Furor Scribendi

Ultimate Compassion

2012-02-06T08:58:00.000-08:00

Philip Glass set this passage to music in his 5th Symphony. It is one of the most beautiful non-scriptural passages I have ever read, and I want to put it to memory. Reminds me a little of the prayer of St. Francis.

Gladly do I rejoice
In the virtue that relieves the misery
Of all those who suffer
And place them in happiness.

Thus by the virtue collected
Through all that I have done,
May the pain of every living creature
Be completely cleared away.

May I be the doctor and the medicine
And may I be the nurse
For all sick beings in the world
Til everyone is healed.

May a rain of food and drink descend
To clear away the pain of thirst and hunger
And during the aeons of famine
May I myself change into food and drink.

May I become an inexhaustible treasure
For those who are poor and destitute;
May I turn into all the things they could need
And may these be placed close beside them.

May I be protector for those without one,
A guide for all travelers on the way;
[May I be] a bridge, a boat and a ship
For all who wish to cross the water.

May I be an island for those who seek one
And a lamp for those wishing light,
[May I be] a bed for all who wish to rest
And a slave for all who want a slave.

May I be a wishing jewel, a magic vase,
Powerful mantras and great medicine,
[May I become] a wish-fulfilling tree
And a cow of plenty for the world.

Just like space
And the great elements such as earth,
May I always support the life
Of all the boundless creatures.

And until they pass away from pain
May I also be the source of life
For all the realms of varied beings
That reach unto the ends of space.

Sãntideva: Bodhicaryãvatãra 3:1, 6-925; 3:17-21
(Sanskrit, translated from the Tibetan commentary by Thog-me
Zang-po)

2011-04-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

Lohengrin by Richard Wagner (1850). The following scene is the climax of Act 1. "Durch Gottes Sieg ist jetzt dein Leben mein" are the words Lohengrin sings after defeating the villainous von Telramund in personal combat in defense of the saintly Elsa von Brabant, who has fallen in love with the mysterious and unnamed swan knight. In the annals of opera, indeed in the history of music, few measures achieve the thrilling agitation and collective ecstacy of this music, it's practically orgasmic. But for all its brilliance there is darkness to give the light clarity. Following Lohengrin's pronouncement, the chorus sings the infamous "Sieg Heil!" (hail victory) that the Third Reich so effectively coopted and made their own so that to this day, Lohengrin cannot be performed in certain locations in our benighted world. I attempted to capture this cyclonic agitation in my short story Vourdalak, in which my protagonist Nicolai awakens from a long undead torpor, to the strains of this very music. The first link is to the traditional view of this work, with Lohengrin performed by Placido Domingo (no, it's not the best, but it is the clearest and most traditional). First video This second link is to the same music set to film by Polish auteur Woyjech Jerzy Has called "Szyfry". It is an ironic juxtaposition of music and film, illustrating the degenerate darkness implicit in Wagner's music, which Hitler found so easy to exploit. Second video Freud theorized in "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" that there was something called a "death drive" that was the equal in power and influence to the sex drive in the human psychology. Here we see the death drive given free reign. This is Wagner's shadow exposed and it is terrifying and unequalled in pure power.

Le Chateau Marmont

2011-03-29T11:12:00.001-07:00

Here's a picture of Disney's Hollywood Tower hotel.

And here is its inspiration, the Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard:

Virtual Suicide

2011-02-02T12:01:00.000-08:00

He decided that instead of actual suicide, he would plan a virtual suicide. First, he didn't like pain, and the continuation of his current life was like wading hip deep in a constant current of anxiety and loneliness. But he had two very good reasons to not commit actual suicide: he enjoyed living, and had hope that life would get better. He remembered better times, and there was no reason not to assume that he couldn't have those moods and feelings again. He didn't need a lot of money, success or fame (or actually any of it) in order to feel good. He just needed a peaceable companionship, and a notion that he was part of something larger, that he mattered.

But he couldn't perservere in the status quo. He began having death fantasies, of strangling himself or of eating himself to death. These were warning signals that he noticed and to some degree ignored because of his doubts. For doubt circled him like a flock of ravens. How would he live? Would he be able to pay his bills? How would he receive healthcare if he got sick? What would he do with all his stuff?

At last realized that it was his stuff that was holding him back: a vast collection of books, cds, dvds, media of all kinds; comic books, graphic novels, paper, paper, paper...

Paper enough to forge a warm cocoon of inaction, of repose, indolence and solitude. What he thought he always wanted--but which had worn very thin in practice. Like a little butter spread across too much bread. He woke up one day to find that his spirit had turned into Gollum.

So he began to divest, to toss and discard the detritus of paper and media that he had spent 30 years collecting. The pieces he couldn't bear to part with, he digitized, with his camera, his scanner and his videocapture software, so that he could reduce his burden of stuff to a more manageable level. He began a process of whittling away the superfluous: books he had never read, or would never read, the computer games he would never play, the dvds and CDs he would never watch or listen to again. And if it was ever in question, he could just render them into pixels and take them with him, no more than airy nothing.

And he found as he cleared away the coagulation of crap that plugged his living stream, his spirit begin to flow and grow again.

The Black Swan

2011-01-21T09:10:00.000-08:00

Last night saw the amazing new film by Aronofsky, The Black Swan. I have enjoyed previous Darren Aronofsky films, and this was no exception. It rose above mere entertainment to engage the viewer in an intimate psychological and artistic pas de deux. The film succeeds by mixing and coalescing the levels of narrative, symbol and psychodrama to transport the audience into a sublime moment of epiphany as the character of Nina transforms into the Black Swan.

Nina Sayers is a repressed young woman of 28 who lives with her mother in a NYC flat (obviously rent-controlled). Nina's mother is cloying, possessive and obviously has transferred her own ambitions onto Nina. Nina's bedroom is pepto-bismol pink, and full of toys and stuffed animals; the room of a 12-year-old. When Tomas, the artistic director, asks Nina if she's a virgin, we believe that yes, Nina is probably a virgin. Nina's sole obsession is to be perfect, to have perfect technique. Tomas tries to "loosen her up" in order for her true artistic spirit to shine through. That is the essential narrative. Juxtaposed against this story of artistic growth is a hint of mental unbalance as Nina begins to experience haunting, provocative and terrifying visions.

But The Black Swan works on more than just the level of narrative. Nina's pursuit of perfection is played out as psychodrama, with her desire for perfect technique emblematic of her EGO-based desire for total control, juxtaposed with her subconscious repressed urges, her Shadow-Self, yearning to be set free, to be expressed, symbolized by the Black Swan. Nina sees doppelgangers of herself on the train, on the street, these are visions of her own Shadow, which is alluring to her on a deeply emotional and sexual level.

It also works on the level of pure symbol. Everyone experiences the awful transition into adulthood from adolescence and the assumption of one's adulthood. Often that means sacrificing the treasured innocence of childhood in favor of the experience of the world as it is, including one's sexuality, one's ambition, one's innate ability to be satisfied with the self without external validation from others, etc. The movement from innocence, in which the personality is formed by the parent and the parent's values, to an individual with values chosen and won by experience is difficult and I've known many people personally whose lives pitiously ended prior to success. For Nina, fully integrating her Ego and her Shadow selves is a symbolic death.

Finally, The Black Swan does work on the level of pure narrative. In order for this to work completely, however, one must believe that Nina, at 28, is experiencing adult onset schizophrenia, which progressively worsens through the course of the film. But that interpretation alone would make this a movie-of-the-week, and The Black Swan is as far from that mode as it is from romantic comedy.

No, The Black Swan is a genius alchemy between narrative, symbol and psychodrama, and by far the best film using the world of the dance as its milieu since The Red Shoes.

Fantasy Thematics

2011-01-19T11:32:00.000-08:00

Fantasy: stories about power and how it’s found, lost, and used.

In Low fantasy, characters have no struggles with power (Conan the Barbarian) they are always confident of their powers (like superheroes) and rarely question themselves or their powers. Sword & Sorcery. Their struggles are against more powerful beings, not themselves or their own weaknesses. Frodo, being half the height of a man, and thus a much less powerful being than the Men or Elves he hangs around with, gains ultimate power over Sauron. Though the necessity of Gollum there in the Cracks of Doom, is an ironic flourish.

Horror is a subgenre of Fantasy. Thus it also is concerned with power. But the most prevalent theme in horror is fear. What scares us, to some extent is also what renders us powerless. Acrophobia, is the fear of giving into a sudden and overpowering impulse to jump making us doubt our power over our own actions. Claustrophobia, is fear of being in a tight, confined space, where the power to move is greatly incapacitated, making us doubt our ability to function to breathe on a physiological level.

The New American Gothic (S. King, Danse Macabre) is a story in which the character's morbid introspection drives the plot. Rooted in narcissism and anxiety (the self-centered fear of Alcoholics Anonymous), the new American Gothic concerns the inability to see beyond the horizon of the self. This closed minded, compartmentalized, blinkered, bracketed cognition on the part of the protagonist is the impetus for horror. Constantin Stanislavski's "Circles of Attention" reduced to a fierce, laser like dot of light in the center of the self. These characters have axes to grind, fierce prejudices to overcome, preconceived notions to abandon, malevolent childhoods to rise above, addictions to accept.

Also, the New American Gothic protagonist is different from the noir protagonist because their fears are existential rather than actual. The perfect example of a New American Gothic protagonist is Jack Torrance from The Shining.

The Violent Nation

2011-01-12T11:37:00.000-08:00

We live in a democracy, but to believe the television, it is a democracy teetering on the brink, where mainstream politicians can use the rhetoric of violence against one another with impunity, until an act of violence occurs and such people recoil in feigned revulsion and crocodile tears.

Certainly speech didn't put a bullet through Congresswoman Giffords' head, that was a young man with "a head full of bad juice," as one of my favorite characters would put it. So, in a fundamentally uncivil society what is the rational response--forget civility, that's tres passe.

We are left with the "Chicago Way" from Brian DePalma's film, the Untouchables:

You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife,
you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his
to the morgue.
That's the Chicago way...

And so, we wring our hands and come to the conclusion that being forearmed is the only way to negotiate a society in which the police cannot be counted upon to maintain law, order and peace, we must arm ourselves.

In a society in which guns are prized above the lives of 9 year old girls, federal judges, ladies of small consequence, and political aides, the only rational response is to murder in return. Therefore, I announce that my 25 year principle against the death penalty officially ended. If summoned to serve on a jury in a capital case, I will unhesitatingly be able and willing to vote to put to death a person capable of this kind of violence. Especially, ESPECIALLY! if he uses a handgun to do it.

The Paladin Club

2010-12-30T14:47:00.001-08:00

So I'm working on this steampunk novel called "The Paladin Club," but that's not what this post is about. No, I'm going to write about my other passion: World of Warcraft. I love my pallies in WoW (I have one that's 85 and one at 80 that I haven't started to level in Cata yet). They're both Ret/Holy. I tried tanking and I disliked it. What's the point of getting better gear and going through all that effort if you don't get to do something flashy once in a while? We'll maybe tanks do, but the rhythms of the tank class just didn't appeal to me. I'm much more comfortable as a healer and that's all right.

I just read the following on the WoW Insider site:

For us, it procs an effect called Hand of Light that lets us use any of our holy power-based abilities as if we had the full 3 holy power stored up without actually using our holy power. As I said in the section about haste, Hand of Light procs off of auto-attacks, so while a slow weapon might be better for your attack abilities to work with, a faster weapon will cause more mastery procs.

This means that my insistance on 2-handed weapons may not be the wisest course! A shield with sufficient strength, expertise, mastery and crit could equal or exceed the 2 handed weapon because of the greater frequency of proccessing the Hand of Light through auto-attacks, which happen more frequently with a one-handed weapon! Thus allowing me to cast the important Templar's Verdict. I hate it that my Exorcism spell is my top dps function. That's because I haven't understood the full implications of Hand of Light. I must remember that whenever Hand of Light procs, I must use Templar's Verdict--which acts as though I have 3 holy power, no matter how much holy power I have. If it procs while I have x3 holy power, I can get off 2-3 Templar's Verdicts in a row, causing as much as 60k dmg. This is really big.

If furthermore, I have a lighter, faster sword, then Hand of Light will proc more frequently! Thus allowing me to cast Templar's Verdict more frequently! While the damage Templar's Verdict does is dependent on the amount of damage a weapon does, it could be a wash without the shield, given that the frequency of TV proccessing increases. Add in the strength bonuses from the shield, the armor bonus, and the enchantment and you could even have a greater dps than with a 2-handed weapon.

The Lamentations of Nikola Tesla

2010-12-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

Nikola Tesla was a genius, but a genius with a strong moral character and sense of loyalty and duty. What he wasn't was a good businessman. A recent immigre from the Balkans to the U.S., he assumed that people were as good as their word. In the person of Thomas Alva Edison, however, he found his sinister, dark, pathological identical twin.

We Americans love our heros. Edison was not only a genius, he was a shrewd businessman. But his treatment of Tesla was nothing short of despicable. In the documentary I watched last night from PBS, Master of Lightning, the hum between the lines became obvious that Edison was envious of Tesla's genius. Their feud over currents, DC (Edison) v. AC (Tesla) was the stuff of legend. Their showdown at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1892-3), which Tesla won, is the stuff of epic drama. You can feel the pathology working in Edison's mind, as he strives to show people the dangers of AC current by electrocuting animals and finally human beings. Repulsive.

Tesla, the airy, disconnected, obsessive-compulsive idealist and dreamer, spent his early paydays on mature research and development, and ended up penniless. He'd signed his lucrative Westinghouse contract back over to the company during Westinghouse's financial rocky period. The AC motors he had patented, and which drove the industry of the world, had made billions for corporations, yet he was a pauper. Finally, Westinghouse granted him an allowance for food and lodging for the rest of his life. Ironically, exactly what he would have enjoyed in the communist/socialist state his homeland became. It is precisely this trenchant irony, which gives his story so much dramatic potential.

Social Security Theater

2010-12-28T13:37:00.000-08:00

Social Security is a political football, but is it really in any danger of being greatly altered in the imminent future? Doubtful. The world of politics is rarely concerned with real, substantive change, but more often fanning the flames of the electorate's fear and anger over proposed changes. That's what's happening here. Social security is such a fact of life that it just can't be messed with. While bankers may own and fund the government to a large extent, even they are powerless against the vast horde of social security recipients who vote. But political fearmongering? No harm, no foul. The democrats look good to their base when they oppose efforts to derail social security by privatizing it, and the republicans look good to their far smaller base when they propose to do just that. Nothing changes, but both parties earn political capital.

Social Security is monolithic and unstoppable. If ever there was a structure that has earned the title "too big to fail," it's SS. I've paid into it every day of my working life. I expect and depend on it to be there for me. Not as my sole means of support in my old age (unless I live to be very old), but as a supplement.

Unfortunately for us, the bankers and Wall Street have decided that if Social Security is to survive, then they can get a drink at the public trough too, every now and again. It's what we're left with. Two social structures, monolithic in attitude, diametrically opposed, looking at each other with hatred blazing in their eyes. But neither one can afford to strike first.

This Day

2010-12-24T11:50:00.000-08:00

In the catalogue of classical Christmas music, there are a few obvious standouts. Handel's The Messiah is probably the most famous, with the Bach Christmas Cantata and Vivaldi's Gloria close seconds. My personal favorite, however, is Ralph Vaughn William's Hodie (This Day). What's it like? Well, it's extremely programmatic, which is to say, it tells a story. This is not music to enjoy, as much as it is to be inspired by. In tone and sonority it's rather like a sacred version of Holst's The Planets. Vaughn Williams has set a variety of sacred and Christmas themed secular texts to music. Parts of the New Testament that deal witht the birth of Christ are interposed with set pieces, arias, which have as their texts mystical poetry in the English tradition of Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Drummond, and the father of the entire genre, John Milton.

Mystical, mysterious, the sonorities are largely in a minor key, which makes the occasional shifts into major chords exceedingly dramatic. In this scene, the Angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, to convince him to "take unto thee, Mary thy wife..." The angel prefaces his comment with "Fear not." Were I to hear such mysterious and turbulent minor chords under an angel's command, I would fear aplenty! But I'm not a saint. Maybe they can withstand more ambiguity than I.

(Note, put the marker to minute 5:00 to begin the Angel's recitation).

In the above section, minute 5:00 through the end of this cut, Vaughn Williams introduces the themes which he will return to twice more in the piece. Note the dramatic shift into major chord on the the word "Jesus!"

Of the several standalone arias in the piece, my favorites are The Oxen (text by Thomas Hardy), sung by the baritone soloist, and Bright Portals of the Sky (text William Drummond), sung by the tenor. The former is an idyllic lullabye, perfect for a Christmas Eve candle-light service. The latter is a glistening, jewellike, piercing stab of mystery, like looking at the face of God.

The absolute highlight for me, however is the Chorus of the Three Kings, which in my mind creates even more mystery and power than Ring Out Ye Crystal Spheres, the thundering epilogue, set to text by Milton, which is the penultimate moment of the cantata.

All in all, with Hodie, Vaughn Williams has used the mystery/mystic traditions of his English heritage (the mystery plays) and set it in a blistering and heartrending 20th Century minor key which only resolves into major keys infrequently but to tremendous dramatic effect in this piece. It's something to listen to in the candle-lit darkness. If you're in a Gothic cathedral, so much the better.

The Psychopath Beside Me

2010-12-23T15:06:00.000-08:00

Wow, what a title to post the day before Christmas Eve. Please be comforted. Tomorrow I will write about Christmas music. Today, however, I must get down in black and white what transpired yesterday that froze my blood.

An individual and I have shared many pleasant conversations in the past. He has shown me pictures of his trips, notably to the Gay Games in Berlin last year, where he was feted and received an award as a volunteer. I've also seen a side of him which has not been pleasant, a kind of darkness. It has been exposed on occasion when he has had a particularly difficult commute. He's confessed to me that he feels as though he hasn't been taken seriously, that his work hasn't been held in sufficient esteem, nor has he been properly recognized, and success has been elusive. At one point he opined that he might give up his professional altogether and take up male modeling. He has striking features and physique; so it's not a strictly delusional prospect, though he would need to lose the spare tire and get his teeth fixed, IMO.

Just two days ago he showed me a picture of an artwork he had created, drawn and painted. I had no idea he was an artist, but apparently so. As I recall I reacted solicitously.

Yesterday, I happened to open Facebook to see a picture of my sister. I asked him if he would like to see a picture of my sister. I was so delighted with her picture, she is gorgeous in it, and I was so thrilled and wanted to share my excitement. His reaction, "Well that's a strange request but I guess so."

Thereupon I again saw the darkness in his face which I've seen at times before. I regret to say, I ignored it. Standing next to Karen in the picture is her best friend Sue. Sue lost her eldest child to suicide a few years ago, and I said, "That's Sue, she has had a lot of tragedy in her life. She lost a son to suicide a few years back."

His response, I kid you not, was, "Well that's not the WORST thing that could have happened..." Verbatim, just as I have typed it here, with the emphasis on "worst." My immediate response to that was a volcanic rage so intense I could hardly see straight. I said, "I'm going to remember that. I'm going to put that away in my bag of tricks to pull out at a vulnerable moment so that I can completely minimize your feelings too."

He turned his back and spoke not another word.

Then my blood cooled and began to freeze. This guy is completely inappropriate. What's wrong with him? And then I realized--it's a character disorder. A Character Disordered person, according to M. Scott Peck, is a person who blames the world and causes outside himself for his problems. The obverse is a neurotic person, who blames some inner deficiency as the cause of their problems. The character disordered person sees the world as broken; the neurotic sees themselves as broken. Dr. Peck states that the neurotic is easier to treat. I have always seen myself as neurotic, but I've also survived a lot of abuse, so I have very low tolerance to threatening situations, and as a result of that I'm perhaps too defensive.

I'm reminded again of that darkness, not just metaphorical darkness, but a coagulation of blood in the face, a real physiological darkening of the features. I beheld his demon. And the blistering effect of his words. The way he was able to choose the most damaging thing to say that he could possibly have said. Fortunately for both of us he didn't insult my sister, or I might have leapt from my chair to strangle him then and there. Good for both of us. Meanwhile, I continue to detox from my SSRI preparatory to switching to a different medication. I'm fat, I'm single, I've only achieved moderate success, and I'm facing bankruptcy. I wouldn't trade places with this dude for anything.

A Confession: I Know Squat about Politics

2010-12-22T11:32:00.000-08:00

I cannot remain silent on this day of epic moral victory for lovers of freedom and the theory implicit in the American experiment that freedom includes the right to be different, even despicably different in the eyes of some.

Barak Obama signed the law 86ing DADT about an hour ago. It is a moral and political victory for the President and quite an achievement getting this law passed and signed against forceful and irrational opposition.

I must confess, however, that the president's brand of political consesus building was difficult to endure the past few months in the face of exceedingly vile, extremist right wing diatribes aimed at him. First, he came across as weak. Second, he came across as being a back-door deal maker, the kind of thing he campaigned against, and which the Republicans lambasted him for, even as he was caving in to their demands. Oh, how I wished someone would have just given it right back to them. In your face Mitch McConnell. Someone like ... Hillary Clinton?

But in politics, the proof is in the pudding. The echoes from the bully pulpit fade away, but the ink drying on the page is permanent! I voted for Barak Obama because I thought he would be a uniter and a consensus builder. I got what I WANTED! And then about 7 months into his term, I didn't really want it anymore. Instead, I wanted someone who would step on some toes and speak up against the unconscionable obstreperousness of the conservative wing of the Republican party (which is now 90% of Republicans it seems).

But Barak Obama didn't do that. He kept his head down and worked, worked, worked for the end goal. Meanwhile Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, slapping themselves on the back and crowing about their mandate, mistook the bully pulpit for actual political work. 3 weeks ago it looked like DADT repeal was DOOMED. But today? It's like a rabbit from a top hat. Obama delivered big-time. He'll have my vote for a second term. Not only am I glad I voted for him the first time around, I'm glad he stuck fast to his principles and didn't get involved in tit-for-tat childish, churlish screaming matches that could have ensued had someone else spoken from a strictly emotional point of view. The Republicans have been doing that now for 2+ years, after having decided that they'd done enough soul searching after the 2008 election. What has it got them? Tax breaks for the wealthy that will be repealed as soon as everyone realizes that continuing them will bankrupt the country. When push comes to shove, what will fall? Tax breaks for the top .001% of the population, or Social Security for millions? I'm banking on the former.

Let The Right One In

2010-09-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in), 2008's best vampire flick, was a work of profound emotion, artistry and beauty. Ravenous for beauty, art, and depth, American audiences embraced the film to the extent that a Hollywood remake was assured. Hollywood doesn't play nice with independent films. Hollywood is about, without putting too fine a point on it, prostitution. Hollywood is a sewer which doesn't care or comprehend what storytelling is or should be, it is about money. Don't get me wrong, I like Hollywood movies as much as the next fellow, but I don't expect depth, tenderness, or relevance from them. This is why I am reluctant to see the remake of Let the Right One In, with its Americanized title, Let Me In. Hollywood is about dualities, right and wrong, black and white, truth and lies. It eschews the shades of gray that might frustrate audiences with their ambiguity and make them reflect on their lives. If they have to think, or feel anything other than excitement, audiences stop buying popcorn. Hollywood films agitate their audiences, they do not make them feel; they stir them up. Hollywood is to film making what the Bush Administration was to war making: the only two emotions they care about are shock and awe.

Let the Right One In is a profoundly better title than Let Me In. It communicates layers of meaning. Let Me In is about teenage love: "stop being so self-absorbed and pay attention to me, you little twit!" Let the Right One In is a weighted phrase that conveys sadness, grief, desire, pain, longing that stretches across generations, hoping for the fleeting embrace of a soul-mate in spite of the defensiveness with which we guard our persons. It has nothing to do with teenage lust or even love for that matter. It is about rebirth, transcendence and communication; of becoming a different being when immersed in the dyad of love. If they didn't even come close with the title, how can the underlying film fare any better?

Post Censored

2010-08-20T09:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally went over the edge at the Seattle Times. They posted this interesting story about a man in a banana costume getting arrested for indecent exposure. This, as you might expect, invited anyone with a budding standup comedy career to take their best shot. While several of my offerings made the grade (see Donuthole's posts), my favorite was censored. So I repost it here for the benefit and smiles of all:

How is a banana like a Liberal? They're soft and squishy on the inside, and yellow on the outside. How is a banana like a Republican? When they get older, they turn brown and are good for making bread.

Just Following Orders

2010-08-09T10:23:00.000-07:00

Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist, is entertaining, that's why I watch his stuff. However, I can't buy into 9/11 was an inside job theory. It's more than simply a visceral rejection of the notion that our government could do something so evil and insidious. The facts simply don't add up. If the 19 hijackers were intelligence assets of the U.S., as Jones claims, how could they have been persuaded to crash planes into buildings? Conspiracy theorists might claim that they were simply patsies, who were duped into boarding and hijacking the flight, only to have the plane remote controlled into the trade center and the Pentagon. They point to the fact that these so-called Islamic fundamentalists led a rather debauched lifestyle leading up to zero-hour, going to strip clubs, getting drunk, and ordering porno. I don't know about you, but I have a lot more faith in a person's religious hypocrisy than I do in the government's ability to remote control planes into buildings.

Yes there are a lot of unanswered questions: The molten fragments dripping from the towers, similar to the reaction of steel to thermite. The extraordinary maneuvers of the pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon after getting failing marks from his flight instructors one month before. The multiple reports of the sound of explosions before the collapse of the towers and building no. 7, as though it was a controlled demolition.

I recently heard a lecture by attorney Daniel Sheehan, who was involved in the Pentagon papers case, and investigated Iran-Contra, and Karen Silkwood's disappearance. He gave a succinct rundown of the conspiracy behind the JFK assassination that was amazingly lucid, and had the ring of truth. He spoke with absolute conviction and certainty, that it was the result of rogue elements within the intelligence community who felt betrayed by JFK, who allied with certain figures in the mob who despised RFK, to use their assets and resources (disaffected Cuban refugees) to murder the president, all financed by Henry Booth Luce and Howard Hughes. What makes Daniel Sheehan's recitation so convincing? It's because he connected the dots.

If Alex Jones were to confine himself to more rational claims, that rogue elements within the CIA allowed the hijackings to take place, or even greased the wheels to make M. Atta & crew's jobs easier, that would be a whole lot easier to believe than a conspiracy that went up to the to active involvement of the White House.

Because the claims are so wild, they suffer from what I would call David Icke syndrome: they seem like the ravings of cranks and kooks. Most people will reject them out of hand while there may be a kernel of truth embedded in the substrata of their arguments, because they can't be taken seriously. This is what happens to people on a crusade. It's so bizarre at times (David Icke's reptilians) that it seems to me as though madmen have pierced the veil of reality. They may really be onto something intuitively and psychically, but they've mythologized their own perceptions to the point that it seems fabulous. Maybe they're "useful idiots" to the conspiracy (if it exists) because their ideas are so far out. Or maybe they're just in on it and spreading disinformation.

The best lies are those that contain a germ of truth.

Pyramid Power

2010-07-22T11:45:00.000-07:00

The eye in the pyramid purports to symbolize the Divine, the grace of Providence. On the dollar bill it is accompanied by the Latin motto: "Annuit Coeptis." Apparently it translates to: "God has favored our undertaking," which in that sense, means the formation of the United States. However, I wonder if there is a deeper occult significance to the pyramid, as a symbol in general.

The pyramid is the shape of the power base of all authoritarian/monolithic human organizations since the beginning of time. The power of the "head" or leader, flowing down through successively larger groups of subordinates, to the bottom. Just look at any org chart from any corporation in the world if you doubt me. An entire software program (Visio) was created to visualize this exchange of power.

Always we must remember the "as above/so below" mantra of all occult/hermetic study. What goes down, may also go up. I.e, the head dispenses power, yes, but does he not also "receive" his power from the stratified layers beneath him? Of course he does, whether it is physical, spiritual, economic or mystical.

I'm reminded powerfully of the image of the Viles in Stephen R. Donaldson's fantasy trilogy, the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever. The Viles formed wedges, in which the power flowed from the back to the front, and through a focus or channelling wand. In much the same way, I believe, is mystical/occult as well as temporal power focused through monolithic bureaucracies. Not only do these bureaucracies focus control downward on their subordinates, they also channel power upward to the master. In this way are organizations based on this model made into closed systems that keep change and evolution at bay.

Which brings us again to Crowley. "Do what thou wilt" was his battlecry. I have always understood that to mean having complete licentious liberty. However, in my unevolved, unenlightened state, this was what I projected onto Crowley's words. In actuality Crowley was advocating freedom from the psychic slavery imposed on us by the illuminati, those invested in the pyramid of power that governs modern life.

Citizenship Clause

2010-07-09T12:12:00.001-07:00

Citizenship and immigration has been front and center recently in terms of issues of relative importance to the polity. One of the meanest spirited attacks from lawmakers out of Arizona, which seems to be the galvanizing locale for such xenophobic opinion, is a desire to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states: "Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

On the surface, it appears that any individual, born within the borders or in the territories of the United States, is automatically entitled to citizenship.

Not so fast.

Read it again, carefully.

"...and subject to the jurisdiction thereof..."

Ah, the money quote.

The Supreme Court ruled in Wong Kim Ark that under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a man born within the United States to foreigners (in that case, Chinese citizens) who have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States and are carrying on business in the United States and who were not employed in a diplomatic or other official capacity by a foreign power, was a citizen of the United States.

Note the conditions of the precedent: the parents had a permanent domicile and were carrying on business in the United States. They were here legally, and thus were subject to the jurisdiction of the United States of America.

In the case of an illegal alien, I think, as a lay person, it's entirely reasonable to doubt whether a person here illegally is "subject to the jurisdiction..."

The path forward for Ariz. Senator Russell may be instead to frame the law in those terms. "Be it resolved, that a person or persons, who is present in the United States through false or illegal methods, cannot and shall not be considered to be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States."

The upshot would be to invalidate the children of such persons from automatic citizenship if they happen to be born here.

In the case of children who are older, who are socialized culturally to the United States, they could be considered to be "naturalized" in the common if not the legal, meaning of the word.

Most folks who know me know me as a liberal. However, I'm not so liberal as to want to give the country away, and I am contemptuous of those on the Left who seem to hold this position. Let me have it.

Mulholland Dr. (Part 2)

2010-06-18T15:48:00.000-07:00

The Spine of Mulholland Dr.

The narrative spine of Mulholland Dr. is very simple. Diane Selwyn is experiencing depression and mental decompensation because of personal and professional problems. She suffers a professional setback when she loses a nice role at an audition to her former lover, Camilla Rhodes. This exacerbates her deteriorating mental condition. Diane fantasizes that some external force caused this to happen, like a mafia plot. At a party at Adam Kesher’s house, Camilla and Adam reveal that they’re an item. This severe cruelty further pushes Diane over the edge. Diane meets a hit-man at Winkies and hires him to kill Camilla. He tells her that he’ll leave a sign for her to indicate when the job is done. Diane notices that a stranger has overheard their conversation and has reacted with a horrified expression. Diane goes home and goes to sleep. She dreams of an idealized vision of herself named Betty Elms who is tantalized by a mysterious woman named Rita who is pliant to Betty. Diane awakens and discovers that the hit man has left proof of his deed. Camilla is dead. Diane suffers a psychotic break with reality, joylessly masturbates in a vain and pathetic attempt to reconnect with a reason to live, and then shoots herself.

Convincing UFO Footage

2010-06-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've got a confession. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. That is not to say I believe. Seeing is believing. To date, I haven't seen anything. But, the next best thing to seeing, is seeing convincing video. And this certainly qualifies.

If it isn't a balloon, it's something very odd indeed. However, I can't rule out a balloon based simply on the way it moves.

The donut hole in the center reminds me of the Maury Island Incident.

Mulholland Drive (Part 1)

2010-06-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

I've been working on an essay about David Lynch's film Mulholland Drive. I'll post it here in segments.

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive contains a proper, causal narrative with a linear plot, even though it doesn’t seem like it.

What makes Mulholland Drive work for me is the way in which Lynch uses all his old cinematic themes, memes and symbols to tell us a fresh story. He’s always been interested in doppelgangers, and the subterranean current of evil and depredation that underlies consciousness and reality (if indeed, there’s any difference between the two). We surround ourselves with fantasies of goodness, of optimism and light, when the ultimate, final reality of our lives is that they end, and all we are left with is “that cold model of the barren earth which serves as paste and cover to our bones.” The essential psychological agony we feel when we contemplate life’s final result is the energy that fuels the films of David Lynch as well as many others.

Lynch’s cinematic style in Mulholland Drive employs standard cinematic techniques in individual scenes, while rejecting causality in the narrative arc with a deliberate obfuscation of point of view. Betty is a pert, perky blonde with a great deal of personal ambition, whose Hollywood dream of becoming an actress in motion pictures seems to play out with almost serendipitous ease. Each of Betty’s scenes employs a standard narrative structure. They exhibit distinct settings, characters that possess rational motivations, which in some cases, conflict, a pivotal moment (dramatic crisis) and a resolution. Moreover, Lynch’s visual style affirms the narrative structure. He uses camera angles, shots, zooms, pans, etc., to reinforce the standard cinematic narrative point of view. This is Betty’s point of view, just as it is Betty’s narrative.

Through symbolism and metaphor, however, Lynch infers an additional layer of meaning every bit as intentional as Betty’s motives. Betty’s character is a perky go-getter. Her identity is fixed and known. Rita, on the other hand, is amnesiac. Her identity is completely unknown. Thus we are confronted with the surface mystery of Mulholland Drive, the mystery of Rita’s true identity, and all that that implies (we know that she was about to be murdered before the accident that resulted in her amnesia). Betty discovers about herself that although she is a talented, pretty, precocious blonde, she’s also tantalized, intrigued and perhaps obsessed with Rita’s alluring mystery. It sucks her in. For her part, Rita is in a state of flux. She’s tabula rasa. And Betty is extremely attracted to that… And the audience is extremely attracted to them both.

There follows mysterious vignettes in which Betty and Rita journey to a mysterious nightclub called Silencio (Silence), there’s a shadowy figure called the Cowboy, and a puzzling blue box that can be unlocked by a key. This key is central to the turn of the super-narrative. When Betty unlocks the box, she disappears. Diane Selwyn, a person mentioned earlier in the film, and whose body the women have discovered prior to their trip to Club Silencio, wakes up. In fact Cowboy appears in the doorway and says “Time to wake up pretty girl,” or something to that effect. Diane looks exactly like Betty and is portrayed by the same actress, Naomi Watts.

Lynch’s camera now demands we abruptly shift our allegiance to the Diane character and we reluctantly submit to the camera’s tyranny, or we leave the theater. Relentlessly, the camera uses the same traditional cinematic techniques to establish that we are now in Diane Selwyn’s point of view. But wait! What about charming Betty? We want to go back to Betty and Rita, and discover the answer to the mystery and achieve the happily ever after ending that we were promised, albeit with a little dash of lesbianism for extra flavor! This is precisely the cinematic trope that Lynch is lynching. The message of Mulholland Drive is that the cinema is an illusion, and if you imagine your life by its principles, you destroy yourself so thoroughly, emotionally and existentially, that real death is a welcome relief. This is the sub-narrative. In terms of the super-narrative, Betty is Diane’s alter-ego. She never really existed. Everything that happened in the movie up to the point where Diane Selwyn wakes up, is apparently a dream of Diane’s. The second half of the film is unremittingly bleak, as Diane’s entire world crumbles around her. She has lost a good role to her lover Camilla, and then lost Camilla to Adam, which heaps betrayal upon betrayal. One element of noir has survived; Diane has hired a hit man to kill Camilla (played by the same actress who played Rita). When Diane realizes that the job has been done, she shoots herself, and that’s the end of the film, except for the final image of the chanteuse from Club Silencio assuring us that there’s no afterlife.

Who was trying to kill Camilla/Rita in the beginning of the film? Diane, of course. Betty, Diane’s alter-ego, was Diane’s subconscious attempt to psychologically deal with the guilt of hiring the hitman. But solving that mystery is not the reason for the film’s existence, just as who killed Laura Palmer was never the raison d’être of Twin Peaks. The purpose was to show the story, with as much psychological truth as possible, of a sad and pathetic loser who kills her lover and herself in Hollywood. What makes the film work as art is Lynch’s steadfast refusal to explain anything, and to pull the starkest images out of his subconscious that he possibly can.

Grandma's Eulogy

2010-06-09T14:07:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, flew back to Decorah, Iowa (place of my birth) to attend my Grandmother's funeral. Also wrote and delivered the eulogy. Several cousins asked for a copy and so I thought I'd post it here for all and sundry...

Maude Pruisman

I want to thank you all for coming today to honor the memory and celebrate the life of Maude Pruisman, my grandmother, and the grandmother of many others here. She was also great grandmother, aunt and great-aunt for many more here today as well as a mother-in-law and a cousin to some. As Maude’s eldest grandchild, I have been asked to share a few short remarks about our dear grandmother, or grandma, as I always knew her.

Grandma lived a very long time. In those nine decades she saw almost the full breadth and scope of the 20^th Century. When she was born, President Woodrow Wilson was in his first term, automobiles had only been around for 15 years and most people didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing. When she was 54 years old, just two years older than I am today, Man landed on the Moon.

Like everyone who lives a very long time, her life was full of ups and downs. When I remember Grandma smiling and laughing, those times she had the biggest smile on her face, was when she was with her grandchildren. I think that her grandchildren brought her the greatest pleasure in her life. A close second was successfully bidding 10 no-trump in a spirited game of 500, or experiencing a very long discard run in Skipbo.

Grandma liked to cook, and she was a good cook. All of the grandchildren I’m sure will remember her Apple Koogan, her sour green bean casserole and vinegar potato salad, but I also remember her fried bullheads. I’m sure if I could taste them again, I would appreciate them a lot more than I did when I was 7 years old. Grandma also liked As the World Turns, and going to coffee with Grampa Klaas, and all her friends, in downtown Kanawha.

I am old enough to remember when Grandma had a job. She worked for the school system in Kanawha where she was employed as a cook; she used to help out in the kitchen when she was living at Eastern Star, too. She was always a very hard worker and an immaculate housekeeper. I am also old enough to remember Manley, and going to visit grandma at her house there, where grandma lived with her first husband Charlie, and where their four children: Glenn, Betty, LaDonna and Rhonda were raised. During one memorable visit there, I learned a painful lesson about not playing with sewing machines.

Grandma had more than her share of heartbreak in her life as well. She suffered tremendous grief having all four of her children and one grandchild (Cally Jo) predecease her. The hardest to bear was probably the first: Aunt Rhonda, who I remember as a laughing, friendly sixteen year old. One day Rhonda and I were riding our bikes in Kanawha, where grandma moved after marrying Klaas Pruisman, when Rhonda fell off and skinned her knee in the road. The sight of her bloody knee and tears made me panic and I ran home to grandma’s house screaming that Rhonda was hurt real bad. Grandma was in a state of panic to match mine, but then Rhonda came pedaling up, saying that it was “nothing.” Then Grandma got mad at me for scaring her. I was so confused.

On the day of Rhonda’s funeral, grandma sat weeping in her chair in the Kanawha house with a grief so powerful it couldn’t be helped by anything I could do. My heart breaks when I remember it.

Grandma taught me many things, and gave me many gifts. Of the lessons she taught me the most vivid was that work is its own reward. Despite her wisdom, in the end, I decided that work as its own reward is pretty rotten compensation. Grandma and Grandpa had apple trees in their backyard. One summer I went to stay with grandma and grampa for a week. Unbeknownst to me, my mother and Grandma had cooked up a plan for me to do some chores. The chore in question was to pick up the fallen apples from the apple trees in grandma’s back yard and put them in a bucket to be thrown away. Well, I enjoyed that as much as any six-year-old can who’s picking up mushy, rotting apples covered with bumble bees with his bare hands. To this day I have no idea why it was so important that I use my bare hands for that job, rather than rubber gloves, or a hand spade. But suffice it to say, the possibility of using such common-sense tools never even entered grandma’s mind. Grandma, you see, was German, and never afraid to get her hands dirty.

In retrospect, I much preferred visiting my Aunt Dolly, who made me costumes, and who had much better toys to play with.

I had many more visits with Grandma after that. All of them were much nicer, but then I was never asked to pick up rotten apples again, either.

Grandma gave me a couple of gifts that were very special to me. The first was when I was three, and in St. Mary’s Hospital in Rochester. I was going in for major surgery and grandma asked me what I wanted. I said “a baby-doll.” I’m not sure why, but it was probably because I’d seen one of the other children in the pediatric ward playing with one and I wanted a similar experience. Apparently there followed a family conference as to whether it was appropriate for a boy to have a baby-doll, and a decision was reached that it was probably okay. If only they could have known! In any event, I was given the baby-doll, which followed me into and out of surgery and through recovery. Another gift I remember fondly was a recording of Fritz Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s Fifth. I played the grooves off that record.

When I was a little older Grandma and Grampa used to go on trips with Mom and Dad and Karen and me. On one trip out west, near the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, Mom and Dad came back to the campsite after visiting a casino (a pursuit Dad has never fallen out of love with) to find Grandma suffering heatstroke from the desert sun and me shivering inside a sleeping bag after swimming all day in ice-cold water. Later in the trip as we were driving over the Rockies, Klaas made the comment, “Mountains: You’ve seen one, you’ve seen ‘em all.” Mom held her tongue for 800 more miles until we returned to Iowa, and Klaas marveled about how much the corn had grown while we were away on the trip, and Mom said, “Cornfields: you’ve seen one, you seen ‘em all.” And that, as Lily Tomlin would say, is the truth.

So in the end, I knew Grandma as well as anyone. She was an uncomplicated person who knew her own mind, and when she formed an opinion, she stuck to it. She was stubborn that way. She expressed her feelings and always tried to be fair. I can’t say she was always happy or even generally happy, but she wasn’t a sad person, either. She knew that family meant more to her than anything else in her life. It was her great joy and accounted for her greatest grief when those relationships ended too soon.

I loved her with all my heart, even though she sometimes frustrated me to distraction. For some reason she found a lot of what I had to say very amusing. Those kids, they say the darndest things…

A friend of mine from college once asked me if I believed in life after death. I said no, that I believe in the resurrection and the life. By that I mean that I believe in the sleep of death, and it is not only what I believe, it is also what I prefer to believe. Grandma is no longer with us, she’s passed on. Her grief and pain are wholly healed. Some day, the horn will sound, and all will rise. On that day, I very much believe, Maude Pruisman will find her name written in the Book of Life. I accept that on faith, and I furthermore hope on that day to find my own name written in the book with other than erasable ink, just as Grandma, my mom and dad and all my aunts and uncles have tried to ensure for me through their instruction and example, and for whose efforts I have been insufficiently grateful.

Thank you for listening.

Lost - It was All A Dream...?

2010-05-24T09:22:00.001-07:00

The opening shot of the pilot of Lost features an eye. Jack's eye, it turns out, opening. The last shot of the end of the series, six years later again, zooms in on Jack's right eye, shutting. This film technique is a framing device. It is a bold and unambiguous choice. The first frame of any moving picture is inarguably important for setting the frame of reference for what follows. The tight focus on the single eye also implies that the story following will be intimately involved with this character's point of view. What he sees is important. The camera is in some ways his eye. To end the narrative also focused on his eye implies that everything in between was experienced by him and through him. And it raises the question, is this observer reliable? Is he experiencing a three-dimensional composite reality shared with other living human beings, or is this a private reality, a dream?

The producers' choice to roll the credits over the deserted wreckage of Oceanic flight 815 cements the latter view. While the producers ended LOST with enough ambiguity to allow differing conjectures as to what was real reality, the film technique of beginning and ending the series focused on Jack's eye proves their true intent. The entire series was a fever dream in the mind of Jack Shepherd as he lies dying on the ground after the crash of Oceanic flight 815 from Sydney. Letting go and accepting his own death is the purpose of the six-year narrative which follows, just as Jack's father Christian, leads him to do in the final scene of the final episode. It is a very, very emotional moment. While the "it was all a dream" ending is generally a copout, in this instance it works profoundly, and proves that there's life left in the old tropes, if they're executed extremely well.

Something's Afoot

2010-05-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

Something's stirring deep within. Awareness is creeping down into the cracks and crevasses of my psyche to affect my subconscious with the understanding that I am being, and have been for the past two years, somewhat self-destructive and self defeating. This is probably due to minimalist treatment I have sought for my depression, but I also believe that I'm lazy by nature. My parents tried to amend that character flaw by forcing me to work at jobs ranging from paper delivery, lawn mowing, grocery store stock boy, cheese factory drudge, etc. All the while I really wanted to retreat into my own head. This is the focus of my extremely quiet life now. However, in the past year, I have retreated farther. In 2009 I spend 2000 hours playing World of Warcraft and elevated three different characters to 80th Level. That's the equivalent of a full-time job. I don't begrudge the time, except I didn't get any writing done. Writing is hard because, unlike a videogame, you can't go to that inner place where you feel warm and comfortable and insulated from the outside. Writing is painful self-examination. There's nothing I like better than to lay in my bed, watching a tv episode (on DVD, so there's no commercials) and playing solitaire or bejeweled on my laptop. I don't have to think about anything. But nothing gets done, either.

I'm now feeling a new need to lose weight, get organized and work harder at making my hopes and goals a reality. This is good news. And with it comes energy. I'm excited! I've re-cathected with my apartment, which I'd fallen out of love with. Perhaps this coincides with more sunshine and warmer weather. That's probably part of the process.

To Arizona - a Postcard from Heinrich Himmler

2010-05-07T10:53:00.000-07:00

While I'm white and speak fluent English, I am quite paranoid about traveling to Arizona anytime in the near future. What is "reasonable suspicion" besides carte blanche to the police to stop anyone and demand to see proof of American citizenship? My fear is not that I would be stopped, but what would happen if stopped, since I would refuse to comply. Thus, today's photo from times gone by: No. 8 Prinz Albrecht Strasse, the former headquarters of Hitler's feared gestapo, which is a German portmanteau combining Geheime Staatspolizei, which translated into English, comes uncomfortably close to "Homeland Security." So let us pause to remember where anti-immigration policies can eventually lead.

Android v. Windows Mobile

2010-04-30T11:53:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has dropped the ball in the phone wars, giving ground to Android, and allowing it to achieve market supremacy. While I chose the Samsung Omnia with Windows Mobile 6.1 as my first smartphone, I am regretting the decision. Windows Mobile is simply too small and too cluttered. Furthermore, navigation is iffy and flakey. Even scrolling from the As to the Ws in my phone book is problematic. I chose the Omnia because I was comfortable years ago with my iPAQ handheld computer, but I desire a more robust user experience, not hesitancy and glitches. I do believe I will catch the next lifeboat off the sinking Windows Mobile ship.

The Music Man

2010-04-29T14:25:00.000-07:00

Depression <

I think this has much to do with listening to music over the past few days. Good music, too! Those who know me know I love music and that I have two favorite composers that rise to the very top of my list of delights: Philip Glass and Richard Wagner.

Philip Glass is the minimalist composer who wrote Einstein On the Beach. The term minimalism isn't strictly accurate in his case, as he employs minimalist harmonies and melodies, but prolix notation--using revolving arpeggios--to create the effect of stillness in motion. It's quite remarkable when it works. It doesn't work all the time. However, his plaintive, minor sonorities strike just the right mood in me, and apparently in others, as his star has grown over the years. I became a die-hard fan the first time I listened to The Photographer all the way through in 1985. I have since acquired almost everything he's written, but especially the film scores, which really show off his moody, completely unique, style and substance.

Richard Wagner hardly needs an introduction. He was the enfant terrible of the 19th Century, turning music, drama, politics and poetry on their heads, and through dint of pure willpower, became internationally recognized as the genius he truly felt himself to be. While Wagner's music, programmatic and romantic, is far from minimal, the use of chromatic tonalities has something in common with Glass (or rather Glass with it). While Wagner is all thundering power and brass in most cases, some of the gentlest, most sensitive and emotional passages are his best: such as Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde and the Overture to Lohengrin. Of course, my good friend Steve Will will recognize the Tristan und Isolde music from the score to the film Excalibur.

Beethoven and Liszt

2010-04-28T15:54:00.000-07:00

My friend Steve Will today blogged about Naxos music company, which publishes some of the rarest music performed. I just happen to LOVE Beethoven and Franz Liszt. There's an old story that Beethoven was present at Liszt's first Vienna concert (at age 11 years or so) in 1822, and actually kissed the apollonian youth post facto. God I wish I could have seen that. In any event, Liszt later transcribed Beethoven's nine symphonies for solo piano. Naxos has released performances of these transcriptions over time, and I've been waiting for a while for my favorite of the symphonies to be released, Symphony No. 7, with its sonorous, emotional second movement. It is, as I expected: sublime. However, my favorite in this recording is the 4th Movement, in which Beethoven's and Liszt's sonorities mingle and merge in a kind of Reece's pieces combination of classical musical rhapsody. Konstantin Scherbakov's virtuoso playing is not all pounding thunder, which I became accustomed to listening to Horowitz over the years, but has delicacy and sensitivity, and hooks your heartstrings...

Zune and Audiobooks

2010-04-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

The problem for Zune users who want to listen to audiobooks has always been the lack of a bookmarking feature. I used to get around that by cutting the audio files, usually MP3s, into 45 minute (or thereabouts) sections. I then had to edit the file data to indicate that the genre was "audiobook" and make sure to title each section in sequence so that they would appear next to each other in the list of files. Because there was no bookmarking feature, one needed to listen to the 45 minute file in a sitting, or keep track of where you were in the file in order to quickly find where you'd left off. That was servicable, but not optimal.

Then, along came Audible. With Audible, audiobooks were kept in their own category--not mixed with music, and were usually kept in one or possibly two, large files (3+ hours each). Best of all, they had a bookmarking feature, which meant that you could pause playback, choose a new file to play (if you had a hankering to listen to "Magic Carpet Ride" in the middle of your book, for example), and return to resume the playback where you had left off. Unfortunately, the audible format was proprietary. Audible manager, the software used for loading books on your Zune, would not recognize any file format except the proprietary .aa (Audible) format.

But then along came Overdrive Media Console. With a little bit of work, one can turn MP3 files into an OMC compatible Audiobook with a bookmarking feature. You have to join the files back into one large file (if you've split them, or ripped them from a CD). I use Roxio Media Creator's Sound Editor. I load all of the files into the sound editor, then export the mix as one large file. Then I use the Overdrive Media Console Wax creator to create a wax file. This file marks the location of the audiobook file and will associate cover art with the file. You then use the Overdrive Media Console's transfer wizard to put it on your Zune. The book goes in the Audiobook section, next to your Audible downloads. It's a slick method. Not as easy as simply ripping a CD to your Zune, but the time it takes (probably 5-10 minutes per title) is worth it for the bookmarking feature.

It took me a few attempts to work out the kinks. Here's what I found. When trying to transfer the file to the Zune I kept getting an error that my wax file had an invalid path. I spent a few hours trying different methods until I realized what I was doing wrong. I had a hyphen in the pathname. The transfer Wizard does not like hyphens, but it seems to do okay with underscores. Also, to save time in the future, I associated the .wax file extension with the Overdrive Media Console transfer wizard. So all I need to do is double-click the .wax file to transfer the audiobook. Slick!

The second thing I learned is that 96 bits or 64 bit samples are plenty for an audiobook. Mono is actually a clearer and more satisfying listening experience for voice recordings than stereo and it takes up half the disc-space of stereo. So, most of my unabridged books are in files about 90 MBs, 90,000 kb. For a 30 GB Zune, I still only have half of it filled, even though I have 2 dozen audiobooks on the hard drive.

I love my Zune, and I didn't want to have to switch to Itunes and the Ipod in order to enjoy audiobooks. Zune + Overdrive Media Console is the the best solution at present. Until Zune comes out with a solution which is as simple as ripping audio CDs, that is.

Mine Kampf

2010-04-07T11:18:00.001-07:00

After watching coverage of the West Virginia mine disaster last night, it is impossible to deny it. Profits have more meaning and worth than the lives of workers. This is the grinning demon-idiot face of lassez-faire capitalism left unchecked. People who have less money have less right to live.

This is the philosophy that made possible the Ford Pinto. The brutal, beyond soulless, evil force of the bottom line, when it applies the spreadsheet of business to the nectar of life, and becomes, instead of a way to improve life, the incarnation of Moloch. It was ugly in the 1970s, and its even more repulsive today. Excuse me while I go find an antiemetic.

Catholics and Kubler-Ross

2010-04-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

Contemplating the hole that the Catholic hierarchy has dug for itself regarding its ongoing sex abuse scandals, it occurred to me that their reactions follow closely the Elizabeth Kubler-Ross model of acceptance. The Kubler-Ross model has been applied to the psychology of dying, of addiction, of trauma and disaster. And these scandals are a disaster for the Church if ever there was one.

To recap, the Kubler-Ross model starts with DENIAL and then ANGER. Up until recently, the Vatican was entrenched in these two phases. Anger was more the position of the rabid lay defenders and apologists than the clergy. After this weekend, however, I think the Church has moved into a BARGAINING phase, though still peppered with denial and anger. See my previous entry regarding how Benedict's own preacher compared the suffering of the church in response to the scrutiny of the western media of the scandals to the "collective suffering" of the Jews in Europe. (As repellant and nauseating as that concept is to anyone with a conscience or mind).

In essence, they were saying that the Church was a victim, too. And that proper scrutiny and criticism of the hierarchy was tantamount to anti-semitism, which is an irrational animus. But that, it seems to me, is a bargaining position. And that's why I think they're in the bargaining phase.

Unfortunately, if their reactions really are following the Kubler-Ross model, it will get worse before it gets better. After Bargaining comes DEPRESSION. Only after depression comes the final stage of ACCEPTANCE.

I do pray they get it before they're left with only wild-eyed blind followers who have idealized and idolized the church; i.e., replaced God in their souls with a kind of Idolatry of the Church... I think Western Civilization is stronger with the Catholic church intact than broken, and I want Western Civilization to survive. So I do wish them well. But they must stop their appalling self-pity. Otherwise, that hole they've dug may turn out to be a grave.

The Catholic Scandals - A New Reformation?

2010-04-02T13:54:00.000-07:00

Outrage over the Catholic sex abuse scandals has heated up in the past few weeks, as reports detailing a Wisconsin priest's abuse of deaf students in his care, and the resulting coverup, which reached the Vatican, and Pope Benedict personally, have been widely disseminated. Today, Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, delivering the Good Friday homily in St. Peters, insisted that the recent criticisms leveled at the Vatican in general and the Pope in particular, were akin to "the collective violence" of antisemitism. While the Reverend may have had a point to make concerning individual guilt versus collective guilt, the audacious hyperbole of conflating international criticism to the Holocaust is unbelievably self-pitying arrogance.

My jaw drops as I contemplate the meaning of the reverend's words. He believes himself, the pontiff and the church, to be the victims here, not the children harmed by the abuse that gave rise to the scandals in the first place. Unbelievable! How can Catholics abide it? Why they don't rip St. Peter's down stone by stone is beyond me. The sheer magnitude of the scandal also troubles me. It makes me wonder if Satan really does exist, and this is an infernal plot to seed the church with possessed priests bent on destroying it from within.

There's much about the Catholic church I can't abide, and I count myself fortunate not to have been raised one. Several of my cousins were, however, and they've all turned out to be quite good people. It's the hierarchy I can't stand. Really, the Catholic Church is the Roman empire redux. The levels and strata of power, from the autocrats to the aristocrats to the bureaucrats to the laity, is top-down, with the Pope occupying the place of Caesar.

However, that model is central to an organizational structure which permits unity of purpose and philosophy. It's had its ups and downs, but throughout the 300 centuries of Western Civilization (Joseph Campell says Western Civ began with the cave paintings 30,000 years ago), the top down structure has served us well at times. There's been rebellion, such as the Reformation, which severely compromised the church's temporal authority and led ultimately to the renaissance and the enlightenment, and gave birth to the Western Democracy we all enjoy. The Catholic church tried its best to adapt to Western Democracy, eschewing its innate feudalism for greater transparancy and discussion, and even allowing dissent. (Vatican II).

I find myself in the unbelievable (i'm using that word a lot today) position of actually fearing for the welfare of the Catholic Church, what has always been considered an eternal juggernaut. These scandals might bring it completely down. It's already paid $billions in restitution, and money=power. This hemhorraging of funds can't help its authority. But I worry what would happen to Western Civilization if the Catholic Church dissolves. One of the problems of radical Islam, is this idea that practically any Imam can make any fatwa against practically anyone. It's extremely chaotic and leads to misunderstanding and continuous violence. I do not want to see that happen to Christianity.

So, while I don't wish the Catholic hierarchy well, neither do I wish them ill. I hope they will abandon their self-pitying victimhood and clean house. Major repentance and reconciliation is called for.

Watchmen

2010-03-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

By Alan Moore

Who watches the watchers? Watchmen takes place in an alternate 1985 (one year after George Orwell’s iconic anno domini), amid a kind of societal schizophrenia that is both twisted and completely rational. Watchmen is about the essential disconnection between morality and pragmatism. On the one hand we have the characters and situations of Watchmen, and on the other, we have preconceived notions about how super heroes are supposed to think and behave. Super heroes are supposed to be moral, virtuous paragons fighting for truth, justice and the American way. Alan Moore has a field day ramming that Titanic boatload of tropes into an iceberg of moral relativism, and the result is brutally ironic.

In Watchmen, super heroes are decidedly non-super. Only Rorshach has the values one associates with super heroes—he cares about the truth and about justice while all about him, super heroes are making closed-door deals, making political alliances, looking the other way when convenient, and allowing the hard truths to go unexposed. Richard Nixon, that paragon of pragmatism for whom the ends always justified the means, is still president in his fourth term. He is the perfect symbol of what Moore’s worldview intends to convey. This is a world of shadow dealings, of obfuscation and cover-up, of lies and innuendo, of muddy waters.

Alan Moore’s literary style here contains multilayered brilliance, with as many facets as the Koh-i-noor diamond (not the Hope—there’s no hope in this universe). Rorshach is aptly named for the famous psychiatrist who created the inkblot test as a window on the subconscious. In one of the best scenes of the film, Rorshach takes the inkblot test, his verbal responses betraying no hint of the profound agonies underlying each image as they raise memories of murder, mayhem, and injustice. Thus, Rorshach’s uncompromising commitment to his values becomes a dark obsession, rather than a mission.

Rorshach becomes like a Super-Ego, unable to compromise. He finally is unable to accept a world which has no absolutes. Watchmen is Rorshach’s dark night of the soul. He is experiencing an existential crisis throughout the story as he uncovers more evidence of greed, ambition, cruelty, avarice, larceny, sadism. He cannot see any beauty in humanity nor in the world. And in this world, ruled over by the Prince of Paranoia, Richard M. Nixon, there’s very little beauty to be seen. For Rorshach, though, beauty can be an idea, or even simply an ideal. But as the story unfolds, each of those underpinnings to the meaning of his existence is pulled away until oblivion remains as the only antidote to uncompromising agony.

The golden age of comics is the backdrop for this dark take on the realms of Camus and Kafka. Golden age superheroes have a multitude of problems with sexuality, relationships, addiction, and codes of honor which are at best mutable. Even their costumes seem embarrassingly ill-fitting. As “enemies of communism” super heroes are shown fighting (and winning) the Vietnam war. “God exists and he is American,” crows the scientist who helped create Dr. Manhattan, the ice-blue ambivalent supreme being which has evolved beyond “super” to “godlike” powers. In one scene, we are treated to the spectacle of the Viet-cong doing humiliating obeisance to Dr. Manhattan and worshipping him as a god, something the powers that be desired more than the lives of the 50,000 American troops they discarded in the attempt to make that fantasy a reality.

The Watchmen bring the idea or ideals of superheroes squarely into conflict with the world as it is, exposing comic book superheroes to be the psychological stand-ins we use them for—fantasies for making the world “right”, that there is an agency out there somewhere, that in karmic terms, looks after us, and repays right with right and evil with evil. Moore exposes that mind-set for the infantile moral pap it is. He at once ennobles and destroys the entire genre of comic books. As a work of art, it is sui generis, a attempt to deconstruct the entire genre, and turn it on its head. At this, Moore succeeds. The story, with its nihilistic ending, captures the notion that big ideas don’t change the world. In fact, nobody can change the world. You can only change your relationship to it, and that requires sacrifice, and yes, compromise. There are no absolutes. We swim without fins in a relativistic soup and all we can do is love one another.

Good Karma

2010-01-13T14:20:00.000-08:00

Today I made a donation to Mercy Corps for Haitian earthquake relief. I urge everyone to do so. My decision is not completely altruistic. At some point, it is likely a major subduction quake will strike the Pacific Northwest. Such a quake would possibly reach a force of 9.0 or thereabouts on the Richter Scale. I'm giving to Mercy Corps today because I want good Karma in my spiritual bank account. By being here for Mercy Corps today, perhaps they will be here for me at some point in the future. And if there's never an earthquake of that magnitude in Seattle during my lifetime--no harm done.

Do What Thou Wilt

2009-03-27T14:38:00.000-07:00

Grace, honour, praise, delight,
Here sojourn day and night.
Sound bodies lined
With a good mind,

Do here pursue with might
Grace, honour, praise, delight.
--Francois Rabelais

I discover today that Do What Thou Wilt originated not with Aleister Crowley, but with the French mystic poet philosopher Rabelais, he of the famous lines from The Music Man's PickaLittle song:

Alma: Chaucer

Ethel: Rabelais

Eulalie: Balzac!

Writes Rabelais concerning the Abbey at Theleme, built by the Giant Gargantua:

All their life was spent not in laws, statutes, or rules, but according to their own free will and pleasure. They rose out of their beds when they thought good; they did eat, drink, labour, sleep, when they had a mind to it and were disposed for it. None did awake them, none did offer to constrain them to eat, drink, nor to do any other thing; for so had Gargantua established it. In all their rule and strictest tie of their order there was but this one clause to be observed,

Do What Thou Wilt;

because men that are free, well-born, well-bred, and conversant in honest companies, have naturally an instinct and spur that prompteth them unto virtuous actions, and withdraws them from vice, which is called honour. Those same men, when by base subjection and constraint they are brought under and kept down, turn aside from that noble disposition by which they formerly were inclined to virtue, to shake off and break that bond of servitude wherein they are so tyrannously enslaved; for it is agreeable with the nature of man to long after things forbidden and to desire what is denied us.

Sir Francis Dashwood of the infamous Hellfire Club adopted the central law of Do What Thou Wilt and it became synonymous with licentiousness and immorality. Crowley has tried to rehabilitate the notion.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law"
"Love is the law, love under will"
"There is no Law beyond Do what thou wilt"

For Crowley, the Will was the innermost highest purpose. This is not a call to gratify base lusts and sinful desires, but to follow your bliss as Joseph Campbell famously said. In essence, it is a call to find existential meaning in one's life. And this in 1904!!!

Furthermore, He taught that the True Will of each individual was identified with the Holy Guardian Angel, a daimon unique to each individual

Those who have seen or read The Golden Compass, what think you of that?

I am a camera

2009-03-20T14:39:00.000-07:00

Natasha Richardson, rest in peace. Natasha Richardson won a Tony award for her performance as Sally Bowles in the revival of Cabaret on Broadway, a production I later saw in Seattle on tour with Joely Fisher as Sally. Cabaret was based on a play by John Van Druten titled I Am A Camera, which was based on one of Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories."

“I am a camera with its shutter open. Quite passive. Recording, not thinking. Someday all this will have to be developed, carefully printed. Fixed.”
-Christopher Isherwood, Berlin Stories

Christopher Isherwood was born in England, lived in Berlin during the Weimar Republic and emigrated to America in or about 1940. He settled in Santa Monica during the war and worked as a novelist and teacher. Besides his own fiction, he is noteworthy for his circle, which included W.H. Auden (champion of Tolkein), Stephen Spender, and for having met fledgling writer Ray Bradbury in a Santa Monica bookstore, a chance meeting that resulted in a famous positive review of Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. I met Ray Bradbury in Seattle about 10 years ago at a book signing. He was gracious and spoke to me for some minutes regarding On the Orient North, a short story of his that had been made into a teleplay by Ray Bradbury Theater on Showtime. He didn't care for its execution, but after I sang its praises he promised he would take another look.

Natasha Richardson's aunt, Lynne Redgrave, performed Shakespeare for My Father at the Intiman several years ago, which I saw, and was quite moved by. This was right before the release of Shine. I later saw Ms. Redgrave standing on the corner of Mercer and 1st Avenue N. waiting to cross the street, a dreamy look in her eye. I wish that I hadn't been driving so that I could have told her how moving her memoir was to me, and how much I enjoyed not only her performance, but her writing, which captured a moment from her father's life of such intimacy and grace that it has been indelibly recorded in my memory. Her father, in a completely selfless frame of mind, ravaged by Parkinsons into an egoless state, cries, "I'm so worried about your mother..."

Natasha Richardson's Mother, Vanessa Redgrave, performed in Little Odessa, with Tim Roth, in which her character is dying of cancer. My own mother had passed away just the year before of the same disease, and Redgrave's frank resemblance to my mother was simply overwhelming. To this day I still associate Vanessa Redgrave with my mother because they looked so much alike.

I am a camera.

Human Life - a closed system.

2009-03-18T11:02:00.001-07:00

Reading Peter Levenda's Sinister Forces: The Nine, which collects and investigates the minutiae of American political history. Levenda abandons the kind of clear and convincing historical pattern most common to historical textbooks, in favor of collecting and analyzing bizarre coincidences and synchronicities, the warp and weft of historical threads of various intentions and purposes. This I think has an unintented consequence. How often have we heard that "truth is stranger than fiction?" We know this can be true because we have experienced it in our own lives. However, perhaps most historians fear that their theses will be disregarded if they get lost in the tangential circumstances surrounding "the EVENT." While Levenda's tangential obsession makes him seem like a crackpot, it also gives his work a kind of verisimillitude that seems strangely convincing--because it seems like the way life operates.

Levenda likes to find connections and correspondences between seemingly disconnected events. Charles Manson seems to stand at the nexus of many of these threads. How does Charles Manson relate to military intelligence, the CIA, and psychological warfare? Levenda connects the threads in a convincing way. At first blush, most would consider these connections to simply be coincidental. Levenda believes that human history is connected in ways that are invisible and strange (what he calls "occult") and thus not written about by mainstream historians. Levenda believes that coincidence is an illusion. I find his hypothesis meritorius. My life is dicated by my beliefs and desires, and these have led me in certain directions to meet certain people whose beliefs and desires have led them across my path. Human organizations also have beliefs and desires and act accordingly. We do not live our lives in a vaccum. Our lives are determined by forces (belief and desire) which are invisible and often unarticulated and unexamined on an individual level. These forces of motivation are as strong as laws of gravity. Human life and culture is a closed system.

Imported Post: Conspiracy Theory

2009-03-16T13:38:00.001-07:00

Originally posted: Thursday, February 12, 2009

Reading Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi's Monster of Florence. Epiphany: Conspiracy theories are wonderful for fiction, but they are annoying and bizarre when applied to real life. But, when the police develop a conspiracy theory as in the the case of Dr. Narducci, the School of the Red Rose, and the serial killer(s) known as the Monster of Florence, then God help us.

It is as though the investigators, in their single-minded obsession to catch the killer, see it as a personal offront that the killer is still loose, and develop a kind of collective delusion. They must justify their obsession. They must justify why this character has eluded them for decades. Of course! It can't be only one person! Of course! It must be a conspiracy against law and order. Of course! It has to be a shadowy group of very rich and powerful individuals who are united against me, because a poor Sardianian illiterate could never have eluded justice so effectively for so long. There's nothing wrong with MY methods--I must be up against impossible odds. The motive? Of course--it MUST be SATANIC, because I certainly feel as though I'm in hell...

Apparently such investigative "technique" is tantamount to a kind of hysteria--and leads to factitious delusion and the most bizarre leaps in logic. Like auditors, investigators may need to be rotated so that they don't develop these Captain Ahab-like fixations and mental disorders.

Preston and Spezi, having the temerity to review the evidence and come to their own conclusions--which deviate from the investigator's bizarre construct of events, fall under the lens of suspicion themselves. Like the Salem Witch Trials, when questioning the procedure itself was enough to bring suspicion on the questioner.

Money quote: "I felt like I was in Franz Kafka's The Trial, acted out by Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis."

Imported Post: Witch Hunt

2009-03-16T13:35:00.001-07:00

Originally posted: Friday, February 13, 2009

Finished The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. It ends on a sad and sombre note, the expression of the mother of one of the victims who has gone bankrupt financially and in almost every other sense during the decades since her daughter's death. "I'll take these pictures down and put them away. I don't care about the truth anymore. There can be no truth that will make up for this pain. I have forgotten I am alive." (I'm paraphrasing there, but you get the idea). Heartbreaking. It put me in mind of the appearance by the mother of one of Ted Bundy's victims on the local news--this was back in 1989 and she appeared together with Bundy's mother, discussing his imminent execution. Her grief was devastating. It was a life-scarring trauma, and she still bore the wounds of it 20 years later. Still, her daughter's death was no mystery.

There was never nor will there ever be a solution in the Monster case. However, finding and punishing a malefactor was not the theme of Preston & Spezi's book. The cerebral romp of pawing through suspects and clues takes a decided turn into uncharted territory for Preston as his temerity to review evidence and come to a different conclusion than the ministers, lawyers and policemen in charge of a seriously derailed and deranged investigation, earns him their scrutiny. He goes from being an obstructionist, to a libeller using the media, to a perjuror, a planter of evidence, and finally, an accessory to the Monster himself.

Preston says that until you've been interrogated you cannot possibly know what it's like. I believe him. In the case of the Monster of Florence, police interrogated poverty-stricken, mentally retarded witnesses who were all too willing to offer testimony confirming the police and prosecution's theory, that a satanic sect was behind the Monster murders.

This testimony would be rejected by parallel court proceedings, invalidated by one jury, yet used to uphold the convictions of others! Incredible. Only in Italy could this happen, yes? A nation of supersitious, backward peasants or excitible Roman Catholics.

Not so fast. Here in my own State of Washington, something quite similar took place in 1995--known as the Wenatchee sex ring. Again, based solely on questionable witness testimony, prosecutors and detectives ruined many lives and reputations looking for a vast network of pedophiles that didn't exist - or so the jury found. Again, the police based their case on confessions gained from poverty-stricken mentally deficient witnesses, who pleaded guilty to charges and then turned around to give evidence against others charged with the same crimes. This evidence and testimony was eventually completely rejected by the juries, but those witnesses still rot in prison as a result of their guilty pleas.

But the worst of the worst--and the theme of this post, is the Witch Hunt. A witch hunt is more than just ruthlessly seeking out a certain group of people, using questionable tactics in single minded obsession on the part of law enforcement. A true witch hunt occurs when the hunt becomes more important than the truth, more important than justice, and more important than reason. In a witch hunt, the investigator feels personally that his theory is correct, it is sacrosanct and can bear no review, anyone who might disagree with his conclusions is automatically on the other side, aligned with the forces of darkness, an enemy, and hence, in league with the malefactors. As in the Monster case, when a person who criticizes or questions the investigation itself falls under suspicion as being involved in the conspiracy--you know you have a witch hunt. Precisely that happened in Wenatchee. America, with all her checks and balances has no defense against irrational, paranoid, factitous rumor--and god help us all when those rumors are believed as truth by a prosecutor.

Imported Post: Absolute Truth

2009-03-16T13:34:00.001-07:00

Originally posted: Saturday, February 21, 2009

I've been working on an idea for a novel, and have been casting a wide net. Recently Post Modernism got caught in the mesh and I took a look. While I've written about relativism before, it again gave me pause. Post Modernism can be defined as that school of thought that came after 'modernism.' Well, that's self-evident. Specifically it is a branch of philosophy that holds there are no absolute truths--we are stories without authors--everything must be approached with skepticism.

From there we get moral relativism, I would guess.

Well it makes me damn bilious. While I find the far right wing completely bankrupt intellectually and ethically, I find the far left wing completely bankrupt morally. This sounds like just the ticket for far left wing professors who want to stick it to the establishment, by questioning its most cherished traditional values.

What I don't understand about the school of thought, and I'm completely eager to be taught, is when does the skepticism and the questioning stop? When do you get an answer?

And when do you accept truth as being a priori? I think it's a-priori that murder is wrong. I would object to murder on ethical and moral grounds because if Decartes is right, and my capacity to think defines my humanity, then my murder would deprive me of my ability to think, and by extension, my being.

By questioning absolute truths, see, I think that most people in academe would want to limit that to traditional truths. They wouldn't want to contemplate skepticism from the other side of the spectrum. Such as, "Torture can be justly applied in certain circumstances." or, "Genocide can be a legitimate tool for social engineering."

I do think there is a place for legitimate skepticism in most areas of human endeavor--especially the arts. It's perfectly fine to question the absolute truth that every wall must meet in a right angle (architecture) or "all plays must conform to the unities of time and place," or "All novels must be sub-divided in equal parts called chapters." By questioning the norm, we can often make great leaps of logic and aesthetics. The humanities flourish when questioned. But we cannot ignore experience in our questioning. We cannot question whether genocide is moral because we know empirically, posteriori, that it is not. There is no epistemology like experience.

Imported Post: The Leader Principle

2009-03-16T13:26:00.000-07:00

Originally posted: Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Her performance in The Reader won Kate Winslet an Oscar. She plays a concentration camp guard on trial for war crimes. I've been doing a lot of reading this past year about the Third Reich, including Peter Levenda's Unholy Alliance and The Hitler Book, edited by Mathias Uhl. While I recommend Levenda's book wholeheartedly (I'm currently reading Sinister Forces), The Hitler Book really seemed to capture more of the zeitgeist of the Third Reich. I also recommend The Goebbels Experiment, a documentary available through Netflix.

One cannot resist the temptation of comparing those times with the times in which we live. For example, the burning of Reichstag as a prelude for war shares certain harmonies with the lead up to war in Iraq in 2002-2003, and George Bush's conflation of Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda, and the destruction of the World Trade Center. It also shares similarities with Emperor Nero's burning of Rome and his subsequent blaming of the Christians for the arson.

And while the Patriot Act, the bobble-heads on Fox News calling any dissent unAmerican, etc. and the ilk on talk radio and internet, had a chilling effect on free speech, this was still a Western Democracy. That was not the case when the first concentration camps were built in 1935-36.

Germany had become a totalitarian dictatorship in June, 1934 when Hitler purged his political enemies by murdering 85 of them, including Kurt von Schleicher, former Chancellor of Germany. This would have been on par of say, Richard Nixon ordering the assassination of ex-President Eisenhower. Though the dissemination of news was not nearly as fluid as it exists today, the German hierarchy could not keep the news secret. But the lie told was that the murdered, led by Ernst Rohm, were planning a coup. This event is also known as The Night of Long Knives, Operation Hummingbird, and "the so-called Rohm-Putsch."

It was a turning point for Germany and the German government. It did more than solidify Hitler's power base, it confirmed Hitler as de jure, the sole highest judge of the German people, and above the law. All law was vested in the personal fiat of Adolf Hitler. Extra-constitutional courts and executions would become commonplace thereafter.

This was when The Fuhrerprinzip became the whole of the law in German society. After the war, at Nuremberg, defendants tried unsuccessfully to use the existence of the leader principle as a mitigating factor, or even an outright defense. It was denied by the tribunals, under the rationale that soldiers are not obliged to obey illegal orders. Under the Fuherprinzip, however, it was argued that there was no such thing as an illegal order, that any order that came from your leader was legal. The tribunals responded that officers should have used their moral consciences as their guides.

While I certainly don't excuse their conduct, nor do I weep at their executions, the defendants had a point that was lost. The Third Reich was not a democracy. No dissent was tolerated. Dissent was punishable by death, and this was frequently proven. Sophie Scholl, of the White Rose movement, was guillotined for passing out innocuous mimeographs questioning the policies of the Third Reich--nothing more.

After 1934 no resistance to Hitler was possible on the individual level, and all who attempted it were murdered. The Hitler book reveals how bloodthirsty Hitler was, and illustrates his pathology--his compartmentalization of the suffering of his victims. He was a true psychopath, no doubt about it. He was the Gordian Knot of the German People. I don't think it's rational to expect someone to make a choice between one's own death, or the death of another (even many, many others), and hold them accountable for not choosing the former!

All that said, we must remember that Hitler didn't almost destroy the world by himself. There were a host of fellow travelers eager for the bloodbath and the victory, and they share Hitler's guilt and culpability. Those at Nuremberg enthusiastically supported Nazi programs and policies, it was just and meet that they should be executed for their crimes. But for the individual German? I'm not so sure how much suffering they needed to experience to atone. In any event, most of those who were alive at the time, are alive no longer. Time is justice.

Imported Posts

2009-03-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

I'm going to import a few posts from my other blog - White Space - here. This is an attempt to separate the themes of the two blogs, and reserve White Space for news about my writing and its publication. I'll post links here from time to time when that blog is updated with specific news about writing.

Blinding me with Science

2009-03-13T13:11:00.000-07:00

I was recently raked over the coals by Katherine Ramsland for comparing dactyloscopy to phrenology and spectral evidence. In my own defense, I was not making a literal comparison, only citing examples from history where generally accepted practices were later found to be unreliable. This was in response to a phrase I thought I read in her article--that the underlying assumption of dactyloscopy, that no two persons have identical fingerprints, has never been proven, and as such, is an urban myth. Certainly the forensic study of dactyloscopy is scientific, and the points of comparison between two fingerprints can be trusted in a court of law. My point was somehow lost in this exchange--which was, that jurors mostly do not have the wherewithal to independently verify the assertions of scientists on the stand, that they must trust those conclusions on faith. Faith that the scientist is telling the truth and that his or her method is sound. I don't think that prosecutors can as jurors to take scientific evidence on faith. They MUST educate jurors in the science, or risk them disregarding the evidence as irrelevant.

It's like the legal term "beyond a reasonable doubt." What exactly does that mean? And how does it differ from "a preponderance of the evidence" or "clear and convincing evidence?"

I'm speaking here only as a layperson. Katherine Ramsland, with her scientific/forensic background would never be picked to be on a jury. I have a jury summons laying on my desk as I write this. These are questions that matter.

The Other - Thomas Tryon

2009-03-12T12:19:00.000-07:00

So, this entry follows on the heels of the previous entry, as I further hone my thinking about psychological doubling, and the doppelganger. One non-fiction project I've had on the far back burner for some years (along with an encyclopedia of Seattle murder) is a biography of Thomas Tryon, the author of The Other. What makes Tryon's life interesting is his metamorphosis from a leading man film star with rugged good looks into a literary lion. In that transformation I feel a resonance within my own life (though I was never so handsome nor famous as Mr. Tryon). The forsaking of acting for an altogether more secluded, isolated form of creative endeavor. I'm indebted to my dear friend David Dollase for confronting me with this truth ("I think acting is a creative outlet for you."). With regard to Tryon, his switch, or drift, or course correction, as it were, may have come as the result of a species of artistic post-traumatic stress disorder after working with the dictatorial German director Otto Preminger. It took him seven more years to complete the transition, but perhaps the seeds of the change were planted during this horrific experience.

When actors must expose themselves to the most dubious manipulations in the bad-director's handbook, they have very little power in the matter. They can only hope that their directors are human beings. People like Christian Bale, for example, regarding his recent on-set tantrum, can be forgiven their temperament because that's the only way they have of maintaining a sense of personal power in this relationship. Bale was powerless to walk away from this commitment. He would have been ruined financially. But nothing in his contract prevents a temperamental outburst. I'm so happy I'm out of it...

Anyway, back to Tryon. It seems clear to me that The Other is a classic example of the doppelganger/doubling trope in American literature.

Doppelganger

2008-11-13T09:42:00.000-08:00

Websters defines "doppelganger" as "a ghostly counterpart of a living person." Different from a ghost because the individual is still alive. The doppelganger is a psychic double or distinct separate entity from the individual. This metaphor has been used throughout literature and is deeply ingrained in the psyche of Western Civilization. The astrological sign of Gemini comes to mind. Also the sign Pisces, with its twin inverted individuals. The god Janus, the god with two faces, one looking forward, the other back. Popular culture is repleat with intances of "evil twins." The novels and stories of Joyce Carol Oates and the films of David Lynch explore this theme tirelessly.

Dr. Robert J. Lifton, in his book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Pyschology of Genocide suggests that psychological doubling was the means by which such individuals as Josef Mengele (to name only the most infamous) were psychologically capable of being loving family men on the one hand, and ruthless mass murderers on the other.

In Dr. Lifton's view, the psyche doubles. This process is distinct from splitting, the effect of which is usually dissociation. The result is that the split personality is numb or catatonic. On the other hand, the psychological double experiences no loss of efficiency.

Says Dr. Lifton:

Doubling is part of the universal potential for what William James called the “divided self”: that is, for opposing tendencies in the self. James quoted the nineteenth-century French writer Alphonse Daudet’s despairing cry "Homo duplex, homo duplex!” in noting his “horrible duality” — as, in the face of his brother Henri’s death, Daudet’s “first self wept” while his “second self” sat back and somewhat mockingly staged the scene for an imagined theatrical performance.9 To James and Daudet, the potential for doubling is part of being human, and the process is likely to take place in extremity, in relation to death.

I have experienced this phenomenon when performing on stage, also watching myself perform from the audience. George C. Scott, the actor, also reported having this experience (as well as many other performers). Dr. Lifton's theory though, is that psychological doubling occurs under duress. The duress is the ego's rejection of the moral depravity of mass murder on the scale of Auschwitz. Thus the ego "doubles" or allows a separate and distinct personality to emerge that has no moral scruples.

Dr. Lipton states that for the Nazi doctors, the turning away from their previous code of ethics and moral equalibrium was a kind of psychological stress fracture. Their individuality had been pummeled into submission by the fuhrerprinzip. The Nazi hierarchy was entrenched and intractable. It allowed for no deviation, no dissent, and no disagreement. The alternative to utter submission to the will of the fuhrer was death. So yes, the psychological doubling of the Nazi doctors was in effect a Faustian bargain, which allowed them to survive as participants and organizers of the horror of the concentration camps and in particular the medical "treatments" and experimental procedures they imposed. That the resulting holocaust was so extreme is testament to the very nature of the SS Nazi "cult" they were all desperately trying to function within, coupling intense fear of death or reprisal with a desire to please one's superiors. None of this emancipates one from ethical responsibility, of course.

New Home

2008-10-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the new home of Furor Scribendi at Blogger. I attempted to merge my AOL Journal with my Blogger account which I set up back in 2005, but I could only import into a new blog, rather than merge with an existing blog, and this is it. You are in the right place for info about Mike Hacker's doings. For more specific details about Mike Hacker's writing, please visit my other blog, White Space. This blog is more for politics, philosophy and issues of personal interest, whereas White Space is geared specifically toward writing.

So please kick back and take a look through the archives. Lots of comments on lots of different issues. Make yourselves t'home.

Islam Again

2008-08-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

I read this in today's Post Intelligencer. This is not my prose, but I wanted to preserve it because I agree with it completely, I find it an extremely cogent and intelligent take on certain PC theories about the Religion of Peace.

Posted by thezorg at 8/14/08 9:18 a.m.

ajd_ind wrote, "Here in the U.S., however, the bigger threat to our democracy is Christian fundamentalism, particularly with people like Ken Hutcherson and Scott Lively and groups like the Watchmen on the Walls.

Americans need to stop being such weenies about criticizing fundamentalist Christian beliefs, particularly those that give perpetuate sexism and homophobia."

I can't agree with the points in either paragraph. Some Christian fundamentalist groups certainly advocate laws, policies and values that many of us consider opposed to constitutional values (though I don't know of any Christian groups that oppose democracy). Most of the issues raised by the likes of Hutcherson don't involve threats to democracy, they are threats to equality, equal protection and the like.

But those groups, while vocal, are more than balanced by other groups - many of which are also Christian, and others hail from other religions and from secular life. I don't consider the fact that zealous religiots are participating in our local and national debates over these questions to be a threat to democracy. To the contrary, I consider it to be the very embodiment of democracy and free speech.

As to Americans being weenies about Christian fundamentalists, you obviously have a very different experience on that point than I do. I see aggressive, vigorous challenges to Christianity on a regular basis. I'm talking about discussion between people, on-line discussions, op-eds, editorials, newspaper articles - it's not only not hard to find numerous examples of those things, it's nearly impossible to avoid them.

And that, too, represents the embodiment of American democracy and free speech. Groups advocating contrary and diametrically opposed views can go at it hammer and tongs, leaving everyone to make up their own minds in the end.

The fact that Islamic and Christian fundamentalism tend to share zealous close mindedness and advocacy of oppressive policies is of no concern to me. I have no problem with people who disagree with me, even if they disagree very strongly and we consider one another to be agents of our respective satans.

To me, it is vastly more important that Islamic fundamentalism accpets and in its more extreme forms actively encourages acts of horrific violence and terrorism. It advocates what we refer to as "vigilantism", the slaughter of anyone who dares say or do anything that they oppose. That is wholly antithetical to democracy, cripples free speech and destroys open debate.

Fundamentalist Christians don't accept or actively encourage those acts. There are certainly some folks like Eric Rudolph who are exceptions, but I not agree with those who argue that those exceptions somehow represent all Christians, or even fundamentalist Christians. They're the exception, not the rule. There are no more Christian violent psychos than there are non-Christians violent psychos (and probably fewer).

It is common in these debates to point to the history of Christianity, particularly the crusades and the inquisitions (there was more than one of each). And that's a valid comparison, although usually the argument misses the mark.

I believe that contemporary Islam is where Christianity was about 400 years ago, vis a vis social/political development. Christianity did go through periods where it inflicted terrible oppression and abuses on populaces. But Christianity grew out of that - slowly and over a long time, and not without internal and external upheaval. For a long time, Christians also slaughtered those they considered "heretics", burned "heretical" books, and forced people to convert or submit to horrible torture - for the good of their own souls. But today, apart from small groups we disparagingly refer to as cults, no Christian group endorses or advocates those practices.

That's what I think we're seeing within Islam today. But unlike Christian evolution, Old Islam is coming into direct conflict with a developed western world that has moved far beyond them socially and politically. There is a powerful backlash within Islam against what they view as "heresy" and the sins of the west. Mainstream Islam is confused, which is why we don't see clearer or louder opposition. Most Muslims are caught between a rock and a hard place without clear guidance from their religion. As for New Islam (those trying to take Islam faster into the future), its proponents tend to get killed as heretics by the Old Islam fanatics.

So long as the fanatics can continue their vendetta against anyone they don't like, New Islam will struggle to gain a hold.

So bottom line, I don't see any real comparison between Christian and Islamic fundamentalism today.

The Holy Lie

2008-04-29T10:12:00.000-07:00

My good friend Steve today blogged about Grand Theft Auto IV and the Holy Lie. To recap the irony: many will oppose this game based on their perception that it promotes violence and antisocial behavior. Yet the empirical data doesn't support that notion. So the arbiters of moral rectitude will lie in order to promote their agenda. It used to be that the Devil could "quote scripture to his purpose." But now that the church has abrogated or has been deposed of the mantle of the determiner of reality, the Devil quotes data to the same purpose. What will please old Scratch more--the idea that there are some hormone-driven youngsters out there virtually carousing, drinking, stealing, etc., or their moral guardians' lies? Won't old horny-head salivate at the prospect of having a group of the righteous headed for the circle of hell that incinerates hypocrites?

I'd much rather stick a self-righteous theocrat with my pitchfork than a pimply faced kid. But that's just me.

If only it were that simple! The problem is not with the kids or the videogames or with the Devil, for that matter. The problem is the nature of belief. For 2000 years Western Civilization has relied on scripture as the final say in what's real and what's moral. But those attitudes have changed decidedly in the last 200 years. As a result, the purveyors of "correct standards of behavior" have changed their tactics. They now rely upon the bible AND the scientific method. It used to be that they could scold bad behavior simply stating that it was anti-Christian. Now, they have to have data to support their position because they know that science is the only thing that anyone pays any attention to. The subtext being: Isn't it interesting how science supports biblical standards. (Except for evolution, of course).

The problem is that they approach data without any understanding of science--they view data as though IT WERE SCRIPTURE. I.E., the data is a matter of belief and faith, *not of proof or disproof.* The data supports them because they *believe* it supports them. There is no truth other than the truth of personal perception based on biblical principles. Objective truth simply doesn't exist. Therefore, they can't be said to be LYING, because they don't believe the alternative to be true. Anything that does not support their personal perception of biblical principles is a lie. Thus the worst that they can be accused of is willful self-delusion. Not exactly the same as lying.

While it sounds like I might be defending these hypocrites, I realize that I fall prey to the same willful delusion by relying on science too much in daily life. While science might be helpful in some circumstances to daily living, it has less relevance than the bible. I'm not a researcher. I cannot independently verify the data, I have to have faith that it is true! I must choose to believe it. While experts will tell me that such and such is supported by the data, I either have to accept that at face value or say, "show me the proof." Graphs and charts are totally abstract. You can't see the objective truth unless you understand the statistical principles underpinning them. Again, you have to accept on faith.

In many respects it is just this problem of science/belief/faith that has caused Global Warming to be such a divisive area of science for so long. Science has theorized that it is happening for decades. But Science is not equipped to tell us what the moral response to the data should be. Thus we are left to flounder.

While it may be bad for you to play Grand Theft Auto, it isn't science's place to say so. Many of the same blue noses pointed to Doom and Quake and the Littleton, CO massacre.

In that respect we return to our old adversary, the devil. It used to be that if someone went out and shot someone "the devil made him do it!" That was quantifiable evil. Nowadays, because of psychology, we have to figure out the psychpathology that made him do it. Except for a small handful of researchers, psychopathology is a scientific stand-in for the devil. But where is the truth? And more importantly, where is the truth that matters to daily life?

Psychotic Tendencies

2008-03-04T21:15:00.000-08:00

Saw a very disturbing thing this morning on the way to work: a naked woman sitting in the middle of the road. I had just turned the corner. Traffic had slowed but I couldn’t see why until I turned the corner. She looked like she was in her mid-20’s to mid-30s—difficult to gauge. When I saw her, I immediately thought that she was injured, that she’d been hit. But then she got to her feet. She looked like a character out of the Ring or the Grudge, with her snarled hair hanging down over her gaunt, pallid face. As she got up I could see that she was naked from the waist down. Next thought: has she been raped? As she crossed the street in front of me, she began to take off her t-shirt and it became apparent that she was psycho.

After those initial shocks, my attention widened to take in my surroundings. Plenty of other people were observing the situation and at least one had her cell phone out, so I stopped reaching for mine. And I drove on. I was scared that if I got out of my vehicle to try to help, the raw madness would coalesce into projection and she might take out her demented misery on me. So I drove on.

But then I felt absolutely horrible about myself. Obviously, I’m one of those people who can observe carnage without doing anything about it. While this quality may make me a good writer, it makes me a terrible Christian.

If this were an isolated situation, I might feel better about myself, but it’s happened more than once. (Not with psychotics, but with drunks).

I remember once when I was first moved to Seattle and saw someone lying insensate in the park near my apartment and when I returned an hour later and saw him in the same posture, I did call 911. Turned out he was just a derelict passed out. But I didn’t know if he was dead or not. So I called. When it turned out he was just a passed out drunk I felt like a fool. Maybe that experience caused a callous to form over my naïve heart. Life in the big city (especially one with as many homeless as ours) has challenges. One of the quips about Minnesota that I remember fondly is: “40 below keeps the riff-raff out.” Words of wisdom—words of wisdom. Minneapolis didn’t have the homelessness that Seattle has. (However, I don’t know if that’s still true).

Obviously, my mind doesn’t work quickly enough to respond. I live in too much fear. I fear altering my routine, even to the point of stopping to get out of the car to assess the situation. I live in a fantasy world of stories and ideas, to the point that, when confronted by grim reality it takes inordinate mental concentration to respond in a meaningful way. My response to this situation wasn’t meaningful. I didn’t do anything to ameliorate it.

So, here’s the philosophical point I’m left with: I didn’t do anything. In the Bible story, I was one of the many whopassed bybefore the Good Samaritan stopped to help. It isn’t that I don’t have a desire to help—I do, but the fear, the weird, disconnected, free-floating fear that I’m going to call “city fear” keeps me isolated and unresponsive.

It’s a primal state, a strange, subhuman state, and I don’t know what the answer is, except that if one other person had been in the car with me—this series of events would have been completely different. Isolation is as much a part of the problem as moral deficiency. Both for me—and the poor madwoman, I dare say.

The Dialectic of Opera

2008-02-22T11:36:00.000-08:00

Thesis. Antithesis. Tinnitus.

Feeling in a playful mood today. Tuesday and Wednesday were DARK NIGHTS OF THE SOUL in which heavy depression and anxiety dogged my every footfall. Can only speculate the cause. Tomorrow I turn 50.

I've been reading Duma Key by Stephen King and I'm enjoying it. Like all of King's work in the past 15 years it suffers from prolixity, but the mood is involving, the setting is different for him, and his characters are interesting.

However, in this case the story is very thin. That was the case with The Cell, too. I'm sufficiently engaged in the characters to keep reading, but very little has happened. The high points: Edgar Freemantle is involved in a life-altering, catastrophic accident that results in amputation of his right arm and neurological deficits (injury to Broca's area). His erratic behavior leads to divorce, but his children are grown and they support him. He retires to Duma Key on Florida's gulf coast in order to rest, recuperate and heal his heart, mind and body. But then his phantom limb begins to tingle. At first, Edgar's forays into drawing and painting seem like precognition. As time goes by, however, his artwork seems to actually be affecting reality.

Like all of King's work in the past few years, this too is derivative. The only thing original here are King's characters. The gimmick of the paintings affecting reality is identical to an episode of the X-Files in Season 9 titled "Scary Monsters." But the idea of art affecting reality is older than that. King compares one of the art dealers that visit Edgar as "Dorian Gray." So apparently he was completely cognizant of his plot pilfering. Plot pilfering is completely fine, as long as you spin it somehow, and King uses his characters to that end. It's going to be different this time because the characters are so unique. That's King's strength, always has been.

However, when the story no longer supports the number of words it takes to tell it, there's a problem. This is a problem with Duma Key. While King is always careful to give the reader sensory details, nice humorous touches, disturbing emotion and feelings, terrific reactions, etc., when that no longer propels the action of the story forward, the prose feels stagnant. That's what happens here. Too much description of too much minutiae. All of it is told with active, vibrant prose, but by describing everything in minute detail, the reader loses touch with what's really important.

I Smell Children....

2008-01-29T13:53:00.000-08:00

Without doubt, one of the movies that influenced me most as a child was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It's now getting rave reviews as a stage musical in London and New York.

The character in the movie that fascinated me the most was the evil Child Catcher--played by Sir Robert Helpmann.

On stage, in a stunning feat of perfect casting, the character is portrayed by Richard O'Brien of Rocky Horror Picture Show fame.

Click here to see who I think should play the Child Catcher when they make the movie of the stage musical!

The Republican Plan for Healthcare (Huckabee)

2008-01-17T14:25:00.000-08:00

Lose weight... and pray.

Bewitched, bothered and dissociated

2008-01-11T10:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I don't want to write because it takes me out of the comfortable mental envelope protecting me from the shock of reality: dissociation. My mind unhinges, and drifts away on a cloud of minutae and the perfect activity to reinforce this warm stew of mental passivity: web surfing. So sometimes I just have to force my fingers to the keyboard and begin typing, no matter what comes out.

Things I've seen today surfing? Christopher Bowman (who I'd never heard of) former champion figure skater and child tv actor, died of a suspected overdose in a motel room somewhere off the beaten track. I'd wonder if he were playing checkers with John Belushi in the afterlife, if I believed in an afterlife, which I don't. Ashes to ashes/dust to dust. We go into the ground or our ashes get scattered and that's the end of it.

Until the Day of Resurrection and the Final Judgment. Not only is that the scenario I believe in, it's the scenario I prefer to believe in. The thought of consciousness surviving bodily death is too terrifying, and fantastic--like a grim fairy tale.

Once we were having a conversation about this during a trip to Ashland. When I laid out these views and defended them, saying that was what I was taught in Sunday School and by my mother--Cyndee, one of our group, snidely said, "well that's fine for a child, but what do you believe as an adult?"

So, I was the one who didn't believe that consciousness survived death--and I was being called childish...

I've decided to write about these moments that return to my consciousness, seemingly at random, but really not randomly at all. There's a purpose for why I remember these events which I might, except for some mysterious component, have long since completely forgotten.

Other surfing news: Mike Huckabee lost 110 pounds and wrote a book about it. That's the Republican healthcare platform--lose weight. I look forward to losing weight when I move to Iowa. It's already begun. My pants are very loose. Although I was up to 315 at my sleep medicine appointment on Wednesday, I suspect that I was actually heftier than that--probably 325 or 330--a few months ago. Stress has a way of creeping up on you.

So here's my thought on that: I could stay in my current job and make enough money to eventually be able to afford a heart bypass--or I could move to Iowa, reduce stress and my waistline, and avoid the operation, and come out none the worse financially.

And in the meantime, do more enjoyable, satisfying, authentic work.

The Inadequate Assassin

2007-12-12T11:08:00.000-08:00

"You've got an 'inferiority complex.'" Or so I've been told. So it gives me pause when I read criminal profiles of inadequate loner types who fantasize and then kill. The recent mass murder in Colorado at New Life Church and the Youth With a Mission training center, involving Matthew Murray, is an example of an extremely shy, awkward teenager, with limited social maturity due to having been homeschooled, and with an underlying psychosis:

Richard Werner, who was Murray’s roommate at YWAM in Arvada in 2002 for missionary training, recalled Murray as an odd 19-year-old who was painfully shy and displayed extreme “mood swings.” Werner said Murray, who growled and spoke to himself in the middle of the night in strange voices, had trouble socially with other young people.

Clearly here are personality traits that are shared with other mass murderers, including the Columbine killers, the Virginia Tech killer, and the recent Omaha Mall shooter, who may have been instrumental in sending Murray over the edge. Martin Bryant, responsible for the worst mass murder in modern Australian history is described as "a quiet lad and a bit of a loner."

What separates these types from other inadequate loner types apparently comes down to three things: 1) proximity of guns or other weapons (one mass murderer used a tank), 2) a psychopathic belief that his needs trump those of other human beings, 3) a stressor that sends him over the edge. The stressor trigger is often "the straw that breaks the camel's back," yet also the result of months or years of slowly building rageful feelings and homicidal and suicidal fantasy.

When confronted by an armed security guard, Matthew Murray shot himself in the head. He needed to control the outcome completely. While he sought out unarmed and defenseless victims, when challenged, he opted out of confrontation because it wouldn't have fit his fantasy of slaughtering a hundred or more church-goers. He was a coward.

The two sisters at New Life Church were his perfect targets, representing other happy, well adjusted young Christians which he felt estranged from and victimized by.

“If you’re an extrovert, and popular, then yes, there is plenty of love waiting for you in christianity,” Murray wrote May 8. “If you ask questions and want to understand things and/or desire a real and deep spirituality, or if you’re just not popular . . . well . . . you are considered as one of the horrible people and are either going to be abused or kicked out by ‘holy spirit love filled’ christians.”

One of the great treasures of my life has been connecting with other introverts. I have sought out and bonded with people who share my interests and understand my feelings. I have also succeeded enough in my pursuits to avoid the damning inner voice of the "critic" which would indeed motivate me to violence if it wasn't held in check. This sometimes manifests as an interior verbal monologue of self-criticism, or of painful memories from my past, projected into my mind's eye, usually at a vulnerable moment. I have learned to deal with this phenomenon, which is a symptom of depression. I am not the only one who suffers. My own treatment has involved heightened awareness of the voice, when it is speaking or showing me embarrassing or stress-causing images. I take a moment to stop and confront the unreality of the negative thoughts.

For various reasons, the killers above did not have the coping skills necessary to avoid their violent codas. Three things can be done: 1) Learn to recognize underachieving loner types and reach out to them. This can be harder than you think. In the case of the Virginia Tech killer, one of his professors took extraordinary steps, including private seminars and counseling, to reach him. She failed. He was too far gone. 2) If you're introverted, seek out other introverts. You both will benefit. Have the courage to say hello. 3) Don't buy guns, no matter how strong, capable, macho and in control of things they make you feel.

Borat Sued Again

2007-12-05T11:04:00.000-08:00

The producers of Borat will be defending against another lawsuit. Another disgruntled individual, duped by the producers of the smash hit film, is fighting back. The producers make my teeth grind with statements such as this:

"He signed a release, and we have an agreement," [producer] Brilliant said. "Now, 2 1/2 years after giving his consent and more than one year after the movie was released, Mr. Psenicska has decided to file a lawsuit, citing the financial success of the film, in spite of our agreement."

First, there's a statute of limitations involved: probably 3 years. Mr. Psenicska likely filed suit in order to preserve his claim against the producers. Allowing the statute to run would negate any legal standing he has.

Second, Mr. Psenicska signed an agreement to be in a documentary about foreign born people adjusting to life in America, and this is clearly not the film Mr. Brilliant or the other producers of Borat planned to make. The producers lied in order to coerce cooperation from Mr. Psenicska, because if he had been in on the joke, it would never have been as funny as his reactions were while being duped.

Other filmed entertainment has met this same litigious fate. Candid Camera was sued. More recently, Scare Tactics was sued. I don't know, but I imagine there are bad feelings and billable hours concerning Punk'd.

You can't lie to people to induce them to sign a contract. You don't even have to go to law school to know that one. If Mr. Psenicska was not fully informed, he could not have made an informed choice entering into the agreement. The contract is null and void. If he suffered damages, he deserves to be made whole.

All Mr. Psenicska is asking for is $100K plus punitive damages (which are usually less--but this is likely a California venue, so who knows?) That's chump change. Mr. Brilliant complains that it was only because Borat was successful that Mr. Psenicska is suing. Well, that stands to reason that the more successful the movie was, the more people saw it, and thus the more damage was done to Mr. Psenicska. I see no profiteering motive here since the damages prayed for in the lawsuit are so freaking LOW. Because the damages are so low, I imagine the case will settle and quickly.

Mitt Romney and the Temple of Doom

2007-11-27T10:33:00.000-08:00

Christopher Hitchens, my favorite conservative athiest, has written a crackerjack editorial about Romney's duck, cover, obfuscate and dodge strategy with regard to his religion and answering questions about it in the press. My position: While I hold no personal animosty toward individual Mormons per se (with the lone exception being Orson Scott Card), the church as a whole has the kind of nutty supernatural/science fiction nonsense shared by Scientology. Purported golden plates and faux old testiment nomenclature are not enough to make me a believer. As I have said before and am proud to say again, I believe Joseph Smith was a False Prophet. If I didn't, I would be a Mormon, wouldn't I? I suppose that goes without saying, and that by saying it, I'm effectively spitting in the eye of the CJCLDS--be that as it may. The famous anti-Morman South Park episode, which turns the tables at the end, taught us: all religions are a little bit nutty--what the church believes doesn't matter, it's what the flock does that matters.

Oh, really?

Hitch raises the specters of racism and polygamy that the LDS eschewed by prophetic fiat at critically convenient times. Some might see that as divine inspiration, while others might see it as the Prophet holding his spit-covered finger in the wind.

My position: I don't know what's in Romney's heart, nor do I presume to judge. I only know what he does, and says. Right now, he's saying nothing about an issue that matters.

Gaming

2007-11-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

Why don't I like Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 as much as I should? The game is far too complex. Rules for rules's sake really, which relegates story and structure to the back burner.

I like roleplaying games because I get to play a role--not roll a bunch a dice. Role/roll--get it?

I still think that Chaosium's Fantasy Roleplaying (CFR) is the best system I've ever used. Granted characters can die much more easily than in D&D, but them's the breaks as they say. I became familiar with CFR playing Call of Cthulhu. The "game" aspect of the activity was simply a method for gathering a group together to create interactive stories in which the game designer creates the scenario and the players interact with each other and the given circumstances. This is the kind of gaming I like. Fast. And roll checks are simply there to throw obstructions in the players' paths. Because if it's too easy, it's no fun.

But it's also no fun if it's too hard! I played D&D last night, but it is simply too complex. In order to combat the drow rogue I was fighting, I had to stand inside an anti-magic area which negated all my magic bonuses. I didn't care to do the necessary math so I simply made up a number. I guessed. When you're roleplaying, it's difficult to engage the part of the mind responsible for calculations and math. So I simply don't. Not my job, as they say. My job is to roll dice and have fun. Someone else has to do the math.

Political Pragmatism

2007-11-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I didn't vote today and I don't plan to. I'm leaving the area in a few months and they can have it. It's hard not to get apathetic when the majority of the electorate votes against new sports stadiums several times and they get built anyway, and when the majority votes for a particular kind of mass transit four times and it doesn't get built. But that's Seattle politics for you. Democracy shemocracy.

We can't let issues of such importance be left to an uneducated and politically incorrect electorate!

I'm tired of political correctness, except when I'm not. What I really want to discuss today are gay Republicans. Or more specifically, Republicans caught with their pants down with someone of their same gender. Usually with Republicans there's at least a generational age difference between the two parties, usually but not always, boys.

Thus do gay activists get their homophobic cake and eat it too. First, a member of a party that is unfriendly to gay concerns is outed as a gay person themselves, and by extension a hypocrite. Another c**ksucker is exposed in the party of family values, is the subtext, and gay activists know it, and they know it's homophobic. Their rationale is that they're using homophobia against the homophobes. But they know the hate and the irony go even deeper.

They know that political correctness has seeped into the very fabric of American life there will be Republicans who will not deal harshly with the gay Republicans exposed in their midst because they don't want to appear to be gay bashing. They don't want to appear to be the homophobes they probably are...

Gay activists know that this is how they'll react. So the gay Republican at the center of the scandal is allowed to keep his position because his party members don't want to appear to be intolerant and some of them really are tolerant. But the gay activists know that the longer the gay Republican stays in office the more difficult it is for the party of Lincoln to appear to be the party of family values. The gay activists are counting on those gay Republicans at the center of the storm to become a priori evidence of Republican hypocrisy at the next election.

Thus are the gay activists exposed as the homophobes they are. But hey--it's a political win-win for them... Karl Rove isn't the only one who knows how to use fags to further his own political ends.

Studying Genocide

2007-11-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Pacific Lutheran University has received an endowment for a Holocaust Studies chair. I've never heard of such a thing, but it makes sense. I've researched only one of the concentration camps, KZ Mauthausen, and have discovered that what I knew about the holocaust before undertaking the research was a mere drop in the ocean. I learned enough to know that I knew very little.

So much of what I knew about the holocaust was based on films and television, and the odd documentary or two that I had glimpsed. The truth of the horror was far more involved, planned, and complex than I had imagined. The genocide of the European Jews was an industry that employed tens of thousands of people - only a fraction of whom were ever brought to justice.

We must find a way to understand how it happened. To simply say it was the abberant result of a madman's fiendish plan is to completely discount the possibility that it was the result of a fundamental shift in the conscious, shared perception of reality in the minds of millions. And that it was facilitated by the poison of propaganda.

We look back at the militarized politics of Germany and say that it could never happen here. But it may be happening right now! In 60 years, how will the world look back on what we're doing, or allowing to be done, by our leaders?

Soon all who had direct personal experiences during the holocaust will pass away. We must find a way to preserve their stories.

Life of the Party

2007-10-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

Pardon my silence. I've been so busy over the past few weeks. I have a new part time job writing for the Bella Sara website. and we've been trying to do a major update that launches today. Please visit the site, learn more about the fantastic world of Bella Sara, and most important, buy cards.

I also went to a Halloween party on Saturday. The theme was Rock & Roll. I went as the only rocker I'm qualified to impersonate: Meat Loaf. Had a lot of fun singing Karaoke. I learned through this experience that pop songs are very difficult to sing. The recording artists make it seem easy--which is why they make the big bucks. I suppose it helps when the song is arranged in your key.

Finally, politics: I'm not embarrassed to admit that from time to time I watch Fox News. And that usually means Bill O'Reilly. (I also watch Keith Obermann's trenchant, sardonic critiques of Mr. O'R as well). At any rate, I was watching the other day and something he said had stuck with me. He had on one of his bimbos that he "converses" with--essentially they are there so that he can have a dialogue with himself. She read a dictionary definition of "patriotism" that defined is as having love or allegiance to their country's "authority." My heart sank. (i.e.: I fell for it...) I certainly don't love or pledge allegiance to our current president. Could that mean I am truly not patriotic?

Hold your horses buster! Authority in the United States is vested solely in the Constitution--not in any one man--not in any administration. Yes, I can condemn, disparage, criticise, hold in contempt, and otherwise denigrate the President without being unpatriotic because I think he's vile and pursuing policies contrary to the values I think America stands for. I am a patriot after all even by the Bimbo's definition!

One final thing--the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal on the Exxon matter. That means there will be no resolution for another year. Once this collection of corporatist, right wing idealogues gets hold of it, there'll be nothing left.

One paralegal here opined that their easiest route would be to simply declare that Maritime law applies, and there are no punitive damages in Maritime law. I think that will probablyhappen. They wouldn't have agreed to hear the case if they didn't think that there was a possibility of reversal.

Comparisons are odorous

2007-10-16T11:46:00.000-07:00

In Shakespeare's masterpiece Much Ado About Nothing, one of his characters, Dogberry, says to his sidekick Verges: "Comparisons are odorous. Palabras, neighbor Verges." A little research reveals that the phrase is a malapropism: what Dogberry means to say is that comparisons are odious. That phrase pops up in Cervantes, Donne, Marlow, and Sir John Fortescue; it was a common axiom, proverb, expression of the time. Palabra means a word, or to talk, possibly related to the root of "palaver." Dogberry seems to be cautioning Verges to "get to the point." Shakespeare sui generis certainly knew the difference between odious, "something foul" with odorous "something that smells foul." Odorous is a much more sensory, concrete evocation of foulness than the abstraction odious.

For Dogberry the line is a tossoff, a response to a nonsensical simile that Verges made in the previous line of dialogue. But its implication runs deep. And it is a phrase that means a great deal to me personally, ever since I played Verges in 1981.

One of the axioms heard in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings is: Don't compare your insides to someone else's outsides. It makes a good deal of sense. The axiom cautions against looking at someone else's success and comparing your own situation to that, and finding yourself lacking.

Success has not come easily for me. In some ways I am successful, but in other ways I wish I were more successful. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Pacific Northwest Writer's Association that our monthly talk would be given by Seattle author Jim Thayer. Thayer has not only written and published 12 thrillers, he's also maintained a law practice, and runs an editing service. Compared to him, I felt quite inadequate. My fevered brain began bellowing at me. And last night I had a very difficult night--a nightmare woke me up moaning with terror (Molly was quite upset) and other problems sleeping.

I need to remember the wisdom I learned from my good friend and former sponsor Matt Hornyak: There's success at every level, and there's value in that, no matter what level you're on.

Inept Democrats

2007-10-15T10:31:00.000-07:00

A letter castigating Rush Limbaugh for calling troops who disagree with him about the War in Iraq "phony soldiers" has backfired on the senators who signed it. Rush is auctioning the letter on E-bay with proceeds going to an education fund for children of Marines KIA. (The fund has already dispersed $29 million in scholarships--this is significant). Rush has turned the tables on the senators, showing them up as inept grandstanders, just exactly like the senators who signed onto the condemnation of MoveOn.org's Petreus/Betray Us ad. The republicans seem to know instinctively how to seize upon a political opportunity and squeeze every millileter of juice out of it. Democrats, attempting the very same strategy, stumble, bumble and issue incoherent, pathetic diatribes.

The sad fact for America is that the democrat's ineptitude never rises (or lowers) to the incompetence of the republicans when the republicans are actually governing. Why? Arrogance. Democrats are incoherent sometimes because they're always self-reflective. They often change their minds. When they do they're called flip-floppers. Republicans have the luxury of total self-confidence, sure in the knowledge that they are completely, and totally correct in everything they do and think. When is America going to get tired of this mind-set? That's the only thing that will bring about the sea-change necessary to rescue our democracy from the hands of those who place ideology above the law.

Personally, I'm content with the shifting of poles between democrat and republican power. From time to time we need a big bully in the white house in order to show the rest of the world that the U.S. is not to be trifled with. But most of the time, I'm much happier with a democrat who builds bridges (rather than watches them fall down--as the residents of Minnesota know all too well George Bush has done).

Truck and Field

2007-10-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Not being much of a sports nut, I had not heard of Marion Jones prior to her recent much publicized admission to doping, after having denied the practice for years. However, one look at her hulked out physique would have caused anybody to be suspicious.

It will be interesting to see if the controversy goes away as fast as the Lance Armstrong doping rumors disappeared from the press.

Raindrops

2007-10-04T12:04:00.000-07:00

Chopin's Prelude No. 15 is one of my all time favorite pieces of music. Currently it's being used as background to a TV ad for Halo 3, and every time I hear it, it stirs my soul. For the complete piece, visit here. I also wrote a short story in which the music plays a strong part:

Raindrop

The Wehrmacht entered Krakow on September 6, 1939, when I was 17 years old. My father, who had trained me from childhood on the instrument of my life, beat time contrapuntally to the tread of Panzers as they jingled through Rynek Glowny toward Wawel Castle, snapping the bricks with their weight. We had known for five days they were coming. The army of Poland had met the blitzkrieg mounted upon chargers, armed with sabres, discarding their lives like stalks of wheat falling before the mow.

That morning I had worked for three hours steadfastly on the first movement of Pathetique, which I still found difficult. The score fell, rustling, as father rose and moved to the window to look down at the street.

“Keep working,” he said when I paused. My attention returned to the opalescent console of the Blüthner, product of Leipzig, the home of Bach and Goethe, Wagner’s birthplace. Father opened the window to the early autumn air, and the tractor-like rumbling grew louder. A whiff of smoke came in at the casement. I continued with the opening of the sonata, but my heart would not inform my hands. Yet, fatherdid not seem to notice my mistakes—or if he did—he did not comment.

He returned rubbing his glasses with his kerchief. “Halina,” he said, and laid his warm hand over mine. “Let us put aside the Viennese composer.”

From the shelf he took our beloved slender volume of Chopin’s preludes. “On this day let us hear the music of our countryman. Turn to page 19. Prelude 15 in D-flat major.”

He spoke as I played. “Yes, daughter—you have his music in your soul. It begins like a gentle spring rain—a soft downpour on flat green leaves, sustaining, revivifying. Hear now, in the middle section, how the storm increases, now growing in malevolence, yet not merely a storm—but also a test—what may we men and women abide? Yes, even in the midst of the tempest there is triumph, hear it! Feel it! And now the grief and loss—as, the storm subsides and the gentle rain falls again to nourish the ground.”

When I finished, he wiped the tears from my eyes with his kerchief. “Halina—the pain will pass away and the darkness will lift, and the world will be well again. Politics and war flame brightly but, in the end, they always burn themselves out. Only art endures.”

Ten years later, while studying in Paris before the Fourth International Chopin Competition, I visited the maestro’s grave in Père-Lachaise. His mausoleum, bestrewn with garlands and wreaths, bouquets of gladiolus and mums and votive candles that guttered in the light rain, invoked despondency as though he had been laid to rest only the previous day, rather than a century before. On that drizzly April day in 1949, I remembered my father’s words. For the hell had indeed passed—but not soon. Laying a spray of lilies upon Chopin’s tomb, I mourned for my poor country. I did not grieve for myself. For I had suffered nothing—except insomniac nights in Krakow; sleepless, clutching my pillow, my stomach a pit of fear and dread and anguish, hearing, far away, shrieking train whistles fade away west.

It's been a Month!

2007-10-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

It's been an entire month since my last entry. My apologies to my regular readers if there are any left...

I just signed a contract to write for Hidden City Games, the company that develops and publishes Bella Sara. Please visit the site. Notice that it's aimed at girls between the ages of 6 and 12. I'm excited by the opportunity, and I've learned more about horses in a week than I had in my whole life up til now.

I'll be writing for them for several months as a freelancer. Hopefully I will be able to keep some association when I move to Iowa.

I'm excited to see my friend Steve and his wife Sherry and daughter Leah when they come to Seattle two weeks from now. Very excited. Steve has been here before but it will be Sherry and Leah's first trip. I love showing off my city, even though it won't be my city for very much longer.

Hmm, lotsa gayness

2007-09-04T14:12:00.000-07:00

Jerry Lewis called one of his production team an "illiterate fag" during the telethon. Apparently, as soon as Jerry found out today that GLAAD was skipping mad (as opposed to hopping mad), he apologized profusely and contritely. Come on GLAAD, Isaiah Washington, self-important actor bully, was one thing, but Lewis is a comedian. His joking insult was in the tradition of "the Roast." Watch a celebrity roast sometime, see how many times the "f" word gets dropped. Lighten up already.

Howard K. Stern and Larry Birkhead are being outed as lovers in a new book. Apparently, one of the interviewees claims that a video exists of the two engaged in oral sex. Birkhead denies the heady reports, saying that the witnesses and the author are "losers." Still, it makes a smarmy, crazy kind of sense.... Oh, and the book also alleges that Stern and Birkhead conspired to keep ANS anesthetized with a steady supply of narcotics, pills and booze before she died of an overdose of narcotics, pills and booze.

I wonder if the same thing's happening to Trouble--Leona Helmsley's pet Maltise--if at some undesignated location, the poor puppy is being kept prisoner on a steady diet of beef fat and doggie downers.

What happens when a dog dies intestate? Certainly Trouble can't will his fortune to anyone else--you have to be a human being in order to sign such a document. Or would it go to Trouble's next of kin? I'll ask one of our estate attorneys.

Senator Larry Craig

2007-08-30T14:15:00.000-07:00

I suppose it's time to weigh in on the Larry Craig situation. Craig, a senator from Idaho, was recently exposed as having plead no-contest or guilty to a crime stemming from lewd behavior in a Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport men's lavatory. Apparently, Craig sent out signals, such as toe-tapping, foot pressing, and finger wiping, that amounted to, in the opinion of his stall neighbor, a solicitation to a sexual tryst. The neighbor in question happened to be a police officer engaged in a sting operation.

This makes the third GOP sex scandal in about as many months. Florida congressman Allen, Senator Vitter, and now Senator Craig.

Idaho is not a state which is fond of gay people. When I lived there, back in the mid-90's doing the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, it still had a statewide sodomy law. I regret to say I broke that law. I apologize to the good people of Idaho, but I don't feel I owe any debt to society. In any event, it's not the place to be faced with a sex scandal and then come out of the closet as a proud gay man, as Barney Frank and Gary Studds were able to do as democrats from Massachusetts.

The republicans, who have for the past 20 years held forth as the party of moral and family values, takes a particularly difficult hit when confronted with sex scandals. Just one, that of congressman Mark Foley, caused congress to shift to control of the democrats. What can three highly publicized scandals do? Clearly the republicans, because of the image that they seek to sell, are much more vulnerable to sex scandals than democrats. Everyone expects it of morally relativist demoncrats. (Sorry, Freudian typo).

A little bit of history. Sex in men's restrooms is as old as Western Civilization. In fact, in the 20th Century, these came to be known in the lavender patois as "tea rooms." Airports, bus stations, libraries, almost every one of these has a tea room. From time to time, law enforcement runs a sting, like the one that caught Larry Craig, and the tea room shifts to another spot, but before long, the action is back.

The concept of the tea room is time-honored, and reflects an era of oppression, when simply gathering together could cause gay people to be rounded up and put in stir. Back in those days raids on gay bars were common and a person could be arrested for just having a limp wrist or wearing a red tie.

In our more enlightened age, the crime is not in being a degenerate, but demonstrating it in public. Sex in restrooms, public parks, etc., can get you pinched.

All that leads me to -- what? Craig says he isn't gay. That's quite correct, even if he is a homo. Being gay means being in some way public to a greater or lesser extent about one's sexuality. Craig may be, in the Roy Cohn tradition, a straight man who just happens to have sex with other men. Because divorcing one's wife and taking up with a younger man, as Ariana Huffington's husband did, means being in some way honest about one's sexuality.

The motivating factor to not be honest? Shame. Being gay--open and somewhat honest--means that you have in some small way faced the shame and dealt with it.

Because Craig is incapable of being honest about this, he will go down in flames.

All that said, I'm not sure that what Craig did was a crime in my view. All he did was solicit--using ambiguous "signals" in the opinion of the arresting officer. If, for example, someone did that to me, I would say, "I'm not interested," and the behavior would doubtless stop at once. Personally I believe that solicitation should be protected under the first amendment, and that in order to be arrested for lewd behavior, one should have to have one's lips around someone's Tom, Dick or Harry.

Deception, deception, deception . . .

2007-08-29T11:15:00.000-07:00

What, precisely, is MySpace selling? Or more appropriately, giving away? For the most part, MySpace is free for users. One puts up a MySpace page, which acts as an internet billboard. On the page, one can list one's interests, put up pictures, write a blog, etc., in essence a personal website. One can also ...

(My coworker just made a funny: "...driving under the influence of what? Of denial?")

Anyway, back to MySpace. Does MySpace have a duty to insure true and accurate information on user sites? Consumer Protection Acts prohibit unfair and deceptive business practices. Essentially what MySpace is doing is similar to "personal ads" in newspaper classifieds. Are newspapers liable for deceptions placed in personal ads in their paper? Yet, MySpace goes beyond what classified personal ads offer, in that they provide a set of tools for interacting online. So, is the telephone company responsible for deceptions or misrepresentations made during fraudulent phone calls?

I think the parents of the abused teens are going to have a difficult time proving liability on the part of MySpace.

* * *

Once again I'm reminded of how pragmatic and centrist I am. I was reading Susan Estrich's blog over at Fox News. Estrich is a liberal democrat who was Michael Dukakis' campaign manager. In this piece she bemoans the quality of public discourse over the Internet. She's getting flamed by liberals to the left of her. This is what I can't stand about far left liberals any more than the far-right wing: polarization. What ever happened to digging in and finding common ground? I have lived long enough to form an opinion as to who is responsible for this sorry state of affairs. I believe it began with Lee Atwater and continued with his homonculus, Karl Rove. They pushed liberal hot-buttons into critical overload. Liberals are just as truculent and intractable as neocons. Essentially what her readers were doing to Susan Estrich was faulting her for being politically incorrect, simply for receiving a paycheck from Fox News.

Personally I like Susan Estrich's opinions no matter where they're posted. I enjoy hearing her point of view--just as I enjoy hearing the point of view of Bill O'Reilly from time to time, Keith Obermann, Jon Stewart and in very small doses, Pat Buchanan. I find Ann Coulter too intellectually defective that I cannot bear to read much of her. That said, I have read a few of her columns, along with those of Maggie Gallagher, William Buckley, George Will and others. And though I will never vote for any Republican for the rest of my life due to the evil that they have wrought with this particular administration, I am not a true believer in any political philosophy. What we need to do in this contentious, polarized society is find common ground.

This is what Hilary Clinton has tried to do in her years in the Senate. To fault her for trying to work with and achieve common goals with Repuglicans (sorry, that's a Freudian typo) is to engage in the most self-defeating politics. For liberals to stand on the narrowest of principles is to engage in the same posturing that Operation Rescue's Randall Terry did over the Terri Schaivo debacle, when he demanded that Jeb Bush stand on principle, sacrifice his political career, place himself above the law and prevent the feeding tubes from being removed.

Goodbye Gonzo

2007-08-27T16:06:00.000-07:00

I must apologize to Octavia Butler, who apparently wrote a manifesto on her creative writing process entitled "Furor Scribendi." When time and creativity intersect at some point in the future, I may retitle my blog. But in the meantime, I'll just go ahead and use this Latin phrase that I picked up on a list of Latin phrases somewhere. I can't remember. I can't recall.

I do recall meeting Octavia Butler, though. At the Foolscap writing conference in Tukwila. Must have been oh, 10 years ago now. She was gracious, elegant, poised--a wonderful conversationalist. I and my writers' group had the great good fortune to be present at the kickoff party, which was not very well attended, with GOH Butler. She spoke about her time at the Clarion Workshop. She then went on to be a linebacker of science-fiction, winning every prize under the sun (and a McArthur Fellowship). I asked her advice on whether I should attend Clarion, and she said she would only recommend attending for someone very new. If you've been writing for a long time, or have had a lot of classes, it might be too difficult to give yourself over completely to the ego-busting and refining that goes on. Thank you Octavia. She died in a fall a couple of years ago. I saw her one other time at the Post Office at 3rd and Union--the downtown branch. She was busy with business and seemed distracted. I almost tapped her on the shoulder and said hello. I wish now that I had.

Alberto Gonzales has resigned. I watched his resignation speech. Sorry, my liberal friends, but I feel sorry for the guy. Not because I feel he got a raw deal. But because, like his boss, he had risen to the level of his incompentence. I think he meant well. He clearly was a quality individual. But it's sort of like using your family attorney to negotiate a book contract. Gonzo was GWB's attorney. He kept being GWB's attorney at the DOJ. He needed to be strong, independent and wise. John Ashcroft, for all his faults, was a prince by comparison. But it just goes to show you that trivial, banal evil can happen, even when one has a pure heart with the finest motives. All it takes is having unfettered power and unquestioning loyalty.

Ashcroft wasn't going along with the philosophy of the Unitary Executive, if he had ever even heard of it. With Gonzales, the Bushites found their stooge, their team player, their man. If you read the description of the Unitary Executive Theory at the Wiki, linked to above, it will curl your hair and give it split ends. The Bush Administration and its allies have tried to create a 4-8 year dictatorship in the United States (or for however long they choose to claim we're at war). Gonzales was not the architect of this edifice--that was the neocons, and their brain trust, one of whom is John Yoo.

I don't know about you--but I don't want to live in a dictatorship, even if/when we're at war. It will be interesting to see who Bush picks for the next AG. If it's Professor Yoo--run for the hills.

Television II

2007-08-23T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stumbled upon an idea that has stuck with me. In what ways has technology influenced the substance and form of television? I have never given this idea much thought. In fact, when I have thought about the evolution of storytelling on TV I have usually linked it to societal changes, politics, the economy, current events and film.

But I'm starting to think that technology has played a larger role than I have given it credit. The switch from black and white to color caused an explosion of sunny, happy shows: Happy Days, Love American Style, The Bob Newhart Show, variety hours with Carol Burnett, Sonny & Cher, Dean Martin, everything filmed in glorious, saturated color. Perhaps this was due to geopolitical concerns: denial of the Vietnam zeitgeist. But it was equally programming that took advantage of the color technology. Sure there were dark shows: Night Gallery, for example, but their shock value was based more on twist endings, than any evocation of mood.

Another innovation in technology was larger and more affordable screens. When the largest TV screens were 13 to 20 inches, closeups were de rigeur. With a 26 to 30 inch screen, establishing shots, traveling shots, panning shots, the language of filmmaking, could be utilized on television. This changed the way television looked and worked. Television had always been closer in essence to radio than film. With larger screens and the employment of cinematic techniques, television became more and more a visual medium.

I anticipate that with the super large screens of today employing High Definition technology, this trend will strengthen rather than diminish. Within two generations cinemas will be rare, home entertainment will stream from a central hub (whatever the internet turns into) and packaging will no longer exist. Intellectual property--anything which is capable of being sold digitally, will be. While it is tempting to consider this negatively, I don't think it will be. Television has improved with the advent of VHS technology. The business model changed, but it still supported higher and higher quality of work.

Where will it ultimately end? Three-dimensional entertainment of course. Total immersion and the assumption of a point of view. Whether that's a holographic "room" or a set of goggles and gloves, or a biomechanical symbiosis of hardware and wetware ala William Gibson.

TV Shows that Deliver

2007-08-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

Television as an artform has certainly gone through its ups and downs. While I generally have an idealized vision of my youth, that certainly doesn't include the quality of the TV shows during the 70's. They don't hold a candle to what's available now. Why?

First, I think we owe a huge debt of gratitude to a trio of gentlemen: Stephen J. Cannell, David Lynch, and Chris Carter, and to a lesser extent Dick Wolf. Stephen J. Cannell developed and produced of The Rockford Files and The A-Team, but it was his visionary work on Wiseguy that really took television in a new direction. This series, which starred Ken Wahl as a cop very deeply under cover with the mafia, ala Donnie Brasco, refined the concept of season arcs. Though arcs within television shows were not unheard of, Wiseguy featured complete arcs over an entire season. A new set of villains would be featured in the second season, and yet a third set in season 3. The story arcs within these seasons were resolved. Within each episode there is also a central challenge for Vinnie to overcome. It meant action packed television that rewarded viewers who watched the entire season.

At this point, it is necessary to mention that the rise of videocassette recorders made this kind of television possible. A person could record the episode to watch at their convenience--they didn't have to worry about missing an eposide and falling behind on the story arc. In this way, VHS technology improved the quality of television.

Taking the next step, David Lynch in Twin Peaks offered a story arc that was really a pretext for showing the lives of a large cast of small town characters. Its odd, quirky mix of humor and darkness created a legion of fans. More than any other TV show, Twin Peaks brought cinematic lighting, editing and acting to the small screen. The visuals were complex and carefully constructed. Compare any episode of Twin Peaks with Charlies Angels, The Bionic Man or Happy Days. The washed-out studio lighting of the latter is flat and inert. On the other hand, Twin Peaks offered a wide range of color, from super saturated reds to almost black. The richness of the visuals hinted at something powerful and ominous under the surface--which is a quality in all of David Lynch's film workas well.

Finally, Chris Carter took the groundwork laid by Cannell and Lynch and combined it in the X-Files. Not only the filming techniques, but also the storytelling concepts. Carter's first season featured stand alone episodes, but with each one, certain elements began to stick--who was that mysterious smoking man that never said anything? What mysterious, powerful invisible forces stood in the way of Mulder's search for the "truth?"

The cinematic quality of the X-Files is also plainly evident. Perhaps it was simply the TV studios had finally recovered from their love-affair with color television, that they permitted a darker chiaroscuro. In some ways, X-Files feels more like a black and white show than a color show--it has the same sensibility of light and shadow.

These three series form the transition from 70's cheesecake to 80's grit to 90's noir. There were others to be sure: The Streets of San Francisco; Law & Order; Miami Vice; NYPD Blues all come to mind. But for sheer innovation, Wiseguy, Twin Peaks and The X-Files are peerless.

They have ushered in the 21st Century and made The Sopranos possible--which in itself is the culmination of the novel for television concept, a work of series storytelling genius.

A Period of Adjustment

2007-08-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

Currently going through a period of adjustment with my adopted dog Molly. Molly is a 7 year old cairn terrier who has a striking personality. Striking in that she seems to have moods and attitudes that confound me. Sometimes she loves going for a walk and is excited and energetic. Other times she takes one look outside and wants to head back for the apartment. She is disinclined to walk in the rain or upon wet ground, which is a problem in the City of Seattle. Just wait until she encounters snow! She has skin problems and scratches herself or rubs her back on the carpet. She has medication for this condition which I have been giving her like clockwork. Nancy (Janice's sister) told me that when they cut her hair very short for the summer her skin was much better. Molly has an appointment with the groomer this weekend. She'll be getting what we used to call "a Butch."

A butch for the bitch...

This past weekend Molly and I went up to Whidbey Island for a writing seminar. The seminar was 7 hours long (wayyy tooooo long) and Molly got restless about halfway through. So I unhooked her lead and let her walk around the room. What should she do, but start grinding her hindquarters on the rug. I'm sure you've all seen dogs do this. One of the attendees pipes up--"she's got worms!"

Doubtful. I researched the condition and found that it most likely is the result of obstructed anal glands. Yes, you read correctly. Anal glands. Dogs have them--that's why they sniff each others' butts. It's how they recognize each other. When they have a good diet and such, the glands get cleared when they go poo. But sometimes they become clogged and full and then it's like a doggy hemorrhoid.

The solution is to express the anal glands. Isn't that quaint? That's the technical term: Express. As in "freedom of expression." One can do it oneself. I put Molly on the counter, and tried to find them (poked around her butt for a little while) but I couldn't locate the glands. So I took her to the vet and the technician took her into the back room and a few minutes later she came trotting out. Federal express. "They were pretty full" said the tech. So hopefully that takes care of the problem.

She was still spinning last night. She sits down and then twirls around. Sort of the "sit and spin" method of butt relaxation.

But it still doesn't answer the question of why, if her butt is bothering her, does she wait until she's in a room full of strangers to begin demonstrating the fact. Sheesh.

The Malaise of the Modern Age

2007-08-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

Years ago I read renowned feminist critic Elaine Showalter's book Hystories (unfortunately out of print) which is utterly fascinating. Showalter's premise is that hysterical syndromes clearly point to the hidden fears and needs of a culture. That's important. The hidden fears and needs of a culture. Not of an individual. Showalter lumped together several disparate phenomena: False memory syndrome, Satanic Ritual Abuse, Alien Abduction; and closer to reality and which caused her to be a lightening rod for vituperous criticism: chronic fatigue syndrome; Gulf War Syndrome; recovered memory of all stripes; multiple personality. All of these exemplify what Freud and Charcot would have termed "hysteria."

Although hysteria is somewhat different, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome bears an uncanny resemblance to the 19th Century diagnosis: neurasthenia.

Here's a quote from the medical record I was typing today: "Tired all the time; don’t feel well; weak; weight problems; headache, dizziness; blurred vision; loss of vision-R. eye; double vision-L. eye – several times a week; leg pain with walking; joint pain; neck pain; low back pain; indigestion; abdominal pain; anxious; tense; irritable; trouble sleeping; sexual difficulties; nocturia; leg and feet and L. arm go numb a lot and remain numb for hours; lots of muscle spasm..."

So what's to be made of this? Perhaps the neurasthenic is in a constant state of what John Bradshaw called "hypervigilance," and the host of physiological effects of stress find their expression in musculoskeletal strain, joint inflammation, and fascitis. Perhaps, we are literally "tearing ourselves apart," dealing with the stress of our culture. Perhaps this is why less freedom can feel more comfortable. I wonder if people who live under rigid, predictable, draconic regimes have less physical pain than those who live in a democracy with its chaotic factional distress. It would be an interesting study.

Myk van Dyk

2007-08-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

Little motivation to work today. Hard to get enthusastic about laboriously transcribing dozens of audio tapes that have been prepared by a paralegal dictating a person's medical records. A good deal of fatigue this morning. It is 10 degrees cooler, which felt pleasant. Molly was in a mood this morning. She was bad yesterday. Got hold of a bag of treats (foil, with a vacuum seal) and tore it open and ate every single one.

That's what dogs do when you're away.

This weekend I'm scheduled to run up to Whidbey Island for a writing seminar. I'm looking forward to that. Involves a short ferry ride, which will be very nice on a Friday evening.

My shingles outbreak is fading, but it still itches like I went wading in poison ivy.

My offer on the triplex in Decorah was countered and I accepted the counteroffer, which means that we've stepped closer to a purchase. I think now that the sale is "pending".

The subject line "Myk van Dyk" is just a jesterly attempt at a nom d'plume.

Sin, Sinner, Sinnest

2007-08-13T14:06:00.000-07:00

A Texas church that promised to host a man's funeral reniged after it learned the man was gay. Apparently it wasn't an issue until the slide show that was intended to provide a retrospective on the man's past, contained images that showed "kissing" and affection between persons of the same gender.

"Some of those photos had very strong homosexual images of kissing and hugging," Simons told the [Dallas] Morning News. "My ministry associates were taken aback."

I thought that the Biblical proscription was limited to the act of sexual intercourse by unmarried persons of the same gender--how does hugging and kissing conflate with that?

In the end, the nondenominational church said it would not hold the funeral because Sinclair was gay, which went against High Point's doctrine. "Can you hold the event and condone the sin and compromise our principles?" Simons said ... "We can't."

Again, conflating the "sin" with the state of being--not a presumptive sinful act. The "sin" in this case was being gay and happy and having friends. Sufficient basis to be cursed, ridiculed and ostracised by the good conservatives among us, who want us all to be better people, and shun us when we don't measure up to their standards. Christians? Or is it just Texas?

Barak Obama--Too Inexperienced?

2007-08-10T11:29:00.000-07:00

Last night on the Daily Show (rerun from the night before), Senator Biden inadvertently boosted Barak Obama's presidential campaign. Early in his first term, President Bush asked him, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to come over to the white house and brief him on Europe. When Biden arrived the President said, "I'm going to Europe for the first time." Biden said, "As president?" No. For the first time in GWB's life.

How can Barak Obama be any more inexperienced than that!

Biden recounted how confused the President was over Chancellor Schroeder, the recently elected German head of state who was a member of The Green Party. "Why is there such friction with him?" asked the man who pulled us out of the Kyoto accord.

Although I am adverse to calling Bush an idiot, his cluelessness in this instance was idiotic. Further evidence that Bush lives in a bubble surrounded by sycophants and cronies hand-picked by the Machine, who give him bad advice which he trusts too much. Not stupid precisely, but certainly naive. Obama, I feel, would be his own man. Bush is enamoured of the mystique of being President, I think. He likes being insulated, contemplating his place in history, crafting his image as a righteous defender of democratic liberty. In other words, he's deluded by the very people who should be challenging him. If he is a King, like many are saying, he's not George III, he is Richard II.

Invasion: Sci-Fi/Horror at its Best

2007-07-26T16:55:00.000-07:00

Recently I've been watching the ABC series Invasion which went off the air in 2006. Impressed with its creativity and its new spin on old ideas. The "Body Snatcher" idea is one of the oldest in sci-fi, and hearkens back to folklore, in tales of doppelgangers and changelings. This particular spin on it is truly interesting, and has provoked my contemplation and brooding long after finishing each episode.

If you aren't familiar with the series, the "aliens" which are never presented as having technology--rather they are biological entities that attack human beings. They look like a cross between giant orange manta rays and trilobytes. They sieze a victim and suck out DNA material. At this point, the creature itself, using the DNA material, metamorphose into replicas of the humans they consumed. In one very well written episode, a botched attack results in a botched replica.

The replicas have memories of their original lives, but they are not human and don't have, apparently, souls. There's something hard, brittle, and coldhearted about them. They don't have consciences. Essentially, the replicas are sociopaths from the get-go.

There is one, however, which has been around quite a while longer than the rest, who was created after a plane crash in the Everglades (the Value Jet crash standing in). He performs a kind of midwife role in the first season. The second season introduces a shadow uber replicant named Zura, who is attempting to achieve a foothold in the American military.

The interesting thing for me, what this show has made me ponder, is the nature of memory. Clearly the replicants have the memories of the human beings they consume/devour/drain/absorb. Memories are nerve impulses stored in our brains. The creatures clearly absorb not only the DNA, but the neural patterns that make up their victim's memories. That's so cool!

This is similar to a discussion of John Carpenter's The Thing, that I was reading the other day. In that discussion, one opinion was that a person infected with the Thing did not necessarily know that they were infected. (Norris). The thing took them over, cell by cell, replicating each cell and neural pathway individually. Not until the underlying Thing consciousness felt threatened, did it reveal itself, rise to the surface, and overwhelm the faux consciousness of the being it had replicated. We see this as Dr. Copper attempts to defibrillate Norris after his heart attack. The Thing considered the electricity an attack, and defended itself. Up until that point, Norris was unaware that he had been transmuted into a Thing, cell by cell.

I wish I could come up with ideas this rich and cool.

Love My Enemy

2007-07-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

I don't have many enemies, but a lot of people infuriate me. Most of them I don't know personally since I don't permit anyone close to me to infuriate me more than once. However, in order to manage my own fury, I often follow Jesus' advice and the advice in the Big Book of praying for those people.

I use the Benediction, which is found in the book of Numbers.

"May the Lord bless and keep you.
May the Lord make His face to shine upon you
and be gracious to you;
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon you
and give you PEACE."

I've often wondered about this little prayer which I love. For years I thought His face and His countenance were the same things. Not entirely. I looked at Webster's today.

The fourth definition of countenance is:

4.	approval or favor; encouragement; moral support.

So, when I say this prayer, I will say it with this meaning: May the Lord lift up his encouragement and support of you and give you peace.

Skip Along

2007-07-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

My friend Skip had a heart attack on Tuesday night and died yesterday morning. He was a good man who had a hard past six months dealing with a discordant situation at home, worry and stress over finances and the insanity of drug addiction - a housemate's addiction - not his own. While it is tempting to blame the housemate for driving Skip to a premature grave, the truth is that on some level, Skip chose his own poison. He had options. He also had suffered a previous heart attack and still smoked three packs a day. I spoke with him on the phone at length on Monday night, and he told me that he had just received his cigarette shipment from back east (in order to sidestep Washington state tobacco prices).

Personally I'm tired of the melodrama. Tonight I'm going to partake in Morita therapy, which is the therapy of puttering, peace through action. It's Japanese. It works. You get lost in simple tasks. It's very peaceful. I'll organize, clean, tidy, and vacuum, do laundry, the sundry domestic chores that take the mind away from pain. And in the end, I will have accomplished something--a clean house, as well as avoiding heaping misery upon misery by acting out.

Things I won't Miss About Seattle

2007-07-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

Here are some things I won't miss about Seattle (in no particular order)

Crack - and the people who make, market and use it.

Traffic.

Public Transportation. Smelly, stifling, seats too small, trips too long.

10% sales tax.

Noise.

Trying to find parking.

Population density--the feeling of being crowded, oppressed, hemmed in.

The dark side of Anonymity: the feeling you're completely on your own, and God help you.

Earthquakes and the possibility of earthquakes, volcanoes, mudslides, tsunamis and other natural catastrophes.

The proximity to the Asian ports and the nasty flu bugs that disembark here.

The feeling that everything is always constantly changing all the time.

How you have to fly in order to go anywhere else in the country.

How expensive it has become to live here.

I used to love Seattle, but my love affair has ended. I have 8-10 months left before I leave, and that's going to be a long haul. I'm trying to get prepared by eliminating the clutter now.

Delores Umbridge

2007-07-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

I haven't yet seen Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but I will say that it is my favorite of the books.

This is primarily because of its villain, Delores Umbridge. I'm going to discuss her character here, but rest assured that this won't spoil the film if you haven't seen it. Hopefully, it will deepen your appreciation.

Among the most important elements of character are their values and codes of conduct. With protagonists, values often revolve around "the common good." Heroes typically take action to benefit community. Thus heroes place value on truth, justice, fairness, equality, etc. Antagonists, on the other hand, often place themselves ahead of community. They value self-aggrandizement. Greed, pride, control, etc.

The greatest and most literary heroes often display values along a continuum between the self-centered and the altruistic. Such characters have mixed motives or inner conflicts, and their principles need to be refined or defined.

So too, with villains. Delores Umbridge has positive qualities: she values loyalty. She is fiercely loyal to Fudge and the Ministry of Magic, and to well-ordered society. She places societal well-being over individual well-being. Thus she could be said to value community in a similar way to a hero. So what makes her a villain?

Her willful denial of the truth. She refuses to entertain the heresy that Voldemort has returned. Her desire for the appearance of order and well-being is so strong it blinds her to the truth. When voices of dissent challenge her pre-conceived ideas, she stifles them through intimidation and torture. In her zeal to protect her vision of the well-ordered life, which is based on willful self-deception, she sacrifies justice for security. Lies and deceit, especially willful self-deceit, is a character defect that, left unaddressed, will lead to hubris and downfall. This is art mirroring life.

And the parallels to the Bush/Blair administrations couldn't be more obvious.

Delores Umbridge, because of her mixed motives, is one of the greatest villains of literature, and joins Madame Dafarge, Mrs. Danvers, Lady Macbeth and Clytemnestra in the pantheon of the great female evil doers.

Deflecting Liability?

2007-07-12T12:54:00.000-07:00

Brian Wells, the Erie Pennsylvania Pizza deliveryman at the center of the collar bomber case, was detained by police for more than 40 minutes before the device exploded. Imagine you're in the policemen's shoes: frightened, apprehensive, never seen anything remotely like this, unsure of what to do, etc.

The bomb squad wasn't called for 32 minutes into the ordeal.

Now unsealed indictments paint Wells as a willing coconspirator. We'll never know for sure. Wells was killed by the bomb. His family has been given the silent treatment by officials from the beginning, an arrogant arms-length approach that antagonizes them.

For what purpose? Law enforcement is clearly hostile to the family. Why? Is it because they are engaging in CYA shennanigans? If a mother, for example, were to bring a lawsuit for wrongful death against the law enforcement agency that neglected to call the appropriate experts until it was far too late, in an emergency, she would have a much, much stronger case if the victim was an innocent hostage, rather than a willing co-conspirator.

By naming Brian Wells a co-conspirator, prosecutors have eviscerated any civil action the family might bring for negligence on the part of law enforcement. This is the circle-the-wagons approach in goverment that we see time and again--especially when lawsuits are likely.

Of course, Brian Wells might factually be a coconspirator, but he'll never have a chance to defend himself. It will never be proven or disproven, but will sit in legal limbo until a civil action commences. The cloud of that uncertainty will allow the state's defense attorney to make mincemeat out of the plaintiff's case.

And there's the matter of Well's previous association with Deihl-Armstrong's boyfriend Barnes. That's circumstantial evidence that really stinks.

My Father's Physician

2007-07-07T11:15:00.000-07:00

My father's doctor was recently arrested, charged with trespassing and burglary. It doesn't add up. Burglary is much better defined in the Minnesota criminal code (under which Dr. Heine is presumably charged) than the Iowa code. The Minnesota code defines burglary as:

Subd. 3. Burglary in the third degree; Whoever enters a building without consent and with intent to steal or commit any felony or gross misdemeanor while in the building, or enters a building without consent and steals or commits a felony or gross misdemeanor while in the building, either directly or as an accomplice, commits burglary in the third degree and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both.

609.582(3).

The Iowa code requires theft in order to be convicted of burglary. Theft is defined by degree based on the value of the property stolen. The Minnesota statute does not make that fine point--requiring only the taking of property that doesn't belong to the accused. But--can the taking of something which is essentially worthless be stealing? Without a set definition in the statute, the law relies on the standard dictionary definition of the word. Websters is the dictionary of choice for most jurisdictions and Websters defines steal as: "To take (the property of another) without right or permission."

Are items in a "lost and found" box anyone's "property?" They certainly have no intrinsic value.

In order to find the doctor guilty, the jurors will have to find that the doctor not only factually did everything the prosecution said he did, but that those actions fit the law as it is written. I believe the law was written to cover property of value. Thus, if the doctor had taken audio-visual equipment, band instruments, computers, etc., he could correctly be charged with burglary. But taking worthless pieces of fabric unclaimed as property by any individual is stretching the law in order to accuse him of a more serious crime than that which was allegedly factually committed. I suspect that's because of the suspected sexual motive for the talking--which is not covered by the statute, I note.

All of this is a railroad in an attempt to deprive the accused of his professional standing in the community.

Personal Questions

2007-07-05T10:05:00.000-07:00

Answering personal questions from nosy Iowans. Hmm. I'm going to have to get used to it. Or, if not precisely used to it, develop a strategy on how to cope. Because you gotta know, it's coming.

"So, arya still acting?" "How longya gonna be here?" "Whenja get back?" etc. But now when people discover that I've abandoned Seattle, they're going to be doubly curious. "What broughtcha back?" "Whatcha gonna do now?" "Whatcha gonna be do'in in Decorah?" or the really nosy who don't care if they're being impolite and don't really care if anybody else (including me) knows it--"Gotta job?"

Some of this can be deflected with humor: "I left Seattle because I got tired of all the traffic and all the liberals." "Too expensive, too many people--especially, too many liberals." etc.

This will immediately cause a republican to laugh, and also I would think an Iowa democrat, most of whom run a moderate stripe--the only ones I have to watch out for is the hippie-commie-peaceniks up at Luther, whose blue is the color of the deepest ocean trenches.

As far as the job goes, if I leave it deliberately vague, it only invites further prying. Thus I must always couch it in terms Iowans understand: Family. "I wanted to be closer to family"--which has the double advantage of being the truth, and something they can understand. If they probe, I can always say, "well you know Dad has a lot to cope with, with Norma in that wheelchair..." [arched eyebrow]. This redirects the question to perhaps a prejudice that the interogator already possesses--that of Dad caring for his invalid wife and what a pity that is--and wouldn't things be different if Betty were still around...

"I'm going to be doing some things for the firm over the internet from home," also has a mysterious ring to it and could invite a peppering of questions, but ones that I don't necessarily mind answering.

The response I would truly love to give? "I've got a book contract and I'll be working on revising and editing my manuscript for publication." Between now and next spring, I hereby promise to commit to trying to make this response a truthful one, one that I can use with pride. :)

Racial Profiling

2007-06-28T11:32:00.000-07:00

Racism. The US Supreme Court yesterday stood up in support of racism by deciding against the Seattle School Board's practice of ensuring racial diversity in Seattle schools by taking race into account when deciding which students attend which high schools. Seattle has 10 high schools in diverse economic neighborhoods. The school at the center of the case, Ballard High, is a highly regarded, progressive, artistically oriented school, like Garfield High, in South Seattle, whose graduates tend to go on to college.

Apparently the Justices want to create a "color blind" society in which race is not an issue. What they are taking aim at are quotas, preferences and the concept of "reverse discrimination" if that indeed exists.

Nothing needs to change. The school board can learn from the lessons taught by Republican racists themselves. To wit: the redistricting of Texas by Tom Delay. You can get around the issue of race, yet achieve the same racial aims by making the quotas and preferences have to do with economics and geographic location.

Use their own weapons against them.

Pushing the Envelope

2007-06-27T11:39:00.000-07:00

Apparently Alan Cumming (Nightcrawler) is pushing the envelope in his independent film Suffering Man's Charity, given a screening recently in New York. It provoked a stampede for the exits and fainting spells. "Margaret! My smelling salts!" Subject: a whipping/torture scene between Alan and David Boreanaz. I say: Bring it On!!! The salient question on my mind: who was whipping whom?

Oh De Sade can you see?
'Neath the whip's forceful lash
As so loudly we whaled
Upon the buttocks' pale gleaming....

Plotzensee and Tom Cruise

2007-06-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

Tom Cruise hit a snag in his desire to portray German hero of the Nazi resistance, Von Stauffenberg. Von Stauffenberg was the pivot point behind a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and other Nazi top brass on July 20, 1944. The plot failed when the heavy wooden table at the Wolf's Lair bunker muffled the blast from the bomb left in the attache case at Hitler's feet. Hundreds of conspirators were tried in the notorious people's court (where Roland Friesler presided as judge, prosecutor and jury). All were condemned to death, and executed at Plotzensee prison in Berlin, where they were hung in rows of eight. I've heard reports that they were hung with piano wire and the executions filmed for the delectation of der Fuhrer. Somewhere I heard that. Don't know if it's true, but I wouldn't doubt it.

Plotzensee also had Germany's last functioning fallbeil (guillotine). It mysteriously disappeared after the war.

Apparently, in a move that would leave American officials stymied, wringing their hands, Germans have no trouble whatsoever denying the right of Scientology to proselytize in the Fatherland. Moreover the Bundeswehr (German military) does not want Von Stauffenberg to be portrayed by Cruise--for whatever reason. And there the matter stands.

I just saw the infamous South Park Scientology episode the other night. Hilarious. They should take to heart the lesson of Microsoft: with success comes exposure, with exposure and money the sharks will circle. Up to now, though, they've made brilliant strategic moves, attracting celebrities, disguising the extent of their assets within corporations and subsidiaries wholly owned by the church, but not generally known to be, such as Earthlink: all tax free courtesy of the U.S. Government. Time for congress to revisit this issue, perhaps?

Decorah

2007-06-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I worry too much what other people think, which is why I hesitate to write this entry. But I've been dealing with a desire to leave Seattle ever since I gave up acting. In retrospect, buying the condominium was not a fortunate decision. Now I have a strong desire to return to my roots, like a salmon, not to spawn, but to reconnect with my family, and to spend time writing in a slower paced environment that doesn't have such a high cost of living. Living in Seattle costs $50,000 a year minimum. Eventually salaries will catch up with that reality but it just hasn't happened yet.

My father is aging, and he is now the sole caretaker of his invalid wife. It would be nice to be around to help him out. I want to be of service to the people who mean the most to me. I needed these two decades in order to establish my own identity, but now it's firm. I can return without becoming mashed potatoes.

I spoke to my sister about this and she doesn't think it's crazy. Knock me over with a feather. I thought for sure she would think it was nuts but she was actually supportive. Big check in the "pro" column.

Found a wonderful online I-Ching. I asked the question, "Should I leave Seattle and move to Decorah to write and reconnect with family?"

Lin-Approach. Above: K'un-the receptive, Earth. Below: the joyous, lake. The judgment: approach has supreme success. Perserverence furthers. When the eighth month comes, there will be misfortune.

About the clearest positive response one can possibly receive from the oracle.

I plan to hang on here at the minimum, until we discover whether the Supreme Court will take the Exxon appeal. I'll sell and move in the Spring, after profit sharing. Either 2008 or 2009. Probably 2008 (that's about 8 months though. I may wait until after the window of misfortune according to the oracle). Next June. Maybe I'll be back in Decorah for my Dad's 75th Birthday celebration.

Official English does not mean English Only

2007-06-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

English. When did it become something to be ashamed of? England was imperial, no doubt about it. But our founding fathers spoke English (and probably French, Dutch, some Spanish, and very likely German -- King George III, as a Hannoverian, likely spoke German--and perhaps French).

But History is no comfort to us as we face this issue. I'm taking the moderate road. I favor the establishment of English as the official language as a practical matter. Not as a way of disenfranchising any special group or population, but as a way of warding off future strife. Make no mistake it's only going to get worse.

At some point in the future, some parts of the United States will see a majority of Spanish speaking residents. When that happens, will legal forms, documents, descriptions of property, laws, writs, summonses, and the courts, human services, public policy, etc., switch to Spanish? And if and when that happens, will the presumably white, English only speaking minority reflect on how difficult it has been for those who have spoken only Spanish in this country, living in a society wherein all the rules, laws, et al. are codified in a foreign language? Will we English speakers pause then, and say, how insensitive we were?

Absolutely not.

The hue and cry will make the debate now seem like a garden party. Civil war? You bet. Language is power. And the sooner we recognize that the better. We are engaged in a cultural war. One of the battle fronts is the battle over language. If English speakers lose that battle, then all power and privilege will be lost with it. And all because we let it happen. Here's where I part company from my liberal friends. Call me a xenophobe if you wish. I hate and fear no one. But I do think there should be practical standards. English is the international language of business; so, why isn't it good enough to be the national language of our government? Why? Because certain people want to take away the language power of the entrenched, presumably white, English speaking majority. Nothing wrong with wanting a piece of the pie. But the best way is to earn it. And it's historically been the sad problem of immigrants in the US that it often takes a generation or two to fully assimilate.

Official English doesn't mean English only of course. We can and must communicate. But when writingour laws, when codifying the public will, describing who owns what, I want that to always be in a language I can understand.

Prediction

2007-06-06T10:31:00.000-07:00

Transcontinental traveler/TB patient Andrew Speaker will be forgiven by the media for putting fellow travelers at quantam risk for TB infection because (1) he's good looking: if he was fat and middle aged, he'd have already been arrested. (2) he's good looking and heterosexual: his travel was the result of his desire to get married and go on his honeymoon, hubba-hubba. How can one preserve umbrage at such red-blooded American motives?

Projection

2007-06-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

Steve asked yesterday why I was blogging about these psychological defense mechanisms. Well, it had been my intention to delve deeper into them, once I had established precisely what they were. Tip of the hat to Wikipedia for the definitions.

When I see projection in others and myself, I'm disgusted. As the Wikipedia states, it is a primitive defense mechanism, but it's also so vile, so based in willful self-deceit, that it can only be deemed evil--when it is given expression either in word or deed. Aesop knew that the grapes were sweet and nourishing. But the fox, unable to get across the stream, despite his wiles, to taste them, was sure that the grapes were sour.

When we do this with people--then it's ugly, depraved and evil. Projection was the grease between the gears of the Holocaust. When people don't do what we want them to do, when they won't give us what we need, or when we make ourselves feel better by denigrating someone else, then we are projecting--and it's heinous. It's primitive, disgusting and vile--animalistic and brutish. It's pernicious because it's so unconscious, and I must be on guard.

Projection and Transference

2007-06-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

I'm still grappling with the most interesting of all the defense mechanisms: projection and transference.

In psychology, psychological projection (or projection bias) is a defense mechanism in which one attributes to others one’s own unacceptable or unwanted thoughts or/and emotions. Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted subconscious impulses/desires without letting the ego recognize them. The theory was developed by Sigmund Freud and further refined by his daughter Anna Freud.

Overview

According to Sigmund Freud, projection is a psychological defense mechanism whereby one "projects" one's own undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings onto someone else.

To understand the process, consider a husband who has thoughts of infidelity. Instead of dealing with his undesirable thoughts consciously, he subconsciously projects these feelings onto his wife, and begins to think that she has thoughts of infidelity and may be having an affair. In this way one can see that projection is related to denial, the only defense mechanism, some argue, that is more primitive than projection. The husband has denied a part of himself that is desperate to come to the surface. He can't face his own feelings of infidelity, so instead he will project the feelings onto his wife and dwell on that.

Historical uses

Peter Gay describes it as "the operation of expelling feelings or wishes the individual finds wholly unacceptable—too shameful, too obscene, too dangerous—by attributing them to another."[1]

The concept was anticipated by Friedrich Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

The philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach based his theory of religion in large part upon the idea of projection, i.e., the idea that an anthropomorphic deity is the outward projection of man's anxieties and desires.

Psychological projection is the subject of Robert Bly's book A Little Book on the Human Shadow. The "Shadow"—a term used in Jungian psychology to describe a variety of psychological projection—refers to the projected material.

Psychologist Marie-Louise Von Franz extended the view of projection to all cover phenomena in Patterns of Creativity Mirrored in Creation Myths: "... wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image."

Counter-projection

When addressing psychological trauma the defense mechanism is sometimes counter-projection, including an obsession to continue and remain in a recurring trauma-causing situation and the compulsive obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the trauma or its projection.

Jung writes that "All projections provoke counter-projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject."

Common definitions

"Projection is the opposite defence mechanism to identification. We project our own unpleasant feelings onto someone else and blame them for having thoughts that we really have."
"A defense mechanism in which the individual attributes to other people impulses and traits that he himself has but cannot accept. It is especially likely to occur when the person lacks insight into his own impulses and traits."
"Attributing one's own undesirable traits to other people or agencies."
"The individual perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest."
"A man harboring attractions for a woman would perceive other men as having the same attractions for her."
"People attribute their own undesirable traits onto others. An individual who unconsciously harbours his or her aggressive/sexual tendencies may then imagine other people acting in an excessively aggressive or sexual way."
"An individual who possesses malicious characteristics, but who is unwilling to perceive himself as an antagonist, convinces himself that his opponent feels and would act the same way."

Psychopathology

In psychopathology, projection is an especially commonly used defense mechanism in people with certain personality disorders:

Transference is a phenomenon in psychology characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another. One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood." Another definition is "the redirection of feelings and desires and esp. of those unconsciously retained from childhood toward a new object." Still another definition is "a reproduction of emotions relating to repressed experiences, esp. of childhood, and the substitution of another person . . . for the original object of the repressed impulses." Transference was first described by Sigmund Freud, who acknowledged its importance for psychoanalysis for better understanding of the patient's feelings.

It is common for people to transfer feelings from their parents to their partners (emotional incest) or to children (cross-generational entanglements). For instance, one could mistrust somebody who resembles an ex-spouse in manners, voice, or external appearance; or be overly compliant to someone who resembles a childhood friend.

In The Psychology of the Transference, Carl Jung states that within the transference dyad both participants typically experience a variety of opposites, that in love and in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process, and that this tension allows one to grow and to transform.

Transference is common. Only in a personally or socially harmful context can transference be described as a pathological issue.

Set Back

2007-05-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

Severe depression over the weekend. Let me describe the pain: It's like life is worthless, there's no point in going on, that I'll never achieve my goals, that even if I do it will be hollow and unenjoyable, that I'm totally alone and isolated. Well that last part is objectively true, though I did try making phone calls to my friend Mike B. who was down in LA. He works for Gencon and was taking in the gala Star Wars celebration. He has the career and the luck we all dream about.

But back to me...

So I look within to see if there's any cause for the pain. Is there anything causing it? And the result of my introspection? Zip, nada, nothing. So, intellectually I have to tell myself that it will pass. So what got me there? I started to obsess about what kind of car I needed to purchase when my T-Bird finally has to be replaced. What would it be? A diesel or a hybrid? I wouldn't get another gas-powered vehicle. Not right for the planet. And I want to do everything I can to reduce the US dependency on foreign oil.

So I was down to three choices: a Ford Escape Hybrid, a Jeep Liberty Diesel, and the car I really, really want: the Mercedes Benz M 320 CDI (diesel). Unfortunately, I could have both the Ford Escape and the Jeep Liberty for what it would cost to purchase the Benz. My mind just went around in circles--like the maelstrom in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Or, I could just try to get along without a car. Ain't that a concept?

I could save probably $300 a month if I didn't have a car. And the bird spends most of its time garaged.

But the real source of the pain--it must be bio/chemical. How can it be anything but? These are not issues of dire concern. Not like a horrible medical condition or the death of a loved one. But just feelings of personal worthlessness and isolation.

Not all alone time is bad. As a writer I have to spend a lot of time alone. Solitude=good. Isolation (hiding out)=bad.

Thus I am forced in the end to use my brain. If I cannot control these feelings, where they come from, nor how to put them aside, then I must convince myself that it is a temporary situation. They will pass. And that gets me through.

I'm feeling much better today, for which I amgreatly relieved.

Can't Quite Shake It

2007-05-24T11:41:00.000-07:00

Mood still run-down. Trying desperately not to get grandiose with my checkbook and purchase a big ticket item in order to lift my spirits. Went to the Lenovo site last night and ordered a 1GB memory upgrade for my stinkpad.* I'm trying to breathe new life into it so that I don't plop another $2000 of unsecured debt down on a new one. It's perfectly good, useable. There's no reason to upgrade yet. It's still under warranty!

*To clarify: I LOVE my Thinkpad, and I will probably never own anything but.

False Prophets

2007-05-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

I think it's important to separate the shepherds from the flock. Is it possible to gain salvation from a tainted source? I expect it is, because God is a loving God. And besides, it is impossible for me to judge what lives in the heart of another. So I accept the fact that my Mormon and Islamic fellow citizens are children of God, even though I believe that their prophets are false. I suppose those are fighting words to some.

But it goes deeper for me. Suicide is a sin. Murder is a sin. When the followers of Jim Jones drank the potion in the jungle, did they lose salvation? I cannot judge. I do not know what was in their hearts. Their leader was, beyond doubt, a false prophet. The same was true of David Koresh. The fruit of their prophecy and revelation was not life, but death. Through their guile and deceit they obscured the truth, but that does not mean that all their followers shared their taint.

The same is true for Islam and the the Latter Day Saints.

This is the verse that settles it...

2007-05-21T16:07:00.000-07:00

St. Paul is a troubling individual, but here's the nitty-gritty (from Galatians):

The word gospel to me here means "revelation", and as such, it invalidates both Islam, which preaches that Christ was not divine and Mormonism, which purports to preach a gospel of a risen Christ in the New World. The Galatians quote is especially damning for Joseph Smith--all but mentioning Angel Moroni by name.

But it is interesting to consider Mormonism a middle-eastern Religion. It is full of Jewish mystical symbolism as well as Freemasonry and Illuminati symbolism. As two of the most rapidly growing religions in the world, what may occur at some far flung distant time when they lock horns with each other?

Rain

2007-05-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

It rained yesterday like we were in the tropics, like it was monsoon season: a steady downpour all...day...long...

Today is gray and cool. If it were sunny, we would be swimming in pollen. Hmm--isn't this thrilling? Blogging about the weather.

I'm feeling lazy today...

My favorite Microsoft Word hot keys: Ctrl+m to move the margin right. Shift+ctrl+m to move the margin left. Ctrl+t to create a hanging indent. Ctrl+0 to put a line of blank space above a paragraph.

Never say my blog isn't educational.

Bad Funk

2007-05-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

Whoa, back after a particularly bad funk. HOA voted on a $1 million special assessment to complete repairs to the building envelope and contain water intrusion and it really sent me into a tailspin. Haven't really been able to function for a few days.

Last night went to the park and saw a lousy game. Left when the Mariners were down by 5. Saw Ichiro steal one base, but that was it. Ate an entire bag of Kettle Korn. Ugh.

Jerry Falwell died. Hard not to feel a little schadenfreude. He was a polarizing figure in politics. He had a stupid mouth: "buy kruggerands" "tinky-winky is gay" "liberals and lesbians caused 9/11" etc. You don't ever want to WISH death on someone, because of what that WISH may do to your own spirit. But when death happens anyway to such a perverse figure, and one feels a sense of rapture in response--it's difficult to subdue.

But in better news, it's Norwegian Constitution Day. When I was growing up in Decorah, Iowa, it was called Norwegian Independence Day, but that was a misnomer. Norway separated from Denmark, but they fell under the aegis of Sweden (after the battle of Waterloo and Napoleon's defeat--Denmark was an ally of France). Norway wasn't fully independent until just before WWI. But they did get a new Constitution on 17 May 1814. In any event, it's a day to snack on lefse and think of the old country.

Sophie's Choice

2007-05-11T15:22:00.000-07:00

Authoritarianism. Shall we pause for a moment to remember Sophie Scholl? Sophie was a student at the University of Munich and was arrested in February of 1943 for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda. After a show-trial before the notorious judge Roland Friesler, she and her brother Hans were sentenced to death for treason. Their treason was passing out mimeographed articles critical of the Nazi regime. Friesler's court, the Volksgerichtshof or people's court, was an extra-constitutional court which was formed by the Nazis for the prosecution of political crimes. Freisler was judge, jury and prosecutor all rolled into one, and no appeal was possible. Although Sophie and her brother were told by their lawyers that a death sentence would be carried out no sooner than 99 days after their trial, the siblings were led directly from the court to Stadelheim prison where they were executed that very afternoon. Sophie was 21 years old. She and her brother Hans were allowed to meet with their parents briefly before they were taken away and they shared tearful farewells. Can you possibly imagine yourself in their shoes? Close your eyes and put yourself in their place for a moment. Your beautiful daughter is about to be taken away and beheaded for passing out a tract. You will never see your handsome son again, your precious children are about to be murdered by YOUR OWN GOVERNMENT!

It was never the intent of the Nazis to be sadistic or barbaric or cruel for its own sake. It was their intent to be firm, to be united, to be one among many following the vision of the great leader.

Sophie was taken into a courtyard before her executioner, Johann Reichhart, who was a professional, from a dynasty of ax-men which went back eight generations, and who kept meticulous records from the beginning of his career in 1924 to the abolition of capital punishment in Germany in 1949. In all he executed over 3,000 souls. Sophie said, "The sun is still shining." She then was placed upon a bench, face down and her arms and shoulders held down by two assistants. The fallbeil was then fitted past her neck and released. The heavy blade, already raised and set before the prisoner had arrived, descended. The death took three seconds at most from the time the prisoner entered the courtyard.

Reichhart was justifiably proud of the fact that he minimized the suffering of those who he was called upon to kill. And though he was a dedicated Nazi and a true believer, he knew that something wasn't quite right with the government that he worked for. When the Allies were approaching, he pulled off the side of the road on a bridge, and threw his fallbeil, his portable guillotine, into a ravine. Reichhart was denazified after the war, and lived until 1972, advocating until he died for the reinstatement of capital punishment in Germany.

Gridlock

2007-05-10T14:33:00.000-07:00

The government that governs best is that which governs least.

Join with me, friends, in the party of Gridlock. My party, Gridlock, stands for one thing and one thing only: anti-authoritarianism. Thus, at all costs, we must try to keep the President of the United States and the congressional majority of two different parties. It matters little which party occupies the White House, as the position has become increasingly imperial and authoritarian in the past century. When the President and Congress are at each other's throats--they don't have the energy to strangle US. Join me, my friends. Leave ideology behind. We must end the political/military/corporate hegemony of America before we all wind up slaves to the government. We must take back our country. Don't give them another "great white leader."