Modeling is quite powerful, eh? I say this comfortably without any "scientific" cushion. The influence of modeling is so lucid, the supply of anecdotal evidence so ceaseless in its bombardment of my eyes and ears that anecdotal no longer seems fitting.
What, if I may ask, are we modeling for our friends and strangers?
Here's a conscious movement we could give a twirl — you know, see how it fits: invite the possibility of pleasure. You don't even need any expertise (imagine that, no skills or preconditions). Start obvious: smell a flower. Eat it a little. Got no flower? What do you have? Smell that. You could find yourself sedated. Maybe repulsed. Indifferent. Tantalized.
Been there, done that? What, nothing new under the sun, you ole spoilsport? Perhaps we could consider ignoring what we think we know. Excuse ourselves from the vile company of certainty. Maybe what we think is lying around in the attic is gone. Maybe it was never there.
Smoking inside
Let me turn to my man Roland Barthes, he's generous, always with something for us:
Pleasure is continually disappointed, reduced, deflated, in favor of strong, noble values: Truth, Death, Progress, Struggle, Joy, etc. Its victorious rival is Desire: we are always being told about Desire, never about Pleasure.
Right on Papa B. Next time pleasure presents itself, let it linger. Maybe we'll find something worthy of our busy schedules.
Here's a little game I like to play with the school boys and girls — you can play too. Alright, first thing: don't try to "figure out" the answer, okay? I'm going to ask you something, I want you to guess the answer; consider the question and just spit out whatever you think the answer could be without calculating anything. Ready?
How much time elapses in one million seconds (you know, in a more manageable unit like minutes or days)?
How much time elapses in one billion seconds?
I'll mention the answers in a minute, if you're interested to see how right or wrong you are.
What I'm thinking about is the way we use numbers-facts-stats to bolster our arguments. Yesterday, some people from a group operating under the name Environment Washington came by to enlist me in a battle to expand the borders of Rainier National Park. Their please-give-us-money salespitch was full of facts — I couldn't get a handle on any of it.
"We're hoping to expand the park from an ungraspable amount of protected acres to even more acres," they seemed to say. "The Obama administration has committed a difficult to fathom amount of money for National Parks and we'd like to get that money and use it to, let me check my notes here, ah yes, save trees and animals and stop logging, drilling and other things. However, we would like to increase leisure activities that don't include extracting resources. Hold this clipboard sir, I'll start your paperwork."
Why the numbers? I am surely not expected to think, "Rainier National park is only X number of acres, well that's a fucking travesty! Expand it now! Here's a hundo. How many acres will that buy? Oh, it doesn't work like that? Huh." I assume the numbers are there to make the pitchmen and women appear well-versed in "the facts" but these facts are utter and complete bullshit, which poses a problem. (When I say bullshit, I don't mean to say they're fictitious (how would I know and it doesn't matter), I'm saying the facts are hollow and unintelligible) Large quanities of small units are inherently confusing and lead to disconnects between the people trying to communicate ideas. A million seconds clocks in at about 12 days. A billion seconds lasts about 32 years. In an abstract sense, it's quite easy to see that a billion of anything is 1,000 times larger than one million of that thing. The problem, obviously, is the scale is overwhelming. Soon enough, I'm left wishing: give me something my simple mind can make use of, because I don't understand what these environmentalists at my door are fucking talking about. Maybe that isn't their objective. Maybe hitting people with information overkill makes them feel stupid and flooded and they're now ready to cut a check to get the source of anxiety (the solicitor) off the front porch (How did they get past the gate, anyway? Was the latch that easy to figure out?)
I suppose the great and obvious problem for the environmental movement in America is that we are the problem (it's so much easier when they are the problem), and our normal response to problems — throw money and resources at it in various ways — is not a terribly useful response measure (see: our other means of measuring the success of our solutions*). The earth's brutal indifference to our wants includes an aversion to bribery — we need to learn a new trick. Remember, we're not destroying the earth, the earth will be fine. We're destroying our ability to get what we want out of it (which is many different things that are regularly in disagreement). This should be the new environmental slogan, truly American in style: We're losing what we want!
If you find yourself needing to use large numbers, at least have the common decency to put them into some context we can begin to think about. For instance, I can't make sense of 6.8 billion people — the whole idea is nonsense. However, I can imagine spending one single second looking at someone (you know, a quick glance as you pass each other in line). If you told me I could spend one second with every single person on the planet, and it would take me more than 200 years to see everyone — without any sleeping or eating or tee vee or anything — at least I'm beginning to make some connection to the scale. Not much, but it's something.
*Quick note: If the kids believed reading was either a) important or b) enjoyable they'd be good at it.
Holy mother of self-aggrandizement. Have you ever seen anything this awesome? It's going to take more than a standard issue tube sock to get all this red, white and blue splooge wiped off my screen — and yours (sorry about that). It's almost like they didn't just make some minor changes to a drearily ornate product.
What should we call the car? Cherokee? Yeah, that sounds pretty cool... oh yeah, it's growing on me. I can't think of anything that better captures America's essence. Wait, wait... Grand Cherokee. You sir, are fucking brilliant. We should get a logo for it, is this taken? Oh, it is. Shit. No matter, we'll come up with something.
After much finagling (there was no finagling, those library beauties are easy-going, they'll give you anything), the Seattle Public Library was kind enough to lend me Baghead. The movie's plastic box reads, "The Funniest Spoof Horror Film of The Year!" Quick, name a horror film from the last decade that doesn't deliver at least a few winks and nudges to their knowing audience: Yes, yes, Ha-ha, you've seen this before, and we know you've seen this before, but we're doing it anyway, we just wanted to let you know, that we know, that we're not at all original in this respect. Noted.
Now, to spoof a horror film (this all seems terribly obvious now that I'm writing it), you've got to skip all that wink-wink shit and play it direly and oppressively straight from start to finish — and then we'll all laugh at that. Ultimately, it ain't about what you do, the audience will find something to laugh about, and for good reason: horror movies can get a little scary when you're too drunk to tell yourself, "this isn't really happening right in front of me." Tee vee can trick your drunk self, remember this.
So, the movie was quite fine and all. I suppose I don't have anything much to say about it. I did like the closeups — it felt just a little like Cassavettes' Faces at a few points.
I did learn something, a word of warning to the uninitiated: don't — Do. Not. — turn the movie off because you're scared and would prefer the fear subside into sleep (I did just this. What? I'm not embarrassed, momma taught me to flee), as you probably know, this could work against you. Like reading Kafka (if you make the mistake of not laughing along the way), when the tension is surely unbearable, rest assured, the release valve will eventually be pulled. But, you've got to get there. Me, being the boob that I am, end up spending the twenty minutes petrified that somebody with a bag on their head is going to plop down in my front yard — all because I was too much of a wuss to finish the damn thing — my mother would be proud, probably?
I experience want. Various things for and from themselves and others — always with the fucking wanting. A challenge:
Stop actively wanting. Stop. Right. Now.
But, what about the good stuff we want? (one might ask) You know, not the oversexed worshiper-of-me that I'm hoping will paw my instruments on cue, but, you know, altruistic stuff.
That too.
I don't give a shit if you and your homies throw on those tie-dyes you bought from Goodwill, lay the peace-loving mood with some Pete Seeger, spin a doob the size of a zuchinni, and lounge around lusting for the most wonderful utopia our liberal art'd do-goodery could conjure.
Stop. That.
Desire is all wrong because it presumes to know the result of achieving whatever is being desired. Fuck desire. Just go experience. Don't actively want anything. Not peace, not fairness, not love, not happiness, not solidarity, not hope, not money, not sex. Which is not to say, don't love, be peaceful, or experience happiness or solidarity; please, by all means, experience these things with gusto when it happens. But don't want it to happen. Don't make it happen. Just be awake enough to see it when it does — just so happen — to happen.
Experience, be generous and don't act like a godforesaken vampire — taking the lifeblood of others so I can supposedly thrive. I am not special. There is no covenant. Don't think about our individuality — what nonsense. We're not humans nor are we humanoids. What are those meaningless categories?
We'll be beasts of burden here and beasts of prey there and if we're wasting time thinking about the future and the past, thinking about how to get what we want. Let's implore her to consider... the fucking future?
What future? The future is impossible. You can't see it. You can't hear it. You can't know it. To desire the future is to reject life. We may allege that this future is practical or necessary — whose terms are they? There are no promises, no guarantees, good folks. Promises are tools for assuaging the exact same fears the promises create: letdown and failure.
The Seattle library was kind enough to lend me Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Then why you acting all crazy for? The pharmacy security steward asks. No answer given. No answer needed. Who knows? Who cares? What is crazy? Go buy everyone a drink.
If you're like me, this film will leave you tickled pink. A "theme" I enjoyed: the art of getting what you want.
Frankie (a call-girl portrayed by Eva Mendes) asks Lieutenant Terrence McDonough (Cage, her "boyfriend"), How come you only call me when you need something? This is one of the film's many questions that go unanswered — and rightfully so, there isn't really an answer. I suppose we're disinclined to think of our relationships as exchanges of goods and services, but that's what they are. Just as Terrence calls on Frankie for passion, companionship, drugs, someone to watch his father's dog, etc., she does the same — although we can replace the dog watching with protecting her from violent johns.
Terrence is pursuing results, the ends do justify his means. He can play it calm and cool or he can go postal — whatever befits the situation. A quick example of his ability to take it easy: His police crew is loading up in front of a suspect's house. Now, instead of blazing through the front door, Terrence opts to go through the neighbors house and enter the suspect's place from the back. So, how does he go about it? He knocks politely on the neighbor's door; when a woman carrying a baby answers, Terrence is quick to say "I need access to the apartment next door, do you mind?" Before she can answer, he turns his attention to the baby, "Awww, it's okay," rubbing the baby's cheeks as he slides past Mom. He doesn't really give her an opportunity to object — despite asking — but he also doesn't act like a dismissive wild man. Effective. He snags the suspect without incident, parading him out the front door to the adoration of his colleagues. "I love it," Terrence announces with a big grin.
If calm and professional works, he'll do it; when that doesn't offer a high probability of success, he'll try other means:
Now, this scene is obviously hysterical. The electric razor creates an ominous "I don't have time for any bullshit" effect better than words could possibly capture. After the nurse claims her grandson doesn't want to be a witness, Terrence sums up compulsive behavior: This is bigger than want to. (Every time he slaps the nurse's hand I crack up.) A little later, after the ladies submit complaints about Terrence's tactics, internal affairs gets on our detective's case. The Captain informs Terrence of the pending investigation, prompting him to hilariously ask, "Oh, come on, they’re going to pull public integrity into this? What for?" The Captain replies, "that old woman, her son is a United States Congressman." Another fun recurring theme: if you fuck with power, expect a power struggle.
Yes, as I've read some people cheer and others jeer, the film is messy — I suppose it was designed to be so, not that I'm overly concerned with artistic intent. There is no direct cause and effect. The opening scene (Terrence sacrifices the quality of his $55 underwear by entering the Katrina flood waters to rescue an up-to-his-neck inmate), perhaps the only selfless act in the film, leads to split consequences: chronic back pain and a promotion. The rest of the film is about adjusting on the fly and taking advantages of opportunities — which isn't to say well-wrought plans won't go to shit. Which also isn't to say things won't work out after the plan goes to shit (this happens several times in his attempts to arrest the "bad guys" — none of the characters are proper villains — and pay off his creditors).
By the end, Terrence is still adapting, but he hasn't discovered any Truth, per se, because there isn't anything for him to find — he's not even looking.
A riot burgeoning from the digital orifice of the NYT this morning. Apparently, Obama and the Evangelicals are finally joining forces. Yes! I think Laurie Goodstein (great name, better reporter) is the best thing they have going over at the N.Y.T. For extra fun, check out her heart-warming piece on Jerry Falwell's legacy (you'll get to see Jerry crowd surfing). She describes him as pugnacious, which, surprisingly, does not mean crazy bigot. Anyway, from this morning, my highlights:
“My message to Republican leaders,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, the president of the evangelical National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference and one of the leaders who engaged his non-Hispanic peers, “is if you’re anti-immigration reform, you’re anti-Latino, and if you’re anti-Latino, you are anti-Christian church in America, and you are anti-evangelical.”
Right on, Brother Rodriguez. However, call me curious, but, I just happen to be anti-Christian church in America (you know, lapsed and non-practicing — it's kinda a social thing), does that make me anti-Latino?
Each side draws on Scripture for support. Those who oppose comprehensive immigration overhaul cite Romans 13, which says to submit to the government’s laws. Supporters cite Leviticus 19: treat the stranger as you would yourself.
Both of these scriptural prescriptions sound pretty god damned crappy. The government? strangers? No. Thanks.
One of the more recent converts to overhaul is Mr. Staver. He said that deporting illegal immigrants violated the biblical imperative to welcome the stranger. “We’re going to break up families,” Mr. Staver said, “and I don’t see how you could claim to be pro-family and condone the separation of families.” (To which Mr. Fischer responded, “We don’t want to break up families, so let’s help them all return to their country of origin.”)
Mr. Fischer is hilarious. Did he say, Help them? What a clever euphemism for force them.
But Mr. Blackwell said the whole effort could implode if the final legislation extended family reunification provisions to same-sex couples where one spouse did not have legal status. For evangelicals, he said, “That would be a deal-breaker.”
Indeed, keepin' a simple hierarchy of needs, evangelical style: "Love strangers... but queers!? Oh no, we're going to do what we can to harrass, harangue, humiliate and dehumanize those guys and gals. Praise. The. Lord. For it is wise."
I'm going to play the half-baked bullshit philosopher on this (as opposed to my normal persona?): prepare yourself accordingly.
Look at this guy to your right, I have heard people say this. A few seconds to destroy years of building? What the hell is going on with this type of thinking?
For quite a while now, I have been down on trust, although I've done very little thinking about it. I've railed against "should" because of the its obnoxious and ridiculous sense of knowing — an ugly stain of certainty on dilemmas collar, if you will. But with trust, I think it's the... let me slow down. Let's take a crack at a definition. What is trust?
One way to define it: a firm belief in the reliability of someone or thing. Now, I get reliability as a practical matter. When I head out of town for a week and I ask my buddy to feed the cat and water the plants, it's very important to me that I don't come home to a dead cat (the plants, meh, fuck em'). But, of course, this is a very tangible, relatable, practical example. Let's move beyond thinking of reliable as someone who can complete assigned tasks. Reliable asks for consistency. Consistency is, I think, a fairly complex idea. An example: someone — I don't know who, let's say me — might argue that consistency is an essential element of a criminal justice system. This, of course, creates a whole shit ton of problems. What do we want to be consistent? I can't think of anything, not the process, the penalties... nothing. If we assume everything else is ever-changing (you know: the peeps, the culture) should the justice system and those who administer it not be ever-changing as well? By that half-assed argument, the only valuable form of consistency is constant adaptation — which, supposedly, democracies don't do too well; or societies in general if McLuhan had the idea right.
So, I'm going to turn away from consistency as a bearer of, dare I say it, virtue.
When someone proclaims or utters, "I trust you," are they really saying, "I think you'll do what you thinkisbest for me?" In which case, yikes. Is trust our veiled attempt to avoid anguish via avoiding decisions that don't have us in mind? Does trust strictly privilege me over we and you?
Help me out here. I want to say, fuck trust as this all important pilar of the human relationship. It's too self serving, or something.
1. Enjoying William S. Burroughs
2. Thinking dubious thoughts about dog and man
3. Abhorring violence in the name of safety
All from The Cat Inside:
I am not a dog hater. I do hate what man has made of his best friend. The snarl of a panther is certainly more dangerous than the snarl of a dog, but it isn't ugly. A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with a pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. But a dog's snarl is ugly, a redneck lynch-mob Paki-basher snarl... snarl of someone got a "Kill a Queer for Christ" sticker on his heap, a self-righteous occupied snarl. When you see that snarl you are looking at something that has no face of its own. A dog's rage is not his. It is dictated by his trainer. And lynch-mob rage is dictated by conditioning.
On prevention as a safety measure:
At Los Alamos Ranch School, where they later made the atom bomb and couldn't wait to drop it on the Yellow Peril, the boys are sitting on logs and rocks, eating some sort of food. There is a stream at the end of a slope. The counselor was a Southerner with a politician's look about him. He told us stories by the campfire, culled from the racist garbage of the insidious Sax Rohmer — East is evil, West is good.
Suddenly a badger erupts among the boys — don't know why he did it, just playful, friendly and inexperienced like the Aztec Indians who brought fruit down to the Spanish and got their hands cut off. So the counselor rushes for his saddlebag and gets out his 1911 Colt .45 auto and starts blasting at the badger, missing it with every shot at six feet. Finally he puts his gun three inches from the badger's side and shoots. This time the badger rolls down the slope into the stream. I can see the stricken animal, the sad shrinking face, rolling down the slope, bleeding, dying.
"You see an animal you kill it, don't you? It might have bitten one of the boys."
And because I don't want to decamp on that last note:
I have observed that in cat fights the aggressor is almost always the winner. If a cat is getting the worst of a fight he doesn't hesitate to run, whereas a dog may fight to his stupid death. As my old jiujitsu instructor said, "If your trick no work, you better run."
