It all started with Sufjan Stevens.
Sufjan Stevens was at the height of popularity when I was finishing high school, having just released the second album in his fifty states project. All of my hippest friends had him in heavy rotation on their iPods, right up there with Radiohead. The next year, in the dorms, I used iTunes's network to view and listen to the libraries of fellow students. It became apparent that Sufjan was among a group of bands whose popularity could be traced back to heavy promotion by Pitchfork Media. It also became apparent to me that Sufjan Stevens was a sort of fraud.
His music was all surface and no substance. That was notable enough, but my real epiphany was the realization that his music's surface catered to the sensibilities of critics and aspiring pretentious white kids everywhere. The elaborate arrangements, unusual instrumentation and hyper-empathetic vocals broke through bored critics palates and bypassed well-rehearsed cynicism. This would be all well and good if most music critics emphasized songwriting/musicianship over the progression of music's sound. Sometime before they actually wrote a review that sounded like a fourteen-year-old having a wet dream, they would have realized that the songs just weren't that great. It wasn't that Sufjan Stevens was bad, he just wasn't the musical genius he got billed as.
In the last couple of years Sufjan has admitted that the fifty states project was a publicity stunt that he never actually intended to carry out. At the end of last year he released his densest, most use-weird-noises-to-cover-a-lack-of-underlying-talent album ever, to an excellent reception by Pitchfork.
Hype is a pretty natural tendency of art criticism, especially when the critics in question are relatively young (when I was finishing high school the mean age of Pitchfork staffers was in the mid-20's). Some amount of self-policing must exist for an organization to produce a thoughtful body of criticism worthy of respect. The "Pitchfork band" phenomena indicated that shiny new, rapidly rising Pitchfork Media was (and continues to be) the most prominent, most irresponsible perpetrator of music over-hype in the industry.
Sometime during my freshman year, I started reading AllMusic. They gave the Queens of the Stone Age respectful reviews, said nice things about Sufjan without implying that he had any real talent, and panned Radiohead's alleged masterpiece Kid A. That last bit caught my attention and it earned my respect, even though I disagreed with their review right up until they backtracked and conceded to the album's greatness last year. In short, AllMusic embodied the contrary, thoughtful kind of snobbery that I saw in myself.
With the aid of dorm broadband, I was downloading music about as fast as I could keep up with. AllMusic provided comprehensive artist bios, discographies and a wealth of internal hyperlinking (genres, similar bands, bands influenced, etc). It's design was ideal for me to rapidly sift through music and investigate and expand my tastes into unknown territory.
It soon became apparent that I faced a dilemma. If I continued to blindly trust AllMusic's reviewers, my tastes would quickly become beholden to and bounded by the tastes and knowledge of a small group of individuals. I had to decide whether or not to sell my soul to AllMusic.
I mulled the decision over for a couple of weeks, but in the end it was an easy choice. I was fresh off my discovery of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. I was eager to develop a taste for the "classic" bands and albums of rock and roll. I never put much stock in individualism and indeed, I'm irritated by the definition and cultivation of "personal taste". Personal taste should be treated as bias that must be filtered out of any final, "true" assessment. There is such a thing as great art in absolute terms.
I sold my soul to AllMusic. And I never looked back.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
On Militant Atheism
The following was compiled from a debate with Rob about a post of his titled Schmutz about ridiculing a passerby for having ash on his head on Ash Wednesday. For the purposes of this post, please read "religion" as "Christianity". Also, and this should go without saying on my blog anyways, if you have hate for this post, please don't remain silent. Address me directly and thoughtfully, either by comment or email.
For what it's worth, Rob, I don't consider you militant anything either. You say that in defending religion I am "defending the indefensible"? Lines like that ensure a long return letter from me.
So you say it was your laughter after being angry, bigoted and confrontational that made it ok? I guess it depends on the kind of laughter. I laugh a hard, cruel laugh when I've made a particularly witty joke at someone's (or an implied group's) expense. That was the laughter (maybe muted, but the spirit anyways) I envisioned in your post. It is a laughter at one's own horribleness, but it's also a sort of victory lap, a twisted embrace of all that is unholy about wit and being born to, frankly, a superior mind. It has its place in my life and I expect it has its place in yours. I'm just saying that if that kind of laughter has made its way to strangers simply for having ash on their foreheads, you've gotten a little far afield.
Life is not nearly so simple, and I'm not talking about the minority of nonbelievers who will wear ash each year. I'm talking about the bivalent nature of something as enmeshed into human life and culture as religion. It can be very bad for people, but if you miss its capacity to genuinely be very good for people or indeed miss the extent to which it genuinely helps most people within its clutches, you are missing something very important.
Living in Davis taught every person of notable intellect how boring militant atheism can be and frankly, how crass it is. I've lived the dream of a majority atheist/agnostic society and I can tell you for certain that it is a place of rationalized persecution, bigotry and, this is especially important, a notable lack of philosophical thought. Can you believe we have an atheist/agnostic club in such a place? What the hell do you think they discuss at their meetings? Seriously, all I can think of is getting out "the word" and why non-non-believers suck. They certainly don't have much to discuss in terms of personal philosophy. I can't imagine a UCD organization less likely to include an individual of insight and imagination.
I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I was just as helpless in not believing in god as so many people are helpless in believing in him. To think otherwise is to give oneself too much credit. There is no minority of people who came to religion by choice. There is a minority of people whose environmental inputs were balanced enough that their decision was decided by native personality rather than those environmental inputs. People are simply not that freethinking. I'm not a determinist, I just recognize genuine free choice for being the intensely rare thing that it is.
I know a handful of enormously intelligent believers. That's not enough, by itself, to give me pause before deriding poster boys for a largely retarded sort of follow-the-leader mentality. It was hearing intelligent people talk about the significance of religion to them that explained to me why religion has existed as something enduring and powerful with deep relevance to the human condition rather than as some transient fad. That, is enough to give me pause before deriding even people who are obviously floatsam upon the tides of religious alignment. It's even enough to give me pause before deriding a person who so clearly is being negatively affected by their floatsamesque religious affiliation, because I cannot easily estimate the positives that religion contributes to their life.
The "is religion more good or bad?" topic is an especially poignant one for me, because my very favorite "intelligent believer" has been affected both so positively and so negatively by her religion. I've tried to imagine what kind of person she would be without her religion and I find it just too inextricably tied. The knee-jerk agnostic reaction would be a revulsion that somebody could be so consumed by a human institution, particularly under the false notion that the institution was superhuman in origin, but being affected by religion is no different from being affected by anything else and there is nothing inherently wrong with being affected so deeply by human institutions. Individuality is, after all, just another value of human construction.
Back to my point, though. My friend is affected in incredibly positive ways by her faith and in dangerous and potentially limiting ways. She lives a life with both more pain and more joy than I think she would live without religion. As to whether religion made her already-intense personality "gel" into the amazing person she is or whether it has straitjacketed her true potential or paved a road for her eventual self-destruction, I cannot say. Surely there is an example somewhere for every case. For now, I have decided it is best that I take it on faith that it does more good than bad. Whether or not that is true, though, I think her life is unquestionably the richer for having religion.
My highest hope for the world is not that people live happy lives free of the worst kinds of sorrow. My highest hope is that people live rich lives, full of both enormous happiness and enormous sorrow. My hope is that somewhere in the process that experience imparts to them tremendous insight into human nature. If religion makes the world a more painful place on the balance, that is still worth the richness and wisdom it brings to the world. Peace and happiness always sounded terribly boring, anyways. I concede that my belief as to what the balance comes to can be reduced to simple faith in my own educated guess. I also believe that if you had any kind of appreciation for its good, you'd see it "being more good than bad" for the very likely possibility that I see it. You say the hurt unleashed on the world by religion is unfathomable? The good unleashed is certainly also unfathomable. To think otherwise is hubris. Who are you to call the balance in religion's disfavor?
Militant atheists often write-off religion's appeal as grounded in fear of "meaninglessness and death". Let me open by saying people respond poorly and inconsistently to ultimatums ("Go to church or burn in hell! Donate a dollar to Red Cross or burn in hell! Wash your hands or go to hell!"). In practice, it only gets you so far in coercing action and loyalty. Cults are just religions without the staying power. Religion survives because there is wisdom inlaid in the tradition, rules and ceremony with genuine human relevance that resonates with people and their children.
To be sure, there is also the appeal of escaping "meaningless and death", but from my vantage point that appeal is rooted much deeper than such a predictable write-off would suggest. Religion is a beautiful and sophisticated allegory for dealing with death and meaninglessness. Just like old school fairy tales deal with childhood fears and traumas by conveying understanding and acceptance through allegory (ie. Little Red Riding hood is about sexual predation), so too does religion, albeit on a more sophisticated and encompassing scale. Religion, understood in my terms, does not deal with fear of death and meaningless through providing escapism, but by teaching understanding and acceptance through allegory. It is the best kind of coping mechanism.
This, perhaps, is the core of my belief system regarding religion. Religion is allegory that never breaks the fourth wall. Treated as such, it is not strident, it is not threatening, it just pushes gently and inexorably onto your skull, whispering how to live a good life, how to prepare for death, how to deal with problems both large and small. I've been working with this belief system for most of my adult life and I have yet to iron out all the wrinkles, but the beauty and reasonableness with which Christianity has opened up to me since then has assured me that I am onto something real and powerful.
Hopefully this clears up at least some of the enigma of my love for and defense of a religion I don't believe. I'm not an enigmatic person. I sometimes wish I was, which is why my first reaction to being called enigmatic is flattery. My second reaction, learned with time, is a recognition that any perception of enigma is simply a failure of mine to convey myself. I don't really want to be enigmatic anyways.
At the end of the day, these are arguments of belief and experience. There is a hard wall between us which you and I may or may not be able to bridge. Barring the success of such an appeal, I have this: Indulging in militant atheism and then posting it on your blog is cliche and contributes nothing to public discourse. Maybe in New Jersey militant atheism seems like an important voice that needs to be heard, but I assure you that your message is out there. Repeating it will only accentuate the misunderstanding and blind hostility on both sides.
Your post will provide no emotional comfort for militant atheists emotionally traumatized by the thought that their position is crazy. I've never met a militant atheist who thought their position was remotely crazy. Every one has been unwaveringly convinced that their position is the most sane position possible. Militant atheists need no comforting. What they need is a dose of reality. The crazier they think of themselves, the better. Their position is not valid. It is understandable, but it is not valid. Crazy is a label societies have traditionally utilized to cope with unconscionably destructive behavior. Militant atheism is destructive. It is hypocritical. It foments everything it seeks to combat. Its existence does no good for anybody, let alone people as a whole. What you are doing is at best, slightly bad for the world and at worst, extremely ugly. In either case it is not constructive in any artistic, philosophical or political sense I can think of. That post of yours is poison and it, my dear friend, is indefensible.
A friend of mine (a nonbeliever), after reading your post and my defending of your character, said, "well, still, you can be the nicest person and then turn around and say you hate niggers". I mean, unless that was the point, unless this was all an exercise in how slippery a slope hateful militant atheism is from a place of thoughtful agnosticism?
For what it's worth, Rob, I don't consider you militant anything either. You say that in defending religion I am "defending the indefensible"? Lines like that ensure a long return letter from me.
So you say it was your laughter after being angry, bigoted and confrontational that made it ok? I guess it depends on the kind of laughter. I laugh a hard, cruel laugh when I've made a particularly witty joke at someone's (or an implied group's) expense. That was the laughter (maybe muted, but the spirit anyways) I envisioned in your post. It is a laughter at one's own horribleness, but it's also a sort of victory lap, a twisted embrace of all that is unholy about wit and being born to, frankly, a superior mind. It has its place in my life and I expect it has its place in yours. I'm just saying that if that kind of laughter has made its way to strangers simply for having ash on their foreheads, you've gotten a little far afield.
Life is not nearly so simple, and I'm not talking about the minority of nonbelievers who will wear ash each year. I'm talking about the bivalent nature of something as enmeshed into human life and culture as religion. It can be very bad for people, but if you miss its capacity to genuinely be very good for people or indeed miss the extent to which it genuinely helps most people within its clutches, you are missing something very important.
Living in Davis taught every person of notable intellect how boring militant atheism can be and frankly, how crass it is. I've lived the dream of a majority atheist/agnostic society and I can tell you for certain that it is a place of rationalized persecution, bigotry and, this is especially important, a notable lack of philosophical thought. Can you believe we have an atheist/agnostic club in such a place? What the hell do you think they discuss at their meetings? Seriously, all I can think of is getting out "the word" and why non-non-believers suck. They certainly don't have much to discuss in terms of personal philosophy. I can't imagine a UCD organization less likely to include an individual of insight and imagination.
I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I was just as helpless in not believing in god as so many people are helpless in believing in him. To think otherwise is to give oneself too much credit. There is no minority of people who came to religion by choice. There is a minority of people whose environmental inputs were balanced enough that their decision was decided by native personality rather than those environmental inputs. People are simply not that freethinking. I'm not a determinist, I just recognize genuine free choice for being the intensely rare thing that it is.
I know a handful of enormously intelligent believers. That's not enough, by itself, to give me pause before deriding poster boys for a largely retarded sort of follow-the-leader mentality. It was hearing intelligent people talk about the significance of religion to them that explained to me why religion has existed as something enduring and powerful with deep relevance to the human condition rather than as some transient fad. That, is enough to give me pause before deriding even people who are obviously floatsam upon the tides of religious alignment. It's even enough to give me pause before deriding a person who so clearly is being negatively affected by their floatsamesque religious affiliation, because I cannot easily estimate the positives that religion contributes to their life.
The "is religion more good or bad?" topic is an especially poignant one for me, because my very favorite "intelligent believer" has been affected both so positively and so negatively by her religion. I've tried to imagine what kind of person she would be without her religion and I find it just too inextricably tied. The knee-jerk agnostic reaction would be a revulsion that somebody could be so consumed by a human institution, particularly under the false notion that the institution was superhuman in origin, but being affected by religion is no different from being affected by anything else and there is nothing inherently wrong with being affected so deeply by human institutions. Individuality is, after all, just another value of human construction.
Back to my point, though. My friend is affected in incredibly positive ways by her faith and in dangerous and potentially limiting ways. She lives a life with both more pain and more joy than I think she would live without religion. As to whether religion made her already-intense personality "gel" into the amazing person she is or whether it has straitjacketed her true potential or paved a road for her eventual self-destruction, I cannot say. Surely there is an example somewhere for every case. For now, I have decided it is best that I take it on faith that it does more good than bad. Whether or not that is true, though, I think her life is unquestionably the richer for having religion.
My highest hope for the world is not that people live happy lives free of the worst kinds of sorrow. My highest hope is that people live rich lives, full of both enormous happiness and enormous sorrow. My hope is that somewhere in the process that experience imparts to them tremendous insight into human nature. If religion makes the world a more painful place on the balance, that is still worth the richness and wisdom it brings to the world. Peace and happiness always sounded terribly boring, anyways. I concede that my belief as to what the balance comes to can be reduced to simple faith in my own educated guess. I also believe that if you had any kind of appreciation for its good, you'd see it "being more good than bad" for the very likely possibility that I see it. You say the hurt unleashed on the world by religion is unfathomable? The good unleashed is certainly also unfathomable. To think otherwise is hubris. Who are you to call the balance in religion's disfavor?
Militant atheists often write-off religion's appeal as grounded in fear of "meaninglessness and death". Let me open by saying people respond poorly and inconsistently to ultimatums ("Go to church or burn in hell! Donate a dollar to Red Cross or burn in hell! Wash your hands or go to hell!"). In practice, it only gets you so far in coercing action and loyalty. Cults are just religions without the staying power. Religion survives because there is wisdom inlaid in the tradition, rules and ceremony with genuine human relevance that resonates with people and their children.
To be sure, there is also the appeal of escaping "meaningless and death", but from my vantage point that appeal is rooted much deeper than such a predictable write-off would suggest. Religion is a beautiful and sophisticated allegory for dealing with death and meaninglessness. Just like old school fairy tales deal with childhood fears and traumas by conveying understanding and acceptance through allegory (ie. Little Red Riding hood is about sexual predation), so too does religion, albeit on a more sophisticated and encompassing scale. Religion, understood in my terms, does not deal with fear of death and meaningless through providing escapism, but by teaching understanding and acceptance through allegory. It is the best kind of coping mechanism.
This, perhaps, is the core of my belief system regarding religion. Religion is allegory that never breaks the fourth wall. Treated as such, it is not strident, it is not threatening, it just pushes gently and inexorably onto your skull, whispering how to live a good life, how to prepare for death, how to deal with problems both large and small. I've been working with this belief system for most of my adult life and I have yet to iron out all the wrinkles, but the beauty and reasonableness with which Christianity has opened up to me since then has assured me that I am onto something real and powerful.
Hopefully this clears up at least some of the enigma of my love for and defense of a religion I don't believe. I'm not an enigmatic person. I sometimes wish I was, which is why my first reaction to being called enigmatic is flattery. My second reaction, learned with time, is a recognition that any perception of enigma is simply a failure of mine to convey myself. I don't really want to be enigmatic anyways.
At the end of the day, these are arguments of belief and experience. There is a hard wall between us which you and I may or may not be able to bridge. Barring the success of such an appeal, I have this: Indulging in militant atheism and then posting it on your blog is cliche and contributes nothing to public discourse. Maybe in New Jersey militant atheism seems like an important voice that needs to be heard, but I assure you that your message is out there. Repeating it will only accentuate the misunderstanding and blind hostility on both sides.
Your post will provide no emotional comfort for militant atheists emotionally traumatized by the thought that their position is crazy. I've never met a militant atheist who thought their position was remotely crazy. Every one has been unwaveringly convinced that their position is the most sane position possible. Militant atheists need no comforting. What they need is a dose of reality. The crazier they think of themselves, the better. Their position is not valid. It is understandable, but it is not valid. Crazy is a label societies have traditionally utilized to cope with unconscionably destructive behavior. Militant atheism is destructive. It is hypocritical. It foments everything it seeks to combat. Its existence does no good for anybody, let alone people as a whole. What you are doing is at best, slightly bad for the world and at worst, extremely ugly. In either case it is not constructive in any artistic, philosophical or political sense I can think of. That post of yours is poison and it, my dear friend, is indefensible.
A friend of mine (a nonbeliever), after reading your post and my defending of your character, said, "well, still, you can be the nicest person and then turn around and say you hate niggers". I mean, unless that was the point, unless this was all an exercise in how slippery a slope hateful militant atheism is from a place of thoughtful agnosticism?
Thursday, January 20, 2011
January Update
Quite a few things in my life changed with the new year.
Howard finally moved from Davis. He's helping his parents out for awhile and then he's going to move to Santa Barbara and live with his sister.
I got a new girlfriend. Her name is Sarah. She is cool and things are going very well. We went to San Francisco last weekend and had a blast. Props to Mereb for his restaurant recommendation (Burma Superstar). I bought some random stuff in Chinatown (6.50 a pound for dried shiitakes!). We hung out with Matt and Cory and I finally got to see at least a part their brewing process.
I got a pea coat and an mp3 player for Christmas, both of which have been in near-constant use since I returned to Davis.
The mp3 player has caused kind of a music renaissance in my life. Basically, it's allowed me to listen to music of my choosing at work and in transit. I've been able to give a lot more music my undivided attention and I've started to intensively research and download music again. I've been working on developing a taste for emo and the Rolling Stones. Somewhere along the way I acquired a taste for Sunny Day Real Estate, Supergrass, the Beta Band, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, the Jayhawks and the Vapors. I also reaffirmed my relationship with the Shoes and Wilco, finally listened to John Cale's solo work and finally acquired the two fabled power pop albums by the Searchers that I had been looking for since last spring.
Amidst all the fun and turnover, the application deadlines for various graduate programs have been rolling in. Which is why I'm apologizing for not posting anything else this month. It's not that my mind is not brimming with good post ideas, it's that I can't justify making good on them when I could be doing something so urgently useful. So, wish me luck. Heaven knows I can use all the help I can get to turn in a few halfway decent applications by their deadlines.
Howard finally moved from Davis. He's helping his parents out for awhile and then he's going to move to Santa Barbara and live with his sister.
I got a new girlfriend. Her name is Sarah. She is cool and things are going very well. We went to San Francisco last weekend and had a blast. Props to Mereb for his restaurant recommendation (Burma Superstar). I bought some random stuff in Chinatown (6.50 a pound for dried shiitakes!). We hung out with Matt and Cory and I finally got to see at least a part their brewing process.
I got a pea coat and an mp3 player for Christmas, both of which have been in near-constant use since I returned to Davis.
The mp3 player has caused kind of a music renaissance in my life. Basically, it's allowed me to listen to music of my choosing at work and in transit. I've been able to give a lot more music my undivided attention and I've started to intensively research and download music again. I've been working on developing a taste for emo and the Rolling Stones. Somewhere along the way I acquired a taste for Sunny Day Real Estate, Supergrass, the Beta Band, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, the Jayhawks and the Vapors. I also reaffirmed my relationship with the Shoes and Wilco, finally listened to John Cale's solo work and finally acquired the two fabled power pop albums by the Searchers that I had been looking for since last spring.
Amidst all the fun and turnover, the application deadlines for various graduate programs have been rolling in. Which is why I'm apologizing for not posting anything else this month. It's not that my mind is not brimming with good post ideas, it's that I can't justify making good on them when I could be doing something so urgently useful. So, wish me luck. Heaven knows I can use all the help I can get to turn in a few halfway decent applications by their deadlines.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Max's Warm Tonic for Colds
My dad infected the whole family with norovirus. Just when we thought it had burned itself out and I'd made it into the clear, I came down with symptoms when I woke up on Christmas Eve (nausea, sore throat, fever, headache, sleeping a lot). I felt better that night and enjoyed a thoroughly delicious Christmas dinner with family. I woke up Christmas morning at four am to puke and continued to puke until noon.
I made it back to Davis on Sunday and the worst is over, but I apparently got a cold simultaneously (for a second my dad thought my respiratory symptoms ruled out norovirus, but I just got a twofer), so now I have a cough. I made this up a while back as a general cold remedy. Cheers to those of you who also feel like crap.
Add a dollop of honey to a mug of water
Boil in microwave
(Optional) Add some kind of black tea
Squeeze in a slice of lemon or lime
Add a drop of angostura bitters (a full dash if you skipped the tea)
This was originally devised for someone who was morally opposed to tea, but I like a little caffeine in mine. Fun Fact: I've actually used a scaled up version of this for hydration on bike trips. Beats the crap out of water.
I made it back to Davis on Sunday and the worst is over, but I apparently got a cold simultaneously (for a second my dad thought my respiratory symptoms ruled out norovirus, but I just got a twofer), so now I have a cough. I made this up a while back as a general cold remedy. Cheers to those of you who also feel like crap.
Add a dollop of honey to a mug of water
Boil in microwave
(Optional) Add some kind of black tea
Squeeze in a slice of lemon or lime
Add a drop of angostura bitters (a full dash if you skipped the tea)
This was originally devised for someone who was morally opposed to tea, but I like a little caffeine in mine. Fun Fact: I've actually used a scaled up version of this for hydration on bike trips. Beats the crap out of water.
Monday, November 29, 2010
Bri's Board and My Theory of Loss
I took Bri's board surfing with Caius and a friend while visiting home for Thanksgiving. There wasn't a very good break at the beach we went to, but the waves were medium-sized and surprisingly strong. I snapped Bri's longboard in half. I didn't do anything special, just got knocked off the board and dragged under by the leash. Another wave followed and snapped the board while I was underwater. That was it.
I really loved that board, which brings me to my theory on the nature of grief and loss. I believe that the emotional fallout of loss, which is to say grieving, is the process of disentangling the lost thing from your vision of the future. I didn't realize it until now, but I really wanted to hang ten off that board.
Bri wasn't overly bummed about losing her board. She had always magnanimously taken my board when the two of us surfed. Our surf guru, my mom's exboyfriend Bob, however, adored it. The board was a full length longboard, broad winged and thin with an extra-light shell. This made it particularly fragile and a rather elegant ride. The board was quite sensitive for its length and could turn as fast as my much shorter board. The broad nose always beckoned me to try and get my toes on it, but it also caught the breeze like a sail, which was especially inconvenient because of the ease with which the board turned.
After the board broke, I gathered up the two pieces and took them home. Caius asked if we could repair it, but breaking in half is universally understood as a surf board's death sentence. Once the wood stringer's integrity is ruined, there's no way to make the board whole again. Bob wanted to make sure we'd kept the pieces, though, because he had a friend who could make a replica based on them. Bob estimated it would cost four hundred to make (the price moderately-used longboards go for in retail surfshops). Knowing Bob and his trouble with alcoholism and, even when sober, with finances, Mom predicted that he'd never get the money together for the board.
That not-quite-loss makes the whole experience more agonizing. The possibility of riding a board like that again makes it that much harder to let go. But let go we must. No good will come from wistfully looking forward to a day that will not come. Unfortunately, Bob left that cursed glimmer of hope and I'll likely have trouble shaking the image of one day riding a board like that. Instead of dealing that loss decisively, that hope will linger and gnaw on dark cold nights. Sometimes I wish that board's reincarnation was impossible.
We also must remind ourselves that, excepting the people we had at birth, loss necessarily must follow gain, and for all that we've had, our lives have been richer for it and we are still the better for it. I'm a much better surfer than I was before I started riding Bri's board.
We should also remind ourselves of all that we still have. Though I transferred technical ownership of my board to Bri, I'll still be able to ride it whenever I get a chance. I've always really liked my board. It doesn't paddle quite as fast or have a broad, inviting nose, but it's a more durable and versatile board. I think every surfboard has something to teach the rider, so my surfing may ultimately benefit when I eventually buy a new board to replace the one I ceded to Bri. Of course, I'll have to return to living on the coast for that to happen.
I really loved that board, which brings me to my theory on the nature of grief and loss. I believe that the emotional fallout of loss, which is to say grieving, is the process of disentangling the lost thing from your vision of the future. I didn't realize it until now, but I really wanted to hang ten off that board.
Bri wasn't overly bummed about losing her board. She had always magnanimously taken my board when the two of us surfed. Our surf guru, my mom's exboyfriend Bob, however, adored it. The board was a full length longboard, broad winged and thin with an extra-light shell. This made it particularly fragile and a rather elegant ride. The board was quite sensitive for its length and could turn as fast as my much shorter board. The broad nose always beckoned me to try and get my toes on it, but it also caught the breeze like a sail, which was especially inconvenient because of the ease with which the board turned.
After the board broke, I gathered up the two pieces and took them home. Caius asked if we could repair it, but breaking in half is universally understood as a surf board's death sentence. Once the wood stringer's integrity is ruined, there's no way to make the board whole again. Bob wanted to make sure we'd kept the pieces, though, because he had a friend who could make a replica based on them. Bob estimated it would cost four hundred to make (the price moderately-used longboards go for in retail surfshops). Knowing Bob and his trouble with alcoholism and, even when sober, with finances, Mom predicted that he'd never get the money together for the board.
That not-quite-loss makes the whole experience more agonizing. The possibility of riding a board like that again makes it that much harder to let go. But let go we must. No good will come from wistfully looking forward to a day that will not come. Unfortunately, Bob left that cursed glimmer of hope and I'll likely have trouble shaking the image of one day riding a board like that. Instead of dealing that loss decisively, that hope will linger and gnaw on dark cold nights. Sometimes I wish that board's reincarnation was impossible.
We also must remind ourselves that, excepting the people we had at birth, loss necessarily must follow gain, and for all that we've had, our lives have been richer for it and we are still the better for it. I'm a much better surfer than I was before I started riding Bri's board.
We should also remind ourselves of all that we still have. Though I transferred technical ownership of my board to Bri, I'll still be able to ride it whenever I get a chance. I've always really liked my board. It doesn't paddle quite as fast or have a broad, inviting nose, but it's a more durable and versatile board. I think every surfboard has something to teach the rider, so my surfing may ultimately benefit when I eventually buy a new board to replace the one I ceded to Bri. Of course, I'll have to return to living on the coast for that to happen.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Scary Movie Month, Year Four
For those of you not familiar with Scary Movie Month, check the original post that I wrote last year. It explains everything. It recently occurred to me that the story of Scary Movie Month is a really good illustration of my approach to appreciation of things in general.
Now, for the movies I watched October 2010:
Bride of Frankenstein
This is one of those unusual sequels to better the original. It's more thoughtful, horrible, and has more heart than the original Frankenstein. The plot of the original was so familiar, it took something away from the movie's grandeur. I didn't know what to expect with Bride.
Ringu
It was scary, as expected. The only part of the movie that really stuck with me, though, was the fascinating relationship between the protagonist and her exhusband while they try to unravel the curse on their heads.
Carrie
My favorite scary movie of the month, this is a movie about a high school outcast. The symbolism is beautiful, thoughtful and exquisitely disturbing. The tension is built over the course of the movie until the famous breaking point, which (surprise) involves a lot of blood, in case you hadn't seen the movie's cover.
Martin
Martin is a real-life vampire. As he states emphatically, "there is no magic". He doesn't have any powers. All he needs is a syringe of tranquilizer, a razor blade and some planning. The themes worked here reminded me strongly of Carrie-- an expose of the alienated, painfully shy teen with destructive antisocial tendencies. The audience is invited to pity and identify with both main characters. However, whereas Carrie is a fundamentally good person driven to those actions by circumstance, Martin is a sociopath.
Night of the Living Dead
This is the movie that established the classic zombie. In the last decade, zombies have been getting faster and more fragile, but there's a lot to be said for a zombie that will take a shot to the heart, pause, and keep coming. Eating people adds something too, I think.
Dawn of the Dead
George Romero returned to the genre that he had popularized with Night of the Living Dead ten years later with this sequel. The bulk of the movie is set in a mall. A lot had happened since 1968, and though Romero didn't change the premise or lore, he certainly doesn't take himself as seriously this time (rather than sobering black and white, blood is now a garish orange-red). As with Living Dead, if the social commentary of the movie wasn't already painstakingly obvious, Romero hammers you with it at the credits. Movies like Shawn of the Dead or Zombieland demonstrate a considerable debt to this classic.
Suspiria
This Italian film seems to be the best-regarded horror movie about witchcraft. It's set in a ballet school in Germany and the main character is American (though she almost only speaks Italian). The movie plays as a sort of boarding school mystery. There's a strong sense of apprehension and "weirdness" through the movie. I wasn't a big fan, but the movie is obviously well-made.
Poltergeist
Poltergeist comes off as kind of the flagship for the family-fun horror genre. The amount of special effects is competitive with contemporary popcorn movies, which is saying something. It takes you on a fun, fright-filled ride, accomplishing exactly what it set out to do.
Let the Right One In
This Swedish film is about a twelve-year-old boy befriending a vampire girl. The movie's as much an old-school romance as a horror film. I thought it was great.
The Descent
This keeps getting reviewed as the best horror movie of the 00's or in the words of a friend, "a horror movie that doesn't suck". As you would expect from one about spelunking, it is incredibly dark and claustrophobic. That pretty much sums things up.
Now, for the movies I watched October 2010:
Bride of Frankenstein
This is one of those unusual sequels to better the original. It's more thoughtful, horrible, and has more heart than the original Frankenstein. The plot of the original was so familiar, it took something away from the movie's grandeur. I didn't know what to expect with Bride.
Ringu
It was scary, as expected. The only part of the movie that really stuck with me, though, was the fascinating relationship between the protagonist and her exhusband while they try to unravel the curse on their heads.
Carrie
My favorite scary movie of the month, this is a movie about a high school outcast. The symbolism is beautiful, thoughtful and exquisitely disturbing. The tension is built over the course of the movie until the famous breaking point, which (surprise) involves a lot of blood, in case you hadn't seen the movie's cover.
Martin
Martin is a real-life vampire. As he states emphatically, "there is no magic". He doesn't have any powers. All he needs is a syringe of tranquilizer, a razor blade and some planning. The themes worked here reminded me strongly of Carrie-- an expose of the alienated, painfully shy teen with destructive antisocial tendencies. The audience is invited to pity and identify with both main characters. However, whereas Carrie is a fundamentally good person driven to those actions by circumstance, Martin is a sociopath.
Night of the Living Dead
This is the movie that established the classic zombie. In the last decade, zombies have been getting faster and more fragile, but there's a lot to be said for a zombie that will take a shot to the heart, pause, and keep coming. Eating people adds something too, I think.
Dawn of the Dead
George Romero returned to the genre that he had popularized with Night of the Living Dead ten years later with this sequel. The bulk of the movie is set in a mall. A lot had happened since 1968, and though Romero didn't change the premise or lore, he certainly doesn't take himself as seriously this time (rather than sobering black and white, blood is now a garish orange-red). As with Living Dead, if the social commentary of the movie wasn't already painstakingly obvious, Romero hammers you with it at the credits. Movies like Shawn of the Dead or Zombieland demonstrate a considerable debt to this classic.
Suspiria
This Italian film seems to be the best-regarded horror movie about witchcraft. It's set in a ballet school in Germany and the main character is American (though she almost only speaks Italian). The movie plays as a sort of boarding school mystery. There's a strong sense of apprehension and "weirdness" through the movie. I wasn't a big fan, but the movie is obviously well-made.
Poltergeist
Poltergeist comes off as kind of the flagship for the family-fun horror genre. The amount of special effects is competitive with contemporary popcorn movies, which is saying something. It takes you on a fun, fright-filled ride, accomplishing exactly what it set out to do.
Let the Right One In
This Swedish film is about a twelve-year-old boy befriending a vampire girl. The movie's as much an old-school romance as a horror film. I thought it was great.
The Descent
This keeps getting reviewed as the best horror movie of the 00's or in the words of a friend, "a horror movie that doesn't suck". As you would expect from one about spelunking, it is incredibly dark and claustrophobic. That pretty much sums things up.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Legalizing Pot
I thought this day would never come. Well, I at least thought it would take another ten or twenty years before a measure to legalize recreational marijuana would be seriously considered by an American constituency. I was wrong. California's Proposition 19, that will legalize recreational pot use, is just barely behind in the polls.
This is spectacularly cool for a number of reasons, the foremost being the realization of a truer liberty in America. I've long thought that our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves to know that an essentially harmless drug like marijuana would be made formally illegal. If Ben Franklin were alive today I'm sure he'd be a fan of pot.
I will grant that marijuana is not entirely harmless. Like caffeine, THC can stunt childrens' growth, like alcohol it lowers inhibitions and though there is no indication that extensive abuse causes brain damage the way alcohol does, residual THC (aka permastone) can dampen brain function for a month or two, though only noticeably so if epic quantities of pot are involved. I think every informed person will grant that the social risks of marijuana use are vastly overshadowed by alcohol and the health risks are overshadowed by tobacco.
I think it's fairly obvious that the decrease in price and increase in availability of pot will result in an increase in its consumption. I'd like you to pause for a moment and consider whether that's a bad thing. Prop 19 opponents will point out that many people have abuse problems with the drugs we already have legal, so why should we allow consumption of yet another drug? The answer is that while alcohol and prescription drugs do cause problems, there is an overwhelming good that comes from their being legal. I know I've enjoyed the benefits of responsible alcohol use.
THC is a non-habit forming drug, in contrast to nicotine, caffeine and, yes, alcohol. That means that consumers must repeatedly make the conscious, non-coerced choice to continue smoking pot. It is a drug consumed more voluntarily than any major legal recreational drug, to say nothing of hard drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin. Honestly, if not for the deference of American common law to consensus --that is, approaching this from a purely constitutional perspective-- marijuana use has far better grounds as a individual right than alcohol or tobacco.
There is some concern that legalizing pot would increase availability of the drug to minors. If Prohibition was any indication, though, bringing pot consumption above ground will make it easier to control who the drug is made available to. Right now minors have better access to pot than cigarettes or alcohol.
One figure I heard estimated the annual value of the Californian pot crop at twelve billion dollars. That's roughly three times the value of every other field crop in the state combined. That crop's value will diminish considerably if Proposition 19 passes. A modest chunk (1.5 billion) will go into taxes. Based on a projected 80% decrease in marijuana prices, that only leaves about one billion for the pot growing industry. Granted, these figures assume no increase in consumption, but these figures project a collapse in industry value by a factor of ten.
Of the original 12 billion, 1.5 billion will go to taxes and around a billion will go to run the industry. The remaining nine billion will be stolen back from the black market economy. Mexican drug cartels make a majority of their income from marijuana trafficking, so we can be sure that a significant amount of money will no longer be making it southward or indeed into organized crime across the state. Further, the profit margins that growers, distributors and dealers once made will disappear in the blink of an eye. Without the risk of incarceration those jobs will no longer pay unreasonably well. It is worth mentioning that Kush Magazine, everybody's "premier cannabis lifestyle magazine" had an ad in it opposing Prop 19, paid for by a medical marijuana dispensary. Middle school dope peddlers and Mexican drug lords won't be the only people suffering if Prop 19 is passed, let's not forget California's newest capitalists.
Voting for Proposition 19 is the correct choice from both a practical standpoint (improving government finance at the expense of cartels) and a civil liberties one. Legalizing a relatively harmless recreational drug like marijuana is fundamentally American and would make California a beacon of liberty. It would also probably set up a Supreme Court battle worth talking about.
Though September polls showed Prop 19 leading in September, it has slipped since then. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a consolation prize should the Proposition fail-- decriminalization. A fairly even vote will also get people thinking about the ins and outs of legalization. There's a decent chance that a loss now will set up a victory later. That said, don't plan on losing this quite yet. The vote is still close and a recent study showed that Prop 19 polls are subject to a strong social desirability bias.
This is spectacularly cool for a number of reasons, the foremost being the realization of a truer liberty in America. I've long thought that our founding fathers must be rolling in their graves to know that an essentially harmless drug like marijuana would be made formally illegal. If Ben Franklin were alive today I'm sure he'd be a fan of pot.
I will grant that marijuana is not entirely harmless. Like caffeine, THC can stunt childrens' growth, like alcohol it lowers inhibitions and though there is no indication that extensive abuse causes brain damage the way alcohol does, residual THC (aka permastone) can dampen brain function for a month or two, though only noticeably so if epic quantities of pot are involved. I think every informed person will grant that the social risks of marijuana use are vastly overshadowed by alcohol and the health risks are overshadowed by tobacco.
I think it's fairly obvious that the decrease in price and increase in availability of pot will result in an increase in its consumption. I'd like you to pause for a moment and consider whether that's a bad thing. Prop 19 opponents will point out that many people have abuse problems with the drugs we already have legal, so why should we allow consumption of yet another drug? The answer is that while alcohol and prescription drugs do cause problems, there is an overwhelming good that comes from their being legal. I know I've enjoyed the benefits of responsible alcohol use.
THC is a non-habit forming drug, in contrast to nicotine, caffeine and, yes, alcohol. That means that consumers must repeatedly make the conscious, non-coerced choice to continue smoking pot. It is a drug consumed more voluntarily than any major legal recreational drug, to say nothing of hard drugs like meth, cocaine and heroin. Honestly, if not for the deference of American common law to consensus --that is, approaching this from a purely constitutional perspective-- marijuana use has far better grounds as a individual right than alcohol or tobacco.
There is some concern that legalizing pot would increase availability of the drug to minors. If Prohibition was any indication, though, bringing pot consumption above ground will make it easier to control who the drug is made available to. Right now minors have better access to pot than cigarettes or alcohol.
One figure I heard estimated the annual value of the Californian pot crop at twelve billion dollars. That's roughly three times the value of every other field crop in the state combined. That crop's value will diminish considerably if Proposition 19 passes. A modest chunk (1.5 billion) will go into taxes. Based on a projected 80% decrease in marijuana prices, that only leaves about one billion for the pot growing industry. Granted, these figures assume no increase in consumption, but these figures project a collapse in industry value by a factor of ten.
Of the original 12 billion, 1.5 billion will go to taxes and around a billion will go to run the industry. The remaining nine billion will be stolen back from the black market economy. Mexican drug cartels make a majority of their income from marijuana trafficking, so we can be sure that a significant amount of money will no longer be making it southward or indeed into organized crime across the state. Further, the profit margins that growers, distributors and dealers once made will disappear in the blink of an eye. Without the risk of incarceration those jobs will no longer pay unreasonably well. It is worth mentioning that Kush Magazine, everybody's "premier cannabis lifestyle magazine" had an ad in it opposing Prop 19, paid for by a medical marijuana dispensary. Middle school dope peddlers and Mexican drug lords won't be the only people suffering if Prop 19 is passed, let's not forget California's newest capitalists.
Voting for Proposition 19 is the correct choice from both a practical standpoint (improving government finance at the expense of cartels) and a civil liberties one. Legalizing a relatively harmless recreational drug like marijuana is fundamentally American and would make California a beacon of liberty. It would also probably set up a Supreme Court battle worth talking about.
Though September polls showed Prop 19 leading in September, it has slipped since then. Arnold Schwarzenegger is preparing a consolation prize should the Proposition fail-- decriminalization. A fairly even vote will also get people thinking about the ins and outs of legalization. There's a decent chance that a loss now will set up a victory later. That said, don't plan on losing this quite yet. The vote is still close and a recent study showed that Prop 19 polls are subject to a strong social desirability bias.
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