Thursday, March 31, 2005

on the road

Greetings from Greymouth, NZ. I've finally found time for a quick post. The trip has been great - the best was Milford Sound. The place gets 7 to 9 METERS of rain a year, and we managed to get a sunny day there with seals, dolphins, et al. The mountains here are pretty stunning, although my Swiss mother-in-law is a little nonplussed about them. Today we head to Kaikoura, and swim with seals tomorrow. A couple of favourite moments from the trip:

Favourite cultural moment: I heard a radio station imploring listeners to tune in "after sex." Bold, I thought, until I remembered that Kiwis pronounce the number six as "sex."

Favourite brain warp moment: I have a tendency to hear people wrong. Well, actually, to hear them correctly and then for my information processing system to turn it into something weird. So when wife-of-socialsomatic asked if we could find an info centre I heard "a nympho centre." Still, what would be wrong with a few nympho centres for the weary traveller?

My, this entry is rather ribald, isn't it?

Is there such a thing as too many rhetorical questions?

Anyway, I should run. I'm keen to jump into the stereotypes comments, but don't have time at the moment (plus they're not loading properly on this computer). Later.

Friday, March 25, 2005

on the road

Billy got a new home today. Of course we're happy that Billy no longer has to hunt rats to survive, but it seems very empty outside the house today. Be careful what you ask for, I suppose. Shine on, you crazy Billy.

I'll be leaving tomorrow for a little over a week in New Zealand. I really appreciate those of you who've been stopping by, and especially those who leave comments. I'll try to post from NZ, but my regular dark introspection won't restart in earnest until I get back. Please do check back around next Tuesday.

Take care.

a visible identity

Thursday, March 24, 2005

secret memory

I felt a qualitative shift.
My God, I'd never felt that good.
I wish I could be there now,
I wish I could be like that forever.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

fear, loathing, and forgiveness

Disclaimer: I’m really nervous about this post. I believe in the message I intend to convey because it’s meant as one of understanding, but I worry about how easily it could be misused or misinterpreted.

I think discourse over issues like racism is in a very unhelpful place at the moment. The charge of racism is used as a weapon, which puts people on the defensive about being racist. Of course, in some ways this is a healthy development relative to times when being racist was tolerated, acceptable, or even morally righteous. But it’s my reading of the psychology literature that basically everyone is racist, including myself. That’s not to say that everyone hates people of different races, but instead that we’ve all been raised in a culture that teaches us to expect negative characteristics of people based on their race.

Our society teaches us (in very subtle ways) the stereotypes – it’s been what psychologists call “overlearned.” So, even people who genuinely do not want to have negative attitudes about, let’s say, natives, are likely to have the stereotype of natives primed when they encounter a native person, or even think about the topic. That is, in order to deal with information efficiently, we basically get ready all the concepts we associate with a stimulus so we can respond quickly and effortlessly. In a society that teaches us that natives are lazy, that thought is ready to go when we encounter a native person. It then takes some effort to override that stereotype through a process of correction. That is, there’s a certain degree of conscious effort where you recognize you’re using stereotypic information (e.g., ruminating on how lazy the person is), acknowledging where that comes from, and suppressing the use of that information. So it’s not that people who act in egalitarian ways never have racist thoughts, they’re just more likely to dismiss them and not let them affect their attitudes or behaviour.

In this sense, then, we’re all racist because we’ve all been taught the stereotypes so well they come to mind automatically. Being non-racist involves some effort a) correcting those stereotypes when they come to mind and b) training yourself over time so that correction becomes automatic in the same way as the stereotype is automatic.

Of course, I need to be careful here. I’m not at all saying that it’s okay to be racist because people aren’t trying to be racist. Instead, it means that we all need to be careful, because even despite good intentions, it’s actually kind of easy for us to be racist. It’s upping the ante by acknowledging that the way our brain works, even “good” people can do and say horrible and hurtful things.

And this is where I get worried about the discourse. When someone, like a politician, gets called racist, the only response you ever see is angry denial. But this is predicated on the notion that racists are rare, so a racist is a monstrous aberration. Because there’s this illusion that only “bad” people are racist (accompanied by the myth that racism has been stopped), considering yourself as racist can lead to defensiveness and a lack of honest introspection.

And that’s the crux of the matter. To me, the only way to lessen the impact of the racist lessons we’ve learned is to be honest when we notice that stereotypes come to mind, recognize them for what they are, and correct ourselves. We might feel shame by doing so, but the shame is a signal that can be used rather than defended against.

Anyway, I’m still pretty nervous about all this, but in many ways it’s the process I went through on my journey from repressed conservative to less repressed liberal. Ultimately, I wanted to square the fact that I just wanted to be nice to individual people with the fact that I seemed to have such negative attitudes toward people at the group level. And when I figured out that all these groups I didn’t like were just a bunch of individuals, scared and wanting to be loved just like me, it started to fall into place. But, I feel like I had to acknowledge my own faults and defensiveness around those faults before I could open up to correcting my mistakes.

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

critics display inability to control own bowels by suggesting this post may not be perfect

Regular readers will remember me complaining about difficulties with inspiration recently. Well, looking for material today, I took a grave short cut and headed to the Fox News website. I suspect one reason Fox has been so successful is that it can only be mocked so many times before the criticism becomes so banal (I genuinely hate this word, I think it's an elitist piece of mindfuck, but it's too perfect not to use here) that it's not worth mocking any more. Once it's completely unfashionable to hold Fox to account, it can unhinge its last tether to reality, and the war on Oceania begins!

That's why there are 8th rate hacks like myself, to keep the pressure on.

This will be nothing mind-boggling, especially, if you've seen Outfoxed. But here's the headline of a story on Fox ripped straight from Pravda:

Some say Bush's speeches show president is comfortable, self-assured and on a mission.

Compare to:

Critics say Republicans are using Terri Schiavo case to energize voters.

First, the obvious - if you're pro-Republican you're "some" but if you're anti-Republican you're a "critic". Goddam critics. I never did like those fuckers. How I dearly wish everything that "some" say was a story on Fox News. If so, there would have been a story after I saw the Bush story that was headlined, "Some say Fox News are a bunch of repressed, phony, sexist cowards."

This is fun, let's keep going.

Second, it's a great example of how information is controlled in a relatively subtle fashion. Remember, the important thing isn't your opinion on Terry Schiavo, it's that you talk and think about Terry Schiavo. No matter where you fall on the issue, how strongly you demand political action, processing that information will use up valuable resources that might otherwise be used to question issues like the distribution of wealth. So Fox looks (relatively) balanced by addressing "both sides." Ultimately, it's both sides of whether or not you liked the tie the guy was wearing when he was beating you with that lead pipe.

I'll wrap up with one last point, one that applies more broadly than just Fox. Why, when writing about Bush's speeches, do journalists forget that THEY ARE WRITTEN FOR HIM? They play into this bogus cult of personality - the Great Man theory of leadership. There was a great example of this on the Daily Show a while ago, where some two-bit congressperson was pushing a bill for bigger flags in the classroom. He said something along the lines of, "We want children to do the most with the freedom our country gives them." It is not leaders who give freedom, it is people who demand it. Keeping to the story that we owe any national success to noble leaders disempowers the individual, making them feel like they cannot contribute meaningfully to social change.

Fucking hell, how I wish I could have George Bush's advantages. Then, I could get reviews from academic journals that say things like, "Although his data was fake, his paper seemed comfortable, self-assured, and on a mission. That's good enough for me."

Monday, March 21, 2005

making a list

I have little time to post tonight as my day has been a Category 5 shitstorm. In the meantime, here are my current favourite words and phrases:

6. Category 5 shitstorm

5. harsh

4. dodgy

3. full-on

2. rock up

1. up in my wishing tree

Sunday, March 20, 2005

it makes me feel like a big man

I've been resisting doing things like commenting on news and politics. This is, at least in part, because it really bothers me how powerful people get to control what we talk about. Every Monday there is a news story about what movie made the most money. To whose advantage is it that we learn about the outcome of an oligarchical business war, then sow that profitable seed into mundane conversation with those seeking distraction from fear and confusion? In a world where suffering was truly abhorred, we would instead spend news time asking why there is such distortion between the lives of the poor and the rich. Of course, that kind of news wouldn't put us in a "buying mood," attract much-needed ad revenue, or reinforce our natural inferiority to our leaders.

But I've been reading a bit about the case where congress is enacting a specific law to keep a woman in Florida on a feeding tube. I want to have faith in politics, but I can come to no other conclusion than that national politics has become a game where symbols are manipulated with little regard to the relation between those symbols and real people's suffering and happiness. "Support the troops" means send them to die without question. So what can "we must protect life" possibly mean in this context? There is much huffing and puffing and sticking out of chests. I saw a body building competition on t.v. the other day, and the part where the final two contestants flaunt a series of poses is not at all a bad analogy for modern national politics.

It is just beyond hypocrisy that this pack of self-interested white folk, drunk with money and privilege, answer their own bleatings about small government by selecting individual lives to control. All this for the noble cause of having stern looks during important press conferences, their sanctimony a piece of flair on the standard uniform of expensive suits and fake dyed hair. This uncompromised Compassion Action has mobilized The President - you could not draw him away from vacation for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians, but for a playing piece in an important battleground state he'll climb off the mechanical bull to be flown and chauffeured to do the right thing.

Well, if you want to stare right into the dark night that is the American legislative process’s soul, I have a suggestion. Visit the Texas Department of Corrections death row website. If you want to know what The State thinks about the Love of Life, read the last statements of those whose brief, fleeting awareness of the universe has been judged wrong and punishable by the injection of poison. I'm not shitting, do not go to this website lightly, but there is potential there for fearful revelation of a kind that is very rare.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

i feel good about myself when i wear my Che Guevara t-shirt

As far as I know, I've only had one repeated dream in my life. I had it a few times when I was a young child, and have never had it since. It is extremely haunting, I know the description will not do it justice. I was mired in pitch darkness. As is common in dreams, I knew exactly what was happening in the situation even though it had not been explained to me. I was playing a game of tag, and was not it. There was only one other player. I could not see this player, but I could sense it. It was not human, but some sort of dark mass, maybe human, maybe animal, mostly just inky void. I did not want to be caught, but was running as fast as I could directly toward it. It, in turn, was running as fast as it could directly at me. There was fear that I still feel today; ultimate, horrible fear.

I've been reading recently about the development of the self. Many theorists argue that the self is an internalization of the values of others who we value. We internalize these values because we feel that living up to them will offer the protection from harm and anxiety that comes with being acceptable to those more powerful than ourselves. The process starts with our parents, but when we realize that even they cannot save us from death, we turn to larger society - government, religion, culture.

As I grew older, as I learned to love God and fear being different, the dream went away.

Friday, March 18, 2005

not as self-indulgent as a winona ryder movie, but getting there

I've had a hell of a time the last few days coming up with things to post. I keep starting posts - on the self, emotional defensiveness, motivated reasoning - but I never feel strongly enough about them to keep going. So now I'm falling into this trap of writing about writing that I still believe is incredibly self-indulgent, and boring as hell for anyone unlucky enough to have come here hoping for an interesting distraction.

So I write this now because it is the only thing that it feel emotionally honest to write about.

As I said a couple of days ago, I've been doing a much better job of taking care of myself recently - dealing with a number of issues directly that I've been putting off for a long time. I think this might have something to do with the inspiration gap. Much of the usual angst and anger isn't there. It feels good, I think. I'm very open to the idea that I'm being defensive, and missing some piece of the picture, using exercise to avoid thinking about something like moving closer to home. You can never be sure of these things until the passage of time. I remember when I worked as a door-to-door salesperson - even that I told myself I wanted to do, for a little while.

Door-to-door sales. What a brutal, brutal life that was. I really didn't like bothering people at home. You're supposed to not take no for an answer, but no seemed like a perfectly rational answer given that I was selling natural gas savings plans where the person gave me fifty bucks in exchange for a shady looking contract. We lived in hotels, worked from about 11-7, then drank and drank and drank. I've never hated a job more, but I also don't think I've ever been closer to people in a workplace. Until I quit. I told them to look me up when they were back in my home town, but it was like when you say, "see you later," to a cabbie in a city you'll never visit again.

So, anyways, I'm at a crossroads with this blog. I remember hearing John Cleese say he got much less angry as he got older, and that it was a good thing. But that also marked the transition from Fawlty Towers to Mastercard commercials. I dunno.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

everyone's a winner

It took me a while to get used to the fact that adults play video games. When I was a kid, adults never played video games, and I guess I assumed that my own habit would wear off eventually. It still hasn't. When I was young, the arcade was a dark place, tinged with danger, but highly addictive. I have a memory of paying someone to take my paper route for a night so I could take a "vacation" at the arcade. To this day, I don't understand why that upset my parents such that they banned me for the short time their weak will could withstand my bleating. Quickly, I was back at Jimmy's honing my skills at Hyper Olympics and Exciting Hour Wrestling.

I also have memories of fights and cigarette smoke - very exotic for a sheltered kid with little in the way of approach motivation.

I still play video games on an all too frequent basis. They worry me, at a sociological level, because the appeal is the ease with which one can transcend. My own addiction is to NBA basketball, and I have won a number of championships. My favourite part is the made up names of the players the computer puts in each season's rookie draft. One of my teams featured Idi Camby at shooting guard and Furious Patterson at center.

Championships are rare in real life, but much easier in video games. It feeds into this culture where everyone is a superstar, or at least wears t-shirts that say "Superstar" on them. But if we're satisfied with just the name, how much motivation is left for actual accomplishment? There was a time when entertainment meant coming together with others and interacting, but it's better for the economy if people live in separate units and purchase their entertainment "on demand". I'm in too good a mood today to work up the righteous anger this subject deserves, so I'll return to this some day when I'm feeling pissy.

p.s. many kudos to tim, the godfather of this blog, on post 100

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

raving matilda

Although I liked last night’s post, and it really expressed what I was feeling at the time, it’s also important to me to acknowledge the extent to which many of the problems I focus on are first-world problems. My angst would be meaningless in a subsistence economy. But it’s reality as I see and experience it. It’s funny because many of the posts are pretty dour (not that I feel I need to apologize for that, as I’ve discussed), but I’m not sure they paint an accurate portrait of me. It’s just that this blog has become a fantastic opportunity to rant, so I usually feel way better after a post than before. That sometimes makes the posts seem kind of silly after I’ve written them. It all makes me think of a line somebody had on his blog in the “about me” section; all he had written was, “What can you say about yourself that isn’t a lie?”

Anyway, for my friends who read this regularly, it’s worth saying that I’m actually feeling better than I have in ages, even if I use this outlet for my anxieties and frustrations. It’s been a goal to write every day for a long time, one I didn’t really think I’d achieve until I retired. I’ve also been exercising every day, and saving more guilty pleasures exclusively for the weekend. It’s likely this won’t be sustained, it usually isn’t, but having more energy has been fun and useful.

One thing I’ve been trying lately, with help from a friend, is trance music (sorry DNA, it was just too soon in Carolina, the time is now). For some reason, the more downtempo stuff I used to like (e.g., acid jazz) has just lost my interest. I wonder if I was downloading music again, and not just picking random stuff out of the used CD rack, if I’d rekindle my interest in downtempo. But I’ve really had a thing for dancey (trademark on this new word) music lately.

For me, a really good trance song makes me want to obey it. I don’t even really know what that means, I just know when I’m into a trance song I have an urge that my brain describes to me as obedience. It’s one of the things that make me sad that trance (and electronica in general) doesn’t have more socially conscious lyrics, because if others are like me, they’re ready to follow trance wherever it leads. But I suppose dance music for generations has been about escape, so chanting “Free Mumia” to a Tiesto song just wouldn’t cut mustard.

Thinking about this tonight reminded me of a fantasy I’ve had for a long time. When I hear a good trance song, one that makes me want to obey, I like to imagine what it would be like if that was the national anthem. In fact, I think this would make a fantastic trance video. If you have some trance music, put on a really good track and imagine the following video accompanying it. If you don’t have trance, put on whatever you have that’s kind of hardcore and upbeat and imagine it. Seriously, I think it will be fun.

It begins with the end of some kind of Olympic event – let’s say the 100 m hurdles. No music is playing yet. They assemble at the podium, the medals are hung around the necks, and the full stadium is asked to rise for the national anthem. The anthem, of course, is the song that you should now press play on. At first, everybody plays it totally straight. They start standing respectfully for the anthem. After a while, though, there’s a shot of the bronze medal winner’s foot starting to tap in time with the music. Cut to the silver medal winner, who is slowly nodding in time. Of course, the rest is a continued gradual progression – the gold medal winner starts swaying, then breaks into a full-on groove, the people around the podium holding flowers start breakdancing, the camera cuts to the crowd who are now just in full-on rave mode. It continues like this until the song ends, when the camera cuts back to the podium and everyone’s just standing there respectfully again. They walk off, with the medal winners waving to the crowd, and it’s never quite clear if the dance scene was real or imagined.

oh, billy


Posted by Hello

In a deliberate and blatant attempt to pander, I thought people might like to see a picture of Billy .

On the topic of pandering, this is one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

I know, Billy, it's hard sometimes

We have a feral cat that lives in our neighbourhood who has more or less adopted us. Originally, I figured if we ignored it, it would go away. So I did things like avoiding eye contact. After it had well and truly adopted us, I read in a book about cats that avoiding eye contact actually encourages them, because direct stares are a signal of threat. This is, apparently, why people who are allergic often attract cats – we use our human social signal to ward them off, but they interpret it as a cat social signal of welcoming.

We have named the cat Billy.

I feel bad for Billy. Her family used to live two doors down, but seem to have left and left her behind. We called the humane society, but they said they’d put her down if she wasn’t adopted in three days. She’s surviving, although skinny, so we decided to leave things alone. Billy had a nice meal the other day when she caught a rat that was eating grapes off the neighbour’s vine. She has scratches on her nose, presumably from the cat fight we heard a couple of nights ago. Billy is perpetually sweet, and desperate for pets (or “pats” as they call them here). She is pathetic in both her devotion and overwhelmingly positive response to the slightest physical contact.

When I saw Billy this morning, I heard myself saying, “I know, Billy, it’s hard sometimes.” It just is.

I wish we could talk about this kind of thing more openly in day-to-day life; how life is often hard, how we all have dangerous secrets, how we all have unfulfilled dreams we’re afraid to pursue. In my lecture this morning I was talking about social comparison, and how when people feel threatened, they look for easy targets they can compare themselves to in order to feel better. That is, we pick on people as a sort of grown-up security blanket. This fully explains the Jerry Springer show to my satisfaction – no matter what a loser we feel like, we can always find someone who’s even more of a loser on television to make us feel big again. Of course, for some of us, we watch George Bush instead of Jerry Springer.

But think about the consequences of a whole society quelling its fears by mocking and humiliating each other. Especially now that it’s so easy to do this, not to the faces of real people, but to abstractions of others who we’ve never met personally. So Bill Bennett diverts his attention from having gambled away the family home by figuring that at least he’s not gay. Rush Limbaugh covers the pain with pills, then covers the pills with hatred of anyone who does not resemble his ideal vision of his father.

Try asking yourself who you hate, and why it is you really hate them.

Then ask yourself who you love, and tell them you love them as soon as you can.

Monday, March 14, 2005

the dark will end the dark, if anything

I'm kind of sleepy, so I'll try to be brief tonight. During my second year of undergraduate, I faced a choicepoint. I knew I didn't want to be a business student, but I also knew I still wanted to be a university student. So I needed to choose a new program. If it hadn't been so hard to get into English classes at my uni, I probably would have chosen English. But, I couldn't get into any English classes, and chose psychology largely because I'd gotten a good mark in it.

Eventually, I got enough seniority that I could start getting into English classes. They were generally depressing, so I was glad I hadn't had English as a major. They were depressing because my interpretations of stories and poems were always wrong. There's not supposed to be wrong answers with literature, but I managed to find them anyway. I eventually dropped my 20th century American lit class even though it was my favourite type of literature. I remember when I went to the prof. to drop the course - I so desperately wanted him to ask why I was dropping it so I could give him a piece of my mind. I was astonished when he didn't care to ask. Now I understand.

Still, there was some pretty cool stuff I got exposed to, even though I apparently didn't really understand it. There were a number of poems in particular that made me feel emotions that seemed very important, and still do. I'll post one here, even though my interpretation of it was, and still is, wrong.

Luke Havergal by E.A. Robinson

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,
Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;
But go, and if you listen she will call.
Go the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies—
In eastern skies.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this,
Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss
That flames upon your forehead with a glow
That blinds you to the way that you must go.
Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,
Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this—
To tell you this.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.
Go, for the winds are tearing them away,—
Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,
Nor any more to feel them as they fall;
But go, and if you trust her she will call.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal—
Luke Havergal.

say, this looks interesting

I like the cut of this guy's jib.

Sunday, March 13, 2005

planet of the apes

I apologize for my absence yesterday. I was playing in back-to-back finals for the recreational netball and beach volleyball leagues I’ve been playing in, and was a bit knackered at the end of the day. You may not be familiar with netball, but I’m told it was invented years ago when basketball was considered too rough for women. So it’s like basketball, but with a number of modifications to make it easier for weak and soft people. Of course, I don’t agree that basketball is too rough for women, but as I consider myself weak and soft I’m quite happy to have found netball. For example, one modification is that a defender has to stand 3 feet back from a shooter. When I played basketball, the one thing I could do was hit shots if nobody was threatening me with any harm or humiliation, so netball is perfect for me. Some people have tried to call me a good netball player, but I prefer to think of myself as a poor basketball player who has discovered the sport version of the Land of Misfit Toys.

There’s a useful analogy here; that thinking of yourself only in terms of your traits misses a big part of the picture. There’s so much political show-off talk about “character,” but I think a healthier way to think about your personality is in terms of what situations you respond to well or not so well. This actually is the meta-lesson of social psychology, so it’s hardly a unique insight. But it has important implications. For example, doctors are so keen to prescribe anti-depressants. I’ve heard figures of something like 25% of the population is depressed. In a society that thinks in terms of traits and character, depression is the result of the individual. But if 25% of society is depressed, isn’t it more likely that the problem is with the conditions we live under rather than the people themselves?

We often laugh at pets because their behaviour seems so silly in a human context. My cat will often use the litter box, then do scraping motions in the air that are totally non-functional. When he’s out in the dirt, though, he does the same scraping motions and they make a lot more sense, they cover his urine with dirt. But we are no more in our natural environment than he is. Much of our instinctive behaviour evolved to deal with the problems presented by environments like the African savannah. For example, I’d argue that we get so worked up about things like insults because expulsion from our tribemates meant death. Try living without a group in an environment like the Australian outback for a few days, and find out just how reliant we really are on others. So we evolved in a context where rejection really was a life or death matter, and now we react to rejection that way. For example, people often get really angry and aggressive on the road if their driving is insulted (i.e., road rage). This, to me, is no different than the cat scraping uselessly into the air – we have a certain repertoire of responses that don’t really fit well with the modern situation because they weren’t designed for this situation. We’re probably better off taking the meaningless insult, and getting on with more important things. But this “character” thing we’re talking about, ironically enough, is portrayed as doing stuff like standing up for your honour by fighting with fists. Ultimately, we’re all just monkeys in cages of our own devising.

Friday, March 11, 2005

not at the movies

It was suggested to me recently that I should do movie reviews. So I've decided to do one, but because I'm nervous about my ability to do so, I've decided to self-handicap. This is where you purposely undermine your own ability to perform so that you have an excuse if it should not go well. So, I could get hammered before I write this, or I could choose a really difficult movie to review. Instead, I've decided to really, really handicap myself, and review a movie I've never seen.

To wit...

A Review of "Shall We Dance," Starring Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere

I haven't seen this movie, but it sucks. First, it has Jennifer Lopez in it. Here's a classic example of someone who is put in movies because there is a certain familiarity with her name. I always find it interesting that there's a premium placed on people who have some ability in multiple domains (i.e., it is often said that she can dance/sing/act). The problem is that she's mediocre, at best, in each domain. I'm not sure why her mediocre acting ability is supposed to be more interesting because, in another context, she could be singing a mediocre song. I mean, what has she ever done of any real substance? If a chef could make a thousand bland meals out of processed cheese, am I supposed to be impressed with each individual meal? So that was one of the things that ruined not watching this movie for me, Jennifer Lopez was in it.

It was also bad because it was a ripoff (the polite industry term is "remake") of a more sophisticated Japanese film. Now, I haven't seen the original either, but it HAD to be better than this one. For one thing, the original didn't have Jennifer Lopez in it. But what remake of a non-American film has ever been better than the original? My most salient memory is of how La Femme Nikita was butchered in the hands of the world's sole superpower. Seriously guys, the cold war is over. Give up on the fucking hair-brained bunker busting nuclear bombs and crazy space weapons, and get back to work on your films. Okay, so Shall We Dance simply paled next to the original, so that's another thing that ruined it for me while I was not watching it.

I guess the other thing that ruined this film was the presence of Richard Gere. He seems like a nice enough guy, and I feel bad about all those nasty urban legends around his sex life, but I thought it was a prerequisite for an actor to BE ABLE TO DISPLAY VARYING EMOTIONAL STATES. Sorry for yelling, but seriously, Richard Gere makes Leonard Nimoy look like Margaret Cho. I know he was supposed to be the sexiest man alive, but I mean, couldn't they just keep a still picture of him in the corner of the screen for the entire movie so they can still get his sex appeal without us having to bear his baseline emotional state for 2 hours? Fuck, that just ruined not watching this movie for me.

So, overall I'm pretty sure Shall We Dance sucked. If you disagree, I highly suspect it's because you were biased by the film's actual content, and thus I am not in a position to take your opinion seriously.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

i was so exhausted, all i could do was watch television

There was an advert for Budweiser, the grand and regal King of Beers, where the cap was turned upside down to resemble a crown. Smirk.

There was a person whose idea this was. Four years at a liberal arts college, sideburns long enough to be different, but not different enough to be dangerous. This person was ambitious and clever. He had never read Thoreau, but got a Thoreau question right on Jeopardy, the other night. He raised the upside down beer cap idea in a meeting, leading to esteem from the hierarchy and bitter, seething jealousy from people who love their families, but haven’t spent much time with them lately.

He cashed his check, with a healthy bonus, for turning a beer cap upside down. He bought a gold watch that was so expensive he would only wear it at home, for fear of losing it. His confidence with women increased, and he would persist until women understood that they wanted to sleep with him. He put Tony Robbins and Brit Hume quotes on his whiteboard in his new corner office.

He was a very acceptable man, rewarded by tired people who needed a beer to cope.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

making a big deal out of a normal, boring mood swing

Man, do I feel better today.

The comings and goings of mood can be fascinating. It's one of the things that makes it hard to predict the future, because we're so prone to processing information based on the mood we're in, rather considering how we might feel in the future. I had a prof. who was opposed to living wills for this reason. He figured that you might feel, right now, like if you were grossly incapacitated that you'd want to die with dignity, but that's easy to think when you're safe and warm and young and vain. But how do you know, when you've been incapacitated, that you won't feel differently? The drive to want to keep living is very strong - what could be a more natural product of evolution than feeling strongly impelled to survive? So, maybe it's even likely that when the moment of truth comes you'll be much less interested in dignity than in just living.

This all reminds me of a time when I was young, and having a fight with my dad. He said we could settle the argument after I'd eaten, because then I'd feel better. This was infuriating. I was arguing based on reason and principle, and what was wrong on an empty stomach would continue to be wrong on a full stomach. What was more infuriating was that he was right. After I'd eaten I felt much less pissy, and he ultimately won the argument. I can't believe he had the gall to feed me. What a dirty trick. But it's just a reminder of how we ignore our physical nature at our own peril. We are not only what we eat, but when we eat.

I mean to write more poetry soon. I find it very satisfying, I feel like my poetry reads more like my thoughts than my prose. But I have to be in the right mood. For now, here's a Robert Frost poem about emotion that's been rolling around in my head lately.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Monday, March 07, 2005

some days are harder than others

One of many scary thoughts is that reality does not care if you understand it or not. For example, try to really understand how big the universe is, or even the distance from here to the nearest star. Or, try to understand that time provides a physical constraint on the universe in the same way as does length, width, and depth. In our evolutionary history, we would have had no need to understand distances between stars, and I suspect that’s why it’s so hard to really understand now. We never needed to develop the ability to think in those terms. We also had no need to understand time in a theoretical sense, we only needed to understand how to operate within its constraints. Fish do not understand water, but they understand how to move within it.

Humans have the capacity for what’s called “emotion focused coping.” That is, we’re probably better than any other species at thinking about something from multiple points of view. This is why we’re effective (relatively) in social behaviour, we have the capacity to understand the world from not only our own point of view, but also from the points of view of others. In this way we can reframe reality so we feel better about it - we can see a husband that most other people would call lazy, and call him relaxed. We also know how to change our emotional state relatively directly – if we feel anxious, we can use a drink or a smoke to kill off that anxiety, for a while. Reality is patient, and is willing to wait for you.

What really, really sucks is when the reality is so bad that we can’t reframe it. Did you ever catch yourself watching coverage of the big tsunami and thinking, “If it were me, I would have gotten away, I would have known to run.” Emotion focused coping. We don’t want to be mortal, and will make ourselves believe, somehow, that we would have been better, or smarter, or faster than the people who died. Reality doesn’t care if you underestimate its power.

You know, I almost apologized for how depressing this post is, there is an urge within me to write some kind of happy ending, or at least a yes, but. And it’s true, life is not always as depressing as this post sounds. But sometimes it is, and it can be scary how little room there is in public discourse for honest, negative emotion. When people ask you how you’re doing, how often are you honest? How does it make you feel to say “fine” when you’re not? Why are we so scared of each other’s fear?

Sunday, March 06, 2005

the cat has a better shot at a booker prize than i do

It's strange how inspiration comes and goes. I figured after a weekend off, I'd be brimming with ideas. But it seems more true the ideas come with consistent writing. So, I've been working on this post on and off all day, and the best I've come up with are:

a) It’s really disturbing how comfortable people often are with making judgements of others. This is most obvious in discussions of the lives of celebrities. I remember hearing a “celebrity watcher” t.v. pundit asked about something like why the queen wasn’t going to go to prince charles’ wedding. The most honest answer would have been, “I don’t know, I’ve never met them personally, I haven’t got a sweet clue.”

...and...

b) EDWARD: I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born. And if you can’t see that, it’s your failing, not mine. (this is my favourite quote from Big Fish, so I didn't even come up with this one myself)

In fact, I think the best thing that was developed for the blog today was written by Jimmy the cat, who wandered onto the keyboard and created:

;p

Anyway, enough people have said nice things about the blog, and have suggested they've been checking in, that this is my public vow to write something, even if the real author is the cat, every day. I guess it's the best way to be regularly inspired.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

mainstream american values

Of all the ways a citizen can gain social approval from peers, perhaps the one that puzzles me most is the choice to Be Fashionable. I have trouble thinking of fashion as anything other than planned obsolescence, so to be lauded for being tricked into buying something you'll mock yourself for wearing within a decade just strikes me as odd. But there's a certain triumphalism in Being Fashionable - I remember this from the period in my life when I was still making unsuccessful attempts to use clothing as a social lubricant. This sense of knowing purpose is especially directed at older generations, often parents, who seem so completely out-of-touch with the obvious value of a Polo shirt. But now, as I get older, I begin to understand what this "out-of-touch"-ness is about. The most salient example is the prominence of "trucker hats" in the modern fashion hierarchy. These are the ones with plastic mesh at the back, and attractive random words like "Von Dutch" at the front. It's when you see an item go from childhood ridicule to adulthood eminence that you realize the inherent randomness and conformity in "fashion sense".

So now we have Extreme Makeover. This is where people discuss how face-altering surgery will raise their self-esteem. Then a qualified surgeon hacks them into painful disfigurement, wraps them like a caterpillar, and after these messages they bloom into a.....well, a fake-looking scary person. Nevertheless, a party is arranged, and society's values are reinforced as people express explicit approval for the larger breasts, the smaller nose, the binded feet. Everyone claps their hands and feels badly about themselves. It's good fun. Nobody swears, the sex is only implicit, and we all have something to talk about besides that gnawing feeling that there may not be an afterlife after all.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

another reason to never leave the house

Acceptable public discourse can be strange sometimes, and I always feel very chuffed when I can recognize bizarre discourse even in the service of causes I support. There was an interest rate rise in Australia today. The opposition Labor (no 'U' in Labor - eternally strange) party were all up in arms about the government failing on its promise to freeze interest rates and was chiding them for excessive spending promises. Labor, though, did exactly the same thing, promising interest rates would be frozen and promising perilous levels of pork during the election. A reminder, I guess, of what a big fake game our society has turned decision making into. You can be very...boring, as Dickie Greenleaf would say.

At the same time, I'm reading about hunter-gatherer societies, and the way they enforce egalitarianism. For example, rather than praising people who bring home large game in (I think) !Kung society, they ridicule them so that they don't take a position of power. Contrast that with today's NFL, where linebackers regularly dance after making tackles for 3-yard gains (not losses, gains). Big fake game. Big fake game. We all get forced to play big fake games.

It's that kind of eloquence Catcher in the Rye strove for, but could never reach.