, but to be fair, i really do use my right arm quite a lot.

2. me: what’s one word that describes how you want people to see you?

a: well-intentioned.

3. meme: if you could be any blogger, which blogger would you be, and why?

a: um, i'm actually pretty happy being me, thanks. i've managed to endear myself to a handful of people i respect a tremendous amount, and that's all the recognition i need. besides, the degree of anonymity i'm enjoying allows me to talk about anything or nothing without getting dragged through the mud by mean-spirited web bullies, and i don't have to restrict myself to a handful of predictable areas of expertise, or even attempt expertise. not that i don't try to be as accurate as possible every time, but i like that i can get hung up on whatever i want for a day or a decade, because i'm so scattered and pathologically eclectic; yep, i am extremely pleased with and very much at home in the pressure-free forum i've erected. unless . . . does christian bale's wife have a blog? no, just kidding; still me. it'd be sort of hellish having to put up with psycho blogchicks running up to my husband and trying to lick his face all the time. if the question were "which blogger would you be for between one and three hours this coming saturday," my answer might be different. but that, i assume, is a meme of a different color--a naughty color.

i am, i think, obligated to pass the torch at this point. so i'm just going to close my eyes and point: hans, mikey b., and dina--RUN!!!!!

this is not to suggest that i don't think each and every one of you would handle the task gracefully and with great insight; it's just that there are rules to be followed, only so many people to a team, that sort of thing. you understand. don't you? i know you do.

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Friday, January 19, 2007

today my heart has been uncharacteristically warmed by technology's intrusion into nature by:

an ap article via the canadian press:

The pilot of a TV news helicopter used wind from the aircraft's rotor to push a stranded deer to safety after it lost its footing on a frozen lake and could not get up.

A small crowd had gathered to watch the deer struggling, its hooves repeatedly slipping, near the shore of Lake Thunderbird [in oklahoma] around 4 p.m. Wednesday.

With the helicopter's camera rolling, KWTV pilot Mason Dunn used the wind from the rotor to push the deer, initially sending it into a break in the ice where the animal managed to hold on to the ice with its front legs.

Dunn then lowered the helicopter and the wind sent the deer sliding on its belly across the ice until it reached shore. It then scampered into a nearby wooded area.


thank you!

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friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear manolo blahnik,

why are your shoes so boring and/or ugly? i think you've played a mean trick on the wealthy and fashion-obsessed women of the world. see, i've figured out that "manolo blahnik" is actually an anagram for "loon makin' blah," which is obviously exactly what you are. how you managed to become globally revered for it i'll never know, but then i probably wouldn't have run away from home to live in andy warhol's factory, either. perhaps i am simply missing some sort of artistic irony in your cobbling. is there a message? shoes are generally designed to provide one or both of two things: comfort and attractive design. your shoes provide neither, and so from my point of view they are failures. yet for years now they have been the platonic ideal against which all other pumps are measured; why should this be? all i can think of is that they are not shoes but art, which is allowed to be unbearably ugly if it embodies meaning or inspires a visceral reaction, even a negative one, and i have been misunderstanding your aims all of this time. even if that is the case, though, i think i'm likely still correct in saying women are crazy to spend the kind of money you're charging on things that look like that only to put them on their feet and limp smilingly down a dirty street in them. but then, only an artist can speak to the purpose of his own art.

so speak. explain yourself. tell me what a thousand-plus-dollar ankle boot covered in black lace and adorned with a ring of the sort of tassels normally reserved for heavy drapery really means. i will hear you out to the end, i promise. but if you refuse to justify your actions, i will be forced to conclude that you have been off in a villa someplace laughing yourself to tears at the hopeless sheepliness of females everywhere--and probably, even though what you are doing is a little mean, i will laugh right alongside you.

i am not yet certain enough of your position to assign any sort of emotion to this closing,

juniper

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Wednesday, January 17, 2007

stories about my family

toward the end of world war II, my father's father, the tall and somewhat scrawny son of french-canadian immigrants, lied about his age so he could enlist in the military. at seventeen, he was assigned to the coast guard, and between 1944 and 1945 he toured southeast asia extensively, spending the majority of his active duty in the philippines. once the war ended, his ship was stationed in a japanese port as part of the occupation. my grandfather was not pleased about this. it was one thing to be a thousand or so miles from japan, keeping an eye on the enemy, but the idea of having to share a shore with them, to walk and live among them after all those months and years of being singularly focused on destroying them, knowing they had been every bit as hellbent on destroying him, made him extremely ill at ease. not that there was anything he could do about it, and he's always been the sort to make the best of whatever situation he finds himself in--so off to japan he went.

lo and behold, it wasn't even awful. the nearby town accepted the crew's presence (outwardly, at least), the girls were very pretty, and sometimes the local theater showed american movies. while he understood it was in his best interests to remain vigilant, he started spending more and more of his leisure time away from the boat--where his shipmates didn't do much of anything besides gripe about having to babysit the japs and drink themselves sick--and in the town. one night while he was walking along the main street a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, ran up to him and followed him along the road, asking for money. my grandfather isn't sure now whether he would have given the kid any money if he'd had it, and maybe if there'd been some change in his pocket this story would end differently, but there wasn't any change; all there was was three-quarters of a hershey bar. chocolate he could part with, especially less-than-scrumptious war-ration chocolate, and he handed it over. the boy's eyes grew huge and he started talking excitedly, but my grandfather couldn't make heads or tails of it; he understood that the boy was happy, though, so he smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder before he continued on his way.

about a week later, my grandfather was standing in line outside the movie theater when he felt someone tug on his sleeve. he looked down and saw that same boy, and he reached into his pockets, turned them inside out, and said, "no candy." but the boy grabbed his arm again and started pulling for all he was worth, trying to get my grandfather to follow him. gramps thought about it for a minute--it wouldn't necessarily have been impossible for some adults he had told to have talked the boy into luring my grandfather into an ambush; after all, an enemy who has surrendered doesn't magically turn into an ally--but in the end he let the boy drag him down the road to his home.

from the entrance they descended a small staircase into a tiny room, where six pairs of eyes turned silently toward them. the boy raced over to his family and started in on an animated speech involving much wide gesturing and some jumping up and down, the gist of which was not at all apparent to my grandfather. none of the listeners offered up any clues in terms of facial expression, and my grandfather started wondering what he had gotten himself into. finally, the oldest man in the group, presumably the boy's grandfather, rose and filled a cup. he held it out to my grandfather, motioning for him to drink. my grandfather, who still had no idea what was taking place, motioned back, "you first." after the old man drained the cup, my grandfather accepted a drink of his own, and then, finally, everyone in the room smiled.

the boy's family managed to get across that night, through their very minimal english, my grandfather's very minimal japanese, and extensive charades, that the boy had brought the chocolate home to share it with them and had told them all about his friend the soldier. they thanked him many times and offered him what little food they had, and my grandfather was more moved by their sincerity and kindness than he could remember ever having been. the next day he got his hands on a japanese-english dictionary and an entire hershey bar and went back to the boy's house to thank the family properly for welcoming him into their home.

over the next several months, my grandfather came to think of that family as his own. whenever he could he would gather up leftovers from the ship's kitchen and bring them along on his visits. he and the boy spent hours poring over the dictionary, teaching each other new words for things they'd been talking about all their lives. the men talked about the war, what it had done to their countries, how much they all wished everything that had been done could be undone. the day before he was scheduled to depart, my grandfather went to the house with all the food and supplies he could carry and told his family, with a speech he had pieced together on his own and rehearsed for days, that he would not see them again. everybody cried, but silently and reservedly, and my grandfather left them and returned to his ship.

the next morning when he went up on deck, he saw his family on the shore, waving. behind them was another family, and another, and another, dozens of people my grandfather had never seen before, all smiling at him and waving.

"who are these people?" my grandfather called out, sweeping his arm toward the crowd.

"they are our friends, and they are your friends," the boy's father answered, "because you are our friend."

all those months, the family had been taking the food my grandfather had brought them and sharing it with almost everyone they knew. a simple act that had cost him nothing had touched and bettered the lives of an entire neighborhood and convinced everyone involved that even among enemies, even in war, you can find someone who will see you only as a person and offer you what he can.

the crew didn't know what to make of the scene, didn't understand what was being said or why my grandfather was weeping. one shipmate asked who the fan club was, and my grandfather told him, "they are my friends." this statement and his lack of interest in drinking himself unconscious at the end of every day left the other sailors with little to say to my grandfather, but he was all right without them, and anyway, they were on their way home. after he married and started a family, he showed his children important words in the japanese-english dictionary. when my sister and i were young, he showed them to us.

"this means 'give' . . . this one says 'love' . . . that one is 'friend' . . . let me teach you how to say 'hope' . . ."

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i made it! i made it!


in my inbox this morning:

Dear blog author:

We recently came across your site, weloveyouplatonically.blogspot.com, while searching for bloggers who blog about the hit tv show American Idol, now starting its sixth season.

A small group of us have started a new site called American Idol Bloggers. Our intent is to bring American Idol bloggers closer together, and make a positive contribution to the Internet community.

Would you be interested in joining American Idol Bloggers? Please take a few minutes to have a look at what we are trying to do, and if you are interested, there is a sign up page to get the ball rolling. We would greatly appreciate your support in this endeavour.

If you do not feel that your blog would be a good fit for American Idol Bloggers, but are an American Iool fan, come visit us and one of our member bloggers. You can also check our FAQ Section to learn more about American Idol Bloggers.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you on American Idol Bloggers.

Craig Cantin
American Idol Bloggers
info@american-idol-bloggers.com

now, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first post on my blog to ever include the phrase "american idol." if i have been sleeptyping about this program, which would be amazing on several levels, especially since i have never seen the show, i extend my most humble apologies to each and every one of you.

still, though . . . it's something to hear the judges say you rocked it--even when "it" is imaginary. and i may very well be an American Iool fan; when that program airs i will be sure to tune in. if i'm lucky, it'll be the sister show to it's always sunny in philadelphia and will fill in all the empty spaces left by that show's absence. i mean, its season is only, what, like, two months long, isn't it? i needs the crack!

crack . . . crack.



update, 1/17/07, 1:30 PM: as if the program hadn't already done its fair share and then some of making my life complete, sunny's adorable little web site has now alerted me to the existence of the philadelphia insectarium, a multistory interactive bug museum. this is so cool--the right kind of beetlemania and a person-sized spider web . . . it's like my dream house. way to go, philadelphia. you really moved me.

Monday, January 15, 2007

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

if someone in my office says something that makes me recoil as if i'd just opened the door to a sauna filled with rancid meat and everybody laughs at it but me, can i forget that i ever heard the sound?

co-worker 1: we don't get martin luther king day off? seriously? do you think they'll see through it if i say i need to take it off out of principle? [chucklechuckle]

co-worker 2: come to work in blackface; that'll fix 'em. [hearty chortles all around]

no. no, i can not. all i can do is retreat to my happy place, where dean and gene ween launch into a 12-inch-casio-and-ukelele rendition of "push th' little daisies" every time i enter a room and these guys serenade me in my secret garden every afternoon at cake time. there i can recoup my strength in preparation for the next time someone says something that makes me want to crawl under my desk and keen while i dig up tiny bits of industrial carpeting with my gnawed, nubby fingernails. because there is always, always, a next time.

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Friday, January 12, 2007

pictures in invisible ink


it's secret pal day here in the states—at least, i think it is. it might have been yesterday, and it might be this coming sunday; the little-known holidays are a bit like floating islands. but they're no less worth celebrating for that, and of course there's no one i'd rather secretly celebrate with than my #1 secret boyfriend. awwww, aren't we cute? now forget you ever saw us. i can neither confirm nor deny having anything to do with that image.

what i can confirm is that this week's new yorker contains malcolm's latest article, which he made a point of speaking right up about the second the issue hit the stands. obviously, after our unfortunate misunderstanding regarding his last piece, he wasn't taking any chances about provoking my bitter, secret wrath. he needn't have worried, though; it's early yet, but all signs point to the universe being more solidly on our side in this new year.

when i stepped through my front door the wednesday evening before last, i did so onto my january 8 issue of the new yorker, which had fallen open to the table of contents after being violently shoved through the (more than wide enough) mail slot. i looked down at its ragged edges and crunched corners and thought, first, "if that poem was from the mailman, i'm in bigger trouble than i thought, because he's taken to destroying the things i love," and second, "oooohhh, i see; the mailman is jealous—'cause my boyfriend sent me a leeeeeetter!" you might be interested to know that january is national letter-writing month, making this revelation all cosmic and adorable. but you might just as easily be not interested at all, and so i'll get on with the story. *ahem*

malcolm's name is very pretty in italics, with all its graceful "l"s and round, welcoming vowels. it's so pretty that i sat right down on the hallway floor to gaze at it, and once i did that i had my third thought:

"enron? aw, damn."

fact: i am not business minded. i don't follow stock reports or bone up on mergers or care what steve jobs calls his company, i'm not shocked or whipped into a scandal-ogling frenzy when corporations do things that hurt their shareholders or employees, and i don't expect anyone i invest my money with to care about what happens to me after i've handed over that money. i have a checking account and a savings account, i pay my bills, i avoid stores that utilize business practices i can't get behind, and that is everything that i have or would like to have to do with global markets. so i was pretty sure that there was nothing more i'd be excited to learn about enron, and besides, malcolm had already written an article about enron, and while i appreciate his enthusiasm and his willingness to doggedly worry a subject until the knot of it gives and falls into a simpler, more linear construct . . . actually, i appreciate that rather a lot . . . and that first enron article was only kind of about enron, and it wasn't half bad . . . i mean, i had to at least give it a chance, didn't i? because i trust the guy.

so i leaned back against the front door in my zipped-up coat and started reading, and i was on the third page before i realized i'd never taken my bag off from over my shoulder, that's how right i was to keep the faith.

i won't lie to you, kids, i really don't care about the enron case in and of itself, and nothing malcolm or anybody else says is likely to induce any radical upheaval in the extent to which my eyes glaze over at business speak. but at some point along the way, out of sheer necessity, this piece changes from an article about enron into something that is only shaped like an article about enron, so that it can more fully become the thing it started as. see, knots come undone a loop at a time, but you can't untie one without constantly reminding yourself of the string's continuity; the process of disentangling a knot has to be as much about the whole as the loops. you have to picture the whole, follow that length of material from one end of the snarl through all its ups and downs and ins and outs, imagine the twists and snags at the center, the part that's hidden from sight—and then you have to move that picture to the back of your mind and focus the rest of your attention on one small, isolated section at a time. i can do this with actual, physical knots; malcolm can do it with stories, which, when they're worth telling, are built just like knots. and while nothing, apparently, is gnarlier than american corporate law, and even though business transactions can be vast and fluid and abstract, at the middle of this particular knot there's nothing but us—us, not just a handful of enron employees and some ruined investors. what went wrong with enron goes wrong in countless other realms all the time, and this story works because it, nearly all alone in the googolplex write-ups on the company's downfall, actually points that out.

so, i don't know what to say about jeffrey skilling. i have absolutely no idea, after reading the piece twice and following the public discourse on the case and studying the law review that inspired and informed the article (the key points of said law review being so surprisingly enthralling, by the way, that i'm not even going to comment on its more wince-worthy spelling and grammatical errors—starting now), whether "fraud" is an entirely accurate description of the wrongs that were committed, and i'm not at all convinced that skilling should have been held as singularly responsible for those wrongs as he's been, regardless of how one chooses to categorize them. if i didn't know what good company i was in, i'd probably be deeply troubled by that. instead, i'm going to accept that there are things going on in the world that are currently beyond my grasp and focus on the fractions of the article that, for me, lit up parts of various other big pictures. like this one:

mysteries require that we revisit our list of culprits and be willing to spread the blame a little more broadly. because if you can't find the truth in a mystery—even a mystery shrouded in propaganda—it's not just the fault of the propagandist. it's your fault as well.

ooooooooooh, he's mad. he's also right. naturally, people have already tried to run him up a pole for saying a thing like that, misconstruing (or misrepresenting; i'd swear on a chicago 15th that at least a few of them are definitely misrepresenting) his stance as a defense of enron's practices, which were unquestionably sketchy (if, perhaps, not exactly shady; but again, i'm not certain) and deserving of condemnation. in his own explanation of his intentions malcolm refers to the article as a "semi-defense," but i doubt i'd have phrased it even that strongly. what the work boils down to is a reframing of enron's breakdown, and it should force people to think about why the word "enron" inspires such an instantaneous flood of negativity, and why we feel justified in giving that feeling free reign. i can't imagine the majority of americans not saying skilling deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison, but i'm every bit as skeptical that a majority of that majority could enumerate skilling's sins. it's imperative, though, that we force ourselves to understand why we've come to the conclusions we've come to in matters like this—matters where futures, where lives, are at stake—because if we fail at that step every subsequent action is rendered utterly indefensible.

i'm going to walk away from enron for a bit, though, now, and venture into the deep, dark, chilling woods that are home to all of the other ideas the phrase "mystery shrouded in propaganda" brings to mind.

the president's approval rating in the united states right now is, according to the most recent zogby poll, about 30 percent. (i think that's dizzyingly high, but i'm just one girl.) in april of 2003, right after the start of the war in iraq and the "fall" of baghdad, his approval rating was closer to 70 percent. in 2002, when he was busy trying to make his case for invading iraq, approval of the president dropped consistently from its october, 2001, high of nearly 90 percent to a low of just above 50 percent in february of 2003, and then skyrocketed when he declared the end of major combat. but he's been the same president the entire time, and the war in iraq has been the same war the entire time; most reasonable people recognized that the combat hadn't ended in may of 2003 and was unlikely to wind to a close over a day or two just because the president had said so. the problem, i guess, was that too many people at that point weren't being reasonable; but does it make sense to assume they've become more reasonable since then? the nation's shift in attitude regarding the war is being touted as a collective awakening, hundreds of millions of people suddenly coming to their senses about a president's, a cabinet's, a party's persistent self-interest and disingenuousness. but i don't see it that way.

when bush presented his new strategy for iraq on wednesday, the plan that had won him approval ratings twice as high, not to mention reelection, a few years earlier was torched for being neither new nor, in truth, a strategy. it might seem like the american people have woken up, since they're no longer buying the rhetoric and propaganda they'd seemed so moved by in the past. but it's got nothing to do with learned lessons. a few years ago, what the american people wanted was revenge. now, they want their families back. they haven't learned anything except that they don't enjoy putting their money where their mouths are, and what's worse is they can't see it, because they aren't putting any effort into understanding—truly, completely understanding—why they've changed their minds, or why they made the decision they made in the beginning.

in the previously cited law review, jonathan macey says this about group decision-making dynamics:

[O]nce boards of directors have been in place for a while, they are likely to embrace management’s perspective. More specifically, after a decision is made and defended by a board, it will affect future decisions such that those decisions will comport with earlier actions. For example, studies of the decision-making process that contributed to the escalation of the Vietnam War showed that leaders paid more attention to new information that was compatible with the earlier decisions. They tended to ignore information that contradicted those earlier assumptions. As one researcher observed, “there was a tendency, when actions were out of line with ideas for decisionmakers to align their actions.” Once ideas and beliefs become ingrained in the mind of a board of directors, the possibility of altering those beliefs decreases substantially. As Tom Gilovich has argued, “beliefs are like possessions, and when someone challenges our beliefs, it is as if someone criticized our possessions.”

in fact, someone had criticized our possessions, and us ourselves, and had ended 2,973 lives to bring the insult home. everything we knew and trusted had been brought to its knees; our hearts were broken. in order for oversight to be effective, macey says, it must be objective, and there was no hope of the average american citizen approaching objectivity at that time. when management's perspective was that we should invade afghanistan and take out the people who had attacked us, no one would have dreamed of dissenting. but when the management selected a new enemy and proceeded to paint it as every bit as much of a threat as the original enemy, if not worse, when they tried to take 300 million people's fear and confusion and misery into their hands and squeeze it, pressing their thumbs into the tears and punctures until everyone was wailing and blind, it stopped being an issue of choosing whether or not to dissent; under those circumstances, most people, if they don't fight to retain it, lose the ability to think objectively, or at all.

so objective refutations of flimsy assertions not only got buried in obfuscations and distractions and reiterations of catch phrases but were actively ridiculed by party members and newly rabid patriots who couldn't imagine any circumstances under which questioning the direction their leader's finger was pointing in didn't amount to treason. when that finger pointed to war, they didn't seek out information that would prove that such a move was neither inevitable nor necessary, even though such information was abundant, and they didn't embrace those ideas when other people pointed them out again and again and again.

the united states chose bush in 2004, after he ran on a platform of intimidation, threadbare slogans, and a guarantee of business as usual. and now that they've gotten what they asked for, what they've earned by failing to recognize or even look for the truth about a situation they had a massive investment in and should have been scrounging for every shred and scrap of objective intelligence on, what they've built for themselves by failing to just plain think,

they've turned en masse to point their own fingers at the people they placed the order with and say, "how dare you. how dare you be dishonest. how dare you do this to me."

when people thought enron was winning, they didn't want to know anything else. someone was responsible for providing them with information, and the information they were getting from that someone was to their liking; they let that be the end of the story. but the information being furnished wasn't the whole story, and while its purveyors must be held accountable for their actions, it is not their fault that no one involved wanted to admit—or even know—that they were meeting with far less success than they were being led to believe.

as dense as the bush administration's fog of propaganda was, there were elements of information that shed enough light to cut through it. some people affixed them to their pith helmets and marched up and down the street ringing bells, while 200 million people hurled fruits and vegetables and stones and slurs and flags and ribbons at them. those rioting mobs weren't different people at the time of last november's election; they just voted differently. the information they're getting isn't pleasant anymore, and they'd like to hear from someone else. but how much sense does that make? how does that signify an awakening? you could throw every last republican in the country into the grand canyon with a pocket full of trail mix and a pound of jerky and tell them that it's their turn to fight and sacrifice, but of course your problem wouldn't be solved. because the untruth that was sold to you was one you, at the time, said you were willing to pay for, and when that transaction leads to disaster, it's your fault as well. america, like a willful child, has gone from a parent who won't give it a cookie to one it thinks probably will. certain circumstances might change, but the practice that brought them about won't, and when we decide we don't like this cookie in however many years and would actually like a popsicle, we'll switch loyalties again. no objectively reasonable thought in sight, not from sea to shining sea.

i couldn't care less about enron. what i care about is people making solid decisions based on all of the verifiable information at their disposal and then accepting responsibility for the fallout from those decisions. what i care about is blame being assigned as it should be, by people who are in a position to know where that blame honestly lies.

jeffrey skilling is taking a hard, more or less solitary fall for a collective wrong that involved all kinds of irresponsible investments and convoluted hand-offs and insufficient models and impossibly unreadable documents—but he's been convicted of fraud. i don't know enough about corporate law to say whether or not, based on what i've read, that's a crime he committed, but i, like malcolm, would like his conviction and associated sentence to be something no one had any questions about. i'd like as many convictions as possible to go that way. whatever your interest in business, whatever country you hang your hat in, you owe it to, at the absolute least, yourself to make certain your legal system is operating in a just and clear-eyed manner.

sometimes ours fails. but it's our fault as well, and i am pointing my very angry finger at an extremely broad population of people who i'm afraid will never, ever care about a word i'm saying.

*sigh* i won't fix the universe tonight, anyway. so i'll close my little rant with this: all of you out there fighting the good fight, working like hell to think with the best parts of your heads, trying to hold yourselves and each other up while you watch the world around you fail you and fail you and fail you, doing all you can to make sense of it even when you have no reason to hope that it will ever make sense: you've got an extremely loyal pal.

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friday celebrity-letter blogging

dear theo ratliff,

a co-worker of mine just came back from the supermarket across the street and told us he was behind you in line at the register. he also told us that you played basketball for forty-four minutes this year and made $11.7 million. i just wanted to tell you how great i think it is that with all that money, you're still willing to get out and mingle with average citizens while you buy your own groceries at the neighborhood mart, especially with the back injury and all. i go to that store sometimes, they stock some decent produce. did you buy any apples? the gala apples they have right now are bitchin'. no lie. i'd eat one with every meal if i could, but i can't always get all that many of them, because i can't afford to spend more than $70 a week on food. oh well; nobody's fault but my own that i didn't become a professional athlete. and nobody's fault but your own that you didn't pick soccer instead of basketball, right? because right now beckham's making you look like a pauper. no way that dude's popping out for a loaf of bread at lunch time; he's not like us.

anyway. i hope you enjoy your purchase and the 525,000 or so minutes a year you don't spend working. feel better, man.

*swoosh*,

juniper

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Wednesday, January 10, 2007

i feel bad about other people's necks

victory, noun: achievement of mastery or success in a struggle or endeavor against odds or difficulties

here is the monologue that i imagine took place in bush's head after the nineteen trillionth person asked him what he actually meant when he said "victory in iraq is still a possibility" and, when bush appeared confused by the question, one of his aides showed him how to look words up in the dictionary, yielding the above definition:

"so, 'victory in iraq' would be . . . well, let's see. since the difficulty we are struggling to master is primarily that the united states has never put enough troops on the ground in iraq to quell an insurgence which has spread its little wings and taken flight as a fledgling civil war and which at this point requires far more political restructuring than policing while simultaneously training what, from all reports, is an almost entirely green iraqi military, 'victory in iraq' must mean more troops. right?

"right! round up the men and load the humvees, boys! victory is ours!"

oh, um, that middle part? out of character for the president, right? that's the monologue that took place when i temporarily inhabited bush's body and grabbed his brain up in my hands and shook it like a tambourine, which, of course, jogged all the bats and goop loose and totally freaked me out, forcing me to flee and return control of his mental processes to him just in time for him to come to that dastardly, simple-as-a-two-piece-jigsaw conclusion.

the problem, i think, is that "more troops" is as far as the president--and possibly a vast number of other officials--cares to quantify matters, and he doesn't seem to grasp that there are different levels of "more," each with its own degree of effectiveness. our version of "more," to date, has had a degree of effectiveness of somewhere between 0 and -174.

between february and april of 2004, the coalition presence in iraq increased by close to 23,000 troops. it held about steady until november of that year, and between november 2004 and february 2005 it increased by about 18,000 troops, to 180,000. but in march it was down to 172,000, by april it was down to 164,000, and it dropped and dropped by dribs and drabs . . . so between september and november of 2005, we sent another 23,000, bringing the total up to 183,000. by january of 2006, that number was down to about 157,000. by the end of 2006, the troop strength was around 160,000, give or take.

at no point since the invasion have coalition ("coalition"? it sounds goofy now, doesn't it? my coach told me there was no "i" in "team," and even in "coalition" there are two of them) forces totaled more than 185,000 troops--and at no point since the invasion have the coalition forces been on the receiving end of anything that might be even loosely referred to as "victory." so one could conclude that the "more"s we've been contributing--20,000 here, 20,000 there, but all bringing us back to about where we started--are the wrong sort of "more."

and, of course, many people have come to that conclusion. "bad president!" they cry. "you can bang our heads into this wall until the end of time, but i swear to you, they will never break open and shower you with candy!"

"unpatriotic naysayers!" the president shouts back, swinging his stick in aimless arcs and reaffixing the elastic of his party hat over the sides of his blindfold. "staying the course always leads to candy! it's candy land! iraq is just a comma-shaped molasses swamp! now shut up and give me my Now and Laters!"

bush's Now and Laters are extra sticky and taste like ass, and the wrappers read a little like this:

Defying public opinion polls and the newly empowered Democratic leadership, Bush on Wednesday moved to send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq while saying it was a mistake not to have had more forces there previously.

"The question is whether our new strategy will bring us closer to success. I believe that it will," Bush said in excerpts released by the White House before the speech. Stepping back now "would force a collapse of the Iraqi government" and could mean U.S. troops staying even longer, he said.

bleccchhhhhh.

yes, it was a mistake to not have had more forces there previously. here's the thing: YOU ARE NOT GOING TO HAVE MORE FORCES THERE NOW. YOU ARE GOING TO HAVE EXACTLY AS MANY FORCES AS YOU HAVE HAD THE ENTIRE TIME. I AM TALKING VERY LOUDLY, MR. BUSH, JUST IN CASE THE PROBLEM FOR THE PAST FOUR YEARS HAS BEEN THAT A BIT OF FLUFF HAS BLOWN INTO YOUR LEFT EAR AND GOTTEN STUCK.

this "surge" isn't a solution--or a surge; it's maintenance, and that maintenance is of a failing status quo. 21,500 more troops means leaving our military and the citizens of iraq where they've been, and that means thousands more dead. it isn't enough to effect the change that needs to take place. it isn't enough to fill the positions our soldiers have been scrabbling to fill. it isn't enough to do anything but make bush look worse in the eyes of americans and the world and deepen the pool of blood that's accumulated in the middle eastern desert. it's more of the same, and in my opinion a lot of the people who are up in arms about that have little or no right to be: more of the same is exactly what they demanded when they put bush back in office in 2004. i, on the other hand, ought to have the right to secede by now, i've been so staunchly against him since day 1. i want to hope that there's still a chance that a more convincing show of humility and regret on bush's part could win over a few global allies and earn a troop commitment from other countries that could put us, finally, on solid footing. i want to hope that--but i don't. the pompous stubbornness of a few old men has likely doomed us and our soldiers to a sacrifice most people never cared or intended to make.

i don't want one more death, and i don't want this war to go on for one more day. i never wanted it. but we destroyed a country, we did, and i am equally disinclined to watch us stick our hands in our pockets, shrug, and back away from the ruins like a clumsy kid in a mikasa outlet. bush wants to devote another billion dollars to reconstruction efforts, but the buildings are not all that got broken, and even if you pay for the vase, when you get home and open its box it will still be shattered. when you close the box back up, put it in the back of the hall closet, and walk away from it, it will still be shattered. to make it a vase again, you have to fix it. you can't reassemble it, glue up a third of the fractures, and say, "well, it isn't my fault if it doesn't want to try" when the water you pour into it blows out the sides and soaks the carpet. you have to fix it.

21,500 new troops is not how. it hasn't been how for the past four years, and yet we have done it again and again. not that i know how; i'm starting to wonder if, at this point in the debacle, there is a how. but to do nothing, to cut our losses (but they wouldn't really all be our losses, would they? or even mostly ours) and withdraw, as some people are suggesting? to holler "suck it up and you'll be fine!" over our shoulders as we flee the scene? i don't want to try to live with that.

was there a solution, for a while? and we ignored it? and now we have all this blood on our hands, and because we can't bear to look at them we squeeze our eyes shut and sit on them.

stop it. hold them up and own them, and apologize. and beg--beg--the rest of the world to help you put this thing you've broken into some kind of order. forget about victory, forget it; just do what's right.

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Monday, January 08, 2007

monday punch-in-the-face blogging

i was prepared to march back into the new yorker's copyediting department this week and start rapping the staff upon their knuckles with their red pens, which they seem to have lost interest in striving to be worthy of. some errors i can compel myself to make peace with—inappropriate spacing, dropped hyphens at word breaks at the ends of lines (oh yes, it's happened), things of that ilk, which would perhaps only be present in the final proof—but other things i can't overlook. take, for instance, this sentence on page 74 of the july 31 issue (i did mention, didn't i, that i have fallen a little bit behind?):

But a determined old woman decided to give him the water he was begging or and cleaned his face with her skirt.

DO YOU SEE??????? for shame! for shame! there's no excuse for that one. and then there's this, from hertzberg's "talk of the town" piece in the august 7 & 14 issue:

It defines "Democrat n" as "A Democratic Party member" and "Democratic adj" as "Of, relating to, or characteristic of the Democratic Party," but gives no definition for—indeed, makes no mention of—"Democrat Party n" or "Democrat adj".

was the united states under british rule for a brief period this past summer? because the end of that sentence certainly was.* and while i officially approve of the magazine's apparent decision to stop italicizing punctuation marks immediately following italicized text, on page 68 of the same issue there is an italicized semicolon following "the atlantic monthly"—and then, farther down on the same page, a non-italicized comma following the same title. what am i to think, people, of such chaos? is it a surreptitious reference to the anarchy overseas? was the hot summer sun creating a blinding glare on the office's computer screens and printed matter for two or three straight weeks? is there a method to this madness that is simply not cognoscible by my feeble, daylight-starved brain? believe me, i'd be thrilled to learn that the only problem is that i don't get it, and there are plenty of things that leave me purely confused. walk backwards through time with me so that we may revisit the july 31 issue and explore this sentence on page 83:

Its undulating glass-and-steel swoops and swells as if it were not a solid mass but a billowing length of fabric.

what is happening with those hyphens? a bit melodramatic, aren't they? are they really necessary? really? really? i just don't know anymore.

so i gnashed my teeth and rent my garments, but in the end those dozens of knuckles were spared; i am still kicking an issue of the new yorker back and forth across my apartment, but, i suppose thankfully, my rage is directed at an idea and not a technicality.

listen, i dig john updike. i do. i bought a paperback copy of marry me for a quarter at a library sale when i was in high school, and i've been collecting his titles like baseball cards ever since. i dig him so much that when the early stories came out a few years ago, i bought a hardcover copy for my cousin instead of for myself, because my cousin loves great stories but had never read anything by updike, and that made me a whole lot sadder than not owning that book ever could have. i was working at david r. godine, inc., the parent publisher of the black sparrow imprint, when the golden west: hollywood stories—a work updike wrote the introduction for—was in the final stages of its production, and one day the editor handed me a packet addressed to updike and asked me to drop it in the mailbox on my way out. i scribbled the address down on a scrap of paper and carried it around in my pocket for weeks, thinking maybe i would sneak out to his house in the dead of night and leave some sort of present on his lawn to thank him for all he'd done for me and the rest of the world. i'm a fan, right down to the tips of my tippy little toes.

today, though, i have no choice but to let him have it. i don't think i can bring myself to hit him actually, you know, in the face, but i am going to hit him somewhere about the face, or at least once very soundly on the back of the head. in a minute. i'm winding up.

in his july 31 review of sara gruen's water for elephants, a book about a depression-era traveling circus (which is more than enough to hook me; i *heart* carnies), updike says some pleasant things about the author and her firm grasp on 1930s-sideshow vernacular, and that's all well and good. but then he says . . . i mean, maybe i shouldn't be bothered, probably i shouldn't be at all surprised, but after all of the terrible things that have happened in the recent history of our world, after all of the unspeakable things that have been happening without pause since the world became a world, to say a thing like this:

Recalling, near the end of his life, his work as a veterinarian for the circus and his love for a colleague's wife, [Jacob Jankowski, the novel's narrator and protagonist] comes off as so relentlessly decent—an unwavering defender of animals, women, dwarves, cripples, and assorted ethnic groups—that he ceases to be interesting as a character.

maybe, given all the updike characters i've crawled into bed with over the years, it is exactly what i should have expected—but i still hate it. nobody likes a cloyingly sweet goody two-shoes, and a character with one earnestly altruistic dimension might be unbelievable, but there's a problem when we start viewing "relentlessly decent" individuals as unreadably dull. an unwavering defender of the weak and disenfranchised isn't tedious, he's, you know, jesus—or bahá’u’lláh or guru nanak dev, choose your path, they're more or less all rooted in those ideals. rooted; they get twisted, sometimes, up toward the branches, where people who are not relentlessly decent are able to get their hands on them. but those are lasting characters, wouldn't you say? captivating enough to have kept people turning the pages for the past couple of centuries, or millenia. i know i wouldn't die of ennui if a few more people started emulating those characters, those thoroughly decent characters. you know who wasn't an unwavering defender of cripples and assorted ethnic groups? hitler. and he was a hell of a character, sure, but not one i want to read any more stories about. ever. if my choices are "morally conflicted/challenged" and "Not Interesting To Writers," well, i guess it was for the best that i never sat up all night tying a perfect bow on the perfectly wrapped gift i never left in a certain wordsmith's front yard. *sniff*

*smack*

there, i've done it. now you sit in that corner, john updike, and think about what you've done.

oh, and, um, when you're finished thinking, um, do you think maybe you could sign my copy of pigeon feathers? that part toward the end, where david's mother is trying to make him see that the earth isn't any less a gift from god if god is an invention of humans, when she's talking about forcing yourself to pay attention to the evidence . . . it just kills me. she was a good woman, wasn't she, that elsie kern? so worried about the fertilizer hurting the earthworms . . . i could read about her forever.


* i do love the pun, i truly do, and you can't take that away from me.


update, 1/12/07, 1:11 PM: i am not alone in my love/hate/love/love/hate affair with updike; jared young has just recently offered up a beautiful work of sardonically loathesome adulation. oh, johnny boy; we're huggin' ya . . . but we're hittin' ya!

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Sunday, January 07, 2007

care about this.






i guess i don't really worry all that much about fair use and the legal implications of pointing out negative attributes of more powerful media entities, mostly because i've never had to. i'm toiling in profound obscurity here at pretentious hack inc., and the vast stretches of meaningless patter connecting the posts where i'm attempting to actually say something probably make me seem harmless enough to anyone who comes across my "work." more importantly, i've never cost anyone an advertising contract—and negative publicity is just publicity until it starts to cut into the revenue.

spocko, by calling advertisers funding the san francisco–based radio station ksfo and asking them if they actually stand behind the vile things being said on the air, has offended the accountants at abc/disney (the station's owners), and they, in turn, are attempting to smother spocko with a lawsuit-shaped pillow. this is a beastly abuse of power; all of the media he sampled was well within fair-use bounds, and advertisers have a right (some might go so far as to say an obligation) to know what they're supporting. if the highly offensive statements spocko's brought to light are hurting the business, the business ought to take it out on the makers of the statements, not the whistle blower. but what a crazy dreamer i am, daring to imagine a corporation choosing to hold itself accountable for its own wrongdoings.

i wondered for a second if maybe i was being a little hypocritical, after all my passionate avowals of my desire to punch glenn beck and others in the face. and that could very well be the case, but here's the conclusion i came to: i said that i would like to punch glenn beck in the face, not that i or anyone else actually ought to punch glenn beck in the face, and i didn't giggle about it at the end. besides, even if i were serious and followed through, beck would recover, seeing as i have the upper-body strength of a small child with a wasting disease. i have never, not once, suggested anyone mutilate his body or take his life, and i wouldn't. big difference. and i don't even have a sponsor; i choose not to recommend giving people i don't like the chair of my own free will.

must be why abc keeps throwing out my résumé.

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Friday, January 05, 2007

friday celebrity-letter blogging


dear wildlife of the arctic and antarctic regions of the globe,

are you guys o.k.? because it's 60°F in boston right now, and i'm pretty sure it ought to be about 6, and i know it's only, like, -13 in barrow, alaska, but the average temperature there last month was about 8° higher than normal, and it doesn't sound like a lot, 8°, but i'm pretty sure it is; it's the difference between needing a sweater over your long-sleeved shirt and not needing one, right? and when i went outside today in my winter coat, which wasn't even zipped, i was like, damn, i might break a sweat just walking down these front steps. and you guys are wearing the winter coats zipped right up to your throats no matter what, and i just, i don't know . . . i got worried. plus, that little stuffed polar bear i've been sleeping with since i was three, i, um, i think he was crying last night. something woke me up, anyway; i guess it could have been the perspiration beading up between my skin and the inside of my heavy fleece pajamas, which seemed like a really good and sensible idea when i was getting ready for bed. so write back when you get a chance and let me know you're all right, that the fishing's fine, whatever. or that it's not; you can tell me anything, you know that.

all my unseasonably sweaty love,

joon

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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

i am angry at slate

no doubt the site's staff are weeping into their macchiatos about it, too, but i won't hide it for their sake. i'm too disappointed to care about sparing anyone's feelings.

the idea of a filmed execution was always, in my mind, one of those morbid jokes thrown out at the tail end of a conversation about a society's ethical and intellectual decline; you know, "if they keep it up with these reality shows, there won't be anything left to put on the air but people eating babies and live executions." the image of a mob of townsfolk gathering around the gallows was a symbol of a darker age, one which we, in our triumphant role as citizens of The Fucking Greatest Fucking Nation Fucking Ever, could laugh about disparagingly from our pre-fab homes with their bleach-coated counters and ultracivilized sofa sets. but i haven't been watching the reality shows, and so i didn't realize how far down the chute things had slid. the cell phone footage of saddam hussein's execution is all over the internet, and while i would expect it to crop up on independent pages and wouldn't have been at all surprised to find it front and center on, say, the fox news site (where, in actuality, it occupies no such position), i was deeply creeped out to see links pointing to pages with names like FunnyVideoSpot.com and comic2.com, and i was terribly unhappy to find the video smack-dab in the center of slate, with its eye-catching red and yellow "graphic content" banner giving the finger to the idea of journalistic decorum. i never looked to jacob weisberg and his apple dumpling gang for even-tempered objectivism, but i did believe i could count on them to not be morally bankrupt sensationalists. sometimes i had to squint to get it to pop up out of its verdana background like a typographic autostereogram, but there was, as a rule, some worthwhile information in almost every piece of work they put up.

almost.

william saletan's "human nature" column, slate's version of a scientific catch-all, may or may not live up to its title. all but one of the ten headlines in the current list involve drugs, fat, or the human reproductive system. i like to think that my own personal nature encompasses a somewhat broader variety of interests and activities, but who knows? i could be kidding myself.

today's column sports the heading, "mop vs. mastectomy: does housework prevent breast cancer?" you, being the astute between-the-lines reader that you are, may already have guessed at the alternate title: "hey, angry feminist! over here! you will not believe how pissed off you're about to get!" the blurb is about a research article recently published in cancer epidemiology biomarkers & prevention which reports a correlation between the amount of housework women perform and breast-cancer risk. there are a number of important factors that should be mentioned in relation to the data reported, such as that the data on housework only included past-year activity and that there was no record of the frequency, duration, and specific intensities of reported occupational activities. i'd also be very curious to know how many children each of the subjects had had, whether any of them underwent fertility treatment in order to become pregnant, whether or not they had breastfed and for what duration . . . things that were, according to its authors, outside the scope of this particular study, which aimed only to explore the relationship between activity levels and cancer, but which are every bit as relevant as other variates that were included, such as age at first pregnancy and education. besides, if they only collected activity data from the past year, they don't have much of a case for that specific relationship, anyhow. women do not get breast cancer because eleven months ago they started vacuuming the house every other sunday instead of twice a week.

or do they? e-zine enthusiasts may never know. saletan, in his skimpy overview of the work, doesn't seem to have any interest in the study's merit or lack thereof. of all the things he could have brought up in this column he is paid to maintain, he chose to close with this zinger:

Male spin: See, women belong in the home. Female spin: Now, for that study of housework and prostate cancer…

oy. maybe we get breast cancer from dismissive un-jokes. i hope it isn't positively correlated with eye strain, because i am squinting and squinting, but i just can't see the sailboat . . .


update, 1/4/07, 1:28 PM: could one tiny blogger have so much power? i wouldn't bet the lint in my pocket on it, but slate has taken the execution footage down and replaced it with frames from comic books about the human toll of the iraq war, and the two newest "human nature" references are to south carolina's proposed intention to start collecting dna from anyone and everyone arrested in the state and nasa's, um, nasa stuff. no pot! no gonads! still a semi-weak one-two close, but with a far more embraceable tone. nothing more than a happy synchronicity, i'm sure, but the sky is very blue and i'm willing to try to forgive and forget. don't think this means you can slouch, though, guys; weisberg, saletan--i've got my eye on you. my squinty, piercing eye.

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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

belated monday punch-in-the-face blogging

this week i'm swinging less of a fist and more of a sock full of oranges at the new yorker's copyediting staff for first robbing me of my beloved en dash and then reinserting it sporadically and haphazardly in correct but entirely unnecessary ways, catching me off guard and making me lose my literary balance mid-sentence. this seems like a cruel thing to do to a reader so loyal as myself, and i can only assume that there is an unpublicized feud being carried out between the editorial director and some grammatically sensitive foe, as this is a knife that one wields with the sole intention of cutting deeply. but i'm pleading with you, henry finder, please stop jabbing that knife into my eye; i've done nothing to you, and yet i am the unhappy (and i assume unintended) victim. why would you keep the en for relaying sports scores but refuse to use it in place of a hyphen in post–world war II? WHY ARE YOU TORTURING ME?????

*thwump thwump thwump* goes the sock full of oranges upon your inscrutable, villainous head, and your pleas for mercy fall upon my deaf ears, just as your senseless, laissez-faire punctuation falls upon your own uncaring eyes.

*thwump*

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smoke 'em in the cold, mean streets if ya got 'em!


there's been a bit of hubbub in the news today about the smoking ban taking effect in d.c.-area bars, as there always is when a city enacts such a policy, and, as usual, i can't see what all the fuss is about. even when i smoked, i couldn't see what all the fuss was about. every time the issue comes up, bar owners stomp their feet and whine about how no one will want to come to their house to play anymore, ignoring the majority of the available statistics for cities that have already implemented bans, which suggest that more people go to bars and restaurants regularly now that these environments are guaranteed to be smoke free. the staff are healthier, the customers are happier, people who need to blacken their lungs with expensive, unspeakable evils can do so outside, and after about two weeks everyone has completely adjusted to the new rules. bar owners are concerned that they'll lose business to surrounding towns that don't ban smoking in public establishments, but the idea that anyone who was driving into d.c. from virginia just to have a drink would suddenly stop doing so strikes me as beyond silly; there are people who like small townie bars and people who like flashy city bars. if you're going out at all, you're doing it for the atmosphere. if all you were interested in was having a beer and a ciggie with your buddies, you'd have been doing it at someone's home, where the beers are always a dollar and you can take your shoes off. all this hue and cry, it's just, i mean, suck it up. you will still and always be more than welcome to kill yourself at a safe distance from me and all the rest of us who have chosen to do something different with our money and time.

the one truly sinister note in this melodramatic opera is that sounded by the state of virginia, a golden child in the tobacco-growing world, whose government has forbidden individual cities and counties from implementing smoking bans of any sort. the political subcommittee opposing the bans paints it as a personal-freedoms issue, declaring it unamerican to tell a property owner what he or she can and can't do with said property, but that, as i think we all know, is bollocks. we tell restaurant owners when they can and can't serve liquor, we implement regular (yes? fingers crossed?) checks from the board of health to tell them what they can and can't do in their kitchens, which they own, all in the name of the public good. but when we recommend that they tell customer a to stop exhaling toxic fumes all over customer b's hair and/or hefeweizen, we're fascists? come on. it's murderous navel-gazing, virginia house of delegates, and you know it. stand up and own your heinous wrong like a man--or group of men, as the case may be.

that being said, three cheers for washington, d.c., for not letting the country's legislative heart be the last place to show concern for the health of its citizens. the city has stepped up just in time to land in more or less the exact middle of the moral-responsibility road, leaving all our houses right-side up and as we've always known them to be. huzzah and happy new year, second verse, same as the first.

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