A New Month, but not A New Hope
My golden birthday is approaching, I talked with an out-of-contact friend on the phone, and the good-bad-&-the-ugly are with us this month.
By golden birthday I mean my 30ths, which falls on the 30th. I had never heard the term before last spring, when Kaity mentioned it during Kaffeestunde. Since then I have heard it several times, both from friends and from colleagues. Perception is amazing in that way, for clearly the term was used around me before it was pointed out to me. I need to send my father and step-mother a list of things I would like for my birthday and/or for Christmas. I find compiling such a list a bit difficult. Several of the things I would like are rather expensive and/or quite specific. For example, I would love a digital camera, but I don’t want someone to just purchase me some random one as gift. I’ll provide a list of books, as I always do, for there are a number I would like, and they are reasonably priced. I might add a DVD or two, but there is no (new) music I particularly want. On the books/music/DVD front, I would like to avoid collecting more massive "stuff" that is simply going to take up space, but that’s the nature of such things, I fear.
Andrew called the other evening, before the election, and we chatted for a while, for the first time in months, so so catching-up was in order. Evidently another friend has just gotten a new job, so I have a phone call to make. As it was, we bitched about politics and the state of the world; alas, my fears were realized.
Wisconsin—barely—went to Kerry, but the rest of the country was not so wise. The only “redeeming” aspect of the election was that Russ Feingold and Tammy Baldwin rather handily won their respective races. Feingold’s opponent, Tim Michels, was a lowlife fucktard and hypocritical asswipe of a Republican stooge. He would have looked great back in the 1930s dressed in brown and goose-stepping it around Nürnberg and Berlin. Dave Magnum, Baldwin’s challenger, seemed like a decent guy, but that doesn’t make him a good candidate. Compared to the right-wing nutjobs in office elsewhere, he came across as moderate, but he missed (skipped) a scheduled debate and had the nerve to blame Baldwin’s camp for his fuckup. All that having been said, Kerry’s loss rests squarely with two groups: the Kerry campaign and the Democratic leadership in this country. The former never made a good case for himself, nor did he ever clearly lock on to an “out with Bush” message. Despite Dean’s faults, he did those things. I respect Kerry the Senator, but Kerry the candidate was never someone to vote for, just the embodiment of voting against Bush. As for the national leadership—what more is there to say? They’re incompetent. In addition to losing the presidency (again), they didn’t help with races for the Senate or House, or for governorships. Because they represent a party, they feel threatened by grass-roots progressivism. They do not understand how to harness it; although the Republican party bosses don’t really believe in the “grass roots,” they do know how to fake it, and a number of their core constituents (wacko evangelical Xians, for example) do do know how to start small, build a base, and grab power. One only needs to look at rural and suburban schoolboards across the country.
The most depressing aspect of the election is that more than half the people in this country decided to prove how truly retarded they are. Oh, I can hear it now, that’s just liberal intolerance speaking. There were, you know, valid reasons to support Bush. In response: no there weren’t. A vote for Bush was a vote for the status quo, even though the status quo sucks (deficit, fundamentally unsound economic practices, uncontrolled corporate control of major political decicionmakers, selfish and neo-emperialist foreign policy, and broken environmental policy). A vote for Bush was a vote for reactionary policy making: reacting to situations, not proactively trying to make the world a better place. A vote for Bush was a vote for being irrationally controlled by one’s fear: the fear of the so-called “gay agenda,” the fear of “freedom-hating terrorists,” and the fear of thinking. Would a Kerry presidency fix all these things? Of course not. Everyone agrees that in many regards the two candidates shared policy decisions, but a vote for Kerry was a vote to indicate being upset with the status quo and a vote to indicate one’s desire for change. The only reason to vote for Bush was if you 1) are a bigoted, homophobic neanderthal, 2) believe we need a deluded leader who thinks God speaks directly to him, and 3) you despise freedom and want a world in which your narrow-minded ethos is imposed by force upon those who disagree with you. Such people are either evil or stupid, and I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt by calling them the latter. Ignorance is no excuse, but it’s a tad bit better than being malicious ... or is it?
I, however, never had much hope for a non-Bush presidency, so now I can only hope that things get so much worse that the 51% of the population that thrust us into this continued mess will learn to regret its decision. That is too much to hope for, I know, and I really do not want to live in a country, let alone a world, that must sink that low before it sees the error of its ways, but in other circles it is known as “tough love.”
I can’t stand “patriotism”—it is rooted in the term “father,” and I refuse to anthropomorphize political institutions—but at times I think liberals are the only people in this country who can, in any way, be labeled patriotic—is not wanting to improve your country and trying to make a better future patriotic? Is not the me-me-me “I need my SUV, god, and guns” view of the bushinistas the furthest thing from “patriotism” one could imagine?
The rest of November will be an ambivalent time. It is, once again, time for NaNoWriMo, and once again I am attempting to write a 50,000 word novel (er, novella) in 30 days; I managed it (in terms of word-count, if not in terms of producing a completed story) last year, though the year before I failed. What caused me to fail two years ago might return to haunt me: the desire and/or need to mess around with computers. Two years ago I set up my server, which has been providing 24/7/365 service since that time. Now, however, I have a corrupted root partition, and I think some surgery is in order, perhaps even a reinstall and upgrade. In addition I have dissertation work to do, and I would like to write a chapter before Xmas. Finally, the writing spirit is barely with me. Instead, I have the nearly constant desire to draw and doodle and sketch, even if the results are, at best, mediocre.
A need to shake up my life has hit me. It is a type of radicalism or fundamentalism, understood in the sense of returning to roots or basics. That is to say: to simplify matters and pursue that which most interests me: good books, good (and new?) music, foreign and/or off-beat films, new cuisine. Routine should be instrumental, not teleological; it servers to free oneself from some forms of chaos in order to pursue more worthwhile goals, but it should not be an end unto itself.
On that note, let me conclude with a few things I have read, watched, listened to, or eaten recently that have caught my fancy.
- Casshern: one of several recent films consisting of live actors in front of a blue/gree screen. Others include Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004: with J. Law, A. Jolie, G. Patrow, and G. Ribisi) and Immortel (ad vitam) (2004: based on an old French graphic novel ... weird, a bit unrefined, but neat), and Sin City (2004: based on some Frank Miller stories), which has not yet been released. As for Casshern, it is perhaps best described as a live-action mix of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Haibane Renmei. It is hardly subtle, and at times it appears too much like an adaption of anime, but some of the shots, scenes, and colors are stunning. As with Sky Captain, it is rather steam-punk in nature. The parallels to Nazism that show up in the first half of the film reminded me also of Bakshi’s Wizards (1977). Alas, the story is, for the most part, a wreck, not because it is silly or stupid, but because it seems too contracted—one feels like it was meant as an epic that had to be squished into 2 hours.
- Innocene (Ghost in the Shell 2): this film was a visual feast. It combined traditional cell animation with CGI, often to good effect, though some of the early scenes felt unbalanced. I loved the first Ghost in the Shell (GITS) when I saw it in 2001, half a decade after it was released. GITS reminded me, and others, of such live-action films as Bladerunner, and in 1999 (and beyond) many noted the similarity between The Matrix and GITS. This is only to say that in certain types of near-future sci-fi there is a geneaology and some shared traits, tropes, and themes. Those expecting Innocence to be just like GITS might come away disappointed, similar to the way many fans of The Matrix were disappointed by Reloaded and Revolutions. In both cases the sequels are more “philosophical” and less action-oriented. But they are also more baroque; they are, truly, irregularly shaped pearls, imperfect, flamboyant, and not a little grotesque. But they are also feasts for the senses, not only for the intellect, and whereas The Matrix Reloaded seemed to hover around an Enlightenment discourse on purpose and rationality, Innocence gravitates toward Kleist and others who contemplated the nature of dolls, puppets, and marionettes. In the sequels to The Matrix a shift had to occur because of Neo’s Supermanesque abilities; it could no longer be about him; at the end of GITS the protagonist became transformed, and the sequel could not really be about her.
- mathgeeks: you may have difficulty coming across music by mathgeeks (and other works by its creative genius, mns), but I do find them a good reminder that good music is not limited to the major labels (if it is to be found there at all).
- The Motor Primitives: I had the pleasure of hearing them at the recent Madison Hostel fundraiser. Just good rock. Also appearing were Art Paul Schlosser, The Great Luke Ski, and Arena Venus
- The Lady and the Unicorn: I just started Tracy Chevalier’s recent novel, but so far I like it. I borrowed it from a colleague (Regina), along with The Witch of Blackbird Pond, a book I had not picked up since my days at Mary Mac back in the early 80s.
- Chicken Apricot Pie: I have been a “regular” at the Mediterranean Cafe almost since I got to Madison. Several years ago my dad and step-mother went there, and the guy who runs it recognized him as my father (even though we do not look that much alike). Just a month ago I “discovered” their Chicken Apricot Pie, which contains plenty of chicken layered between a bed of bulgar wheat and a custardy yogurt mixture. It is served with rice and salad. I recommend it to all my friends. They make it only on Thursday.
—November 4 2004