The Ex President

I Have Moved!

2011-02-06T11:09:00.005-05:00

This blog lives here now.

Update your reader!!!

Thanks, dudes.

Why Animal Rights? My Talk At Urban Academy

2010-09-28T16:22:00.005-04:00

Urban Academy is a small high school in New York with a unique teaching philosophy that foregrounds critical thinking and does away with standardized tests. Earlier this month, they invited me to come and speak to the school about animal rights and brought in an animal researcher to give the opposite point of view. Then we played "hard-hitting questions." It was all kind of intense and awesome. This is the talk I gave:

My name is Jack Shepherd, and up until recently, I worked as the chief blogger for an animal rights group called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (or PETA). While I was at PETA, I helped to create various campaigns that were designed to encourage people to think in a different way about animals, their rights, and our own responsibilities towards them.

One example of the campaigns that I worked on for PETA was a website that encouraged people to stop calling fish fish and start calling them Sea Kittens, with the idea that nobody would ever want to be cruel to a Sea Kitten. As incredibly stupid as this idea was, it got picked up by a lot of major TV networks and talk shows, which meant that we had a week or so when the entire news media was having a discussion about the ethics of eating animals, which was a big victory for us.

Now the actual issue that we were trying to get people to think about with Sea Kittens and other similar campaigns is kind of a complicated one, so I'll stop here and go over a few of the finer points. The first and most important question I want to ask is about rights. What are rights, and how would it be possible for an animal to have them? I would imagine that most of us here are agreed about some basic human rights that we enjoy in this country - that we have a right to speak freely about issues that are important to us; that we have a right to practice a religion, or no religion; that we have a right to vote for those people we want to represent us in government.

And I think we can probably also agree that it would be pretty ridiculous for anyone to try and extend those kinds of rights to animals. If I tried to give my cat the right to vote, she wouldn't even know how to vote for, like, a cat president. The whole thing would be an embarrassing disaster for everyone involved.

What we mean when we talk about "animal rights" is actually a very basic right that touches on something that every person - regardless of their mental abilities or social status or any number of other factors - shares with every animal: We are all capable of suffering - and we all, I believe, have a fundamental right to be free from avoidable suffering. We have a right not to be tortured, or mutilated in medical experiments, or kept confined in cages and prodded with sticks.

Which is all very nice for us. But the flipside of that right is a responsibility: We have a responsibility not to do those things to others. And I feel very strongly that those others - because they have the same capacity to suffer and experience pain that we do - include cats and dogs, and mice and rabbits, and cows and pigs, and a long list of other animals who are way less cuddly and cute but who have a basic right to be left alone to slither around in a hole, or whatever it is that they do for fun on the weekends.

Unfortunately, up to this point, we've been enjoying the right and totally shirking the responsibility.

The cows we raise for beef have their throats slit and their skin removed while they're still fully conscious; egg-laying chickens are kept confined for their entire lives in cages so small they have no room even to spread a wing. To prevent them from pecking each other to death in these conditions, their beaks are sliced off with a hot blade when they are less than 10 days old. Mother pigs are forcibly impregnated and crammed into cages called "gestation crates," which are so small that they are unable to stand up or even turn around for their whole lives.

I really do believe that in a few generations, we're going to look back on all this and wonder how we ever thought it was a better idea than, like … not doing that to animals and maybe eating veggie burgers instead.

Part of the problem, I think, is that it's just what we're used to. It's hard to get people to change what they're doing when everyone else around them seems to be totally cool with it. But the consequences of this sort-of "everyone else is doing it so it must be OK" attitude can be pretty drastic, and I want to just finish up very quickly by looking at how this attitude plays out in the field of animal experimentation, which, next to the meat industry, is the area where the largest number of animals suffer the most.

Every year, more than 100 million animals are killed in U.S. laboratories for chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing, as well as plain curiosity-driven research. Mice, rats, cats, dogs, rabbits, and monkeys are subjected to experiments that blind them, give them seizures, bore holes through their skin with corrosive chemicals, and any number of terrifying and usually fatal procedures that range from research on disease to developing lipstick.

Now there are two standard arguments that people like me tend to use against animal experimentation: The first is that it's not effective. Animals are not like humans – and what could be harmless to an animal might be fatal in humans, and vice versa. This is why so many animal-tested drugs have to be taken off the market when they fail human trials.

The second argument, and the one that I'll finish up on, is much more simple: It's wrong, regardless of the outcome. It's wrong for the same reason that it's wrong to experiment on the poor, the mentally disabled, on the institutionalized.

I've talked a bit about the rights we do have, but there are also some rights we don't have: I believe that we don't have the right to torment and terrorize others simply because they are smaller, weaker, or less intelligent than we are. This goes for children; it goes for our pets; and it goes for the hundreds of millions of animals confined in laboratories who we have to speak up for, because they have no ability to speak up for themselves.

Conversation between a British soccer commentator and an American soccer commentator at the zoo

2010-07-12T09:26:00.002-04:00

B: A balmy day for it, and the animals all in their furs and finery as we prepare for what promises to be an entertaining and enlightening display of nature at her glorious best.

A: We are at the zoo.

B: Indeed we are, John, and, on the sidelines as we may be, we have a part to play in this age-old ritual of man confronting his ancient past and, who knows – maybe his future – through the iron bars of a cage. And here they go! The baboons are in powerful form today as they begin their morning ablutions.

A: The monkeys are playing in the water. I knew a guy once who had a monkey. It was kind of like, some kind of pet monkey.

B: Quite. And now we must bring our own pet notions to bear on this exciting spectacle. It looks as if the male baboon, awoken from his righteous slumber, has cast a wary eye upon the swollen rump of his rutting young bride. That kind of focused attention can only mean one thing - the play is about to begin.

A: He's hurting her!

B: Yes, John, I suppose he is. But like all pleasures and pains, this one has been fleeting. His interest has waned, and with it I fear, ours must go as well. Shall we make our way to the lofty arbors of the Orangutans?

A: Are they monkeys? I knew a guy once who had a monkey. Like, a real one. He kept it as a pet. I like monkeys.

B: I know you do, John. I know you do.

Clocks

2009-11-01T18:10:00.016-05:00

In order to ensure that I do not miss important engagements, I set all the clocks in my house forward by 10 minutes.

To safeguard against my becoming inured to this timekeeping method and mentally recalibrating to the actual time after a while, I set all the clocks in my house forward an additional 10 minutes each day. So on Monday, 9:00 is 9:10, on Tuesday, 9:20, on Wednesday, 9:30, and so forth.

The flaw in this system is that after a few weeks, I become wary of the information that I am receiving from my various timepieces and begin to rely instead on my internal clock, which cannot be so easily fooled. My solution to this problem comes in the form of a custom-made calendar, which has the days offset on an incremental scale that is analogous to my clock system, so that Monday, January 1, is Tuesday, January 2, while Tuesday, January 2, becomes Thursday, January 4, and Wednesday, January 3, becomes Saturday, January 6 (See Fig. 1).

I find that the calendar system, combined with a more-or-less random regulation of the lighting in my apartment to disrupt the (for my purposes) dangerously predictable succession of day and night, is sufficient to keep my internal clock off balance and allow my external clocks to do their jobs properly.

Click for larger

Lest all this hard work be spoiled by a public occurrence such as a newscast or a sporting event, I have reprogrammed my DVR to record the nightly news, the weather channel, and the NFL, and to play random 5-minute selections from a pool of 3 months' worth of these recordings on a continuous loop in my living room.

The Holiday problem has not escaped me. To combat this particular difficulty I have bribed various acquaintances to call me with seasons' greetings at intervals based on contemporary events that I have incomplete access to due to my aforementioned DVR-news-gathering system. So, for instance, if the San Francisco 49ers clinch a playoff berth, someone will call up to wish me a Happy Birthday, and if the President makes a public address to the nation, I will receive Christmas cards in the mail the next week. I do not take any calls or letters from close friends or family.

Although this might occasionally give me sufficient information to guess certain calendar dates with a reasonable degree of accuracy – e.g., if the Niners win their division on the same day as the President's Thanksgiving Proclamation – I have found that the erratic sleep schedule which is occasioned by the random lighting in my apartment and the constant barrage of conflicting sports-, weather-, and current-events-related information coming from my television leaves my brain generally too addled to perform the intricate calculations necessary to make sense of these coincidences.

As a final precaution, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays (which occur consecutively most weeks), I dose my morning coffee with a strong hallucinogenic substance (usually mescaline or dipropyltryptamine), which practice has proven of inestimable value in distorting my sense of temporality in general. Consequently, I do not, at present, believe that time passes at all – a worldview which has helped me come to terms with some genuinely surprising phenomena such as the fact that I have not had a birthday since 2002.

Obviously, this entire system obliges me to drastically limit any contact with other human beings ("Spoilers," as I call them), but apart from the occasional interruption, I have not found this requirement to be much of an imposition.

The Collected E-Mail Correspondence of Jack A. Shepherd

2009-10-24T13:04:00.019-04:00

If Jack Shepherd's legacy is to be defined primarily by his work in the field of cat videos, it must at least be bolstered by his prodigious output in a wildly different (and too often overlooked) medium: The e-mail.

The Collected E-Mail Correspondence of Jack A. Shepherd: 2006-2008 (Faber & Faber, 2009) ends with a short note – deeply characteristic of Shepherd's laconic, no-nonsense style – that sheds as much light on the fundamental questions that informed his illustrious literary career as any of the dozens of critical tomes that have been dedicated to the subject in the past decade:

Students of Shepherd's work will immediately recognize the juxtaposition of cats and cleaning apparatuses as a central obsession of his literary endeavors, and they will doubtless appreciate this enlightening collection for the many e-mails like this one which help to elucidate Shepherd's often enigmatic contributions to the world of letters. But the real value of The Collected E-Mails is the surprisingly complete picture it paints of the innermost workings – both the frustrations and the aspirations – of a once-in-a-generation literary mind. Take this passage from an August 2008 e-mail exchange between Shepherd and one of his New York acquaintances:

What's striking about this e-mail (apart from that characteristic colon-parenthesis coda by the self-styled "Master of the Emoticon") is the almost joyful flippancy that he brings to the undeniably serious subject of intimacy with friends and the relations between the sexes.

This playfulness is not a characteristic that fans of such works as "Pixel Princesses: The Ten Hottest Videogame Babes" will recognize, but it is a helpful clue in unraveling the more difficult outpourings of the often inscrutable Shepherd and a timely reminder that behind even the grittiest of his writings is a sense of humor – of joy – that can illuminate many of the darker passages that have obsessed the literary world since he burst onto the scene with "Cats and Cleavage: Two Things I Like."

As useful as The Collected E-Mails may be to a critic of Shepherd's work, it is also a surprisingly tender document of a life lived to its fullest, with all the attendant heartbreaks and triumphs. As Shepherd himself blithely puts it in an e-mail to a colleague found near the end of the collection:

These are the words of a man who knew himself all too well, and – along with the rest of this captivating volume – they are words that help us to get to know him just a little bit better, as we come to grips with his life and works. If The Collected E-Mails is anything to go by, the release next year of Jack A. Shepherd's Complete IMs, Texts, and G-Chats may well be the literary event of the decade.

Me, Sad Sweater

2009-09-25T18:00:00.002-04:00

Lots of feelings here. Music by Peggy. Video by Amanda and Scott. Emoting by me.

Context.

A Happy Thought

2009-08-04T19:46:00.011-04:00

The following just occurred to me:

If (1) there is such a thing as eternal torment; it is (2) likely that it will be constructed in such a way as to ensure the maximum possible torment for each individual.

(3) It is far more painful to endure suffering when one is certain that it (a) could have easily been avoided (e.g., by not sinning quite so much) and (b) was directly one's own fault.

But!

If (3) and (2) are true, then it is also true that (4) whoever is in charge of the whole post-mortal tormenting biz would instill each tormented soul with a certainty that the whole thing was his own fault regardless of whether it was in fact his fault or not.

Therefore, if it falls to us to be eternally tormented, we may take solace in the fact that our certainty that we could have avoided this torment (by e.g., being slightly better people) may in fact be a false certainty. And the presence of even this admittedly minor comfort would be enough to ensure that we could not at any point be experiencing the absolute maximum possible torment. So, no matter what happens: it could be worse.

I had kind of a shitty day today, but this really cheered me the fuck up.

I believe I can fly.

2009-07-24T15:36:00.010-04:00

I genuinely believe, with the full force of conviction, that I can float in the air and propel myself through the sky by waving my arms around.

I also believe that (for me and me alone) the aether is a tangible thing. That I can actually reach out and grab onto the air as one would a door handle, or a baseball bat.

Worse yet (and this is where my unique condition devolves from erroneous fantasy into pathological obsession), I am utterly incapable of thinking about anything else. I think about this every single night of my life. The days are no different. I am forever cogitating on this one idea - turning it over in my mind, analyzing every aspect of it, gnawing away at it until I can no longer separate the concept from the dim reality of my existence. It consumes me.

Not only do I have feathered flaps of skin attaching my arms to the rest of my body, but the mere act of raising my arms and exposing these flaps to the elements will allow me to suddenly and surprisingly glide through the air. To escape, from you, from my troubles. From this place.

Further, it is my unshakable conviction that I am able to rise majestically into the air in an easy, fluid manner that gives no appearance of strain or effort. When I envision this in my mind, it seems to me not (as I have described) like flying, but more like propelling myself through some kind of a wide, inviting doorway. On my legs.

Which, now that I think about it, really seems a lot more likely.

Nonetheless, I believe I can fly.

I believe I can fly.

I believe I can fly.

Terminator Salvation: A Review

2009-05-24T00:39:00.004-04:00

I watched this film. In it, a man named Christian Bale and a group of his friends try to come to terms with their disappointment about the apocalypse by breaking a number of very expensive machines. The villains of the piece are a gang of humorless robots who are inexplicably angry with Christian Bale and his friends because of something that a man named Edward Furlong did in a previous, more interesting film, which they watched but did not particularly enjoy.

There are two parts of this film that I liked very much: In the first, an extremely large robot shoots motorcycles out of its knees, which I can relate to because it is something that I have always wanted to do. My other favorite part of the movie is a dramatic scene in which Christian Bale spends ten minutes shouting at a cinematographer who is acting unprofessionally.

All in all, I would have to say that I did not like this film as much as I thought I was going to. This is primarily due to the direction, by a Scottish gentleman named McG, who, due to a traumatic childhood incident where a killer robot belittled him for writing a competent segue, is convinced that coherent narratives are for sissies and elitists.

In conclusion, I would recommend that you not watch this film because it will make you very depressed about the future, which has no jokes or girls in it.

Top 10 List!

2009-05-10T12:00:00.018-04:00

I've been told that people on the Internet won't read prose anymore unless it's been cut down into bite-size, manageable chunks for Web consumers. Nuggets. That if you want to grab someone's fleeting attention on this speeding superhighway of information and reach the front page of Digg.com, your best bet is to distill the information you want to convey into a Top 10 List.

I am therefore very pleased to announce that this blog is now less focused on "writing" and more focused on compiling easily digestible lists of things.

Here is my first Top 10 List. I hope very much that you and your short attention spans enjoy it.

Top 10 Most Recent Paragraphs I Have Written Today

1. From a Letter of Recommendation I Was Asked to Write

Mr. Ryder has been a colleague of mine for more than two years (we share opposite sides of a desk), and what he lacks in creativity he more than makes up for in boisterousness. In Charles, you will find an employee who is never at a loss for words, which he adeptly strings together at all times and in no particular order. It is my great pleasure to recommend him for employment in your organization – not just because I will at last have an entire desk to myself (I am not so shallow!) but because I genuinely believe that he will thrive in an environment where his garrulousness is allowed free reign and his intellect is not overtaxed. If your office is such a place, then I am wholly convinced that he will fit right in.

2. From a Post-It Note, to Remind Myself of Something

Don't forget! When you're in a bad mood, the combination of gin, painkillers, and uppers can sometimes ruin a friendship! :0)
(Also, lunch with the Andersons is off this Sunday.)

3. From a To-Do List

1. ~~Prepare To-Do List~~
2. ~~Decide on Items to Include in the List~~
3. ~~Write List in Entirety~~
4. ~~Read over List~~
5. ~~Mentally Separate Those Items That Have Been Completed From Those That Have Not~~
6. ~~Despair~~
7. ~~Cross Off Completed Items~~

4. From an E-Mail to My Mother

Dearest mother – thank you for your kind and forceful invitation to come and visit you in St. Catherine's. Sadly, I fear I must remind you that my engagement on this latest archaeological expedition has been extended into the indefinite future. I assure you that as soon as I return from Kharkhorin, it will be my first priority to stop by with news of my travels and to investigate the unfortunate incidents with the staff in your ward that you have so diligently enumerated in your latest e-mails to me. Goodbye for now, or as they say here in Mongolia, Bayartai!

5. From a Response to a Judicial Summons

I would also like to complain about the language used by the arresting officer during our encounters. On both occasions, Sgt. Wooster stated that "anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law". If it is indeed true that everything I say will be repeated in court, then I should like to take this opportunity to state for the record that Sgt. Wooster is an ass and a cretin, who wouldn't recognize a tautology if it knocked him down and read him his Miranda rights. I am aware that a restraining order is a restraining order, and that – as you have astutely pointed out – ignoring one brings appropriately dire consequences. But must the violation really be met with such willful vapidity?

6. From a Shopping List

1. Sandwich Fixin's
2. Picnic Basket
3. Magazines (New Yorker, Harpers, The Economist)
4. Wool Sweater (Black)
5. Ski Mask (Black)
6. Camouflaged Treestand
7. Binoculars
8. Digital Video Camera
9. Change of Underpants

7. From a Sympathy Card

What I remember most about your son (and my dear neighbor) is not that he owed me 15 dollars from our bet that he could not jump from his balcony to mine, nor that he had just consumed half a bottle of my very best rum, nor even that he tragically landed on my brand-new Schwinn touring bicycle. What I remember most is his youthful vivacity, his tender nature, and the fact that he could always be counted on to pay his debts. Shall I send the bill to your address or to his executor?

8. From a Note Left on Someone's Car

So sorry – I think I accidentally broke your right front headlight when backing out of my parking space! Please do not try to find me, or I will be forced to come back and break the left one as well.

9. From a Posting in the Personals Section of Craigslist

m4w: SWM seeking d/df, hwp SF who also likes acronyms.

10. From a Discarded Blog Entry

Top 10 Best Things About Being Alone

1. Having lots of time to yourself.
2. Not having to go out because no one has invited you out and you don't want to go out anyway.
3. Spending time with the cat.
4. Cats are unable to file restraining orders.
5. They just scratch.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Don't jump.

2009-02-15T19:40:00.003-05:00

I had a dream on Friday night that I had created a website/marketing campaign based around the tagline “Don’t jump.” With the exception of the Fonzie one, all of these images are created from ideas I came up with in the dream. Don’t jump.

Bad Idea for a Love Story

2008-12-04T20:40:00.012-05:00

This is an idea for an epic romance that will actually make money. Every day, after she gets back from the salt mines, Elizabeth writes in her diary – not about the grueling, soul-shattering drudgery of hewing precious saline crystals from the living rock, but about the world that only exists in her mind. About the idea that sustains her through the desert landscape of her existence, where no plant grows save the thorny cactus, and the thought of rainfall brings nothing but the bitter knowledge that life, real life, is a mirage – and the dull toil of living is merely a perfect negative of our steady, downhill crawl towards an inevitable grave.

The idea is of a boy – youthful, earnest, and full of a hopefulness that her soul yearns for with the same urgency that her body aches to hold him in her arms. To forget, for a moment and forever, that there is anything in the world beyond the softness of his skin and the gentle warmth of his breath against her neck. Her visions of him take many forms, but when he comes to her, he comes always as a supplicant, carrying in one hand a perfect white rose, and in the other, a cold, frosty Miller Lite^TM, full of delicate hops and a smooth, satisfying taste that will never let you down.

There could be other sponsors too. For instance, I have this idea for a part of the novel where it turns out that her visions are not the tragic delusions of a broken woman in a featureless world, but real memories of a vibrant past, dressed up as hallucinations so as to dull the pain of loss – and, like, the illusion is shattered one day, when she's walking home from the salt mines, and she stops short because he's just standing there, waiting for her, a beautiful dream from her childhood come to life – come to rescue her from her solitude and her despair and her empty, barren future in a brand new 2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee with heated seats and a V8 Hemi multi-displacement engine.

The boy, of course, had been lost in a storm many years earlier, and Elizabeth's grief had driven her to accept a job in the brutal salt refineries of her hometown where the harshness and the tedium of her work might eventually come to serve as a proxy for the agony of her lost love. But instead of being killed in the storm, the boy was miraculously rescued by a kindly old man who gave him the education and the training he needed to become CEO of Morton Industrial Salt, which, in addition to being a kind and benevolent employer, offers the most complete line of salt grades and salt-related products in the industry.

After that, there'll be a few chapters about how the power of their love for each other (plus a bolt-action Smith & Wesson Winchester rifle) finally frees her from the clutches of her cruel employers and her doomed town, and by the end of the story, she's blissfully working as Director of Product Development for Morton Salt Inc. In the final scene, they'll be lying together in the fully-reclinable passenger seat of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, lost in the warmth of each other's touch and the reassuring hardness of their custom Smith & Wesson rifles, as the memories of their years apart fade into the quiet absurdity of a bad dream that will never return.

Bad Idea for a Dating Site

2008-11-22T13:45:00.008-05:00

The problem with dating, right? Is that it all starts out like this really exciting thing where you suddenly know someone who's at least not openly repulsed by the idea of touching you and, like, maybe just maybe you've found a real human person who will be there to stroke your hair and, I don't know, coo at you while you're drunkenly sobbing yourself to sleep at night. So much so, actually, that you're willing to overlook the fact that this chick has a psychotic fixation with, e.g., trying to talk to you while you're on the fucking phone with someone else.

But like before long, it turns out that having someone ask you who you're talking to every single time you pick up the telephone is actually the single most annoying thing in the entire world; and on the flipside, she's actually not all that into the fact that you're this oddly defective human being who bursts into tears for no apparent reason, and she starts telling you to, like, why not just cheer up? Which somehow just makes it all so much fucking worse.

Right?

But so this dating site takes care of that problem from the beginning of the process. Through a comprehensive 42-question survey, we'll identify every insecurity, nervous tic, bad habit, fear, psychosis, or piece of questionable taste that you have, and assemble this accurate-as-shit composite of what you're really like, so we can pair you up with someone who's fucked up in similar ways.

So for instance, if you have this deep-seated anxiety about physical intimacy, we'll find a partner for you whose germophobia is so intense that s/he would never be able to touch you anyway without the aid of a powerful sedative and a pair of heavy-duty burlap gardening gloves. Or, right? If you're one of those people who just can't keep the difference between "your" and "you're" straight in your head, we'll find you a life-mate whose degenerative brain disorder is so severe that they'll never be able to fully comprehend just what a monumental fucktard they've been paired up with.

Also too, it's a network, right? So you can have friends write testimonials for you that will help fill in information that you may have been too modest to include. Like,

"If you can deal with the fact that Jack will always be more emotionally committed to his music collection than he is to you, then go for it."

"Diane will often have a dream that you did something fucked up and then actually hold it against you."

"Stephanie genuinely enjoys reality television."

And then the real bonus of this site is that when your partner leaves you because you're "not the person they thought you were," you can be like, "Well maybe you should have read my fucking profile."

Bad Idea for a Movie

2008-11-15T18:47:00.004-05:00

Here's an idea for a Monster Movie. Everyone's trapped in an amusement park – no, a brothel. OK, no, everyone's trapped in an underfunded semi-annual conference for Social Media and Emerging Technologies. It's called "Harnessing the Social Web." And it's in Detroit. No, that's absurd – it's in an old space station orbiting a distant, sunless planet. OK, no, so it's in Jersey City. And the characters – what the characters don't know (there are five of them – old friends from high school, and they all look like they're out of an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, plus this talking ~~snow-leopard~~ attorney named Augustus, who provides comic relief.) So what the characters don't know is that the conference, which is called "E-Commerce: From Networks to Net Gains," is actually a front set up by this shadowy group of vampires or, like, zombies, or social conservatives or something, who want to trap them and eat their brains. Or, like, no, it's a cult, right? It's this cult of Satan-worshipping tech bloggers, who are fanatically obsessed with finding "the next Google" so they can use it to somehow summon a demon.

And the lawyer, right? The talking attorney who's their faithful companion. He's the only one who knows that something's fucked up about the conference, which is called "Is Facebook the New Google? How to Keep Up in a Web 2.1 World" – but he can't say anything about it because he has this pathological fear of expressing any sort of opinion, so the only thing he can do to warn them is, like, grunt and, like jump around in this agitated kind of way.

But yeah, so the climax of this movie comes when they're all at this panel discussion about, like, Social Media Marketing and the Occult, and they're all Twittering at each other that it's a trap, and the lawyer is freaking out and grunting and generally disrupting the panel discussion, which is actually getting pretty fucking interesting, and these mystical forces start converging and, like, it's fairly clear that this scary-ass demon is going to materialize right in the middle of the PowerPoint display, and all the electricity suddenly goes out, and the group has to work together to find a way to somehow stop the demon without using the Internet.

And then I haven't figured out how the ending works yet, but it turns out that the real monster is their own greed.

Note to Self

2008-08-29T11:18:00.001-04:00

My Dear Jack,

I regret to inform you of a policy change which will significantly affect the scope of your responsibilities, and the liberties you may take in interpreting them henceforward. By way of elucidating the motivation behind this decision, I would ask you to remember that, while we maintain the utmost respect for your rights as an individual, it is essential—for your sake as well as ours—that you in turn respect the obligations that apportion to your role as a stakeholder in the aggregate of Jacks both present and future, which may be thought of as encompassing the atemporal quality defined as “Jackness”.

To wit: It has come to our attention that for some years now, you have—in an outright contravention of the wishes of Evening Jack and an apparently willful denial of the projected desires of Future Jack—been taking it upon yourself to decide that the agreed-upon time for Jacks to wake up in the morning (which, we will note, is marked by the ringing of an alarm clock that will have been set by a previous Jack who is just as entitled to a stake in overall Jackness as you are) may be postponed indefinitely to suit your own needs.

This cannot be allowed to stand. We recognize that your duties as a Jack—getting out of bed, dressing, grappling anew with the soul-shattering realization that one day must of necessity follow upon another—are not perhaps quite so enriching as those of (for instance) Bedtime Jack, Snuggletime Jack, or Beach-Fun Jack, but we must implore you to sacrifice your own fleeting comforts to a greater good that will benefit all of us in the long run.

We are quite certain that matters will not proceed this far, but we feel it our duty to warn you that a failure to make improvements based on this appeal to your better judgment will result in punitive sanctions. It is not in our power to physically prevent you from hitting the “Snooze” button after you have read this note, but we can, if pressed, ensure that future Morning Jacks wake up without bedding, air-conditioning, an absence of air-horns, or indeed any of the material comforts to which you have become accustomed—and which you have evidently begun to take for granted.

Please take this all in on your own time, and once you are fully awake, hand over the reigns to Breakfast Jack. Do not go back to bed.

Yours always,

The Jacks

Five Easy Ways to Fuck Up a Job Interview Before It Starts

2008-07-25T17:26:00.009-04:00

On Tuesday, inexplicably (unless you are willing to grant that the universe is ruled by a malicious and spiteful entity who likes to kick people when they’re down and who believes, deep down in the core of his petty little soul, that I am a great big loser) …

Let me start again. On Tuesday, God crashed my hard drive while I was conducting simultaneous Internet searches for job opportunities in New York and naked pictures of celebrities. Suddenly, a lot more depended upon the solitary interview that I had managed to scrabble together—as a brand-new Mac laptop costs more money than I have ever even imagined.

So, on Wednesday, the morning of the interview, I woke up early and looked at the notes I had jotted down from my brief conversation with the prospective employer to make sure I was prepared with everything I needed. Which brings me to my first, easy tip on fucking up a job interview before it starts:

1. If they ask you to bring something, show up without it

At the time of our conversation, both the friendly woman who was setting up the interview and I considered it an exceptionally reasonable request that I bring with me a printed copy of my résumé and references. But at 9 a.m.—two hours before the interview itself, when I turned my thoughts to this request in earnest—I realized just what a monumental challenge I had been presented with: A pathological lack of foresight means that I have ever lived my life without such amenities as printer paper, printer ink, or, indeed, a printer. And even had I been able to overcome this particular obstacle, my useless, whimpering hard drive was a stark reminder of the fact that divine intervention had quite recently deprived me of almost all traces of my résumé as well.So I spent the next hour amusing Our Lord by attempting to install a driver for my roommate’s new printer while frantically cobbling together a résumé and set of references from the salvaged wreckage of earlier endeavors. Which brings me to my second tip:

2. Leave the house looking like a middle-schooler at his first "semi-formal" dance

With just five minutes to go before the absolute last second I could leave the house and still stand a chance of arriving at the interview on time, I looked up from the pile of cables, malfunctioning printers, and paper jams that had become my personal hell and processed the dawning realization that I was still in my boxer shorts, and that this would simply not do.

I rushed to my closet and pulled out my nice dress pants, which have a pin-stripey thing going for them, a shirt that looked like it was at least vaguely familiar with the concept of an iron, and my only tie, which is actually a good tie and does not generally make me look like an idiot. But fortunately, I would not be calling upon my tie to perform such a role just yet, as my suit jacket was quickly pressed onto stage for the part: Something you will know if you know these things is that a black suit coat and pinstripe pants have the exact opposite effect from what’s intended—i.e., they make you look like you just got out of fucking clown school. But there was no time. No time for anything except a swift kick in the pants from Jesus Himself on my way out the door.

3. A little stain goes a long way

For no good reason except to deliver a final, crushing blow to my sense of self worth, my nice tie, instead of sitting quietly in my closet for the past three years like it was supposed to, was busy creating out of thin air a small brownish stain right in the middle of itself. This tastefully positioned blemish is just a few shades darker than the rest of the tie, but it really stands out quite prominently in, for instance, daylight, as if to say to anyone who would listen: "I'm a nice tie, but the guy who's wearing me is a bum! A bum, I tell you!" I did not notice this stain until I stopped briefly in front of a mirror to curse at myself as I sprinted towards the subway. Which brings me to my penultimate tip:

4. Develop a limp

If you have ever tried running half a mile in dress shoes that are two sizes too small for you, you will know what I’m talking about here. The pain is exquisite, and, no matter how much you might want to look like a normal human being (as opposed to, say, a drunken Orangutan) there is very little that you can do to stop yourself from lurching and grimacing with agony every time you move. Potential employers do not generally find this endearing. Fortunately, I had one last trick up my sleeve.

5. Remember these phrases: "I'm sorry" and "Thank you"

Being British originally, I have a deeply rooted "survival mode" which consists of alternately thanking and apologizing to anyone who happens to be within earshot. Think Hugh Grant right after he got caught with that prostitute, except, like, nowhere near as charming or sexually fulfilled. The more stressful the situation, the more feverish and inane my expressions of gratitude and remorse become—the idea being that whoever I’m talking to will either take pity on me or just for God’s sake leave me alone. In England—where we consider actually communicating with other humans extremely impolite—this mode of discourse is universally understood and respected. Unfortunately, behavior of this sort tends not to go over quite so well at an American job interview, where you are supposed to say things like "utilize" and "proactive" instead of, like, "I'm so sorry I didn't bring my résumé and I'm limping and there's a stain on my tie. Thank you so much for being so understanding, but would you mind terribly if we printed it out from my email? I’d be ever so grateful. Awfully sorry about this."

"This is the shortest résumé I have ever seen," she said, once we had finally obtained it. She was very nice, and I thanked her profusely for her time. I'll let you know if I hear back.

Dark Knight: A Review

2008-07-21T23:33:00.007-04:00

I watched this film. In it, a very small man named Christian Bale makes himself appear larger with some help from Morgan Freeman, a pair of black, pointy ears, and a tank. There are no pretty girls in the film, as unforeseen budget problems created by the recent rise in pleather prices required the producers to hire a woman named Maggie Gyllenhaal to play two roles, as Batman’s love interest and the girlfriend of District Attorney Harvey Dent.

My favorite part of this movie is when Batman patently ignores international extradition laws and the Geneva Convention to bring an Asian accountant to justice. I have often felt that foreign accountants deserve to be plucked from their workplaces by giant bats and left hog-tied in front of an American prison, and it was nice to see a movie that clearly shares this ideal.

Overall, I would say that I definitely liked this movie, even though it was very dark and intense and I had to watch it on opening weekend in New York from the end of a line 34 blocks away from the theatre, via a tedious and emotionally exhausting game of Telephone. What possessed them to include a character named “Pooface” in what is otherwise an extremely serious picture, is still lost on me.

In conclusion, this movie made me feel a lot more comfortable about my sexual orientation than Brokeback Mountain, even though Heath Ledger does wear makeup in this one as well.

Hellboy II: A Review

2008-07-20T10:46:00.005-04:00

I watched this film. In it, a large red alien named Hellboy and his best friend, Niles from Frasier (played as a fish in this film, by Doug Jones) work for a shadowy government agency called the INS. The red alien and the fish team up with a piece of skirt named “Selma Blair”, whose superpower is being surprisingly hot, and the threesome embark on a quest to find the mysterious “Golden Army”, which is an army made out of gold. Along the way, they meet a number of bugs.

I liked this film because it reminded me of another film by the same director (also about bugs), called Pan’s Labyrinth. In conclusion, Selma Blair really is exceptionally good-looking. Somehow, I must have missed that during The Sweetest Thing. Possibly because the advertisers of that film failed to mention either aliens or bugs in their promotional materials. As a consequence of which, I failed to watch it.

For more reviews by me of movies that Selma Blair was apparently in, see Waz.

Epithalamion

2008-07-20T00:00:00.005-04:00

This is a wedding video. It will primarily be interesting to those people who were present at the actual ceremony, or to others who know Sean and Becky or else who, like, like love. I don't want to spoil anything here, but this one ends happily. For those of you who are more romantically, or ecclesiastically, inclined, the full, uncut video of the ceremony itself can be viewed here. There are also some nice pics here. For everyone else: Just click play and witness/relive the union of Sean McCarrick Fagan and Rebecca Lynn Olson. (And subsequent revelry.) Congratulations, you crazy kids.

Watch on YouTube

Videoblog 2: U.S. Site 447

2008-04-15T09:02:00.005-04:00

Watch on YouTube

What I Did This Weekend (or, I try videoblogging)

2008-04-07T01:28:00.005-04:00

Watch on YouTube

An Open Letter to Hayden Christensen

2008-03-30T13:59:00.008-04:00

Dear Hayden,

As you know, Jumper is a movie about superpowered individuals who can travel vast distances in the blink of an eye, using merely the power of their minds. An ancient sect of religious fanatics has been following these superheroes since the Middle Ages with the intention of wiping them out for good. It should be impossible to ruin this movie. But you did, Hayden. You ruined it.

I won't say that I'm not still emotionally scarred from Star Wars: Episode II, because I am. But I never blamed you personally for that. Sure, I disagreed with your decision to portray Annekin Skywalker's complex metamorphosis from a benevolent idealist into a hate-filled lord of darkness by "acting like a douchebag the whole time," but I was willing to chalk that up to monumentally bad directing. And yes, it did strike me as a trifle awkward that the male lead in the movie was outperformed by a floppy-eared, irritating, uncomfortably racist animation, but I was willing to focus my hurt and anger about what I call "the Jar Jar paradox" towards George Lucas, who seemed to be the real mastermind behind the crime spree that we've come to know as the Star Wars prequels. Now I'm starting to rethink that position.

Because I believe that you are evil, Hayden.

It's the only logical explanation. Your acting isn't soul-shatteringly awful — it only seems that way. The fact is that your acting is too good. You play the part too well, Mr. Christensen, and I'm onto you. No one but a highly trained master thespian with a heart full of the purest evil would be able to pull off a piece of work like your performance in Jumper. The effortlessness with which you have managed to take a screenplay written about a handsome, troubled adolescent who discovers that he is a central figure in a timeless battle between good and evil and turn it into a depressing biopic about an emotionally bankrupt, intolerable frat boy is already a feat worthy of Hollywood's finest character actors. But to have done it twice — such a coup could only have been arranged by a dangerous sociopath.

So my question to you is this, Hayden: Why are you using your powers for evil? Your unrivaled ability to suck all the fun out of an exciting adventure, to turn a love story into a nightmare worthy of Kafka, to drain the life and energy out of anyone who so much as walks into a room with you — these are abilities that could be used for the greater good of our nation. You could be weakening the resolve of terrorists in interrogation rooms, extracting confessions from violent criminals with a glance, ending hostage situations by confronting kidnappers and sapping their will to live ... but instead you elect to use your talents to ruin perfectly good action movies? Why, Hayden? Why?

Sincerely,

Jack Shepherd

P.S. My friend Ashleigh thinks you're cute.

Waz

2008-03-16T15:34:00.013-04:00

Waz is a very specialized term that I came up with in high school, originally to describe the effects of a cat tranquilizer called Ketamine, which is not fun at all, but not so completely lacking in fun that you wouldn't do it again so you could go ahead and not have a good time on Ketamine as an exciting change of pace from just not having a good time, which is pretty much what high school is all about.

It soon became clear that there are a large number of very common activities in life that are exactly as fun as ingesting a bunch of cat tranquilizers and sitting around not having a very good time. Relationships, for instance. And watching movies about superheroes. Waz was much more than a piece of druggie jargon that only made sense to me, my friends, and a generation of house cats—it was a vital piece of emotional vocabulary that had been mysteriously omitted from the list of descriptive terms we're expected to use to describe what kind of a time we're having. Like leaving "red" off the color wheel. For instance:

Girlfriend: Was that as good for you as it was for me?
Me: It was pretty fucking waz, actually.
Girlfriend: Well, that's the last time I take you to watch a movie about a superhero.

So imagine my relief this week when I learned that they've come out with a feature film about waz. They've got a Flash website and everything. The tagline is "What Would it Take to Make You Kill the One You Love?" Since we all know that the answer to that question is "A seven layer burrito and a coupon for a free Journey ringtone of my choice," it's pretty clear that the geniuses who crafted this rich filmic experience have a firm grasp of what's waz and what's not waz.

The poster for this movie, which depicts a woman who has accidentally covered the non-disfigured side of her disfigured face with the hood of an anorak, shows us that the graphic designer was not afraid to use the Greek symbol for the letter "d" to replace the only vowel in the only word in the movie's title (knowing that he could just write it out below in capital letters, thereby negating and undermining the entirety of his role in designing a graphic for the title in the first place), and also that the film stars Hollywood leading lady Selma Blair—two powerful indications that not only will the uncompromising auteurs behind this cinematic event depict waz experiences to their viewers, but they will also ensure that their viewers experience waz for themselves. Much like how the guys who made A Thin Red Line showed countless moviegoers that war is dreary and monotonous by making their movie 13 hours long and completely impossible to watch without the aid of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The Waz official movie site, which I encourage everyone to check out, has a "storyboard" section which shows many of the waz moments that putative viewers can expect during the film. After ravenously devouring every element of this storyboard, I have decided that I will not be watching this movie in theaters, but as soon as it is released for rental, my cat and I intend to cook up a vial of Ketamine, pop the DVD in the player, and rate it on a scale of 1 to waz. I'll let you know the results in a few months.

I'm also told that in the UK, "waz" is used to mean "urinate".

Older

2008-01-23T20:18:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to postpone 30 for as long as I reasonably can (and if possible, to prevent it entirely), but the fact that things have come to this stage at all implies a considerable degree of negligence on my part up until this point—which doesn't inspire an awful lot of confidence in my ability to stave off the impending disaster in a state of red alert. My point being, I've had 29 years to address this problem, and whatever emergency measures I may be able to enact at this late stage will hardly be sufficient prophylactics against a cataclysm that I have systematically failed to forestall during the ample time that has been allotted to me for the task. I have only myself to blame.

Nonetheless, a summit has been called and drastic measures are being considered. The gravity of this situation is not lost on me. We have discussed at length the potential for a radical plan to reduce or eliminate any pleasurable or interesting stimuli from my life in order to make time pass as slowly as possible while our scientists explore further options for defending ourselves against this tridectuple onslaught. Agents have been dispatched to explore the existential validity of simply denying that the disaster has occurred (in the unthinkable event that it does), i.e., if I don't admit that I'm 30 and others are taken in by this deception, will we have any legitimate recourse to a claim that perceptive reality is more reliable than an uncertain but objective truth (such as that I am, in fact, 30)? We do not have much hope for this line of defense.

Meanwhile, our most reliable officers are working around the clock to determine whether the very concept of "30" might not be vulnerable to an assault on its objectivity. Do we have incontrovertible evidence that 29 always leads to 30, rather than to 28 or, let us say, 19? Certainly, this is the norm, but then so was authoritarianism, patriarchy, religious dogma. If we can openly question these once irreproachable ideals, can we not also cast some doubt upon the flimsy—and indeed profoundly unlikely—notion that all beings must turn 30 exactly a year after they have turned 29? I hope that this society is not so repressive as to object to an intelligent inquiry into the haphazard and heretofore unregulated computational methods it uses to establish the relevant longevity of its citizens.

While we martial our defenses and exhaust our other options, I can tell you nothing more than that we will not give up hope. We will not accept this imposition without a fight. We will not allow ourselves to be overcome simply because the odds are stacked against us.

We will not go gentle into that good night.

Wasted

2008-01-19T01:14:00.000-05:00

There is a double-entendre going on with the title here. It's suppose to refer both to my current state and to the months that have passed since I last wrote. Anything. There's a temptation to leave it at that, honestly. But one does sense a need for an update.

In the last month, I turned an extremely unlikely age, had intercourse on one occasion, read three books in a science fiction trilogy, watched roughly 38 hours of football, learned of two deaths (including Bobby Fischer) and one conception, drank somewhere in the ballpark of 120 beers, revived one old friendship, failed to turn up for one exam, consumed 15+ adderall, drove 500 miles, had one prophetic dream, apologized at least five times, and ate the same meal almost every night.

My prose has not much improved, and neither has my honesty, though I would rate myself a little higher in 2008 for humility than in previous years. This is related to growing older and seeing oneself more in the scheme of things. Which is related to pride.

Introspection is at an all-time low.

I have discovered that I am not the following things: Management material, tan, irresistible, solvent, decisive, unflappable. Though, on a more positive note, it does seem evident that there are some things I'm good at.