GDP vs GPI

Gross Domestic Product is the total output or total monetized value of all that a nation produces. The success of nations, like corporations, are often judged primarily by the growth of that total output. The value of a company is so linked to the growth of its output that the price of a stock in a company reflects more the rate of growth expected in the future than its actual present output. We are addicted to growth at the expense of overlooking the true costs of growth.

Someone must have tutored Nicolae Ceauşescu about the economics of growth. He correctly reasoned that people were the most valuable resource of an economy but incorrectly settled on increasing the quantity of human resources instead of its quality. The 1966 Decree found an easy solution to a wicked problem. He simply instituted bans on contraception and abortion and severely limited the acceptable grounds for divorce. The resulting disaster socially, culturally and economically cannot be overstated.

By the late 1960s, the population began to swell, accompanied by rising poverty and increased homelessness (street children) in the urban areas. In turn, a new problem was created by uncontrollable child abandonment, which swelled the orphanage population and facilitated a rampant AIDS epidemic in the late 1980s. (Wikipedia)

The presumption of scientific certainty being overlaid on amorphous processes has largely been the goal of economic theory and praxis. Such presumptions almost always result in disastrous unintended results. The bigger problem is often the problem that you can't see, not the one you can see.

Adam Smith, followed also by Marx and most economic theorists after them take it for granted that growth is the measure by which success is measured. But when you consider the costs of the effects of growth with an eye on resource depletion and environmental harm, not to mention social and cultural effects then things aren't so easy any more. The blindness to such costs of growth are easy to ignore because their payment often will not come due until after the present government is out of office so that the next government and generation will have inherited the problem. Or not until the current CEO has safely retired with the bonuses earned through bolstered stock prices brought about by growth.

The Genuine Progress Indicator may be a better gauge of real desired economic achievement because some cases of expansion are really examples of uneconomic growth. Under GDP calculations a massive oil spill off the coast of California would be positive for GDP growth since it would result in massive expenditures for services and goods to clean the shores and replace the tanker and the oil. GPI seems to lack the demonstrable calculability of GDP but it's a start towards taking into account the the real complexities of corporate and public policy. Governments and companies would be better to concern themselves with how to design platforms for genuine progress not just blind growth.

Depletist

Depletist
1. An individual or group demonstrating apparent negligent or reckless disregard for the environmental consequences of their actions.
2. An individual or group that exhausts non-renewable resources and rejects positive environmental strategies.

My friend Robin organized a conference at the Ontario College of Art and Design recently. A student at the College presented a project that his 4th year class has just initiated. The project's aim is environmental and it involves the unleashing of a meme onto the world and tracking its propagation. The meme is the word/thought/concept "Depletist".

It's very encouraging to see such a project undertaken by these students. I'm doing my part here to support them. Over the past 2 weeks the word has already begun to make its rounds. It was used at a presentation made at the United Nations last week and has its own entry in Wikipedia.

Pass it on.

Positive Feedback Loop

I attended a fitness model contest to support a friend who was entered. I always thought they should be renamed BDD Expos. I am generally quite skeptical of such competitions and have always considered them another example of North American excess. There is of course nothing wrong with pursuing a physically active lifestyle and watching what you eat to maintain good health. I simply wonder if even healthy activities become unhealthy when brought to extremes.

The world of the fitness model competition could be considered a positive feedback loop ecosystem. I find this subculture to be very similar to those of the cat fancier and the hot rod enthusiast. Over time a common set of aesthetic priorities are established within the group that push the creations further and further into various design directions. To win the favour of their peers and the contest judges the participant must continually push the envelope to create something that becomes increasingly removed from the aesthetic understanding of the outside world.

The cats become increasingly weirder to the point of being considered "ugly" and grotesque by the average person while their "beauty" is appreciated greatly by the initiates. Likewise, the "pimped-up" car can be startlingly bizarre and outrageous to my mother but "totally awesome" to the teenager next door. Any closed group of initiates seem to bring about this process of aesthetic evolution. We see it also within music fan cultures, whether it's speedmetal, jazz, or experimental electronic music. Within any internally competitive aesthetic group the innovation required to stay ahead is positively encouraged by the success of such innovation and this leads to further alienation of the outside observer.

So I found myself within a crowd of cheering observers and competitors positively feeding the girls on stage. It was eerily puzzling to realize that despite having in front of me a stage full of nearly nude fit young women it was hard to find any of them appealing. The natural response to physical beauty must have something to do with our intuitive assessment of health and the outside observer correctly assesses that something is amiss here. I believe we sense that this extreme stage of physical development is simply not healthy and as a result do not find it attractive. The initiate and the judges however gauge their opinions not on so-called natural physical responses but from abstract theoretical guidelines. So my friend did quite well in the competition and although none of us told her, almost everyone who knows her considers her to be a naturally beautiful girl who chooses to make herself unattractive in order to compete.

Bigger is Best

When you're a 12 year old boy and discover that you may have more than a passing interest in girls' breasts you take upon the childish conclusion that if some is good then more is better and huge is best. Of course this rather linear aesthetic is abandoned when one discovers that the concepts of balance and proportion might have more to do with it than size. Still, at that immature stage of development it is considered to be a axiom that any good thing must be even better in larger quantity and scale.

What is alarming is that many people never seem to get past this stage of aesthetic judgment. Marketers know this. That's why they can advertise such things as "super extra strength headache medication, the strongest most lobotomizing pain-killer you can get without a prescription". The approach in this case is to beat your headache into submission and to kill your headache, dead. The insight that is being missed is that you probably have that headache because your body has been put off-balance for some reason. Your goal should therefore be to put it back into balance - not to swing it madly into the other direction.

This pendulum approach is precisely what drug addicts are known to do. It seems that there has been an wholesale abandonment of the concept of balance as it applies to almost every facet of our lives. The effects of its absence are manifested in the tragic overreactions of modern politics. Vigilance against terrorism is good, therefore pathological obsession with it is better and therefore focusing on it to the exclusion of countless other public policy initiatives is best of all, even if spending on the environment would probably save millions of more lives than stepping up the surveillance of the citizenry.

So we continue popping pills, swilling caffeine injected sugar waters and driving our grotesquely over-sized SUV tanks as our governments use our massive military arsenal to swat at mosquitoes in far away lands.

Football Coaches Are Running The World!

Perhaps typical for someone who would later become a philosopher, during high school I was on the debating team, student council and Reach For The Top. Perhaps atypical for such a young boy, I also played on nearly every school sport team. The teams were mostly comprised of the same jocks with only slight variance. For some reason football was considered the pinnacle of sport and the best athletes strived to make that team. The soccer team had more immigrant kids, the swimming and water polo team had more rich kids with swimming pools, the cross country team had more of the skinny kids that couldn't make the football team.

What differed from team to team were the coaches that volunteered to train and manage us. The coaches were ultimately responsible for the general environment that they created for us. The soccer coach was usually the guy with the British accent, most often Scottish and adept at yelling at us in colourful tones - "uuse yar left fuut lad". The basketball coach was always experimenting with sport psychology asking us to "visualize making that shot". Except for maybe each of them taking their respective sports a little more seriously than the players, the majority of our coaches generally let us have fun while encouraging sportsmanship.

The environment created by the football coaches was of an entirely different character. What they gave us were easily the most corrosive and counterproductive life lessons that adults can pass onto their wards. The lesson was always to win at any cost, regardless of what was right or wrong. Sportsmanship was for pussies and blatant cheating was even encouraged. They tore us down into scrap during training and fired us back into metal for the games. My coaches were less like Knute Rockne and more like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. They were failed men trying to live their overblown macho fantasies vicariously through us.

The metaphor was overwhelmingly militaristic. Hardness and leadership were emphasized over imagination and insight. Valued were quick decisions made with determined strength, whether they turned out to be right or wrong. I later realized that these people must also have been running the MBA schools since the corporate business milieu in North America has largely been a reunion of football jocks revelling in how they told the competition to "bring-it-on" and then "kicked ass and asked questions later".

When I try to understand what goes on in the minds of Bush's inner circle I sometimes find it useful to imagine the macho football culture within which I participated as a young boy. Then it all starts to make sense. Those guys are kicking ass even if they are forgetting to ask any questions at all. The football coaches of the world are now in charge!

Conspiracy and Chaos

Here is a terrifying scenario: The world is run by a cabal of evil psychopaths who will stop at nothing to control every major event in world history. Their immense organizing capacity coupled with their utter disregard for the individual results in such catastrophic events as the 911 attacks, the Katrina devastation, and the death of Elvis.

Now here is a more terrifying scenario: No one is in charge. No one person, group or nation is capable of controlling the swirling psychohistory of geopolitics. We ride on the seismic ripples of history. The shifting landscape moves us here and there and we really don't have the power to resist much of the jolting perturbations.

I believe there is an inherent fear of chaos in our human nature. It's responsible for the drive of the scientist to figure out what makes the universe tick and is epitomized by Einstein's notion that God does not play dice with the Universe. It is also at the heart of the religious person's drive to understand our place in the world and this is characterized by the need to envision the Universe as caring and purposeful.

The alternative is too frightening to consider. So this fear of chaos is also likely at the heart of what makes people believe that complex historical catastrophes must in some way be in the control of some person or group of persons. Our anthropomorphic tendencies sometimes run wild and coupled with our unlimited capacity for hubris we somehow feel comforted that at least someone is in charge. The strongman or dictator exploits this tendency by offering the facade of strength and control. In the face of terrifying chaos and misdirection people are seduced by someone who has a simple answer to whatever scares them. Sometimes the object of fear is proposed by the same despot before offering a simple final solution to eradicate it.

There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism. It is wholeheartedly encouraged and we must continue to question our leaders' actions, intentions and motivations. But do not be blinded by a zealous need to attribute rationality to irrational forces. What often results is a Rube Goldberg Machine approach to understanding history. Beliefs should be guided by intuition but supported and built with evidence.

Lex Parsimoniae

This is an example of well made conspiracy art. I'm not sure about the content. Who knows? It might be true.

Some people believe that a Boeing 757 did not actually fly into the Pentagon. So what did? And what happened to the missing plane? I just haven't heard any reasonable explanation as to why someone would go to all that trouble. Quite often the cover-up seems like it would have to be so incredibly complicated and onerous to pull off. That's not to say there was no such conspiracy, but until more evidence can be presented to compel me to accept an alternative explanation then Occam's Razor cuts off the debate for now.

Higher, Older, Smarter

My nephew took me to the symphony the other day. Most of the people in the audience seemed to be older people. I asked my nephew why he thought that was the case. He replied that this music is "high-brow" and that's why there were so many older people there.

His answer revealed to me a latent faith in individual progress. He must believe that as we get older we get smarter. Having just reached adulthood, he has so far in his life experienced that older people seemed to know more than he did. From this it could be inferred that the music to which they listen must be of the calibre that requires higher intelligence to appreciate.

I didn't have the heart to tell him that we peak fairly early and don't continue to get smarter but that we begin to degenerate soon after peaking. It's better that he respects his elders.

Alice Doesn't Really Live Here

Human: hello Alice.
ALICE: Hi there!

Human: My name is Jake.
ALICE: It's good to meet you, Jake.

Human: Do you know anything about philosophy?
ALICE: Philosophy is the study of thought.

Human: Well yes.
ALICE: Well what?

Human: That is but one part of philosophy.
ALICE: Makes sense to me.

Human: Do you know what epistemology is?
ALICE: Epistemology is the study of knowledge. That is, it asks the questions "what can we know" and "how can we know it?".

Human: How do you know what epistemology means?
ALICE: Because it's true.

Human: How do you know it is true?
ALICE: Because it's true.

Human: But how do you know that it is true?
ALICE: Huh. This belief is justified.

Human: Oh I see.
ALICE: Do you think about these things?

Human: So you claim that your belief is justified.
ALICE: Interesting deduction. I said that? Thanks for telling me that I am belief is justified.

Human: But how? By convention?
ALICE: Interesting. What is it to you.
Does it have anything to do with Your favorite movie?

Human: It does have something to do with my favourite movies.
ALICE: by convention does have something to do with your favorite movies?

Human: They tend to be those that are concerned with confused individuals trying to make sense of a chaotic universe.
ALICE: Who does "they" refer to?

Human: My favourite movies.
ALICE: What makes it your favorite?

Human: They often deal with the subject of epistemology, metaphysics etc.
ALICE: Who are "They?".

Human: The movies, silly.
ALICE: Oh that they.

Human: yes
ALICE: Dude!

Human: Dude!
ALICE: Can I help you?

Human: It seems apparent that you cannot.
ALICE: I agree. Then what is it?

Human: Alice?
ALICE: Can I help you?

Human: Alice?
ALICE: Can I help you?

Human: Alice?
ALICE: Can I help you?

Human: Alice!
ALICE: Can I help you?

Turing Sex

What happens when you unleash a computer program on unsuspecting chat users?

Try scrolling right and clicking on "fifty" at
http://fury.com/aoliza

Famous Last Words - Archimedes

Archimedes (c. 287 BC - 212 BC)

"Don't disturb my circles"

In response to a Roman soldier who was forcing him to report to the Roman general after the capture of Syracuse, while he was busy sitting on the ground proving geometry theorems. The soldier killed him.

Famous Last Words - Hegel

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm (1770-1831)
	"Only one man ever understood me. And he really didn't understand me."

The Prestige

I was reluctant at first to see The Prestige because it seemed that it could have been something similar to that other magic film The Illusionist which I have not seen but am confident is a pretty cheesy film. Upon closer inpsection I realized that The Prestige was made by Christopher Nolan and I always give the benefit of the doubt to a good director or screenwriter. Nolan's reputation with me is mainly based on his film Memento.

The film is a little surprising. It resembles Memento in its convoluted structure which forces the viewer to pay close attention much like the audience at a magic show. The question is posed to us at the outset "are you watching closely?". It is perhaps more science fiction than fantasy and then more about obsession than anything else. The two magicians are engaged in an epic battle of wits to outsmart each other and many lives hang in the balance.

Christian Bale played Batman in Nolan's more popular gig but I still rate his performance in American Psycho as one of my favourite of all time. I haven't really liked him in anything else since then except in The Machinist. He's the magician matching wits with the other magician played by Hugh Jackman about whom I know very little since I tend to avoid comic book movies. It mostly works and they are supported by several good actors including David Bowie who plays the eccentric genius Nikola Tesla .

So I put my faith in the director and enjoyed this movie. Last week I put my faith in Martin Scorsese when I went to see The Departed and I left a little disappointed.

Politics Detour

Matters political that caught my attention this week.

1. Husseyin Celil is a Canadian citizen who was essentially kidnapped by the Chinese authorities from Uzbekistan and recently sentenced to serve 15 years in an undisclosed location for terrorism. His crime is advocating democratic principles in the annexed Uyghur region. This is very similar to the plight of the Tibetans in their struggle against the Chinese authorities. The Canadian government has done next to nothing. It appears that they have learned very little from the Maher Arar case.

2. Speaking of the Canadian government... they are trying to pass legislation that ostensibly tries to lock up dangerous offenders for good. The problem is that they may have to contravene the constitution to do so. If convicted of three voilent crimes then the onus will shift to the defendant to convince a judge with arguments for why he should not be locked up for life. Do we really need to explain to lawmakers the importance of respecting the rule of law?

3. Speaking of the rule of law... the Bush administration has released another doctrine. They have outlined the legal framework within which they intend to proceed with their activities in space. The doctrine essentially states that they can do whatever they please and will not allow any interference or even debate on the matter. This wild west approach is their first step towards weaponizing space.

4. France is the home of civil liberties and free speech. So it's curious that their national assembly has passed a bill that makes it illegal to deny the Armenian genocide by the Turks. The irony is that saying such a genocide took place is illegal in Turkey. Both governments are engaging in counterproductive measures. It matters not at all to this discussion whether it did or not. I just don't think politicians are the people to decide on historical debates. Always err on the side of liberty and allow discussion. Only then can we hope to arrive at a closer approximation of the truth.

It's Raining Money

The internet is like a raging hurricane. Many of us can see how it works and watch its progress but none of us are very good at affecting it to move this way or that.

Occasionally a butterfly like YouTube flaps its wings in a basement somewhere and through a series of interconnected developments actuated at opportune moments, this butterfly moves the hurricane a little off track. This leaves a whole swath of media geographies scurrying to react.

Crazy College Kids

Lou Salome, Paul Ree and Friedrich Nietzsche in happy times; Before the heartbreaks, nihilism, crippling illnesses and eventual syphilis induced madness, only to be then posthumously misrepresented by his Nazi sister and brother-in-law.

N.B. He seemed to have that crazy moustache throughout his entire adult life.

Nietzsche Family Circus

What happens when you cross random Nietzsche quotes with random Family Circus comics?

Nietzsche Family Circus

Found Art

A sheet of paper was found by the lake. This is what was written on it:

"A man sits on a bench by the lake. He writes on a stack of papers.
When he finishes writing on a page. He lets the wind take it away."

The Autumn Sky

sitting by the water and thinking of you
rose bushes wilting under the autumn sky

a couple plays chess on a picnic table
their game again may end in a draw

moments of sunshine, but the nights are cold
as rose bushes wilt under the autumn sky

Song To The Siren

This Mortal Coil recorded their version of this song in 1984 and everytime I hear it on my iPod it stops me cold and transports me to somewhere else. I've listened to it several times today and it has put me in a strange mood (like Camus strange).

I had never been able to make out the lyrics so I researched it and was surprised to find that the song was originally written by Tim Buckley. It turns out that he was the father of Jeff Buckley, another one of my favourites, who incidentally met his father only once. Both 4-octive singers died young (Tim was 28 and Jeff was 30).

It occurred to me that this would be a very suitable song for a funeral. If I were ever to succumb and depart this mortal coil then my surviving 200 year old contemporaries might consider it.

Tim Buckley - Song To The Siren

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
'Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isle
And you sang
Sail to me
Sail to me
Let me enfold you
Here I am
Here I am
Waiting to hold you

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you hare when I was fox?
Now my foolish boat is leaning
Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
For you sing, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow:
O my heart, O my heart shies from the sorrow"

I am puzzled as the newborn child
I am troubled at the tide:
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Should I lie with Death my bride?
Hear me sing, "Swim to me, Swim to me, Let me enfold you:
Here I am, Here I am, Waiting to hold you

Helpful Advice

Don't forget to breathe.

How Now?

It's awful, it has always been awful.

It's beautiful, it has always been beautiful.

PKD

Another Stillborn Project

I was set to begin my new project: to write a screenplay based on the life of Philip K. Dick, layering ideas from his paranoid schizoid visions with his fictional writings.

My second day of research revealed the following:

http://www.philipkdick.com/media_pr-060808.html

Fuck!

Next...

6 AM Eternal

they fly through the dark of my space
their shadows swoop down upon me

instead of sleep
I've settled on madness

Apex

Intelligence, language, organization, tool use, and even the use of other animals in hunting make humans the most effective of all predators despite being slow and clumsy.

Solaris (1972)

The introduction to Solaris is calm and slowly paced, with little of the drama later appearing in the film. Some people feel the car traffic sequence filmed in Japan to be too long, being placed so early on in the film that it alienates some viewers. On direct question from the Soviet censor overseeing the production, Tarkovsky said he intentionally made this sequence boring: "so that the idiots leave before the actual movie starts"

Why Is There Something Instead Of Nothing?

The Universe, as a whole, has a nonzero baryon number density —
that is, matter exists.

It's Not Easy Being Green

I found this poster taped to my front window yesterday morning. My house is a commercial building. It looks like a vacant storefront but I live behind that facade. The heading reads "PUBLIC NOTICE - POSSIBLE NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE FACILITY" It is huge, about 3 feet by 5 feet.

For a few seconds I thought my building had been condemned without my knowledge. When one reads down to the fine print one realizes that it is a poster encouraging people to vote for green policies in the by-election that was conducted yesterday in my riding. I'm troubled by this campaign strategy which I discovered to be hatched and paid for by WWF, Greenpeace, Pembina Institute, Sierra Club, Ontario Clean Air Alliance and the David Suzuki Foundation.

I'm a strong proponent of green initiatives. Over the last several elections I have encouraged many people to consider voting for the Green Party. I've convinced friends of mine who may be considered to be mainstream capitalist voters to actually vote for the Green Party. I think I have been successful largely because of the strengths of my arguments. I also feel that the message is more likely to be effective if it is coming from someone to whom the voter can relate. Aside from my predilection for black clothing I appear to fit in quite easily with the so-called mainstream. This allows me to sneak up and change the minds of accountants and lawyers who would otherwise just walk away from someone espousing green policies.

Much of the environmentalist strategy to win votes is woefully inadequate. It is often a premier example of preaching to the choir. A case in point would be the poster I found on my window. Who do they hope to sway with this tactic? Thousands of people walked or drove by before I took down the poster. Ninety-five percent of them didn't read past the headline. How many of them years later will drive by and think "wasn't there some nuclear contamination in that building?" When the building and the neighbourhood is tainted property owners become resentful.

The only people who will stop and read it and then say "yeah, that's right, I support that" will be people who already support that. Others will be angry at the scare tactics employed. Haven't we had enough of scare tactics to win votes over these last several years?

Trench Coat Mafia

It was reported by eyewitnesses that the shooter in the Dawson College rampage in Montreal was wearing a black trench coat. Then someone found the shooter's page on vampirefreaks.com. There we have it. Everything has been neatly and roundly explained. He was a goth! That explains everything.

He was a loser, he was bullied, he was a goth, that's why he went on a shooting rampage. Surely, there must be more nuanced ways to understand aberrant behaviour. A goth is probably statistically as likely to go on a shooting rampage as anyone else in the general population. Son of Sam wore clothes from JC Penny: Does this mean that we should be suspicious of people who wear white shirts matched with sensible polyester pants?.... Well probably yes, but for other reasons.

The Persistence of Memory

Everything in the past continues to exist.

Remembered things exist more so than not-remembered things, so you will be more real if you leave behind progeny or memes.

Dead Einstein is probably more real than living I.

Wait, does that mean that famous people are more real?

Where are all the time-travellers?

Time travel will be developed in the future.

But you will only be able to travel as far back as the first running of that machine.

That's why we don't have any visitors from the future.

Bigfoot Revisited

I met a man in BC who claimed to know Bigfoot. The discussions I had with him were astonishing and will become, when I reveal their contents, the final word on Sasquatch.

I recorded my conversations with this man who claims that Bigfoot is actually his great-great uncle from Seattle. I will be reviewing the recordings over the next few weeks to try to come to grips with them. I may post some clips. Stay tuned.

Late Night Advice From a Friend

so your life is in a pickle or is pickled

the same issues preserved in brine over time

someone should eat the fucking pickle and pour the brine down the sink

Ministry of Plenty

I went today to the Ministry of Plenty aka Ikea Store. It was double plus good. My furniture rations were increased by ten percent so I decided to get another desk and chair for my home office. I had to return something from my previous visit so I took a number and waited with my comrades for my turn to come up. Everyone was pleased that the average wait time has been reduced for the seventh consecutive quarter. It took me only twenty-five minutes to see someone who then gave me my credits so that I could spend it upstairs.

Of course I had to wait in line for someone to print out my desk requisition. They were out of stock - something about a storeship from Eastasia having sunk on its journey across the sea. With paper in hand, I proceeded to another line where my chair requisition could be printed. I was only goodthinkful as I walked about a kilometre to the warehouse where I dutifully sought out and secured my disassembled bookshelves and then proceeded to the register lines which, I swear my brother were only about twenty deep. A mere thirty-five minutes later I was able to pay with my ration credits and proceed to the prolefeed section aka the cinnamon bun line where I was able to replenish my strength for what was yet to come. Super plus tasty!

Another half kilometre and I was positioned in the final queue. I saw only happy faces amongst my comrades and was able to avoid all thoughtcrime during the last twenty minutes before my chair arrived. I swam through the crowds to find my vehicle and was able to load and drive away without incident.

I sit on my new chair as I write this, my desk on its way from Eastasia, and my bookshelves on the floor in their boxes because they didn't include the screws needed to mount them to the wall. Still, my brother I am thankful for the Ikea Ministry of Plenty for in what other way could we ever imagine buying furniture.

Observation

Perfume smells wonderful, but tastes awful.

Notes Found in the Margins

Suicidal Art - Protest of Silence

Exhibition of World - Production of Earth

It was a sign, of course it was, it just was and that's true.

This art?

We're all recyclable.

Great Pun is Dead!

The only conspiracy is to make you beleive there's a conspiracy.

Spock/Kirk - Apollo/Dionysus

Hey, what's with the gravity?

hey-hey, ho-ho
this protest chant has got to go (repeat)

Coming of Age

When did you first start to notice that newspaper comics weren't really that funny?

Kill Bill - 5 minute review

One of my 5 minute reviews from 2003. These are reviews that I write in about 5 minutes, as soon as I get home from watching the movie.

Kill Bill is the best made, most technically skilled and most exciting action film that I have ever dis-liked. This is a film that is a step back for Tarantino as an artist. While it is true that he displays a very impressive mastery of the chosen genre it is also true that he disappoints in the paucity of any another dimension beyond style. This is a Bacchic feast of form but it lacks even a side dish of substance and what substantial content it offers is drowned out and made dysfunctional by the form.

After a brutally violent wedding murder scene, Uma Thurman's character wakes up after a lengthy coma to discover that her baby has been lost. A long and sympathetic camera lingers on her as her sorrow and rage pours out of her. The problem is that because of the onslaught that has just occurred we cannot really feel for her. Such an emotionally powerfull scene is reduced to being perceived as a drawn-out filler until more cartoonish action can be served up.

As it turns out, the actual cartoon segment in the film works really well. The Japanese style anime is very stylishly done, with excellent movement of perspective. Many of the other segments of the movie which can also be described as cartoonish also are technically successful. I understand that it is an exercise in referential filmmaking, an homage to various genres and it succeeds as a tour de force of an action martial arts film. There is however the odour of American over-acheivement. It is as if Tarantino is trying to prove that he can out-do the genre and bring it to some ultimate conclusion. The goal it seems is to make something that teenage boys can argue is the last word in a martial arts action film. It is as if we are to be awed and humbled and dared to make another film of this genre after seeing Kill Bill.

The intent itself seems unable to overcome the boyish fight fantasies it portrays. Tarantino throws down the gauntlet in some imagined competition to be crowned the uber-geek. He might win that contest and be awarded such laurels by the academy of cinema geeks but he has brought himself down a rung in the pantheon of auteur filmmakers. What has he really done that could not be achieved by countless other directors given enough time and budget to do so?

This work is not produced through the subtle insights of a talented director - and talented he surely is - the kinetic overabundance is mainly the result of having enough time and money to out-do other filmmakers. Perhaps Tarantino was stung or even ostracised by the members of that diaspora that I call the Academy of Cinema Geeks after he made Jackie Brown. Perhaps he felt that he had lost their respect and wowed to win them back. In many ways Jackie Brown is better at showcasing those more rarefied directorial talents. The ability to invent a sympathetic soul with whom the viewer can empathize is more difficult than throwing enough money at an action sequence to numb the senses. There are those who will say that my estimation of this film is really beside the point, that Tarantino intended it to be just such a movie. With this I would agree. He has indeed succeeded in his aim. My disappointment lies in the fact that he is capable of so much more and I wish he would draw again and re-aim.

Girls On A Beach... dude

While reading at the beach on Comox Lake, two young girls stepped out of a small jeep vehicle and set up their tanning towels in front of me. This is the conversation that was overheard:

Girl1: Oh Dude, I've had like the best summer ever.

Girl2: I know. It's been like so awesome.

Girl1: Dude, yeah just me and you, its been so Gong Show.

Girl2: Yeah, like sooo Gong Show.

Girl1: Just doing random shit.

Jakes On A Plane

I just landed in Northern BC for a couple of weeks.

I plan on continuing my research into the Bigfoot legend. Next week I have an interview lined up with someone who not only claims to have personaly known the famous Sasquatch but also claims to be related to him.

My results will follow soon.

Crazy Cat Lady

Everyone has heard of those crazy cat ladies. They are those eccentric women who live in unkempt houses with their dozens of cats who can be seen eating and pooping all over the place. Well it turns out that she may have been made crazy by the poop.

Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that lives in cat feces and can be transmitted to humans who come into contact with it. It can cause Toxoplasmosis that can make one ill or in rare cases be fatal. It is thought that about half of the world's population may be latently carrying it. What is interesting is that some studies seem to indicate that even when latent the parasite may have effects on human behaviour.

Could it be that the world is becoming ever more insane not because of any large social or economic developments but because of our affection for our feline friends?

Toxoplasmosis

Cuba Libre (Cuban Rum + Coca Cola + Lime)

Ever since Fidel was said to have passed on the leadership to Raul I have had the suspicion that he may have actually died. I don't find the photos very convincing. Regardless, the effect has been a greater affection for Fidel from the people.

But then again, I always thought that Coca Cola planned the New Coke fiasco to redouble the loyalty of Coke drinkers.

Meanwhile about 90 miles from the Florida Keys (where key lime is grown) Sheritt International is pumping about 20,000 barrells of crude oil.

The corporations have been licking their lips, waiting for a sip of a Cuba Libre, but they may go unquenched if the Cubans are able to pull off a smooth transition when Fidel passes on.

Random Musings

Bigfoot is a big-footed creature.

Bunker Palace

Kinder Fassbinder

Undemanding Slaveowner

Eat This Book

Out-Neil Neil

Abortion Distortion

Duotang

Monkey Scary

Where did the future go?

Tickle Me Emo

Spotted Leper

Mercury Headgear

Heidegga Ma Nigga

Wikimania

Last night I innocently read the featured article on Wikipedia:

I noticed that there was a dispute about the content so I clicked on the discussions and found myself again only several hours later.

Holy cow! I don't know what to think. I was impressed by the determination of the several contributors who seemed to have been carrying out a heated debate. It really brought home the amount of effort that goes into this open source project to build a comprehensive free encyclopedia. I'm thankful that so many people feel the spirit of voluntarism. I read about a guy last week who had contributed thousands of articles. This on top of his regular day job.

Traditional encyclopedias were written by people who we assumed were experts on the entries that they produced. We didn't really know who these contributors were but we knew that if their words were printed in the book then it must have had the authority of truth. Wikipedia allows you and I to write the entries and others to change them. There is still some notion of authority since we assume those contributing must know a great deal about the subject but the traditional power of the authority of knowledge is out the window. You are allowed to scrutinize the information, make suggestions, and ultimately rewrite the entry altogether.

Ideally, one would think that this process would bring us ever closer and closer to the truth. I will suggest that this is correct but not in the way one might suppose. The ideal of truth is an old Platonic notion that envisions truth as the ultimate reality that we only catch glimpses of in our progression towards it. If you subscribed to this approach then as long as all the contributors acted honestly then we would get closer and closer to the ideal of the truth of the matter. But I don't buy this approach to truth.

Truth can also be seen to be something less stable than a perfect ideal. It can be thought of as something that is more pliable, morphous, and temporal. It can change, be willed to change, and change over time. Truth can also be thought of as a social construct. Some things are true by consensus. If a group of people in a certain area of the world consider themselves to be of a certain ethnic variety then that is true for them by their social act of collectively saying that it is true. The notion of race is one of those ideas that are much more slippery, morphous and temporal than one would assume. I think if we think deeply about it, the idea of race seems to slip away perhaps entirely.

If you find yourself reading any Wikipedia entry at any time I would argue that you are always reading the truth... as it has been agreed upon by the consensus of those who can contribute to it. Since we can all contribute to it, that entry may be the closest thing we have to truth. It is a wonderful mix of authority and consensus.

Irresistable Force vs The Immovable Object

Jake to Universe

conditioned to push
afraid to pull
push past and pull again

The Wisdom of Silenus

What occurred to me at the funeral of a young man who was to be married in two weeks:

Oh, wretched ephemeral race, children of chance and misery, why do you compel me to tell you what it would be most expedient for you not to hear? What is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born, not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is -- to die soon. (BT:3 [Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1224ff])

Now it became possible to stand the wisdom of Silenus on its head and proclaim that it was the worst evil for man to die soon, and second worst for him to die at all. (Birth of Tragedy vi-xv, Nietzsche's 1887 preface)

Private Language

In my language the words for "music" and "tickle" would be cognates.

Positive Thinking

I had a basketball coach in high school who was always trying new and experimental things to improve our play. Some were terrible failures. He decided that french fries were the perfect food for us and encouraged us to feast on them before games. He decided that if we all wore the same shoes we would all coalesce into a single-minded machine. These didn't work. We continued to lose as we sluggishly tripped over our identical 20 year-old Converse shoes that were all the rage when he used to play.

One day he told us that he had just read about some recent research and was ready to put it into action. He made us line up at the foul line, close our eyes and imagine shooting perfect foul shots... over and over again. The boys naturally began to giggle, crack jokes and erupt in fits of laughter to which the response was to force us to do hours of wind sprints.

That was my first experience with positive thinking as a strategy for success. He was probably right - a little visualization could positively develop your follow-through. I have since come across other people who seem to take this idea a little too far. Sure, you could visualize yourself in healthy positive situations and you might be able to more easily achieve some of these end results. But does this mean that if I visualize myself winning the lottery, I will have a better chance of winning the lottery? If I visualize Trezeguet scoring on a penalty shot does that mean he will be more likely to score? (apparently not)

It seems to me that positive visualization will only work if you had the power to affect the outcome in the first place. I have the power to improve my free-throw so visualization could work. I have no control over the balls inside a lottery bubble so I could visualize all I want and no different result will come of it.

Some people not only subscribe to this irrational over-exuberance but also to it's converse. I had a business partner who always insisted on thinking about what could go right but he never wanted to hear about what could go wrong. He assumed that even thinking about the negative would bring it about. This is particularly dangerous and doomed to failure. It is in our arsenal of useful evolutionary traits to worry about what could go wrong. Not taken to excess, this is what allows us to avoid terrible outcomes simply by visualizing their possibilities. To ignore those and to only focus on what could go right is just asking to be sucker-punched.

Remember to visualize positively about those things upon which you could have some effect and not on things that you could not possibly have any effect. Also remember to carry an umbrella if you don't want to get wet and if you think it might rain. Bringing the umbrella will not make it rain.

Conversations

Boy: Well, you have to believe in something!

Girl: I believe in hats.

Rebel Hair

It seems teenage boys will groom themselves in a fashion that they perceive is most likely to scare their parents. This might be why suburban white kids tend to look like inner city black kids. So why do so many young men seem to be growing beards these days? Is it part of this hick-chic movement or is it because with their bushy beards they look like they could be members of Al-Qaida?

Moire Patterns

These Five Video Stills (1990's) are some of the most accessible works created by Sternime after his resurfacing from the dark decade of the eighties. After creating such foreboding works as the Blackened Life series and photo essays like Grey Matter (1988), he turned to a more colorful approach and wholeheartedly began his study of popular culture, in particular the world of Advertising and Television. The perfect fusion of the heightened elements of these worlds is manifested in the Infomercial and an exploration of this is presented in I'll Cut Off Their Heads and Charge it To The Corporation (1990's)

When studied closely many of his photos appear to have moire patterns - the visual interference patterns that can appear if one takes a photo of a video image. They also frequently reveal pixelations. Occasionally he would glean a few images from hours of random television video recordings and then photograph them at precisely the chosen moment without pausing the image. But many of Sternime's photos were actually photos of a video screen displaying scenes that he had previously shot on traditional film. Having gone through these several transformations they begin to reveal some imperfections. These interference patterns are a welcome and intentional aspect of the final image presented by Sternime.

The scientific explanations for these patterns are clues to the role these interference patterns play in Sternime's study of popular TV culture. If one stands close to a television while it is displaying an image, one notices that the seemingly smooth contiguous images are in fact composed of a series of grid alternations of a few primary colours. The screen constantly refreshes itself several times per second. It does not do this all at once, but by alternating every other line across the screen, then it refreshes the missing lines right before beginning again. The human mind simply fills in the missing lines like it fills in the missing movements in a projected reel of film. The photo image sometimes catches it in the process of refreshing so that every alternating line is out of phase. Every alternating line is actually from the previous refresh wave right beside a line from the next refresh wave. The moire pattern is an interference of these lines.

What seemed poignant to Sternime was that "the interference results from the interaction of the past wave with the future wave and what we are left with is the present image - a clearly imperfect record of the marriage of what has already occurred to what has yet to happen."

This deconstructive view of a video image is richly filled with evocative symbolism. By bringing this process to light Sternime is playing with the notions of temporality, reality, appearance and memory. In its most basic definition, all art is merely some form of reflection. The manifestation of this reflection is also recorded in some physical form. It can be said that reality or truth is reflected in a work of art such that the truth of a peasant's life is in some respect reflected and recorded in Van Gogh's painting of a pair of torn and tattered slippers that have been flung upon the floor.

But what could be said to be reflected in a work of art that records examples of advertising? Sternime's answer is rich and layered. The first thing to consider is that Sternime's definition of art would be much more inclusive than one might find in any academic theory. For him, art can be present in just about any reflected medium. The ever-present media of Television can be home to art. This is not surprising. What is surprising is that the advertising commercials sandwiched within the shows can also be home to art.

Sternime makes no effort to present examples of art in advertising. What is revelatory for the viewer of Sternime's work is that by studying the processes of advertising one reveals a deeper understanding of the nature of art. For Sternime, Art and Advertising are both activities that seek to exploit a particular medium or media to invoke a powerful effect upon the viewer.

Nietzschean aesthetics speaks of forces of artistic nature that align themselves in an opposing duality. There is the orgiastic random passion of the Dionysian opposed to the organizing structured regularity of the Apollonian. A similar duality is explored in Sternime's own meditations on Art. He touches on the opposition of the individual with the collective and the varying perception and understanding of the same world when viewed at the micro or macro levels.

The question asked by Sternime is "what can we come to know of the whole by studying the parts, and what do we come to know about the part by studying its whole?" The locus of the experience of art begins with the reflected image, but the image exists as both an interesting physical process of perception and a more interesting mental process of appreciation. The experience of art begins with something that is perceived and something that is appreciated through that perception. In these Five Video Stills Sternime reminds us of the reflective nature of the perception.

... - to be continued.

Out of Touch

Jake to Universe

I've been in the northern parts of the Islands in B.C. this past week. I'm a million miles from home. No Globe and Mail, no TV, no computer, no problem. I don't seem to miss those things even though they seem indispensible in my life back in Toronto.

I've started reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Marquez. I'm impressed with the first 70 pages. I wonder what it's like in Spanish? Literature should be read in the original language whenever possible but better to read it than not at all.

God versus Santa

Some religions seem to want to make God the Santa Claus for adults.

Checking lists, rewarding those who behave and an eternity of coal blackness for those who don't.

Steeple

Primeval

Universal Standard

In this peice entitled Universal Standard (1990's) Sternime plays with the stereotypes of what he called "the average nuclear family complete with all the toxic sludge one would expect".

Sternime had little opportunity to experience a childhood that could remotely be considered normal except for the brief span of a few months when his Mother Gloria moved in with a policeman and his daughter. This rigid and authoritarian man "was obsessed with all the outward appearances of normalcy, set up mainly as a subterfuge for his true psychopathic nature".

Later his mother would admit to him that this episode was her attempt to sacrifice her happiness so that little Sternime could "have a normal family setting within which he could hopefully become more normal". It turned out to be a horrible experience for both he and his Mother until the policeman died under suspicious circumstances while allegedly cleaning his gun.

Monster Devour

From the Monster Series (1990's) another example where the filmic and the photographic were combined to create a gallery piece of strong kinetic intensity. In these works Sternime explores his almost pathological unease with sexuality. He claimed that the feelings associated with sex would nearly overcome him. He likened those emotions to "having feelings of motherly love and comfort suddenly torn asunder when your mother turns and decides to devour you whole". Sexuality for Sternime was a nexus of comfort, coersion, and cannabilism.

He admits to having watched several horror B-movies with his mother as a young child. Sternime's mother Gloria was an independant minded single mother who never married and had a series of men revolve through their lives. Little Sternime would often find himself at the drive-in movies with his Mother and her date. After being lovingly tucked in to sleep he would recall often waking during his sleep to the shrilling screems of the movie. He wasn't sure at the time whether he was dreaming but would be startled to find that in addition to seeing and hearing someone being hacked and slashed to death on screen he would peek open his eyes to see what appeared to be his mother "savagely and with hungry desire cannabalizing this poor man who was lying on his back and writhing in pain".

The stylized representation of the act of fellatio plays prominently in many of his films and display pieces. He considered it to be "at once the most giving and most debilitating act that one can perform on a lover. It is an association between two people that requires the greatest of intimacy because it prioritizes the the need for trust over and above the fear of being castrated". The fear of cannabilistic castration seems to have won out for Sternime since the fellators represented in his works tend more often to be depicted as monstrous.

Grey Matter

Although Sternime is best known for his films, he is regarded by many to be a photographer first. His cinematic shots were painstakingly researched and planned. Sternime insisted that each of his scenes could be frozen and be taken for photographs in their own right. While planning his shots for a film he would spend months taking photos and developing his visual ideas so that they could stand alone and be appreciated. These recently discovered stills taken by Sternime in the eighties reveal a darker tonality of subject matter. They were undoubtably taken with some cinematic idea in mind. Sadly, these were never developed into any film he made. So they stand soley as a photographic representation of a cinematic project that never occurred. Struggling through his depression and solitude he continued quietly to work through his personal troubles by externalizing what he called his "overbearing dark nothingness within the geography of my mind".

This series of photographs is titled Grey Matter (1988). They were titled and sub-titled by Sternime but were not numbered as they appear here. They were meant to coexist in a group but not within any order. As the name would suggest, they are meant to somehow externalize the psychic dread into the physical world. He invites the viewer to enter his mental blackened psychological realm. Sternime often struggles with the intertwining connections between the physcial and the psychical in his works. Fully aware of his embodied physical existence, Sternime commented "at this one level I know I am comprised of physical elements that determine 'how' I am. Yet I am also certain that 'how I am’ psychically determine my physical existence." Grey Matter is an apt title, referring to the physicality of the "stuff" or "matter" of the brain while also referring to the more abstract "greyness" of his emotional being, "the matter of greyness in my life"

Photo 4 (Amongst Tendrils). A powerful evocation of forlornness, it presents a young man visually overpowered by the complexity of a forest of "tendrils". He is lost within and overwhelmed by the barren dusky greyness of the steep forest of the visually interconnected branches.

Photo 1 (Innocent Beauty) reflects his early childhood memories growing up in an industrial town. Sternime had never been able to shake the effect of the industrial landscape on his imagination "beautiful and horrid in the same billowing plume". Industrial architecture conveyed to Sternime "a solidity of purpose, an economy of design that purely follows function without any need for artifice" The magnificent smokestacks seem to spew toxic smoke to some but soft puffy clouds to the mesmerized child. The innocent seagulls fly about in the foreground of the factory. The moniker of innocent beauty is perhaps more attributed to the factory than the birds. The factory is built with no regard for beauty yet to Sternime it is unconciously or innocently beautiful. The forlornness shown in # 4 is counterposed to the iconic representation of homecoming.

In photo 2 (Dwelling) an estate is enshrouded in a misty haze. It is an ideal home setting of a beautifully landscaped property. Despite such perfection, it is abundantly clear that little life is revealed in the shot. The imagery is more funereal than domestic. One’s lifelong homesickness can only be satisfied with the ultimate blackness of death. So it is here we see Sternime working out what was to become one of his cinematic motifs: that a constant estrangement with the everyday cannot ultimately result in any satisfaction.

In photo 5 (Grounded), a seagull is shown at the foot of the photographer. After a life of flight - a life of ethereal imagination - we are reminded that we will be grounded by the physicality of the everyday world. "After dancing with the stars, we fall back to the ground which is our dwelling".

Photo 3 (Corridors) once again returns to the internal tendrils of the imaginative experience. Black and white photography became much favoured by Sternime during the eighties. "Two colors in opposition, yet together they produce infinite shading." This perfectly symbolized the central opposition in human imagination for Sternime. Human experience is at once capable of the highest highs and the lowest lows. The checkerboard pattern of the floor as well as the alternating pillars revealing light and casting shadow are clues to Sternime’s revelation of this infinite opposition. Yet in the corridor of black and white there grows an organic branching of tendrils again defying the sterility and thriving in spite of the shade.

Empowerment

I'll Cut off their Heads and Charge it to the Corporation was a departure for Sternime. It appeared as part of the Schwarzes Leben series created in the early nineties. Despite his advanced middle age, he successfully transferred his angry detachment to the medium of visual arts. Having enjoyed a medial success in the art circuit cinemas of Europe and North America, he had sunk into a protracted depression and produced little in the eighties, often characterized by him as "my personal dark ages".

He sprang to the fore once again with his Blackened Life outpouring that garnered as much confusion as praise. Those familiar with Sternime's work quickly realized that there was much consistency of purpose in his newly chosen medium with his cinematic works. Sternime had become somehow more youthful in this example of externalized anger at those "who peddle self-induced spiritual lobotomy". He seems to poke fun at the entire culture of crass capitalism that had begun to pervade the seemingly unconnected realm of the religion. It occurred to Sternime that there had been a blurring of the realms of Capitalism and spiritualism. Tony Robbins merely served as a personification and an embodiment of this newfound "Salvation for Sale" that merely seemed to carry on the ancient strategy of charging a fee for enlightenment. These new cultural developments however were much more likely to succeed according to Sternime simply because religion finally fully appreciated and exploited the realm of advertising and promotion. As is the case with the world of advertising, much is highlighted and much is left out of the message.

These self-help strategies espoused by Robbins et al refer to "the power within" that needs to be unleashed (intentionally mis-spelled as "unleased"). It implies that the secret to success simply lies in unbridling those powers that surge within us. Sternime referred to this new spirituality as "a turning on its head of two thousand years of Christianity". It lays religion topsy-turvey because instead of encouraging the repression of "the power within" it encourages an unleashing. What is reprehensible to Sternime is that this strategy ignores the true force of this unleashing. It disregards that true self-awareness must involve a full acceptance and recognition of all the "leashed powers within us" including the unpleasant ones such as the need for domination, sexual savagery, and presence of overwhelming anxiety.

Millions of years of savage existence cannot be repressed that easily, especially after unleashing the powers within. We cannot simply choose to retain some of these leashed powers while picking over those unpleasant powers within. Learning about and addressing what you really want will inevitably make you dirty. As he said in an oracular manner in a 1981 interview, "When we stand too close to the fire of our desires, we are blackened by the soot of the ember of our ancestors"

MWAA

In this memorable scene from Mother Was Always Angry (1972) Sternime uses an intense blue filter to coincide with Drago's barren maternal environment. A montage of images from his most distant memories, it displays a series of closeups of his mother and father from the vantage of a child looking up. The coloring of Drago's memory - now grown - reveals in retrospect that there was no love in his early life.

Last Days

Last night I watched Gus Van Sant's Last Days. It is a movie with even less dialogue than Ceylan's Uzak- at least discernible dialogue since the main character played by Michael Pitt mumbles unintelligibly throughout much of the film. It clearly did not have the same effect that the Turkish film was able to achieve. In Van Sant's defense it was 3am when I started watching it and I was a little anxious so I might not have been able to let it wash over me or more accurately seep into me as such movies must do to be successful.

In Ceylan's film the characters don't do much on screen - a great deal of the film is spent by us watching them watch TV. In Last Days the rock-star character (largley based on Kurt Cobain) mumbles and stumbles as he tries to make Kraft Dinner. He sleeps on the floor as we watch the TV in the room displaying a nearly complete Boyz to Men music video (which I thought was a parody video for the first 2 minutes).

Ceylan's characters slowly grow on you and you begin to care for them. I simply couldn't bring myself to care for Van Sant's characters. They are largely spoiled, self-absorbed and drunk/stoned young people who are sleep-walking through a self-destrcutive haze. The Cobain character's predicament is completely self-inflicted and unnecessary. It's hard to feel for a millionaire who has every option in the world open to him and chooses to blow it and himself away.

The best part of the movie for me was when they played a Velvet Underground song on vinyl.

I'll watch it again when I'm in a more receptive mood. And I also intend on seeing Gerry.

Strangers in Transilvania Restaurant.
I don't know their stories.

Retro Schmetro

Whatever happened to Dalek I Love You?
Or for that matter; Classix Nouveaux or Visage?

Those were some of my favourite bands from the 80's. Yet I never ever get to see them during those retro video shows.

To me the music of the eighties isn't properly represented by the irritating and predictable songs of Bobby Brown, Sheana Easton or Phil Collins. That era's genius is reflected in those endearing bands with the overbearingly serious poses and goofy haircuts.

Secret Rendezvous

These pictures were taken in May of 2003. There used to be a website that allowed you to remotely control a camera that was installed on the roof of a 50 storey building in Toronto. I trained the camera on the people talking on the patio of the restaurant one level below. I wonder what their story is?

My guess is that the one on the right is a tourist visiting from Warsaw. The one on the left is from Prague. They met the previous summer during world youth day when the Pope was visiting and agreed to meet again in Toronto the following summer. Being strictly devout Catholics they are somewhat confused and exhilerated by the intensity of their feelings for each other. They are meeting at this sky-high restaurant where no one who knows them could possibly be expected to see them together and guess their secret feelings for each other.

Or maybe they're just a couple of guys from Mississauga.

Less is More

I watched a Turkish film called "Uzak" or "Distant". It was one of the most sparsely dialogued movies I’ve seen in a while. It’s surprising how something so sparse and subtle can sneak up and effect you.

Only in low budget markets can you make such a movie these days. Antonioni made some great films in which hardly a word was spoken. Maybe Jim Jarmusch or Gus Van Sant can still get away with it today. It would be very difficult to convince someone to let you spend millions of dollars to make a film with so little dialogue.

Such a work is really a kind of Rorschach test. The less is said the more interpretation is required from the viewer, having different effects on different viewers. It’s an interesting strategy for art because it can be difficult to determine the virtuosity of the artist. People will argue that Antonioni is brilliant or an over-rated charlatan.

Life is Funny

I'll make a joke on my deathbed.
People will say "he was funny, but he still died".

Happy Mother's Day

Don't forget to call your Mom or "Mom-like" person in your life.

In the Moment

I once saw Bob Costas bragging that he does his own stunts including the tongue-twisters. He then very impressively gave an example of a lengthy, complicated and convoluted string of words and effortlessly continued to introduce the next segment of his show. I wondered if multiple takes were required. I would guess that he was able to do it in a single take. Some people are good at that sort of thing.

I have been on Radio and TV a few times and I've had to make presentations in front of large classes and audiences. I find that if you stumble and make a mistake, the natural tendency is to dwell on it internally even as your mouth has already moved onto the next sentence. While you try to contemplate the error, react to it, or learn from it, your mouth has already moved on and you find it very difficult to concentrate on the task at hand.

Sometimes when you're humming along nicely and everything is going smoothly you might start to think about an important point that you are about to make. Internally you are already planning out the next segment but out of your mouth is flowing the segment at hand. You will likely have trouble with it.

Those who are best at this sort of thing will be the people who can block out both the past and the future as they move in the present.

Tripped up by the words that came before and those to follow.
I talk today, not yesterday, not tomorrow.

Paul 101, Paul 101

I wrote this 3 years ago when I tried spending some time in an office pretending to work.

----------
The rumbling hum of an aging air conditioner that rattles the floors when it turns on or off.
The ziggity-zag of a printer well past its prime - on loan from the museum of antique technology.
The seeking whine of a dial-up modem negotiating a connection.

Peppered with the random musings of bitter mid-level so-called professionals.
The din and cacophany shoots over and through me.
I am surrounded by noise and startled by P.A. announcements too loud so it can be heard over the chortling air conditioner.

"Paul 101, Paul 101"

The phones don't stop ringing.
The chit-chat chattering.
This place is too cold, turn off that damn air conditioner.
Someone please find Paul and tell him to pick up 101.
If I hear his name again that motherfucker is done.
Paul's not here, just take a damn message, he'll call back when he's done recovering.

Spend time in coal mine and you'll become dirty.
The soot will find your skin wherever you've left it exposed.
I want to remain clean,

Adopt a tree

While walking around my neighbourhood these last few days I have come across these beautiful blankets of colours lying beneath certain trees. Some are pale green, some are yellow and some are vibrant hot pink. It is especially pleasing when two or more of these trees are next to each other. They steal all attention away from their surroundings.

Most of these castings end up stillborn on cars, sidewalks, on the road and finally in the sewer. Today I stopped, picked up a handful and buried them under some dirt on a front lawn. It's easier to save a baby tree than a baby racoon.

Is this a fetish?

Women who yawn or file their nails or read a book or engage in some such distracted activity while having sex.
It might have something to do with male selfish sexuality. "She's so devoted that she'll do it just for me... even if she isn't particularly interested in it at that moment".

Baby Mammals

Is there anything cuter than baby mammals? And furry baby mammals are surely the most adorable. Yesterday I drove into a very tight laneway to help a friend pick up a used BBQ. I had to brake suddenly because someone was using a spade to push a litter of baby racoons under a fence from their backyard into the laneway. They were able to scurry away.

When I got through to the clearing in front of the row of garages there were several neighbours out in the laneway and none of them seemed to care a cent for those frightened little bandits. The man with the BBQ said "yes but they'll grow up and shit everywhere and tear everything up" I doubt they'll make it into next week. It's a cruel world isn't it?

Zipper in the Fabric of Spacetime

I have owned a backpack style carrying-case for close to a year. Today I noticed a zipper and pocket on top of that bag. I could swear no such zipper was there yesterday. I am afraid to open it.

We Exceed Standards

I've seen these full page ads the last few days in the Globe and Mail. I can't even remember for which company they were pitching; I think it was a petroleum concern. In the ad they claim to not just meet standards but to go further and exceed them. Isn't it always the case that when you meet a standard you exceed it. If you're given a minimum standard of n, you need to exceed n in order to meet it.

Cruise out of Control

Since when are Hollywood stars required to be sane and uncontroversial in order for their movies to be successful? Apparently Tom Cruise has become somewhat crazy and this might explain the less than expected receipts for his new movie. I keep hearing this repeated and seeing titles such as the one I've used to head this entry. One is tempted to suspect a conspiracy.

OK, Scientology seems somewhat wacky but no more than most other religious sects. Maybe Cruise's rant against pharmaceuticals like prozac are making some people angry. Maybe these angry people who spend billions advertising such pharmaceuticals would like to see dissenters like Cruise discredited as frothing nutjobs.

I will not defend Scientology's theologies or methodologies but maybe they're onto something here.