Saturday, March 7, 2009

Dawn - A Short Story

He checks the balance on his pre-paid cell phone.  It tells him cheerfully to "re-up now" as his balance is under five dollars.  He can receive calls but not make them, which isn't going to happen because no one calls him any longer.  Not even bill collectors.  The bills exist.  They sit opened and fanned out on the table that he pulled from a dumpster.  The red "Notice" adorning every letter looking like Kool-Aid on the white paper with the long notice about this being an attempt to collect a debt.

The only sounds he hears is the rumble of his stomach and the cat sleeping on the window sill.  He has made sure that he has been able to feed his cat, even when he hasn't bothered to feed himself.   He thinks this to be fair.  Making sure the cat is properly fed before he takes him to the park and lets him go.  He knows this cat, which is named "Cat", will survive.  He was completely feral before he was rescued and treats his nominal master as a food dispenser and little more; an emaciated vending machine of ash and salmon.  "Cat" will become the dominant male of the park where he has seen at least a dozen cats before.

"Cat" deserves a chance.

The fridge serves as little more than storage space, the power having been disconnected weeks before.  He opens the door and with a deft flick of his thumb, provides light with an old Zippo that family legend says his grandfather carried in the South Pacific.  He, of course, does not believe this.  If he did, he would not still own it.  He would have given it to someone to prove his love or fidelity or some other concept of humanity that he vaguely remembers from when he considered himself human. 

The fridge still has that decaying and clammy smell because he was too lazy to remove the spoilt food for two weeks.  He couldn't be bothered.  It was already gone and what was the point.  He grabs a half empty bottle of water and fills it from the sink.  The water is still working. He drinks it down, fills it again, and sips at it for a while, hoping that the water will confuse his stomach for a while, at least until he can pass out on the old couch, inherited from some college kids who moved out years before, a couch that remembers when he was human.

He sees himself as a ghost now, no reflection, a shadow in other people's eyes. 

He does not know what caused this change, when he stopped getting calls from friends, when he stopped going out, when he stopped caring, as it just happened to him.  He stayed in the same place and life, and everything associated with life, passed him by, leaving him alone, which is all he ever claimed to want in the first place.

He looks at his watch, which was a gift a long time ago, and it is a reminder from when he was among the living.  It reads quarter past two through the scratched and dirty face.  The face is why he still has it.  The pawn shop refused it.  The perturbed Korean owner sending him away with a scowl for wasting time.  He can nap now.  Or try.  He doesn't sleep so much as he lurches from bad dream to bad dream, never remembering them.  He does not remember anything but the moment before and the moments of shame he has had since becoming what he is now.

Sweating, he wakes up.  "Cat" is sitting on his chest with a look that is barely distinguishable from his larger and less domesticated cousins who roam the jungles and the savannahs.   If "Cat" were larger than his eleven and one half pounds, he would be feline Fancy Feast right now.

He checks his watch.  It is now seven in the evening.  He was able to escape for five hours.

He realizes that he stinks.  He cannot remember the last time he showered.  Too difficult in the dark, plus he can't afford food, how can he afford soap?  It doesn't matter.  He reaches into the pile of clothes that have accumulated around the couch and pulls out a t-shirt.  It doesn't smell of shit.  He slugs off his sodden t-shirt and painfully puts on the "clean" one.  He notices the blisters and pustules and other assorted blemishes that cover his chest and arms.  He wonders what his face looks like. Tentatively, he touches it.  There is a matted and greasy beard there.  When did he grow a beard?  He is tempted to uncover the mirror and look at himself. 

He fails to remember why he covered it in the first place.

"Best to leave it alone," he thinks to himself with neither a sense of self pity nor one of regret.  He has reached this point without knowing how he got here and he does not care to start thinking about it now.

He drinks some more water, stands, and puts on the same jeans he has been wearing for…how long?

He does not know and this does not disturb him.  His lack of realization is simply that.  He lives in each moment, waiting for the next minor tragedy.  His bare feet are black with grime and he is missing a couple of toenails.  He pulls on battered generic sneakers, walks into the bathroom and takes a piss, not caring or realizing that he has missed the commode in the half light of the dark flat.

In the pile of clothes is a sweatshirt for a moving company.  He puts it on and grabs "Cat" who objects for a moment and then begins to purr.  This may be the first time that "Cat" has purred for him.

Opening the unlocked door, he has nothing to steal so he stopped locking it, he and "Cat" emerge into a small foyer that smells of waste, garbage, and diesel exhaust.  Not bothering to close the door behind him, he walks out onto the street, and towards the park.

"Cat" starts to struggle.  He now walks with a greater purpose.  This is the first goal he has a chance of completing.  He strides to the middle of the park and puts "Cat" down.  "Cat" looks at him and then runs off into the bushes.

"Mission accomplished," he blandly states without a hint of irony.

He turns, and walks down the hill toward the riverwalk.

The sun has almost set, and it is reflecting a pinking light across the brown expanse.

He walks south, not knowing why.  Both the direction and the choice to walk are unknowns to him.  It is not quite a compulsion, and it is less than a feeling.  Walking, it is.

He falls into a quiet reverie, feeling every step, not noticing when the river walk ends and he starts on a mud path.  The moon which has come up is obscured by clouds.  He cannot see the dial of his watch.  He does not know how long he has been walking or why he is continuing.

All he can do is continue though.  There is nothing else left for him to do.

He walks, ignoring the sounds of the water, and the light wind through the trees.  The insects of late summer quiet as he passes them, only beginning their songs when this presumed predator passes.

The night is as dark as he has ever experienced.

He continues; thirsty, hungry, and sore.  He thinks his feet are bleeding.

The light changes slowly, with a subtle shift that takes him a long time to notice.  By the time he does, dawn is almost upon him.

When the harsh, yet comforting, light of morning hits him, he makes his first decision it what seems to be decades.

He will continue to walk.

Friday, March 6, 2009

I See Lawsuits

Thumbs Down | The Biz | Kempt:

"PersonRatings is billing itself as “Yelp for people”—it’s the first site to offer quantitative approach to web celebrity—but giving people an open forum to say things about Julia Allison is a dangerous game, and the nastier it gets, the higher their traffic numbers will go."

This is either a brilliant idea or a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Interesting.

A run for your money - New York Politics Capitol Confidential - Albany Times Union - timesunion.com:

"Whether you agree with it or not, here’s an example of the sort of clever street action we could use in these grim times: Industry groups protesting Gov. David Paterson’s plan to impose an 8 percent tax on personal services, including gym memberships, will hold a “Race Against the Tax” 5K run in Albany at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 18."


But, David Paterson loves to run, would he join this protest run?

Cigarettes.

Every cigarette that a smoker has is going to be their "very last one".  It has nothing to do with whether or not they want another one, it is just that with the strike of the match, or the flick of the lighter, they hear the voices of everyone who has implored them to quit.  For the first two or three drags, these are the voices that one hears.  At that point, the nicotine floods the various receptors in the brain, and for a brief moment, you feel peace, and calm.  You are once again in control.  It is the illusion of control through.  It is an addict's control, a false front, where one believes that they are managing their demons, as if addictions were a team of spirited horses to be yoked into working as a team.

Why would someone smoke?  A common refrain is, "I started when I was young and stupid," which I cannot use.  I started smoking long after I knew better.  I was twenty one or twenty two when I became a serious smoker.  I may have been stupid, but I was not young.  Cigarettes do a number of things for me.  They fight of boredom, first of all.  With a pack of cigarettes, and a couple of books*, you can spend an effective afternoon ignoring people while feeling that you have accomplished something.**  Courting death, in a very long term sense, to fight off boredom seems just a bit silly though, does it not?  Cigarettes for me (and I am my own subject of study) act as a focusing agent.  It's not that I can think better while smoking, but…it is.  I have something to do with my hands, and something to focus on that allows my thoughts to flow in a coordinated fashion.  Think of my neurons like synchronized swimmers.  With a cigarette, they have music and practice, and without, no music, so…they can go through the motions, however, the timing is just a bit off.  Cigarettes force the smoker to think more clearly through the haze of tobacco smoke and to focus on living for the moment, enjoying the moment, and struggling through to the next moment when you can have a cigarette.  Smoking also allows to the smoker to recognize their own mortality in a very significant way.  Every smoker knows that they are going to die one day.  What makes them a bit different is that they would rather have the pleasure of the moment rather than longer viability into what Denis Leary referred to as the "adult diaper years".   Living in the moment becomes much more important than concerning yourself with the long term ramifications of something that is rather stupid and self destructive.

Ayn Rand wrote that a cigarette was fire tamed in man's fingertips, proof positive of a human mastery of nature and that the coal of a lit cigarette was a beacon of conscious thought.  Wendell Berry, on the other hand, wrote about the social aspects of smoking, the time it takes to smoke a cigarette is a time to connect with another person, a brief foray into bonding with someone over a shared interest.***

Therefore, I have a (semi) academic justification for smoking, but why do I do it?  More importantly, why do I promise to quit almost twenty times a day?  Am I lying to myself every single time I promise not to do this again?  Not consciously, I presume, but deep down, I know that I am a smoker.  I like smoking.  It gives me opportunities, and it (concurrently) helps me engage with other people while limiting my contact.  From my (admittedly skewed and damaged) perspective, that is what is referred to as a "win win" situation.

Should I quit?  Of course, I should.  Every person knows that.  Former smokers know this better than most.  I have been a former smoker, and currently, I am searching for ways to quit, but…

What should I replace it with?  What item is going to provide me with the immediate satisfaction?

That is the question, isn't it?

Once I have the answer, I will, once and for all time, become a former smoker.

Until then, it defines me, and limits who I am, but it makes me part of a community as well. 

Does needing to be a member of a community make me a gaping maw of need?  No.  It makes me human, with a longing to be part of a tribe, social, et cetera.  Yes, it is a tribe based on a shared (from the point of view of people like Eliot Spitzer) badness, but we are not pederasts or anything of the sort.  We just enjoy a sweet smelling weed that was introduced to Western society roughly five hundred years ago.  So…not really a big deal, right?

But it really is to a lot of people.   My health is an issue; debated in Congress, subject to taxation, and a point of criticism in the President.

Smokers get it.  You dislike us for our "disgusting" habit.  You think we should be regulated, taxed, and treated like crack addicts.

Which is why every flick of that lighter reminds us that we need to quit, even though, it feels so good.

*I always need a cigarette while reading, which is one of the reasons that I don't think I will be able to completely quit. 

**The best way to do this is a warm summer afternoon spent either in the park on a chaise or at a pub that has open air seating.  The latter is preferable because of the proximity to beer and that someone may see you (or more to the point, me) and think, "He drinks, he smokes, he reads, and he is bald!  He is perfect for me!" and buy me beer and cigarettes, compliment me on my book, and attempt to take me home for what I can only envision as something described as Dionysian.

***In this case, the interest will kill you eventually (if you are genetically pre-determined to die like this) and requires a certain amount of infrastructure to pull off.  If neither of you have cigarettes, nor a way to make fire easily (have you ever tried to make fire with a piece of bark, a stick, and elbow grease?  You can do it, I have tried and succeeded, however, [and let this be a lesson to you] my hands were sore for a week and my ability to do anything was severely impeded.  Why would I want to engage in an activity like this?  Let us refer to it as an attempt to keep a bright but easily bored five year old entertained while I was trying to relax at a mountain lake in the Berkshires.  I thought to myself, "1. How hard can it be? And 2. Every kid loves fire."  As I mentioned, it was considerably harder than it looks, which it probably why more kids don't burn down forests while playing indigenous people and white oppressors.) then it becomes impossible for you to share a "moment".  In addition to that, if your shared interest is your only shared interest, you can be friendly, but, not friends, as you are slowly killing each other and enabling really awful behavior, or so those thetruth.org commercials tell me.

Media I Am Not Going To Get To

More than Watchmen

The Limits of Control Trailer: Jim Jarmusch’s Greatest Hits -- Vulture -- Entertainment & Culture Blog -- New York Magazine

Those brains splattered on the floor? They belong to your New York film-geek friend who just saw the trailer for Limits of Control: Wong Kar Wai's cinematographer Christopher Doyle teams up with New York's most vertically haired auteur, Jim Jarmusch, for what looks like a metaphysical sex-murder-mood piece. The trailer identifies Jarmusch as the the director of Broken Flowers, Down by Law, and Ghost Dog, but it doesn't have to — the visuals (Bill Murray, the guitar, and Ghost Dog actor Isaach De Bankolé) quote all three films anyway.

Can I see this this weekend instead?

Brutal

Movie Review - Watchmen - For a Cold War, a Blue Superhero (and Friends) - NYTimes.com:

"Indeed, the ideal viewer — or reviewer, as the case may be — of the “Watchmen” movie would probably be a mid-’80s college sophomore with a smattering of Nietzsche, an extensive record collection and a comic-book nerd for a roommate. The film’s carefully preserved themes of apocalypse and decay might have proved powerfully unsettling to that anxious undergraduate sitting in his dorm room, listening to “99 Luftballons” and waiting for the world to end or the Berlin Wall to come down."

Brutal

Movie Review - Watchmen - For a Cold War, a Blue Superhero (and Friends) - NYTimes.com:

"Indeed, the ideal viewer — or reviewer, as the case may be — of the “Watchmen” movie would probably be a mid-’80s college sophomore with a smattering of Nietzsche, an extensive record collection and a comic-book nerd for a roommate. The film’s carefully preserved themes of apocalypse and decay might have proved powerfully unsettling to that anxious undergraduate sitting in his dorm room, listening to “99 Luftballons” and waiting for the world to end or the Berlin Wall to come down."

This should terrify me.

651,000 Jobs Reported Lost in February - NYTimes.com:

"Another 651,000 jobs were lost in February, adding to the millions of people who have been thrown out of work as the economic downturn deepens.

In a stark measure of the recession’s toll, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the national unemployment rate surged to 8.1 percent last month, its highest in 25 years."


And if I were capable of caring about anything apart from my own issues, it would, but...seeing that the likelihood is that I am going to become one of these statistics...not so much.

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Coffee.

The first sip of a mug of exceptionally bad coffee is memorable in the same way that a fond thought about a really bad evening is. There is nothing redeeming about that sip. The sip tells you to "take me as I am, addict, drink me down, and come back for more." There is no pretense to this. There is no rationalization to it.

Part of me longs to ignore the call of this so-called beverage, and wait for a pleasurable mug of coffee in my home, with my music*, and my couches, and my books** and my dog; a chain coffee house developed for me and me alone. There is always the option of the several very good coffee shops within walking distance of my home as well. Several independent and a couple of chains, which make up part of my life on a basis that is difficult to admit, at least publicly, because, on occasion, they serve as my only real human interaction for that day.

However, that is not an option right now, and the only option is this acidicly foul brown liquid that passes for coffee, which, like a monk scourging*** himself to make himself aware of his imperfections in the eyes of an omniscient and omnipotent God, I embrace this option, this choice, as an acknowledgement of choices that I failed to make.

"How bad can this coffee be?" you must be tempted to ask.

If the phrase exceptionally bad has no meaning for you, no context you can gather…allow me to phrase it this way. This first sip is comparable to the first kiss of a love affair you know to be doomed from the beginning. It is breathtaking, and wonderful, and tragic; a doomed visit with faux happiness, ultimately unsatisfying in a way that you do not understand at the time and you only come to know after time has passed.

If you are anything like me, you make a vow never to go back to this particular purveyor, regardless of the economic benefits, regardless of the expediency of the moment, feeling as if you hold off for something better, tastier, more enjoyable, you may have one a subtle victory over yourself and the doubts that you have over your worth. "I deserve better, " you scream to yourself.

And you wait…

But…

It is still there. Waiting, available, unfulfilling, and without judgment, knowing that you will come back, because, this is a mug of coffee, and anything you assign to it is really just a manifestation of your Id. The coffee does not care if you ignore it, or if you want something better. The coffee just is. After a little time has passed, you (or, more to the point, I) slink back, mug in hand, and pour yourself a mug, hoping that this time, it may be better, fooling yourself into thinking that you are being the better person by giving this coffee a chance.

It is not that, really.

By this point, the coffee has taken on an aspect of everything regarding your life. Imagine the way that one would have to feel about themselves for a minute to make a mug of bad coffee a metaphor for their life and their beliefs (justified, unjustified, or clearly delusional****) about it.

However, this is just a cup of coffee. Exceptionally bad coffee, as was aforementioned and one cannot read too much into it. Rather, one (meaning: you) should not read too much into it as one (meaning: I) does not think of my bad cup of coffee as a metaphor for a life. One can, however, use this metaphor going forward.

For a moment, picture yourself at a dinner party, or at a social gathering with your friends, and when someone asks you, "How is life?" you respond with something similar to "Like a bad cup of coffee."

How does one take that? How is one meant to take that? I know how I want you to take it, and I have rather obliquely defined it in the previous seven hundred or so words, but…

How do you want your audience to take it*****?

We have all had a bad cup of coffee. I can remember my first really bad cup of coffee. I can also remember a mug of coffee that was so sublimely wonderful that it took what was an awful moment and made it bearable and because of that simple coffee, I have pleasurable memories of that time.

How would you want someone to react? Would it be a simple reaction? It is just a cup of coffee after all.

Or maybe it isn't.

Coffee is something that we share, like our lives, with the people around us. How many times have you told someone who has just gotten re-ensnared in web of your life that, "We should get coffee sometime"? It is so common that it has become cliché. Eddie Izzard does a bit about the meanings behind the question, "Would you like to get a cup of coffee?" and the sub-textual doubts and fears that we have about ourselves as social beings become more apparent. Coffee is quick, cheap, and disposable, and if we really wanted to know someone, coffee acts as a precursor, not an end in and of itself.

There are several false starts and digressions here, which I fully understand (meaning: I understand that there are false starts and digressions, not that I know how to get out of them, nor do I care all that much, after all, this is just about a bad cup of coffee in a white ceramic mug bearing the logo of a network security company that does some really interesting things) and I leave it to you, if you have gotten this far, to parse some sort of meaning out of this, if you believe that there is any to be found.

Me…

I need to go get another cup of coffee.

*Currently, Neon Bible by Arcade Fire

**Currently, Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

***The act of scourging is done with a scourge, which can also be referred to as a tawse. This offers no value to what I am saying, which I understand, however, since I spent a good twenty minutes trying to remember the name of the device that medieval monks used to scourge themselves, I needed to put it out there. That is it done with a scourge is…well…just too simple for me to process.

****I fully understand that anyone penning an ode (or a lament) about a mug of bad coffee can more than justifiably be called delusional.

*****Most people, when using similes (or when otherwise speaking), are concerned about how their audience is going to react. I am not saying this is a good thing or a bad thing. I just happen to believe that a good number of people do this, which may be one of the ways I am able to sleep at night.

Yelp

Pizza joint gives staff t-shirts with the text of 1-star Yelp reviews - Boing Boing:

"At San Francisco's Pizzeria Delfina, they know how to own their pain. Rather than wringing their hands over Internet sourpusses who give them one-star Yelp ratings, they've printed up tees with excerpts from the most scathing reviews"

Yelp is sort of like LiveJournal with more drama and less Lee/Anders slashfic.

Language is a tool.

FiveThirtyEight.com: Politics Done Right: “Democrat Party" Decrier Rips Admin for “Childish” Limbaugh Strategy:

"Musing out loud, if a critical building block in the Republican ideological persuasion strategy is first to argue that the media has a liberal bias, and media insists out of accuracy in using “Democratic” while actual Republican officeholders Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, George Bush, et. al. use “Democrat,” then perhaps it subtly seems like the media is taking sides by choosing the correct term. Thus, the 'liberal media' charge in turn has more merit, and that premise is critical in Republican argument given all the decades of incredible energy dedicated to that claim."

But I want to be the one to write it

Next Great American Novel - Best New Books of 2009 - Esquire:

"The last great American novel was The Corrections, by Jonathan Franzen. And that was published in 2001. We're about due for a new one"


Don't get me wrong, I LOVE The Corrections, but it may be stretching to say that it deserves to be on the Great American Novel list.

Readers, and some of you are, what do you think? Which book published in the last decade deserves the accolade of Great American Novel?

All of them?

Topless Robot - 20 Possible Battlestar Galactica Endings, All of Them Hideously Depressing:

"11) The ship runs out of algae. Order breaks down as the remaining humans turn to cannibalism to survive. Adama is forced to eat Roslin, and cries while eating her. It is revealed that the only difference between humans and humanoid Cylons is that the Cylons have a delicious 'ranch' flavor."

The list is worth the read.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

A is A

Books: Bailouts Spike Atlas Shrugged Sales:

"And yet Atlas Shrugged, the worst sort of libertarian porn, went to an average monthly Amazon ranking of 127 from 542, spiking recently to around rank 30, according to the Economist."

Does it have Unethical Businessmen? √

Does it have oodles of cash thrown at these Unethical Businessmen? √

Does it have incompetent elected leadership? √

Does it give the reader a sense of hope? √

What's not to love?

Christian salt?

Christian salt, a wingnut alternative to Kosher salt - Boing Boing

Ummm...

What?

Sad

Minor leaguer traded for bats meets tragic end - ESPN:

"Ask the most hard-core baseball fan about John C. Odom and most likely you'll get a blank stare. Yet millions of people have heard of the slender right-hander.

He was 'Bat Man' or 'Bat Guy' or 'Bat Boy,' the minor league baseball player traded for 10 maple bats.

It became a big joke last May when word of the unusual swap jumped off the sports pages, and the former San Francisco Giants prospect went from pitcher to punch line.

'People are like, 'I'd kill myself' and stuff,' Odom said at the time, dismissing any such notion.

Three weeks after the trade, he abruptly left the team.

Six months after the trade, he was dead."

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

BSG and an anti-religious worldview

Battlestar Galactica TV Show - Battlestar Galactica Recaps, Battlestar Galactica Reviews & Battlestar Galactica Episodes | TWoP:

"Pythia is like the ultimate unreliable narrator if you're looking for facts, but then, that's not how oracles ever work. Confusing the layers, imminent to historical to legendary to mythic, is a good way to end up with a Laura Roslin, or talking about intelligent design: a good way to miss the point entirely and rape religion of what little use it provides."

SUNYA Pride!

Facebook Bullying Lawsuit Could Net $3 Million - Gothamist: New York City News, Food, Arts & Events:

"A freshman at SUNY Albany is suing four former Long Island high school classmates, their parents and Facebook for $3 million for humiliating her in a password-protected page on the social-networking site. Denise Finkel, who graduated from Oceanside High School last year, filed the lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing the former classmates of holding her up to 'public hatred, ridicule and disgrace' in a private Facebook forum."

Really? Is the pain this caused really worth $3 million?

On Atheism

Big Tent Atheism - Boing Boing:

"I think closeted atheists who participate in other religious activities are the future of atheism. They know that prayer feels good without a needing brain scientist to tell them, and they know you don't need God to want to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and provide homes for the orphaned. What if they simply stopped reciting the words that they didn't agree with during religious services, without calling attention to it? In many places I don't think they would be kicked out or turned upon and beaten just for that."


I am curious about what you all have to think about this piece, especially Barista Babe...

Radiohead makes you smart

Science Sez: Lil Wayne Makes You Stupid, Sufjan and Radiohead Make You Smart | Pitchfork:

"According to Griffith's chart, the smartest kids' favorite musician, by a ridiculously huge margin, is Beethoven (average SAT score: 1371). Other smart kid favorites: Sufjan Stevens, U2, Radiohead. The dumbest kids' favorite, meanwhile, is Lil Wayne (average score: 889). Other dumb kid favorites: Beyonce, T.I., Ludacris."

Or smart people love Radiohead, which also makes sense.

Anyway! Yay for Validation!

For FAU

Book Excerpts That Might Suck: Alyssa Milano's 'Safe At Home':

"Well, let's get right to the action, such as it is:

Carl Pavano — Yes. Tom Galvine — No. Barry Zito — Yes. Josh Beckett — God, no (although I do think he is an amazing pitcher). Brad Penny — Yes. Russell Martin — No."

Monday, March 2, 2009

The New Yorker Reviews Watchmen

Dark Visions: The Current Cinema: The New Yorker:

"The world of the graphic novel is a curious one. For every masterwork, such as “Persepolis” or “Maus,” there seem to be shelves of cod mythology and rainy dystopias, patrolled by rock-jawed heroes and their melon-breasted sidekicks. Fans of the stuff are masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match."


Worth the read for the prose alone.