THE RECLUSE

Richard Gilbert: Prayer after Typepad's Help Ticket Advice

2008-02-20T14:21:00-08:00

Please God, tell me my Feedburner feed is now properly configured and working the way I always hoped and dreamed it would be. Thank you.

Your humble, poly-consciousness servant.

Cha Ching: Let the Virus Begin

2008-02-18T18:30:00-08:00

Cha: Greetings, Soul Father.

Richard: One second, Cha. Let me just get this one area below my nose....there...How are you?

Cha: Personally, I'm fine. But I'm a bit concerned about the limited traffic to the blog.

Richard: I appreciate your use of the world "limited" as a euphemism for "none." What can I say?...If only the streets of Los Angeles were as uncongested.

Cha: Obviously, publicizing the blog on the web directories didn't have the effect we hoped for, so we need to revamp our marketing strategy. Instead of taking a top-down, directory-driven approach, let's try a grass roots, viral, method.

Richard: What do you mean?

Cha: We can set up an e-mail subscription capability through Feedburner. That way people can go to the blog and, with just a click or two, they can sign up to receive free e-mails of any new posts. You can start with a narrow circle of friends and family members -- anyone who would feel guilty and ashamed to say no if you asked them to sign up -- and hopefully build a network of subscribers from this base. This all probably sounds like geek to you, but it's not that hard and I can walk you through it.

Richard: OK, let's start walking.

Cha: Basically all you need to do is download a Feedburner widget into the blog's content layout.

Richard: Great. What's a widget?

Cha: A widget is a piece of content or functionality (in this case, notifying readers of new posts via e-mail) that is provided by a third party (like Feedburner) that you can place in the siderail of your blog. Technically, it's a snippet of HTML and/or JavaScript that you can manage like any other sidebar content on your blog.

Richard: I'm sorry I asked. Let's concentrate on what specifically I need to do. Think of me like someone at Jiffy Lube who wants to change the oil in his car without knowing the detailed workings of the internal combustion engine.

Cha: OK, in TypePad, first click on "Help" and then click on "TypePad Knowledge Base." When the narrow box appears, type in "Widgets" and press enter. Do you see the link to "Widget Gallery?"

Richard: Amazingly, yes.

Cha: Good, click on it. Then scroll down to "Browse by Category" and click on "Publishing Tools." Scroll down again until you see "Feedburner E-mail Subscription." Click on this link and you'll see the actual e-mail subscription display that will be added to your blog.

Richard: Great. Am I done?

Cha: Not quite. Scroll down to the end of the page and type in your feed or blog URL in the box: www.therecluse.org. When you do, the system will identify multiple feeds at your URL address. Click on "Atom" vs. RSS 1.0 or RSS 2.0.

Richard: Of course.

Cha: Then add a feed title (The Recluse), a feed address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/therecluse/cdkq., a user name, and a password. This ends your interface with Feedburner. Now go back to TypePad and click on Design>Order Content and drag and click the E-Mail Subscription Display to the sidebar location you choose.

Richard: I think I'll put it on the top of the right column where it will be easy to find.

Cha: That's a very good idea.

Richard Gilbert: The Speed of Darkness

2008-02-16T21:46:10-08:00

Recently a team of 69 scientists from around the world reported that they had found evidence of a solar system similar to our own located about 5000 light years away. That means if there were intelligent life in this solar system, and we were able to exchange messages with it at the speed of light, it would take tens of thousands of years just to share a few sentences. "Hello, this is Earth" (5 thousand years); "Hi, this is Distant Planet" (10 thousand years), and so on. Obviously, if there is ever going to be meaningful conversations with extraterrestrials we're going to need a method of communication or physical travel that is much faster than the speed of light. This is such a revolutionary possibility that it's hard for me to even imagine it. Of course you hear sci-fi scenarios about time travel or new-agey discussions of mind-travel and projecting one's consciousness across space, but these seem as far fetched and grandiose to me as suggestions that there is a tangible afterlife. At the same time, one has to concede that if someone told Cro-Magnon Man or Java Man that one day millions of near instantaneous messages would be sent around the globe through tiny fiber optic cables, this possibility would have been met with a skeptical grunt. ("Fiber Optics, ugh!"). But lo and behold that's exactly what happened. So maybe the possibility of reaching communication speeds in excess of the speed of light isn't so far fetched after all.

Even if I'm willing to accept the possibility of transferring information at speeds faster than light, I'm still massively skeptical that human beings will be around long enough to realize this goal. The dinosaurs may have roamed the earth for over 70 million years before becoming extinct, but we're already teetering on the brink after a mere 50,000 years of human culture. Some say the dinosaurs perished because they developed too much physical armor for their relatively undeveloped intellects to manage. That is, they perished when their armor to brain ratio became too great. In a sense this is exactly what is happening to our species. The rate of weapons development (our form of armor) has far outpaced our emotional/moral/intellectual development. When we just had spears or bayonets our stupidity was in line with our rudimentary weapons. But now the sophistication of our weaponry has far exceeded the sophistication of our internal lives. So look out T-Rex. Make room Brontosaurus. Oblivion here we come.

The essential question, of course, is what to do in the meantime. Nietzche, using the analogy of a day at the beach in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra,'' said we have 3 options: We can build a castle in the sand and believe it will last forever, we can identify with the destructive force of the tides and decide that building a castle would be an exercise in futility, or we can build the castle even with full knowledge that it won't last forever. As a blogging recluse, I suppose my position is somewhere between choice 2 and 3. I basically believe that humanity is doomed to destroy itself and I would be astounded to learn that our species made it another 50,000 years. And even if we did make it that far, ultimately nothing human is important or meaningful when measured against eternity. At the same time, given that there's nothing I can do about any of this, and I do have a few more decades (hopefully) to hang out on this planet, I've concluded that I might as well try to enjoy the ride and post a comment now and then.

In conclusion: An idea for a New Yorker cartoon...Two baboons are sitting in the jungle facing each other. Below,the caption reads: "Do you think there's intelligent life in the universe?"

Metablog: On Form

2008-02-02T21:49:26-08:00

When Richard first spoke to me about overseeing the blog (or, more accurately, when Richard spoke to the part of himself that later became expressed as "me"), I raised an obvious question: Why don't you tell this story as a traditional novel? After all, you had a great time writing "The Third Condition" and, with this experience under your belt, you were eager to see if you could improve your writing with a second book. Why the change?

Richard responded that he began "The Recluse" project as a novel but 40 pages into it he encountered a problem that made him re-evaluate his narrative approach. The issue was that the motivation that prompted Michael Guntrip, the protagonist in the novel, to retreat from the world was fundamentally different than the issues underlying Richard's interest in a reclusive life.

In the novel, Michael Guntrip became a recluse in response to a heartbreaking trauma. (In clinical terms, he is a rare example of late-onset, trauma-induced, agoraphobic.) While this dynamic is interesting (I'm at a loss to think of another novel in which the protagonist is a highly functional individual who becomes an extreme, housebound, agoraphobic in midlife) it has no role in Richard's reclusive tendencies. Richard goes out all the time. He gets coffee and reads the paper; he goes to work; he drops off and picks up his dry cleaning; he socializes with friends; occasionally, he takes a trip. He does all of these things without anxiety or fear. Unlike Michael, Richard's reclusiveness is fueled by growing misanthropic feelings rather than a defensive response to internal threats. Increasingly, the quirks and stupidity of individual people, and the distasteful aspects of human culture in general, are annoying the shit out of him. He's not sure why this geyser of irritation is erupting now. Is it hormonal? The world-weariness that comes with age? An over-reaction to traffic? Did George Bush finally push him over the edge?

Also, in contrast to Michael Guntrip, Richard is drawn to the reclusive life for intellectual as well as emotional reasons. Allow me to explain...

We are all privileged to be living at the start of the third revolution or paradigm shift in human productive activity. The oldest fossilized bones ever discovered (in Kibish, Ethiopia in 1967) suggest that homo sapiens first arose in Africa about 195,000 years ago and that modern aspects of human behavior and culture (i.e., bone carvings for religious reasons, hunting tools such as spears and harpoons, and ornaments such as beads and jewelry) originated around 50,000 BCE. For most of this history, human beings survived by hunting game and gathering nuts and berries. Then, somewhere around 9400 BCE, these nomadic,hunter-gather societies were replaced by fixed-location, agrarian communities. This was the first paradigm shift in human culture - the transition from hunting and gathering to growing crops as the primary economic activity of human beings. The dating of this monumental development is traced to an archaeological dig near Jericho that uncovered figs that were clearly not a natural variety. They were stiffer and more edible than their ancestral species and, even more importantly, they were sterile and thus had to be propagated by cultivating cuttings rather than via natural seedlings. This discovery fixed the dawn of agriculture a thousand thousand years earlier then the growing of grains such as wheat and barley, which were previously thought to be the first domesticated crops. Subsequently, about 11 millennia later, with the mechanization of the textile industry in England in the late 18th century and the American invention of the steam engine in the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution was born and manufacturing replaced growing crops as the dominant mode of economic production. Finally, the third paradigm shift -- the transition to a post-industrial society or Information Age -- occurred in the second half of the 20th century. In this mode of production, the primary mechanism for survival and generating wealth is the transfer of information (as I'm doing now). I'm not hunting, gathering, growing, or manufacturing anything (except perhaps a new neural connection or two).

What struck Richard is that the advent and maturation of a post-industrial world makes it possible for the first time in history for a person to have all of his or her essential needs (and virtually all discretionary needs) met without ever leaving home. The only requirement is that one must be independently wealthy (a rarity) or have a technologically-mediated means of earning sufficient income (increasingly commonplace). When this condition is met, "to stay in" or "not to stay in" becomes the question, a matter of individual decision rather than necessity. In "The Recluse" Richard wanted to fully explore these intellectual issues and he wondered if a novel would suffer from the inclusion of prominent didactic elements.

As Richard wrestled with these concerns, he hit on a number of solutions that would work within the structure of a novel. First, Michael Guntrip would earn millions of dollars a year by being the most successful writer of Google Ads in the world. Corporations large and small would pay him handsomely because his method of ad writing generated a response rate that averaged .25% more than was previously believed to be possible. While that number seemed small, when it was multiplied by hundreds of millions of Internet users who witnessed the ad, it meant huge differences in revenue. Consequently, Michael would never be forced to travel to work and he had the funds to have virtually any product or service delivered to his home. Also, Michael would host monthly meetings of the Southern California Chapter of the World Futurist Society. In the context of these meetings, there would be several satellite characters, some of whom could be misanthropic and some who could convey the more didactic content about the social consequences of post-industrialism. In addition, Michael could use these meetings as a way to camouflage his disorder. He could tell people that the reason he never went outside is that he was engaging in a social experiment to demonstrate that it was possible to live fully in the modern world without leaving one's home and he was planning to publish a book on the subject. In this way, the novel could primarily be a character study of a man struggling to continue on after a heart-wrenching trauma while still exploring other emotional and intellectual issues that were important to Richard.

While this approach could have worked, Richard (as I'm sure you surmised by this blog) eventually rejected the idea of writing a traditional novel in favor of a poly-consciousness narrative. In this structure, a traditional novel is embedded in the multi-voice narrative in the form of Michael Guntrip's postings, but it makes up only one of five perspectives on the subject of being a recluse. In this way the role of trauma in withdrawing from the world is given its place in the narrative, but it isn't the dominant or central perspective. Other viewpoints on the subject: the misanthropic stance of Richard, Cha-Ching's preference for technologically-mediated experience; the other-worldly domain of D.K. Urbane (nice rhyme, Metablog!), and my free-floating, aerial omniscience are all given greater weight than they would receive in a novel. (What would I be in a novel? Reduced to some trivial, David Foster Wallace-esque, meta-fictional footnote? No way! I wouldn't have taken the gig on those terms.) Also, by having alts that express the full range of the host personality (rather than focusing the story on a single aspect of the self) the potential exists for almost continuous posting because there's an outlet for whatever the host is experiencing. Richard doesn't have to wait until he is in the mood to convey the singular perspective of Michael Guntrip, or torturously will himself into this point of view. There is an alt for any state of mind. And if there isn't, one can always be added. And of course the potential exists for there to be comments to the postings of the various alts, making the blog interactive and multiplying the narrative possibilities. However, that would require someone to actually read the blog and take the time to respond to an entry, a highly uncertain prospect at this time.

Another reason Richard decided to move away from writing a traditional novel is the increasing evidence that it's fast becoming an archaic narrative form. According the National Endowment for the Humanities, the number of people who elect to read one novel a year, let alone consistently read novels, is dwindling, especially among the young. No need to wear a black armband. Human beings will always hunger for narratives; our dreams demonstrate that we are story creating machines. But it isn't written on any sacred stone that "Thou shall get one's narratives from a novel." Forms of storytelling rise and fall with the changing times. Cave paintings and the oral tradition had their day before becoming casualties of history. Do you mourn that they are gone? The novel was made possible by the invention of the printing press and made sense in a slower paced world where one could lose oneself in a gradually-building, long-form narrative. Now the novel runs counter to the natural rhythms of the modern world. To some extent the same thing is happening to the feature film. Where movies used to run two hours or more, now they often run 90 minutes or less and are drawing closer and closer to the time frame of a television show. No wonder DVDs of TV shows sit side by side in video stores. Short form narratives -- blogs in the world of words, Utube videos in the world of images -- are the modern forms of telling stories. In the world of hunter-gathers and agrarians time was unitized in months and days, by the passage of the seasons and the laconic movements of the sun and moon. In the industrial age, it was broken into seconds, with beat of the heart serving as the naturally occurring analog for the incessant, throbbing sound of the assembly line. Now we live in a world measured in nanoseconds, a unitization of time for which there is no natural analog. There is nothing in our bodies or in the natural world that moves in unison with the machines that define our existence. This is a central reason why we are alienated and why it is absurd to think that novels can be a meaningful artistic expression of our age. Let's not wallow in nostalgia for the past. Long live blogs. That is, until the time comes when stories are downloaded directly into our brains and minds!

One last thing before I dissolve back into space. Richard told me that, with all of this movement toward digitization and abbreviation, he still likes the way a good book feels and especially how it looks on a shelf. That is, books may be an unnecessary and wasteful means of housing a story, but they work well as an element of interior design. In that sense they are similar to a houseplant, but superior in that they don't require watering (just an occasional dusting works fine). With that in mind, it's possible that if Michael Guntrip's postings go well, he might publish them in book form (The Recluse, a novel by Richard Gilbert) or Michael's postings may never be more than fragments of a novel, a component perspective in the wider purpose of the poly-conscious blog. Another possibility is to publish the entire blog, including the postings of all the alts and any reader comments, at various times, perhaps once a year. In this case, the cover might read something like:

WWW.THERECLUSE.ORG

VOLUME ONE: 2008

                        RICHARD GILBERT'S INNER ORG

D.K. Urbane: Hey, Buddy, Can You Spare a Linden?

2008-01-22T11:00:28-08:00

Last night I had a hot date planned with Zania Delecto. She's a doctoral student in zoology at Ohio State University's campus in Second Life, a part-time exotic dancer at Club Atlantis and, frankly, the best sex-simmer I've met in a long time. We were going to take a swim in the ocean near the club after she got out of work and then get tattooed at a new parlor I had heard about. After that, it would be back to my place to try out the new genitals I picked up last week for only L10 in the northeast grid. Somebody told me once that Zania's controller is a 75 year-old Baptist minister from Hope, Arkansas, but I think it was just a ploy to get me out of the picture, probably due to jealousy. Anyway, even if it was true, I wouldn't care. I'm not gay or Anti-Baptist and I sure wasn't out to sim her controller, even if that was possible.

You know what they say about "the best laid plans." Well, it was really true when it comes to my date with Zania. I had just left my apartment and teleported to the south grid where the club is located. While I was waiting for Zania to get off work, I went to the ATM machine at Ginko Financial where I bank (they pay 40% interest per year!) to pull out a few Lindens for the night. Unfortunately the ATM wasn't working, so I went a little ways down the grid to Linden Bank & Trust, but that ATM was down too. Fuck! While I was trying to sort out what to do, I saw a crowd of angry avatars (some human form, some animal, a few mythics and machines) marching down the gridway carrying signs saying "Give Us Our Banks Back!" and shouting slogans like "We want our Lindens!" "We want our Lindens!"

While this spectacle was going on, I noticed Zania standing outside the club and watching the crowd too. She was still dressed in her exotic dancer outfit and even with all of the protest and outrage going on I felt like simming her right there in public. I teleported next to her and she immediately told me that they had closed the club early because no one in Second Life had any Lindens to spend. She said that Ginko Financial had tricked a bunch of morons to deposit their Lindens in their bank with the ludicrous promise that they would pay 40% interest a year. Then, after Ginko had collected over L75,000,and became the dominant financial institution in Second Life, they shut down the bank and vanished from the grid. Because no one knew the identity of the controllers (and even if they did the controllers lived in countries all over the world so no one knew who had legal jurisdiction), there was no way to recover the money. The geeks at Linden Labs freaked out and temporarily banned all banks from Second Life, fearing that other institutions might be planning the same type of scam. Suddenly people couldn't get Lindens. Prices of grid plots plunged and the Second Life Stock Market lost a third of its value. Some Wild-west, libertarian types were furious at Linden. They said that it was OK that Linden had banned gambling and simming with minors, but that they had no business meddling in the Second Life economy: If people were stupid enough to put their money into Ginko or some other scamming bank that was their problem. On the other hand, the annoying, lefty types at the Second Life Bar Association wanted their controllers to get the U. S. Congress to regulate all in-line financial institutions. Fortunately, none of the Senators or Representatives except for Ron Paul (who no one listens to) had ever heard of Second Life, although they asked if avatars have a right to vote and if they have a well-funded lobby. At the end of her story, Zania asked: "So, where do you have your Lindens?"

Obviously, there wasn't going to be any simming that night.

Richard Gilbert: Research on Virtual Reality

2008-01-20T21:46:43-08:00

Virtual reality is an important topic for a recluse. The reason is that it provides a way of being part of a culture that shares the near infinite possibilities of the visceral world without having to put up with all the annoying shit associated with real people. Without virtual reality, the only choice is isolation and self-absorption (which is extremely limiting) or being part of the crude,moronic masses (which is extremely irritating). Virtual reality, especially as it realizes its full promise (including digitizing the sensual realm), offers an alternative universe to explore with the advantage of being able to unplug at a moment's notice.

Recently, Karen Platoni, a freelance journalist from Oakland, published an article in the January/February edition of Stanford (the magazine of the Stanford Alumni Association) in which she summarizes a number of cutting edge studies on the psychological impact of experiences in virtual reality. In her article, she focuses on research being conducted in Jeremy Bailenson's Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford (VHIL). The lab has been in existence since 2003 and has grown to include 5 graduate students, several post-docs, and 25 undergraduate assistants.

Preliminary data from the VHIL tend to support the conclusion that experiences gained via digital alter egos (i.e., avatars) can change how people behave in real life settings.

---Nick Yee, a communications Post-doc at VHIL, has found that people who were given taller avatars behaved more aggressively in both virtual and face-to-face bargaining tasks. Similarly, subjects who were given more attractive avatars approached more potential dates in a real life social setting.

---Hal Ersner-Hershfield, a fifth-year doctoral student in psychology, is addressing a fascinating question in his research. He asks: If we put an individual in a virtual environment in which his or her avatar is a realistic, aged version of the self, will this cause the person to think more about the future, to place more importance on the future in his or her current thinking and actions? To create the aged avatar, Ersner-Hershfield photographs a subject and then digitally alters his or her image so that it reflects what the subject will probably look like in 30 years. In a study currently in progress, he is assessing whether interacting in virtual reality with your futurized image encourages savings and a long-term financial perspective as opposed to an orientation to spending and short-term consumption. If it does, it may be a mechanism to increase the dangerously low savings rate in American society and help individuals avoid future financial crises.

---Jesse Fox and Victoria Green are also doctoral candidates in communications. Fox is examining whether seeing your avatar exercise (either by running on a virtual treadmill or lifting virtual weights) leads to more real-world activity and exercise, while Green is looking at the impact of having an avatar of a different race on racial stereotyping.

I found these studies to be fascinating. Of course, even if they scientifically demonstrate that virtual experiences can affect real-life attitudes and behaviors, we will have to see if the findings are robust and if they endure over time. I also found myself thinking about the possibility of applying these techniques to areas of applied psychology. For instance, in the clinical realm, imagine an individual who had an anxiety disorder (such as a phobia, or social anxiety) who was able to experience transcending his or her fears in a virtual environment. Would this translate into meaningful and durable changes in real-life? Or consider organizational psychology: One could train managers in a virtual business setting before they assume their positions in the actual world. One could go on and on musing about the potential applications because, if the basic premise holds and virtual experiences can generate meaningful, lasting changes in visceral reality, the psychological applications are virtually (no pun intended) limitless.

Cha Ching: Publicizing the Blog

2008-01-20T15:40:53-08:00

Cha: Greetings, Soul Father.

Richard: Give me a second, Cha. I'm shaving around my Adam's apple and I want to make sure I don't cut my throat before I receive your wisdom.

Cha: Take your time...

Richard: OK, what's on your mind?

Cha: I was wondering if you know how to monitor the amount of traffic to the blog?

Richard: Miraculously, that's something I've been able to figure out on my own. You click on Control Panel and then on Stats.

Cha: Excellent! And what do the stats look like?

Richard: Since the blog was launched I've had 357 total hits, an average of 8.57 per day.

Cha: It's a start.

Richard: Not really. I've accounted for 351 of the hits. You've visited the site a few times and I think my girlfriend and mother looked at it once each. Of course, Metablog monitors everything closely, but he doesn't go to the site itself.

Cha: Obviously, we need to be more aggressive in getting the message out.

Richard: I could yell out the window.

Cha: The first thing we need to do is to publicize the blog. Click on Weblogs>Configure>Publicity.

Richard: OK.

Cha: Click "Yes" to "Publicize this Weblog" and under "Notify/Update Services" check all the available boxes: Google, Technorati, and Weblogs.com.

Richard: Got it.

Cha: Now, whenever you save a post, other websites will automatically be contacted and told that you have updated your site which may drive more traffic to your blog. To help direct your posts to relevant websites, you'll need to write a description of the blog and a few keywords.

Richard: That's a little tricky. This isn't something easily describable like a celebrity gossip or fantasy football site. I'll need a few minutes....

Cha: China has been around for thousands of years.

(Tick-tock; tick-tock; tick-tock)

Richard: OK, here goes: The Recluse explores the issue of engaging or retreating from the world using an odd but innovative narrative form called a "Poly-Consciousness Bloggel." It's a "bloggel" in that it combines features of a blog (serial posts) and a novel (a consideration of themes, characters, plot and language). It's "poly-conscious" in that 5 different 'alts' (component personalities, or forms of consciousness, of the writer or host personality) are used to consider the conflict over isolation and engagement in the contemporary world. As for keywords, I'd say "recluse," "on-line writing," and "mixed genre."

Cha: I like it. You should be a writer.

Richard: I think I should yell out the window.

Cha Ching: The Typelist

2008-01-10T22:59:00-08:00

Cha-Ching: Good morning, Soul Father. Are you shaving?

Richard: Of course. What have you been up to, Cha?

CC: I've been going through a magical realism phase. This week I'm reading the collected works of Cristina Garcia.

RG: What do you think?

CC: Very good. Interesting stories. Lush, poetic prose. But I must say the woman seems a bit preoccupied with chickens.

RG: I've heard that point raised about her work. In her defense, she's often said that a writer should follow his or her obsessions. I suppose in her case that means chickens.

CC: Actually, even though I may sound critical, I'm getting into this chicken thing. I've collected a couple of Chinese urban legends that feature chickens and I'm planning on e-mailing them to Garcia's publisher. There's one where a retired Army Colonel taught a chicken to goose step as if it was in a military procession. Another one tells of 750 chickens who died when a man living next to their farm set off an elaborate fireworks display in the middle of the night. Apparently the loud noises so agitated the chickens that they began flying wildly, smashing their heads into the walls and ceilings of their coops, and crushing their skulls.

RG: While you're at it, send her this item too. Tell her that Ralph Lauren is starting a new clothing line in South America called "Pollo." It's like the IZOD line except, instead of an alligator, there's a little white chicken on the breast of every shirt. The advertising slogan for the line is "Vaya con Pollos."

CC: That's clever, but I don't think it qualifies as magical realism.

RG: OK, so add the fact that if you sprinkle a little curry powder on the shirt the bird comes to life and flies around the room squawking madly before turning into a bowl of Chinese Chicken Salad and landing on the dining room table.

CC: That's more like it. In any event, the reason I called wasn't to talk about chickens. I think it's time to begin adding some promotional elements to the blog. Are you familiar with a " book type list."

RG: No.

CC: It's a list of books, in this case your books, that is displayed on one of the columns of the blog home page. When you click on one of the listed books, you are immediately connected to Amazon.com where you can read more about the book, look at the table of contents, read reviews, and purchase the book. You'll also need to become an Amazon Associate so that when anyone purchases one of your books after being linked to Amazon from your blog, you will get an additional royalty. It's just a few cents, but it's a start in the world of e-commerce, and it all adds up.

RG: It sounds a bit overwhelming. Will you walk me through it?

CC: Of course.

RG: Thanks. If it works out, I'll buy you a chicken.

Richard Gilbert: Popeye and Percocet

2007-12-28T09:32:25-08:00

   I've been lying in bed under the influence of percocet following the extraction of three wisdom teeth. It's been a few days and I haven't changed the t-shirt and sweats I put on when I first climbed into bed after surgery. I still have red marks on my chest where the nurse placed the leads to monitor my vital signs and there's a bruise on my inside right elbow where Dr. Givens inserted the iv for anesthesia. I haven't shaved or showered. Let's just say I'm a spectacle of decrepitude.
   Percocet is good for pain, but it's hell on sustained concentration. I can only read or write or watch tv for a half an hour before feeling exhausted and drifting into sleep or a state of reverie. Yesterday, when I was in one of these dream states, I heard my upstairs neighbor practicing the piano by repeatedly playing the Popeye theme song. At first the quirky absurdity of the situation made me happy and glad to be alive. But then, as he played the song over and over again, I began to get irritated as if I was being subjected to a kind of Chinese water torture with sound. I started to recall an incident that happened in London a few years ago when a man became enraged at his upstairs neighbor who was playing Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" at full volume on his stereo over and over again. After hearing the song a few dozens times and getting no response to his banging on the ceiling with the end of a broom, or crying out "Stop it, please!", the man raced up the stairs and knocked loudly on the neighbor's door. When the neighbor opened the door, the man barged into the flat and punched the neighbor in the nose. Then he tore the stereo from the wall, threw it out the window, and watched it smash to pieces on the sidewalk below. This was a very satisfying result for the man, but it wasn't the end of the story. The neighbor went to the police and filed charges against him, including assault and destruction of property. In court, the man argued that the repetitive playing of "I Will Always Love You" had caused him to go temporarily insane. Unfortunately, the judge wasn't swayed by his defense and the man was sent to jail for 5 days.
   I didn't want to end up like the man in London, so I coped with the persistent Popeye song with fantasy rather than aggression. I imagined myself as one of the You Tube questioners at the CNN Democratic Presidential Debate. Anderson Cooper had just rolled my video on the big screen and I was holding a ukulele and telling Dennis Kucinich that I admired the boldness of his platform (even though I supported Joe Biden for President, with Hilary a pragmatic second choice, and could accept Obama or Edwards with some concerns about their lack of foreign policy experience) but that he needed to lighten up and be a bit more sympathetic. My suggestion was that he find a theme song for his candidacy and, because I was a lyricist in an earlier time, I had taken the liberty of writing one for him. I then began playing the ukulele and singing (to the tune of Popeye, of course):

                     I'm running for President.
                     I'm running for President.
                     I'll win in the finish.
                     I'm Dennis Kucinich!
                     I'm running for President.

   Hilary seemed to like the tune, but Kucinich was livid. He thought linking him to Popeye trivialized his message. This pissed me off, so I countered by singing the song again with different lyrics.

                     I'm strung out on Percocet.
                     I'm strung out on Percocet.
                     My campaign is finished.
                     I'm Dennis Kucinch.
                     I'm strung out on Percocet.
                     Toot. Toot.

Metablog: Themes and Content

2007-12-08T22:22:32-08:00

The Recluse explores the conflict between engaging and retreating from the world, from being with others or being alone. These competing desires of isolation and interaction are as old as humanity itself. Long ago I'm sure some Java Man or Neanderthal Guy got in a pissy mood and announced to his fellow primitives that he couldn't deal with them anymore and was going back to the cave to be alone. Then later, after he calmed down, or he began to feel lonely or hungry, or he heard the distant growl of a sabertooth, he decided to make his way back to the campfire for eating, huddling together, group grunting, or whatever the hell cavepersons did around the fire. Just anything but be alone.

Fast forward a few thousand years and the emotional situation is largely the same. Everyone is still trying to find the right balance in their lives between belonging and freedom, between intimacy and separateness, to achieve what shrinks call an "optimal balance between distance and closeness." It's just that instead of Java Man, we have Starbucks Man and Coffee Bean Woman. And instead of grunts, we have "we don't spend enough time togethers" and "I don't feel connected to yous," and "I need more spaces", and "I'm feeling smothereds," and "I don't have enough time for myselfs," etc. etc.

So has anything changed other than the language we have to express one of our core conflicts? Yes: technology. For most of history a person could either be alone or in direct interaction with others; there was no other choice. Then a series of historical events led to the introduction of the written letter into mass culture and the beginning of revolutionary changes in human social psychology....

In 1600 B.C the first alphabet is developed in the Sinai Peninsula (Egypt), replacing pictographic images as the dominant form of written expression. This is followed by the development of the Hebrew alphabet in 600 B.C and the Greek alphabet in 400 B.C. (Note: Alphabets, the cereal, is introduced much later.)

In 1200 B.C ink, first invented by the Chinese philosopher, Tien-Lcheu (circa 2700 B.C.), becomes commonly available.

In 800 B.C paper is produced in China. According to Fu Licheng, the curator of the Dunhuang Museum, the oldest piece of paper was discovered by archaeologists digging through ancient rubbish in Yuman Pass -- the gateway between China and Central Asia.

In 400 B.C....The Greek scholar, Cadmus, combines alphabet, ink, and paper, and invents the written letter.

In 400 A.D a stable form of ink is developed that will adhere to paper for a long time.

In 700 A.D the quill pen (from bird feathers) is introduced.

In 1400 A.D paper mills arise in Europe and make paper widely available.

The written letter was a significant development because it enabled individuals, for the first time, to interact with each other, to be in psychological relationship to each other, even though they were physically separate. It presented an option for balancing the competing needs of involvement and independence that didn't exist previously.

At the same time, the written letter has two major limitations as a medium to conduct a relationship. First, it is painfully slow. In the era of stage coaches and steam-powered boats, it could take months for letters to be exchanged if the people involved lived on opposite sides of a large country or across an ocean. Even with the advent of trains, and later planes, days or weeks could elapse between sending, receiving, and responding to a letter. Over time the speed of exchange problem was overcome by the introduction of the telegraph,and later the near-instantaneous transmission capablility of e-mail, instant messenging, and phone-based texting. These more immediate forms of communication more closely approximated the interactive rhythms of face-to-face relationships.

The second problem with the written letter as a mediator of human interaction is that it is a purely symbolic form of communication. That is, there is no direct sensory information transmitted in a letter -- either aural, visual, or tactile -- the way it is in a face-to-face exchange. Messages conveyed via telegraph, e-mail, and IMing share this sensory limitation. This is why the telephone was so revolutionary: it allows both immediate communication and has a sensory (aural) component. The listener not only gets the message; he or she hears the voice. Later, video phones and computer based videocams added a visual component to immediate, remote communication. Now the only major sensory modality lacking in widely available forms of distance interaction is touch. And soon enough this will be solved as well. Individuals will "meet" in virtual environments (rather than talk on video phones) while wearing special gloves or full body suits. The touch of their cyber representations will then be translated from digital information to mechanical information (as with a fax machine) and sent to their respective body suits in order to convey physical affection and sexuality. When two people can immediately exchange the full range of aural, visual, and sensory information while being physically separate, the distinction between direct, visceral interaction and electronically-mediated interaction will become increasingly subtle.