The War Prayer

A Memorial Day reflection you're not likely to hear or see on the news, from the pen of Mark Twain:

Cormac McCarthy at Cannes

I've made no bones about the fact that I was not a big fan of Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men. Increasingly, I'm beginning to wonder if I just am not advanced enough to appreciate it. From the sounds of it, the Coen Brothers might be.

Speaking of McCarthy, I'm really shocked, pleasantly so, that The Road is getting such wonderful press. And not just from Oprah -- which was a development I was not expecting at all. If you've not yet read it yet, trust me, do so.

Religion as an Alternative

Curtis White has a fantastic two-part essay on "the idols of environments" and the "ecology of work" ([1] & [2]) in Orion Magazine, which by the way is a fairly new online magazine that is well-worth looking through if you're interested in eco-issues. Both parts really hit hard on an issue that is increasingly important to me: religiously re-animating our passion and our relationship with the earth & existence.

White first captured my interest a couple of years ago with his book The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don't Think For Themselves. Since then, he wrote an underappreciated little book called The Spirit of Disobedience [see summary version from last April's Harper's]. I've never blogged about this last book, but it has proven really influential to me in terms of offering me a new grammar to conceptualize the kind of research & work I'd like next to do.

Judging by his essay in Orion, it has also set White's current course. In the second part, he does, I think, have an error. He asserts that humanity is naturally inclined to live in harmony with itself and its environment. I think he is fundamentally wrong here. The history of human civilisation has found it not simply a witness but a cause of an ecosystem's collapse. This is no radical claim either -- just read Jared Diamond's Collapse. Now, this isn't to call humanity a virus, or something dramatic like that. It's an observation, not a moral judgment, that we consistently tame nature to its submission, and in many cases our own demise.

What is a moral judgment is the hope for an alternative. To call for a different & religious way to approach and live within our ecosystems, as White does, should not be framed in some kind of nostalgic or idealistic plea for 'the way things used to be'. It is far less practical than that: its focus is about the way things might be. This was basically the point of my long, likely-ignored post last week about marketable religion. Only when we have figured out a way to think something different (note: not think something differently, which just assumes we see that "something" in a different light), and thus to breach the defining confines of practicality and productivity, is it possible to proceed "religiously". The aim of religion, in this perspective, isn't simply to project imaginative fantasies, but somehow to inspire and organize us to proceed from these fantasies imaginatively.

Sir Charles

I've been a fan of Charles Barkley ever since he actually made Auburn's basketball team fun to watch back in the early '80s. Even as a nine-year-old I could appreciate the sheer athleticism of somebody so fat -- at one in his college basketball career was weighing 300 lbs, all carried in a 6'4 frame. He, of course, went on to become one of the greatest NBA players of all time. And, in all likelihood, one of the most entertaining.

Fortunately, Barkley has not become an embarassing shell of his entertaining self like Michael Jordan. TNT was very wise to pony up the big bucks to land him on their Inside the NBA studio show, and it is consistently one of the most fun things to watch on tv. I suspect that even non-basketball fans might enjoy it, if only because it's so rare to see people on a live set actually seem to enjoy one another's company and have a good time talking.

For those who do not know him very well, Barkley is the consummate court jester. He is, though, also pretty insightful, as this interview proves. Much of it can be ignored, but he does hit on something in crystal-clear, "blue-collar" language what I think is the fundamental truth about the world today (not just America):

So is that what interests you primarily--economic issues?

America is divided by economics strictly. You know, people always talk about race, and we have racial problems in this country. Of course we do. But the real issue is the rich against the poor. We've got to get poor white people and poor black people and Mexicans [sic] to realize they are all in the same boat. If you in one of those three groups and you are poor, you are going to be in a bad neighborhood, you are going to go to a bad school, and you are going to have strikes against you. You can't commit crimes in good neighborhoods. They will get your ass. Their kids go to private school, or they go to school in a good economic area. But the poor people, they are all in the same boat but they divide you based on race or stuff like that. A lot of these politicians say things like "We've got to stop all these illegal immigrants." I am like, "That is so easy to stop." They are not working for other immigrants.

Has your perspective on these issues changed in the last few years?

Yes, when I realized that rich people will always be rich and the poor people are like crabs in a barrel. They are going to fight with each other, but they are really in the same boat. They want you to argue about gay marriage. They want you to argue about the war in Iraq.

Well said.

A San Francisco Treat

It's taken about a week, but K., Ireland & I are just about settled into our temporary housing in a Mission Bay community two blocks down from AT&T Park, home of Barry Bonds and the San Francisco Giants. We've washed the miles out of clothes and off the car, and I think we've sufficiently adjusted to the time-zone change.

I am, of course, still looking for a job. The only positive thing about this is that I have time to get to know the city better. Ireland & I, for example, learned very quickly that long walks in the Nob & Russian Hills area are not for the faint-hearted. These hills are fierce!

I've also been able to indulge my budding love of jazz. (Now that I think about it, I don't know that I've broadcast this interest all that much here on Silentio. If you're at all interested, I do so elsewhere every Friday night in my regular feature "Friday Night Jazz".) Last week, I was listening to the radio while idling next to Ocean Beach and was introduced to a San Francisco institution, Uplift! The Music of John Coltrane, a four-hour program on Tuesday afternoons devoted purely to the music of John Coltrane. I was stunned. Four hours!? Even if you're not a jazz fan now, I invite you to take a listen to this program. If Coltrane cannot suck you into the jazz fold, I don't know who can. Click here on Tuesdays, between noon and 4 (between 3 and 7 for you EST people), for the station's streaming broadcast. You won't be disappointed.

Marketable Religion

There is a general, running assumption that defines our globalistic political economy: if the market tanks, we're all fucked. By 'we', the assumption does not refer to the already impoverished. They are already fucked. All measures to save them now are efforts to assuage the collective first-world conscience. No, by 'we', this assumption refers to the workaday hoi polloi -- those of us with a little bit of 401-K stock, casual day-traders, or even those with no stock at all. The market, so goes the assumption, is so deeply inbedded into our experience of reality that the two are now now fully indistinguishable. When somebody imagines an alternative lifestyle, say, on a commune, most of us conclude that this simply isn't practical. When somebody else suggests that we individually try to 'opt out' of the market, or to 'escape the grid', we're told this kind of singular action isn't productive. Indeed, so goes the trump card, neither are they even feasible, for the market itself makes possible the the existence of its alternative -- even the thought of its alternative. E.g., those Europeans can enjoy their fancy universal health care, we're told, because Americans are the suckers stuck with the market-based health care, where billions of dollars are pumped into research and development.

On one level, this assumption rings true. For the sake of a blog post, I'll accept it as such anyway. Now the more interesting question: why is this true? Why exactly is the market the limit-experience by which which all other experience is defined -- the paradigmatic paradigm? Why exactly do we read with embarassment our religious texts, when they tell us to give away all we own, or when they indicate the implications of recognizing desire as the root of suffering, and recognizing our experience of life as one of vanity and/or illusion? Why do we then rationalize and/or spiritualize these texts into something more palatable -- something more marketable and productive?

The answer, of course, is as simple as the question is complex, and betrays a religious element to our political economies. Our religious myths almost universally, be they orthodox or heretical, speak of an original -- or immanently recurring -- lie. A deception at the heart of our experience of what we take to be real. A deception that is the original melancholic "fall" (or, for the philosopher, "being thrown") into existence. For some, this deception is an evil that never should've happened; for others, thinking beyond this original evil is impossible, for where there is no deception there is no creation, and where there is no creation there is nothing & nobody to gripe about the deception. It is here that we find an important analogue between the mythic/religious 'original lie', whether it be a deception that must be reversed or one redeemed, and our position with respect to the the market & marketable religion.

Almost across the board, religious myths are built around the notion that in some way the basis and limits to our lived existence (be they the lie or the market) can be overcome. However, to resist the lie (or, by extension, the market) or at least the degree to which it defines us and the possibilities for our future, is not a matter of coming up with transcendental or utopian alternatives, as though we might imagine some truth that is beyond or trumps the plane of existence (and thus of the lie / the market). We are, on the contrary, stuck with the great lie, to the extent that it forms the basis for all existent, marketable truth.

Nevertheless, in my view, our religious myths & cultic practices are not means of cooperation or compromise. (Such compromise is what we find in traditional formulations of sacrificial atonement -- i.e., Christ dying on the Cross to satisfy the penalty for guilt, etc. -- and various proposals now to use use the market to solve problems caused by the market -- e.g., carbon credits, etc. I do not find either very compelling.) To overcome the great lie, our religious myths remain fully a part of the lie they expose, and thus are prey to inherent weaknesses, flaws, and aporia, but inform a cultic practice whose power is not accessed by marketable efficiency. If, then, religion can be found to participate on the level of the lie, and perhaps even provide our political economy with its foundational myth, the cultic practice of religion might then also inform us of a means & aesthetics of our resistance.

I recognize that all this comes dangerously close to an apologia for fundamentalism. When Thomas Frank wondered, 'What's wrong with Kansas?', he failed to adequately explore the religious basis for many rural poor voters to go against their own temporal (financial) interests and instead home in on moral issues. While I affirm there are solid religious reasons for these voters to vote against their interests, and thus to reject marketabl efficiency, I fully reject their equation of morality and religion. Such an equation, in my estimation, requires little to no actual cultic practice -- and, thus, very little in the way of actual religion. Contemporary religion, in the east now as much as the west, has traded in the power of the cult that cannot be measured for the power of its marketable return. This need not be a the immediate return of, say, a bomb exploded in the name of a deity, for it could just as easily be done with a view to deferred eschatological future that never arrives. Moral civic religion is, in short, not simply a reluctance but a full-scale unwillingness to take traditional religious practices at their word -- that is to say, is to not really believe in their power or truth.

A point of discussion, I hope, is the the extent to which we have almost completely lost the sense that religious practice has been traditionally limited to minoritarian communities. Monks, of myriad religious stripe, for example. This never meant that an individual culture was without religion. Superstition has, of course, always been rife; we might even say there was enough inbedded religious belief that, to the outside observer, the culture itself was religious. But, for the most part, it seems that traditional religious practice consisted of patronage -- that is, supporting that smaller community who was seen as actually believing in, and thus practicing, the religious myth. In this way, the greater community reaped the benefit by cultic proxy. There is, perhaps, something to this sense of the true believers believing for you.

If that is the case, casting alternative religious visions & practices, in spite of the protests of some, is not an irresponsible apology or rationalization for the religion & religious ideology that exists (even if unknowingly) to maintain the lie / the market. It is, rather, one of our most essential tasks.

Masochism

A month between posts. I know what you long-time readers are thinking: he's back to his old ways again. But believe me, I had the best of intentions. I wanted to blog about the month-long process of packing and moving, but it was so painfully dull, devoid of even the most agonizing and vulgar frustration, that I couldn't find anything worth writing about. The only exception, however, is a big one. Namely, the unexpected sadness I felt when I actually left. I should've blogged about this at the time, I suppose; but, to be honest, it was too raw an emotion, too deeply felt. I'm not a good enough writer any more to set that kind of feeling into words. Perhaps if I blogged more often ...

I'll try to do so now, though. With a little bit of hindsight, and a lot of bit of (potential) foresight.

The final week I was in Cincinnati reminded me how much I'll miss living in that part of the country. I've grown very oddly affectionate of my home state, Kentucky, for example. K. & I found ourselves driving south more often than we did any other direction, in fact. There is an allure there that I kind of thought I'd moved beyond. In the past year ago, in particular, I've become fascinated with farming and traditional crafts, at the precise time in my life I was moving from one urban environment to an even more urban environment. I remain a man of pavement and people traffic, and yet I cling to a sense that the passing away of traditional arts of life & work is perhaps the final tragedy of our age. Is it still 'nostalgia' when you have never experienced something before and have no inclination to really experience it?

More important still, though, is the degree to which I realized I really love my family and friends. Unlike my last big move, this one really hurt. Between the mother who sold me her beloved car for a bargain-basement price; a brotherly best friend who goes out of his way to help me even when we rarely get to hang out; an older friend-mentor who buys me lunch & whisky, and who (with his wife) has hosted some of the best dinner conversations I've had in ages; to an old pastoral friend who, in spite of disagreeing with me about just about everything worth disagreeing about, lends me laptops and televisions and Sopranos DVDs; and a Hoosier household who buys my dog treats and toys for the road, supplies me with an endless supply of cookies, and has extended me an open-ended sanctuary for nearly five years -- I have a lot to miss.

As I drove west this past week, I was very regularly reminded of the things I will miss. And now, as I walked the streets of San Francisco yesterday and today, and as I now look out my hotel's nineteenth-floor window to see the streetcar rumble by, I don't miss any of these things & people any less. Ever peculiar, and ever melancholy, I know, I now look forward to the accumulation of more people and things worth missing.

I'm under no illusion that I've "settled down." Indeed, I only hope to feel this kind of sadness again.

Commander Crunchy is Homo Sacer

The saga of Mr. Sprinkles continues over at Acceptable TV. Watch it here, and then head over there to register & vote for it. We must keep Mr. Sprinkles' story alive.

Mr. Sprinkles

Welcome to the world of Mr. Sprinkles & Acceptable TV.

The Perils of Parking

Lately, I've become increasingly interested in urban planning -- another missed opportunity for me, it seems -- so maybe none of this is as interesting to you as it is me. But, surely you've been stuck in downtown traffic and have fumed, 'Where the hell are all these people going!?! MOVE!!' If so, check out this astonishingly interesting Op-Ed in today's New York Times about the relationship between traffic congestion in cities and the search for a cheap curbside parking space. (As for me, I'm always content to take the first parking spot I find -- no matter if it results in a half-mile walk. It's not that I'm a responsible person, it's just that I'm not the model of patience.)

[A] surprising amount of traffic isn’t caused by people who are on their way somewhere. Rather, it is caused by those who have already arrived. Streets are clogged, in part, by drivers searching for a place to park.

[. . .]

When my students and I studied cruising for parking in a 15-block business district in Los Angeles, we found the average cruising time was 3.3 minutes, and the average cruising distance half a mile (about 2.5 times around the block). This may not sound like much, but with 470 parking meters in the district, and a turnover rate for curb parking of 17 cars per space per day, 8,000 cars park at the curb each weekday. Even a small amount of cruising time for each car adds up to a lot of traffic.

Over the course of a year, the search for curb parking in this 15-block district created about 950,000 excess vehicle miles of travel — equivalent to 38 trips around the earth, or four trips to the moon. And here’s another inconvenient truth about underpriced curb parking: cruising those 950,000 miles wastes 47,000 gallons of gas and produces 730 tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. If all this happens in one small business district, imagine the cumulative effect of all cruising in the United States.

The writer's solution may seem unpalatable to some: increase the cost of curbside parking. But, all in all, I think his thinking is spot-on. We've accommodated the all-consuming culture of the car for far too long. This is but a token gesture in the right direction.

"I've Seen Everything"

K. & I watched the first season of Extras a couple of months ago, but this scene still kills me:

On the Hereafter

This quote is completely stripped of its context, and I'm not even going to say much about it. But it's something I came back across this evening and thought worth sharing.

The secularist and the Marxist criticism of the vision of marching to Zion claims that the promise of pie in the sky bye and bye cuts the nerve of action today. The expectation of "fairer worlds on high" is supposed to detach the present from that which is promised.

This may well have been the case when in recent centuries the beneficiaries of the social system appealed to a future world to encourage their subjects to remain docile. But our interest is not in asking whether the eighteenth-century religion could be the opiate of the people, but rather understanding the function of the apocalyptic vision in the first-century church, whose seers were not on any drug.

In the world view of that time the gap between the present and the promise was not fundamental. What we are now doing is what leads to where we are going. Since the "this-worldly" and the "other-worldly" were not perceived in radical dichotomy, to be "marching through Emmanuel's ground" today is to be on the way to Zion. Terms like "hereafter" are in that kind of context affirmations not negations. They do not say that that to which we look forward is in a radically different kind of world from the world in which we now live, but rather that it lies farther in the same direction in which we are being led. The unforeseeable future is farther along in the same direction as the foreseeable future for which we are responsible. (John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, 248-49).

A Little Basketball

As many of you know, this was the first year of a new rule in the NBA that requires kids just out of high school to wait one year before they will be allowed to play professionally. The problem, near as I understand it, is that team owners were increasingly frustrated by the fact that they had to invest money in unproven talent. Of course, nobody had a gun to their head when it came to drafting kids just out of high school. And, of course, for every Lebron James who came out of high school and became an instant All Star there were at least three players like Sebastain Telfair who will almost certainly end their career playing in Europe. Nevertheless, no team owner wanted to take the risk of passing up on that high school phenom who might be the next big thing. They're fun to market, they're potentially very lucrative (i.e., they put butts in seats), and they can revive an organization (for a while) if they're great. After several years of rolling the dice, though, the owners finally decided to change things up. Let the kids play college ball for a year, or sit on their butts playing with their Nintendo Wii, they said, anything but enter the draft.

This year, the rule has been almost universally regarded as a success for college basketball. It's brought long-time NBA fans back to the game, and it's turned football towns into basketball towns (e.g., Columbus, Ohio and Austin, Texas). Between Kevin Durant down in Texas and Greg Oden at Ohio State, NCAA Division I basketball was bursting at the seams with awesome talent. It was, in my estimation, a golden year for college basketball. Durant and Oden were choirboys, loved by their communities and colleges -- they said all the right things, even down to the obligatory "I might come back next year" lie. Of course they're not coming back next year, but we'll give them credit for playing along with the illusion of honesty and integrity that compels so many to adore college basketball.

All along, though, there have been naysayers to this new rule. Take for instance, Bobby Knight. For all his personal flaws, Knight is an educator at heart. College basketball is not, for him, a NBA minor league; nor is it a junior circuit. Kids are given athletic scholarships ... in order to go to school. The fact that they are athletes of the highest caliber is secondary. Obviously, then, he doesn't take kindly to kids coming in for a year only beause they have to. He contends that what you have is a bastardization of college athletics as a whole.

"Because now you can have a kid come to school for a year and play basketball and he doesn't even have to go to class," Knight said Monday during the Big 12 coaches call. "He certainly doesn't have to go to class the second semester. I'm not exactly positive about the first semester. But he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball.

"That, I think, has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports."

Now, I don't know what Oden or Durant's academic schedule or grades look like. But, on the whole, Knight makes a pretty good argument here. Thus far, though, both players have been such class acts that's it not really been a big issue to too many people. What happens, though, when a high school kid without their apparent maturity comes along -- who understands the illusion of integrity in college basketball, but who revels in openly flaunting it rather than repress or deny it? What happens when a kid comes along who will not say the things we want to hear, or play along the way we want; who understands the college game purely in terms of his pre-professional marketing; who has his coach wrapped around his finger? What happens then?

We'll find out next year.

A Redacted Cross-Post From Elsewhere

I've been meaning to post something for a few weeks now, but something always comes up just at the moment I feel like I have the words to express whatever was on my mind at the time. I've no such excuse now, but I won't subject you to a series of catch-up posts. One should do just fine. So, a few thoughts:

I don't generally have a lot of positive things to say about Indianapolis, but, wow, the Indianapolis Museum of Art is pretty damn nice. Def. worth a trip. Should keep you busy enough to ignore the rest of the city. Esp. check out their fine collection of crafts & three Frank Stella installations -- oh, and one of the most curiously vulgar nudes in late-19th century American painting.

Chicago gets nicer each time I visit. I may very well never leave the next time I'm there. A couple of random Chicago notes. First, just before I left, I wandered around Lincoln Square, and was really thrown off by how much it (or at least the street I was on) felt like the Main Street of Small Town, America -- except for the fact that (a) people lived there and (b) the people who lived there had families -- an annoying number of kids, actually, now that I think about it. I even saw a shopowner putting out two bowls on the sidewalk, one filled with dog biscuits & the other with water. I didn't feel the least bit bad about stealing one of the biscuits for my dog back in Cincinnati. Second, I think the weather must've put everybody in a good mood, because I never had a more pleasant city-driving experience. People were waving me over, smiling, using turn signals. Bizarre. I flipped off an old lady driving the speed limit on Lake Shore Drive just to make it feel more like home.

While in Chicago I was very pleased that I got to hang out with death-of-god theologian & friend, Tom Altizer, who was lecturing at Chicago Theological Seminary. His visit was, I think, a success. I had a good time anyway, and I think many aspects of it meant a great deal to him, esp. the return to the site of his first 'real' conversion -- *dramatic pause* a conversion to Satan! I don't think, though, most of the people there were prepared for how attuned he is to preaching. If he considers himself a Satanologist, he surely is its most engaging evangelist. Of course, as he would quickly admit, he is not as 'on' as he used to be, and doesn't feel he is as effective. This is probably true. But I'm still pretty staggered at how engaged he is with the life of the mind at nearly eighty. His first talk, in my estimation, was his best. Here, he very concisely talked about nihilism & American politics, and engaged in a lively debate about his appeal to nihilism as both a positive & a negative force -- there is, in my opinion, something to this worth exploring all the more. His second talk was about the absence of Satan in theology. For a moment, Jonathan Edwards was smiling in his grave. And for his final talk he read an unpublished chapter from his memoir. I felt this last talk was the weakest, but only because it dragged a bit toward the end -- esp. compared to his previous presentations, which were amazingly concise & clear for being fully extemporaneous. The man, one of the last who welcomes his damnation, can also still drink & curse like a sailor.

And last, don't let her innocent appearance fool you, my dog is a badass. Yesterday the wife & I were invited to bring her along to a cookout. Things were going fine for about fifteen minutes. There are about four or five other dogs. Ireland was bouncing around and having a good time running after balls & trying to steal sips of beer, when suddenly she & a dachshund named Dandy caught scent of a wild rabbit in the yard. They both went on the hunt, but only Ireland emerged with the prey. Blood on her snout & teeth, Ireland paraded through the circle of guests and around the firepit with the poor animal dangling from her jaws. As I chased her down, I heard the screams of children & adults alike, 'That poor bunny!!!', and sternly tried to dissuade this newly feral beast from shaking the rabbit any further, as the fur was beginning to fly dangerously in the direction of the food. I finally got the dead rabbit from her, despite her token growls & cries of protest, and the bunny was flung in the front yard for the family to deal with later. The last time she caught her intended prey (the only other time), it was a bird at the park, and it took about a week for her swelling pride to diminish to a nearly manageable level. Until then, she will race with all the vim & vigor her newfound bloodlust can manage toward every bird & squirrel downtown. It should be a fun week.

Oh, I almost forgot. Barring something unforeseen, namely me getting one of the jobs I've applied for, I'm going to be moving to San Francisco sometime late next month.

The Collect

Heads up all in-town readers, a good friend of mine is organizing an art exhibition that you are invited to help with. Don't worry, it doesn't involve public nudity or bodypaint. Just your trash. And so the new wave of recycling begins. Be the first on board.

'Take What You Need'

Last night I was talking to a friend and he told me about a church service he'd recently heard about. Just after a sermon about giving & receiving, the preacher had the offering buckets distributed throughout the congregation/audience and told everyone in attendance to 'take what you need'. When the buckets returned to the stage, there was still money in them. So, he proceeded to exhort them all the more to take the money, and if they didn't he would shread it at all (as he did with a few bills). The upshot of all this was to tell them about how the church's benevolence ministry is there to help people out when they've fallen on hard times.

Okay, so here's my question, is this a good lesson? I'll confess that I'm pretty ambivalent about it. On one level, sure, this is all well and good. They're sharing money with one another, etc. I get that. But my initial, and stronger, reaction is more negative. I'm just not entirely sure why. Part of the reason is that I know the Sunday services of this particular church are (or at least used to be -- no clue about how things are now) 'seeker-oriented', and thus not intended to be a full manifestation of their fellowship & teaching. If that is the still the case, this just seems really flashy to me, and possibly (though I'll hold off from assessing their intentions here) a little disingenuous.

Also, just what exactly did he mean by 'take what you need?' Now, my friend wasn't at this church, and he couldn't be sure what the minister's exact words were, but they had to be something like this. He wouldn't say, 'Take what you want', would he? And if he did, well, there'd be no ambivalence about this at all -- I'd be thoroughly against it, but still very keen on attending the next time I saw he was preaching on the subject. But 'take what you need'? I think I'm pretty representative of a lot people's financial burden's -- even with my catastrophic student loan debt, since the value of most people's houses are bound to go belly-up in a few decades and explode the assumption of their long-term investment value -- and my 'need' would surely go beyond what I would be expected to take out of a church offering bucket. I could dig in there until I pulled out enough for rent & utilities, or whatever amount would actually put K. & me in above zero each month, but if I did so, oh dear, the IHOP would be abuzz with snickers & gasps about 'that greedy guy who took over a grand!' (None of this even addresses that one's financial need might be brought about because somebody just bought a new boat that's really straining their budget, or that gas-guzzling SUV parked out in the church parking lot, or the superfluous education one sought for the sake of getting a job that'll let him have summer's off -- not out of a real lack.)

And the heavy-handedness of cutting up money? Is the point of this to situate the reception of a church's benevolence alongside the (evangelical) Christian message that one accepts ('receives' even) Jesus as savior not simply because he loved us first but because of the content of that love -- because he was broken, beaten & killed for our guilt as sinners? Is the reception of this grace and the reception of financial stability so close?

And yet, as I say, I'm open to the potentially positive aspects of this object lesson. I'm ambivalent, though obviously not the insidious brand of ambivalence that sees a 50/50 split between the good and the bad. What about you? I'm genuinely curious what many of you make of all this.

Do Not Adjust Your Dial

As you no doubt have already noticed -- and I'm sure at least a few of you hit the back button, thinking you for sure typed in the wrong address -- but Silentio looks a little different. Short version: I was fiddling with Blogger today, and ended up not only changing the template (the only one this blog has ever known) but accidentally deleting it. As good a time as any for tidying up. Things are still in-process here. I've not yet decided what I want to add. Suggestions are welcome.

An interesting thing I long suspected but never knew for sure: over half of my blogging production was done in the first year of this site's existence. In the second month alone I crammed out 84 posts. To put that in perspective, I managed only a combined 90 posts during 2005 and 2006.

Ahead of His Time

John Ruskin, of course, didn't live to see the modern-day horror that is suburbia, but he described it better than most:

I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital -- upon those thing, tottering, foundationless shells of splintered wood and imitated stone -- upon those gloomy rows of formalized minuteness, alike without difference and without fellowship, as solitary as similar -- not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow, for a desecreted landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground.

A Nauseating Display

This is a bit premature, maybe, what w/ the Bears down by only twelve with enough time to score twice, but I think I can go out on a limb here and say that this is one of the most embarassing offensive displays I've ever watched. Seriously, the Bears as a team & as a legion of fans would have been much better off if they'd lost to the Saints in the NFC Championship. People would've been disappointed, sure. But, this, this has been a debacle!

BTW ... cast your MVP vote for Rex Grossman at NFL.com before the game is over. Because surely he's done more for the Colts than anybody else!

Oh, and congrats to the Colts. In a few minutes you'll be the answer to the trivia question that baffles millions in a few months, "Who won the Superbowl last season?" Soak it up.

Update: Manning is the MVP??? Um. How about the Colts whole offensive line? More possibly, I suppose, what about Dominic Rhodes? Even more possibly, if Dungy hand't inexplicably yanked him in the third quarter, what about Joseph Addai? Seriously, this is yet further evidence to just skip the Superbowl from here on out.

Here I Come!

I have a pretty active imagination, but never so much as when I'm walking through town with my headphones on. I love setting the IPod to shuffle and seeing what the soundtrack to my stroll will be today. After all, all of life's moments need a soundtrack. From sleeping, to sex, to cooking, to fights with the wife. Today's was perfect: The Roots's "Here I Come." I couldn't find a streamable MP3 I could directly link to, but this video of their appearance on Letterman is kickass enough for you to get the idea.



If you can't get your strut on to that, you simply never will. And if you don't have a strut in my neighborhood, well, there's gonna be a problem.

For Julia

There are so many reasons to hate Duke University's basketball team. I could devote a blog to them, in fact. But, the end of last night's Clemson game says enough.

Solitude

This may sound at first like a contradiction, but the greatest thing thus far about my urban life is the solitude it offers. I should explain, since "solitary" is not, by default, a good thing to most people. A solitary life, in my estimation, is most possible only when one is amongst other people. One can live in solitude next to a loving partner in a happy relationship, as well as when surrounded by neighbors in a community you are happy to call your own -- even when neither the relationship or community are necessarily perfect. For indeed solitude is, at root, a celebration of this fragility, an attunement and attention not to what is lacking in these relationships and communities, to their existence in some perfect state, but to one's place in the midst of their reality, in all its fragility. In fact, it might be that much more difficult, impossible even, to achieve solitude in a horrible relationship and community, for in these one's attention tends to be drawn effortlessly to its deficiencies, and thus to what might fix it. It is this culture of remedy, of self-help and cures, of redemption from weakness rather than redemption of weakness, that is really the culture of isolation -- isolation from the reality that people are, well, people.

Solitude is a form of self-consciousness borne of self-reflection. Too commonly, self-reflection is thought to mean isolation. This is a lie. When one looks in a mirror, one sees something. But this something that we call a "a reflection of me," is only understood as such if we are a part of something far greater than ourselves: a community of others, of other "me's," through whom I can identify myself as "me" and them as "not-me". And people are, if anything, weak-kneed versions of themselves -- even when playing the hero -- of all that they aspire to be, of their confessions and ideals . We, in short, tell the truth when we lie, for in falsehoold are we finally being ourselves; and we lie most tellingly, betraying ourselves most fully without even the benefit of thirty pieces of gold, when we unsuccessfully try to tell the truth about ourselves. It's not that we don't know this truth -- oh, we're well beyond self-discovery and finding ourselves, but two of the self-perpetuated frauds that expose much more truth about ourselves than we'd like to admit.

Solitude draws one's attention to this because it is an intentional living, and thus a life truly lived; one lived aware of oneself as being amongst others who are different creatures, with their different stories, joys and heartbreaks, but all bearing the same weight of his or her creaturely life. It is an attunement to a harmonious dischord. Listen to life in the city, open all your senses to its voice -- for it is a voice that can be seen, touched, and smelled -- and you cannot miss this atonal horror that we can't do without. Such is the beauty, or is it the sublime, we can't stand most of the time, that often repulses and angers us, but that is the torturously cruel heart of life's mad melancholy -- which is to say, this life's capacity to create itself anew.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that urban living has exclusive rights to solitude and creativity. Madness. Rural life may be immediately pastoral, with its dumb simplicity and splendor, sunrises and sunsets, but I am certain that the one with the ear to hear knows better. To see beyond the apparent, we need only watch movies like Fargo, read novels like In Cold Blood or anything by Cormac McCarthy or Flannery O'Connor, or talk to my friend Brad P. about the social injustices & reality of rural poverty. No, solitude, the pulse of imagination and anything resembling hope, is beyond the simple divisions of urban & rural, a fact exposed (ironically) by the the masquerade of solitude in that mediated space between rural & urban, the neither/nor, the medicated isolation of our communities of the car and suburban kingdoms.

More on this false solitude, a solitude that is a betrayal of itself, this "geography of nowhere" (as described by James Kunstler), later.

The Road to Nowhere

Figured I should show some love to my thoughts on Cormac McCarthy's new book, The Road. If nothing else, it deserves a link somewhere. Readers, however, are a different story altogether.

Stay tuned for a more substantial post. Should be up later Monday.

A Day in the Life

So, it seems the wife & I have survived almost nine full months in the heart of darkness, the belly of the beast, the kernel of the corn – living in the riot-scarred ghetto of Cincinnati. It has been, for lack of a more banal word, interesting. The things I thought I’d hate, or at least fear, do not even register on a daily basis; and the things that I would not have even thought about prior to the move bug me daily.

Most naturally, I suppose, I went in fairly concerned about safety. This has, thus far, turned out to be a non-issue. Granted, much of this might have been due to the police crackdown in the neighborhood following the April 2006 murder spree; or, more plausibly, it had to do with the fact that neither K. nor I buy or sell drugs, and thus aren’t worth the bullet or bludgeon of a would-be assailant. I like to tell myself that my homeless guardian crack addict played some small role, too – the very one who promised me evening that he would “kill” (his words) anybody who disrespected me, K., or “my little girl” (his designation for the dog). I don’t know about you, but I’ll gladly support somebody’s crack addiction with a dollar here and there if they promise me protection.

Speaking of crack addiction, I’m increasingly astonished at how many functional addicts there are. I knew that there one could actually live some semblance of a life addicted to heroin, alcohol, and cocaine, but for some reason I thought that with crack all bets were off. My suspicion was that what distinguished crack addiction from all the others listed is that it is primarily the poor addicted to it -- and, if nothing else, money buys functionality, whether you’re an addict or sober. Not yet sure what to think of this.

Less shocking, I suppose, is that our car has not been broken into. It helps that our little Honda is twenty years old and that I’ve wrecked it at least twice; not to mention the fact that we heeded the warning of a neighbor, who once noted that he had a roll of paper towels stolen from his car once, and have since left nothing but philosophy books in the back seat. Thus far, the only minor vandalism inflicted was that our antenna was unduly ripped off. I can deal with that, provided somebody isn’t whipping me with the antenna removed.

What has been an issue – no, the issue is the litter. I used to drive through this neighborhood all the time before living here, but seeing trash when at 30 mph is not the same as when you’re wading through it on the way home. Condoms, used or not; paper plates with pizza crust; chicken bones (it is as though my neighborhood is a fucking hen house and a fox is on the loose); piles of glass, be it that of car windows or liquor bottles. I really should just keep a daily tally of the different things I have to wrestle away from the dog. I’ll have more to say about this in coming posts, though, especially as it relates to the across-the board-decline and neglect of the living space in contemporary America (be it rural, suburban, or urban). For now, suffice it to say, a trashed environment is indicative of a deeper problem that is not endemic to ghetto life.

All in all, life hasn’t been so bad down here. I miss the two-minute walk to the only art-house theatre in town, as well as the only grocery with a decent beer & cheese selection. I miss the sense of security (which is different from the reality of safety) that I felt walking late at night in the relatively affluent neighborhood I used to live. Don't get me wrong, I’m not a martyr for moving away from all that. But, as I'll explore in my next post, I do think it was the right choice to move down here, even if I often regret the decision to do so. There are deeper implications to this admission, but it’s way too late to get into them.

Don't Worry, I Lit a Match

My dearest friends, approximately three months ago, on October 12, 2006, to be precise, I presented you with evidence of the existence of God. Since then, as you can well imagine, there has been a lot of soul searching here at Silentio Central. Thus the three-month silence. As one reared in the bosom and by the stern hand of evangelical Christianity, who subsequently stole away from the faith in the deepest of nights, pitch black, in fact, what for the clouds of doubt covering all semblance of light, this revelation came as, not a shock, but as the nauseating onset of something nearly indescribable, something only viewed in a small room with the door closed. Too much truth, like too much starchy food, especially curry, fell upon me, and I was overwhelmed. My cup overfilleth, indeed, and the excess left me feeling, well, a little bloated.

Oh! But fear not. It took repeated probing, but I have, only today, realized that this Lord of the Arse was not due the undying fealty I dealt it. I should say that this was not due to his inadequacy, nor to the fact that this divine sign was filled with only poo. No, this vision of a poop-chute Jesus rising to the heavens made me realize that the Lord was always to be behind me, heard but never seen; or, if seen, seen only in my wake, in what I leave behind for others; or, barring that, in a one-time visit to a website about a dog’s anus that bears a striking resemblance to our popular imaginative rendering of a biblical scene. What I realized, after much strain whilst sitting, a posture due the longest, most pleasurable but often most foul, of thoughts, was that if blind devotion is not due the Lord, it makes him no less Lord. I realized, rather, that he is created, in a series of movements, of my movements, of your movements, of our movements. All together, we squeeze together a fashioning of the Lord, and we leave a prize for others to find! A nugget of ourselves that, upon its exit, is no longer ours, for it is no longer distinguishable from all the others. Sometimes we leave a larger piece, sometimes only a trace – but it is always there. And every bit is but a whiff of the Spirit.

All this is to say, I realized it was foolish to hold it in! To make myself silent is to make myself deadly to the world. Let it rip, I said, these acts of God. I must blog, I said aloud. For to blog is divine!

Pull my finger, and it shall begin anew.

The Only Viable Proof of the Existence of God

Reality Check

If any Bengals fans were under any illusion they had a defense that could stop the run, the Patriots effectively are your wake up call. You should thank them. If anything, three quarters into the game they're showing themselves to be the same defense as last year -- take away the turnover and they are utterly & completely toothless.

Where I Show I'm a Good Sport

Kudos to Peyton Manning & co. for gutting out that win today. I was telling Pat earlier this week that seeing him will his team to victory would go a long way in helping me like him a bit (a bit) more. Another hard luck loss for the J. E. T. S. JETS JET JETS! -- not to mention me, for having started Chad Pennington.

Football Blogging!!

I'll have more to say about Week One of the NFL tomorrow -- the wife is in bed & I think I just might get lucky -- but I just have one parting question for all you Colts fans out there: how much did that offensive pass interference call late in the fourth quarter cost you? Such a horrible call.

On the bright side, it did look like the Colts will follow their traditional form of getting by in the regular season, even ending up w/ a record that makes them look unstoppable when in fact everybody who watches them know it was a mixture of shitty schedule (the NFL's gift to Indy that keeps on giving) &/or clusterfuck inability of other teams to capitalize on the many miscues Indy's pride & joy throws into any given game, and then completely flame out in the playoffs, likely in truly spectacular BoSox-style. I mean, c'mon, really, a team can rely on smoke-and-mirror defense (which, if tonight is any indication, doesn't even exist this year) & Peyton's uncanny ability to convert third-and-11's all day (nothing more frustrating to a Peyton-hater than watching that unfold series after series) for so long. In fact, next week may very well be the day that David Carr gets his breakthrough victory.

Also ... if anybody knows Chi they might want to IM or call, just to make sure he's still alive.

The Story Told Differently

First off, I realize this post might come off as odd. For starters, it is an actual post. Who would've thought it was still possible for me to post twice in one day? More importantly, though, I think it may surprise a few people.

I've long heard, and probably even said once or twice, the maxim that goes something like "if only we told the story differently . . . " E.g., "If only we Democrats could frame the issues better, use positive language, etc. we might win more elections"; or, as I'm sure some of the readers of this blog have wondered or said aloud, "If only Christians weren't such distended assholes, the faith always be treated like bullshit nobody (not even the faithful) really believes." There is, of course, an obvious logic to this kind of thinking. Without it, where would all our marketing gurus be today? But logic only ever goes so far for me. I can't help but wonder: is it possible for an actually existing (versus hypothetical) faith to finally and fully override and overrule either (a) what one would like their faith to be, or (b) what one would like to think this faith used to be?

That is to say, what would it mean for the truest manifestations of the faith (be it religious or political) to be boiled down to the simple formula: "the story told differently"? What if this manifestation of the faith is, for lack of a better word, a singularity; or, to be more "prophetic," miraculous? Is it still possible, in this apparently post-liberal age, to use the same language and forms of a faith (e.g., the Bible, the sacraments, the liturgy, etc.), but for this use of language & form to be recontextualized? What I'm talking about is not a return to liberalism -- for instance, the transformation of the traditional gospel of orthodoxy to the social gospel of Enlightenment values, and thus of traditional concepts of redemption and judgment to the terms of social justice (although I'm not opposed in principle to this transformation). Rather, what I'm wondering about is the relationship of speaking and living the faith & truth: is it still possible to speak of the faith in such a way that the opposition between "story told well" and the "story told badly" makes no sense? Why? Because the story told truthfully is in-built with an intensity that makes it impossible to "frame" (and thus to circumscribe) but also impossible to silence -- i.e., that speaks itself in truth simultaneously in spite of & because of its particular context/language/form.

Which is to say, in short, what if there are no "better" stories, or "better" versions (and thus more compelling versions) of the truth? Only stories/versions that perpetually call forth the truth that is worth listening to and speaking -- the story told differently, that truth which effectively destroys it form, perhaps on a Cross, and thus all one expects and knows of it, perhaps like a god, in order that it might be reimagined into something neither qualitatively "better" or "worse," as this assumes some standard by which we judge it; but rather & simply something worth being listened to and spoken yet again, a listening & speaking in faith that is, finally, the only true act: that of creation.

Full Time

I just realized something that is a little astonishing: this week I'm working forty (paid, non-research) hours for the first since 1997!!

A Month Later ....

A Month Later . . .

It really does not feel like a month (over a month, even!) since I last posted here at my poor, neglected blog, Silentio. The very thing that kept me going through many a day and evening back in Glasgow, the sole connection I had with so many of you back in the States, becomes the one thing I ignore the most upon my return. I'd like to think this is because I personally see and/or talk to my readers. While this is true of a few of you, I imagine it is not of most. Alas.

A weird couple of days. A banal embodiment of coincidentia oppositorum, for those of you inclined toward either the philosophical or the Latin. On the very day that I received in the mail my doctoral diploma, I also received official correspondence from the British Academy indicating that I was not awarded one of their postdoctoral grants -- which would've sent me back to Britain for another three years of research and writing (this time, w/ a salary!). Before I continue w/ extra bits of this and that, I should also point out that my grant application was awarded an "A," which means, so they say, that if money was available I should receive it. Whatever, we know what it really means: my application (but not me, because I refuse to take it personally) was a Grade A Reject. So be it.

Moving on. So, the day that hearkens back to those great years spent abroad but that also cuts any imminent return, K. is told that she is getting a pretty substantial promotion that will require her (and, thus, us) to move in about six months. The thing is, we know not where. And will not know for a few more months. An imminent move refused ... an imminent move granted. A move that would send us forward by moving us back to a place we know (& I love) ... a move that would send us forward by moving us to, in all likelihood, parts unknown. Still not entirely sure what to think of this.

But, nevertheless, congratulations to K. She deserves it.

"Organic" on the Cheap

Not too long ago, I wrote a post about "eating well." It was surprisingly well-received even beyond the confines of this blog. Since then I've had several very interesting conversations about various alternatives & solutions to, by all accounts, our food crisis. One of the most common solutions, certainly here in the States, is to make more healthy food more widely available by virtue of it being inexpensive. This perspective, one would assume, would welcome Wal-Mart's decision to start selling organic food, in bulk & at low costs. Healthy food to the masses! Yay!

If you'll recall from that original post, though, I was very sceptical that capitalism would be our savior on this one. I remain so.

Angel of History

I'd forgotten how much I loved this passage. So dark. So true.

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (W. Benjamin, On the Concept of History, Thesis IX)

Purity (Blue) Ball

Via Mark Morford I only just learned something that depresses me only because it doesn't surprise me: Purity Balls. Morford's description is better than I can offer at the moment:

Purity Balls. No, not some sort of newfangled spherical chastity device to be inserted using vacuum tubes and pulleys, but rather fancy creepy dress-up rituals taking place in towns like Colorado Springs and Tucson and Zoloft Jesusville, in which Christian dads rent a bad tux while their daughters, mostly teenagers but many as young as 6 or 7, get all dolled up in gowns from JCPenny and they all drive out to the airport Marriott and prepare to, well, lose their minds.

It begins. At some point the daughter stands up, her pale arms wrapped around her daddy, and reads aloud a formal pledge that she will remain forever pure and virginal and sex-free until she is handed over, by her dad (who is actually called the "high priest" of the home), like some sort of sad hymenic gift, to her husband, who will receive her like the sanitized and overprotected and libidinously inept servant she so very much is. Praise!

Would that I were making this up.

The dad -- er, high priest -- in turn, stands up and reads his pledge, one stating that he will work to protect his daughter's virginal purity that he has so carefully and wickedly drilled into her since birth, since she was knee-high to a disturbing dogma, that he will protect her chastity and oversee it and help enforce its boundaries, which might or might not involve great amounts of rage and confusion and secret stashes of cheap scotch, although his pledge claims it's with honor and integrity and lots of bewildering Godspeak. Which, in many households, is essentially the same thing.

Really, what can you say to something like this? I mean, it's hardly surprising, depravity with the best of intentions, but sweet Jesus, people, c'mon! I'm sorry, but NOT having sex, not even waiting until marriage, is NOT necessarily healthy sex. It's not unhealthy either, mind you. Healthy sex is that which doesn't kill you, or cause you to kill somebody else (i.e., emotionally, psychologically, physically, etc.). What about "spiritually," though, the Christian moralist squeals? Look, for one, if you want to get spiritual about it, the flesh is already dead -- sex in or out of marriage doesn't change that. It's a fleshly act that creates fleshly (& squishy) pleasure and children, mixed w/ the endorphins that make us sometimes feel out-of-body if it was especially good. There's nothing wrong this, and count me among the masses who love it ... but it certainly isn't pure, at least not in the sense implied by the intention to store your daughter's genitals, in some lame form of female circumcision, in a safety deposit box until she's married.

Eating Well

My desire to eat well is not altogether different from my desire to be religious. I do think there is a value to both, but I do not typically have the will to truly accomplish either. The flesh, as it were, is weak. I'd like to be able to differentiate the two. That is, I'd like to fashion a religious piety that makes my weakness a strength, and thus provides me with some kind of redemption. As it is, though, I am increasingly having a hard time fathoming such a redemption without a commitment to eating well.

What does it mean to eat well? For most of us, it is just a matter of eating healthy -- of balancing the bad stuff we put in our body with good stuff; or, even better, putting in our body more good stuff than bad stuff. In this sense, "healthy" presupposes either a state of equilibrium or an appropriate ratio (of good stuff to bad) to be the ideal, the result of which being that one lives a longer and/or more (mentally & physically) productive life. In my mind, this is only one part of eating well. Or, perhaps we frame it more positively: this is the general structure of eating well. When we get more specific, though, we find that eating well, eating healthy, cannot simply be about me & mine eating well/eating healthy. Rather, in order to keep eating well, to make it a habit that allows & animates life, eating well must be extended beyond me -- to others, to every other. This is precisely because of the interconnectedness of human existence: as much as we might like to think our health & well-being is ours alone, it is in a give-and-take relationship with & through the activities of others -- and thus, their health & well-being, as well. (Not to mention the fact that the truest measure of life, that which happens after it is over, after we've died, and thus even the truest measure of the "afterlife," is what we leave behind, the results of our [the plural] eating well.) Eating well, then, is more than counting calories & carbs; it is more than avoiding nuts if you're allergic to them. It is more than making sure you get enough iron & protein. It is, in short, more than insuring you & yours have all the vitamins necessary to live long & vital lives. It is, rather, having the will to insure that others have the capacity to do (& thus to will) this as well.

If this is true, eating well is perhaps the most revolutionary, radical action possible. The most unthinkable, even, what for the ever-present first-world dominance over food cultivation & distribution. In the name of profitability, we are sold (and gladly purchase) cheaper, typically less healthy, goods, which all too often not only inject us with the poisons that kill us, the consumers, but also kill the laborers who are paid to grow & produce it, by forcing them to abandon their natural sources & markets of subsistence.

I really want to eat well, as much as I want to believe in miracles, in beginnings that never stop & that thus change the social fabric & our conception of what is possible and what is not. I really do, and yet I still do not. Where, then, to begin?

If There Was Any Doubt

I can't believe we're at this point again -- the point where I have to protest an apparently inevitable war. This is just so fucking absurd, it is beyond belief. War ... against Iran? Seriously. Another one? *sigh*

Well. I can't do it. Not today. I'm not in the mood (more on that in a post later). Good thing there's Matthew Yglesias to run down the many reasons even considering this is beyond stupid.

Release the Hound of Hell!!

Most of you know this already, but for those of you who do not, there is a new addition to our humble family. Her name is Ireland, and terror follows in her wake. Truly. She is a thing to be feared -- in both the sense of her awesome majesty and of her power to kill you in an instant. She is not to be messed with. Granted, she'll do it without barking or growling, and possibly with a lick on the nose. Oh, but those are but a part of her charade. She is evil incarnate. Believe me. She will destroy us all.

That is, once she wakes up from her nap under my desk.

Update: I just cannot resist one final picture. I know, I know. What have I become? But, I cannot help myself.

Local Blogging

It's good to see that the Cincinnati City Council is on the verge of taking one further step to insuring the city maintains its reputation as the Unhip Capital of the Midwest.

Proving yet again that it is a powerhouse of a newspaper, the Enquirer doesn't actually spell out City Councilman Cecil Thomas' plan. Fortunately, Citybeat does:

A person caught in Ohio with less than 100 grams of marijuana is charged with a minor misdemeanor, which entails a $100 ticket. Thomas is proposing an ordinance that would make possession of less than 200 grams a first-degree misdemeanor, with a maximum sentence of six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

I'm no pothead. Nor do I sell pot. But I have a really hard time seeing how this is supposed to keep guns off the street, or protect the 'hood. When your shit is threatened, you become a threat. So I was told, in so many words, by a friend who likely sold and used pot. Which is to say, guns would seem more likely as a result of this. Not to mention, of course, it's just another way to appear tough on crime by bloating the jails with poor people.

Maybe I'll Just Call This Movie-Week

If you've not yet seen Caché, I highly recommend you do so. Granted, I had to drive thirty minutes to my town's "other" arthouse cinema, but it was worth it. I was going to write an assessment of it, but Steven Shaviro has done it for me over at his blog.

An excerpt, but the whole thing is fantastic:

We are made to feel guilty and complicitous, while at the same time we are given no way out from this position, and no release even from our own being safe because of the unquestioned privileges that people less fortunate than us do not have. Indeed, we are shielded from consequences because we are, after all, watching a film, this is not happening directly to us in "real life." Despite the fact that "real life" itself is revealed by Caché to be no more (as well as no less) "real" than a video. Which means that, whatever we understand intellectually, on the affective level we end up sharing Georges' self-protective sense of unquestioned privilege, as well as his sense of guilt.

In this way, Caché simultaneously abuses and flatters its audience. And I think that the flattery (rather than the abuse) is the nastiest thing about the film. From a political point of view, after all, guilt is just about the most worthless and useless affect/emotion there is. Nobody has ever questioned their privilege, or even done anything decent, out of guilt. Oh, lots of white people "identify" with "minorities" out of guilt, or give to charity (Live 8, anyone?), or mutter pious platitudes and express their support for "identity politics" of various sorts, which allows them to be self-congratulatory about how radical they are, when in fact they aren't. Indeed, many people of power and privilege positively get off on being made to feel guilty, whether it is the oft-repeated apocryphal story of wealthy CEOs getting release by being abused by a dominatrix, or the more common everyday spectacle of white suburbanites feeling cleansed after getting a good scolding (followed by absolution) from Oprah (or white people with more intellectual/political pretensions getting a good scolding from bell hooks). I do not claim to be exempt from this whole process.

And this is exactly what Caché does to/for its viewers. Or better, it indeed exposes this mechanism of flattery-through-guilt; but without offering any escape from it, and even without quite criticizing or critiquing it. As if that were just the way it is: which indeed, it is. This is what the obvious question about Haneke's own position comes down to. (Is he claiming exemption from the condition that he otherwise shows to be universal among people of privilege? Well, yes and no. That's an evasion, of course, but the evasion itself is the point). What's most powerful about the film is that it not only decrees guilt, but cranks the guilt up to a self-reflexive level: the guilt is reduced or managed by the flattery and privilege that we retain while observing all this; but such a meta-understanding itself creates a new, higher-order sense of guilt, which in turn is cushioned by a new, higher-order sense of self-congratulation as to our superior insight, which in turn is an unquestioned privilege that, when comprehended, leads to a yet-higher-level meta-sense of guilt, and so on ad infinitum. There's complete blockage, no escape from this unending cycle. The experience of the film is one both of self-disgust and of a liberation, through aestheticization, from this self-disgust. The latter is what makes Caché truly insidious. . . .

There's a long shot/long take at the very end of the film, in which -- foregrounded in no way, so it is easy to miss -- amidst a whole crowd of people doing all sorts of things, we see some sort of contact between two of the minor characters . . . that suggests even new levels of complicity and uncertainty. I think that this only reinforces the film's overall coldly delirious deadlock. The more explaining we need to do, the more we are trapped in the film's (and society's) self-reflexive spiral of guilt and privilege. The film offers no way out, because it never breaks with its sense of privilege, no matter how unwarranted it shows that privilege to be. The creepiness of finding oneself under surveillance, the creepiness of seeing a marriage break down into mutual vicious recriminations, is nothing compared to the creepiness of realizing that one still has one's shield of privilege despite these intrusions, and that the facade of bourgeois marriage will survive everything that's going on underneath.

More About Movies

To prove that I'm not just some big cynic for disliking Crash, I thought I'd repost something I wrote for another blog.

So, I went and saw Brokeback Mountain the other day. I mean, why not. I figured, what self-respecting otherwise heterosexual academic doesn't have one or two, or a dozen, 'conference buddies'?

Actually, I went in with a very bad attitude. Cynical, one might say. Surely, I thought, this is just the "liberal" version of the Passion of the Christ [ed. In hindsight, maybe this was Crash]. That is, the movie we liberals are supposed to support, even if its rubbish. Even though we know its rubbish. (Because, let's not be mistaken, the story of Jesus getting the shit kicked out of him wasn't particularly interesting either.) My thought was that the homosexual cowboy thing, while not entirely contrived, because I'm sure it happened often enough back in the cowboy days, was mostly just to jar our expectations of either homosexuals or cowboys, a jolt made all the more explicit by the juxtaposition of their bourgeois heterosexual relationships, with the intention of making us all better, more accepting individuals.

Now, does the movie do this? Yeah. Undoubtedly. And yet -- and perhaps this is why I resist being finally identified as a cynic, because I do not think our critiques can ever stop there, but rather we must go through cynicism, in order that we might find something more, for lack of a better time, human -- Brokeback Mountain is more. A common assessment is that the movie is heartbreaking. And it is. Devastatingly, in fact. Relationships, and not just the homosexual one, are delicately portrayed in all their human, and thus often dissatisfying and uncomfortable, complexity.

Last year, the supposed celebration of monogamy in March of the Penguin was hailed as the mark of true family families. Fuck those cute penguins, though. The family values of Brokeback Mountain are the family values I know. Granted, I've not (yet) known anybody who had a gay lover while being married, but I've known plenty of people who loved their kids but didn't know how to show it until just nearly the kid didn't want that love anymore. I know people who love being together, as a couple or a community, but don't actually love one another. And I know a helluva lot about loving people I cannot have, either because of either internal or external pressures (or a mixture of both). The movie, more than a celebration of tolerance, is a celebration of love as frailty.

In love we do not simply make ourselves stronger, or more truly ourselves; indeed, if we become ourselves at all in love, and I think we do, we do so only in weakness and brokenness. (Is this, I wonder, some bastardized Gnostic notion of love?) Perhaps this is why in most long-term relationships there are periods of forgetfulness, or even flat denials that "I don't love you anymore." And perhaps those relationships that last are those that do not so much remember the past, or beckon its return, but actually find a certain, maybe but momentary, sublime awareness and acceptance that the person I love now is not, and cannot be, the same person I fell in love with.

I don't know that it should've won Best Picture. Correction: I don't care which movie wins Best Picture. Just saying ... I'm not hating on Crash for the reasons a lot of you might be thinking.

On Crash

Maybe I'm obtuse. Maybe I'm just not racially sensitive enough. Maybe I for some reason just miss the fine art of making movies. But I really do not get the fuss over this movie. Didn't get it when I saw it several months ago; and do not get it now, as I watch the cast and crew celebrate their Oscar win. Far too easy a moral ... far too lazy a story. Shrug.

You Really Can't Believe Me. Honestly, I Make a Lot of Stuff Up

Let me preface this by saying something unequivocal and untainted by qualification: I really don't like kids. Okay, having said that, let me equivocate and add a couple of qualifications. (1) I really don't like kids that make me realize how much I hate the idea of ever having any; (2) I really don't like kids that stare at me while I'm eating; and (3) I really don't like kids that don't like me.

By and large, nobody thinks it's a good idea that I ever be a parent. While the jury is still out in the minds of many whether K. would make a good parent, with most being won over by how much she genuinely seems to like most kids, a good 90% of friends polled are simply horrified at the thought of me being a father. (This was confirmed in a conversation with two such friends last night.)

This has got me thinking, though. Is "proving people wrong" a valid reason for trying to have a kid? I mean ... isn't that just as valid as, "oops, I guess that forgotten pill was a big deal"? I mean, sure, women have the biological-clock thing going for them. But, really, biology? A natural urge to be a mother? If that's all you have in your motivation bag, then don't come talking to me about the "miracle" of childbirth -- at that point, your child is as natural as a turd.

Now, before I'm attacked by the legion of mothers who undoubtedly read this blog, I'm not comparing anybody's child to a piece of crap. Near as I can remember, none of your kids have stared at me while I'm eating; and most have no reason to hate me, but certainly every reason to be happily oblivious to my existence. No ... my point is simply that everybody has an underlying motivation for wanting to have a baby. This talk of biological need to have a child, to breed, is far too animalistic and primal for me to think anybody actually believes it on the level of biology alone. I won't begin to speculate as to what the "real" reasons are, or to what degree they may or may not be valid. (Not only am I not in a position to assess that, I don't particularly care.) Furthermore, my point is that maybe "proving people wrong" isn't such a bad reason to want to have kids. I mean, relative to other reasons, I have to think it has as much validity.

Before you inquire whether I've just learned that K. is pregnant, I'll stop you in your tracks and say, "Hell to the no!" Nor am I all that interested in proving any of you people wrong anytime soon. But someday, who knows, maybe I'll be able to sit a son or daughter down on my knee and tell them the story of how Papa made her out a love borne by spite. And we will laugh at one another, and then at others, and then at you.

Gotta Save Up Those GBDs

Travis Frey, stands accused of one count of child pornography and another count of trying to kidnap his wife, but I suspect with this four-page document he's made his fair share of male (and even some female) fans.

Note: I'm not blockquoting any of this for fear of the Google hits.

Bedtime Reading

Final serenity. -- A newspaper obituary for a businessman once contained the words: "The breadth of his conscience vied with the kindness of his heart." The blunder committed by the bereaved in the elevated language reserved for such purposes, the inadvertent admission that the kind-hearted deceased had lacked a conscience, expedites the funeral procession by the shortest route to the land of truth. If a man of advanced years is praised for his exceptional serenity, his life can be assumed to comprise a succession of infamies. He has rid himself of the habit of getting excited. Breadth of conscience is passed off as magnanimity, all-forgiving because all-too-understanding. The quid pro quo between one's own guilt and that of others, is resolved in favour of whoever has come off best. After so long a life one quite loses the capacity to distinguish who has done what harm to whom. In the abstract conception of universal wrong, all concrete responsibility vanishes. The blackguard presents himself as victim of injustice: if only you knew, young man, what life is like. But those conspicuous midway through life by an exceptional kindness are usually drawing advances on such serenity. He who is not malign does not live serenely but with a peculiarly chaste hardness and intolerance. Lacking appropriate objects, his love can scarcely express itself except by hatred for the inappropriate, in which admittedly he comes to resemble what he hates. The bourgeois, however, is tolerant. His love of people as they are stems from his hatred of what they might be. (T. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life)

A Common Sense Shit Post

I know most people regard me as a die-hard partisan Democrat, though I'm not, and that I'll say and do anything to make a Republican seem dirty, which I will, but it is reporting like this that should put to rest the attempts of so many to paint the Jack Abramoff scandal as one shared by both Democrats and Republicans.

It goes without saying that career politicians of all stripes are almost certainly dirty individuals, in some respect anyway, and that there should be reforms; but it doesn't stand to reason that this scandal needs to be equally laid at the feet of both parties in order for that to happen.

A Shit Post

As a lot of you already know, be it through other kind-hearted bloggers or through conversations with me, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation last week. Remarkably, things went very smoothly. All that is left now to make the necessary editorial revisions, bind it, and spend another $100+ shipping it o'erseas.

I've been asked a lot lately how it feels being finished. My instinct is to regard the whole affair as oddly anticlimactic. But, really, I only feel this when sober. Get a few pints or drams of whisky in me, and I'm the king of the world. Another reason to stay boozed up, I guess.

The other question commonly asked is, in short, 'What now?' Good question. The short answer, besides getting drunk a lot and revelling in my superiority complex, is that I desperately need to find a job. One that does not relate to shelving CDs and DVDs. In order for that to happen, though, I need to get some more stuff published. So, basically, there's no rest for the weary. As soon as I get the thesis bound and shipped, I have to start tearing article-sized portions out for possible publication, finish up writing articles and reviews I committed to writing without really thinking, and then pimp out my services to a institution that finds appealing somebody trained in philosophical aesthetics and theology. Any of you with uncles or great-aunts who happens to be on the Board of Trustees of a college or university, you know where to find me.

Wow. This might be the most boring blog post ever.

Maybe We're Not So Different After All

I obviously spend a lot of time frustrated at my country's undyingly fundamentalist fervor -- be it fully fleshed out in something ostensibly noble like 'justice', or something ostensibly wrong like 'revenge' -- for, in short, a messianic return. We all want a return on our investments, so why not go for the biggest return of all, the promise of which prompts the investment, cynical or pious, of many a president and professional politician.

Which brings me to Scott Peterson's excellent two-part article in The Christian Science Monitor on the appropriation of religious language, especially that of rapture and eschatological fulfillment, in the political saga currently unfolding in Iran. (part one // part two).

It's nice to think that all that divides us is the name of that tyrannical religious excuse for demagoguery.

Checking In

I can't believe it's been nearly a month since I last posted. I've been bad before, but surely never this bad. And this after a torrent of comments related to my, shall we say, strong opinions about The Chronicles of Narnia.

There is something about life in Belgium, especially when you're not in the city, that causes days to race by without you even noticing. Mind you, I'm not isolated. I have super-fast internet, a variety of BBC channels, and an assortment of Flemish and French documentaries that I can sometimes vaguely follow. So, I know what's happening in the world.

I know, for instance, that the US Senate is on the verge of likely confirming a Justice with a conception of 'executive' power disturbingly similar to that of the US President, and that all right-thinking people should by very very concerned. A move to Belgium, in fact, should not be ruled out.

I know that West Virginia mine officials, the private corporations that failed to heed governmental warnings and governmental agencies that failed to enforce said warnings, have little to no interest in the lives of the workers who keep them in power.

I know that I'm a little sad that Tom DeLay will no longer pursue leadership of the House -- but am also a little delighted that in the span of a few years the head Republicans of both the Senate and the House have had to resign their positions in disgrace.

I know that I'm very depressed at the prospect that none of this will matter on Election Day in November.

I know, moving to lighter stuff, that last night the New England Patriots took one more step toward playing the Indianapolis Colts in the playoffs. ('nuff said) And that the Bengals will likely lose today against the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I know that my viva is less than two weeks away and all bravado has slipped away.

I know that this was a very haphardously random blog post.

I know that I'm going to try to be a better blogger the rest of my trip abroad.

Saturday Night at the Movies

K. & I caught a late showing of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe [aka, The Chronicles of Narnia -- not sure which is the official title] on Saturday night. Now, as a few people have already pointed out, I'm not a huge fan of Lewis anyway, so my comments here are not entirely unexpected. Having said that, I like to think I'm open-minded enough to enjoy something even if I expect to hate it; and hate something I expected to enjoy. It's certainly happened before. It did not happen this time around, though.

Well, let me back up. I can't say that hated the movie. That's giving a bit more credit than it deserves. I am, surely, deeply opposed to what I regard as its testicular jingoism. But whatever. For the sake of argument, I'll just accept that as benignly metaphorical. Even then . . . I find myself really disturbed by a war in which the winner suffers no real losses. Aslan (inexplicably) returns -- thankfully, his version of sacrifical atonement ultimately makes about as much sense as Anselm's; all the 'good guys' who get struck down during battle are revived and on hand for the coronation of the kids. I mean. If there is a battle between good and evil, a battle that I guess would seem worth fighting, the high cost of death doesn't seem too much ask. And yet, we get the sense here that even 'the good' isn't something worth (or something you're capable of) dying for. Which makes me think ... in Narnia, what is? Sort of cheapens the 'warfare' metaphor. I mean, hell, even Judas hung himself for the sake of Christ's cause -- the quintessentially tragic victim. Nothing like that here.

'Oh, Brad, you're being petty again.' I know some of you are thinking that. Maybe I am. But you know, is a little loss really that much to expect? Or, for that matter, ambiguity. This, I suppose, is the primary thing that annoys me most with the recent crop of 'Good v. Evil' movies: absolutely no nuance or complexity of character. Consider Lord of the Rings. You think you're getting some nuance with Golem, but no. Tolkien has to make explicit that Golem is as beastly as we'd normally expect. He bites off Frodo's finger for the sake of owning the ring, damn the cost to himself. Well ... what if Tolkien had injected some ambiguity to that scene? What if we were left wondering and arguing about Golem's intentions? Perhaps he saw Frodo's moral failure at the moment of decision, or simply knew that one could not refuse the ring, and did the most heroic act in the entire book? Wouldn't that, dare I say it, be a little more like the real world? As it is, you have an exciting turn of events, but no moral ambiguity. Much the same here. You think you're getting some complexity of character w/ regard to Edmund. But, no. He's just a prat who deserves to die. There is nothing patently evil about this, since this is how most of us live our lives -- categorizing people according to various criteria -- but it certainly is a failure as a piece of art or literature, which is ultimately intended to create new horizons of meaning and not simply parrot or reinforce the one that already exists.

'But, Brad. Have you considered the possibility you're judging the movie by a standard it was not written / presented to achieve?' Yes, I have. My only response is that movies that are this epic in scale -- that is, movies whose message is momentous and so obviously injected with universal themes & scope -- an aborted artistic ambition is damning. And it infects the rest of the project. Notably the degree to which it is sold to the highest bidder, namely Disney, and then pimped out as nothing short of a vapid promo for a video game. In the end, this is what I walked away regarding the movie. As far as it goes, I suspect the game will be very fun indeed.

Then again, maybe I'm just an old-fashioned elitist. Granted, one who likes the bawdy humor of 'Drawn Together', who has fond memories of the movie Bad Boys, still listens to Howard Stern, and knows the chorus to almost every Top 40 love song from the 1980s.

[None of this even touches on of the clear technical problems w/ regard to the film's editing and very flimsy characterisation. But I don't want to ruin the movie for people who haven't yet seen it, or haven't read the book, so I'll save that for the comments if anybody is interested in sounding off.]

Playing the Fool

I've only recently begun reading anything written by Simone Weil. There's a lot of interest there, but I really like this quote from one of the letters she wrote while in an English sanatorium.

When I saw Lear here, I asked myself how it was possible that the unbearably tragic character of those fools had not been obvious long ago to everyone, including myself. The tragedy is not the sentimental one it is sometimes thought to be; it is this:

There is a class of people in this world who have fallen into the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, and who are deprived not only of all social consideration but also, in everybody's opinion, of the specific human dignity, reason itself -- and these are the people who, in fact, are able to tell the truth. All the others lie.

In Lear it is striking. Even Kent and Cordelia attenuate, mitigate, soften, and veil the truth; and unless they are forced to choose between telling it and telling a downright lie, they manoeuvre to evade it.

What makes the tragedy extreme is the fact that because the fools possess no academic titles or episcopal dignities and because no one is aware that their sayings deserve the slightest attention -- everybody being convinced a priori of the contrary, since they are fools -- their expression of the truth is n ot even listened to. Everybody, including Shakespeare's readers and audiences for four centuries, is unaware that what they say is true. And not satirically or humourously true, but simply the truth. Pure unadulterated truth, luminous, profound, and essential.

From here, Weil goes on to too quickly & conveniently equate herself with the fool, but I'll be damned if the first part isn't well stated.

That Wasn't So Hard, Was It?

I realize I've already gotten a round of congratulations already, but I would be remiss if I didn't announce here, officially & all, that today I printed out my thesis & shipped three copies of it to Scotland. All that awaits now is my examination in late-January.

You know, I started this blog in the early days of my research, one cold morning while in Brussels. Most of you have seen me through many an intellectual turn, and you've accepted it all with wonderful dignity, class, and patience. Much obliged.

I guess I'm now fresh out of excuses for not blogging regularly enough, huh?

The Emo-ification of Kelly Clarkson

Today the Belgian & I were driving to grab some lunch somewhere, and we we heard the newest Kelly Clarkson song, 'Because of You'. I enjoy it when her songs come on the radio. This isn't because I like the music -- I hardly even pay attention to it, let alone like or dislike it -- but because I can tell that K. is trying for all she's worth NOT to like the music. The funny thing is, no matter her resistance and claims to hating Kelly Clarkson, she cannot help but sing along.

Anyway, as to the song, since when did Clarkson, who by the way I think is kind of hot, go emo? It's really starting to hurt her hotness, quite frankly.

Speaking of 'emo', I really love this picture.

Follow the Light

The light, it would seem, is at the end of the tunnel for all this thesis-business. By the end of this week, all major proofs should be complete, bibliography finalized, and a copy emailed to my advisor for one final read-through. Fingers crossed, people.

Torture & Martyrdom

It's a short post, but Matthew Yglesias is right on in his discussion of 'The Pragmatics of Torture -- specifically, torture as a means for a regime to hear what it wants to hear.

And that's precisely the sort of thing torture is really good for. If you already know what the truth is -- perhaps because it can be deduced from regime-type rather than boring intelligence gathering -- but just need some more evidence in order to convince others, then torture is a really, really, really good way of getting that kind of evidence. That's always been the main historical use of torture -- you have your prisoner, you want a confession, so you torture him until he confesses. It's not, after all, as if the administration was genuinely wondering about Iraq/al-Qaeda ties. They knew what they wanted to prove and they needed to make the case. Torture was an excellent way to get the job done.

Yglesias' point, I think, extends beyond torture to my own thinking about religion / theology -- to the point, even, that I may even agree with a friend who has recently stated that torture is the theological problem of modern times. (This is the case, for me, insofar that we are all being tortured, in a way, by our socio-political & religious regimes -- tortured to the point of our capitulation, i.e. quiet resignation to reality, or perhaps even to our deaths. For some, the solution comes only in a certain kind of death that opens up the possibility of something new -- something along the lines of a martyr's death, which rallies the forces of change. Perhaps. But certainly not one death, that of a history redeemed, such as that of a Cross or otherwise. Rather, only inasmuch as that martyrdom is representative of the only death that truly is, that which always comes from within at every moment, whereby life is but a certain kind of death, and thus that which betrays the transcendent / true / perhaps even eternal sovereignty of those regimes as necessarily false, as a projection of our own capitulated confessions.)