The Great Pumpkin
Since my long past youth I have been puzzled by the "true believers" in the world of music. You know these people. They put great pride in discovering the new bands first, and then abandoned them with acidic derision if and when they broke through and got a hit. They believed bands "sold out" by becoming financially successful, and by achieving an audience outside the music snobs, the true believers. I've noticed that, to a person, every one of the true believers stopped listening to music entirely somewhere in her/his 30s.
I think I recently found the key to these people's psyche. While reading Kurt Cobain's Journals recently, I kept running across the words these people, these true believers, use like a litany. Music has to be sincere, and honest, and pure, etc. (How some songs are sincere and others not is a mystery to me.) As I read Kurt's invocation of these words again, a glimmer of an idea danced just out of my reach. Where have I heard these words before? What was the circumstance?
Then it hit me.
It's Linus's theology of the great pumpkin! The true believers believe if their pumpkin patch is the most sincere, the most humble, the most worthy, the great pumpkin will visit them. (Has anyone ever made the connection and named their band "the great pumpkin" or "the pumpkin patch" I wonder? Maybe that's where "Smashing Pumpkins" came from.) Of course, crass commercialism, or heck, even purposely trying to write a hit song, with full intention of getting a hit, that will ruin everything and the great pumpkin will pass them by. They have internalized Linus's own private Idaho personal holiday.
It makes sense chronologically, too. You didn't hear these sentiments regarding old pop standards or big band music, or even early rock and roll. No, they began showing up in rock criticism and music snob circles about the time the first generation that watched "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" came of age and started going to concerts and writing about it.
The parallels abound. Sally, Linus's faithful wanna-be girlfriend believes in his cause, and misses trick-or-treating through her dedication to his ideals, then feels foolish when she realizes it's all bullshit. The other kids tolerate Linus's devotion and mythos, but really know the point is to go out and just have fun already. Lucy, the big sister, trick-or-treats for Linus so he won't miss out, thus she's the sibling who secretly loans her Led Zeppelin records to the true believer who thinks only Black Flag or the Melvins are worthy of public endorsements.
In Cobain's Journals, on page 117, there's a picture Kurt drew of Jesus on the cross with a jack-o-lantern on his head (I believe it was part of the plans for the "Heart Shaped Box" video.) Is this an unconscious reference to the great pumpkin? Dunno.
Next time you encounter a music snob/true believer, listen to them for a while. I bet you'll agree s/he sounds just like Linus on Halloween. Point this out to them. You'll probably get something akin to Linus's rant as the others leave him to his pumpkin patch to go to a party.
Friday, May 23, 2003
PG-13
Cliff Claven Trivia Moment: The movie rating PG-13 was brought into being single-handedly by the Steve Martin/Carl Reiner movie The Man with Two Brains. Steve Martin has a brain he's in love with, but no body to put her into. When the scientist helping him says he could put her brain into a gorilla body, Steve responds, "I can't fuck a gorilla!" The folks involved in the movie felt it was silly to get an R rating for this one joke, but didn't want to lose it. Thus PG-13 was created, and to this day, you can use the work "fuck" precisely once and get a PG-13 rating. More than one "fuck" and you have an R.
Cliff Claven Trivia Moment: The movie rating PG-13 was brought into being single-handedly by the Steve Martin/Carl Reiner movie The Man with Two Brains. Steve Martin has a brain he's in love with, but no body to put her into. When the scientist helping him says he could put her brain into a gorilla body, Steve responds, "I can't fuck a gorilla!" The folks involved in the movie felt it was silly to get an R rating for this one joke, but didn't want to lose it. Thus PG-13 was created, and to this day, you can use the work "fuck" precisely once and get a PG-13 rating. More than one "fuck" and you have an R.
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Who Are You
I recently read a newspaper article where the author was complaining about the fact that we know little to nothing about Bob Dylan, particularly his inner thoughts (except for what comes out in his music). In terms of his impact on music in this century, yes it is amazing and somewhat terrible that this great man is largely a mystery. Since Dylan won't talk himself, the author offered that perhaps we could at least learn something from those who know him best, but two of the people who would know the most about Dylan are dead. The author then waxed morose on the potential loss of wonderful historical information. That gave me pause.
How do we know where to draw the line between historical necessity and a personal, private life? Right off bat, it's obvious that bias must be towards the personal, private life. Your business is your business, as long as it's not about killing or hurting someone. So that wins by default.
Yet, there are people whose lives have had such an impact on history or culture, our lack of knowledge about them seems almost like a crime. If we can wail over the loss of historical vases during a war, mourn over archeological sites covered by highways, and flip out over the decay of great works of art like the Mona Lisa and the statue of David, then it seems to follow that we would be hysterical over the fact that history is sitting right there, smoking a cigarette, strumming a guitar, and refusing to talk about himself (or herself).
I just finished reading Curt Cobain's Journals, a collection of some of the many notebooks he filled with notes, pictures, and lyrics. When it first came out, there was a great controversy about the invasion of his private (past) life because they are his raw notes, most likely something he never intended to publish. He even writes about how angry he was that other notes he wrote in rehab and other places were stolen and the contents released. So, he probably wouldn't approve of Journals if he were here today.
And you know what? The journals really don't give you that much more of an insight into Cobain's art and life (at least the ones that were published). I got more information about him just reading the excerpts of the bios on him and Nirvana on Amazon.com. The one piece of information in Journals I hadn't read about before anywhere else is this sad little incident where he tries to relieve himself of his virginity, which was on his "to do before I commit suicide" list.
Cobain had an obsession with rape, with "white male oppression" (though I personally wonder how much of that came from dearest C. Love), and, well, suicide. Since what he did could be characterized in some misguided people's minds as an attempt at "date rape" or taking advantage of someone who's mentality was questionable, he might have felt guilty of rape, given his total acceptance of gender feminist misandrist "thought" (i.e., men/males = bad, evil). The fact that she was 18, was a willing partner, and the fact that Cobain didn't even make it to consummation, all dismiss any construal of rape. Still, his classmates labeled him a "retard fucker", and clearly he felt terrible about it, so maybe in his mind it mutated over into an obsession with rape - by which I mean he abhorred it and often used it in his lyrical imagery as one of the worst things possible.
Everything in that last paragraph is cheap, dime-store psychological speculation that might be complete bullshit. Have I contributed positively to the gestalt of the case of Kurt Cobain by stating such a thing? I'm dubious on it. I put it here because as I was reading his journals, I had these thoughts, and they would seem to explain his obsession. But I'm just speculating based on sketchy info. I remarked to my wife how little Cobain writes about others, like his wife and the other Nirvana band members. But right after I did, I realized that in most blogs, including mine, the authors don't often talk about their family and friends, so the lack of those kind of personal references probably means nothing. When you are writing about your thoughts, it's naturally mostly about you.
When I was in the midst of pondering this topic, I happened to get my hands on the deluxe DVD of Taxi Driver that contains a documentary on the making of the film. Towards the end, the writer reminisces about the FBI interrogating him after Hinckley gunned down Reagan in order to get the attention of Jodie Foster. Then they cut to Jodie Foster. I sat straight up on the couch in anticipation. What would she say?! Well, she said nothing really. She skirted all around the topic, only addressing it in a general way - no names, no dates, no direct reference - and only in the context of how the movie is about a nut who guns down people. I was so disappointed. But then it occurred to me, what could she really say? (Then I was briefly angry at myself and the Barbara Walters conditioning we've all been exposed to where any meaningless comment a celebrity might have on a topic is deemed worthy simply because the celebrity opined in the first place.) And, if Foster had addressed it directly, Hinckley would have won, because that was his sole reason for the act - to get Jodie to notice. She handled the topic brilliantly and responsibly, given the circumstance. The best thing she could have done in relation to history, and the consequences around the event, is precisely what she did: nothing.
So, would we really gain any real information about Bob Dylan, or any other historical media figure if they really opened up and spilled their guts to us, and we knew that a girlfriend walked out on a given day, right before they wrote that song we love? As a fervent aficionado of all things music, especially trivia, I find that for me personally it doesn't add much. Because it's not about the music.
Knowing that Bowie got that great vocal in "Heroes" by using three gated mics placed at various distances away from him so the mic that got the best signal turned on while the others turned off so he could whisper some lyrics and bellow others is much more useful and interesting than his getting caught by his wife in bed with Mick Jagger. I so think, anyway.
TLD: About the only thing that I've found that is consistently interesting and useful as hell (historically), besides Pete Frame's great rock family histories (see post "Symbiosis, or fractals on movies and music " on Friday, May 02, 2003), is the "Classic Albums" series available on DVD. The bands and their producers, mixers, and roadies explain how a particular album was written, recorded, and mixed. Full of fascinating stuff like Steely Dan recorded something like 10 different guitars solos for a song, which all still are on the master tape; or Stevie Wonder is the only guy who could do the drums on some of his songs; or that Fleetwood Mac had to re-record all the high-end on Rumours because they literally wore out the first master tape by the number of times they made another pass at a take. That's history.
I don't think we are missing anything by not knowing what Bob had for breakfast, and what he thought about it.
I recently read a newspaper article where the author was complaining about the fact that we know little to nothing about Bob Dylan, particularly his inner thoughts (except for what comes out in his music). In terms of his impact on music in this century, yes it is amazing and somewhat terrible that this great man is largely a mystery. Since Dylan won't talk himself, the author offered that perhaps we could at least learn something from those who know him best, but two of the people who would know the most about Dylan are dead. The author then waxed morose on the potential loss of wonderful historical information. That gave me pause.
How do we know where to draw the line between historical necessity and a personal, private life? Right off bat, it's obvious that bias must be towards the personal, private life. Your business is your business, as long as it's not about killing or hurting someone. So that wins by default.
Yet, there are people whose lives have had such an impact on history or culture, our lack of knowledge about them seems almost like a crime. If we can wail over the loss of historical vases during a war, mourn over archeological sites covered by highways, and flip out over the decay of great works of art like the Mona Lisa and the statue of David, then it seems to follow that we would be hysterical over the fact that history is sitting right there, smoking a cigarette, strumming a guitar, and refusing to talk about himself (or herself).
I just finished reading Curt Cobain's Journals, a collection of some of the many notebooks he filled with notes, pictures, and lyrics. When it first came out, there was a great controversy about the invasion of his private (past) life because they are his raw notes, most likely something he never intended to publish. He even writes about how angry he was that other notes he wrote in rehab and other places were stolen and the contents released. So, he probably wouldn't approve of Journals if he were here today.
And you know what? The journals really don't give you that much more of an insight into Cobain's art and life (at least the ones that were published). I got more information about him just reading the excerpts of the bios on him and Nirvana on Amazon.com. The one piece of information in Journals I hadn't read about before anywhere else is this sad little incident where he tries to relieve himself of his virginity, which was on his "to do before I commit suicide" list.
Cobain had an obsession with rape, with "white male oppression" (though I personally wonder how much of that came from dearest C. Love), and, well, suicide. Since what he did could be characterized in some misguided people's minds as an attempt at "date rape" or taking advantage of someone who's mentality was questionable, he might have felt guilty of rape, given his total acceptance of gender feminist misandrist "thought" (i.e., men/males = bad, evil). The fact that she was 18, was a willing partner, and the fact that Cobain didn't even make it to consummation, all dismiss any construal of rape. Still, his classmates labeled him a "retard fucker", and clearly he felt terrible about it, so maybe in his mind it mutated over into an obsession with rape - by which I mean he abhorred it and often used it in his lyrical imagery as one of the worst things possible.
Everything in that last paragraph is cheap, dime-store psychological speculation that might be complete bullshit. Have I contributed positively to the gestalt of the case of Kurt Cobain by stating such a thing? I'm dubious on it. I put it here because as I was reading his journals, I had these thoughts, and they would seem to explain his obsession. But I'm just speculating based on sketchy info. I remarked to my wife how little Cobain writes about others, like his wife and the other Nirvana band members. But right after I did, I realized that in most blogs, including mine, the authors don't often talk about their family and friends, so the lack of those kind of personal references probably means nothing. When you are writing about your thoughts, it's naturally mostly about you.
When I was in the midst of pondering this topic, I happened to get my hands on the deluxe DVD of Taxi Driver that contains a documentary on the making of the film. Towards the end, the writer reminisces about the FBI interrogating him after Hinckley gunned down Reagan in order to get the attention of Jodie Foster. Then they cut to Jodie Foster. I sat straight up on the couch in anticipation. What would she say?! Well, she said nothing really. She skirted all around the topic, only addressing it in a general way - no names, no dates, no direct reference - and only in the context of how the movie is about a nut who guns down people. I was so disappointed. But then it occurred to me, what could she really say? (Then I was briefly angry at myself and the Barbara Walters conditioning we've all been exposed to where any meaningless comment a celebrity might have on a topic is deemed worthy simply because the celebrity opined in the first place.) And, if Foster had addressed it directly, Hinckley would have won, because that was his sole reason for the act - to get Jodie to notice. She handled the topic brilliantly and responsibly, given the circumstance. The best thing she could have done in relation to history, and the consequences around the event, is precisely what she did: nothing.
So, would we really gain any real information about Bob Dylan, or any other historical media figure if they really opened up and spilled their guts to us, and we knew that a girlfriend walked out on a given day, right before they wrote that song we love? As a fervent aficionado of all things music, especially trivia, I find that for me personally it doesn't add much. Because it's not about the music.
Knowing that Bowie got that great vocal in "Heroes" by using three gated mics placed at various distances away from him so the mic that got the best signal turned on while the others turned off so he could whisper some lyrics and bellow others is much more useful and interesting than his getting caught by his wife in bed with Mick Jagger. I so think, anyway.
TLD: About the only thing that I've found that is consistently interesting and useful as hell (historically), besides Pete Frame's great rock family histories (see post "Symbiosis, or fractals on movies and music " on Friday, May 02, 2003), is the "Classic Albums" series available on DVD. The bands and their producers, mixers, and roadies explain how a particular album was written, recorded, and mixed. Full of fascinating stuff like Steely Dan recorded something like 10 different guitars solos for a song, which all still are on the master tape; or Stevie Wonder is the only guy who could do the drums on some of his songs; or that Fleetwood Mac had to re-record all the high-end on Rumours because they literally wore out the first master tape by the number of times they made another pass at a take. That's history.
I don't think we are missing anything by not knowing what Bob had for breakfast, and what he thought about it.
<valley girl> Omiga-awd</valley girl>
Salon.com published my "date from hell" story today! (I'm the cat hair one, aka "The slob and the spit gob". I cannot stress enough how much cat hair there really was. You probably could have constructed an entire third cat from what the other two had shed.)
I don't know why they withheld my name - I don't recall asking them not to publish it. Oh well. Maybe they figured the woman could figure out it was her, if she happed across the story somehow, and sue the heck out of them and me. Or maybe she works for Salon. Hmmm.
Anyway, you have to watch the "free day pass" ad to see the story. They don't ask for personal information or anything - you just have to endure the ad (get to it via the upper-right hand of the topmost banner). They place a cookie on your machine which allows you access for a day. I would just post the story here, but I think Salon owns the story once you've submitted it to them.
_______________
Update:
Aw hell, I guess if I can post an entire copyrighted article by someone else, I can post my own.
Here's my "date from hell" story on Salon:
I swear this was not an episode of "Seinfeld."
I met this pretty blonde at a party -- a slightly less glamorous Gwen Stefani look-alike. I asked her out, and we decided on an afternoon movie followed by dinner at her apartment that coming Saturday.
I arrived at her door and immediately noticed a thunderous, full-bodied stench that had so many components to it, the very air around me seemed to carry slight discolorations. Looking down, I saw I was standing in a grayish, viscous puddle that was hosting a fly rave. About a minute after my second knock, I was beginning to think I'd been stood up when she dashed around the far corner yelling, "Sorry! I had to put the garbage out!" Puddle mystery solved.
She was wearing a cute red top, very sporty, and flattering jeans. When she went into her apartment to grab her coat, I happily noted that she was as cute and svelte as I remembered her. Caveat: Walking to the car, I noticed she had those little dried white spit globs at both corners of her mouth, the ones we all sometimes get. I'm not a fussy guy, so I mentally shrugged it off. We're all human and sometimes flaws are cute.
At the movie, she was charming, intelligent and funny. Secretly I was thrilled at my luck as the movie started. We shared a tub of buttered popcorn and a Coke. When the movie ended, as we got ready to leave, I noticed that the spit globs were still hanging on! The grease from the butter was shining all the way around her mouth, and you'd think that the popcorn would have dragged the globs into oblivion. Still, no big deal. I would just have to think of a way to have them exorcised by the time the goodnight kiss arrived, which I suspected it would, given that the date was going well so far.
We got back to her place, she got me a beer, and told me to sit on the couch while she made dinner, turning down my offers to help. While she cooked, I took in the apartment, which was like a shoe box, taller than it was wide, and it had two lofts: On one I could see a gray futon with stained sheets. The other was piled approximately six feet high with dirty clothes, including undies. There's something a little too intimate about seeing someone's soiled underwear before you've even kissed them, so I looked away and did my best to ignore it.
She also had two enormous gray cats who stirred only to growl at each other occasionally. I'm cool with pets, and they didn't seem to be annoyed at me, so I took the place in. Beer helps with denial, so I reached for mine. My hand had an odd nimbus around it. The beer was strong, but I hadn't had that much yet, so I took a closer look. It was covered with a thick mat of gray cat hair. Glancing around I saw the whole place was coated. Even the carpet, which was probably some form of beige, had a gray cast to it.
That was when she had put the pizza in the oven, sat down next to me, and told me how good her Bisquick pizzas were. According to her friends, they were renowned, she said. One of the interesting facts I learned about Bisquick pizzas is they take only minutes to cook from scratch (or from box, at least), so we would be eating soon.
During our conversation, I licked the corners of my mouth a few times in hope she would unconsciously mimic me.
We had just opened our second beers when the pizza was done. It looked marvelous. She'd put the ingredients on rather artistically; an aesthetic culinary event appeared imminent. I took a big bite, carefully holding the cheese so my chin wouldn't get a molten cheesy hug, and the odd sensation of many tiny things dragging across my tongue and out of my mouth almost made me drop the piece. The whole edge of the bite mark was lousy with threads of baked-in cat hair. Since there was so much, I thought it had to be a fluke, so I pulled off that part of the crust, explaining that though the pizza was good (not that I could tell, my mouth had shut down from shock), I liked a little less crust. The next bite was the same. As was the third. I nearly gagged on the third bite, managed not to, but my eyes watered up quite a bit. I can only guess she mistook that for newfound affection brimming up within me.
I gave up. By now, I was thoroughly, irrevocably grossed out. Critical mass had been achieved. I did not want another date with her, no matter how cute or smart or sexy. I went to the bathroom, rolled the cat hair off my hands, washed, and then looked into the mirror to prep for a breezy, promiseless exit.
The first words out of her mouth when I emerged were, "We have to do this again! I've had a great time! Are you busy tomorrow?" The globs were still in place, and I probably imagined this, but they were bigger. I have no excuses for what happened next.
I immediately abandoned all intentions of honesty, smiled brightly and said, "Sure! I'd love to. However, tomorrow I'm meeting some buddies, uh, out of town, and I won't be back till late, but how about sometime later this week?"
"Great!" she said. And stood there waiting for a kiss. So I kissed her. The globs were gone after that.
She waved to me from her door as I got in my car. "Call me!" she hollered. "You bet!" I hollered back. She closed the door before I was stricken with a full-body shudder. And, of course, I didn't call her.
I'm such a schmuck.
Salon.com published my "date from hell" story today! (I'm the cat hair one, aka "The slob and the spit gob". I cannot stress enough how much cat hair there really was. You probably could have constructed an entire third cat from what the other two had shed.)
I don't know why they withheld my name - I don't recall asking them not to publish it. Oh well. Maybe they figured the woman could figure out it was her, if she happed across the story somehow, and sue the heck out of them and me. Or maybe she works for Salon. Hmmm.
Anyway, you have to watch the "free day pass" ad to see the story. They don't ask for personal information or anything - you just have to endure the ad (get to it via the upper-right hand of the topmost banner). They place a cookie on your machine which allows you access for a day. I would just post the story here, but I think Salon owns the story once you've submitted it to them.
_______________
Update:
Aw hell, I guess if I can post an entire copyrighted article by someone else, I can post my own.
Here's my "date from hell" story on Salon:
I swear this was not an episode of "Seinfeld."
I met this pretty blonde at a party -- a slightly less glamorous Gwen Stefani look-alike. I asked her out, and we decided on an afternoon movie followed by dinner at her apartment that coming Saturday.
I arrived at her door and immediately noticed a thunderous, full-bodied stench that had so many components to it, the very air around me seemed to carry slight discolorations. Looking down, I saw I was standing in a grayish, viscous puddle that was hosting a fly rave. About a minute after my second knock, I was beginning to think I'd been stood up when she dashed around the far corner yelling, "Sorry! I had to put the garbage out!" Puddle mystery solved.
She was wearing a cute red top, very sporty, and flattering jeans. When she went into her apartment to grab her coat, I happily noted that she was as cute and svelte as I remembered her. Caveat: Walking to the car, I noticed she had those little dried white spit globs at both corners of her mouth, the ones we all sometimes get. I'm not a fussy guy, so I mentally shrugged it off. We're all human and sometimes flaws are cute.
At the movie, she was charming, intelligent and funny. Secretly I was thrilled at my luck as the movie started. We shared a tub of buttered popcorn and a Coke. When the movie ended, as we got ready to leave, I noticed that the spit globs were still hanging on! The grease from the butter was shining all the way around her mouth, and you'd think that the popcorn would have dragged the globs into oblivion. Still, no big deal. I would just have to think of a way to have them exorcised by the time the goodnight kiss arrived, which I suspected it would, given that the date was going well so far.
We got back to her place, she got me a beer, and told me to sit on the couch while she made dinner, turning down my offers to help. While she cooked, I took in the apartment, which was like a shoe box, taller than it was wide, and it had two lofts: On one I could see a gray futon with stained sheets. The other was piled approximately six feet high with dirty clothes, including undies. There's something a little too intimate about seeing someone's soiled underwear before you've even kissed them, so I looked away and did my best to ignore it.
She also had two enormous gray cats who stirred only to growl at each other occasionally. I'm cool with pets, and they didn't seem to be annoyed at me, so I took the place in. Beer helps with denial, so I reached for mine. My hand had an odd nimbus around it. The beer was strong, but I hadn't had that much yet, so I took a closer look. It was covered with a thick mat of gray cat hair. Glancing around I saw the whole place was coated. Even the carpet, which was probably some form of beige, had a gray cast to it.
That was when she had put the pizza in the oven, sat down next to me, and told me how good her Bisquick pizzas were. According to her friends, they were renowned, she said. One of the interesting facts I learned about Bisquick pizzas is they take only minutes to cook from scratch (or from box, at least), so we would be eating soon.
During our conversation, I licked the corners of my mouth a few times in hope she would unconsciously mimic me.
We had just opened our second beers when the pizza was done. It looked marvelous. She'd put the ingredients on rather artistically; an aesthetic culinary event appeared imminent. I took a big bite, carefully holding the cheese so my chin wouldn't get a molten cheesy hug, and the odd sensation of many tiny things dragging across my tongue and out of my mouth almost made me drop the piece. The whole edge of the bite mark was lousy with threads of baked-in cat hair. Since there was so much, I thought it had to be a fluke, so I pulled off that part of the crust, explaining that though the pizza was good (not that I could tell, my mouth had shut down from shock), I liked a little less crust. The next bite was the same. As was the third. I nearly gagged on the third bite, managed not to, but my eyes watered up quite a bit. I can only guess she mistook that for newfound affection brimming up within me.
I gave up. By now, I was thoroughly, irrevocably grossed out. Critical mass had been achieved. I did not want another date with her, no matter how cute or smart or sexy. I went to the bathroom, rolled the cat hair off my hands, washed, and then looked into the mirror to prep for a breezy, promiseless exit.
The first words out of her mouth when I emerged were, "We have to do this again! I've had a great time! Are you busy tomorrow?" The globs were still in place, and I probably imagined this, but they were bigger. I have no excuses for what happened next.
I immediately abandoned all intentions of honesty, smiled brightly and said, "Sure! I'd love to. However, tomorrow I'm meeting some buddies, uh, out of town, and I won't be back till late, but how about sometime later this week?"
"Great!" she said. And stood there waiting for a kiss. So I kissed her. The globs were gone after that.
She waved to me from her door as I got in my car. "Call me!" she hollered. "You bet!" I hollered back. She closed the door before I was stricken with a full-body shudder. And, of course, I didn't call her.
I'm such a schmuck.
Friday, May 16, 2003
Remastering
When you see "remastered" on a CD, what does it mean? Does it make it sound better?
I'm glad I asked that question! I've done extensive personal research on the issue and would love to share my knowledge!
Yes, it almost always makes it sound better. How much better depends on what is meant by "remastered" and the source recordings.
Sometimes all that is done is a higher bit-rate sampling of the existing original stereo mix-down master. That means they made a clearer copy of an old tape, the one made back when they first made the album. The multi-track master tapes (the ones the band used while actually recording the pieces of a song) are mixed down to a "stereo master" which is the source for a CD, tape or vinyl record. This kind of remastering can make a difference since you're hearing more information due to the better sample, but sometimes these old stereo mix-downs just don't sound the best, and often they were equalized specifically for the known audio dynamics of vinyl records (light on the bass, heavy on the mid-range). The first Rolling Stones remasters were of this type, and though clearer, they didn't sound much better. Sometimes the older, "muddier" versions of their albums had a more pleasant sound. (But stay tuned, they tried again.) Tom Petty's remasters don't sound much different from his originals because the dynamic range of his "sound" was a lot like the Stones', which doesn't really improve with a simple higher bit-rate remaster.
If the original stereo mix-down tape is decent, though, a remastering from a high bit-rate sample can really "open up" the sound. Billy Joel, the Eagles, Steely Dan, and Earth Wind and Fire's remasters are good examples of this. Especially the horns on EWF brighten up quite a bit. And Steely Dan is restored to its original champagne and caviar clarity and range - it's orgasmic.
TLD: The Eagles, for some reason, were sneaky about their CDs being remastered. You have to look real close at the back of a CD to see if it's remastered. I find this odd because back in the day when everyone was using the "aural exciter" - a little device that took the high end and kinda echoed it, punched it up, and made it all shimmery - the Eagles made a point of stating in their liner notes that THEY did not use it, {sniff}. So if they were audiophile snots back then, why weren't they hooting about their catalogue getting an upgrade? Beats me.
Then there are the folks who went back to the original master tapes, the ones where all original recording was done on 8, 16, 24, and even 64 separate channels which, is then mixed down to the stereo master. The original multi-track tapes contain ALL of the original sound information, so going back to them produces the best remastering result of all. The catch is sometimes no one remembers which tracks they used for the stereo mix-down (as there is typically much more on the tapes than what made it into the final mix - see below on Fleetwood Mac), or what levels, equalization and other tweaks were done on those original tracks. Sometimes that's where a band's "sound" comes from (see below on the Beatles).
To date, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and the Beatles have done this - gone back to the original multi-track recordings to create a new remastered mix. Oh, and the Rolling Stones finally did this. Their latest remasters are of this type, and they sound niiiiice.
Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page did the purist form of this. He supervised the remixing of the original master tapes so that the sound of the original mix would be preserved. The results are astonishing. If you can get your hands on an original (non-remastered) Led Zep CD and compare it to the new ones, it's apparent even on a cheap boom box. On a good stereo (I recommend Yamaha), you can pick out all individual instruments on every track. The warhorse "Stairway to Heaven" sounds as good when you are sober as it used to sound when you were stoned out of your gourd at a party. Pink Floyd's remasters are of this quality as well. If you like either group, you do need to get the remastered versions of your favorites, if you haven't already.
The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac took slightly different routes, and (save for the one exception explained below) you can't find original master tape remasters on CD; they're only on DVD. (Suppressing ... rant ... on greed of ... music industry... {strain ... grunt}.)
The only true original master remix available for the Beatles is on the soundtrack to the movie Yellow Submarine - and on the DVD of the movie itself, where it's in 5.1 surround. The effect on the DVD of the movie is astonishing. When the guys harmonize on "Nowhere Man", their voices come from individual speakers. When the remaining Beatles (which at the time was Paul, George, and Ringo) were approached about this remastering for the movie soundtrack, originally they said "no" because they were concerned that they would futz with the masterful stereo mixes of Sir. George Martin (the fifth Beatle), which they felt was instrumental to their "sound". (Which becomes apparent when you see George Martin demonstrating just what he did back then in the documentaries that comprise The Beatles Anthology.) The remastering team got around that by giving the Beatles absolute final approval on the mix they created. What's even more astounding is that those songs were recorded before we had only 4-track tape machines. Nearly every other group that recorded in those days would fill up three tracks, then those three tracks would be mixed to the remaining one, and then they would do that a couple more times before tape generation degradation set it. But, this meant they "lost" the original single tracks of some of the instruments or voices. Evidently due to some huge miracle of foresight, the Beatles did not do this. They kept all the original tracks, and mixed down to a new tape, so we have all their original single track takes of everything. The team that restored Yellow Submarine copied all those tracks to a digital master, synched them up, then remixed them. The complete story is here. (Wouldn't it be cool if they did this for all of their music? Shudder to think!) If you're a fan, go get the DVD, turn on the 5.1 surround, and make sure you're sitting.
What Fleetwood Mac die is an example of how NOT to do it. They went back and remastered Rumours from the original masters, but put it out only on DVD! (Bastards.) What's worse, is THEY CHANGED THE FREAKIN' MIX! They added instruments and vocals that were recorded at the time, but not included in the original mix. Half the songs sound entirely different. For an album that is more or less tattooed on the public consciousness, the stupidity of that misstep is hard to state adroitly. Sure, it's clear as a bell and it sounds like you're in the studio, but it's not the same album!!! (Paging Jimmy Page for reality patrol ... Paging Jimmy Page for reality patrol ... get to Lindsey Buckingham STAT!). Still, it's probably worth the money for die-hards who have a DVD and 5.1 surround stereo. And it has the studio version of "Silver Springs" which wasn't on the original release. Let's just hope they put it out on CD someday, with the original mix restored.
Lindsey, give us a call. Let's chat.
So:
Remasters to buy, like fer sure:
- Led Zeppelin
- Pink Floyd
- Steely Dan
- Earth, Wind and Fire
Remasters to buy, if you're a big fan:
- Billy Joel
- Eagles
- Most recent Rolling Stone remasters.
- The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" on DVD - but only if you have a good 5.1 surround system.
Don't bother:
- Tom Petty
- Older Rolling Stones remasters
- Fleetwood Mac DVD (sounds great, but it's a different mix altogether)
When you see "remastered" on a CD, what does it mean? Does it make it sound better?
I'm glad I asked that question! I've done extensive personal research on the issue and would love to share my knowledge!
Yes, it almost always makes it sound better. How much better depends on what is meant by "remastered" and the source recordings.
Sometimes all that is done is a higher bit-rate sampling of the existing original stereo mix-down master. That means they made a clearer copy of an old tape, the one made back when they first made the album. The multi-track master tapes (the ones the band used while actually recording the pieces of a song) are mixed down to a "stereo master" which is the source for a CD, tape or vinyl record. This kind of remastering can make a difference since you're hearing more information due to the better sample, but sometimes these old stereo mix-downs just don't sound the best, and often they were equalized specifically for the known audio dynamics of vinyl records (light on the bass, heavy on the mid-range). The first Rolling Stones remasters were of this type, and though clearer, they didn't sound much better. Sometimes the older, "muddier" versions of their albums had a more pleasant sound. (But stay tuned, they tried again.) Tom Petty's remasters don't sound much different from his originals because the dynamic range of his "sound" was a lot like the Stones', which doesn't really improve with a simple higher bit-rate remaster.
If the original stereo mix-down tape is decent, though, a remastering from a high bit-rate sample can really "open up" the sound. Billy Joel, the Eagles, Steely Dan, and Earth Wind and Fire's remasters are good examples of this. Especially the horns on EWF brighten up quite a bit. And Steely Dan is restored to its original champagne and caviar clarity and range - it's orgasmic.
TLD: The Eagles, for some reason, were sneaky about their CDs being remastered. You have to look real close at the back of a CD to see if it's remastered. I find this odd because back in the day when everyone was using the "aural exciter" - a little device that took the high end and kinda echoed it, punched it up, and made it all shimmery - the Eagles made a point of stating in their liner notes that THEY did not use it, {sniff}. So if they were audiophile snots back then, why weren't they hooting about their catalogue getting an upgrade? Beats me.
Then there are the folks who went back to the original master tapes, the ones where all original recording was done on 8, 16, 24, and even 64 separate channels which, is then mixed down to the stereo master. The original multi-track tapes contain ALL of the original sound information, so going back to them produces the best remastering result of all. The catch is sometimes no one remembers which tracks they used for the stereo mix-down (as there is typically much more on the tapes than what made it into the final mix - see below on Fleetwood Mac), or what levels, equalization and other tweaks were done on those original tracks. Sometimes that's where a band's "sound" comes from (see below on the Beatles).
To date, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Lindsey Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd and the Beatles have done this - gone back to the original multi-track recordings to create a new remastered mix. Oh, and the Rolling Stones finally did this. Their latest remasters are of this type, and they sound niiiiice.
Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page did the purist form of this. He supervised the remixing of the original master tapes so that the sound of the original mix would be preserved. The results are astonishing. If you can get your hands on an original (non-remastered) Led Zep CD and compare it to the new ones, it's apparent even on a cheap boom box. On a good stereo (I recommend Yamaha), you can pick out all individual instruments on every track. The warhorse "Stairway to Heaven" sounds as good when you are sober as it used to sound when you were stoned out of your gourd at a party. Pink Floyd's remasters are of this quality as well. If you like either group, you do need to get the remastered versions of your favorites, if you haven't already.
The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac took slightly different routes, and (save for the one exception explained below) you can't find original master tape remasters on CD; they're only on DVD. (Suppressing ... rant ... on greed of ... music industry... {strain ... grunt}.)
The only true original master remix available for the Beatles is on the soundtrack to the movie Yellow Submarine - and on the DVD of the movie itself, where it's in 5.1 surround. The effect on the DVD of the movie is astonishing. When the guys harmonize on "Nowhere Man", their voices come from individual speakers. When the remaining Beatles (which at the time was Paul, George, and Ringo) were approached about this remastering for the movie soundtrack, originally they said "no" because they were concerned that they would futz with the masterful stereo mixes of Sir. George Martin (the fifth Beatle), which they felt was instrumental to their "sound". (Which becomes apparent when you see George Martin demonstrating just what he did back then in the documentaries that comprise The Beatles Anthology.) The remastering team got around that by giving the Beatles absolute final approval on the mix they created. What's even more astounding is that those songs were recorded before we had only 4-track tape machines. Nearly every other group that recorded in those days would fill up three tracks, then those three tracks would be mixed to the remaining one, and then they would do that a couple more times before tape generation degradation set it. But, this meant they "lost" the original single tracks of some of the instruments or voices. Evidently due to some huge miracle of foresight, the Beatles did not do this. They kept all the original tracks, and mixed down to a new tape, so we have all their original single track takes of everything. The team that restored Yellow Submarine copied all those tracks to a digital master, synched them up, then remixed them. The complete story is here. (Wouldn't it be cool if they did this for all of their music? Shudder to think!) If you're a fan, go get the DVD, turn on the 5.1 surround, and make sure you're sitting.
What Fleetwood Mac die is an example of how NOT to do it. They went back and remastered Rumours from the original masters, but put it out only on DVD! (Bastards.) What's worse, is THEY CHANGED THE FREAKIN' MIX! They added instruments and vocals that were recorded at the time, but not included in the original mix. Half the songs sound entirely different. For an album that is more or less tattooed on the public consciousness, the stupidity of that misstep is hard to state adroitly. Sure, it's clear as a bell and it sounds like you're in the studio, but it's not the same album!!! (Paging Jimmy Page for reality patrol ... Paging Jimmy Page for reality patrol ... get to Lindsey Buckingham STAT!). Still, it's probably worth the money for die-hards who have a DVD and 5.1 surround stereo. And it has the studio version of "Silver Springs" which wasn't on the original release. Let's just hope they put it out on CD someday, with the original mix restored.
Lindsey, give us a call. Let's chat.
So:
Remasters to buy, like fer sure:
- Led Zeppelin
- Pink Floyd
- Steely Dan
- Earth, Wind and Fire
Remasters to buy, if you're a big fan:
- Billy Joel
- Eagles
- Most recent Rolling Stone remasters.
- The Beatles "Yellow Submarine" on DVD - but only if you have a good 5.1 surround system.
Don't bother:
- Tom Petty
- Older Rolling Stones remasters
- Fleetwood Mac DVD (sounds great, but it's a different mix altogether)
Corn
TLD: I'm going to break from tradition and take the high road in this particular post.
I simply don't believe the nutrition information on packages of whole kernel corn.
Here's why. The way they determine the calories in something is they get a sample of a certain weight, they then burn it in a chamber that can measure the exact amount of heat given off, and voila, you have a calorie count. The thought is that the amount of heat can be extrapolated into how the body digests that food as it relates to calories.
Carbohydrates are determined by inverse zen math performed without a spotter, evidently. All the stuff I've read on how theyguess determine carbs reads like most college papers and scientific articles where the author doesn't want to come out and admit s/he really doesn't have any idea what's going on. They're largely making it up as they go.
But the issue at hand is corn. After reading how the scary C's are determined, and observing that my body doesn't even begin to process whole kernel corn the way their labs and calculators do, I conclude that corn is the dietary equivalent of Styrofoam packing peanuts. Therefore, from now on, I'm going to ignore the dietary label on all whole kernel corn products with extreme prejudice.
Disqualifier for those of you in the cheap seats: I'm not a professional scientist and have not done anything to prove my opinion. Carefully reading the post and imagining my situation when my conclusion occurred can help you to determine the one method I used. Don't even think of suing me if you're fat from a month-long all-corn bingefest.
TLD: I'm going to break from tradition and take the high road in this particular post.
I simply don't believe the nutrition information on packages of whole kernel corn.
Here's why. The way they determine the calories in something is they get a sample of a certain weight, they then burn it in a chamber that can measure the exact amount of heat given off, and voila, you have a calorie count. The thought is that the amount of heat can be extrapolated into how the body digests that food as it relates to calories.
Carbohydrates are determined by inverse zen math performed without a spotter, evidently. All the stuff I've read on how they
But the issue at hand is corn. After reading how the scary C's are determined, and observing that my body doesn't even begin to process whole kernel corn the way their labs and calculators do, I conclude that corn is the dietary equivalent of Styrofoam packing peanuts. Therefore, from now on, I'm going to ignore the dietary label on all whole kernel corn products with extreme prejudice.
Disqualifier for those of you in the cheap seats: I'm not a professional scientist and have not done anything to prove my opinion. Carefully reading the post and imagining my situation when my conclusion occurred can help you to determine the one method I used. Don't even think of suing me if you're fat from a month-long all-corn bingefest.
Thursday, May 15, 2003
Deeply Throated
I really didn't think political abuses of the Homeland Security department would start this early. I thought we'd at least make it past the next presidential election, and it would've come out they used it Nixon-style to mess with the Democrats during. Well, they're ahead of schedule.
Even the wingnuts have got to hoist an eyebrow at this one.
I'm gonna go crank Jackson Browne's "For America". I like the lyrics a lot. Plus, it rocks.
_________________________
Update: Talking Points Memo
Via: Calpundit
Ooo! More: Lieberman Seeks Answers On Use Of Homeland Security Resources To Aid Texas Political Battle
.
I really didn't think political abuses of the Homeland Security department would start this early. I thought we'd at least make it past the next presidential election, and it would've come out they used it Nixon-style to mess with the Democrats during. Well, they're ahead of schedule.
Even the wingnuts have got to hoist an eyebrow at this one.
I'm gonna go crank Jackson Browne's "For America". I like the lyrics a lot. Plus, it rocks.
_________________________
Update: Talking Points Memo
Via: Calpundit
Ooo! More: Lieberman Seeks Answers On Use Of Homeland Security Resources To Aid Texas Political Battle
.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
M-O-O-N spells eclipse
For those of you, like myself, who like to gaze into the night sky, portents of doom and a decent summer movie season will appear in the night sky at the end of this week. On Thursday, May 15th, most of us in the USA will be able to see a total lunar eclipse as the moon rises, with the exception of Oregon and Washington because not only will it rise already eclipsed, but it will be raining.
You are here:
The moon eclipse will begin about 11:14 PM EDT (9:14 MDT, 8:14 PDT), be fully eclipsed at 11:40 PM EDT (9:40 MDT, 8:40 PDT), and end at 12:07 AM EDT (10:07 MDT, 9:07 PDT). You central time zone folks will just have to do the math, but then most of you can.
Here's looking at you, kid.
(Bonus points for those of you who not only get the reference in the title, but why it's especially appropriate in these infectious times.)
For those of you, like myself, who like to gaze into the night sky, portents of doom and a decent summer movie season will appear in the night sky at the end of this week. On Thursday, May 15th, most of us in the USA will be able to see a total lunar eclipse as the moon rises, with the exception of Oregon and Washington because not only will it rise already eclipsed, but it will be raining.
You are here:
The moon eclipse will begin about 11:14 PM EDT (9:14 MDT, 8:14 PDT), be fully eclipsed at 11:40 PM EDT (9:40 MDT, 8:40 PDT), and end at 12:07 AM EDT (10:07 MDT, 9:07 PDT). You central time zone folks will just have to do the math, but then most of you can.
Here's looking at you, kid.
(Bonus points for those of you who not only get the reference in the title, but why it's especially appropriate in these infectious times.)
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
Monday, May 12, 2003
Vampires!
I futzed around recently with possible inspirational links between movies and music. ("Symbiosis, or fractals on movies and music" - 5/2/2003. And I'm even more sure that "More Human Than Human" was inspired by Bladerunner because the word "Nexis" appears in the lyrics, which is the classification of the type androids that Harrison Ford hunts down.)
I've found a new one. The latest Foo Fighters CD, One by One, is about Vampires, I think. Specifically, it follows the lore of Anne Rice's vampires Lestat and Louis from the movie and book of Interview with a Vampire. If you've seen the movie or read the book, go read the lyrics for every song. They fit perfectly. Lestat even becomes a big rock star, like Grohl, in The Vampire Lestat.
When I got the album, I wondered why they used hearts as the design theme:
Now I think, "well, duh."
Even on the website, notice on the menus how little blood cells gather around the menu choice under your mouse.
Houston, we have a concept album.
Ever noticed how toothy Dave Grohl's smile is?'
Now maybe the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons will mention me on the show!
I futzed around recently with possible inspirational links between movies and music. ("Symbiosis, or fractals on movies and music" - 5/2/2003. And I'm even more sure that "More Human Than Human" was inspired by Bladerunner because the word "Nexis" appears in the lyrics, which is the classification of the type androids that Harrison Ford hunts down.)
I've found a new one. The latest Foo Fighters CD, One by One, is about Vampires, I think. Specifically, it follows the lore of Anne Rice's vampires Lestat and Louis from the movie and book of Interview with a Vampire. If you've seen the movie or read the book, go read the lyrics for every song. They fit perfectly. Lestat even becomes a big rock star, like Grohl, in The Vampire Lestat.
When I got the album, I wondered why they used hearts as the design theme:
Now I think, "well, duh."
Even on the website, notice on the menus how little blood cells gather around the menu choice under your mouse.
Houston, we have a concept album.
Ever noticed how toothy Dave Grohl's smile is?'
Now maybe the Comic Book Guy on the Simpsons will mention me on the show!
Republicans
Well, the Republican-controlled Colorado legislature, at the close of the session, has gone and illegally redrawn the congressional districts so that seven out of five districts will greatly favor Republican chances during an election, and I got to learn a new word: Gerrymander.
All over the conservative and/or wingnut blogs and newspapers and magazines, they say quit calling the last presidential election a "stolen" election, get over it, shut up, move on. Etc.
Uh, that'd be a "HELL no!"
Well, the Republican-controlled Colorado legislature, at the close of the session, has gone and illegally redrawn the congressional districts so that seven out of five districts will greatly favor Republican chances during an election, and I got to learn a new word: Gerrymander.
All over the conservative and/or wingnut blogs and newspapers and magazines, they say quit calling the last presidential election a "stolen" election, get over it, shut up, move on. Etc.
Uh, that'd be a "HELL no!"
Friday, May 09, 2003
Science vs. Christianity
On the way into work today, I listened to Annie Lennox's "Why". It's a very dramatic and sad song, but to me, like all good tragedy, it has some wonderful comic proportions, too. For instance, when I encounter something that's frustrating or stupid or confused, sometimes that song, particularly the long, drawn-out "why", plays in my head. Very loudly. For specific instance, every time I encounter a science vs. Christianity debate, I roll my eyes and sigh, and sometimes even sing along out loud with "Why" while it's playing in my head. I imagine the people adjacent to my cubicle make a mental note to never invite me to a karaoke party.
Look. Science and Christianity are simply different things. It's not even an apples and oranges comparison, it's more like apples and lightbulbs.
Science, and let's be precise here in that we are talking about "hard" science - physics, biology, etc. - and not "social science" - like anthropology or psychology; science is about observable, predictable facts and, because of that, is limited in its ability to describe much of the human condition outside of the mechanics of the human body, the effect of the physical environment upon the same, and descriptions and manipulations of physical properties. Science is about how the heart works, computers, electricity, gravity, chemistry, and stuff that blows up real good.
Christianity, and the text that documents the source and history of it (the Bible, for those of you in the cheap seats), is about humanity and its relationship to God, and our relationships to each other. Nothing about science.
Simply put:
Science = Explorations of physical reality.
Christianity = Relationship with God.
Pardon me, but I'm just not seeing the intersection there. To which someone might say, "Excuse me, but don't you consider God part of physical reality?" To which I'd answer, "No, He's outside of it." Therefore, He's unknowable save for perhaps the little He has told us about Himself.
Now, personally, I accept as reasonable the justification some folks proffer where just the fact that we exist, the wonderfully balanced laws of the universe, and the possibility that evolution can explain our occurring naturally is enough for them to believe we came to be by some phenomenal accident, which doesn't require God as part of the explanation or equation. To me, that's just as plausible a cause for their belief as is my accepting the New Testament as the literal truth and real history of Jesus is a plausible cause for my belief. That belief that natural accidents may explain away God is the one place where science vs. Christianity connect very tenuously. Still, I think that particular leap is based on only one implication among many possible ones, and it is quite a leap. Even a leap of faith.
Two people observing a marvelously complex and robust system can come to the opposite conclusions that 1) someone consciously designed and constructed that system and that 2) it just occurred all on its own by sheer happenstance, and having no proof of either the two will just have to accept each holds a possible valid conclusion.
Outside of dubious theological missteps and overreaching, such as denying the earth goes around the sun because we have to be at the center of God's creation because he just wuvs us SO MUCH!, Christianity just hasn't got all up in science's process. Well, unless you count the anomaly known as Creationism. Creationism is to science as stage magic is to real magic (if real magic existed, of course). Creationism's attempt to meld science and religion is as misguided and futile as strapping rocket jets to your roller-skates - see any Roadrunner cartoon or MTV's "Jackass" for proof, provided you're immature enough. By the way, believing that God created everything does not make you a Creationist. Glad we got that out of the way.
Nothing in the Bible makes any claims or statements on scientific knowledge or the advancement thereof. It is all about people and God. Now, everyone knows that it contains a couple creation stories (yes, it does have two), but these are either allegorical or vastly simplified in the same way an explanation to a three-year-old on where kittens come from is. The reason for this is apparent, at least to me. How do you really explain how you created everything when your audience has no previous experience with any of the concepts they'd need to begin to understand, and really your most immediate concern is to introduce yourself, tell them to quit cheating and killing each other, and demand that they stop fucking goats and stuff already. (If you want a book that starts at the dawn of time and realistically walks you through the continents forming, life populating the earth, and finally places you on the front steps of modern times, read a James Michener novel.)
The first five books of the Bible were by Moses or about Moses, and all of the things God conveyed to Moses, including the creation stories. Can you imagine how it might have gone if God had tried to explain the big bang, the basics of matter, and evolution (if evolution was the mechanism God used to form us) to Moses?
GOD: "Hi Moses. Take off your shoes; this is holy ground. Don't get too close. That robe looks pretty flammable. Get comfortable, this may take a while."
Moses complies.
GOD: "Well, in the beginning, I created a proto-singularity that contained the proto-matter from which I would construct all matter, such as atoms and molecules and the various forces to bind them all together."
MOSES (with a very puzzled expression): "Atoms? Proto...what?"
GOD: "Hmmm. Okaaay. Lessee. First there was nothing and then I created this huge explosion that threw matter everywhere."
MOSES: "Matter?"
GOD: "Um, 'stuff.' I made the earth, moon, the sun and the stars from that stuff. Then, I evolved all the animals and you humans from the same single-celled organisms, though I formed you humans in my image..."
MOSES: "Evolved? Single-cell organwhatis?"
GOD: "Well, it was like I made jelly fishes turn into fishes, and the fishes turned into a lizards on the land, then I made little furry things like mice out of those lizards, those lizards became dinosaurs, later after going through many kinds of animals, I made humans from the same animals I made monkeys from."
MOSES: "Holy Shit! Monkeys? What the hell is a dinosaur?!"
GOD (the bush burning a little more furiously than usual): "Oh for heaven's sake, I'll let you guys figure out all that stuff later yourselves. Just write this down: I started with nothing. I made everything over a period of time, like seven days is a "period of time," and then I made a man called Adam, and from him I made a woman called Eve..."
MOSES: "Are atoms and Adam the same guy?"
GOD: "Oy."
A little later...
MOSES: "I always knew I didn't like snakes for a good reason."
GOD: "Um, yeah. And, here, take these few simple rules down to the folks. I'll be in touch."
So Moses goes down the mountain and finds everyone in the middle of a drunk, nekkid orgy around a golden statue of a cow (at least it wasn't a monkey), and flips out.
MOSES: "Holy cow! A golden calf? What, you've all gone Hindu on me, now? You! Put some clothes on. You! Put on some coffee! We've got a lot to cover. And leave that goat alone!" (Moses thinking to himself all the while that he's glad he didn't have to explain the stuff about the atoms and the monkeys.)
And then, in this day and age, a scientist gets all fussy when s/he doesn't find the equations for atomic states in the footnotes of Genesis, and declares the whole thing bullshit.
<Annie Lennox>Whyyyyyyyyy... </Annie Lennox>
On the way into work today, I listened to Annie Lennox's "Why". It's a very dramatic and sad song, but to me, like all good tragedy, it has some wonderful comic proportions, too. For instance, when I encounter something that's frustrating or stupid or confused, sometimes that song, particularly the long, drawn-out "why", plays in my head. Very loudly. For specific instance, every time I encounter a science vs. Christianity debate, I roll my eyes and sigh, and sometimes even sing along out loud with "Why" while it's playing in my head. I imagine the people adjacent to my cubicle make a mental note to never invite me to a karaoke party.
Look. Science and Christianity are simply different things. It's not even an apples and oranges comparison, it's more like apples and lightbulbs.
Science, and let's be precise here in that we are talking about "hard" science - physics, biology, etc. - and not "social science" - like anthropology or psychology; science is about observable, predictable facts and, because of that, is limited in its ability to describe much of the human condition outside of the mechanics of the human body, the effect of the physical environment upon the same, and descriptions and manipulations of physical properties. Science is about how the heart works, computers, electricity, gravity, chemistry, and stuff that blows up real good.
Christianity, and the text that documents the source and history of it (the Bible, for those of you in the cheap seats), is about humanity and its relationship to God, and our relationships to each other. Nothing about science.
Simply put:
Science = Explorations of physical reality.
Christianity = Relationship with God.
Pardon me, but I'm just not seeing the intersection there. To which someone might say, "Excuse me, but don't you consider God part of physical reality?" To which I'd answer, "No, He's outside of it." Therefore, He's unknowable save for perhaps the little He has told us about Himself.
Now, personally, I accept as reasonable the justification some folks proffer where just the fact that we exist, the wonderfully balanced laws of the universe, and the possibility that evolution can explain our occurring naturally is enough for them to believe we came to be by some phenomenal accident, which doesn't require God as part of the explanation or equation. To me, that's just as plausible a cause for their belief as is my accepting the New Testament as the literal truth and real history of Jesus is a plausible cause for my belief. That belief that natural accidents may explain away God is the one place where science vs. Christianity connect very tenuously. Still, I think that particular leap is based on only one implication among many possible ones, and it is quite a leap. Even a leap of faith.
Two people observing a marvelously complex and robust system can come to the opposite conclusions that 1) someone consciously designed and constructed that system and that 2) it just occurred all on its own by sheer happenstance, and having no proof of either the two will just have to accept each holds a possible valid conclusion.
Outside of dubious theological missteps and overreaching, such as denying the earth goes around the sun because we have to be at the center of God's creation because he just wuvs us SO MUCH!, Christianity just hasn't got all up in science's process. Well, unless you count the anomaly known as Creationism. Creationism is to science as stage magic is to real magic (if real magic existed, of course). Creationism's attempt to meld science and religion is as misguided and futile as strapping rocket jets to your roller-skates - see any Roadrunner cartoon or MTV's "Jackass" for proof, provided you're immature enough. By the way, believing that God created everything does not make you a Creationist. Glad we got that out of the way.
Nothing in the Bible makes any claims or statements on scientific knowledge or the advancement thereof. It is all about people and God. Now, everyone knows that it contains a couple creation stories (yes, it does have two), but these are either allegorical or vastly simplified in the same way an explanation to a three-year-old on where kittens come from is. The reason for this is apparent, at least to me. How do you really explain how you created everything when your audience has no previous experience with any of the concepts they'd need to begin to understand, and really your most immediate concern is to introduce yourself, tell them to quit cheating and killing each other, and demand that they stop fucking goats and stuff already. (If you want a book that starts at the dawn of time and realistically walks you through the continents forming, life populating the earth, and finally places you on the front steps of modern times, read a James Michener novel.)
The first five books of the Bible were by Moses or about Moses, and all of the things God conveyed to Moses, including the creation stories. Can you imagine how it might have gone if God had tried to explain the big bang, the basics of matter, and evolution (if evolution was the mechanism God used to form us) to Moses?
GOD: "Hi Moses. Take off your shoes; this is holy ground. Don't get too close. That robe looks pretty flammable. Get comfortable, this may take a while."
Moses complies.
GOD: "Well, in the beginning, I created a proto-singularity that contained the proto-matter from which I would construct all matter, such as atoms and molecules and the various forces to bind them all together."
MOSES (with a very puzzled expression): "Atoms? Proto...what?"
GOD: "Hmmm. Okaaay. Lessee. First there was nothing and then I created this huge explosion that threw matter everywhere."
MOSES: "Matter?"
GOD: "Um, 'stuff.' I made the earth, moon, the sun and the stars from that stuff. Then, I evolved all the animals and you humans from the same single-celled organisms, though I formed you humans in my image..."
MOSES: "Evolved? Single-cell organwhatis?"
GOD: "Well, it was like I made jelly fishes turn into fishes, and the fishes turned into a lizards on the land, then I made little furry things like mice out of those lizards, those lizards became dinosaurs, later after going through many kinds of animals, I made humans from the same animals I made monkeys from."
MOSES: "Holy Shit! Monkeys? What the hell is a dinosaur?!"
GOD (the bush burning a little more furiously than usual): "Oh for heaven's sake, I'll let you guys figure out all that stuff later yourselves. Just write this down: I started with nothing. I made everything over a period of time, like seven days is a "period of time," and then I made a man called Adam, and from him I made a woman called Eve..."
MOSES: "Are atoms and Adam the same guy?"
GOD: "Oy."
A little later...
MOSES: "I always knew I didn't like snakes for a good reason."
GOD: "Um, yeah. And, here, take these few simple rules down to the folks. I'll be in touch."
So Moses goes down the mountain and finds everyone in the middle of a drunk, nekkid orgy around a golden statue of a cow (at least it wasn't a monkey), and flips out.
MOSES: "Holy cow! A golden calf? What, you've all gone Hindu on me, now? You! Put some clothes on. You! Put on some coffee! We've got a lot to cover. And leave that goat alone!" (Moses thinking to himself all the while that he's glad he didn't have to explain the stuff about the atoms and the monkeys.)
And then, in this day and age, a scientist gets all fussy when s/he doesn't find the equations for atomic states in the footnotes of Genesis, and declares the whole thing bullshit.
<Annie Lennox>Whyyyyyyyyy... </Annie Lennox>
Wednesday, May 07, 2003
Invisible Sun
Wow. Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless bats one out of the park, the parking lot, the layers of the atmosphere and achieves lunar orbit. This is a great must-read for anybody with any interest in modern theological and non-theological debate.
In my years arguing with fundamentalist atheists (Steven calls them "proof atheists" and "evangelistic atheists"), I have attempted to explain why they were in the same ontological boat that I am as a Christian, and any claims of theirs (or mine) to being more correct, less delusional or irrational are wrong, because it comes down to the decision, the arrival at an opinion that may or may not be fact, that has been made by the individual given the available evidence. We are all/both stating belief which we believe to be fact, but neither of us can know if it is fact or not (yet).
Yes yes, there are many theists and atheists who arrived at their professed view because it was handed to them, they didn't think very hard about it, didn't really investigate, and sometimes chose what they did just for comfort, or need, or to piss somebody off. But then, many of us believe what we do because we have investigated extravagantly and thought about it for years, and have reached our decision without regard to any needs or promises of comfort. We theists and atheists who have given it a lot of thought and have done much investigation quite rightly take umbrage at the presumption of someone else who claims we haven't done our homework. And then calls us idiots, delusional, or what have you.
Well, Steven has done his homework, to say the least.
So did C.S. Lewis.
And so have I.
Now, can we just all get along and have a couple beers?
________________________________________________
Update: Additional thoughts from Steven.
Wow. Steven Den Beste of USS Clueless bats one out of the park, the parking lot, the layers of the atmosphere and achieves lunar orbit. This is a great must-read for anybody with any interest in modern theological and non-theological debate.
In my years arguing with fundamentalist atheists (Steven calls them "proof atheists" and "evangelistic atheists"), I have attempted to explain why they were in the same ontological boat that I am as a Christian, and any claims of theirs (or mine) to being more correct, less delusional or irrational are wrong, because it comes down to the decision, the arrival at an opinion that may or may not be fact, that has been made by the individual given the available evidence. We are all/both stating belief which we believe to be fact, but neither of us can know if it is fact or not (yet).
Yes yes, there are many theists and atheists who arrived at their professed view because it was handed to them, they didn't think very hard about it, didn't really investigate, and sometimes chose what they did just for comfort, or need, or to piss somebody off. But then, many of us believe what we do because we have investigated extravagantly and thought about it for years, and have reached our decision without regard to any needs or promises of comfort. We theists and atheists who have given it a lot of thought and have done much investigation quite rightly take umbrage at the presumption of someone else who claims we haven't done our homework. And then calls us idiots, delusional, or what have you.
Well, Steven has done his homework, to say the least.
So did C.S. Lewis.
And so have I.
Now, can we just all get along and have a couple beers?
________________________________________________
Update: Additional thoughts from Steven.
Friday, May 02, 2003
Symbiosis, or fractals on movies and music
The other night on one of those "Behind the Music" shows, to which I'm unapologetically addicted and will only turn away from when my wife mumbles a sour wish that I preferred sports (I'm missing the sports gene entirely - I can see why cats and dogs chase balls, but I have no idea why people do, or care to watch other people chase them), I discovered that Aerosmith wrote the lyrics to "Walk This Way" after they saw that Marty Feldman gag in Young Frankenstein. How cool is that?!
I get extreme jollies from that kind of stuff. As a kid, when other kids were sorting baseball cards or reading stats on some football team, I was devouring the The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, which included Pete Frame's marvelous rock family trees (the third page on this Amazon "Look Inside" sample shows one). The Rock Family Trees traced which members were in which bands for specific albums and tours, and were festooned with little rock trivia gems among the branches. Through these things some interesting details come out, such as the Eagles, Poco, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, and Linda Ronstadt were more or less one big band behind the scenes, as were Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.
I am the Cliff Claven of rock trivia.
So, the other day I was grooving along to the Flaming Lip's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (like someone said in the comments of another blog recently, it's like audio crack), and I wondered why "pink" robots? Well, in two great sci-fi movies, The Matrix and Bladerunner, the robots were pink, mostly. (And in The Matrix they weren't technically robots, but software bots, so let's not quibble.) (And I think they're always pink because robots equate to slaves, and having someone black in those roles would probably too close to the bone for many.) Thus, I concluded, those movies are probably the influence or source inspiration for Yoshimi. I listened closely to the lyrics after that revelation, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. (If you follow the link above, you can preview the entire album and the lyrics on their site. What do you think? Is Yoshimi the red-headed step-child of Bladerunner or what?)
That got all up in my process, so I wondered about other albums that were probably inspired by movies, other than the obvious Heartlight ("Turn on your heartlight!" -- {full body shudder}) by Neil Diamond, his ode to E.T The Extraterrestrial. Went pouring through my copious CD racks and nothing stood out at me. The only other one I thought of was White Zombie's "More Human than Human", which was probably also inspired by the plight of the androids in Bladerunner.
So, I went the other direction and tried to think of movies that had come from songs. That was easier. R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It" inspired Independence Day, and appears front and center in the movie.
David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona and songs inspired The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie. It has a scene where the aliens make love, and it looks like someone slipped some acid into the coffee one morning at the dairy processing plant and everyone became ballerinas in the holding tanks for a short, wasted while. That visual makes you glad they didn't provide one for the mating ritual Kevin Spacy character's Prot describes in K-PAX where the mating participants feel like they've been kicked in the balls and have fallen into a cesspool rotten with floating dead skunks, or something like that. Sounds like fun, eh?
Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone came from the song of the same name by the Police. What a great near miss of a sci-fi flick. It would have been great except for the fact that Stallone was in his "I get a cool car out of the deal" phase. I think for something like four of his movies in a row there was THE SCENE where Stallone meets, drives in on, or blows up a totally kewl car, dude. In Demolition Man, Stallone finds a cherried-out, freshly waxed rod in the underground habitrail of the good guys who are so poor they can't afford to bathe or buy Top Ramen. But the rest of the movie is a hoot. One of the best scenes has Stallone carrying an eight-year-old girl away from the smoking wreckage of a building, and a stupid reporter trails along beside him, asking this question: "How can you justify destroying a seven-million-dollar mini-mall to rescue a girl whose ransom was only $25,000?" To which the little girl responds, "Fuck you, lady!" I fall off the couch howling every time. (Oddly, it's not as funny when Diane Sawyer asks a question of the same caliber while interviewing the Dixie Chicks, for some reason.)
Finally, it hit me.
Superman. The all-time winner for cross-pollination. Comics. Movies. Novels. Songs. Frequent Seinfeld in-joke. Poems. Meme. Archetype. Center of many atheist philosophies. One of the five cornerstones of American culture that have become universal along with Star Trek, Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the books), and Gone with the Wind. You make a reference to any of these anywhere in the world and everyone will get it. I made a CD recently of rock/pop songs called / that are about / that mention Superman, and I was able to fill the entire 70 minutes. My fave is the recent "Superman" by Five for Fighting. Men weren't meant to ride with clouds between their knees, indeed.
Thank you for joining me in this little Cliff Claven geek-out fanboy moment.
The other night on one of those "Behind the Music" shows, to which I'm unapologetically addicted and will only turn away from when my wife mumbles a sour wish that I preferred sports (I'm missing the sports gene entirely - I can see why cats and dogs chase balls, but I have no idea why people do, or care to watch other people chase them), I discovered that Aerosmith wrote the lyrics to "Walk This Way" after they saw that Marty Feldman gag in Young Frankenstein. How cool is that?!
I get extreme jollies from that kind of stuff. As a kid, when other kids were sorting baseball cards or reading stats on some football team, I was devouring the The Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock, which included Pete Frame's marvelous rock family trees (the third page on this Amazon "Look Inside" sample shows one). The Rock Family Trees traced which members were in which bands for specific albums and tours, and were festooned with little rock trivia gems among the branches. Through these things some interesting details come out, such as the Eagles, Poco, Jackson Browne, Joe Walsh, and Linda Ronstadt were more or less one big band behind the scenes, as were Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers.
I am the Cliff Claven of rock trivia.
So, the other day I was grooving along to the Flaming Lip's Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots (like someone said in the comments of another blog recently, it's like audio crack), and I wondered why "pink" robots? Well, in two great sci-fi movies, The Matrix and Bladerunner, the robots were pink, mostly. (And in The Matrix they weren't technically robots, but software bots, so let's not quibble.) (And I think they're always pink because robots equate to slaves, and having someone black in those roles would probably too close to the bone for many.) Thus, I concluded, those movies are probably the influence or source inspiration for Yoshimi. I listened closely to the lyrics after that revelation, and I'm pretty sure I'm right. (If you follow the link above, you can preview the entire album and the lyrics on their site. What do you think? Is Yoshimi the red-headed step-child of Bladerunner or what?)
That got all up in my process, so I wondered about other albums that were probably inspired by movies, other than the obvious Heartlight ("Turn on your heartlight!" -- {full body shudder}) by Neil Diamond, his ode to E.T The Extraterrestrial. Went pouring through my copious CD racks and nothing stood out at me. The only other one I thought of was White Zombie's "More Human than Human", which was probably also inspired by the plight of the androids in Bladerunner.
TLD: "More Human than Human" is a great song, but I don't own that White Zombie album, because after I had a look at my brother-in-law's copy, I decided I didn't want to give my money to someone who would include a picture of a nun about to have sex with the devil in the cover art. Some folks claim it's just cartoon satanism, done for the shock value, don't get your undies in a bunch already. No. It just shows how utterly some people misunderstand the religious experience. Could anyone find humor or satire in that same graphic if the nun were replaced by a picture of their mother? I doubt it. MHTH is still a great song though. Steal it off the web somewhere. I recently noticed that you can hear either pudenda slapping together or the bed creaking during the sounds of ecstasy in the intro before that great guitar riff explodes, making it yet another song I can't play around the house anymore for fear of having to explain it to my young daughter who misses nothing. ;)
So, I went the other direction and tried to think of movies that had come from songs. That was easier. R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World as We Know It" inspired Independence Day, and appears front and center in the movie.
David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust persona and songs inspired The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring David Bowie. It has a scene where the aliens make love, and it looks like someone slipped some acid into the coffee one morning at the dairy processing plant and everyone became ballerinas in the holding tanks for a short, wasted while. That visual makes you glad they didn't provide one for the mating ritual Kevin Spacy character's Prot describes in K-PAX where the mating participants feel like they've been kicked in the balls and have fallen into a cesspool rotten with floating dead skunks, or something like that. Sounds like fun, eh?
Demolition Man with Sylvester Stallone came from the song of the same name by the Police. What a great near miss of a sci-fi flick. It would have been great except for the fact that Stallone was in his "I get a cool car out of the deal" phase. I think for something like four of his movies in a row there was THE SCENE where Stallone meets, drives in on, or blows up a totally kewl car, dude. In Demolition Man, Stallone finds a cherried-out, freshly waxed rod in the underground habitrail of the good guys who are so poor they can't afford to bathe or buy Top Ramen. But the rest of the movie is a hoot. One of the best scenes has Stallone carrying an eight-year-old girl away from the smoking wreckage of a building, and a stupid reporter trails along beside him, asking this question: "How can you justify destroying a seven-million-dollar mini-mall to rescue a girl whose ransom was only $25,000?" To which the little girl responds, "Fuck you, lady!" I fall off the couch howling every time. (Oddly, it's not as funny when Diane Sawyer asks a question of the same caliber while interviewing the Dixie Chicks, for some reason.)
Finally, it hit me.
Superman. The all-time winner for cross-pollination. Comics. Movies. Novels. Songs. Frequent Seinfeld in-joke. Poems. Meme. Archetype. Center of many atheist philosophies. One of the five cornerstones of American culture that have become universal along with Star Trek, Star Wars, The Wizard of Oz (the movie, not the books), and Gone with the Wind. You make a reference to any of these anywhere in the world and everyone will get it. I made a CD recently of rock/pop songs called / that are about / that mention Superman, and I was able to fill the entire 70 minutes. My fave is the recent "Superman" by Five for Fighting. Men weren't meant to ride with clouds between their knees, indeed.
Thank you for joining me in this little Cliff Claven geek-out fanboy moment.
Thursday, May 01, 2003
Mawwidge, that sacwed awangement...
So there's been some talk because some guy in Washington - I don't care to go hunt down his name, suffice to say he's some Republican wingnut (surprise!) - who said that homosexuality is bad, and then said that incest and bigamy and polygamy and other things that comprise basic plot points of nearly every MTV series or "The Sopranos" are bad, too.
Well, anymore, seems we don't agree on what is wheat and what is chaff. The reality is that people pretty much have to sort that out for themselves, and hope they don't catch anything or do anything that haunts them later in the wee hours when the demons come out to play. (One of the borders you pass over from early adulthood (read "still a kid") to real adulthood is you abandon "I'll try anything once" and embrace "Ok, I don't need to experience EVERYthing ... ick." I think for a lot of kids these days it will be when they either try a "threesome" or "experiment" with same-gender sex only to discover they prefer the opposite gender for that particular activity.)
But, besides the issue of making those choices for yourself in the privacy of your own life (though the current administration would have it otherwise, see below), there are the legal issues concerning what we as a society want to drag into the legal arena and what we don't. And, further, there are two sides to that: civil and religious.
Let's get the religious one out of the way, since it's more or less moot. If the laws of a religion say it's wrong, not accepted, don't do it, don't even ask, then the discussion is more or less over. Yes, the pomo weenies out there will complain that it's not fair and doesn't Jehova/God/Allah love everyone and if He does, how come He doesn't want Floyd to marry Bruce? (Not that you'll catch anyone who's gone down the intestinal tube of postmodernism believing in a deity.) Like it or not, things are a little more cut and dried regarding marriage issues within most religions, and that's just the way it is. Some would say that's harsh; others think there's a good reason behind it. You know how you stand on that issue. So there you have it.
The civil issue is much more complex. Essentially, we can do anything we want in the civil arena when it comes to making laws. We could legalize dying bunnies Easter-egg day-glo colors and renting them out to bestiality buffs. (Which reminds me of a sick, terrible old joke - vegans turn away now: Q: "Why do you wrap your hamster in duct tape?" A: "So it doesn't explode when you fuck it.").
There are no compelling legal or logical reasons why there should not be civil gay marriage. (Imagine stringing together that phrase about fifty years ago with the old meanings of those words; everyone would agree that marriages should be gay and civil, of course!) There's really nothing more to say than that. However, there may be societal reasons against it derived from historical experience (I'll get to that later). The same goes for polygamy (both kinds!: polyandry - a babe with lots of dudes or, polygyny - a dude with lots of babes), or hell, group marriage, inclusive of any number of mix-and-match genders and orientations, thereby extending the original definition of the military term "clusterfuck". Really, if we legalize gay marriage but not polygamy and/or group marriage, how do we justify that? If we are going to revisit what's allowed in a civil marriage, we should throw the doors open and get it all over with; or reject it as a society, stay with what we have now, and move on. You pick which side you're on; I don't care. Just don't require that I explain any of it to my little daughter (and the new one on the way) until she's old enough.
I can imagine divorce lawyers across the land spazzing out and flopping unconscious onto their desk blotters out of sheer glee overload if wide open marriage were to become legal.
Of course incest and cheating should still be illegal because people with tails, three eyes, retardation, or bullet holes in them tend to have extremely troublesome lives - not that Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice wouldn't have enormous friction on household chore assignments, much less deciding on a restaurant.
And I think it goes without saying that children should be protected from the world of adult sexuality, period. If you think sex with children is a debatable topic, I suggest you go fuck a hamster; see instructions above.
Now the fun part! We skate from the available alternatives to how we arrived where we are now, in relation to history.
(Note: for a lot of the rest of this post, I'm in "thinking out loud" mode, for what it's worth.)
For some reason, most societies have abandoned polygamy. Some cultures still practice polygamy, but let's examine the list: some Arabian sub-groups, some African tribes, and some Mormons. If I haven't caused an aneurysm in my pomo audience (assuming I have one) yet, I just might now. Are any of these cultures representative of how you would like to live? If so, grab a passport, get your ticket, get your inoculations, and rock on! However, the rest of us, as a society, have agreed that this tribe of spouses thing just doesn't fit with our current understanding of interpersonal needs, stable family dynamics, and what's best for bringing up well-adjusted children*. Why? Polygamy was about wealth and power and real estate and worker bees, not loving relationships, romance, kinky sex, or loving families where everyone was valued (our current most popular reason for marrying). Which situation do you think is a better formula for happiness? Power and real estate, or a loving family where you are unique and loved and are not just glorified help.
The Bible allowed polygamy, but it was primarily to allow the taking in of a widowed relative's wife so she wouldn't starve. And there were strict laws about taking extra wives for the hell of it (I chose my words carefully, there). You had to be wealthy enough to do it, and you had to respect the pecking order and honor of the wives. About the only person who really benefited from the arrangement was wife number one, who got to be the boss of the rest of the wives. However, as our societies and our views of personal rights and needs have progressed, not a single Judeo-Christian society has kept the tradition of polygamy because we've replaced it with a better view of our responsibility to one another and an individual's worth.
There has never been an example of gay marriage in all of the historical record of the world. Gay relationships and trysts abound, but a formalized, legal relationship have never existed as far as we know. Why? Well, (pause - deep breath - gotta break eggs to make omelets) homosexuality was primarily viewed as a sexual activity and not a civil rights issue or even a relationship classification. Romulus boffed Remus because, well, he thought he had a cute little hairy ass, not because he wanted to pick out a china pattern. With male homosexuality, there weren't power or wealth issues. Children don't result from gay sex, so that wasn't an issue, either. The issues were roughly the same with female homosexuality, though the power element was different, of course. It was thought to be about sex (even if love and attachment were involved) and not about the reasons people married in those societies, as marriage wasn't viewed as a required component of a romatic or sexual relationship.
I'm not saying that homosexuality being morphed into a civil rights issue in our age is a good thing or a bad thing; that just comes down to personal opinion, and I'm not really concerned with what yours is, nor should you be concerned with what mine is. In our age, with our different views on what marriage is, we are told by gay activists that "it's not just about sex". So, anymore, apparently it isn't.
Up to now in this windy oration, since two consenting adults are involved, the issue of gay marriage isn't really thorny, because we aren't dealing with the complexity that polygamy/group marriage can bring, and it's, in theory, about love. If it stayed that simple - two shiny happy people holding hands and skipping along humming "Just the Two of Us" - then I think the debate would be over. However, a larger issue is that marriage typically implies children. Since other people are involved, particularly non-consenting non-adults, it gets complex. This is, again, when we face questions on what kind of society do we want to have and/or create?
Do single parents make good parents? Typically, yes. Do gay parents make good parents? Typically, yes. Do ________ make good parents? As long as you're not filling in that blank with something that doesn't fit, like "pedophile" or "serial killer" or "a family of gorillas", then the answer is the same: typically, yes. However, what has proven to be the best situation within which to raise children? A mommy and a daddy. It's just a fact. That doesn't mean we should prevent single parenthood, gay parenthood, or what have you, but should we put things in place that will purposely cause less-than-optimum situations? That's not a question I can answer for you, and I'm not sure I've completely answered it for myself.
There is the issue that most gay people don't have children because of the obvious. If they have them, they either have the children from a previous heterosexual marriage, or they adopt (if it's allowed where they live). Of course lesbians can do the turkey-baster thing if they've got a pliant Birkenstock-wearing male who's willing to have a go with Rosie and, uh, hand over the result. Or, heck, they can just go fill out some paperwork at a sperm donor clinic and hit the stirrups. Either way, we are not talking about a huge demographic here, so the whole "impact on society" is moot, perhaps.
I think the final question, then, that we need to answer, is how will opening up marriage to be something other than, or in addition to, the contract and commitment between two heterosexual people, a man and a woman, affect society? The biggest question to be answered is how will it affect children's lives? Do we want those affects? Do we put the individual ahead of society or society ahead of the individual? Typically, those decisions have been made considering the two, with the individual's rights being the dominant factor. But here, we have an individual who can choose and one who can't. Yet we don't want to go down the road of involving the law in who can conceive kids and who can't.
Having talked out loud about it here (at length - sorry), it seems that, if we're going to be American about it, we are going to have to open marriage up to whoever wants to take the tax hit.
So, perhaps the thing we should agree upon beforehand is how we behave towards others who might be in a marriage arrangement (or not) that we personally don't agree with (presuming we disagree, that is). If I don't want to explain the situation with Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice next door to may child, allow me that parenting choice without any red-faced, spittle-flecked ranting about my being a close-minded bigot, and I'll grant you the same courtesy. If you don't want to present a heterosexual male/female couple as the norm for families to your kids, that's just fine with me. You even have enough children's books and a swath of PBS shows that will bolster your case to your kids. If my religion (or yours) says that gay people can't be married in the eyes of God, then accept that and don't mock my religion or expect me to disown it on that one basis alone (hint: it's about bigger issues than that). If you are going to have a group marriage orgy on your deck, at least put up some screens or something. See the theme here? In other words, let's be respectful and civil about each other's choices, even if we disagree, and agree to live and let live. Whattaya say? By the way, I know a great photographer if you need one.
TLD:When I started, I didn't mean for this post to balloon to standard Steven Den Beste length. Most humble apologies.
So there's been some talk because some guy in Washington - I don't care to go hunt down his name, suffice to say he's some Republican wingnut (surprise!) - who said that homosexuality is bad, and then said that incest and bigamy and polygamy and other things that comprise basic plot points of nearly every MTV series or "The Sopranos" are bad, too.
Well, anymore, seems we don't agree on what is wheat and what is chaff. The reality is that people pretty much have to sort that out for themselves, and hope they don't catch anything or do anything that haunts them later in the wee hours when the demons come out to play. (One of the borders you pass over from early adulthood (read "still a kid") to real adulthood is you abandon "I'll try anything once" and embrace "Ok, I don't need to experience EVERYthing ... ick." I think for a lot of kids these days it will be when they either try a "threesome" or "experiment" with same-gender sex only to discover they prefer the opposite gender for that particular activity.)
But, besides the issue of making those choices for yourself in the privacy of your own life (though the current administration would have it otherwise, see below), there are the legal issues concerning what we as a society want to drag into the legal arena and what we don't. And, further, there are two sides to that: civil and religious.
Let's get the religious one out of the way, since it's more or less moot. If the laws of a religion say it's wrong, not accepted, don't do it, don't even ask, then the discussion is more or less over. Yes, the pomo weenies out there will complain that it's not fair and doesn't Jehova/God/Allah love everyone and if He does, how come He doesn't want Floyd to marry Bruce? (Not that you'll catch anyone who's gone down the intestinal tube of postmodernism believing in a deity.) Like it or not, things are a little more cut and dried regarding marriage issues within most religions, and that's just the way it is. Some would say that's harsh; others think there's a good reason behind it. You know how you stand on that issue. So there you have it.
The civil issue is much more complex. Essentially, we can do anything we want in the civil arena when it comes to making laws. We could legalize dying bunnies Easter-egg day-glo colors and renting them out to bestiality buffs. (Which reminds me of a sick, terrible old joke - vegans turn away now: Q: "Why do you wrap your hamster in duct tape?" A: "So it doesn't explode when you fuck it.").
There are no compelling legal or logical reasons why there should not be civil gay marriage. (Imagine stringing together that phrase about fifty years ago with the old meanings of those words; everyone would agree that marriages should be gay and civil, of course!) There's really nothing more to say than that. However, there may be societal reasons against it derived from historical experience (I'll get to that later). The same goes for polygamy (both kinds!: polyandry - a babe with lots of dudes or, polygyny - a dude with lots of babes), or hell, group marriage, inclusive of any number of mix-and-match genders and orientations, thereby extending the original definition of the military term "clusterfuck". Really, if we legalize gay marriage but not polygamy and/or group marriage, how do we justify that? If we are going to revisit what's allowed in a civil marriage, we should throw the doors open and get it all over with; or reject it as a society, stay with what we have now, and move on. You pick which side you're on; I don't care. Just don't require that I explain any of it to my little daughter (and the new one on the way) until she's old enough.
I can imagine divorce lawyers across the land spazzing out and flopping unconscious onto their desk blotters out of sheer glee overload if wide open marriage were to become legal.
Of course incest and cheating should still be illegal because people with tails, three eyes, retardation, or bullet holes in them tend to have extremely troublesome lives - not that Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice wouldn't have enormous friction on household chore assignments, much less deciding on a restaurant.
And I think it goes without saying that children should be protected from the world of adult sexuality, period. If you think sex with children is a debatable topic, I suggest you go fuck a hamster; see instructions above.
Now the fun part! We skate from the available alternatives to how we arrived where we are now, in relation to history.
(Note: for a lot of the rest of this post, I'm in "thinking out loud" mode, for what it's worth.)
For some reason, most societies have abandoned polygamy. Some cultures still practice polygamy, but let's examine the list: some Arabian sub-groups, some African tribes, and some Mormons. If I haven't caused an aneurysm in my pomo audience (assuming I have one) yet, I just might now. Are any of these cultures representative of how you would like to live? If so, grab a passport, get your ticket, get your inoculations, and rock on! However, the rest of us, as a society, have agreed that this tribe of spouses thing just doesn't fit with our current understanding of interpersonal needs, stable family dynamics, and what's best for bringing up well-adjusted children*. Why? Polygamy was about wealth and power and real estate and worker bees, not loving relationships, romance, kinky sex, or loving families where everyone was valued (our current most popular reason for marrying). Which situation do you think is a better formula for happiness? Power and real estate, or a loving family where you are unique and loved and are not just glorified help.
*Yes yes yes, the polygamists say the kids turn out just fine, and we all know children are resilient and can thrive in a lot of whacked environments - just look at all the wingnuts who have children - but isn't our goal as a society to try for the best arrangements for everyone's mutual benefits? Your answer to that question is your answer to the question of polygamy.
The Bible allowed polygamy, but it was primarily to allow the taking in of a widowed relative's wife so she wouldn't starve. And there were strict laws about taking extra wives for the hell of it (I chose my words carefully, there). You had to be wealthy enough to do it, and you had to respect the pecking order and honor of the wives. About the only person who really benefited from the arrangement was wife number one, who got to be the boss of the rest of the wives. However, as our societies and our views of personal rights and needs have progressed, not a single Judeo-Christian society has kept the tradition of polygamy because we've replaced it with a better view of our responsibility to one another and an individual's worth.
TLD: An almost but not quite related issue is the concept of romantic love. I remember somewhere in one of my literature classes a prof said that the conception of romantic love was a relatively recent occurrence, beginning about the time of the troubadours. At the time, like most students, I just put that in my notes and let it pass, but now that I've got some experience on me, I realize that is utter horseshit. (There is a difference between horseshit and bullshit, but I've already taken enough of your time, here). The Song of Solomon in the Bible speaks, quite eloquently, of romantic love, and it predates the troubadours by centuries. Regardless of how authentic you feel the stories of the Bible are, there is no arguing about its age. Besides, the troubadours existed only in European society, and nearly every society on earth has myths and stories about romantic love. The Odyssey anyone? Further, one of the common things all human societies share is marriage. It exists or existed in every single society we know about. I think that implies a lot.
There has never been an example of gay marriage in all of the historical record of the world. Gay relationships and trysts abound, but a formalized, legal relationship have never existed as far as we know. Why? Well, (pause - deep breath - gotta break eggs to make omelets) homosexuality was primarily viewed as a sexual activity and not a civil rights issue or even a relationship classification. Romulus boffed Remus because, well, he thought he had a cute little hairy ass, not because he wanted to pick out a china pattern. With male homosexuality, there weren't power or wealth issues. Children don't result from gay sex, so that wasn't an issue, either. The issues were roughly the same with female homosexuality, though the power element was different, of course. It was thought to be about sex (even if love and attachment were involved) and not about the reasons people married in those societies, as marriage wasn't viewed as a required component of a romatic or sexual relationship.
I'm not saying that homosexuality being morphed into a civil rights issue in our age is a good thing or a bad thing; that just comes down to personal opinion, and I'm not really concerned with what yours is, nor should you be concerned with what mine is. In our age, with our different views on what marriage is, we are told by gay activists that "it's not just about sex". So, anymore, apparently it isn't.
Up to now in this windy oration, since two consenting adults are involved, the issue of gay marriage isn't really thorny, because we aren't dealing with the complexity that polygamy/group marriage can bring, and it's, in theory, about love. If it stayed that simple - two shiny happy people holding hands and skipping along humming "Just the Two of Us" - then I think the debate would be over. However, a larger issue is that marriage typically implies children. Since other people are involved, particularly non-consenting non-adults, it gets complex. This is, again, when we face questions on what kind of society do we want to have and/or create?
Do single parents make good parents? Typically, yes. Do gay parents make good parents? Typically, yes. Do ________ make good parents? As long as you're not filling in that blank with something that doesn't fit, like "pedophile" or "serial killer" or "a family of gorillas", then the answer is the same: typically, yes. However, what has proven to be the best situation within which to raise children? A mommy and a daddy. It's just a fact. That doesn't mean we should prevent single parenthood, gay parenthood, or what have you, but should we put things in place that will purposely cause less-than-optimum situations? That's not a question I can answer for you, and I'm not sure I've completely answered it for myself.
There is the issue that most gay people don't have children because of the obvious. If they have them, they either have the children from a previous heterosexual marriage, or they adopt (if it's allowed where they live). Of course lesbians can do the turkey-baster thing if they've got a pliant Birkenstock-wearing male who's willing to have a go with Rosie and, uh, hand over the result. Or, heck, they can just go fill out some paperwork at a sperm donor clinic and hit the stirrups. Either way, we are not talking about a huge demographic here, so the whole "impact on society" is moot, perhaps.
I think the final question, then, that we need to answer, is how will opening up marriage to be something other than, or in addition to, the contract and commitment between two heterosexual people, a man and a woman, affect society? The biggest question to be answered is how will it affect children's lives? Do we want those affects? Do we put the individual ahead of society or society ahead of the individual? Typically, those decisions have been made considering the two, with the individual's rights being the dominant factor. But here, we have an individual who can choose and one who can't. Yet we don't want to go down the road of involving the law in who can conceive kids and who can't.
Having talked out loud about it here (at length - sorry), it seems that, if we're going to be American about it, we are going to have to open marriage up to whoever wants to take the tax hit.
So, perhaps the thing we should agree upon beforehand is how we behave towards others who might be in a marriage arrangement (or not) that we personally don't agree with (presuming we disagree, that is). If I don't want to explain the situation with Bob & Ted & Carol & Alice next door to may child, allow me that parenting choice without any red-faced, spittle-flecked ranting about my being a close-minded bigot, and I'll grant you the same courtesy. If you don't want to present a heterosexual male/female couple as the norm for families to your kids, that's just fine with me. You even have enough children's books and a swath of PBS shows that will bolster your case to your kids. If my religion (or yours) says that gay people can't be married in the eyes of God, then accept that and don't mock my religion or expect me to disown it on that one basis alone (hint: it's about bigger issues than that). If you are going to have a group marriage orgy on your deck, at least put up some screens or something. See the theme here? In other words, let's be respectful and civil about each other's choices, even if we disagree, and agree to live and let live. Whattaya say? By the way, I know a great photographer if you need one.
The Poor Man weighed in on this topic, which got me to thinking about it, and he's much smarter than I, so go read his post and make sure you check out the comments. I'm not sure where some of the commenters were pointing their little red wagons, but maybe you will.
A Note on Punctuation
Grammar snobs may have noticed that I sometimes put my punctuation outside of my quote marks: "like this". Which is wrong wrong wrong. Strunk and White would red-pencil me within an inch of my sanity if they were alive.
But here's why I do that: I make my living writing technical documents. Nearly everything we put in a technical document is a variable or some thing that must be completely literal; it must contain no less and no more than what appears between the quotes. So, I've gotten into the habit of always putting the periods, commas, and semicolons outside of quotes. In typical non-technical writing, quotes are employed for much the same reason - the name of a song, scare quotes for being snotty in a flame war, and so on - with the sole exception of the words some one is saying, or actual quotes of dialogue. Since nearly everything except actual quotes (of what someone said) are like a technical term in form, and since the technical term entities in quotes typically do not have punctuation in their own forms by themselves - such as a title on the cover of a book - it's only logical that the punctuation not found in the term should lie outside the quotes. The only place I think punctuation inside quotes makes sense is when you are using punctuation within a quote (a representation of a statement or dialogue) itself. Yes, it's not proper current accepted style, but I think as computers take over, it will be. I'm on that freaking bleeding edge, baby!
That's also sorta the same reason I don't use the word "whom" properly. Languages are living evolving things, especially American English, and there are many dead words and grammar forms. "Whom", except in formal business communication, is at the intersection of dead words and abandoned grammar forms. It's going to be buried right next to "thee".
You heard it here first.
Grammar snobs may have noticed that I sometimes put my punctuation outside of my quote marks: "like this". Which is wrong wrong wrong. Strunk and White would red-pencil me within an inch of my sanity if they were alive.
But here's why I do that: I make my living writing technical documents. Nearly everything we put in a technical document is a variable or some thing that must be completely literal; it must contain no less and no more than what appears between the quotes. So, I've gotten into the habit of always putting the periods, commas, and semicolons outside of quotes. In typical non-technical writing, quotes are employed for much the same reason - the name of a song, scare quotes for being snotty in a flame war, and so on - with the sole exception of the words some one is saying, or actual quotes of dialogue. Since nearly everything except actual quotes (of what someone said) are like a technical term in form, and since the technical term entities in quotes typically do not have punctuation in their own forms by themselves - such as a title on the cover of a book - it's only logical that the punctuation not found in the term should lie outside the quotes. The only place I think punctuation inside quotes makes sense is when you are using punctuation within a quote (a representation of a statement or dialogue) itself. Yes, it's not proper current accepted style, but I think as computers take over, it will be. I'm on that freaking bleeding edge, baby!
That's also sorta the same reason I don't use the word "whom" properly. Languages are living evolving things, especially American English, and there are many dead words and grammar forms. "Whom", except in formal business communication, is at the intersection of dead words and abandoned grammar forms. It's going to be buried right next to "thee".
You heard it here first.
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Canary in a Coalmine
Warning: Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me post ahead. Surf away if you desire happiness and light.
To my friends and family I've been squawking a long time about our government's steady erosion of our civil rights, and our protections from entities more powerful than us. If you don't have civil rights, you have nothing, because nothing really belongs to you (such as your house, your privacy, your life). For example, if the government can take your house and money for suspicion of a crime, as they can with civil asset forfeiture - brought to us by the drug war but steadily expanded since - then at any given time you are vulnerable to anyone and everyone who has power over you or even merely dislikes you. Simply put, if the government can take all you own simply due to a rumor, then do you really have any civil rights or do you really own anything? Answer for those of you in the cheap seats: No.
The government, exploiting the terrorist attacks on our country by non-Americans, foisted the PATRIOT Act upon us, giving them further right to spy upon citizens, tap our phones if they simply feel like it, come into our houses without our knowledge or even a judge's consent, and they can even arrest and hold us secretly without due cause, bail, or a trial. Well over half of the Constitution is now completely irrelevant. (The only useful section of the PATRIOT Act was the new ability to tap all of a suspect's phones - mobile, landline, etc. That ONE part made sense, as long as the previous protections regarding the tapping of a citizen's phone were in place, which they're not anymore.)
Also, there have been other, smaller recent "privacy" acts. When I went to pick up a prescription recently, I had to sign a piece of paper showing that I had read and "consented to" the new privacy legislation which essentially allows any corporation, insurance agency (including about any private person who would claim to have some need for it), or the government to get all the information on which prescriptions I get. And, I had to specifically ask for a copy of the thing I was supposed to read and consent to; they expected me to sign without reading it. Not that it mattered. The simple math is that if I had not signed away my rights, I would have been unable to get my prescriptions. So, not only do I have to pee in a cup in front of a nurse (I had to do this once with a female nurse in the room to insure I wasn't cheating) to prove to my employer that I'm not doing anything illegal on my own time (and, of course, alerting their insurance carrier to any potential life-threatening - read "expensive" - diseases), I now have to let everyone who wants to know what I take to heal or deal with any diseases for infirmities. Is anyone else getting freaked about this shit besides me? (Was I the only one who saw "Gattica" as a realistic prediction of our future?)
Though it's not directly related to civil rights, part of the equation is the infamous "deregulation" of industry, especially media outlets. This, so far, has brought you soaring cable bills and the ruin of popular radio since media giants, like Clear Channel, now own most of the radio stations, and thus can control the content of radio across the nation. This is small potatoes against the gutting of environmental laws, and other regulations that keep companies from poisoning, firing, or otherwise killing you. Still, once we had laws which regulated media outlets because they were recognized as immensely powerful forces in influencing public opinion. In response to the realities of WWII and concerns about propaganda being fed to Americans, laws were passed that forbade Germany or Japan (and perhaps it was any foreign media company) to own radio stations or TV stations for fear they could be used for anti-American propaganda. This was a good idea. I think those laws are gone now. And, yet, who could have imagined the surrealistic situation in which we find ourselves where the Dixie Chicks say something bad about the President and are immediately banned from the airwaves because most of them are controlled by cronies of the President? Didn't any of these bozos have to take the history classes where we learned about McCarthyism and other abuses of/by the state that I did? (Even the freakin' spellchecker in Word knows the term "McCarthyism".) I've read blogs recently that say things like a media owner's suppression of opinions they don't like isn't "un-Democratic," it is simply their exercising their right to free speech by not allowing others to have it. Dear God!
The "Right to Work" act in Colorado, and a few other states - brought to you by "Big Business that Cares!" (Motto: "Fuck You! Have Some Cake!") - essentially strips away any and all claims one might have against an employer for unfair practices. The only law left in place on the side of the employee in Colorado is that you can sue to be paid for documented hours worked, and that's it. If you are fired or laid off in Colorado in a way that is illegal most other places, you are primarily introduced to the concept of "tough shit". Lawyers say they'll take your money if that's what you want, but don't expect a win. Example: My wife got laid-off this last December (the favorite month for layoffs as it allows accounting to adjust the year's books to make profits look better, and the side benefit of suicides cuts down on those requests for aid from the government), and as she was getting the "heave ho" notification, her replacements were being trained in not 5 feet from her. In most states, a lay-off means there's not enough work, so the company can get "relief" by letting folks go for no other reason than financial ones. Thus, training new workers to replace the old ones is illegal. But not in Colorado and other states with the "Right to Work" act on their books.
Now lest you think I'm some sort of commie pinko socialist, let me divest you of that notion. I think Capitalism works just fine, thank you. However, I do agree with most of the legislation that FDR and other intelligent leaders introduced after the country nearly went belly up for good after the Great Depression, a lot of which was caused by the very situation our Republican leaders are trying to restore. The average working guy/gal needs some protection against huge conglomerates that would prefer to be able to use us like Kleenex. There has to be balance. Allow layoffs, but then enforce the laws when a company is just trying to finagle the bottom line by sacrificing people's livelihoods. Keep the government out of our lives and keep their damned hands off our property, like the Constitution says.
Anyway, let's recap; so far we have:
- Civil Asset Forfeiture -- Allows the government to take any and all of your possessions and money via simple suspicion of illegal acts.
- PATRIOT Act (with sequel in the works) -- Destroys most of the Constitution, allowing you to be spied upon without proper controls, and then arrested and held secretly without legal recourse.
- Various "Privacy" Acts -- Meaning you have none. And pee in this cup while you're at it; you look like a Democrat.
- "Deregulation" of media -- Providing the environment where you can learn the latest opinion you must espouse to avoid running across any of the above list, unless someone feels like fucking with your life anyway.
- Right to Work -- 75 hours a week with no overtime, unless your employer needs to balance the books because they've run things badly or illegally, and your paycheck will come after the lawsuit and after you've lost your house and you can only rent a flat in Pottserville, and of course since your company owns Pottersville, your rent will be subtracted from the check.
And now, to top it all off, the current wingnut Republicans are continuing their gutting of America by trying to remove laws concerning overtime and by changing when a company can decide to pay you for work you've done. Short version, they want all overtime gone, they want to replace it with "comp time", and if you still want overtime pay rather than comp time, the company can decide to pay you up to a year or so later, all that time earning interest on your money they've held back from you. (See the Molly Ivins' article below for details on "Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act" (Senate version) and the "Family Time Flexibility Act" (House version).)
Is there an explanation for this other than it's just COMPLETELY FUCKING EVIL?
TLD: Notice how almost all legislation anymore is named the exact opposite of what the true intent of the laws are to be?
Note: I've included the whole article because www.creators.com doesn't provide permanent links to articles. Nonetheless: here's a link to Molly Ivins' current articles: http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv
Warning: Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me post ahead. Surf away if you desire happiness and light.
To my friends and family I've been squawking a long time about our government's steady erosion of our civil rights, and our protections from entities more powerful than us. If you don't have civil rights, you have nothing, because nothing really belongs to you (such as your house, your privacy, your life). For example, if the government can take your house and money for suspicion of a crime, as they can with civil asset forfeiture - brought to us by the drug war but steadily expanded since - then at any given time you are vulnerable to anyone and everyone who has power over you or even merely dislikes you. Simply put, if the government can take all you own simply due to a rumor, then do you really have any civil rights or do you really own anything? Answer for those of you in the cheap seats: No.
The government, exploiting the terrorist attacks on our country by non-Americans, foisted the PATRIOT Act upon us, giving them further right to spy upon citizens, tap our phones if they simply feel like it, come into our houses without our knowledge or even a judge's consent, and they can even arrest and hold us secretly without due cause, bail, or a trial. Well over half of the Constitution is now completely irrelevant. (The only useful section of the PATRIOT Act was the new ability to tap all of a suspect's phones - mobile, landline, etc. That ONE part made sense, as long as the previous protections regarding the tapping of a citizen's phone were in place, which they're not anymore.)
Also, there have been other, smaller recent "privacy" acts. When I went to pick up a prescription recently, I had to sign a piece of paper showing that I had read and "consented to" the new privacy legislation which essentially allows any corporation, insurance agency (including about any private person who would claim to have some need for it), or the government to get all the information on which prescriptions I get. And, I had to specifically ask for a copy of the thing I was supposed to read and consent to; they expected me to sign without reading it. Not that it mattered. The simple math is that if I had not signed away my rights, I would have been unable to get my prescriptions. So, not only do I have to pee in a cup in front of a nurse (I had to do this once with a female nurse in the room to insure I wasn't cheating) to prove to my employer that I'm not doing anything illegal on my own time (and, of course, alerting their insurance carrier to any potential life-threatening - read "expensive" - diseases), I now have to let everyone who wants to know what I take to heal or deal with any diseases for infirmities. Is anyone else getting freaked about this shit besides me? (Was I the only one who saw "Gattica" as a realistic prediction of our future?)
Though it's not directly related to civil rights, part of the equation is the infamous "deregulation" of industry, especially media outlets. This, so far, has brought you soaring cable bills and the ruin of popular radio since media giants, like Clear Channel, now own most of the radio stations, and thus can control the content of radio across the nation. This is small potatoes against the gutting of environmental laws, and other regulations that keep companies from poisoning, firing, or otherwise killing you. Still, once we had laws which regulated media outlets because they were recognized as immensely powerful forces in influencing public opinion. In response to the realities of WWII and concerns about propaganda being fed to Americans, laws were passed that forbade Germany or Japan (and perhaps it was any foreign media company) to own radio stations or TV stations for fear they could be used for anti-American propaganda. This was a good idea. I think those laws are gone now. And, yet, who could have imagined the surrealistic situation in which we find ourselves where the Dixie Chicks say something bad about the President and are immediately banned from the airwaves because most of them are controlled by cronies of the President? Didn't any of these bozos have to take the history classes where we learned about McCarthyism and other abuses of/by the state that I did? (Even the freakin' spellchecker in Word knows the term "McCarthyism".) I've read blogs recently that say things like a media owner's suppression of opinions they don't like isn't "un-Democratic," it is simply their exercising their right to free speech by not allowing others to have it. Dear God!
The "Right to Work" act in Colorado, and a few other states - brought to you by "Big Business that Cares!" (Motto: "Fuck You! Have Some Cake!") - essentially strips away any and all claims one might have against an employer for unfair practices. The only law left in place on the side of the employee in Colorado is that you can sue to be paid for documented hours worked, and that's it. If you are fired or laid off in Colorado in a way that is illegal most other places, you are primarily introduced to the concept of "tough shit". Lawyers say they'll take your money if that's what you want, but don't expect a win. Example: My wife got laid-off this last December (the favorite month for layoffs as it allows accounting to adjust the year's books to make profits look better, and the side benefit of suicides cuts down on those requests for aid from the government), and as she was getting the "heave ho" notification, her replacements were being trained in not 5 feet from her. In most states, a lay-off means there's not enough work, so the company can get "relief" by letting folks go for no other reason than financial ones. Thus, training new workers to replace the old ones is illegal. But not in Colorado and other states with the "Right to Work" act on their books.
Now lest you think I'm some sort of commie pinko socialist, let me divest you of that notion. I think Capitalism works just fine, thank you. However, I do agree with most of the legislation that FDR and other intelligent leaders introduced after the country nearly went belly up for good after the Great Depression, a lot of which was caused by the very situation our Republican leaders are trying to restore. The average working guy/gal needs some protection against huge conglomerates that would prefer to be able to use us like Kleenex. There has to be balance. Allow layoffs, but then enforce the laws when a company is just trying to finagle the bottom line by sacrificing people's livelihoods. Keep the government out of our lives and keep their damned hands off our property, like the Constitution says.
Anyway, let's recap; so far we have:
- Civil Asset Forfeiture -- Allows the government to take any and all of your possessions and money via simple suspicion of illegal acts.
- PATRIOT Act (with sequel in the works) -- Destroys most of the Constitution, allowing you to be spied upon without proper controls, and then arrested and held secretly without legal recourse.
- Various "Privacy" Acts -- Meaning you have none. And pee in this cup while you're at it; you look like a Democrat.
- "Deregulation" of media -- Providing the environment where you can learn the latest opinion you must espouse to avoid running across any of the above list, unless someone feels like fucking with your life anyway.
- Right to Work -- 75 hours a week with no overtime, unless your employer needs to balance the books because they've run things badly or illegally, and your paycheck will come after the lawsuit and after you've lost your house and you can only rent a flat in Pottserville, and of course since your company owns Pottersville, your rent will be subtracted from the check.
And now, to top it all off, the current wingnut Republicans are continuing their gutting of America by trying to remove laws concerning overtime and by changing when a company can decide to pay you for work you've done. Short version, they want all overtime gone, they want to replace it with "comp time", and if you still want overtime pay rather than comp time, the company can decide to pay you up to a year or so later, all that time earning interest on your money they've held back from you. (See the Molly Ivins' article below for details on "Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act" (Senate version) and the "Family Time Flexibility Act" (House version).)
Is there an explanation for this other than it's just COMPLETELY FUCKING EVIL?
TLD: Notice how almost all legislation anymore is named the exact opposite of what the true intent of the laws are to be?
Note: I've included the whole article because www.creators.com doesn't provide permanent links to articles. Nonetheless: here's a link to Molly Ivins' current articles: http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv
Molly Ivins
RELEASE: THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2003, AND THEREAFTER
AUSTIN, Texas -- Boy, there is no shortage of creatively terrible ideas from the Republican Party these days. Those folks are just full of notions about how to make people's lives worse -- one horrible idea after another bursting out like popcorn -- and all of them with these sickeningly cute names attached to them.
Consider the Family Time and Workplace Flexibility Act (Senate version) and the Family Time Flexibility Act (House version). The Bush administration is leading the charge with proposed new rules that will erode the 40-hour workweek and affect more than 80 million workers now protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act.
To hear the Republicans tell it, you'd think these were family-friendly bills, something like Clinton's Family Leave Act, designed to help you balance the difficult combined demands of work and family. With such a smarm of butter over their visages do the Republicans go on about the joys of "flexibility" and "freedom of choice" that you would have to read the bills for maybe 30 seconds before figuring out they're about repealing the 40-hour workweek and ending overtime.
As The American Prospect magazine notes, when Republicans talk about "flexibility," it means letting business do whatever it wants without standards, mandates or worker and consumer rights. Ever since FDR's New Deal, working overtime gets you time-and-a-half in money, which has the happy effect of holding the work week down to 40 hours -- or at least preventing it from ballooning grossly.
The proposed Bush rules, which the two Republican bills codify and expand, would:
-- Exclude previously protected workers who were entitled to overtime by reclassifying them as managers. Companies are already using this ploy where they can get away with it. Say you're frying burgers on the night shift at McDonald's, making overtime, and suddenly -- congratulations -- you're the assistant night manager, with no raise and no overtime.
-- Eliminate certain middle-income workers from overtime protections by adding an income limit, above which workers no longer qualify for overtime. You like that? You make too much to earn overtime.
-- Remove overtime protection from large numbers of workers in aerospace, defense, health care, high tech and other industries.
Pay attention, this one is coming right out of your paycheck.
Big Bidness is lobbying hard on these bills. If you work overtime to pay your bills, look out. The trick is, employers get to substitute comp time for overtime, and the employers get the right to decide when -- or even if -- a worker gets to take his or her comp time. The legislation provides no meaningful protection against employers requiring workers to take time off instead of cash and no protection against employers assigning overtime only to workers who agree to take time instead of cash. Everybody gets screwed on this one, except the bosses. Isn't it lovely?
The proposed rules changes and the Republican bills provide a strong financial incentive for employers to lengthen the workweek, on top of an already staggering load. By 1999, in one decade, the average work year had expanded by 184 hours, according to Kevin Phillips' book "Wealth and Democracy."
He writes, "The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the typical American works 350 hours more per year than the typical European, the equivalent of nine work weeks."
The bills give employers a new right to delay paying any wages for overtime work for as long as 13 months. According to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, under the new bills an employee who works overtime hours in a given week might not receive any pay or time off for that work until more than a year later, at the employer's discretion.
"Without receiving interest or security, the employees in essence lend their overtime pay to the employers in the hope of getting back some time later as paid time off," the report states. "Employees' overtime compensation is put at risk of loss in the event of business failure and closure, bankruptcy or fraud. Furthermore, employees get no guarantee of time off when they want or need it."
The EPI explains why Big Bidness loves these bills: "A company with 200,000 FLSA-covered employees might get 160 free hours at $7 an hour from each of them (160 hours is the maximum allowed under the bills). That's the equivalent of $224 million that the company wouldn't have to pay its workers for up to a year after the worker has earned it. Considering that, under normal circumstances, the employer might have to pay 6 percent interest for a commercial loan of this magnitude, it could save $13 million by relying on comp time to ‘borrow' from its employees instead."
The slick marketing and smoke on this one are a wonder to behold. We're being told that private sector workers will get the same "benefit" of comp time as public employees. Wow, keen, except the government has no profit motive for pushing comp time instead of overtime. Boy, does this stink.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2003 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC. Originally Published on Thursday April 24, 2003
Wednesday, April 16, 2003
Open Sez-me
James Lileks has a rumination (scroll down) on the cyclical geek reveille call for a new paradigm in computer interfaces. "We've got to come up with something better than the desktop" is the mantra. I agree with him that the desktop is just fine, thank you. Most other suggestions make you wonder if the presenter eats spaghetti with a spoon.
My only quibble is he wants for the day when we can talk to our computers, ala Star Trek. I think that would just be a mess. The formalized language you would have to use to address a computer would be harder to learn than using menus and buttons - and you'd sound like Spock with aphasia. Offices would sound like a Tourette's convention at echo canyon. No one could use the words "fuck" (men's most common choice) or "baby" (women's favorite) as a password because it would unlock half of the PCs in a 5-cubicle area. And since most operating systems get twitchy when you simply flip rapidly between windows, cutting, pasting and typing away, imagine what would happen if you were in the middle of dictating something, and the toddler approached the dog with a sharp stick and a lighter. "Sweetheart! What are you doing! Put that down! Owie! Where'd you get that?! Leave Muffin alone. Fire hurts! Stick hurts! Come back here! You're going to get a time out young lady! I'll paddle your behind! Watch out for the...oh DAMMIT! [large thunk and much loud crying in background] HONEY!" You'd come back to discover your computer had blown the hell up, reformatted the hard drive, or patchily transcribed the whole episode and emailed it to your boss. And forever afterward, your boss would be haunted by a mental picture of you dressed up in an all-leather hooded fetish suit, replete with zippers, suspended only from your nipple piercings while your spouse tortures you with hot wax and pointy things.
The sheer technical feat of teaching a computer when to listen to you, when to ignore you, and to be able to tell the difference between a command and content would be on the same scale as training cats to swim in formation. Theoretically it's possible, but is it likely it will ever happen? No, we're pretty much stuck with the keyboard for good.
TLD: This reminds me of a true story. I once managed a group of content editors for a text-searchable computer product (think of Google on CD). The workforce was mostly young men and women, fresh out of college or jail, because it was scut work, and most people moved on within a year to find something more meaningful to do, like bagging groceries or taking tickets at a movie theatre. Once, probably while in a boredom trance, one of the guys accidentally pasted a letter he was writing to a buddy into the middle of one of our regulatory documents. It was one of those mid-twenties crisis, is this all there is, I could stand to get laid more, we got sooo wasted last Saturday, kinds of epistles; we've all written and read them at one time or another. Cut to a couple months later, one of our sales folks was giving a demo, happened to get a search hit on one of words in this letter, and pulls it up to show the potential customer. There, in the middle of all this boring govt. regulatory text about blood clotting agents or something there is something like this: "I just don't know what to do with my life. I know! I want to dance!" I was the guy's boss at the time, so I had the onerous task of pointing out his error to him, admonishing him to be careful, and face the sheer mortification and embarrassment the guy went through. The look on his face conjured the image, to me, of an agoraphobic acrophobe standing at the open door of a skydiving plane, staring down the full 15,000 feet to the drop site, his pants and underwear flapping around his ankles, while that really hot girl he has a crush on is pointing at him (or "little him") and laughing. I tried to help us both get past it with a little levity, but I've never perfected crushing a beer can against my forehead, and to explain why I had my head bandaged for a couple weeks always lead to the earlier story. (OK, I made up the part about crushing the beer can; I think in reality I told him he could mail the CD to his buddy rather than the letter, and instruct him to search on "angst".) Anyway, he quit inside of a couple months, I think. Oh well. Sometimes you gotta cut ties, put out the thumb, and cross a state line to catch up again with your dignity.
James Lileks has a rumination (scroll down) on the cyclical geek reveille call for a new paradigm in computer interfaces. "We've got to come up with something better than the desktop" is the mantra. I agree with him that the desktop is just fine, thank you. Most other suggestions make you wonder if the presenter eats spaghetti with a spoon.
My only quibble is he wants for the day when we can talk to our computers, ala Star Trek. I think that would just be a mess. The formalized language you would have to use to address a computer would be harder to learn than using menus and buttons - and you'd sound like Spock with aphasia. Offices would sound like a Tourette's convention at echo canyon. No one could use the words "fuck" (men's most common choice) or "baby" (women's favorite) as a password because it would unlock half of the PCs in a 5-cubicle area. And since most operating systems get twitchy when you simply flip rapidly between windows, cutting, pasting and typing away, imagine what would happen if you were in the middle of dictating something, and the toddler approached the dog with a sharp stick and a lighter. "Sweetheart! What are you doing! Put that down! Owie! Where'd you get that?! Leave Muffin alone. Fire hurts! Stick hurts! Come back here! You're going to get a time out young lady! I'll paddle your behind! Watch out for the...oh DAMMIT! [large thunk and much loud crying in background] HONEY!" You'd come back to discover your computer had blown the hell up, reformatted the hard drive, or patchily transcribed the whole episode and emailed it to your boss. And forever afterward, your boss would be haunted by a mental picture of you dressed up in an all-leather hooded fetish suit, replete with zippers, suspended only from your nipple piercings while your spouse tortures you with hot wax and pointy things.
The sheer technical feat of teaching a computer when to listen to you, when to ignore you, and to be able to tell the difference between a command and content would be on the same scale as training cats to swim in formation. Theoretically it's possible, but is it likely it will ever happen? No, we're pretty much stuck with the keyboard for good.
TLD: This reminds me of a true story. I once managed a group of content editors for a text-searchable computer product (think of Google on CD). The workforce was mostly young men and women, fresh out of college or jail, because it was scut work, and most people moved on within a year to find something more meaningful to do, like bagging groceries or taking tickets at a movie theatre. Once, probably while in a boredom trance, one of the guys accidentally pasted a letter he was writing to a buddy into the middle of one of our regulatory documents. It was one of those mid-twenties crisis, is this all there is, I could stand to get laid more, we got sooo wasted last Saturday, kinds of epistles; we've all written and read them at one time or another. Cut to a couple months later, one of our sales folks was giving a demo, happened to get a search hit on one of words in this letter, and pulls it up to show the potential customer. There, in the middle of all this boring govt. regulatory text about blood clotting agents or something there is something like this: "I just don't know what to do with my life. I know! I want to dance!" I was the guy's boss at the time, so I had the onerous task of pointing out his error to him, admonishing him to be careful, and face the sheer mortification and embarrassment the guy went through. The look on his face conjured the image, to me, of an agoraphobic acrophobe standing at the open door of a skydiving plane, staring down the full 15,000 feet to the drop site, his pants and underwear flapping around his ankles, while that really hot girl he has a crush on is pointing at him (or "little him") and laughing. I tried to help us both get past it with a little levity, but I've never perfected crushing a beer can against my forehead, and to explain why I had my head bandaged for a couple weeks always lead to the earlier story. (OK, I made up the part about crushing the beer can; I think in reality I told him he could mail the CD to his buddy rather than the letter, and instruct him to search on "angst".) Anyway, he quit inside of a couple months, I think. Oh well. Sometimes you gotta cut ties, put out the thumb, and cross a state line to catch up again with your dignity.
"This house is clean"
Once in a while, I really enjoy starting with a clean hard drive filled with nothing but zeros, creating the perfect boot floppy, loading the OS, throwing on the apps, and then restoring the media thangs I like: pictures, docs, wallpaper, sounds, internet bookmarks, porn favorites. And then comes the configuring. Get it all just right. It's like a Zen thing, raking water-ripple circles onto the clean, white pebbles, placing larger stones where they think they should go. Or it's like spring cleaning, getting the stale air and dust out of the house. Trading blue screens for clean windows and blue sky. Pausing only for the upload of an occasional sip of beer and the obligatory download. Out with the old, in with the new. (And don't forget to clean up all the garbage files that Windows makes whilst forming itself.) Defrag. 'Tis a thing of beauty. 'Tis a thing of joy.
I've done it in Windows 3.0 through 98 (I refuse to move up to the new versions of Windows that allow Microsoft to check on your configuration and require you enter the registry key every time you fiddle with the devices. Microsoft will wise up about that someday, but only after Macs and/or Linux have thoroughly mopped up their ambivalent market share), hitting on NT along the way occasionally (NT is a total pain in the ass due to security and account management stuff - it's much like dating someone after they've had a messy breakup), reveling in the clean and pretty Macintosh experience, and finally lurching and tripping through Linux. (I did VAX/VMS way back when, but I finally tossed out those doorstop/childbooster manuals about 5 years ago when it was clear only crusty legacy systems and the military still use it). I've seen 'em all. They all hold special places in my memory. Some made me a better man, some were simply lessons on what to avoid in the future. To all the girls I've loved before.
The order in which you load the applications is key, because, much like the politics involved regarding how women run their households (see digression below), you have to load the applications starting with the least important and ending with the big dogs who will run the show, because applications, as they load, associate themselves to the file types they open, so the bosses come last. Determining this order is often as much fun as putting together the guest list for a huge barbeque and beer bash. You gotta get the charmers, the blowhards, the wallflowers and social butterflies balanced just right so the party rocks on until the last person drops or dawn arrives, whichever comes first.
TLD: Ever notice the tension between women who have to share a house or apartment with another woman? My wife and I are of the opinion the woman sets the rhythm and the tone of the household, determines what happens and when, decides where things are placed, so when you get two women in the same house for any length of time, let's say a mom-in-law visits for a week, there is invariably tension as they try to merge their calendars or, more likely, obliquely battle for dominance. Lesser mortals (for those of you in the cheap seats, that would be husbands and children) are wise to just stay the hell out of the way, not take sides, and when summoned for dispute management, respond in non-committal mumbles while furtively edging towards the nearest exit.
After everything's loaded, you have to go through and open each application, because most of them have some last-minute annoyance they spring on you, such as a registration key or some addlepated wizard that's supposed to help your grandma send email (she'll end up calling you for help, instead), and you don't want these things leaping into your path when you think of that perfect opening sentence for your next opus. Then comes the time to configure Word just the way it must be. I always need to add the thesaurus button (hey, Sting uses a rhyming dictionary, I'm gonna use the thes.), throw on buttons for hiding spelling and grammar errors, add the obligatory "paste special" button so I don't have to fight with whatever formatting some programmer thought was worth saving or not, and tell clippy to fuck off for good.
Finally, the moment has arrived for the final reboot wherein one revels in the speed, the lack of error messages, and the playing of the latest startup sound - I'm partial to the THX surround sound filling-rattler, myself. Then close it all down, because it's two A.M., and soon your wife will come hunting for you just to make sure you haven't choked on a pretzel or something.
Once in a while, I really enjoy starting with a clean hard drive filled with nothing but zeros, creating the perfect boot floppy, loading the OS, throwing on the apps, and then restoring the media thangs I like: pictures, docs, wallpaper, sounds, internet bookmarks, porn favorites. And then comes the configuring. Get it all just right. It's like a Zen thing, raking water-ripple circles onto the clean, white pebbles, placing larger stones where they think they should go. Or it's like spring cleaning, getting the stale air and dust out of the house. Trading blue screens for clean windows and blue sky. Pausing only for the upload of an occasional sip of beer and the obligatory download. Out with the old, in with the new. (And don't forget to clean up all the garbage files that Windows makes whilst forming itself.) Defrag. 'Tis a thing of beauty. 'Tis a thing of joy.
I've done it in Windows 3.0 through 98 (I refuse to move up to the new versions of Windows that allow Microsoft to check on your configuration and require you enter the registry key every time you fiddle with the devices. Microsoft will wise up about that someday, but only after Macs and/or Linux have thoroughly mopped up their ambivalent market share), hitting on NT along the way occasionally (NT is a total pain in the ass due to security and account management stuff - it's much like dating someone after they've had a messy breakup), reveling in the clean and pretty Macintosh experience, and finally lurching and tripping through Linux. (I did VAX/VMS way back when, but I finally tossed out those doorstop/childbooster manuals about 5 years ago when it was clear only crusty legacy systems and the military still use it). I've seen 'em all. They all hold special places in my memory. Some made me a better man, some were simply lessons on what to avoid in the future. To all the girls I've loved before.
The order in which you load the applications is key, because, much like the politics involved regarding how women run their households (see digression below), you have to load the applications starting with the least important and ending with the big dogs who will run the show, because applications, as they load, associate themselves to the file types they open, so the bosses come last. Determining this order is often as much fun as putting together the guest list for a huge barbeque and beer bash. You gotta get the charmers, the blowhards, the wallflowers and social butterflies balanced just right so the party rocks on until the last person drops or dawn arrives, whichever comes first.
TLD: Ever notice the tension between women who have to share a house or apartment with another woman? My wife and I are of the opinion the woman sets the rhythm and the tone of the household, determines what happens and when, decides where things are placed, so when you get two women in the same house for any length of time, let's say a mom-in-law visits for a week, there is invariably tension as they try to merge their calendars or, more likely, obliquely battle for dominance. Lesser mortals (for those of you in the cheap seats, that would be husbands and children) are wise to just stay the hell out of the way, not take sides, and when summoned for dispute management, respond in non-committal mumbles while furtively edging towards the nearest exit.
After everything's loaded, you have to go through and open each application, because most of them have some last-minute annoyance they spring on you, such as a registration key or some addlepated wizard that's supposed to help your grandma send email (she'll end up calling you for help, instead), and you don't want these things leaping into your path when you think of that perfect opening sentence for your next opus. Then comes the time to configure Word just the way it must be. I always need to add the thesaurus button (hey, Sting uses a rhyming dictionary, I'm gonna use the thes.), throw on buttons for hiding spelling and grammar errors, add the obligatory "paste special" button so I don't have to fight with whatever formatting some programmer thought was worth saving or not, and tell clippy to fuck off for good.
Finally, the moment has arrived for the final reboot wherein one revels in the speed, the lack of error messages, and the playing of the latest startup sound - I'm partial to the THX surround sound filling-rattler, myself. Then close it all down, because it's two A.M., and soon your wife will come hunting for you just to make sure you haven't choked on a pretzel or something.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
eefn'
It's funny how sometimes the attic door on my memory seems to have come open in the night and one of the toys falls out while I'm taking a shower or brushing my teeth.
This morning I woke up with an old Mac Davis song called "Poor Boy Boogie" stuck in my head. I haven't heard that thing since prior to puberty. It was on the album that had his big hit "Don't Get Hooked on Me" where he warned young conquests that he would use them like Kleenex.
Mac Davis had a variety show for a while - remember those? Sonny and Cher, Carol Burnette, and Bobby Goldsboro (of "Honey" fame: "See the tree, how big it's grown, but yet it hasn't been so long it...wasn't big" ... "And Honey, I miss you, 'cause you'd help me rhyme..."). My mom thought Mac was something else because he shook his hips in a particular way when he sang, so we had the album and watched his show every week. After the Mac Davis show was the time to hit mom with requests for candy or a new toy because she wasn't on her game for a good couple hours following his hip thing.
Once in a while Mac would introduce the audience to the wonders of "eefing" or "eefn'". This is a form of scat-singing/boom-beat box vocal percussion that sounds like someone has a ping pong ball lodged at their epiglottis and is tragically trapped in indecision about either swallowing it or horking it up, thus making gasping, squeaking, "eefing" sounds, all while rhythmically slapping their knee and chest with one hand. Another way of trying to visualize it is it's kinda like Bobby McFerrin having an epileptic fit in the middle of "Thinkin' About Your Body".
"Poor Boy Boogie" was the "Stairway to Heaven" of eefin' songs. "Poor Boy Boogie" went something like this (if I recall correctly):
Po' boy don't need 'lectronics to make no rock 'n' roll
Po' boy got boogie woogie bubblin' in his soul
Po' boy got rhythm
Po' boy got blues
Po' boy got boogie woogie right down in his shoes
(...this middle part of the song must've been stored in one of those brain cells I killed in college, but eventually Mac worked up to the "eefing" part of the song...)
Now do your thang on the jug and the jews harp!
I'm gonna blow this old harpoon!
Now give me something to eef with!
Now add some funky old guitar!
At this point in the song, Mac would eef for a while.
I think next time they are blasting disturbing noises and songs at someone in a hostage situation, trying to wear them down, they should pull out "Poor Boy Boogie". It would take a strong man or woman to withstand that sucker at a few hundred decibels over and over.
By the way, if you think this is all a figment of my imagination, here's another story about Mac Davis and his effin' prowess that I discovered while researching how to spell "eef".
TLD: In an example of sheer, full-blown synchronicity, Dooce's post for today is about songs that stick in your head. Ain't that something?
(FYI, I get my sound links from CD Universe because it's the only place I've found that offers samples of all the songs on a CD since Amazon engulfed CDnow (the other guys who let you hear it all) like a big web amoeba.)
It's funny how sometimes the attic door on my memory seems to have come open in the night and one of the toys falls out while I'm taking a shower or brushing my teeth.
This morning I woke up with an old Mac Davis song called "Poor Boy Boogie" stuck in my head. I haven't heard that thing since prior to puberty. It was on the album that had his big hit "Don't Get Hooked on Me" where he warned young conquests that he would use them like Kleenex.
Mac Davis had a variety show for a while - remember those? Sonny and Cher, Carol Burnette, and Bobby Goldsboro (of "Honey" fame: "See the tree, how big it's grown, but yet it hasn't been so long it...wasn't big" ... "And Honey, I miss you, 'cause you'd help me rhyme..."). My mom thought Mac was something else because he shook his hips in a particular way when he sang, so we had the album and watched his show every week. After the Mac Davis show was the time to hit mom with requests for candy or a new toy because she wasn't on her game for a good couple hours following his hip thing.
Once in a while Mac would introduce the audience to the wonders of "eefing" or "eefn'". This is a form of scat-singing/boom-beat box vocal percussion that sounds like someone has a ping pong ball lodged at their epiglottis and is tragically trapped in indecision about either swallowing it or horking it up, thus making gasping, squeaking, "eefing" sounds, all while rhythmically slapping their knee and chest with one hand. Another way of trying to visualize it is it's kinda like Bobby McFerrin having an epileptic fit in the middle of "Thinkin' About Your Body".
"Poor Boy Boogie" was the "Stairway to Heaven" of eefin' songs. "Poor Boy Boogie" went something like this (if I recall correctly):
Po' boy don't need 'lectronics to make no rock 'n' roll
Po' boy got boogie woogie bubblin' in his soul
Po' boy got rhythm
Po' boy got blues
Po' boy got boogie woogie right down in his shoes
(...this middle part of the song must've been stored in one of those brain cells I killed in college, but eventually Mac worked up to the "eefing" part of the song...)
Now do your thang on the jug and the jews harp!
I'm gonna blow this old harpoon!
Now give me something to eef with!
Now add some funky old guitar!
At this point in the song, Mac would eef for a while.
I think next time they are blasting disturbing noises and songs at someone in a hostage situation, trying to wear them down, they should pull out "Poor Boy Boogie". It would take a strong man or woman to withstand that sucker at a few hundred decibels over and over.
By the way, if you think this is all a figment of my imagination, here's another story about Mac Davis and his effin' prowess that I discovered while researching how to spell "eef".
TLD: In an example of sheer, full-blown synchronicity, Dooce's post for today is about songs that stick in your head. Ain't that something?
(FYI, I get my sound links from CD Universe because it's the only place I've found that offers samples of all the songs on a CD since Amazon engulfed CDnow (the other guys who let you hear it all) like a big web amoeba.)
Monday, April 07, 2003
Oy. Evangelism. Oy.
Does anybody but an evangelist enjoy evangelism?
I have always been resistant to any kind of evangelism, for probably the same reasons most people are. I don't like to be told I've got to embrace this GREAT NEW THING that's going to IMPROVE MY LIFE. I also loathe the ersatz empathy and "caring" that all evangelists employ, outside of fundamentalist atheist evangelists, of course; fundie atheists tend to enjoy shaming their prospective converts. Christian fundies tell ya you're going to hell if you don't accept what they offer, laced with all the fake concern they can muster without a permit, and atheist fundies tell ya you're stupid and always will be until you join their mission to save the world from itself and embrace the great nothingness. Hey, guys, I gave at the office. Can't'cha see my "No Soliciting" sign there? Heck, "Blind Date" is on and I'm missing it. G'way.
Nonetheless, there we were, my wife and I, at a recent ultrasound because my wife is pregnant with what we hope will be our second child. We've had a couple early-term miscarriages as many couples do, and so during the ultrasound, my wife was answering some questions about those - pretty standard procedure. Of course, my wife expressed sadness at our previous losses, and then, suddenly, there we were, in the middle of an evangelism moment. This one was unique in two ways: 1) it was our first "live" Buddhist evangelism event (we'd seen Richard "gerbil boy" Gere on TV, of course), 2) the ultrasound wasn't over, and at this early stage in the game, ultrasounds are vaginal, so my poor wife had a wand the size of a cheerleading baton planted in her privates. The woman sat there and expounded on how the ego attaches to things and the only way to happiness (outside of the obvious immediate but ignored concern of having the wand removed, evidently) was to not allow our ego to attach to things, such as sadness over the loss of a potential child. Picture the tableaux in your mind for full effect: wife in stirrups with intrusive wand being held by evangelist; evangelist in full conversion mode; wife and I striving to keep our faces as blank and pleasant as possible to facilitate fast escape. It made telemarketing and pornographic email spam seem benign.
One time some Christian evangelists came to my door because my wife and I had stupidly put our address on a pew card when we were looking for a new church after we'd moved. This old guy didn't say a word; he just put the card and a pen in my hand and turned away. That should've been a clue, I guess. Anyway, so I open the door to these two forlorn souls: a man and a woman who were agonizingly shy, blatantly single, and clearly so uncomfortable about having to go and "witness" together - most probably because that was the most time they'd ever spent alone in the presence of the opposite sex - that they were both on the verge of either passing out, or dropping and fucking on the hallway carpet just to get past the tension. I invited them in once they announced their intentions and clearly would not leave until I entertained them for a moment. They robotically started in on "Have you heard the Good News of the Lord" or some other evangelistic cliché, and I raised a hand to interrupt. A full 20 seconds later, as they ground down to a halt, I explained that I was already a Christian, so they could save themselves some time and energy. They stared at me for at least a full minute, both through glasses so thick their irises looked tiny Indian beads in a glass bowl, and then started up again, more or less where they'd halted, as if I'd pressed "pause" on a CD player. So I held up my hand again, repeated my information, then did a little nutshell summary of the Apostle's Creed just to let them know I meant business and wasn't a Unitarian or anything. This only made them start over from the beginning. So I just surfed with it, path of least resistance and all that. Well, unfortunately, my wife chose that moment to come home from work. So they started all over again, even though they were very near the end of their script. Believe it or not, they were shocked, SHOCKED! when we announced yet again as we lead them to the door that we were already Christians, so conversion wasn't an option.
Needless to say, we never darkened the door of that church again. And, we haven't filled in a pew card since. However, we have a few more ultrasound sessions. Maybe I'll take along a Quarter-Pounder with cheese the next time as a subtle message...
Does anybody but an evangelist enjoy evangelism?
I have always been resistant to any kind of evangelism, for probably the same reasons most people are. I don't like to be told I've got to embrace this GREAT NEW THING that's going to IMPROVE MY LIFE. I also loathe the ersatz empathy and "caring" that all evangelists employ, outside of fundamentalist atheist evangelists, of course; fundie atheists tend to enjoy shaming their prospective converts. Christian fundies tell ya you're going to hell if you don't accept what they offer, laced with all the fake concern they can muster without a permit, and atheist fundies tell ya you're stupid and always will be until you join their mission to save the world from itself and embrace the great nothingness. Hey, guys, I gave at the office. Can't'cha see my "No Soliciting" sign there? Heck, "Blind Date" is on and I'm missing it. G'way.
Nonetheless, there we were, my wife and I, at a recent ultrasound because my wife is pregnant with what we hope will be our second child. We've had a couple early-term miscarriages as many couples do, and so during the ultrasound, my wife was answering some questions about those - pretty standard procedure. Of course, my wife expressed sadness at our previous losses, and then, suddenly, there we were, in the middle of an evangelism moment. This one was unique in two ways: 1) it was our first "live" Buddhist evangelism event (we'd seen Richard "gerbil boy" Gere on TV, of course), 2) the ultrasound wasn't over, and at this early stage in the game, ultrasounds are vaginal, so my poor wife had a wand the size of a cheerleading baton planted in her privates. The woman sat there and expounded on how the ego attaches to things and the only way to happiness (outside of the obvious immediate but ignored concern of having the wand removed, evidently) was to not allow our ego to attach to things, such as sadness over the loss of a potential child. Picture the tableaux in your mind for full effect: wife in stirrups with intrusive wand being held by evangelist; evangelist in full conversion mode; wife and I striving to keep our faces as blank and pleasant as possible to facilitate fast escape. It made telemarketing and pornographic email spam seem benign.
One time some Christian evangelists came to my door because my wife and I had stupidly put our address on a pew card when we were looking for a new church after we'd moved. This old guy didn't say a word; he just put the card and a pen in my hand and turned away. That should've been a clue, I guess. Anyway, so I open the door to these two forlorn souls: a man and a woman who were agonizingly shy, blatantly single, and clearly so uncomfortable about having to go and "witness" together - most probably because that was the most time they'd ever spent alone in the presence of the opposite sex - that they were both on the verge of either passing out, or dropping and fucking on the hallway carpet just to get past the tension. I invited them in once they announced their intentions and clearly would not leave until I entertained them for a moment. They robotically started in on "Have you heard the Good News of the Lord" or some other evangelistic cliché, and I raised a hand to interrupt. A full 20 seconds later, as they ground down to a halt, I explained that I was already a Christian, so they could save themselves some time and energy. They stared at me for at least a full minute, both through glasses so thick their irises looked tiny Indian beads in a glass bowl, and then started up again, more or less where they'd halted, as if I'd pressed "pause" on a CD player. So I held up my hand again, repeated my information, then did a little nutshell summary of the Apostle's Creed just to let them know I meant business and wasn't a Unitarian or anything. This only made them start over from the beginning. So I just surfed with it, path of least resistance and all that. Well, unfortunately, my wife chose that moment to come home from work. So they started all over again, even though they were very near the end of their script. Believe it or not, they were shocked, SHOCKED! when we announced yet again as we lead them to the door that we were already Christians, so conversion wasn't an option.
Needless to say, we never darkened the door of that church again. And, we haven't filled in a pew card since. However, we have a few more ultrasound sessions. Maybe I'll take along a Quarter-Pounder with cheese the next time as a subtle message...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)