Small signs and omens

2011

2011-12-27T22:18:00.001-08:00

Interesting, the songs of 2011 celebrated the unique, the polymorphous perverse, interstellar/interracial relationships, unacceptable sexual practices, rise of the nerds, divorce, and the apocalytpic.

DJ Earworm, from the German 'ohrwurm', a song that sticks in your mind, made a coherent narrative out of this. But if you are like several people I know who 'don't listen to pop or the radio' you may be mystified. So herewith are the songs and videos chosen by DJ Earworm (who has been plying his craft for many years now).

DJ earworm

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2011/12/26/best_singles_2011_dj_earworm_gives_the_year_in_pop_in_5_minutes.html

Katy Perry "Firework" a song even Markus the avowed NPR listener shamefacedly admitted to liking, as that ;'boom boom boom song."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGJuMBdaqIw

Katy Perry ET with Kanye West, the song about which Io9 suggested she had spent 'way too much time thinking about sex with aliens.' Though why is she using the now four year old video of dead things used on True Blood?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Sd5c4o9UM

Britney channelled end of the world paranoia, and also some bravado about her place in music history, term 'loosely used'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzU9OrZlKb8

Enrique had one of the dirtiest, catchiest songs, a big one in Second Life, where the whole 'bleeping' concept fails utterly

sadly, the only one with a 'video' I can find is with the stupid "I'm lovin' you"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UecPqm2Dbes

Foster the People actually had Americans using the term earworm -- go LA! In fact this song embodies two trends for me -- I first heard it on Second Life, and it has a very LA "yeah we know this is the end of the world' cheery sensibility. Cheerful nihilism, kinda my brand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTZ7iX4vTQ

LMFAO is another band so LA it hurts - they get followed around by TMZ camera-men for kicks and invite them home. Do I even have to mention the post apocalyptic vibe? How can you be black and a ginger (nerd) at the same time? Welcome to SoCal.

Shit, they got that Jesus gardner dude to break dance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8&feature=artistob&playnext=1&list=TLuYH6nVQP064

Hmmm, Rihanna had a huge year, so did Pink, and Adele. Did I mention the blending of identities, sexualities, ethnicities, nationalities, musical categories? Rihanna does that better than anyone:

drugs and young love - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg00YEETFzg

S and M http://www.vevo.com/watch/rihanna/sm/USUV71002981 - pretty fucking amazng considering she went from being a star who was abused by her boyfriend to (IMHO, sorry little monsters) the biggest pop-star in the world.

Whatever this is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa14VNsdSYM

Nothing to say about this one, except I think I heard it 30 times crossing the Bay Bridge this past October...

Oh and Pitbull is from Miami, which might as well be LA ;-) Also, I like Neyo, there I said it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPo5wWmKEaI

Can I not discuss Bruno Mars? Thank you.

Back to Lady Gaga, this year she became a 'national treasure' like Liza Minelli or something:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wV1FrqwZyKw

I think that was the first time I ever watched/listened to that - um, theological statement, much?

Hey, look, pink wigs! Is one of those a dude? Likely. Also, sci fi. And private jets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JipHEz53sU

I don't think I knew this was a song

http://www.directlyrics.com/maroon-5--moves-like-jagger-music-video-news.html

I mean I heard it....Xtina is on that one.

Another theme, almost all of them are genuinely good dancers.

OMG this one defined ubiquitous

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjVNlG5cZyQ&ob=av3e

I mean, I get it, most musicians are not exactly normal, but by definition most people are, so why the love for the outcast, the misfit this year in particular?

Maybe because Katy Perry (socal again) made it adorbs?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlyXNRrsk4A

Was that Kenny G or was I hallucinating? Oops not hallucinating.

I think that does it...

Dawn of the Dead References Will Soon Grow Stale

2011-07-08T14:46:00.001-07:00

Yes, Virginia, retail real estate is deadsville. It is not just because of the econoclipse (my preferred term, since recession/depression have precise values, and we can all agree that while we might not meet them, things are baaaaaad) but because of the vast restructuring of the global economy, much of which is to do with technology.

I laughed to read Best Buy described as Big Blue Amazon Showroom, and I may have linked to it before, but it is so true. The best intentions to shop local in the world aside, I cannot justify spending an extra $40.00 at a lighting store when I can get the same exact thing on Amazon. So retail spaces that want to keep their local/brick-and-mortar presence alive need to do one of the following:

Offer an amazing customer experience. I mean 'happy ending' amazing.

Offer products you cannot find online. Aaaaannnnndd good luck with that.

Curate products such that the stories they tell enhance customer's personal narratives

Create a cradle to grave suite of services built AROUND the product/consumer relationship

Learn to adopt and deploy technologies rapidly that can squeeze the juicy information from what customers you do have. "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly..."

Or, on the opposite end, go so low tech that costs are minimal. Become flexible, pop-up, portable, flash-mobby, resilient.

Meanwhile, I think one of the commenters on Consumerist pointed out the death-spiral commercial landlords enter upon when they engage in a game of chicken with their tenants. Right now, there is nowhere to go but down.

Advertisers: This is how we watch today

2011-06-26T07:35:00.000-07:00

Ah summer, it used to be the season of a television drought. Then came counter-programming on USA like Burn Notice and Royal Pains (so beloved by Grant McCracken, hey there Grant!), or on SyFy like Warehouse 13. Thank you television gods, even if you have made the Fall new show season less of a festive holiday than it used to be (oh the memories of gathering around a flickering tube to watch premiere episodes of shows like 'Manimal' or 'Cop Rock' and gleefully predict their demise!)

But I digress.

Old habits die hard, and new technologies form a bridge. I have had a busy spring, and what with nine classes and a full Second Life, I have hardly had time to spend with my old friend. I miss you, television! But that is okay, since thanks to my DVR I can stockpile shows (Bones! Vampire Diaries! Supernatural!) for what will certainly be the dog days (and nights) of deep July and hot August, when all one is capable of doing is lying on the floor, panting.

And so, last week, I opened the valve on Supernatural. Doing laundry, other house-y projects, I greedily watched one episode, two, three at a time. In a row. And it occurred to me that advertisers are really not taking advantage of this change of behavior -- 'cause seriously, am I the only person who does this? No. Not only do I know of other people who do this, but wouldn't it be statistically unlikely for me to be a sole outlier here? What are the odds? Not to mention the fact that for the past 25 years or so I have been a reliable bell-weather for mainstream tastes. Merlot in the 1990s? You are welcome.

So, if I am watching several weeks worth of eps chained together, shouldn't advertisers almost be back to their roots with soap operas? Creating serial, narrative vehicles that promote their products in a sequence, offering some new tidbit on a weekly basis, rather than the same blah blah that I skipped through after the first three accidental viewings? Because I DO pause and I DO remember what I paused on (love that Ford Focus commercial by the way, I even called in my parkour obsessed son to watch it). It wouldn't hurt, as well, if you could go back to explaining what the ACTUAL benefits of your product were, but that is grist for another blog.

It doesn't even have to cost much more than exercising your brain to offer some minimally engaging intellectual tidbit, a game, a puzzle to solve, a mystery? Nothing elaborate, just something for me to hang my attention on for 30 seconds. As opposed to product placements, which, are almost always intrusive and laughable, even to grade schoolers. Though, again, Twizzlers took this quality and amped it up past the point of ridiculousness to almost genius.

Now if you would just do something about Christmastime, another season of television dearth and dreck.

Did I predict the uptick in repairs?

2011-06-22T12:35:00.001-07:00

From Consumerist:

"Now that the economic downturn has well set in and there's no booming recovery around the corner, it's a good moment to take stock of the little things that have changed. Ed, a dry cleaner in Brooklyn, says, "I'm seeing a lot more repairs, a lot more patches.""

Why lookee here, December 2008, I posted, "The New Frugality is Here to Stay." That was three years ago, and about a year and a half into the downturn. Why do people keep being surprised that things are not getting any better? There are huge structural deficits in terms of labor and employment, production and consumption, that fueled 25 years of growth (give or take). All if that, ALL OF IT, was illusory, and no one is doing anything to fix the things that caused it to go awry. We will be LUCKY at this point if it only takes 25 years to get back to something like 'normal.'

Lunchtime focus group: Kids and Chips

2011-06-16T09:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at the table I sat down with my ten year old son and quizzed him about his friends' chip eating habits. The conversation started because I had made a salad with chicken, corn, and crunched up some Nacho Cheese Doritos as a garnish:

"Did these come from the small bags?" he demanded.

"Yes, I noticed no one ever eats this flavor so I thought it was safe to use them up. By the way, what flavors do you think go the fastest? What flavors do people get into wrangles over?" I offered the suggestion that it might be the Barbeque flavored that disappear most quickly from the Lays flavor pack - see link for image.

He thought about it, "The blue Doritos...Cheetos....and Chili Cheese Fritos. Wait, no, not the blue Doritos...BBQ"

I offered that there might be more of the Doritos in general than of the other kind, but looking at the bag, I see that there are equal amounts of Doritos, BBQ and Cheetos. (I had thought maybe the bags were used to get rid of overage, I am not sure why it comes in a pack of 22, when 24 is more easily divisable. Or 28, if you wanted days of the week. Or a 32 pack would cover a month. Or 20 would be four work week lunches for one person/)

"Which one, if you had to pick one, do you think is the favorite among the most kids?"

He thought for a minute, "Cheetos. You know, there is a lot more advertising for Cheetos than there is for Fritos. I never see ANY advertising for Fritos."

He has a point, there used to be the Frito Bandito guy, but I am sure he was phased out as super offensive to Hispanics.

"You know, the company is called Frito-Lay, so that should suggest that Fritos are extremely important to them as part of their identity."

"Lays, Mom, they are called Lays."

"No, the company, not the chips, Frito-Lay. Makes you wonder why they are not pushing Fritos. Which have a long history, there is Frito Pie..."

I have noticed, Cheetos advertising success aside, that when kids FIRST begin to identify a preference, around 5 or so, they like the Lays BBQ. I am guessing it is the sweetness of the seasoning they are responding to. Cool Ranch IS definitely preferred by kids, over the Nacho Cheese, easily 2:1, holding steady after a quarter century (God I feel old now, those came out when I was 18). Poor Nacho Cheese....

People tether you in place

2011-04-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

in the most literal way possible. Other people determine where you can and will go, even virtually.

I have long been aware of the simultaneously alienating and liberating aspect of travel, wherein on any given trip there is a moment where no one knows where you are (and what you are up to). This moment is always brought home to me in a mundane fashion, usually doing something like walking through Schiphol airport, or stopping to get gas on the 5 before the Grapevine. I look around and think, "Now. Right now. No one knows where I am." The concept of Foursquare has very little appeal to me for this reason, like putting and electronic leash on one of the last wild moments possible in an increasingly domesticated life.

At the same time, the more one travels, the more circumscribed one's travels become -- this is something I have noticed since I first left Germany at 18, the implication would be that I would return. As I accumulated friends, lovers, a husband, and a child, the loop, the noose, between me and Germany has tightened like the leash on a falconer's wrist. How can I ever go to Europe without at least stopping in at my mother in law's? C'est impossible! I am also snapped back to the Bay Area, thanks to myriad friends, just the weight of having grown up there, will likely continue to drag me back, for the rest of my life, whether I will it or no. The death of both grandparents released me from my Tulsa loop, flinging me away from that circuit at top velocity. I cannot imagine what business will ever bring me back to a place where I once spent so much time...

And now, I notice, the same phenomenon occurring in Second Life. Despite the fact that the entire experience is virtual, and my body is located in California. Regardless of the ability to converse in IMs with as much immediacy and emotional content as one can 'face to face' (in fact, due to the fact that they are private sometimes much more) people congregate together in 'places' and one's presence or absence is an important aspect of the social process. This need for virtual attendance has meant that I am increasingly tethered to one or two sims, with short expeditions allowed for shopping or specific socializing.

Much the same way that, IRL, my residence comes freighted with work, friends, civic engagements, my child's needs, relationships with merchants, suppliers, banks, doctors....To contemplate a move thirty or fifty miles away is about as realistic as a move to the moon. This is not to say it cannot be done, but it would be a wrench. The library card is a filament, holding me down like Gulliver in Lilliput, with gossamer strength, each one a snap to break, but the cumulative weight pins me down. Same in SL, the relationship with one other person/avie may be easy enough to break, but soon one is as enmeshed in community as IRL.

Bitch

2011-03-17T08:37:00.001-07:00

In which I sleepily ponder the many meanings and uses of the word.

I have been talking about the concept of being a bitch with my two best friends on SL, Cat and Toni. It has always been striking to me that, like 'fuck' the word 'bitch' is protean in its uses, functions, and meanings. Maybe, in itself this is something to consider, since men do not have an equivalent word.

Women and men use 'bitch' quite differently as well, in fact I am starting to believe there is almost no overlap in the terms. This is likely due to the specific function it has in very different systems of social relations. When women use it, they may mean themselves, for it is quite common for a woman to label herself a 'bitch' and this label has a dual function -- it announces and recognizes positive qualities such as forthrightness and stubbornness, while simultaneously recognizing how little those qualities are typically valued in a woman. "I know, I'm a bitch, what can you do?" said with a shrug.

When a woman labels another woman a bitch, she usually is referring to that other woman's linguistic capacity. Someone is a bitch when they trounce you in a war of words, making a cutting remark that leaves you only armed with l'esprit d'escalier. This can be a recognition ranging from the humorous to the bitter: "You, bitch!" being the only rejoinder possible in a given situation.

When men label a woman a bitch however, it seems to refer to her not being mean, not being cutting, not even perhaps being an obstacle. A 'bitch' to a man is a woman who simply, for whatever reason, does not care about their feelings. Since men are socialized to believe that women care about emotions, and particularly their emotions, perhaps it is as shocking as a dousing of cold water to encounter a woman who does not, in fact, give a damn.

I do not mean that the woman in question is being problematic in any way, except for a refusal to invest emotionally in the exchange. "Not my problem," from a man, will be a lot less loaded than from a woman.

Discuss.

Shortage and Disruption Watch: Japan edition

2011-03-15T08:55:00.000-07:00

Chip prices rose 10-27% over the weekend....

I laughed

2011-03-14T08:55:00.001-07:00

From Grist's Interview with James Howard Kunstler:

"Q. In your forecast for 2011, posted on Jan. 3, you mentioned the "eerie absence of major disruptive events on the world stage" and noted that the Middle East, which you described as a "sorry-ass corner of the world, a neighborhood of camel-herders turned lottery-winners" has "the most potential for blowing up than any other region except Korea."

Now that the dung has duly hit the fan, what do you think the ripple effect will be?

A. The Middle East blew up very impressively a mere month after I predicted it. The situation gives every sign of spreading and getting worse. Despots ruling resource-rentier economies are falling like dominos. As I write, Mubarak in Egypt is gone, Gadhafi is under siege in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, Oman are in an uproar.

Egypt does not produce much oil but Libya does and production is shut down, including a substantial amount of the world's available export oil. Algeria is rumbling, too, and they are significant oil exporters. The price of crude has gone over $100, so it's entered the zone where it tends to crush economies in the OECD nations.

We have reason to fear that these uprisings will infect Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a physically ill 87-year-old king with an even sicker 86-year-old successor. Good luck with that."

We need a better word than 'tribe'

2011-02-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

"In Benghazi and other towns, according to accounts on social-networking websites, demonstrators chanted, "The people demand the removal of the regime!" — the same chants that rallied protesters in successful revolutions inTunisia and Egypt. But unlike those two north African nations, Libya is a tribal society. The army and security services are structured on tribal loyalties, making it less likely that the military will take the nonconfrontational approach of Egypt's professionally trained army.

Meanwhile, in Sana, the Yemeni capital, 11 members of parliament withdrew from President Saleh's ruling party, and several government officials in the city of Taizz resigned over the weekend in moves that may indicate a sea change in the nation's political unrest...The resignations come at a time when Saleh faces renewed opposition from within his own tribe, the powerful Hashid Confederation, and from the national political opposition coalition."

Band, Tribe, Chiefdom, State. Teaching Intro to Cultural, Elman Service's schema from the 1960s still has its utility for introducing students to the ways in which several cultural features travel together, even though (IMHO) it requires annotation and modification lest it lead them down too simplified a path. But out there in the real world? I think the term muddies the waters of political analysis when we are talking about modern societies and their conflicts.

Given that I am about as far from a Middle East/Islamic/Arabic expert as one can get and still have the balls to comment on the subject, I cannot say which anthropologists (I am sure there are some) have revisited the issue of kin-based corporate societies in places like Afghanistan or, as the LA Times says, Libya and Yemen. If they are out there, I would love to have you comment here about what word or short descriptor you might offer in place of tribe; or perhaps you think tribe is perfectly adequate! Please let me know....

At the heart of the ethnographic enterprise

2011-02-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

lies the job of answering questions like, "Why do people continue to order the same unhealthy foods even after being told that they are unhealthy?"

Similarly, I am working on a proposal for research that would look at laundering practices in California households for the California Air Resources Board. This is an area ripe for reduction in electricity and water usage, as well as a source of pollutants in the water table, and heat emissions. Preliminary work done by students in the Master's degree program for Regenerative Studies at Cal Poly Pomona's Lyle Center suggest that people do know HOW they could reduce their resource use, but that cultural models and beliefs trample these issues completely.

Of course, neither of these is a surprise to the anthropologist. One of the master strokes of social marketing campaigns, like the one that changed our smoking habits forever, is their harnessing of 'the social' to deliver immediate consequences for actions dubbed suddenly 'unacceptable.' It is one thing to have vague intimations of mortality or to reluctantly admit the long term economic consequences of continuing to smoke or overeat....but it is another thing when people begin to snub you. When you are seated in some out of the way spot. When ashtrays disappear, forcing you to ask for one (thus making a direct request, shudder) or to violate a norm by polluting some communal space.

The trouble with food is that it IS necessary for survival. The trouble with laundry is that it is semi-private, conducted within the household space. In one of the student papers, people had a litany of complaints against the laundromat, most of which had to do with the other people there, some of which were quite terrible (racist, ableist). I would not be surprised if the problem is really one of exposure to the social in such an arena. The vulnerability this creates causes intense discomfort.

Like eating inside the fast food joint. I love to walk my students through this scenario at the beginning of the semester:

"Alright, who has ever driven through a drive-thru." Most hands go up, some people still want to lie about this, amazingly, "Let's not start our relationship off on a bad foot by lying to each other," all the hands go up.

"Why do we use drive-thrus?" The answers trickle back, "Speed," "Convenience", "On the Go" and then an occasional, "Laziness."

"Ok, how many of you have spent a ridiculously long time in the drive-thru, say at In-N-Out?" Hands go up. "How many of you have sat in the drive-thru even though you knew it would take longer than going inside?" Hands go up. "So we can dispense with speed."

Bypassing the problems with drive thrus, not getting your order straight, yelling into the microphone, eating in your car seat...all of which undermine the conveinence aspects, "Ok, how many people, seriously, don't lie to me about this, have driven through, gotten your food, and then pulled over and parked in the parking lot and eaten there?" Sheepishly a bunch, if not all, hands go up. "So, what happened to being faster and on the go?"

What drives people is not the labels they attach to the reasons they do things. It is the underlying life of the social. People indulge in this behavior when they are alone. No one wants to walk inside McDonalds and dorkily carry a tray all by themselves to seat, in full view of a bunch of random strangers, bringing back bad memories of high school cafeterias. Especially not in contemporary society, where we are supposedly a cell phone call away from friends. What? You couldn't find someone to eat lunch with? Far better to turn our cars into private dining rooms, and hide our social shame behind a mask of convenience.

One other Second Life artist

2011-02-17T19:22:00.000-08:00

Fractal Artist Travis Williams

2011-02-17T19:00:00.001-08:00

a friend of mine from Second Life does these gorgeous images.

Boom!

2011-02-16T16:51:00.001-08:00

Bye Bye Freddie and Fanny

2011-02-12T10:28:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah!

On the heels of lawmakers showing some balls and rejecting the extension of the Patriot Act comes a level-headed agenda from the President on moving the country away from an unsustainable dream of homeownership for everyone. If you think about it, this focus on homeownership, coupled with the invention of the car, is pretty much responsible for everything wrong with America today.

We live in houses that are too large for our small families, filling them up with stuff, far away from services and amenities, so we drive instead of walk, getting fatter all the time. The stuff comes with built in waste by products, not to mention the environmental damage done by its production. And frankly, I think anyone who watches 'Hoarders' will agree that the stuff is mainly used to assuage the pain caused by attenuated and atrophied social ties.

Further, I am no economist, but isn't damage done to the value of a house when scarcity is NOT an issue? I mean, many people justified their home purchases as investments, but an asset has to make you money, and in the real world (as opposed to paper) the only way for a house to make you money is to rent it out for more than it costs you. If everyone owns a home, who pays rent? Not to mention that mortgage payments get funneled to a more select, amalgamated group of investors, whereas rental income oftentimes circulates within the same community as owner and tenant, keeping beneficial effects closer to home.

Mental furniture and the role of nostalgia

2011-02-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

Awhile back, I think on this blog, I made the observation that my long dead grandparents were still making brand purchase decisions for my household. I was reminded of that today in a roundabout way concerning the giant storm blanketing much of the country. My grandparents lived in Tulsa, OK since shortly after statehood, and if you click on the link above it takes you to an E-edition of the Tulsa World newspaper -- which for the first time in 106 years was unable to deliver a print edition due to the heaviest accumulation of snow in living memory.

For me, just the words "Tulsa World" immediately snap me back into my childhood, the taste of ultra-crisp bacon floods my mouth, and I can smell coffee and that bready smell that filled the kitchen because my grandmother always toasted her bread in the oven (funny how I never thought that was odd until just now) along with cake donuts. They had both grown up on farms, and remained rail thin their entire long lives, despite the enormous breakfasts that also included eggs, and sometimes biscuits and gravy, juice, and cereal.

In my memory, the kitchen is bright, as it always was, filled with the kind of light reflected from multiple gleaming surfaces, refracted and rebounding off the wooden floor, soaked up by the toile wallpaper, resting in the curtains pulled usually quite tightly against either the heat or the cold. It was almost always deep summer or high winter when I would visit, on vacation or Christmas holiday, so Tulsa for me was a place of extremes. My grandparents had, in the 66 years they lived in that house, created an enclosed system, a bio-dome of sorts, for their marriage.

For me, who grew up in the traditional late 20th century California landscape of fractured and badly put back together families, multiple moves, various religions, and caretakers who spoke different languages, this house would become my only touchstone of stability. Even today I can sink myself deep into my mind and recall the slightest detail, grooved over and over into my mind by the ritual polishing to totemic significance. I know that even with that level of engagement, I remember things that are somewhat hidden to me, partially because I might not have even know then names of them at the time. For example, I just now realized that Grandmother Handley had planted yellow gladiolus in the backyard, simply because I did not recognize them until acquiring the information long after they have likely been turfed up and disposed of.

Having a whole house of this detail in my head to escape to has made me aware of and interested in the concept of memory constructs or memory theaters, spaces in the mind created for the visual storage and access of more conceptual or abstract thought. One example is that, having read the entire works of Shakespeare and much of the Bible at their house during long, deadly summers spent lying on the terrazzo floor in front of an old fashioned fan, my knowledge of those is securely stored in the bookshelf of the den from where I had plucked those books. Unlike classical memory palaces, however, these associations are happenstance rather than a conscious production. This construct stores a lot of emotional information, formative information, like my sense of time, or fears vs safety.

There are moral aspects to living in this memory palace, because it is burnished with long use and freighted with nostalgia, there is an imperative sense to recreate it in the 'real world' and there I think my construct has begun to trip me up. I am not sure that the ontology of two people born over a hundred years ago is necessarily applicable to my present day, much as I might wish it was. It is one thing to allow them to pick my cookies for me, but I am not so sure they should be dictating how to live. Thoughts?

Enmeshment vs. Transcendence (and some Blade Runner)

2011-01-30T15:51:00.000-08:00

Or as may be more familiarly formulated by anthropologists, structure vs. agency, the age old question. Still, for an individual as the unit of analysis, I like the concept of enmeshment, since it seems to contain within it the circumstances of struggle. Structure seems too passive, too immobilizing, though it may be helpful at larger scales.

Using the word individual is misleading, not only because I am not sure such a thing exists, but also because questioning one's autonomy in terms of decision-making is the subject of today's musings. If I am a social construct, albeit a unique one, is it possible for me to transcend my programming, instilled within me over decades by the collective actions of myriad agents of culture? If it is possible, is it even wise to subvert one's own programming?

It seems to me that one must really solve, once and for all, this conundrum of how much personhood and autonomy one really has in order for much rational decision-making to take place. I am forcibly reminded of the troubles facing both replicants and alleged humans in Blade Runner, who has a claim to true personhood, and what does that claim rest upon? Is it the question of a natural and biological and accidental genesis as opposed to an origin that is artificial, inorganic, and intentional? If so, there are quite a few among us now who would fail to qualify as human on those bases.

If we are collectively programmed constructs in flesh, then can we have a personal morality? Or must it always remain a social morality. If social, then is any decision I might make foreseeable, inevitable? Can I even make 'wrong' decisions? Or, and this is an odd thought, can I only make 'wrong' decisions if my programming is somehow flawed, through the embodied nature of consciousness. Would that then mean that, flaws make me an individual, and thus, ultimately responsible for my decisions after all?

Why can we not live like elves?

2010-12-26T13:39:00.001-08:00

I linked to a Google Book above, Foods of the Gods, about eating in science fiction and fantasy, which has a chapter titled, "The Sacramental Feast' analyzing Tolkien's books and the foodways of various cultures within them, to Bakhtinian theory. Very well done, and worth a read on its own -- but today I want to muse about why I find the vision of Elvish life in Tolkien so compelling, and how it could possibly relate to how we live our own lives.

I have been reading and re-reading Tolkien since I picked up The Hobbit over 30 years ago and fell in love with the words, "In a hole in the ground lived a Hobbit." What I find odd is that, even at eleven, when I really should not have been susceptible to feelings of melancholic-nostalgia, what the Germans call sehnsucht, Tolkien's descriptions of Elves called it forth in a way that has never been muted by repetition. Such descriptions are almost too many to select among, and they start in The Hobbit, with the arrival of the 13 travellers at Rivendell:

"Clear voices rose and fell in the starlit air."

Later, Bilbo will say of the singing, "Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things."

So we begin to arrive at some themes that have potential real-world applications - outside living, self-generated entertainment, and an atmosphere lacking light pollution such that stars can light one's way in the absence of a moon.

Later in the book, Bilbo and the dwarves encounter the Mirkwood elves, creeping up on the feast they see:

"A clearing where some trees had been felled and the ground levelled. There were many people there; elvish-looking folk, all dressed in green and brown and sitting on sawn rings of the felled trees in a great circle. There was a fire in their midst and there were torches fastened to some of the trees round about; but most splendid sight of all: they were eating and drinking and laughing merrily. At the head of a long line of feasters sat a woodland king with a crown of leaves upon his golden hair ...The elvish folk were passing bowls from hand to hand and across the fires, and some were harping and many were singing. Their gleaming hair was twined with flowers; green and white gems glinted on their collars and their belts, and their faces and their songs were filled with mirth. Loud and clear and fair were those songs."

There is clear use and manipulation of the natural world here, the elves do not leave it untouched, and they are clearly interested in the 'good things' in life, including eating, drinking, jewelry, and status markers -- but they leaven it with usage of natural materials (flowers, leaves), blending themselves with the environment (clothes of green and brown) and while they may make clearings, they are not building or otherwise imposing objects, substituting artificial for natural. This can be seen further in the beginning of the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, when Frodo and Sam encounter Gildor and his companions, who are apparently just strolling around, enjoying the autumn air:

"At the south end of the greensward there was an opening. There the green floor ran on into the wood, and formed a wide space like a hall, roofed by the boughs of trees. Their great trunks ran like pillars down each side.In the middle there was a woodfire blazing, and upon the tree pillars torches with lights of gold and silver were burning steadily."

This space is clearly presented as one they had been intending to make for and use, not a happenstance occurrence of the natural world. No, the elves actively shape the natural world into giving them what they need, whether it be shelter, or fuel, and they certainly do not apologize, for instance to the Ents, for burning wood -- and the Ents seem to have no problem with it -- because they are natural resource managers, a cull rather than a wholesale slaughter. Forests and meadows have intricate biotic inter-relationships, and landscapes are the richer and more diverse for the inclusion of clearings, but again, they are taking what they need, rather than taking commonly held, 'free' wild resources to sell for a profit.

Ethnographically speaking, the elves' rich oral tradition, extreme good health, and hardiness in walking long distances before tiring, are all hallmarks of natural resource managers aka food foragers, to same the same for their high degree of mobility. When we encounter them it is mostly on the road, and while they have settlements, they are few, far apart, and sparsely settled. They seem to have a strong degree of control over their reproduction, maintaining a low population density. Descriptions of Lothlorien bear this out:

"High amid the branches of a towering tree that stood in the centre of all there gleamed a white flet. At the feet of the trees, and all about the green hillsides the grass was studded with small golden flowers shaped like stars...Beyond it was a deep fosse lost in soft shadow, but the grass upon its brink was green, as if it glowed still in memory of the sun that had gone. Upon the further side there rose to a great height a green wall encircling a green hill encircling a green hill thronged with mallorn- trees taller than any they had yet seen in all the land. Their height could not be guessed, but they stood up in the twilight like living towers. In their many-tiered branches and amid their ever-moving leaves countless lights were gleaming, green and gold and silver."

They have a city, but it does not over-run the pre-existing environment, but rather takes advantage of it, works within its restrictions, not against them. Their aesthetic as such, then becomes one of judiciously adorning the environment, adapting it, for their comfort and joy in beauty:

"[The lawn] was lit by silver lamps that swung from the boughs of trees, and it fell into a basin of silver, from which a white stream spilled."

The thing that is interesting is that words and concepts applied to the elves, like dignity, wisdom, grace of body, are all similar to ones used by Europeans in encountering indigenous peoples, many of whom had followed similar cultureways to elves, and whose cultures had thus persisted within their specific, local environments, for hundreds in not thousands of years (see for instance, aborigines, and the dreamtime).

One last thing of consequence, perhaps the origin of their sense of self-worth, while they have leaders, like Thranduil mentioned above, they are always primus inter pares, rather than absolute monarchs or dictators. No elf is ever shown to have their activities restricted or monitored by another elf, which is a liberty that comes when you know enough about the natural world to be able to take care of yourself regardless of the circumstances.

So why can we, why can I not manage to live like an elf? Why am I sitting indoors on a computer? Why am I not playing a lute under the stars somewhere? Well, in order to be able to do that, we would need to handle significant social problems. Like, crime, which would prevent ME from hanging out under the stars, which I could not see anyway thanks to smog and lights. How would any child grow up playing the lute when music and arts have been cut?

No wonder I felt nostalgia already for a world I would never know.

Prediction Alert: Household Size

2010-12-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

Back in June of 2008, I predicted that the poor economy would radically transform the composition of households -- that the building of McMansion's might even make sense if you stuck 6,7,8 people in them. Now, comes an article in the LA Times highlighting this trend:

"Morning begins in the Grisso household with the coffee maker grinding beans at 6:07, churning with the same grating sound as a fork spinning in a sink disposal.
The eight occupants of the house stir. Two grandparents float into the kitchen and head to work, taking the whole pot of coffee with them for their hourlong commute. Upstairs, a teenage girl hits the snooze button, annoying her uncle in the next room over, who doesn't want to hear the alarm buzz again after another all-nighter playing video games. Dogs run in and out of a crude doggie door in the wall.
By 8 a.m., the house is quiet again, and Philip Routh, 31, pads down to the kitchen to start breakfast for his 2-year-old daughter, Aubrey, who trails behind him in pink pajamas, chattering about dog tails.

How long before people stop thinking of this as a temporary state of affairs?

When do people get over the idea that there is an 'optimum' or 'proper' number of people per household?

My guess is that, economically, and emotionally, this family is functioning better in this configuration than

it would with everyone split across several individual, isolated socials and spatial units.

Homelessness, Abortion, Global Climate Change and other bugaboos

2010-12-21T10:33:00.000-08:00

I think one thing that conservatives consistently get wrong is the idea that liberal ideas cost money. In many cases, the long-term return on investment will more than pay for initial outlay. The problem is, THEY are thinking with their emotions, not their brains. They do not want to help the homeless, because they FEEL that the homeless should help themselves, and they are willing to stick to this idea long after empirical evidence suggests that there is a lower cost/higher benefit to society.

Abortion would be another prime example of this -- look at the theory that crime rates dropped because people aborted away those most likely to have been born into circumstances that would lead them to develop criminal tendencies (and even if you want to go down a genetic road with this one, well, there you are, explain away that one, you cannot square the circle using conservative logic).

How can husbanding the environment be a bad decision? Oh, well, if you make your money essentially taking things that are free, like water and air, and using/polluting them in your manufacturing process, or running your cattle on public lands, again for free, and then profiting from all of this -- sure, that is a sound rational and economic decision....for you. But not for the long run, not for society.

Of course, on this one they are boxed into a corner screaming "La La La" as the sixth extinction comes bearing down on them like a freight train. Winter-time, chock-full of articles saying, "Look, snow, there is no such thing as Global Warming." Thanks Anecdotal Evidence Man.* Trouble here is with the branding. Scientists have been calling it Global Climate Change since 1975, but the straw-man argument of Global Warming, "Ooh, what is wrong with beachfront property in Kansas?" is so much more fun to refute.

Not that it matters, since the yahoos do not understand the concept of AVERAGES as in an AVERAGE rise in temperature across the globe of 4 degrees does not mean it will be uniform. Gah! The AVERAGE grade in my classes will always be a C, but some classes have bimodal distribution, with a lot of As and Bs and a lot of Ds and Fs. Average them together and what do you get? So if my AVERAGE grade went up to a B you might accuse me of grade inflation, or if my AVERAGE grade went to a D you might think I was a little nutso/harsh. So by extension, an AVERAGE rise in temperature of even a little bit on a global scale is a big deal.

These are systemic changes as well, and they are linked. Let us go back to my grades. In a class with bi-modal distribution, the more As and Bs that accumulate, the harder the struggle is for the Ds and Fs. They are not uplifted by the moral rectitude of their fellow students, there IS no moral component. There is only math. And the math means that, in a world where the highest grade sets the bar (my curve) the more certain people excel, the harder it is for others to catch up (and yes, it is their own fault). The two ends of the system impact one another.

So too will a global weather system, it is a push-pull dynamic. They are not isolated and discrete events. Why can people not understand that, have they never flown in a goddamn airplane? Is there some sort of red laser marking off the air space between the United States and Mexico? Or out over the Pacific? Did I just never notice how weather sticks to its own side of the planet?

* When in fact, snow IS disappearing.

I have to admit,

2010-12-11T09:19:00.001-08:00

that I am really not all that peeved with President Obama for any one particular decision or outcome, in most cases I can see the political calculus as well as anyone. So really, my anger comes down to this: I want him to fight, because I want him to fight.

What does this mean? It means that I am wrong. President Obama is actually trying to be every American's president, as he should be. The lefter side of things may have elected him, but unlike Bush, he isn't ignoring or punishing those who did not vote for him. I can only imagine the amount of sand it must require to hold on to your integrity under the circumstances offered to him by the Republicans. He's like a Quaker kid having his lunch money taken repeatedly by bullies, who taunt him for not trying to fight back, meanwhile, his best friend stands next to him in anguish, not understanding that he is living up to his principles in that moment.

Hey, a lot of liberals idealize Gandhi, do you think nonviolent resistance was popular among his crew? "So Gandhi, when they come in with, you know, the billy clubs and the dogs and the whatnot, whater we gonna do? Whadaya mean, "Nothing?!" He is going to be every American's president whether they want him or not, that is a supremely ADULT position to take in this country that every day descends further into spasms of infantile instant gratification.

Maybe, we just aren't very nice

2010-12-11T09:18:00.001-08:00

The reporter in the amusing article linked to above thinks US diplomats are banal platitude spewing idiots, until the Wikileaks reveals their true mastery of their world.

"I long ago concluded that the Americans -- the product of a Foreign Service selection process that encourages dutiful ladder-climbers rather than creative thinkers and then sends them out to be walled up in overprotected embassy compounds far from town -- were just not as sharp as their wilier continental counterparts."

Hey, yeah, we send total morons to manage our empire, 'cause that always works out so well. Maybe you should go ask their counterparts what they think was going on:

"I've found it far more useful to set up meetings with the Europeans -- Germans, French, or Swiss, especially. Those are the diplomats who will give you the real dirt: juicy details about corruption and political infighting and what nefarious schemes the Russians or Chinese (or Americans) are up to in the country."

Because their opinion of the staffers at embassies and consulates will probably be shockingly dire, sinister and cynical. I was warned once by a Lithuanian who had been involved in high level politics, "If you ever get in trouble do NOT expect your country to bail you out." This of course, is a paraphrase of a long, drawn out, alcohol-fueled tirade delivered with great seriousness.

But this article, to me, just is further evidence that we have bought our own press hook line and sinker. Do you REALLY think we have been in charge of the planet for the past 60 odd years, and were EVER golly-gee-whillikers-aw-shucks kind of people?

Headline for ya, "Americans, we be assholes." Seriously. People are shocked at the TSA, shocked at our civil liberties being violated and taken away, shocked at the rampant deal-making in Congress that only seems to benefit the kinds of people who give their business partners drugs and access to kiddie whores.

They should be shocked it took this long.

If you get over the national koolaid that Walt Disney manufactured for all of us, you may remember HOW exactly this country came about, on the backs of Native Americans, black slaves, women who could not vote, the poor. Just today, there are headline articles discussing Nixon's quaint views on "Jews, Blacks, Italian-Americans, and Irish-Americans" among others. Referring back to my last post, who exactly did this guy think he was the President of? Hmmm?

Now, no one ever accused Nixon of being a nice guy, however he is getting a posthumous reputation for having actually gotten some shit accomplished. Nice guy = nothing accomplished; asshole = shit done. With that as the equation, why on earth would anyone think we were anything other than a pit of vipers? A viper looks hella attractive to another viper.

Virtual third places

2010-12-03T11:41:00.000-08:00

I am practically working a second shift in Second Life these days, as a barmaid in a tavern on Mystara. The thing that struck me was, despite the goal being to role-play, many of the folks seem to just enjoy hanging out by the fire, drink in hand, chatting. That got me to thinking about Third Places, and whether or not this would qualify as one despite being disembodied.

Color me unsurprised, then, to find this had already been mined as a topic, with some really neat papers to be found by Googling, "Virtual Third Places". Rather than discourse further on the topic, consider this a brief bibliography for your own explorations thereof:

"Virtual Third Places: A Case Study of Sociability in Massively MultiPlayer Games"

"Some May Stay and Some May Go: Sociality and Membership Turnover in Virtual Third Place"

"Computer-mediated communication as a virtual third place: building Oldenburg’s great good places on the world wide web"

"Where everybody knows your (screen) name: online games as third places."

Cinema or Second Life?

2010-12-03T07:50:00.000-08:00

In this review of the new movie, "Black Swan" directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman, we get a detailed autopsy of the filmmaker's process and influences. Many are related to classic cinema, like "The Red Shoes" and "Black Narcissus" but then along comes a reference that just screams video games to me (my familiarity is SL, but I have watched my son and others playing Half Life and Left for Dead:

"The influence of the Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne can be seen in the close, tag-along shots of Nina’s head as she hurries off, a point of view that brings you within breathing, at times panting, distance of a character whose behavior can be off-putting."

I can't think of a better description for the experience of inhabiting an avatar, can you?

I'm gonna party like its two zero zero five

2010-11-25T12:14:00.000-08:00

"Deffeyes, 78, has worked in and around the oil industry for more than half a century, and he has a strong track record. In his 2001 book "Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage," he predicted that oil production would top out during the middle of the first decade of this century. It was only a prognostication then, but as he notes in his new book, "Currently, the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows 2005 as the peak year" for global oil production."

Don't really have anything to add to this...