Thoughts During Some Useless Cycles
Somewhere between poetry
and a flow chart: This HYPER
is a crude hypertext
using graphical layout CONTENT
It isn't finished. for local connections and
It never will be. HTML jumps for long
distance ones. (Real Soon.)
--------
DEDICATION
In honor of the doomfile's current home on
kzsu.stanford.edu, my current obessessions I am not an
with all things auditory have been moved offical representative
up top. of KZSU or Stanford.
HISTORY I'm just a DJ.
The old top node was DESPERATE. MACHINE
But you can start anywhere, Standard disclaimers.
and get to anywhere else. All rights reserved.
Not responsible for misuse.
So let's start here.
---------
IDEAL_SET
The ideal set should have every segue flow
invisibly, so it's difficult to tell where one
song ends and the other begins.
The ideal set should have every cut selected
from a different genre. It should be a tour
of different cultures, different traditions.
The ideal set should be composed of superb
examples of music of it's kind. Every cut
should be a fantastic cut, a cut that demands
air play.
The ideal set should use the lyrics to the
songs in an intelligent way, when
juxtaposed they should appear as a
statement of a problem and a proposed
solution. The listener should experience
a revelation.
The ideal set should be able to use music
with lyrics and music without lyrics
together, so that the lyrical is enhanced by
the purely musical, and the musical by the
lyrical.
--------
RADIO (10/94)
What are it's virtues? It's cheap. It's vices? The FCC in it's
It's immediate. It's cool. less than infinite wisdom,
COOL strictly liscences the use of
radio frequencies. In a typical
For most people, it's something you metropolitan area, there have
do while driving around, if you're been no new frequencies made
bored with your recordings. available in half a century.
There are other things that can be I tend to think
done with radio though, provided that the odd
the listener is willing to listen polarization
actively, to study program of the radio
schedules, perhaps to tape shows spectrum into
and repeatedly listen to them. bland commercial
stations and
bizarre non-
I often work with an coms is almost
ideal listener in entirely an
mind, rather than a artifact of
typical one. FCC regs.
POSTRADIO
--------
MACHINE
The Machine is my radio show on KZSU, 90.1 FM
on Friday nights, from 9PM to Midnight.
I've described it as
"Post-industrial interplanetary folk music"
At 10 PM, the listener is invited to celebrate
the joys of personally improvised noise and to
"Play Along With Doom".
At 11 PM, there is a 45 minute long set,
an essay on a theme.
"Let the machine into your heart."
-- William Gibson
--------
BLEND
Before the Machine, I did a show called "The
Industrial Strength Blend". On Saturdays,
Midnight to 3AM.
This was the Manifesto:
This is the Voice of Doom
Many people have asked me, what is
the _formula_ for the Industrial
Strength Blend? This isn't wasy to
say, since the blend draws on so
many sources.
But the point is not just to shock
with contrasts, not for the sake of
weirdness alone (for some of us,
shocking weirdness comes all too
easy).
The point is to illuminate
similarities underneath the
differences,
to create a classic tension/release
narrative structure,
to create a whole greater
than it's parts
(And doom is a master of great
wholes).
Each 3 song set must flow
through angst & anger
to acceptance, understanding,
even joy.
And at 2 AM it switches to a larger
structure, the 45 minute, uninterrupted set,
the essay on a theme,
the collection of oddities,
the odyssey of aspects.
And of course, all of this is
30 % industrial by weight.
It's too ambitious, even
doomed to failure, but
in the end, what else is there
but doom?
The Industrial Strength Blend,
Saturday Night from Midnight to
3 AM on KZSU, Stanford, 90.1 FM.
A show for all and none.
---------
PLAYING_DJ (10/94)
I used to make "mix tapes".
First, I went for juxtaposition of
different kinds of music, trying to
shock with contrasts.
Very quickly, this seemed like an
easy, cheap trick.
Back then, I also believed in
I started working on smooth transitions, treating the music with
getting different pieces of music to respect, leaving a noticeable
flow together. gap of silence between the
cuts. Very "loose" segues.
I got into the idea of creating
tapes for other people to
listen to, tapes that would I also started playing
provide structure to a party, with structures...
or a dinner
A punk tape, going back
I found this incredibly and forth ten years with
difficult. The medium of a each cut.
tape is too non-interactive,
for one thing. It's too hard A tri-cycle tape, rotating
to predict exactly what kind of between three different
music will work with some bands.
unknown group of people, days
in advance. Obviously, this is STRUCTURES
why live dance music DJs are a
necessity. The dance music DJ
has to watch the crowd
response, and decide what will
work next.
I wound up trying to do this
at one party, (using someone
else's records and a single
turntable). I found it
intensely frustrating. The It turns out that this party
crowd *looked* like a "cool" was dominated by the "International"
crowd, and there were some crowd, which may explain the
records I thought were cool, cognitive dissonace.
too, but it turned out that
there was a major difference Visual fashions travel faster than
in their fashion sense and musical fashions?
their musical taste.
They really liked dancing to
things like Michael Jackson.
I have a lot of respect for
dance music DJs. What they do
is not at all easy.
The college radio DJ has the
unique privilege of
self-indulgence.
To a first approximation,
anything that I want to
play, I can play. Since RULES
audience feedback is so
limited (yes, some people
call in, but callers are
hardly representative of the
whole audience) there's
little choice but to steer
by your own lights, and hope
that someone out there
appreciates what you're
doing.
-------
COLLEGE_DJ
When I started doing a show at Stanford
I was trying to think of things that I could
do differently than other DJs.
STRUCTURES
PROGRAMMED
-------
STRUCTURES
One of my first ideas
was to minimize DJ
interruptions.
So, given a three
hour show, I figured
I would do three I picked the length of
forty five minute 45 minutes to be one
sets. side of a 90 minute
tape.
At the top of each
hour I would cluster I tape radio shows I like.
together all of the Why not make it easier
required for someone like me?
announcements,
describe everything
played before, and
maybe play another cut
or two to fill in the (Irony #1:
rest of the time. I'm probably praised
more often for
"having a great
voice" than for
my taste in
music.)
I was strongly discouraged from
structuring a show this way. SHORTORDER
Being a person of extremes,
I went from the idea of
doing 45 minute sets, to
doing the shortest possible
set that could still have
some sort of structure to
it. The reasoning being
that most listeners have
very short attention spans,
and if you're doing
something clever with the
arrangement of music, they
better not have to listen
for very long to figure it
out.
Soon after I was on the air, I
started sneaking *one* 45 minute
set into my show.
Which made it a show of extremes:
the shortest possible sets in the
first two hours, suitable for short
attention span listening, and the
last hour dedicated to the longest
possible set, designed for more
careful listening.
It made sense to me to have
something I could promote within
the show ("and at 3 AM, I'm going I was continually trying
to be doing a 45 minute set on the to think of a "feature"
theme of anal retentiveness."). to start at the top of the
second hour as well as
Maybe I could talk the casual the third.
listeners into actually focusing on
what I was doing for a solid 45 I didn't get it
minutes. until my second year,
with The Machine.
NECESSITY
--------
BLOCKS
Maybe this is obvious, but lets look at what
DJs have to work with.
1: The irreducible minimum is the
one single cut. You could do a
show where you played single cuts,
coming on the mic between each one.
Might make sense for genres with
very long pieces.
2: But for the DJ, the creative act
begins with the number two: The
segue, the transition between two
pieces of music. TRANSITIONS
3: To do something with a
structured sequence of music
though, it helps to have three.
Two points determine a direction,
and the third establishes the
change in direction.
My thought was to mimic the
"tension-release" curve of
literature. So the first two cuts
would establish a conflict, and the
third should give you a feeling of
resolution, of closure.
Sometimes, this just means the
first two tracks I play would be
dark and/or noisy, and the third
would be more upbeat or poppy.
In the ideal case though, the third
track should provide a real answer
to the problems posed in the first
two, a resolution of the conflict.
One of the characteristics of Art:
multiple constraints satisfed simultaneously.
plot and character.
meter and rhyme.
rhyme and reason.
sound and meaning.
4: More recently I've gone to four song
sets.
Just one extra cut, but there's so
much more scope.
It allows the opportunity to borrow
structures from simple rhyme schemes: ((Expand on this.
abab, abcb and so on. Connect to musical genres,
Genre definitions. Indust/Folk
And in a weird way, putting togther Manifesto?))
four songs on a theme can actually
be easier than three. I guess I won't try and
explain how. Yet.
45. The forty five minute set, typically
around 10 to 15 cuts. This provides a
tremendous amount of scope... Though come to think
of it, I've never tried
THEMES to use a really long
struture, in analogy
of a sonnet's rhyme
scheme, for example.
--------
THEMES
That the short sets I do often have
"themes" to them, but I almost
never make a point of it. People
either notice or they don't. For
the long set though, the theme is
always announced in advance.
This creates a game about playing
with people's expectations
here... a "clever" segue in the
short sets is intended to take
people by surprize. A slightly weak
connection probably won't be even
recognized in the attempt.
For the 45 minute set, however, if
the listener knows the theme in
advance, then they'll be listening
for how what you play fits into the
theme.
A weak connection could be an
obvious gaffe... or, you may be
able to rely on the listener's
expectations to fill the gap.
Some 45 minute sets I've done have
required an enourmous amount of
work, but in general they're not
that hard to deal with. When
you're not worrying about getting
on the mic, you have more time to
go rushing around working on other
things. I've gotten stuck for time
and improvised some long sets that
have worked out okay, if not great.
Types of themes?
There are stupid ones,
like 105s "guess the connection":
("yes, that's right the bass players all have
brothers named Fred!")
Single keyword groupings,
e.g. songs with "ice" in the title.
This can be stupid, but it's
surprising how often something like
this can be interesting to listen
to: you get a collection of "icy"
music, and get to hear what
"iciness" means to muscians.
Collections of a certain type of
thing. This can be based on sound
(e.g. music with flutes) or on the
theme of the lyrics (songs about
killing the president). Or they can
be based on some external property,
(e.g. songs that have all been
mentioned in Neil Gaiman's
_Sandman_).
But the highest, the ultimate, type of
theme set is the _Essay_, a collection
intended to advance a thesis
that may or may not be expressed in the
lyrics of the songs used.
It's rare that I manage to do this.
--------
TRANSITIONS
You can probably classify segues
in different ways.
Sound and meaning: Matched or contrasted:
You can think about the You can try and do an
meaning of lyrics, or the invisible segue, and
apparent theme of an blend the beginning and
instrumental piece end of each piece together.
(perhaps hinted at by Or you can go for an
it's title), or you think abrupt change, the sudden
about the sound jump from one kind of music
to another.
--------
PROGRAMMED (10/13/94)
Improvisation is a necessity, not a virtue.
(Typo of the week:
Impovertised Music)
I always make an attempt at planing my
radio show out in great detail.
A technique I worked out a long time ago
for figuring out sequences of events, is the
use of post-it notes as a paper database
which can be arranged on another sheet of
paper.
When I'm interested in a cut, I write
it up on a post-it note, and archive
it in a looseleaf notebook. I flip
through this notebook, arranging the
post-its into sets of music I think
will work, and the sets can then
later be arranged into a show.
Everything is pre-planned, but it remains
flexible. If I get a request I really
like, if I can't find a record I want to
play, if I spend too much time on the air
talking, or if I just have a better idea,
the post-its can be rapidly re-arranged.
A shorter set can be substituted for a
longer set. A set can be split up,
another cut added...
I get some other advantages out of this
system: I'm freed from the time it
would take to write down what I'm
playing as I play it. And since I know
what I'm going to play, in theory all
of my records can be pulled before the
show starts so I shouldn't need to look
for things during the show. Also, I
only need to pull and refile precisely
the records that are going to be
played: (more improvisational DJs often
start their shows with more music than
they can possibly use).
Someday there will be computers good
enough that I can throw away the post-it
note system and do this electronically. I'd
certainly like to. It would be great to have
my own database of interesting music with
my own keywords that I could search on.
With the current state of software though,
even if I had a workstation in the control
room I think I'd have trouble doing this
without using paper.
--------
NECESSITY
All of this said, it is somewhat ironic
that most of the work I've been doing lately
is oriented toward ten minutes of improvised
noise.
I've been using mostly "organic" sources, with "Organic Industrial"
minimal electronics. On a good night, I'll is a beautiful
fill the outer studio with mechanical oxymoron, don't
contraptions, pieces of scrap metal, kids you think?
toys, anything I think will make interesting
sounds.
The excuse for all this is I call this the "Play
Along With Doom" feature, and invite
people to make their own noises while I
make mine.
And if it sounds boring... well then it's your
own fault for not making it more
interesting, isn't it?
This approach is partly a matter of
necessity: I don't have access to a lot of the
electronics available at KZSU, and I
personally don't have the money to spend on
a lot of it.
In an odd way, it's also connected to my
thoughts about the oxymoron of live techno.
If you're going to do something on stage, it
had better be more visually interesting than
just tweaking knobs on some electronics
boxes. Einstuerzende Neubauten style
industrial makes more sense... PERFORMANCE
Except that this isn't on stage. No one can
see what I'm doing. But maybe I'm working
out the details for a performance. Working
toward some live show, or maybe a video
tape?
There are a lot of unspoken contraints on
what I'm doing:
For example, I'd consider it cheating to use
a conventional musical instrument. And I
dislike inviting another person to help: on
some level it's supposed to be demo for solo
performance concepts.
I also consider it cheating to play a tape as
part of the performance, because that's
something I wouldn't do live: it's too boring
to look at. Since this is radio after all,
sometimes I'll do this when stuck for time.
On the other hand, I often use tape echo,
which I consider barely acceptable because
running a tape between two tape players,
one of which can be wheeled back and forth
to change the delay loop seems like it would
at least be visible enough to be
comprehensible to an audience.
For various reasons, part of the sound has to
be automatically generated. Working by
myself, I can't really do more than a couple
of things at once, not without a lot more
practice, anyway.
I've made a lot of use of the ordinary
sweep fans we have in the studio, that
are need to cool the place, especially
in the summer.
I started out with them sweeping back
and forth, blowing against some borrowed
wind chimes. I also played with them
blowing against suspended aluminum cans
which are light enough to make a
tremendous racket. I've attached a boom No, I haven't tried
to the fan that pushes against things as jamming screwdrivers,
it sweeps back and forth. I've attached baseball cards, or fingers
strings to a boom like this, and run it into the blades. It's not
through pulley arrangements to tip my fan. And they are my
things back and forth. fingers.
Working with fans can be frustrating:
the gearing that sweeps them back and
forth can't put out a lot of mechanical
force (I presume they're designed that
way for safety reasons).
But they're always available,
and as of yet I've resisted
the temptation to sink a lot
of money in noise machines.
I do have lots of ideas for nifty gadgets that
only require time to build... But time ain't
free either.
It sometimes seems to
me like I should be doing
more work with words. I'm
much closer to being a writer
than I am to being a
musician. I feel like I've
fallen in with a bad crowd
interested in Sound to the
exclusion of Meaning.
---------
RULES
There are some rules that a
DJ has to follow in putting
a show together. They're
not very restrictive at KZSU
compared to most stations,
but still they're there:
External restrictions: Internal Restrictions:
The FCC requires a legal ID You need to do a promotional
("KZSU, Stanford") once an announcement for some other
hour, and some Public show at KZSU once an hour.
Service Announcements (twice
an hour at KZSU). Music DJs are required to
play a certain number of
There are other FCC cuts out of the "A-file" For
requirements such as, no new DJs this number is 15,
long passages of dead air. but for older shows it's 10.
And there are the infamous Many people are often
restrictions on the surprised to here this,
"indecent" and the but then they're also
"obscene". "Indecent" often surprised to hear
expressions are allowed late that for commercial stations
at night, but "obscene" the restrictions are much
material is in *never* tighter.
allowed.
How these ridiculous polices Who controls what gets put
are in any way consistent in the A-file? The final
with the First Ammendment is authority is the judgement
beyond me. The intellectual of the directors of the
gyrations involved have to music department, though
do with the supposed they rely a lot on the
physically limited character judgement of first string
of the broadcast spectrum, music reviewers, and have a
which therefore justifies tradition of responding to
the governent's intervention the opinions of DJs that
to make sure that what is care enough about a
there is used well. difference of opinion to
argue the case.
This philosphy strikes me as
incredibly evil, and we're The A-file is huge, most of
lucky that it's only applied what it contains genuinely
to the extent that it is. does seem to be quite
excellent, and it's rare
that this restriction ever
chafes. In effect, complying
with it is just making a
commitment to keep up with
good, new music.
-------
SHORTORDER
The first argument I heard against
splitting a show into 45 minute long
sets:
Come on, this sounds like public TV No, I have no idea
What are you doing, telling people what he has against
to tune out and come back when the public TV.
messages were over?
His point seemed surprisingly
This wasn't the last time I like something you'd
ran into things like this. expect to hear from at
Despite the great appearence commercial station.
of infinite freedom, there are
some real restrictions on what But then, DJ training
a DJ can do, and MANY people in general at KZSU had
around who feel the need to a surprising emphasis
tell the DJs what they should on things I associated
do. with commercial stations:
doing tight segues,
avoiding dead air,
The first time I did a 45 minute sounding professional, etc.
set, my show happened to be
formally reviewed by the staff at KZSU. I never would have
One of my reviewers hated guessed from just
the idea of doing a 45 minute set. listening to the
He figured it was too long to go station.
without doing a station ID.
I put up a spirited defense of what
I was doing and why, and I was
pretty much left alone or even
encouraged to keep going after
that.
Which may say something about my
perception that there are Hidden
Rules at work in places like KZSU.
The hidden rules can be
circumvented, you just have to be
willing to stand up for what you're
doing.
--------
MOREMUSIC (links to things written, notes of things to write- 11/94)
LIMITED
HAVERING
THIRDBIGLIE
LOOPY
MANIACS
These two may need a complete re-write
KFJC
KZSU
Frame might be unreliability of listner impressions...
Would like to write something about WBAI (connect to MANIACS).
A general bands I have known section,
spiel about the impossibility of avoiding favoritism.
Note some relevent things in TOON
Some more genre notes, e.g. GOTHIC?
Music recommendations in GEODESIC_DOOM
Some under EDLET in POETS, too.
Write some general recommendations: Clock DVA, Master Slave/Relationship,
Leonard Cohen... Maybe Sky Cries Mary, etc?
Write up the Industrial-Folk Manifesto.
--------
LIMITED
As pretentious as it may sound, I have
the idea is that in anything that I do, no
matter how stupid or inherently trivial it
might seem, I want to do more than just
well, I want to push the limits of what's
been done.
So, how well have I done?
--------
POSTRADIO
The death of radio has been predicted many times.
Television was supposed to destroy it completely, but
instead it only killed the radio drama, and weakened radio
news.
Cable TV is looking like a better contender to kill radio
(MTV and it's children are sometimes termed "national radio
stations"). But there will still be niche markets that
require something "cooler" (e.g. people driving cars). COOL
Cable radio exists, largely
unpublicized and unlistened There has to be a way to
to, but it has some great beat the technical problem
potential to make a dent of giving a mobile listener
into traditional broadcast access to these kinds of
radio. signals.
Someday, a beefed up Cellular cable-radio?
Internet will allow
phenomena like the
Underground Music Archives All car-drivers could
and Internet Talk Radio to have different kinds of
become serious competition preprogrammed autoselection
to traditional radio. running, looking for things
they expect that they'll
It would seem that the want to hear.
future would be in Audio
Magazines. A music radio
show then would be more like
an anthology, a collection,
and the DJ more like an
editor.
But beyond all this, I would
expect a day when driving
itself is largely automated,
and nothing will prevent
people from constantly
indulging in the easy and
over-heated TV like media...
--------
COOL
McCluhan, in "Understanding Media" provided
a unique definition for "Coolness"...
A cool media is one that bombards you with
a relatively small amount of bits per second.
Radio is Cool. TV is Hot.
Cool people then, like radio because it is
a cool medium, perhaps because it requires
(or at least allows) a greater use of your
imagination than Hot media like TV, which
just hands everything to you and requires only
passive reception of the information.
On the other hand, people driving cars
like cool media, because the main part of their
attention is taken up by what they're doing.
They can't afford the total engagement a
"hot" media requires.
There's an older, almost forgotten
definition of "cool", as in "playing
it cool", which means keeping a low profile
so the authorities will leave you alone.
Painting your car in psychedelic day-glo
colors would therefore not be "cool".
-------
PERFORMANCE (based on a submission to the KZSU zine. 7/92 - 6/93)
Are bands obsolete?
All too often live music acts as an
energy sink, turning the crowd into
zombies. They stand very still,
and pack themselves as close as
they can, all staring in one
direction. Talking to each other,
is of course, out of the question.
Is this any better than TV?
But at a rave, or any DJ dance VISION
event, people move around RAVE
interacting with each other,
dancing, talking... in general they
seem much happier.
Just like electronic amplification
made the symphony orchestra
something of an anachronism (you
don't need a whole violin section
anymore just to be able to hear
them), increasingly perfect
recording is making the live band
an anachronism. And the newer
electronic instruments make this
even more obvious... when you watch
someone strum a guitar you know
what's happening, but in comparison
the ways of Techno are infinitely
mysterious.
Meat Beat Manifesto satirizes
this: they say "Now it's time
for some IMPROVISED music" and
then walk across the stage to
flip the switch that starts a
complicated dub beat. 808
State completely gives up on
the issue, and hides behind
huge oval screens spelling out
"808", cranking the smog
machines as high as they'll
go.
But to make money it's necessary
for these bands to tour. For some
reason, it isn't enough to get
radio play, or even to put out the
dance hit of the summer (no one at
a rave can tell what record is
being played, anyway).
But what about improvisation?
Isn't there room for spontaneous
interaction between the audience
and the band?
No, not much. The endless tedium
of the typical jazz improv that
sounds just like every other jazz
improv testifies to this. Really,
carefully composed, produced music
almost always sounds better.
Most bands train like crazy in
order to reproduce their recorded
sound, all the while putting on a
show of freshness and spontaneity
on stage.
("Despite all the computations--")
The Milli Vanilli "scandal" shows
how ridiculous the situation is.
There are rumors that Madonna lip
synchs about 50% of her shows, but
why should we care if it was 100%?
Madonna's act has more in common
with a broadway show than a
traditional rock and roll band
anyway. Why not abandon the lie
that anything spontaneous is going
on here?
Or consider Nine Inch Nails: one
guy, Trent Reznor, by messing NIN
around with some gear in his
bedroom managed to do a decent
entry into the Skinny Puppy school
of industrial dance music. The
result was so popular that they had
to create a band to imitate the
sound, and this cover band was what
was wowing them at Lollapalooza,
under the name of Nine Inch Nails.
But there are a few examples of
performances that really work.
Einstuerzende Neubauten is an
industrial band that relies more on
physical percussion using
industrial artifacts, rather than
computers. When you watch them
pound on random pieces of steel, or
pour buckets of gravel over a
plywood ramp, or run a fan with tin
cups attached to the blades
regularly clanging against
strategically placed brushes...
you develop an immediate, visceral
feel for how the music is being
produced. It's a powerful assault
on the the barrier between music
and "noise"...
San Francisco's Sharkbait also does
an excellent job working in the
same direction, but they add some
theatrical touches, like exotic
dancers and fire-breathers.... and
more importantly, pass out random
chunks of metal and drum sticks to
the audience, allowing them to
pound away with the band.
But anyway, maybe in general I'm
missing something? Could there be
some subtle interaction between the
audience and the band that I'm not
taking into account? After all,
recently I've had fun with ace
punksters like The Gits, the
funk/punk masters Cone of Silence,
and the industrial gothic sounds of
the Switchblade Symphony...
But still I have a sneaking
suspicion that the rock and roll
band has no clothes.
Maybe it's time people re-thought
what a stage is for...
Why not:
Put MIDI triggers on part of the
dance floor, using the audience as
part of the beat.
Have a screen behind the stage with
graphic displays of the status of
every instrument sequenced and
every sound sampled, so the
audience can follow what a
performer is doing.
Combine the art of the music video
and the documentary, to bring the
audience's level of understanding
of music technology up to date.
Rescue the concept of musical
theater from the cheesy clutches of
broadway shows with hybrid
live/recorded art forms like San
Francisco's God's Girlfriend, which
gets a nice industrial drone sound
from one guy singing and playing
guitar in front of effects boxes.
Hold a rave with cameras above each
turn table rotating in synch, to
display the record's label on a
screen behind the DJ. And how
about some booths there selling
recordings of this music?
Build a full-body theremin, an
instrument that converts the motion
of a dancer on stage into sound.
Doom's incoherent conception of the
purpose of music is illustrated
every Friday night from 9PM
to midnight on KZSU.
Outraged responses from musicians that
still want to be the Beatles can be
emailed to doom@kzsu.stanford.edu or
mailed to The Doom of KZSU PO Box B
Stanford Ca 94309.
---------
INSTRUMENT (~1991?)
So, a friend of mine has been telling me I should be in
a band. He says I just seem like someone who should be
in a band.
And a certain bboard goddeslet recent said something to me
like "So, which band are you in?"
But I don't play any instruments, and my singing skills are
somewhere below those of Lou Reed. And I've never tried to
write any songs, or even much poetry, and a few years of
bboard postings have probably hopelessly corrupted my sense
of meter, if I ever had one.
Okay, so let's assume I can write any genre, if I work at
it. And we assume I learn to fake singing (easier if I
write stuff so that I can sing it). And we further assume
that I'm going to learn to play something.
What should I learn to play?
Yusuf says it should be the accordion, but you should never
take a Haverist too seriously.
Someone else suggested Saxaphone. Saxs are cool, but I
know from experience that they annoy the shit out of your
housemates while you're learning to play them. I'd have to
spend my free time hiding in the foothills for the next
three months.
Base, drums, are all reasonable, but they're not much good
solo. Guitars, of course, but everybody plays guitar.
I keep coming back to keyboards.
I'm closest toward knowing how to
play them, you can wear head phones But...
while you practice, you can mess I have trouble with pianos.
around by yourself vocals, There's no back space key.
keyboard, and tape recorder.
They're _lousy_ on stage though.
Like having another drummer.
I received some other
suggestions for instruments I
could play:
Playing myself isn't a bad
idea. I could be the male (Or an American Gerogerigegege.)
Madonna.
Playing tambourine has
possibilities, too. I'd need
to get a black leather
miniskirt, I suppose. But
then, you can go for the same
effect using keyboards.
Farfisa organ has advantages over synth/MIDI/keyboard route
-- so does piano, for that matter -- in that you know you
can get a complex, proven sound out of them. But I
don't think you should write off electronics too soon.
Synthpop is boring, because it's made by boring people who
do boring things with their equipment. A decent MIDI
keyboard can be programmed to do weird (albeit, pointless)
shit like play thunderclaps on the low notes and bird tweets
on the high notes. Even an old analog synth can have the
distortion cranked up high enough to be more metallic than
a Fender with a dozen fuzz boxes.
I mean, where would we be if people took this attiude toward
electric guitars.
--------
INDUSTRIAL (11/94)
A short definition I use:
roughly, a kind of BELADONNA
pounding, noisy,
synthesizer created
music, that frequently
sounds something like
some clanking nineteenth
century machine
There are two obvious sub-genre's:
Industrial Dance:
Regular, pounding beat, slower than techno, faster than hip-hop,
with evil-sounding electronically distorted vocals, often
using samples of movies, politicians, religious leaders, etc.
Industrial Ambient:
The non-dance version, and in fact what originally was meant
by "industrial". Often more like "noise" than "music",
a collection of murky, sinister sound effects, samples,
computer generated noises.
Historically, the term "industrial music":
((insert Genesis P. Orridge))
Genre definitions tend to be fuzzy around the edges,
and industrial is no exception. Connections can be
made to modern classical and experimental jazz.
((musique concrete))
--------
PUNK (6/18/92)
These are superficial trappings of punk:
Fast, noisy, music, ripped t-shirts, safety pins, Richard Hell
sometimes worn as crude self-destructive piercings. says that the
A nasty, rude, obnoxious attitude. idea was it was
supposed to be
NEO-PUNK cheap, a game
anyone could play.
A freind of mine described As opposed to
one her boyfriends as Disco, with it's
being a "real Punk". He Chic suits and
refused to say "hello" to $100+ shoes.
anyone, "Because he
thought it was bullshit." By this
logic,
you could
argue
that
leather
jackets
are *not*
punk.
FASHION
But what's the essence of the punk esthetic?
A big part of There's a Melody Maker The punk faction
punk is being interview with Patti of the Havering
willing to Smith that I've heard seem to think that
look closely about, but never seen, the crucial element
at the things where she advances the is political and
that other theory that technical social commentary,
people think virtuosity is as compared to
are ugly and irrelevant in the face the endless,
turn away of true passion. vapid pop songs
from as about "relationships".
quickly as
possible.
A complaint I heard:
"Punk just seems
like an excuse for WORD
ugly people to look
ugly."
I would say: It's about people
who have been condemned as
being ugly, refusing to crawl
into a corner and hide.
One punk I MONSTERS
knew (we all
called him Once, in
"Existential the streets
Death and of Manhatten,
Decay", I I saw a guy
dunno what in standard
he called black punk garb
himself. walking with
Ask the an extremely
Birdman obese woman
sometime dressed in
if you a tight,
see him), white leotard.
used to You could see
hang around every little
listening quiver of her
to the fat as she
static moved.
between
stations Certainly not
on his pretty... but
box. "It's fascinating:
the best how could you
thing on!" not look?
So by a
certain
logic,
maybe
annoying
TV commecial
jingles
have a
certain KFJC
punk
quality.
--------
NEO-PUNK 5/94
Since hanging out at KZSU a lot (KZSU,
Stanford 90.1 FM), I'm somewhat bemused
by the fact that the people who
currently consider themselves into
"punk" now have there own conception of
what punk is, and I've only barely begun
to get a sense of what they mean, except
that it seems incredibly narrow and so
far away from the original conception of
"punk" that I formed back in the late
70s that it amounts to a re-writing of
history.
Anyway, I've just decided to resist
jargon like "classic punk", and instead
label these new comers "neo-punks".
Care to join me?
--------
GEODESIC_DOOM a letter to some friends (7/16/94)
"Did you read The Gripping Nope. Another book to avoid
Hand? If so, what was your until it hits the used bookstores.
reaction?"
"How many nights did you Zero. Don't watch much TV.
stay up watching CNN's Well, I guess I did see Dr. Who
coverage of the Hubble repair last Sunday. Ace is cool.
mission?"
"How 'bout that DC - X?" Takes a licking but keeps on ticking.
Haven't seen the Av. Week shots yet.
"News reports suggest that Harlan Ellison should drive a
James T. Kirk dies in the stake through his heart.
upcoming Star Trek Movie. How I liked the press release for this:
should he meet his demise?" compare the acting careers of
Shatner vs. Stewart, then imagine
them in the same movie.
"All that plus my own Upon which I will score rock bottom.
invention -- a formula for I live in an 8 by 10 room, sleeping
estimating your Bourgeoisie under a plywood and 2x4 loft I constructed,
score (I remain a social I listen to music on a 2nd hand Sears
scientist)." stereo which can play 8-tracks, but not
CDs. The TV I watched Dr. Who on is a
5 inch diagonal b&w I got from K-mart
to use as a monitor with Will's old
If anyone is interested Atari-800. I must admit, I do now have
in adding up my Bohemian *two* cars. Someone gave me another
score, I'd probably do 78 Toyota Corolla. Neither of them are
better. running at the moment, but with luck
I will improve this situation tomorrow.
My main hobby
right now is the radio
show I do on the Stanford Why the doom schtick?
radio station (KZSU 90.1FM), Well, there was this
where I am "The Voice of bboard once where I was Being a college
Doom". changing my name every DJ is an interest-
day... Boris Badanov, ing thing...
I live in "Luck House", Francious Villon, more recorded
a semi-communal Dr. Benway, Rafael music is released
group house, where Sabatini, Victor von then you can
I am one of a set Doom... I noticed that possibly
of six people. I always many people were comprehend,
We all have our seem to be genuinely confused by and about half
own bedrooms, 1 of 6. this. I asked a friend of this acoustic
though, there are which name I should firehose is
more than one switch to permanently. blasting through
bathrooms, and She said that "'Victor my ears, and
half of us are von Doom' matches your sometimes through
female. Most of sense of humor". Then my mind.
the books in the came a long string of
living room are unix accounts under the My main goals
mine. name 'doom'. Then when on the air:
I became a Dj, what apply a struct-
I'm currently name could I possibly ured, planned
doing software use but "The Voice of approach to
work (sometimes Doom"? create new
interesting, art forms.
though not often The 3 song
enough) at Simultrans tension-release
a company that I am all too set. The
"localizes" software familiar with 4 song
for other countries Windows for subversive
(which we will not Workgangs. set. The 45
call foreign). One And MS Word. minute essay.
of the jobs we're
doing right now: I got a call on the air
translating a software tonight from "Wendy"
package that claims I am really who claimed to be in
to be able to do feeling the Boston. A friend she
automatic translation. need to called in CA had my show
get back on, and she listened to
As for relationships: into a lab. a lot of it over the phone.
my long string of relatively Sputtering She wanted to tell me what
brief ones and long dry magnetics a good show I was doing
spells seems to have ended at Almaden and that I have a "great
with the most excellent was much voice".
one who I've been seeing more fun.
for about a year and a half This is not a typical call.
now. A lot of adjectives And perhaps
go with her ... intelligent, into another (Usually I get
pretty, athletic... but graduate requests for Motley
most people seem to fixate program... Crew.)
on "young" though it won't though not
be long before she's out quite yet.
of her teens.
The story.
Past: Future:
There's this place, Another three months of
the Stanford Theater, making money, and she and
restored by David Packard her girlfriend are going to
(son of the "P" in "HP") follow through on their years
to it's pristine 1930s old plan of doing a trip
condition, devoted to around the world, focusing on
early Hollywood. I go the indonesia side of the world
there a lot. Often (Europe, in their opinion, is
wandering in by myself. too boring). After nearly a
One night, coming out for year of that, it's off to college
a dose of coffee and for her, though we know not yet
chocolate between movies, where (Boston? New Mexico?),
this babe behind the and then it'll be time for me
counter makes a point of to finally leave California,
handing me a napkin. and say farewell to "Luck
Turns out it has writing House".
inside "You don't have to
go to the movies alone."
But enough about us, how about you?
Recommendations: _The Sandman_ (advances the art of comicbooks,
immensely readable fantasy, loaded with convoluted references to
myths, folklore, literature... start with _The Doll's House_ trade
paperback if you haven't started already); rec.comics.misc (a silly
news group which nevertheless provides a lot of insight into _The
Sandman_, a dozen sets of eyes being more powerful than one);
rec.music.industrial (for the latest in music); Mary Renault's trilogy
about Alexander the Great: _Fire from Heaven_, _The Persian Boy_, &
_Funeral Games_ (if Alexander were a character in a fantasy novel I
wouldn't believe in him); "The Brain Wash" on Folsom near 7th
(greatest coffee house/laundromat/performance space/gallery in the Bay
area); _Liberty_ (a much more reasonable libertarian rag than say,
_Reason_, in that it's willing to publish criticism of things
libertarian, e.g. the libertarian party -- speaking of which, "Go,
Stern!", though I wish he'd drop the death penalty); Prigogine &
Stengers _Order out of Chaos_ (a nice balance between popular and
technical)...
And as far as music goes, Clock DVA (technophiliac, promethean
industrial dance); Voice of Eye (excellent industrial ambient, dark
and moody); X-tal (local folk punks with excellent lyrics); SunRa's
_Cosmic Tones_ CD (astounding cosmic psychedelic big band jazz music,
far ahead of it's time), or maybe Moondog's _Sax Pax_, with some cool,
laid back lyrics going for it, or what about the International music
scene? Shu-De, Ziskakan and Sheila Chandra are all amazing, which brings
us to the Pokrovsky Ensemble and their "Les Noces" CD demonstrating
Stravinsky's roots in Russian folk music, and speaking of "classical"
do you realize how much exists that gets no play on "classical"
stations? I mean you may have heard about some great stuff by Michael
Nyman (you know, "The Piano" flick), but how about Morton Feldman (as
performed by the Kronos Quartet, perhaps), or if you want some Hip-Hop
that isn't bogus, see if you can find Paris or Aztlan Nation, and did
you even get a chance to hear The Gits, punk with superb powerful
lyrics and vocals, before their lead was murdered? You can't get 'em
to shut up about Kurt Cobain, but nobodies even heard of Mia Zapatta...
Argh. I'll shut up now.
--------
DESPERATE (late 80s)
Plywood and
two by fours,
used books,
army surplus, CAVE
rust and dust...
The grunginess of my
cheap but functional
lifestyle turns off
many women.
But I know what to do about
it. Make some more money,
buy a new car, get some REALCHECK
more clothes, get a more
expensive hair cut, move to
a bigger place... All to
impress women I think are "That's unfair. Really women
fools for being impressed. just respect talent. People
with talent just happen to
have money."
Right. All women are
indifferent to merely
inherited wealth.
"Come on, some women are
interested in other things..."
Okay, let's try to be
positive. All good True but then,
libertarians know that I'm often
prostitution shouldn't be LIBERTY attracted to
illegal. Maybe there liberals who
isn't even anything wrong can't handle
with it. So then there's anyone who
nothing wrong with doesn't recite
disguised versions of it, Except the party
either, right? possibly, line.
the fact
So why not pair off with that they're TOLERANCE
someone with some material disguised?
advantages? Admirably So why not recite
practical, no? it? I know where
Then honesty the buttons are,
So why can't I get is the central why not push them?
used to this? If most issue? I don't even have
women want to play to lie, I just
whores, then I ought have to steer the
to be able to play the Unless it's conversation to
role of trick easily the _style_ of subjects where my
enough. Why don't I the disguise, opinions are in
either pay the price rather than agreement.
or forget about the the need for
deal and quit looking them... When a dangerous topic
for things that aren't comes up, all I need do
on the market? DECADENCE is remain silent.
By these lines the world seems divided: some seek
material wealth and some ideological purity. I have little of
either to offer.
If it comes down to a choice between
conservative whores, and liberal sluts
which will it be?
Third base. METHOD
There's a gap I'm not interested in
between my unattainable ideals.
ideals and
reality.
PROVIDENCE
I don't have much in
common with most
I seem stuck in a So which do I fix? people. Women I have
disgustingly Are my ideals out a lot in common with
conventional of touch with are even rarer.
moralistic mode. reality, or can There aren't too many
reality be brought female libertarian
more in line with cyberpunk rock
Terms like "slut" and my ideals? climbers around.
"whore" can be taken
as gender-neutral, SEARCHING
technical terms,
without negative
connotations. Sluts So maybe I should POLY
have sex when they abandon the notion
want to have sex, Personally, I of "having things
whores do it for think there aren't in common" with a
ulterior motives. enough sluts around. lover.
So is everyone a slut Am I so vain that
or a whore? I need to be
surrounded by
No: there are other RAND human mirrors?
logical possibilities
Like Slaves.
"Women make wonderful pets."
Maybe Romantics ---Michael Shane,
(sex-for-love) Private Detective
aren't exactly the HORSING
same as Whores.
And maybe Studs ((...talk about Not long ago I was shot
(show offs?) aren't the love/ down with the line "We
the same thing as lust dichotomy? are very different
Sluts. Nah. Too people." So, at the very
boring. Even least you need to have in
But why choose for me.)) LOVE common an appreciation
such loaded for differences.
terms if I PERM
really mean
something more True DECADENCE
neutral?
Decadence has been
Maybe I'm over dramatizing. defined as "the
elevation of style
How about some simple over substance." to
compromises? There's quote Barry
clothes I want anyway, Malzberg, who said
like a leather jacket. (Improve your it once, though not
When my car finally dies, marketability first.
I'll probably replace it by doing
with something like a things worth Maybe I'm a person
jeep or motorcycle. I doing anyway.) who likes to pose
could dust off some of my as being relentlessly
old short story attempts honest? Could it
and try and get them be that I don't
published. I could even (Or take a shower?) mind lies so much
clean my room. (Nah, too extreme.) as boring lies?
That conventional
There are prices I'd be hypocrisy bothers
willing to pay, if it got me just because it's
me somewhere worth being. conventional?
CONFORM
Looking for an image (ETHICS)
to assume that "... I wonder if I
doesn't violate my ought to tell them When you really get down
identity. GUISE about my PREVIOUS to it, I think that the
LIFE as a COMPLETE source of all our ideas
Trying to write a story STRANGER?" about ethics are really
that I can become the esthetic. When
protagonist of. philosphers try to
resolve ethical issues,
Esthetics the first "What if a doctor they always resort to
and final word? could save two hypothetical cases, i.e.
Then style is lives by taking telling stories. We
substance, and the vital organs from formulate principles to
"decadence" I sneer a third patient? generate artistically
at is choosing the Does that _seem_ satisfying endings.
wrong arbiter of right?"
style. Who is the
proper judge of the
style you live by?
Yourself. Maybe I've been
underdramatizing.
And maybe all of this
is too simple to mean
anything.
-=[]=- -=[]=- -=[]-=
MISOGYNY
Am I a misogynist?
I prefer to think of myself as misanthropic.
I complain about women more because I care more.
DATA
I've been asked to support what
I'm saying, so here's some
data for a few different cases: SLUT, WHORE, PERM
What kind of
data would
be acceptable?
Say I go out on a date with a woman.
Things seem like they're going well
at first, then for some reason thing's
aren't. I think back and say "Ah, it One of the fun things about the
must be that remark about gun control." game is that you're not allowed
or "Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned to ask why you lost.
I drive a '78 Toyota." I could be
right... or it could be a rationalization. Not that I think anyone
could *really* tell you,
I trust other people's anecdotes even if they wanted to try.
more than mine, but there's no
reason not to suspect them also.
Should I scan the pages of
Psychology Today for a "study" that
claims to show something using
surveys of what people want to
believe is true about themselves?
I think you gotta watch what people
And somehow I don't hold do more than listen to what they say.
much more hope for psych
experiments with people "Girls just want to have fun." But
in artificial situations somehow they have more fun with guys
trying to peer through with more money.
the double blinds to get
at the correct response. Women may just want a "good husband"
to help raise kids... but that also
translates into someone with money.
WHORE
How do I know the
"conservative
whore" phenomena
is real? Could it
be just a
stereotype?
Impersonal experience: Personal experience:
Some comments from women I know, An ex-girlfriend, very proud
"All my friends chase after guys with that her new boy friend made
nice cars, but if they don't have the more money than I did.
money to go with them they drop them
fast." A woman who insisted on her
place over mine, comparing
"Women are more materialistic than men my room to a tree house in
are." Calvin and Hobbes.
"I've only been in love twice, and both A girlfreind who insisted
times the guy was rich, and I'm not sure that I leave grad school
I would have been in love with them if and make money or else
they weren't rich." she would leave me.
((I can expand this list more, I'm sure...
There are many small things that could be added --
watching the things women are impressed by, the things they reject.))
((The file mf has some old postings I could scavenge for support.))
(I'm not the first person to equate marriage with
a kind of legalized prostitution, but I can't
remember where I've seen it done before.
George Bernard Shaw? Simone de Beauvoir? FREE LOVE
H.G. Wells, for all I know...
one of these days I'll read up on it...)
SLUT
Maybe it would be more interesting
to establish the "Liberal Whore"
phenomena, since the PC police are
now denying that PCness is real... As though conservatives
have a monopoly on
fanatical orthodoxy.
TOLERANCE
Recently, I over heard a woman discussing
potential boy friends say "Well, he's *at
least* liberal..."
A friend of mine was saying "I don't care about
finding men with money, I just want someone with
a social conscience."
--------
DECADENCE -- style over substance
When I saw _The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and
Her Lover_, I expected a movie that might be
bad, but would at least be interesting.
Instead it was good, but extraordinarily dull.
Very well made. Lots of carefully repeated This must be
motifs, very nice direction, fairly good a disease of
acting, and in general a lot of very heavy the age.
guns pointing in no direction.
----------
GUISE
So think about other interests I
could develop, that are closer to the
traditional interests of women?
I could do some acting. But I
know what amateur actresses are like...
endless histrionics, life treated as a
series of scenes, infinite vanity, an PNASH
obsession with style, an absence of
substance. (DECADENCE) (Am I an actor? Not
really, but I can
Am I a writer? I don't work fake it really well
at it hard enough to claim to if I believe in the
be a writer. I used to lines I'm reciting.)
though. In some ways, I think
like one. At least like a
certain kind of writer. (I
know, I know... my prose style
could use a little work.)
But then sitting at home,
banging on a keyboard, is not
really a great way to meet
chicks. Or impress them.
However much they might like
the idea of hanging out with
someone who's a writer, it
just isn't that much fun to go
out with someone who stays
home weekends to get the next
story in the mail.
Really: I am not the island,
the pure individual that
I'd like to be.
I care somewhat about what Just a regular guise. (Just one of the guise?)
other people think about
me, just not as much as other
people do? Is it all a matter
of degree? *merely* a matter A torrent of puns, none of
of degrees... which I can get to make sense:
Third degree.
Give them the third degree!
Looking for an extreme I can embrace, Treat them to third degree burns.
an ideal I can chase after, Master degrees.
a line I can definitely cross,
a side I can be on.
THINK
"You think too much, you
can't force these things, you
just have to be open to new
posibilities, play your
opportunities as they arise
see where they go, and not ELVIRA
worry about it too much."
Of course not. Of course.
Providence favors a prepared I need to just do it, and quit
mind. trying to control everything
in my life.
Some women believe this "go with CAGEY
the flow" philosphy, probably I think therefore I am not.
because they're under the
impression that relationships GHOST
"just happen", because they've
never had to put much effort
into making them happen. Pretend I'm someone else, and
give that boy some advice,
Women can always evade cause the schemes I cook up
responsibility through the for me are goddamn stupid,
traditional route of like pretending all the
passivity. parameters of my personality
are variables, shall I learn
While playing a game of "Scruples" to be homosexual, I ask, but
once, I insulted a woman by this is *ridiculous*. Shall I
suggesting that she just might learn to lie? Shall I learn
want to get to get to know someone to be more "flexible" and
she met in a laundroment: chase after women I don't want
"I don't need to pick-up men!" for the sake of fufilling a
goal I'm uninterested in?
(no devils around just Tomorrow may I wake up and
then, strangely enough) choose to be a bitter Richard
Blaine hard-case rather than
the more complicated mixture I
really am?
Sometimes I play a game of
looking at couples on the
street. If the woman
looks cool, I check out what
kind of guy she's with,
because that's the kind of guy
I'd probably have to be if I
wanted to go out with her.
Usually I decide it's not
worth it.
CAGEY
I could stop playing it quite so
cagey. I never deal out a
card until I've seen two of
someone else's.
But there are reasons I play
ghost, at that. I sometimes
feel like what I am is too off
kilter for the conventional "YOU!! Give me the
advice to be much good. Just CUTEST, PINKEST,
relax? Just be myself? What most charming little The future of
good is relaxing if the way my VICTORIAN DOLLHOUSE Relationships/
mind works produces non you can find!! And Kinship/Sexuality:
sequitors more obscure than make it SNAPPY!!" Greater contact
any of zippy's absurdities? and more distance
from humanity
I win. At least I can figure out what Zip means.
--------
LOOKS
Aleph: "Did anyone ever tell you look like Arnold Schwartznegger?"
Doom: "Uh, no, I can't say anyone ever has. In fact, it's one of the
most absurd things I've ever heard."
Aleph: "No, no, I mean from the neck up."
Doom: "_fuck_... _you_... _asshole..._".
(or at least that's what I should've said.)
A conclusion I came to early: (how early? EARLY.)
there's no point in worrying
much about things outside of
my control, like "am I too ugly?" But then, what factors
are there that _are_ SLOWSCULPT
For one thing, I'm "under my control?"
not particularly
ugly. My body's
okay, and though
my face strikes me
as peculiar, in
some folks There's a flip side
opinion's I look to this, though: I
good. So I think it's easier
probably look for men to be
okay, at least. considered good
looking than for On the other
HAIR women. The hand: Women
standards aren't as are allowed
tight, and the a greater
definitons of ideal range of
aren't as far away tricks to
from the average. modify their
looks.
So an obsession
with landing only
"beautiful" women
could be really
counter-productive.
It wouldn't hurt I don't think I am.
to be better looking,
but...
There are guys
who look worse
who do better
than I do.
PNASH
A lot of the problems I have are
entirely matters of "social skills", FLIRT
which include a whole host of things...
how you make eye contact, when you
smile, how good you are at coming up
with litte jokes that are comprehensible,
inoffensive and yet funny.
It is at least possible that my problem THINK
with "liberal sluts" is just that I'm FEAR
not good enough at explaining what I'm
about.
You've got to be up front about what you are,
Confident that what you are is something worth being.
"Silence
It's a classic mistake I've seen engineers make, is Death"
to come off as being apologetic about what
they do. "Sorry I'm so boring."
--------
EXTERNAL (seeing yourself as though someone else was seeing you) 4-26-92
An interesting guy
who needs to get "Someone with an overdose
his act together. of healthy skepticism."
Manque. "You're a weird mixture of
Not quite genius grade. laid back and compulsive."
"You seem like you're
interested in everything."
Ted Nelson sees himself as
something like a lesser
Orson Welles (trying to be
greater of course).
It may be that I am a lesser
Ted Nelson. NELSON
--------
GENERAL -- Being a renaissance man, a generalist....
The smart money is always on specialization,
on narrowing your field of focus,
concentrating your efforts...
Cutting away pieces of your brain,
to let other pieces flourish.
The temptations are obvious:
to try and do everything,
to be everything you can be instead
of just one thing you can be.
Ted Nelson's one excuse offered for
the problems he has had in his
career:
"The problem with being a generalist NELSON
is that you have no territory to
defend."
Alfred Bester's claim that Science
Fiction is a refuge for Renaissance People like Asimov:
Men, for people interested in Who cut wide, but never
everything. deep.
Think about some others.
Feynman? An interesting
example: someone who
started tightly focused, Stuart Reges sounds like the
and only branched out same kind of guy, in a way.
later. Computer Science first, only
later did he become more
politically active. I think
he credits Bloom for
encouraging him to read more
widely.
Specialize in what you're working on
at the moment. (Said by who? A Russian physicist?
Perhaps Sakharov?)
(John McCarthy also offered excuses
for working outside of his field...
what were they again?)
Maybe more interesting: he mentions a case where he felt bad
about having done it. Nuclear rockets, limited by the
melting point of Uranium. He suggested a centrifugal design
using molten uranium, and wrote a paper about it. Years
later, someone contacted him, inviting him to submit an
article about his recent work on the idea, but of course, he
had done no such work... and if only he'd never written the
article, maybe someone else would have come up with the
idea, and followed up on it. It would have
been someone's
territory to
defend.
"The writer will offer no apology for making
this experiment. His disqualifications are
manifest. But such work needs to be done by
as many people as possible...."
p.vi, H.G. Wells _Outline of History_
---------
EARLY
I would guess I worried about how
ugly I was when I was around 13, (Probably, this is fairly
but had pretty much forgotten typical, which is why I
about it by the time I was 16 or should probably avoid talking
so. much about these things.)
I did have an obsession with my I remember a brief period where
mallocluded jaw (underbite). I tried things like going to
sleep with the weight of my
head resting on my jaw to try
and push it back into place.
COSMETIC
This is one of those things which
actually might be "under my control",
depending on how you look at it.
Hard tissue plastic surgery can But I've had my jaw
correct this stuff (a spinoff of broken once already.
combat surgery. One of the many I've no desire to go
lessons of war). wired up for months.
And then spend another
But then, braces might be able to do it. six months trying to get
back lost muscle.
It's more a matter of vanity:
Am I vain enough to want to go
through the trouble and expense Or I could take the line that
just to improve my appearence? it isn't just cosmetic surgery:
I might want to do it so that
Or am I too vain to admit to the my teeth would work better.
world that I am quite that vain?
But how plausible
is it that this is
All of which is somewhat the main reason?
ironic, because I think
the attitude that cosmetic Not very, at least not
surgery is necesarily a vain, to me.
shallow endeavor is kind of
parochial.
Everyone cares about their image,
including the people who go to great
lengths to look like they don't.
What's the difference between buying
spiffy clothes, shaving everyday,
styling your hair and so on and
getting a nose job? I've got stylistic
problems with a lot
As these things get easier to do, of this, though:
they'll become more common. getting your nose
hacked off in a
clumsy attempt to
look Aryan doesn't
impress me.
The "Modern Primitive"
body modifications are
more interesting:
tattoos, piercing,
"scarification".
MONSTERS
--------
LESBIAN-DETECTOR
I make a very good lesbian An obvious possibility:
detector. Put me down in a I'm actually avoiding
party, watch me zero in on the women who'll be interested
women I think seem most in me (a "club that'd
interesting, and there you have me as a member").
have the lesbians.
NOT-SERIOUS
((Sometimes it's a tall
outdoorsy blond woman
with a faint European
accent. Sometimes it's
a woman with long black
hair, and beat up
spiffed-up, blue jeans,
playing with a plastic
snake. Sometimes it's
a jock in jeans and
t-shirt with a very
intense expression...))
Just for completeness sake,
let's think for a minute
about how a man (for
example, me) might go about
trying to seduce a lesbian.
I've got three rough ideas:
(1) Pretend to be a homosexual
man to set her at ease.
(2) Look for lesbian couples where
one of the women is Bi, and seduce
the Bi side of the pair.
(3) Have a sex change.
I know of a couple of cases of
homosexual men sleeping with
female friends for the hell of
it (for instance, to give
lessons in oral sex). So is
the complementary case
plausible? I've never really
been a really close friend of
a lesbian.
---------
NOT-SERIOUS
So maybe I'm avoiding
relationships on
purpose?
For reasons of varying
degrees of silliness. I don't have the heart for
I frequently do ignore endless cycles of use and
women who seem discard, not if I've got
interested in me. to the discarding.
And if I were really serious
about all this I probably
wouldn't be whining about it
in public.
--------
SEARCHING
"There is someone out there for everyone...
even if you need a pick ax, shovel and night goggles
to find them." -- "LA Story"
Some years ago (1987?) I decided on criteria
for an ideal woman, making a conscious attempt
to avoid the trivial or the unachievable. LESBIAN-DETECTOR
The triad I sought: intelligence, depth, athleticism.
But I was willing to settle for two of the three.
At least: any woman who obviously exhibited two
of the qualities was worth chasing.
The doomfile began with a duality, DESPERATE
"sluts and whores", really: the
intellectual and the materialistic
or the liberal and the
conservative.
Perhaps this very loosely (Really, I doubt
conincides with "depth" and they correspond
"intelligence" in my triad. in any neat way.)
But what about the athletic? That
has it's own set of problems
associated with it.
The intellectual is often disgusted
with the atheletic, and vice
versa...
Another approach then:
Think of this as an
information processing problem.
What do you do to locate opportunities?
Ads. Agencies.
Professional Societies.
Activate your Contacts.
"What color is your parachute?" advises staying away from
the numbers game. (Plastering women's rooms with resumes?
Mass mailings? Waiting to be discovered at the bar?)
Unconvential methods of meeting people
have a stigma associated with them,
but they're farily common especially
among people out of school. Usually
people won't tell you if they met An undergrad friend of mine,
their spouse some weird way, like said something about
through the personals ads, dating relationships that start over
agencies, or even over the net. the computer. His comment:
"Sad." My response: "It isn't
A friend of mine reports that any more pathetic than the
of the two personals ads he 'normal' things people do,
placed, the one in San like hang around in bars." He
Francisco produced one said "But how do you actually
response, and the one in San meet somone that way? Unless
Jose produced five responses. you use the Chappie method."
Greater paranoia in the bigger I didn't bother to explain.
cities? Another guy I know Some people are too
placed a personals ad in New prejudiced... and you can see
York and also got just one why in his case, he knew Perry
response. Friedman.
The paranoia factor is
certainly a problem. It's not
impossible for me to pick up
women on the street in Palo
Alto, but I have no idea how I
would go about it in New York.
Also, it's easier
to do it during the day than
at night, and so on.
So, there's this guy, he's
been attending a series of
Forum work shops on
interpersonal whatevers and
he's been given a two hour
assignment: he's supposed to
find a woman on the streets of
New York City, give her a
flower and say something like
"Hey, I think you're very
pretty, and I think you should
have this." Time passes and
he hasn't seen anyone he likes
well enough. Or maybe he's
just stalling. He's starting
to worry about getting back to
the Forum meeting on time. So My interpretation:
finally he picks out this one The key thing is he
girl, hands her the flower, turned away. If he
says his one line, and says stood there waiting
"bye, I gotta go." He turns he never would've
to leave. She chases after got anywhere. But
him, stops him to talk. They how do you apply
exchange phone numbers, and he this? How do you
starts going out with her. chase someone
without chasing
them? This is the It turns out that she's
kind of thing that about sixteen (he likes
literally drives them skinny). She's
men to drink. got to get home early
every night. He says
she gives the most
painful blowjobs he's
ever had. (He's never
heard the adage
"Get em while their
young so you can train
them the way you like
them.") The
relationship doesn't
last long.
--------
ANVIL
Du musst herrschen und gewinnen, You must be master and win, or
Oder dienen und verlieren, serve and lose, grieve or triumph,
Leiden oder triumphieren Amboss be the anvil or the hammer.
oder Hammer sein.
Goethe, Der Gross-Cophta (1791) Act ii (via NeXt).
((Balance "being tough"
against provoking screams of
date rape or some such.))
((Venus In Furs))
I will not be pounded into the
shape of a hammer by women who
pretend to be anvils.
"Go to women with whips." "But I can't find any women with whips."
--- NIETZSCHE ---Me
((Nervousness/smell of fear is
verbotten=> Covered in
existing bboard postings,
which are stashed under FEAR.
))
--------
((still other
strategies: consciously
searching out conservative
women. Trying to develop an
interest in homosexual ((Hypothetical ((So? Play it through
relationships . )) claptrap)) anyway, maybe it'll go
somewhere else. Like
brainstorming. "Ideas
should never be
killed, only
deflected." This is
*elementary*. Stop
being so hard on
yourself, you idiot.))
TOLERANCE
Conservative whores and Liberal sluts.
((This is a rough for something written
out better under DAWKINS. Merge em
together somehow. THis first, jump to
rest of Dawkins...)) ((Except the
DAWKINS node is missing. Huh?))
Dawkins. Selfish gene "explanations"
for much of the "conservative whore"
stuff. Stategies for gene propagation
that include things like searching out
men most likely/capable to assist in
child-raising, and also an explanation
for attractiveness being attractive.
Thought: Liberal intolerance a
mechanism of meme propagation? A lot of conservatives
Like seeking like, rejecting would have you believe
dissent, an attempt at an that "intolerance" is
ideology spreading itself. more of a problem among
liberals than conservatives.
Conservatives=genetic determinists,
hence favor a genes eye view? I used to think so:
Liberals= environmental determinists, I'd often heard
hence more likely to think in terms of the line "I *hate*
spreading memes? Does that make any Republicans", but never
sense? Like, could a CW be influenced "I hate Democrats."
by the gene view without knowing much
about the logical structure, and a LS That is
similarly motivated based on a until
different world view, without Keith
understanding the world view? How Rabois But maybe
would these structures evolve. said it he doesn't
in the count?
Daily
(2/10... 93?)
But there are those
Alternately, you could postulate that Christian Fundy types
on some level they do understand what that the more
they're doing. intellectual neo-cons
might like to forget
about...
A gene that seeks out other members Of course, I
containing the same gene? What purpose don't run into them
incest? much, in the circles
I frequent.
Possibly: incest as a superficially
appealing strategy, that produces only
short term success. Hence discreditied
in the longer term process of genetic OUTNICE
evolution, but still in play among some
younger ideologies in the arena of
memes.
Analogy to recessives, harmful memes
"bad ideas" may only prosper if
protected from debate, if kept out of
contact with hostile memes.
Hence bad ideas, will tend to be
associated with the intolerance meme.
(Connection: studies of group think in
secrecy, Nixon's plumbers...)
----------
OUTNICE 9/5/92
Wells remarks on the tolerance
of Gautama's Buddhism, compared Sections 5 and 6 of Chapter
to the "jealous God" of Judaism. XXV of H.G. Wells _Outline of
History_, (around page 376 of
"The intolerance of the Jewish the third edition).
mind did keep its essential faith
clear and clean. The theological
disregard of the great Eastern
teachers, neither assenting nor
denying, did on the other hand
permit elaborations of
explanation and accumulations of
ritual from the very beginning.
Except for Gautama's insistance
upon Right Views, which was
easily disregarded, there was no
_self-cleansing_ element in
either Buddhism, Taoism, or
Confucianism. There was no
effective prohibition of
superstitious practices [...]
At an early stage a process of
encrustation began and
continued. The new faiths
caught almost every disease of
the corrupt religions they sought
to replace [...]"
This contradicts my thought
that "intolerance" is a long-
term liability for an
ideology.
Probably: The resolution is that
tolerance vs. intolerance is too
broad an issue. By itself,
tolerance is not a virtue (do you
tolerate murder, slavery, rape?).
When we praise "tolerance",
what is it we have in mind that
should be tolerated?
--------
TIT
((Hey, how about:
Axelrod, Evolution of Cooperation
subject, difficulty of applying the idea of "Tit for Tat".
e.g. what's an appropriate tat for a given tit?
should you apply a sliding scale of reprisals, where you hit
back harder after a repeated offense? How do you manage to
be both "provocable" and "forgiving" in a world where things
are not neatly divided into rounds of exchanges of a limited
kind of interaction?))
((And... isn't Tit for Tat a strategy that can reduce
you to the level of your opponent? At the very least,
you can lose when trying to convince a third party that
you're not as bad as your opponent. Yelling "He started it!"
isn't going to distinguish you very well when both sides are
lying, cheating and killing.))
The significance of this work:
one more nail in the coffin of
altruism. Axelrod essentially
argues that much of what we
normally think of as "altruistic"
behavior can arise from purely
"selfish" behavior.
So what is usually thought of
as "selfishness" is really
"shortsightedness".
-------
METHOD
Try not to get sea sick.
Chase it around and around,
look at at it this way and that
and still a third way if you
can find one. That's me: always
looking for the
third alternative,
the third party,
the third eye.
Then I wonder if
Tricks for three is enough.
generating
Nth ways?
Look at two extremes, (can either be
choose a "compromise". definitely
ruled out?)
Look for internal
Argue against contradictions.
the compromise.
(Draw a line, then Try and think of
stand on top of it.) special cases
that don't work.
Thesis, antithesis,
synthesis, hoy!
If the facts exist
to settle the
"Ask the next question." issue, where would
--- Theodore Sturgeon you find them?
Calculate what can
be calculated.
Understand the
magnitudes.
Try forced association with a
random list. (ESC x yow!)
Rezone. Slice it up
in a different way. DISSONANCE
Don't ignore the rinse cycle. Clean it
up if you can... But don't forget to
remove the soap when you've you're done.
Pretend you are someone
else you've just met.
Give yourself some simple EXTERNAL
advice, quickly before
the train arrives. "Have you considered suicide?"
Stop being so
clever.
Maybe you don't need NELSON
to exhaust all the
alternatives.
Perhaps there's no need
for something new.
Creativity is not an end
in itself.
Apply a general principle and Imagine a principle, that
ask if it really does apply. could exist that would make
the solution easy.
Does it exist?
Bill Griffith: just another
standard issue liberal
intellectual, and yet Zippy
lets him transcend his
limitations and get at
another side to things.
Invent your own Zippy.
Talk to him.
Clowns. Madmen. Aliens. Spirits. Demons. Alter Ego.
Morton Rigor. Bogart. Woody Allen. Virgil or Mussolini.
The Randroid. The Mother Thing. The Mother Box.
Just as Zippy arose
out of the Toad, so
must each angel
be given a chance
to speak, without
proof of divinity.
The true Zippy
chooses himself.
The great advantage of the The great curse of the
hack writer is the freedom to hack writer is to get used to
repeat yourself, to get it getting it wrong, to lose the
wrong several times before ability to tell what's GOOD.
staggering toward getting it
right.
First thought is best thought,
let the movement of the mind
provide the structure, ((This is a reference to
providing there is a mind, and something Jack KEROUAC said
presuming it can move. Or is about spontaneous prose, but
moved. you probably didn't get it,
you uncultured moron.))
If you see something you hate,
stop reading. If you see
something you like, stop
reading. Maybe you should
write a reply.
"What is needed is a gentler curiosity."
Paul Goodman, Why not put my
_Five Years: ideas where my life is and
Thoughts During A Useless Time_ try and apply a little knee
jerk libertarian philosophy
GOODMAN for once.
"Those aren't
WINOS--that's my JUGGLER,
my AERIALIST, The latext novel.
my SWORD SWALLOWER, and The rubber text, the
my LATEX NOVELTY flexibile novelty.
SUPPLIER!!" Drunken=> apparently
pointless or absurdly
exhalted, an extreme
state attained by
juggling supressing portions of
black with or the normal state. Other
boxes. without methods. The deadline.
dreads. Three balls only, one
minute for the quip, one TIME CONSTANTS
BLACKBOX second for the spike.
Fatigue poisons.
silence. Exhausting the topics not
procrastination. possible if the 2D links
running, physical exhaustion. can only let me go in 2
Other swords of or 3 directions at most.
damocleses.
Are these "graphical"
links too obscure?
Maybe there isn't any need to remove the
scaffolding. The only cue I use is
proximity. People
probably read through
going left to right,
and top to bottom,
((Try and run the then figure out the
word dissociation logical connections
routine on *this* file. later (if ever).
Go looking for inspiration
in the entrails.))
Really, while randomness has
a certain romantic appeal to me,
I think it's practically worthless.
This word dissociation experiment
for example, didn't yield anything
of value. I put much energy into
breaking out of ruts, finding new
directions, when really my problem
is to follow through, to stick to it DISSONANCE
untill it's finished.
An approach for converting text to
doomfile format:
Reformat with tight right margin.
Split paragraphs into smaller units
(one rectpara per sentence, i.e. idea?)
Chop unnecesary words. It's amazing how hard
it can be to read text
Turn parenthetic comments into stripped of the apparently
side bars. "unnecesary" words.
Reorganize "train" of thought into The doomification
"tree" of thought. process has interesting
biases: short Hemingway
style sentences are
Plan on obsolescence: favored. Fewer words
try not to work on things are usually best, but
that can't be finished large words are awkward:
before they're irrelevant. they make it harder to
format into rectangles.
For example, worrying about E.g.: above, "Hemingway
the human gene pool being style" was originally
contaminated by poor traits "hemingwayesque".
(like bad eye sight) that
civilization protects. Dumb, Even better though,
because in a few decades the would be to drop
genes of the children will be the Hemingway ref.
under direct control of the It's not even
parents... and *that* may obscure enough to
cause some problems worth be pretentious.
worrying about.
If you buy into Drexler's NANOTECH
ideas completely this
principle knocks down
a lot of concerns:
from Drexler's point of
view, why worry about
rapid space industrialization
if nanotech will make it
all easy long before it
happens otherwise?
Which is better: write about
the entirety of an author's
work under one subject heading
(e.g. the author's name), or
split up the writing, filing
each piece under some more specific
subject? Answer: The Latter.
((Example: Maybe the stuff under the
Delany heading would work better split up
according to subject, with subheadings about
different works by Delany, like Babel-17, say.))
--------
HYPER "Hypertext is non-sequential text."
Ted Nelson, NELSON
Computer Lib/Dream Machines
By this definition,
lots of things are
hypertexts.
Hypercard stacks.
Outlines. The
whole earth
catalog.
Nelson has a dream of
"The Grand
Hypertext", which
would have _all_ A typical -- and trivial --
information in example of a hypertext is a
immediately document with highlighted
accessible words that you can "click"
computerized form, on to see a further
all connected and explanation of the term.
indexed by a dynamic
web of links. EXAMPLES
PRODUCT
Eric Drexler in ENGINES OF CREATION
talks about forward tracing
references: I just read a paper This may seem mundane.
about the physics of sputtering, I doubt that it is:
from 1923. How do I know it wasn't Imagine a world where
discredited a few years later? ignorance can no longer
Drexler's point is that if all be an excuse for lies.
technical papers were stored on
line, the references to previous LIES
work could be traced forward to
find later comments.
And there's this thing DEEP_GNU
you're reading, the
"doomfile". The idea is to Thus far I pronounce
outline my thoughts as it good. Useful for
briefly as possible and try _me_, at least...
and take it all a few steps
further. Could be a new
prose form? HYPERART
As hypertexts go, it's Would the doomfile make
limited. It relies more sense if I drew
mostly on the implicit boxes around all the
links of a 2-D para's, and connected
graphical layout. The them with little arrows
use of special search like a flow chart?
key words as long
distance links strikes Maybe. But I wouldn't
me as clever in a few like the way it looked.
ways, but it has
problems. SCAFFOLDING
A problem with non-linear works
implemented as plain text: If I
start flipping through a work
at random (e.g. Nelson's _Dream
Machines_) I get to the point
where the things that catch my
eye are things that I've read
before. This gets boring fast,
despite the fact that I know
that more than half of the work
remains un-read. These days, I
read _The Whole Earth Review_
with a pencil in hand, rather
anally checking off items in
the Table of Contents as I look
at them.
Better to have anal retentive
computers than people.
"A literature is _a system of interconnected writings._
We do not offer this as our definition, but as a
discovered fact. And almost all writing is part of
some literature."
-- Ted Nelson, _Literary Machines_
---------
PRODUCT
Inching toward the Grand Hypertext:
The jump from libraries on paper to
libraries on electronic media seems
hugely expensive. We don't even
have really good electronic indexing
of the stuff on paper. My solution:
Start with some research libraries
(at Stanford?), equip each one with
a scanner and "worm" drive. Then,
as you research a topic, you can
copy information onto disk instead
of xeroxing it. Later you can
develop your own webs of hypertext
links as you study the material. If
you meet someone working on a
related topic, you might offer each
other copies of your disks, so you
can merge the two different webs.
Eventually, the library might offer
to collect the information on all
the existing disks, and later start "Products are better than
scanning in more information on it's systems." -- John McCarthy
own. So we get to start small and
grow towards a grand hypertext...
The way it seems to be happening, as of 10/94:
Computer literate scientists (notably
physicists) have been using the internet
to trade new papers as they are written.
They designed the World Wide Web to
assist this process, and in the last year
it's become extremely popular for all sorts
of information.
--------
NELSON
(There are
Listening to Ted Nelson's _detailed_ notes
_World Enough_, about this in
the "doomout"
I begin to pick up And I begin to wonder: file.)
something about Is it really a productive
his methods. way to work?
One of the things he really You can drive yourself
wants Xanadu for is to crazy doing this! Far
handle the intercomparision better to try and get
of different versions. He it right the first
wants to be able to look at time, to develop an You can't
things every way, before instinct for picking a write an
deciding which way is best. good way without essay the
trying to exhaustively way a
examine all computer
permutations. plays chess.
META
He also places a lot of But who is ever going
emphasis on methods of to look at those old
historical backtrack, so versions, except for
that you can look at older Lit majors, historians,
versions of what you have, and masochists?
and so on. Very rarely is this a
useful feature.
Also, evidentally Nelson Drowning yourself in notes
takes endless amounts of is a bad idea. You should
notes about things, to always try and work on
the point where he can't something close to the
keep track of where the finished product (if at FINISHED
old notes are, or what all possible) rather than
they're about. stall by taking yet another
note.
BOTTOMSUP
He puts a lot of emphasis But, If the idea
on inspiration, getting is really good, won't
that idea down on paper you remember it, or
before it's lost. at least be able to re-
discover it without
much trouble?
Taking an unsympathetic eye, (Practice makes
Ted Nelson looks an awful lot preachers, eh?)
like a plodder, a slow
thinker with a weak memory.
Though I'm sure you could
find people who would say
similar things about me. EXTERNAL
--------
BOTTOMSUP
So I guess I'm arguing for
Bottom Up approaches to
life here.
The arguments against this
are legion among
computer science types.
They pay lip service
to Nelson's idea of But this method has met
software design: have one with limited sucess for
person figure it all out, and Nelson, if only because the
let some team of flunky flunkies have a habit of
programmers code it up. losing interest, or missing
the point.
But more than this:
you can get lost in
abstractions this
way. And waste a
lot of time
thinking about
things that can't (I doubt that this is
really be done Nelson's problem.)
practically.
Working bottom up makes it
more likely your
intermediate results will
be worth something.
Possibly you can sell them,
or use them as demos, and
finance the whole project
this way. Or if you're
interrupted, maybe you'll (This may very well be one
have a partial solution to of Ted Nelson's problems.)
your problems that you can
live with.
BENFORD
A good example of working bottoms up,
might be the way Gregory Benford was
writing stories back in the mid 70s.
The novel _In The Ocean of Night_,
was written in many pieces. It was
cobbled together from some short
stories that probably were intended
to stand alone originally, but also
there were some pieces that were
probably written with the novel in
mind that were published with
prefunctory false endings that were
later deleted.
Benford is an excellent example of BEYOND
a highly productive man, working
full time as a physicist at UC Irvine,
while also writing stories, while also
doing a number of other things.
When asked how he does it, he
recommends getting in the habit of
dealing with things immediately.
When you read a letter, you should When I try and apply this
write the response immediately rule, I wind up carrying
while the letter is in your hand. around un-opened letters
for weeks.
--------
FINISHED
Don't stall by taking notes? RAT3
Always try and work on something
close to the finished product? Which is just to say,
always try and be
But what is it I've been doing goal directed?
but stalling by making mental
notes?
I read a little of this,
I read a little of that,
Jumping from subject to subject,
Genre to genre.
Some of it may be useful someday.
But it gets me no closer to
finishing anything now.
Read what's necessary to finish
the project you're working on... So pick a project already.
Which is not to say, you need A goal, _both_ a
to read _everything_ on the subject. date and a destination.
Don't drown yourself in excesses
of information. I've never learned the
knack of reevaluating
goals. Keep slugging
or give up? I can
never tell which.
--------
RAT3 (6/2/92)
On one of my last attempts at
writing a short story, I tried
to use a strategy based on these
ideas:
(1) Take no notes, except in the
form of story fragments.
(2) Avoid reading any other
fiction until the story
is finished.
(3) Avoid working on any other
stories until the current one
is finished.
This solved my typical
problem of procrastination,
But I didn't like the
finished product.
It was a nominally
hard SF story, where some of
the technical elements seemed
like they belonged in different
eras. E.g. working laser
launchers long before working
photonics had been developed.
The secondary characters were
okay, but the main character
seemed dull and passive.
His "gradual transformation
of character" was much too
gradual.
Many of the background details
were more interesting than the
foreground, and the connection
between the two wasn't very
strong.
In general, the story was ill-thought
out, and it showed. I avoided drowning
in preparation, but boxed myself in with
something essentially unusable.
This approach might have worked for a
different kind of story, but not for
hard SF.
--------
HYPERART
Today's New York Times book review (6/21/92) has a cover
story by Robert Coover called "The End of the Book" that's
really about hypertext, largely as applied to fiction.
He talks a lot about the Brown University Hypertext Fiction
Workshop in general terms. The "Death of the Novel" line he
takes is a bit overblown, but it's a fairly interesting
article.
"Print may be read as hypertext, but hypertext may not be
read as print."
- - - - - - - -
Robert Coover's "The Death of the Book" in the NYT book
Review. All about creative writing workshop experiments
with hypertextual fiction.
Aspects of the idea I've never really thought about.
I've always just assumed that fiction where the actual
underlying structure is hypertextual is just a kind of dumb
idea, something that will always be at best a marginal art
form.
Like the brief craze for "Interactive Fiction", where you
make choices at the end of each passage.
First and foremost being Charles Platt's "Norman vs.
America", a story told in something like underground comic
book format, published in the Quark series of anthologies.
Come to think of it, at the end of it it even had an
over-view map of all the possible paths through the material
(something that some hypertext systems have incorporated as
a feature to help prevent getting lost).
The problem of "closure" that Coover sites has always seemed
like an insoluble problem to me in a non-linear work of
fiction. But maybe that was a hasty decision.
For instance, you can write a work with multiple possible
paths through the material, all of which have a certain
sense of closure of their own. A tree pattern, a single
root problem or conflict, resolved in different ways...
(A critic of Zelazny's conclusion to the Amber series might
pick the point where the man went wrong, and try and finish
it in a different way. Great, unfinished novels like "The
Last Tycoon" present such a challenge that they may inspire
multiple writers to attempt different endings. )
A loop pattern (like the figure 8 that began the doomfile) DESPERATE
has a definite sense of closure about it.
There's the random deck of cards approach. Say one of
Adliss's "tryptiches", only set up to be read in
any order. The same narative told from a half dozen
different view points, with none of them given primacy?
Well, maybe it has possiblities. I don't exactly see the point of
it all however. Don't see *why* you'd do it.
What's the problem with the linear narrative?
--------
EXAMPLES
Some more examples of uses for hypertext:
Gnu emacs "info mode" is Even more trivial
somewhat similar to this examples: Indexes. Tables
kind of trivial of Contents. Footnotes.
hypertext. C-Hi shows you HYPERGNU "See note on page blah",
a menu, where subheadings "as shown in Figure 3",
are indicated with an "for a review, see Ref
asterix in the first 3". Ted Nelson makes the
column. You can wander point that all literature
around in the docs is hypertext. With
however you like, computers we can take it
rather than reading to a new extreme.
through it sequentially.
Another example: The usenet LIES
The newsgroup about "drwho" There is no one correct
could logically be put in hierarchy to organize
several different places in information.
the usenet hierarchy:
rec.arts.sf.drwho A point I believe
rec.arts.tv.drwho "object-oriented"
soc.culture.british.drwho folks are also now
re-discovering.
Is it technically so difficult
for the same file to have
several different paths
pointing to it? One newsgroup
could then be put in several
places in the hierarchy
without any penalties in
excess storage.
And how about program development? Modern disk files only
You always wind up with multiple one step above tape
versions of programs, sometimes with storage: Files may be
only minor changes made between versions. random, but each one is a
Xanalogical storage makes it easier to linear chain of bytes.
keep all of these on line: you don't
need to resave the entire program
each time. Only the changes, and links
to indicate where they go, need be saved.
In a Xanalogical system,
you can also have links
to sample input and
output files from each
version of the software,
not to mention comment
links to "sticky notes",
or even into the specs or
the rough documentation.
But okay, so you've saved
some sample output runs
for each version of the
program? That could eat
up some disk space as
well: the output might
be very long, and each
file might be very
similar, BUT because they
don't actually descend
from some original Unless... you had a
prototype, Xanalogical utility that could
storage wouldn't help. "xanify" data: give it a
bunch of files to
process, and it looks for
regions of similarity and
tries to compress them.
Of course, the Xanadu
folks may be building
some sort of "garbage
collection" routines like
this into the back end...
Something like this would
be great for compressing net
news, turning the existing
postings full of repetitous
quotations of other postings
into neat Xanadu transclusion
links.
Other examples? Perhaps MARGINAL?
--------
HYPERGNU -- Gnu meets Hypertext. Some notes from the net.
((I've moved this stuff to the "doomout" file.))
--------
LIES -- lies, damn lies, and usenet.
emv@msen.com (Edward Vielmetti) writes:
>Once individuals can add to the hypertext web by themselves - and by
>any account a posting to Usenet news is a piece of that - then lies,
>half-lies, mistruths, mistakes, and all kinds of informed or misinformed
>opinions [will proliferate].
Right, link explosion is a problem all right. But link
filtering has got to be at least a partial answer. In my
example, for instance, I would be happy if I could screen
out all comments except those made by accredited physicists.
(Eric Drexler puts a lot of emphasis on Fact Forums -- a
variation of Science Courts -- and maybe that's a part of
the answer, too.)
And you know, as bad as usenet gets sometimes, I think it's
often superior to conventional media because it's more
hypertextual. To take an example close at hand, when Ted
Nelson was doing his "World Enough" show, the San Jose
Mercury news published a review that was *awful*. The man
clearly knew very little about Nelson (certainly he'd never
read one of his books) and engaged in a really vicious,
killer review, no better than a usenet flame.
But at least with usenet, *someone* would argue with the
flamer. Every blatant untruth is usually immediately
followed by a counter-argument, and a threaded newsreader
like nn or gnus brings the two very close together.
--------
MARGINAL A discussion from rec.arts.books (12/23/92)
From: marc.colten
colten@cbnewsb.cb.att.com
I never make marks in books. Over
the course of years I found I even
stopped putting my name on the Probably it is a
cover sheet. Perhaps it's some kind of reverence.
kind of reverence for the book. But then, I've
It's certainly not economic as I recently managed
NEVER sell my books. I think it's to overcome my
Exactly, but a kind of ego thing with some reluctance toward
maybe that's the people as I occasionally get a opening a paper-
virtue of marking second hand book with notations - back more than
up books. It's an arrow pointing to a sentence and 45 degress...
an assertion of the comment "right!" or "wrong!" or You've got to grow
your mastery over whatever. I hope when I see this up sometime.
the text. When you that they did it for school as I
begin to read can't conceive of any reason why
a book with pen they think a future owner would be
in hand, every interested.
statement is
suddenly open to
question. The From: Roger Squires,
exact opposite of rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu
the "it's in
print, it must be As to whether marking books is
right" attitude. morally ok, my opinion is that my
notes, highlighting if any, It isn't likely
increase the value of the book, that a later
certainly for myself, and owner would
potentially for other users as well agree with you,
(the 'value' of the unmarked book but then there
is not an issue with me -- no one may not be that
gives a durn about $0.50 much reason
paperbacks, and I keep all to care.
The copy of Murray's technical books for myself; I also
_Losing Ground_ in mark library books, though limited Some
the Stanford to creating an index of interesting confusion
library has a topics on a bare page in front, of the
review by Lester which is often cut out by libraries Golden
Thurow stapled in when reselling the book anyway). A Rule,
the front of it. good example is my marking up of a treating
In a way, I copy of _The Growth of Biological future
appreciated this, Thought_ by Ernst Mayr, which was a owners as
because I wanted to textbook for one of my bother's you, the
look up some grad courses. On the inside cover present
criticism of the I wrote in a couple excellent owner
book anyway. On quotes from Gibbon and Jean de would've
the other hand I Meun, and created an additional liked to
think it a tad index on the inside cover of topics have been
obnoxious that (mostly definitions of biological treated?
someone took it terms) not in the main index (he
upon themselves to had already put in these self-stick
try and discourage plastic book markers on the long I think brothers
people from reading edge of the book that I've never are a special
the book with this seen before, like what you would case, certainly
rather shrill, use with file folders -- very with me. the
irrational, killer neat); he told me after I returned flow of thought
review. the book that he liked what I had is similar
done. As for the practise of book enough that it's
marking, I always use pen why in unlikely that
the Name Of Satan And All That Is one's comments
Unholy would you use pencil?! It will intrude on
The reason you smudges with the merest thumb the other.
use pencil is swipe, is quite difficult to get
that it's less rid of (why would you want to erase My first encounter
obtrusive and your own markings anyway), and is with "sociobiol-
a bit less much more difficult to read than a ogy" was a pop
permanent. good pen. I always print (not article in
Because there script) notes, which are generally "Analog" that
is no one limited to the supplemental index immediately
correct way as above) with few exceptions: Many sent me for
of reading a classic books have excellent quotes reaching for
book, and or topics that one may want to my pen. Then
anyone who's access in future, but which are my older brother
done this for nearly impossible to find without read it, he
any length of creating an index. Which brings us continued
time has to highlighting. disecting it.
experienced Someone reading
the discovery The Fine Art of Highlighting: We've this at random
that what you all heard the joke about freshmen might not realize
once thought mindlessly highlighting the entire that was two of
was critical book, but I think that, properly us who had marked
now seems used, a Highlighter can be an it up.
trivial. extremely powerful instrument. I
think that the Highest, Noblest, <-Like most other
Most Excellent use of a Highlighter tools. But high-
is as a tool to *condense* a book. lighters seem
I first did this with a textbook more often abused,
titled _Hegel, An Introduction_, usually I think,
by Raymond Plant (good book, BTW). by the inexper-
I bought it way before the semester ienced who don't
started, so I had all the time in yet understand
the world to read it. I sat under that today's
the pinon tree, and after chain of thought
ruminating a few pages would go should not bind
back and highlight, using the one forever.
I have trouble highlighter to connect blocks of
believing this text so as to form a readable Post-it notes
could work for narrative encompassing the argument are far more
any but the most of the section. So when I was valuable tools,
poorly written done, I had a readable book that I find. I keep
books... but then was about half the length of the a small stack
what would you original. Not all books are of them cut to
expect from a amenable to this approach: _Beyond tab size on
fan of Hegel? Good and Evil_ is not such a good the inside cover
target, but I found the technique of interesting
worked quite well with the essays books.
in _Genealogy of Morals_ for
instance).
Underlining is a phase that one has to go through, but it
isn't the final phase. The next step is to realize that your
own highlighting and marginal additions are also not the last
word, and a later reader (including later versions of yourself)
may find them more hindrance than help.
Really, I think all text needs to be electronic text, and any
reader should be able to attach a set of comments with
hypertext links that can be searched, filtered and viewed in
any number of ways, and let us hope that we may get to Xanadu
yet.
--------
REVIEWS
Best doomfile review yet:
From: oski (L. Ravi Narasimhan)
Subject: Doomfile
Makes my brain hurt.
Second best:
"So, does this mean you're looking for a girlfriend?"
Third:
"How did you write that?
That's really the way I (A: With GREAT difficulty.)
think, following
different chains of
thought at once."
jonathan steuer (chance@apple.com) thought my finger plan looked
like a cluster diagram. So what's a cluster diagram?
RESUME
----------
LIBERTY
Libertarians believe in
freedom as opposed to I've also heard it put like this:
security. "Libertarians don't believe in
initiating coercion."
Or:
(Too many negatives, I say.)
The best thing the
government can do to Sometimes I say:
promote security is to Libertarians are liberal on
protect freedom. social issues, but conservative
on economic issues.
(This confuses some people.)
A simple idea, but it
leads lots of places, many of
which lots of people are
reluctant to go to.
RELUCTANT
Much as it pains me to
classify myself as anything, I
can probably be best described
as a libertarian. In fact,
the sense of independence that
makes me reluctant to join
groups like this probably
helps mark me as one of them.
More often than not human happiness is maximized
when people are free to trade among themselves,
and "free" means free to trade anything, for any
reason that seems sufficient to you. ((well, maybe not, exactly....))
The Libertarian party is the third largest party
in the united states. You might want wonder for a THIRD
moment why you hear so little about them. Hint:
Last election, all the national news services used
the same agency to determine their election
results. The Democrat and Republican votes were Objectivists hate
normalized to total to 100%. One toon one vote? libertarians.
Hardly. Libertarians
think this is
pretty funny.
Liberals think you Conservatives think
should be allowed you should be allowed
to see sex on to see violence on
television. television.
Liberals think Conservatives think
defense spending that social spending
should be cut. should be cut.
Libertarians agree
with both of them.
Choosing between Conservatives & Liberals is like
choosing between Hitler or Stalin.
The Libertarian-CS Connection:
I've always had a pet theory that lots of hackers become
libertarians, because hacking, though it may start out as a
quest for control, becomes a fundamentally humbling
experience. "I can't even debug a few thousand lines of
code, how could I possibly handle engineering a society?
How could anyone?"
Collie's got a point, though. To become involved with
anything remotely intellectual in this country there's got to
be something that prevents you from being "normal".
Happy, healthy, socially adept people become jocks and
insurance salesmen.
RELUCTANT
Most people believe in freedom
in some form or another...
Many people share libertarian
attitudes to some extent.
But very few people are willing
to work as hard as the libertarians
do at consistency...
A positive thing about libertarians:
they make an effort to work out a
system based on some simple principles,
rather than decide everything
"pragmatically", on the the fly.
The down side of this is that you'll
often find libertarians arguing about
the fine points of doctrine in ways
that look insane to someone on the
outside.
Is it okay for private citizen's to
own nuclear weapons?
Do we need the government for national
defense? Couldn't that be handled by
private armies?
Isn't it better for parents to have
absolute control over children, rather
than state agencies?
Should you be allowed to sell yourself
into indentured servitude?
But there are smaller issues that bother me as much or more:
Libertarians are opposed to the idea of public parks.
So in a libertarian utopia, Central Park would not
exist. The land would be sold off to private interests,
and if people really want a park that bad, they'd be
willing to pay for admission. If not, let them put up
office buildings.
Libertarians would oppose laws requiring
food ingredient listings on labels.
But this is a very convienient
thing! And it doesn't seem On the other hand...
like it intrudes that much on A hard core lib would
the businesses around... probably argue that
the law is unnecessary:
if you want to know what's
in a product, you could
subscribe to a consumer
reports type of publication
put out by organizations that
can hire a lab to analyze the
products. You would get
*more* information this way,
because they could tell you
the exact percentages of each
component.
REVOLUTION
A freind of mine comments
that libertarians are too
individualistic to organize
a revolution of any sort.
They all insist on going
their own way.
My first thought:
"A libertarian revolution Thinking about Heinlein's
would look like a social _I Will Fear No Evil_:
collapse." A throw away detail about
lawless zones that the
government has official
renounced any control
over. People go there
to gamble, watch risque
night club acts, and so HEINLEIN
on.
Another connection: _How I
found freedom in an unfree
world_... living as an
anarchist in a world that
doesn't believe in
anarchy.
And isn't that the theme of
much of Heinlein?
Alternately you might think
about the ending of
Rand's _Atlas Shrugged_. RAND
--------
RANDY
Ayn Rand frequently talks
about love as a recognition of
the value of the other person.
Hence her ideal woman is
always ready to trade up for a
higher performance model,
searching for the cock of the ("Do you need me?"
walk. She anwered, her voice
earnest, "Desperately."
There are also places where He laughed. "No. Not the
she nods in the direction of way I meant. You didn't say
marriage as prostitution, but it the way they do."
she seems to think it's really "How did I say it?"
neat. Being a whore is ever "Like a trader -- who pays
so naughty and risque... for what he wants. ..."
"I... pay for it, Hank?"
"Don't look innocent. You
know exactly what I mean."
HORSING "Yes," she whispered; she
was smiling. --p263 ATLAS)
--------
RAND
Ayn Rand:
A crazy lady, babbling
about reason and rationality
in a Dionysian way.
"Contradictions don't exist,"
but her idealized smart,
independent women are all
looking for men tough enough
to dominate them.
She sneers at proof by
assertion, and resorts to it
repeatedly for pages on end.
"No one survives here by
faking reality in any way."
Except the author.
An awful ear for english,
using words like
"looter" when any native would
say "thief".
DIDACTICS
But I actually agree with Rand's
"values"... truth and justice
and freedom and all that. It just
seems trite to me to expound
about it for hundred of pages.
But then, it may just be because
I don't need to hear it. I'm
always surprised to meet someone
who doesn't believe in truth,
though plenty of them exist.
People searching for a beautiful
delusion they can lose themselves in TRUTH
without reality breaking down the door.
And as for justice, sometimes
it seems like no one believes
in it, substituting instead a
sense of "niceness". NICE
There are things to like
about Rand.
The rejection of the mind/body
dichotomy...an attempt at being
passionately intellectual.
A willingness to try and write a
novel of ideas, as opposed to
the more modern obsession with
detailed descriptions of existance.
Recognition of the importance
of industry/technology
for preserving life and
improving quality of life.
Her attempt at an
ethical defense of Rand's proposed ethical defense
capitalism. of pure capitalism ("freedom is
good") is a nice try: it's
comprehensive and concise
(though propounded
RANDRHET repetitiously at great length),
but not without problems. Are
She talks about individuals free to stand by
"slavery" a lot. and allow someone to die? How
Every form of coercion much difference is there
gets labeled "slavery". between actively causing
something, and passively
Taxpayers = slaves, allowing something to happen?
because they're Having read Rand, the welfare
forced to work for issue may no longer seem as
causes they don't simple (at best it becomes the
necesarily believe in. lesser of two evils) but to
really settle it you have to
get into the practical defenses
of capitalism ("socialism
doesn't work too well"), and
all of the piecemeal, lengthy
arguments of economics.
MURRAY
Heroes: Villains:
"I can accept almost anything, "Always be what other people
except what seems to be want you to be, then you've got
easiest for most people: the them right where you want them."
half-way, the almost, the
just-about, the in-between."
"Centralization relieves the
"People want nothing but mirrors blight of monopoly."
around them. To reflect them
while they're reflecting too...
Reflections of reflections and "But there are also sins of
echoes of echoes. No beginning omission to consider. To fail
and no end. No center and no to save a life is as immoral
purpose." as murder. The consequences
are the same -- and since we
"You know how people long to be must judge actions by
eternal. But they die with every consequences, the moral
day that passes... They change, reponsibility is the same..."
they deny, they contradict -- and
they call it growth. At the end
there's nothing left, nothing
unreversed or unbetrayed..."
Ayn Rand seems incapable of
writing a decent ending. Her
sense of dramatic structure
gets skewed by her didactic
intent, I suppose. Or maybe
she just can't handle longer
works. Rand a playwrite
trying to be a novelist?
Plays. "??" Is a neat idea. ((What *is* the name? In _The Early Rand_
An actress modeled on Greta (I think it's _Ideal_.) ))
Garbo has to go on the run
from the police. Out of the
thousands of fan letters that
she's received she has saved a
small bundle, each of which
claims to have seen some depth
of meaning in her
performances. She goes to
each of these people looking
for shelter, and in each
encounter they repudiate the
ideals they expressed in their
letters... all of them save one.
My fave: an artist obsessed
with painting the woman's
image doesn't recognize her
face to face.
Plays. "The Night of January
the 14th" isn't such a bad
job. It's a court room drama
where the jury is composed of
members of the audience, whose
decision determines how the
play ends. It's also
interesting as a somewhat
sympathetic view of gansters,
an attitude frequently found
amongst libertarian sorts. Al Cyril Kornbluth's the _Syndic_:
Capone considered as a noble The Mob takes over, and does
businessman fighting unreasonable better than the government did.
regulatory restraints. Much
of the drive of Rand's work
is the same as the drive
behind stories about
romanticized jewel theives,
pirates or revolutionaries. In _The Fountainhead_, the two
The flamboyant rogue, the main characters have red hair
noble criminal. And much of (to show individuality) and
the flaws arise from trying yellow hair (to show some
to rationalize these impulses kind of Aryan purity?). When
away, and make over all her reading the story, though,
characters into goody-goodies it's difficult to shake the
consistent with her ideology. impression that they both have
black hair.
COLOR
So Rand might be compared
to Nietzsche, a "philospher"
trying to redefine
good and evil.
Rand's stated opinion of
Nietzsche, was that while on the
*surface* he might look like a
champion of individualism and
right-thinking, he babbles too
much about the joys of submerging
yourself in the oneness of
Dionysian revelry to be a
true-blue Objectivist.
Nietzsche claimed to be Dionysian.
Rand claimed to be Apollonian.
"The Passion of Ayn
Rand", a biographyy of (I should probably read
Rand and co, has some _Judgement Day_ by Branden
interesting stuff in sometime, for the sake of
it. See POLYANDRY. equal time.)
AROUND">HORSING AROUND
"Never sell yourself.
Period."
--Mitch Cohen
"Sell yourself,
but get a good price."
--Me, circa 1980
The Living Section of the Monday, June 10, 1991 I'm surprised Stanford
New York Times had a short note about Lehigh didn't think of this
University... They've got a course there where you first. Or maybe they
can get credit for asking someone out on a date, have, and I just
e.g. for striking out three times. haven't heard about
it. Could be Adams
The great thing is that at Lehigh this covers this in his
is *not* a course in the Social Psych "Creativity" course.
department on Interpersonal Whatevers.
It's included in a course on Marketing.
"Marketing is a social process in which
buyers and sellers get together.
Marketing facilitates transactions or
exchanges..."
James E. Hansz, Chairman, Marketing Dept.
Love as a contract... I was
disapointed in the movie "The
Unbelievable Truth". It was billed
as being about "The Mechanics of
Emotional Capitalism". It
doesn't say all that much
about it, though there's some
funny lines where a teenage
girl does some strange bargaining
with her father.
--------
TRUTH
Resolved: The pursuit of truth should
superceed the pursuit of happiness...
Something I feel in my gut, but how
do I go about making a case for it?
One angle: Truth can lead to Happiness,
but not vice versa.
Another: Survival a prerequisite of
both, and placing Happiness over Truth
can be contra-survival.
You can't get away forever with living a life based
on lies and misconceptions.
Eventually the bullshit will hit the fan.
"Well, if a fundamentalist
is happy with their beliefs, what's wrong with
that?" But what happens if it turns out that
one of their kids is gay?
You can try and ignore reality, or try and ignore it
selectively as most people do, but eventually reality
isn't going to ignore you...
----------
WEIRD
The right to be weird
is the right to be
free.
Sterotypes, i.e. sloppy
generalizations about
groups of people can
not be oppressive
unless there is an
additional assumption
that *all* individuals A confusion of the map
are or should obey and the territory?
the generalization.
If there's an understanding
that individuals are free
to be individual, if the
exceptions to the rule are
valued rather than feared,
then all the teeth of false
generalizations are pulled.
The right to be weird includes
all other rights. ((sounds good.
really, though?))
----------
NICE
There is a cult of niceness.
Nice people like nice things.
Nice people do nice things.
Nice people say nice things.
Unless someone has said something Not Nice.
When confronted with the Not Nice the Nice
People get very Not Nice themselves.
Then they do Not Nice things:
threaten
sue
lie
blacklist
arrest
They like to have guards to haul the
Not Nice out of their shopping malls.
They like to phone in false accusations
to make sure the police do something.
They like to complain to your boss to
try and get you fired.
They never worry about being wrong,
because they know that they are Nice.
Nice people believe people should be free...
to do _nice_ things.
Do not disturb the niceness.
--------
SLAVERY
Prison labor should be avoided because....
It provides economic motiviation
for throwing people in jail. Gene Wolfe story:
"How the Whip Came Back"
("Hmm. Gotta get some road work
done. You boys get out there
and arrest some niggers.")
There's a similar problem with
traffic tickets, where there's
an annoying "guilty until
proven innocent" attitude.
This may only be a potential problem,
because currently the costs of keeping
someone in jail isn't all that much cheaper This could change.
than hiring them.
But it isn't all that unusual
for organizations to spend
money in an inefficient way (At IBM it's often easier to
just because it comes out of a buy the spare parts to
different account. assemble a computer rather
than to buy one off the
shelf.)
Anyway, to me slavery is something
too nasty to want to rationalize away
under any circumstances.
(Prison Labor = Slave Labor)
(Anything else that is comparable
as slave labor?)
RANDRHET
Libertarians are big on
restitution, as opposed
to retribution or
rehabilitation.
What if the
state tries to claim
restitution for
damages to itself
("society")?
--------
DIDACTICS
Is it possible that the problem
with things like Ayn Rand's work
arise out of it's strengths, i.e.
it's a didactic piece of fiction.
Reality tends to be somewhat warped
to support the message.
The deck is always stacked....
DISCH
--------
COLOR
Once upon a time, a brief article
appeared in the Patchin review,
by a paperback cover artist who
claimed to have noted patterns
in the appearence of characters
in genre fantasy. Green eyes means
one thing. Red hair means another.
Etc.
The question is raised:
isn't this a form of racism,
though perhaps unconscious?
Above I assume that certain
types of characters *should*
have hair of a certain
color: black indicates
"evil" or at least
"rebellious", "outsider".
Coming from a different
direction: The author of a
Lando Calrissian
novelization complains that
his books sold far less well
than other Star Wars books.
The suspicion being that your
typical skiffy adventure fan
doesn't want to see no black
faces on the covers.
And the third star wars movie
really down played the Lando
character introduced in the second...
--------
UTOPIA
Ursula LeGuin's only good work
is a short piece that plays
with our gut-level perception
that a perfect society is
impossible. She describes an
idyllic place named Omelas,
repeatedly addressing the
reader, harping on how it all
seems like a fairy tale.
Finally, she adds one last
element to the scenario: a
suffering child locked away in
a closet, and *then* it all
seems much more realistic.
Once I considered
myself one of "The Ones Who
Walk Away From Omelas", but
I've long since wandered back
to it.
PROVIDENCE
Ed talks about a concept he That's Ed Brenner,
calls "Providence", which is of course.
the best of all achievable
realities, as opposed to
Utopia which literally means Another word for Providence
"no where". might be Omelas.
Or "An Omelas"?
Suggesting that
there are many
local maxima?
Or perhaps just
that there are
many visions.
Some paragraphs quoted from "The Pompous Rose" by
Charles Platt and Gregory Benford, from the
March 1985 Patchin Review. Also published as
"Reactionary Utopias" by the University of Southern Illinois.
(Book title unknown.)
_The Left Hand of Darkness_, her first novel
with a strong social message, postulated a colony
of human beings who have become hermaphroditic.
Interviewed in _Mother Jones_ magazine, Le Guin
has said that eliminating gender was the only way
she could postulate a society without war; to her,
men -- or at least, the differences between them
and women -- evidently seem the root cause of
human strife.
In _The Dispossessed_, _The Left Hand of
Darkness_, and _The Eye of the Heron_, the small
communities of idealists are nonviolent,
thoughtful, compassionate, and hard-working. They
reach decisions by consensus. When a member of
the group is too disagreeable to be reasoned with,
he is simply ignored; exclusion is the only form
of punishment.
Again, it seems mean-spirited to disparage
such right-minded behavior. And yet the very idea
of anarchy by consensus is an oxymoron. Freedom
to do as we please, so long as we all agree with
each other and remain in a state of Zen harmony
with the cosmos, is no freedom at all. It is
little better than a religion in which faith in a
deity has been replaced by faith in some
half-baked historical truths of the human spirit.
It is a single-party political system that seems
congenial only because the people in it are
somewhat implausibly easygoing and nice.
The result is a system as superficially
benign, yet as subtly authoritarian, as
Disneyland.
But ever-so-gently disapproving of traits such
as aggression, leadership, defiance, and
acquisitiveness, and ever-so-gently suggesting
that our only choice is to cooperate with (her
interpretation of) the way things really are, Le
Guin is an authoritarian writer. She may express
doubts about the fate of her cause, but never
about its justness. She may depict her gentle
people losing a brave battle against oppressors,
but she never casts doubt on the _rightness_ of
their struggle. Her politics may seem radical,
but in fact she is advocating an inflexible,
permanent status-quo.
Possibly, Ursula Le Guin might argue that her
social models are not intended to be taken as
literal prescriptions for utopia. Perhaps it is
the role of the idealist merely to encourage hope
and the dream of transcendence, just as it is the
role of a fantasist to remind us of the myths that
make us human.
In that case we would reply that it is
misleading and dishonest to couch such vague
promises in such seemingly concrete terms,
depicting make-believe as if it _could actually
happen_. Le Guin's societies are anything but
realistic, in that they deny all the harder
lessons of history.
LEGUIN
About Samuel R. Delany's "To Read the Dispossessed" DELANY
from _The Jewell-Hinged Jaw_.
Delany spends thousands of words discussing the first
paragraph of the novel. He complains about "hints of
smugness and condescension" and "echoes of ponderousness and
pontification". He goes as far as to suggest a re-write:
Le Guin: Delany:
There was a wall. It did There was a wall of roughly
not look important. It mortared, uncut rocks. An
was built of uncut rocks adult could look over it; a
roughly mortared. An adult child could climb it. Where
could look right over it; the road ran through, it had
even a child could climb it. no gate. But for seven
Where it crossed the roadway, generations it had been the
instead of having a gate it most important thing in the
degenerated into mere geometry, world.
an idea of a boundary. But
the idea was real. It was
important. For seven
generations there had been
nothing more important in the
world than that wall.
Delany comments: "For the rest, it is the 1975 equivalent of
Van Vogtian babble. [...]"
He then goes on to discuss various things in the book that
disagree with his own experience. This is a brief summary
of some of them:
Shevek finds the Urrasti's soft beds erotic and their
smoothly curved furniture feminine. Delany points
out that a man used to sleeping on a hard mat finds a
soft bed uncomfortable, and that softness and curves
isn't likely to be an Annaresti male's idea of "feminine".
Further, he argues that Shevek has had no opportunity
to learn to interpret Vea's cock-teasing behavior as
erotic. He suggests it would just be confusing and
seem "erratic" instead.
Delany also mentions that because of alchohol's well
known efffects on men, Shevek's drunken premature
ejaculation isn't believable.
Le Guin shows Annaresti young boys as having a
natural antipathy to young women. Delany argues that
this kind of thing is entirely a social construct,
nothing natural about it.
The "eureka" scene (where Shevek completes his great
theory) seems weak. Le Guin tries to describe
Shevek's reasoning, but all that comes through sounds
tautological and unscientific. Delany argues that
she would have been better off skipping any attempted
explanation.
My own reaction to reading the Dispossessed was boredom.
I thought Shevek's character was thinner than cardboard, more
like newsprint -- a blurry photo of Einstein, clipped from a
newspaper.
Reading far more carefully than I, Delany finds (a) clumsy,
ponderous writing and (b) too much "literature", i.e.
places where the fiction is based on other fiction and
doesn't jibe with reality.
Delany specifically avoids He seems to feel that approaching
extending this to a political level the work that way distracts you
from actually reading what's there.
Interesting that Benford and Platt,
though they take a more political
approach (and most likely, would
politically disagree with Delany),
come to something like a similar
conclusion: Le Guin's view of human
nature is out of touch with
reality.
It would be interesting to try and
bridge the gap between Delany and
Benford/Platt, to try and chart the
points of agreement and
disagreement and see if there's
some synthesis or the two. But
when you really come down to it,
I'm just not into Le Guin enough to But, but... could be that
want to hassle with it. the synthesis would have
little to do with Le Guin
and might be worth while for
other reasons...
Le Guin strikes me as someone with little feel for the way the
world works, and her attempts a presenting a flawed utopia just
don't ring true to me. I don't much agree with her vision of
utopia, nor about what flaws in it would be likely.
A few (contradictory?) Delany quotes:
[...] the main subject [...] the [...] That point is merely the
philosophy of Odo [...] manages to specifically science-fictional
put itself beyond discussion. To version of the advice the poet
disapprove either of the philosophy Charles Olson once gave a
as an ethical construct, or the way fiction-writing class at Black
the ethical construct has been used Mountain College: "Without
to contour the aesthetic construct necessarily imitating the real, we
of the novel, is simply to declare must keep our fictions _up to_ the
oneself out of sympathy with the real." No matter how science
book. A critic who is seriously fictional our entertainments [...]
uncomfortable with either of these they must approach the same order
aspects had best look for another of structural complexity as our own
work to discuss. conscious perceptions of the real.
--- Section 6, p 251 --- Section 6, p 255
--------
POLY
Instead of searching for
a perfect person to fit into
my conception of a perfect
standard monogamous relationship,
maybe it would make more sense
to think about different structures?
Instead of counting on one person
for everything, why not settle for
a little bit of what you need Of course, non-conventional
from different people? structures pre-supposes
there are some non-conventional
There's one conventional route people around to fit into them,
to this: A standard monogamous and they aren't likely to be
sexual relationship (herein called all that easy to find, either.
"love") and some less intense, non-
sexual relationships (herein called So this is all academic?
"freindship"). Perhaps a bit utopian.
Sometimes it seems like you're not
really allowed to do even this.
Your love gets nervous if you put
too much time in with your friends.
The other popular type of
relationship is bogus
monogamy: various reports
claim about half of the
married folks in the US One version of this factoid
have commited adultery. has it that it's men, 60%
And that's just a and women, 40%.
statistical snap shot: it
can't include people Women clearly don't
who've only been married get out enough.
a week and haven't had
time to cheat.
(There are newer
Obvious question: why not just versions of these
be honest about the fact that factoids with
you have an "open relationship"? lower numbers.
I wouldn't trust
the new ones, either.)
possible arrangements: Examine:
POLYANDRY Various real utopian experiments.
Polygyny 19th century free love debate.
Group Sex
I've written about some of this
under DELANY
& STRANGER
& RELIGION
& GROUPS
& FREE LOVE
--------
LOVE
Love is a slippery concept. ACCIDENT
It's popular to try and
distinguish between love and
lust, between spirit and body. I try and avoid it myself.
The two don't work all that
well separately.
The Open Relationship concept BLOVE
is sort of based on it: You have
one pairing considered primary, Alternately, you might suppose
spiritual, and the others are that the "primary" relationship
just "flings", purely "physical". is simply pragmatically useful
for raising kids, dealing with
the straights, and so on.
-------
FREE LOVE
((Orginal version of this seems to be missing:
just as well, it was just a reading list cribbed
from Socrates. Make a new one, though.))
"Children of the future age,
Reading this indignant page,
Know that in a former time,
Love, sweet love, was thought a crime."
"A Little Girl Lost"
Blake (1757-1827)
--------
POLYANDRY
I thought this would be a good
dig at Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED:
Why don't her iconoclastic, non-
conformist geniuses ever consider
abandoning monogamy, since the
male to female ratio in her
utopian community (Atlantis) seems In fact, you might wonder
to be about 10 to 1? the same thing about
Silicon Valley, since it
Reading seems to have a similar
_The Passion of Ayn Rand_ ratio.
by Barbara Branden, I
discovered that she It would seem like the
actually did ideal resolution to any
deviate from monogamy romantic triangle, but I
in the way she lived. only know of one story
that uses it: a play by
Noel Coward, appropriately
When she was about 40 or so, enough, titled "Design
She set up an open affair for Living".
between her and a guy in
his twenties, Nathaniel
Branden (Barbara's husband),
while she was still married
to Frank (a man closer to her My reaction: "All right Ayn!
age, forties I think). She went for it!"
The reaction of the other three
people concerned was not at all
good, if you believe Barbara.
No one really wanted it this way
except Ayn, and when Nathaniel
finally broke up with *both* Ayn
and Barbara to go with some
bimbette, Ayn seriously freaked.
So, sometimes it doesn't work.
((Other topics... standard male
fantasy is supposed to be polygyny,
multiple women, one man... funny thing
is it seems to be the common female
fantasy as well. "All women are
bisexual." as the kid in "Murmurs
of the Heart" says... ))
((West magazine reports that Bisexual
women are in high demand amongst
"swingers"... Bisexual men on the
other hand are avoided like -- ))
((Also Anthropology.
The Nyimba or something.))
-------
BLOVE (3/17/92)
"love is a many splintered thing"
It's really simple: love is There are different
friendship involving sexual definitions. When
contact. you say "I love ice
cream!" it doesn't
But maybe it's not all usually imply any
that simple, because sexual experiences. But then,
since it involves But these other considering
sexual contact love is definitions aren't the way some
assumed to be a what you first women act
deeper, more serious think of. toward ice
relationship than a cream, maybe
typical friendship. I'm wrong
about this.
There's a very complicated
implied contract involved
assuming certain exclusive
rights, expected behavior, and
a protocol for breaking the
contract. I've always found
this annoying, because it (Though, I was
seems to me like the talking to some friends of
provisions of the contract mine about this recently and
aren't open to negotiation in they didn't understand what I
advance. was talking about. Everything
can be discussed at any time.
No one is allowed to make any
assumptions. Right.)
And while there are people who
claim to have merely friendly
sex with no heavy emotional
involvement... the dreaded and
adored "casual" sex. I'm not
sure I believe in it myself.
Never seems to work out that
way for me, anyway.
How I use the word:
It is very rare for people It is only slightly less
in my family to say "I love rare for me to say "I love
you" to each other. you." to anyone, since I
Expressing emotions is not tend to think it
exactly our strong point. ought to be obvious.
Consequently, I usually wind
up saying something like
"Sure, of course I love you."
--------
ACCIDENT
I once picked up Eric Fromm's
_The Art Of Loving_, and after
realizing that it wasn't
another sex manual, I discovered
he had some interesting stuff
to say. The popular idea that
love is an accident is
ridiculous ("falling" in love,
like tripping over a rock).
Really it takes effort to do
it right, and since it sure as But what does this
hell isn't a science, it must get you? So it's an art...
be an art. How do you learn to create
sucessful artwork?
Another, older, idea... Isn't art characterized
The romantic/mystical idea of by mystery? The difference
love being fated, an accident between what works and what
that only seems like an doesn't often seems to be
accident. When Jimmy Stewart hard to pin down.
is excised, Donna Reed goes
spinster. If it's all so subtle,
as to be ineffable,
Just about any random pairing then what can you do
of people can fall in love but blunder around and hope
with each other if they want to trip over the right log?
to work at it.
But the ineffable is only
part of the story, perhaps
responsible for the
distinction between the
good and the great.
But before art can be good,
there must be a certain
Before one can demonstrate level of technical competence.
talent, one must demonstrate
skill. And technical competence is
achieved by hard work.
Though, I believe Studying other's methods.
that there is such Learning standard proceedures.
a thing as art that Practicing simple exercises.
requires talent but I sometimes
little skill. call it
"trash" art.
Collages.
Finger painting. How about photography?
Playing DJ. Requires simpler skills
than, say painting,
but still they're there...
I like to think
I'm pretty good Then there are
at trash art. degrees of
trashiness.
How trashy
is love?
-------
ELVIRA
((No connecting link in for
So, I get frustrated at how this. Something about addiction?
I've lost my ability to hit Maybe life organization?))
the ramp targets in Elvira, I
decide to shift from my usual
goal of scoring high and
rolling it over to just playing
for action. Like going for
skull locks and multi-ball
play... "easy" targets that I
always thought of as a waste
of time and a distraction. But this zen fairy tale doesn't
And all of a sudden the "easy" tell the whole story by itself.
targets become much more It's true that "trying too
difficult than I thought, and hard" can screw you up, but
I start hitting the ramps there are other times when the
again without much effort. game seems pointless, and I no
And once I do get it into the longer care where the ball
multi-ball mode I roll it goes, and *that* state of mind
over... certainly doesn't improve my
score.
As of October 1990, I think I've
finally mastered Elvira.
I don't play it.
And as of February 1991, I've managed
to quit playing it again.
And as of January 1992, I'm still off
it. I play Dr. Dude instead.
(At least I'm off caffiene now.)
(March 1992, I'm more into Batman.)
(April 1992: quit again.)
(May 92 or so, I adopted a one
game per day limit. This has
been surprisingly stable.)
DEEP_GNU
This is (briefly) how this file was I wrote an introductory level
created: I brought the fill column explanation of this, but it's too
in tight, usually around column 30, long to want to include here.
and working in auto-fill-mode, I (Yeah, it's *that* long.)
would wail away writing something.
Then I'd try and edit it down. It's a file called "deep"
Frequently I'd find it could be that is also unprotected.
split into smaller sub-blocks. When Do a Control X control f deep
these were more or less written, I'd to visit it now.
go into picture-mode and use the Remember: Control x b
commands to manipulate rectangular will bring you back here.
blocks of text to move it all into
appropriate locations. Editing
these blocks once they're in place
is tough, so I added some commands
to emacs to move a rectangular
paragraph into a text mode window,
and to move it back again when done.
Also, I decided to stick in a Local
Variables table to default to
picture-mode and case-sensitive
searches.
----------
ROLES Soft Roles vs Hard Roles?
Someone in SF EYE #8 Elizabeth Hand in "Distant Fingers"
once again revives the "Women Visionaries for the _Fin-de-Millenaire_"
familar complaint: Too
many female characters are
poorly translated male
characters. "Men with Does the converse problem
tits." Just like male ever occur? "Women with dicks"?
characters except for
names, appearence.
But this is the unisexual
ideal in play, right?
All gender differences
are cultural. And if we Why? Because some people Any characteristic
strive to eliminate them, find them restrictive, presumed universal
any mildly utopian oppressive. oppresses the
future must presume a move exceptions.
in that direction.
To write otherwise WEIRD
presumes an
alternative theory
about what men and
women are, and about
why they are that
way, and a guess
about how these
things might change.
This is a possibility:
Pick some other theories to look at.
Begin with this idea I lifted
from Anthropology 101: sex How about the Camile Paglia notion
roles are universal, but of women as the font of the
their precise meanings are irrational, whose natural province
not. In a few cultures, the is all things not scientific. Woman
things we call feminine are as intuitive.
associated with men, and the
"masculine" with women. But Where does that lead?
everyone makes _a_
distinction, just not always PAGLITE
_our_ distinction.
To me this suggests the This is a severely
postulate that there is offensive idea to
an inbuilt need for a 70s style feminist.
gender differentiated I had one compare
social roles. me to Nazis since they
used "anthro" to back
up their racial theories.
Is there a positive way
to deal with this?
Consider transvestites...
What if anyone was free
to choose either role
regardless of physical TRANS
gender?
----------
TRANS (an old bboard posting) ((integrate with the above?))
So, who really cares about transexuality? I guess it's
interesting that some people go through the hassle of the hormone
treatment and surgery that it takes, but just modifying your physical
equipment doesn't seem that fascinating to me.
I like transvestites better. Cross-dressing is easy to do and yet it
gives you a chance to adopt the social roles usually assigned to
people of the opposite gender.
This is what I think is neat about it: we're presumably stuck
with some kind of gender differentiation: I remember the assertion
from my undergrad Anthro class that all cultures have something like
our "masculine" and "feminine" social roles, though there are a few
where they're associated with the opposite gender. But if you take
it as a given that a unisex society is impossible, this is bound to
be oppressive to lots of people, since you're sticking them with
behavioral rules arbitrarily tied to their physical characteristics.
Enter the transvestite. Even if we are stuck with "bisexual" roles,
it doesn't matter as long as the "masculine" and the "feminine" are
unstuck from physical genders. If you don't like the deals available
to men, you can check out the ones available to women, and vice-versa.
All we've got to do is get cross-gender behavior out of the
perversion category and we'd be all set.
(All well and good, but
what if you don't like
either of the two deals?)
----------
And remember:
"As goes doom, so goes the country."
FUTURE
----------
PAGLITE (4/13/92)
Given the idea that women
are somehow inherently
intuitive, non-rational,
what is the ideal role
of women in society?
One answer might be And Fritz Leiber's
Sterling's _Islands in _Conjure Wife_?
the Net_. His female
protagonist is an
executive manager, a He accuses her of
"people" person. Her being blind to the actual
husband is more potential of the technology
interested in the of a sub-culture they're
technical side of studying together. From his
things. point of view, he's doing the
real work.
If you buy the maternal
instinct business, then
why wouldn't women be
an ideal choice for (Why is it that the actual
any managment position? roles don't seem consistent
with the sterotypes in this
Other possibilites case? Other aspects that
artistic need(ed) to be challenged:
creative women as weaker.)
writers
and so on?
What occupation is
an intuitive style
*not* suited for?
BOUNDARIES
Especially considering the
possible roles of teamwork,
pairing an intuitive and
an analytic character.
So that's one:
a culture with a policy of This would start
assigning couples to a job, as the policy
rather than individuals. of a single
Presumption of team work, company.
etc.
Typically, a male-female,
analytic-intuitive pairing.
But not necessarily?
Gender inversions allowed?
(Or if not allowed,
switch handled
undercover, internal
to the two-unit...)
Married work-couples might Home life no longer an
be common. What if you're escape from work.
not married? Might you
not wind up "assigned" into Possible conflicts Vauge assoc.
an only semi-voluntary unit? between a work-pairing Poul Anderson's
and a marriage-pairing. "The Saturn
Pressures to marry early Game"
for business purposes?
Widows/widowers forced
to adopt a new partner
rapidly.
A taboo *against* marrying
somone you have too much
in common with.
(possibilities of
parent-child
business work?)
So, for fiction purposes there
are possibilites here, precisely
because the practicalities are
so hard to work out.
----------
GAIMAN
Picked up a copy of Miracle Man on a whim. Pretty damn weird
ass shit: couple of years in the future, an alien named Mors
is running around designing bodies and performing resurrections.
He's created about 18 identical Andy Warhols. The viewpoint
character is Warhol #6, who is playing guide to the newly
ressurected mad genius/great dictator figure, who was killed
by his son, the Miracle Man (who has zilch to do with this story).
This story has been zinging around in my head for a few days.
((Note: turns out this was my introduction to Neil Gaiman. THERMIDOR
Albeit doing riffs with some of Alan Moore's material.)) (why?)
--------
6/25/93
Subject: Re: Sandman #52... (*spoilers*)
This story reminded me a bit of the Amber business...
riding on horseback on a trail through alternate universes;
the long lived trickster (whose character might be compared
to Zelazny's Random) dimly remembered by the culture he's
messing with; and being imprisoned and freed by a powerful
external agency. Then there's the business about
sword fighting, but that's pretty standard genre fantasy crap
(that I personally would like to see flushed, by the way...
chasing after an idealized past that never was is really
pathetic. The biggest disappointment for me about _Game of
You_ was that it took the genre fantasy stuff so seriously.
When he first introduced it in _The Doll's House_ I thought
it was a great put-down... I thought "yeah an airhead that
calls herself Barbie WOULD dream that kind of D&D fairy tale
stuff").
The Sandman has always seemed somewhat Zelazny influenced to
me. Notably the Gallery of sigils is reminiscent of
Zelazny's deck of trumps. Also, both begin with their main
characters trapped on earth, both escape and slowly make
their way back home. Dream's slow crawl back to the center
of the Dreaming was the first thing that reminded me of
Zelazny's "walking though shadow". Also, both Dream and
Zelazny's Corwin return from Earth with their characters
changed, somewhat humanized.
I don't think there's much correspondence between the
various members of the "royal" families, but then Zelazny's
pantheon wasn't as well thought out as Gaiman's... (For
that matter the Phil Jose Farmer "World of Tiers" stories
Zelazny drew inspiration from did an even worse job.)
Sometimes I think there's a connection between Dream and
Zelazny's _Lord of Light_, in that both main characters have
so many different names and titles (Zelazny's "Sam" is known
as "Sam Calkin, Prince Siddhartha, Mahasamatman, Binder of
Demons, Lord of Light"). Other times I figure this is a
trivial similarity, since you could say the same thing about
any number of royal/religious characters throughout myth and
history.
The one thing I really liked about #52 was Cluracan's flash
of guilty annoyance at the end when asked if he was going to
visit his sister. When I read #52 I happened to be stalling
about writing a letter to my own sister...
By the way, may I infer that Gaiman's elves don't dream very
often?
And, it's obvious that currently Gaiman is telling a story
about stories... but what is it that Gaiman wants to say
about stories?
I notice that everyone keeps insisting that they are merely
killing time by telling stories to each other in the Worlds' End.
--------
ORESTEIA -- review of Aeschylus for comic fans. (10/1/94)
So, I just finished reading the trilogy
of plays by Aeschylus "The Oresteia"
("Agamemnon", "The Libation Bearers",
and of course, our friends "The
Eumenides"). I was reading the Penguin
edition, translated by Robert Fagles.
I thought they were pretty good: I was
most impressed by "Agamemnon", though
they all have good things about them.
You can easily imagine every line of
these plays shouted out on stage, they
all seem to speak or sing in
proclamations, exclamations, and so on.
This is in sharp contrast to modern
plays, where the actors are expected to
learn how to do "natural" dialog at the
tops of their lungs. In fact it all
kind of reminded me of a somewhat
classier version of Marvel comics dialog
(all exclamation points, never a
period). I mean, check this line from
"The Libation Bearers":
ELECTRA:
Both fists at once
come down, come down --
Zeus, crush their skulls! Kill! Kill!
Now is that Frank Miller, or what?
I was also impressed by a lot of the
staging in general. For example --
(*** oh, here's a ***SPOILER*** warning.
Just in case you want to be surprized by
all the twists, just like Aeschylus'
original audience was. ***)
In "Agamemnon", there's a lot of dialog
between two characters (one of them the
"leader"), punctuated by the "Chorus"
who represent the will of the people,
but then as the tension builds, the
Chorus comes in, singing *in synch* with
the leader... this must be a really
spooky effect the first time you see it.
And what the play is about is
"Agamemnon" being murdered by his wife.
But instead of having the murder take
place on stage, what you actually have
is this Seer (Cassandra), babbling
semi-coherently about what's going to
happen, as the Leader questions here.
And then you hear Agamemnon cry out
inside as he's actually murdered. Then
the Chorus briefly breaks up into a mass
of individuals, yelling different
things, representing the chaos that
breaks out after the murder.
Now that's Theatre.
But what does all this have to do with
The Sandman? Well, we're all reading
about "The Kindly Ones" right now, aka
"The Eumenides". Briefly this is the
story of the Orestia:
Agamemnon goes off to war with Troy
because Paris has kidnapped his I remember hearing some
brother's wife Helen. In order to win skepticism that a real
this war (to escape a storm at sea, nation state would
really), he sacrifices his daughter actually go to war over
Iphigeneia to the gods. In the first a woman. Perhaps this
play, after winning the war, he returns was their excuse, but
home and is murdered by his wife there must have been some
Clytaemnestra (because he killed their economic motivation also,
daughter). In the second play, their yes?
son Orestes returns from exile, having
been prompted by Apollo to kill his On the other hand...
mother (because she killed his father). perhaps this is a
In the third play, the Furies are after symptom of our own
Orestes ass, but they are held off by nation's sickness,
the intervention of Apollo, who gets that we refrain from
Athena to save him, essentially by war even when are
establishing what is apparently supposed citizen's have been
to be the first murder trial, where taken hostage.
Athena gets to cast the deciding vote. If the hostage
They also manage to get the Furies to strategy is allowed
chill out and not destroy the world in to work, then it will
anger at being defied by the younger happen over and over,
gods like this. right?
There's a bunch of things going on here. But then, Helen
One is a theological issue, a territory was not just
dispute between the older beliefs (the The any citizen.
Fates, the Furies) and the newer gods forerunner
(Zeus, Apollo, Athena, etc.). But this of the Would we go to
also evidentally conicides with a civic split war with Iran
issue, the supression of blood feuds in between if Iranian
favor of a trial by jury system. Xtians terrorists
& Jews? kidnapped
And there are all sorts of amazing side Madonna?
issues... for example, when Apollo is
arguing for Orestes, one of his points Hillary
is that killing your mother isn't really Clinton?
a blood crime, because the mother is
just an incubator for the father's seed.
And the Furies couldn't care less about
a woman murdering her husband. After
all, they're not related, right?
And the justice of springing Orestia for
killing his Mom, when his Mom thought
she was similarly justified in offing
his Pop for commiting a similar blood
crime is all very peculiar. No one
cares that Agamemnon killed his
daughter, because that was a sacrifice
to Artemis, and very good statesmanship
all around?
But anyway, there are lots of puzzles
here for loyal Sandman fans trying to
follow what Neil Gaiman is doing with
this material. "The Kindly Ones" is a
translation of "The Eumenides". Can we
expect Gaiman to parallel Aeschylus?
There are some parallels: Morpheus has
committed a blood-crime, but our
sympathies are with him. What he's done
seems just, it's just a technical
violation of the rules.
Apollo is only a minor figure in
Gaiman's cosmology, though Morpheus
often seems to play Apollo's role. But
he can hardly appeal to himself for
protection, and no one really urged him
on to kill his son... except Delerium?
Or perhaps Destruction?
If the "Eumenides" is any rough guide,
though, the things in store for us are
not just personal changes for Morpheus
(death and/or retirement), but
fundamental changes in the "rules", the
definition of the "responsibilities"
that the endless live by.
Well, in conclusion, I recommend these
plays to any sandfans hanging around,
awaiting the almost mythical next issue.
They aren't all that difficult to get
into (I had to check the Glossary a
number of times to get the relationships
of all the characters straight, but I
mostly ignored the notes, and I've only
skimmed the long and rather beserk &
breathless introductary essay in the
Penguin edition).
Here's a parting quote, from early in
Agamemnon, where the Chorus is filling
us in on the historical background of
Agamemnon's sacrifice of his daughter:
'Obey, obey, or a heavy doom will
crush me! --
Oh but doom will crush me
once I rend my child,
the glory of my house --
a father's hands are stained,
blood of a young girl streaks the altar.
Pain both ways and what is worse?
Desert the fleets, fail the alliance?
No, but stop the winds with a virgin's blood,
feed their lust, their fury? -- feed their fury! --
Law is law! --
Let all go well.'
And once he slipped his neck in the strap of Fate,
his spirit veering black, impure, unholy,
once he turned he stopped at nothing,
seized with the frenzy
blinding driving to outrage --
wretched frenzy, cause of all our grief!
Yes, he had the heart
to sacrifice his daughter,
to bless the war that avenged a woman's loss,
--------
12CEASARS A review of Suetonius for comics fans (July 93)
I've been reading Suetonius, _The Twelve Caesars_ (as
translated by Robert Graves), and I agree that Gaiman's
_August_ is based almost entirely on this book, certainly
the character of Augustus seems to be based more on this
than Robert Graves version of Augustus in the novel _I,
Claudius_. (On the other hand there are some touches of the
character Lycius that seem to owe something to Graves'
Claudius.)
If anyone still cares, here are the only two references to
the relationship between Julius Caesar and Augustus:
(p.57 of the Penguin paperback edition)
8. At the age of four Augustus lost his
father. At twelve he delivered a funeral
oration in honour of his grandmother Julia,
Julius Caesar's sister. At sixteen, having
now come of age, he was awarded military
decorations when Caesar celebrated his
African triumph, though he had been too
young for overseas service. Caesar then
went to fight Pompey's sons Spain; Augustus
followed with a very small escort, along
roads held by the enemy, after a shipwreck,
too, and in a state of semi-convalescence
from a serious illness. This action
delighted Caesar, who, moreover, soon formed
a high estimate of Augustus' character quite
apart from the energetic manner in which he
had made the journey.
(The funeral oration mentioned here also appears in Gaiman's
August.)
(p.92 Penguin paper)
68. As a young man Augustus was accused of
various improprieties. For instance, Sextus
Pompey jeered at his effeminacy; Mark Antony
alleged that Julius Caesar made him submit
to unnatural relations as the price of
adoption; Antony's brother Lucius added
that, after sacrificing his virtue to
Caesar, Augustus had sold his favours to
Aulus Hirtius in Spain, for 3,000 gold
pieces, and that he used to soften the hair
on his legs by singeing them with red-hot
walnut shells.
To me, there seem to be two different images of Augustus in
these stories. In one, he's the unwilling recepient of Julius'
attentions, in the other he's carefully cultivating a boyish/effeminate
appearence, willingly prostituting himself.
Other interesting things:
On pp. 78 and 79 in section 43, Suetonius goes on making Augustus
sound like quite a patron of the theater. He makes it sound like the
prohibition of high born people from being actors was the idea of the
Senate, rather than Augustus. Remember, in the Gaiman story,
Lycius says to Augustus that he hasn't been good to the theater.
Even Roman knights sometimes took part
in stage-plays and gladiatorial shows
until a Senatorial decree put an end to
the practice. After this, no person of
good family appeared in any show, with
the exception of a young man named
Lycius; he was a dwarf, less than two
feet tall and weighing only 17 lb but
had a tremendous voice.
So Lycius is a historical character! Somehow I didn't realize
that. I figured he was Gaiman's invention.
on page 101 in section 87, Suetonius says of Augustus:
He also had a favorite metaphor for swift and
sudden actions: 'Quicker than boiled asparagus.'
A character detail used by both Gaiman and Graves in _I, Claudius_
Another piece of Augustus dialog lifted by Gaiman:
p.90 section 65 Suetonius says that August referred to his three children
as 'my three boils' or 'my three running sores'.
And on p. 93 section 70, Suetonius describes an incident where Augustus
appeared at a private banquet dressed as Apollo, prompting remarks
such as:
... 'Caesar is Apollo, true -- but he's
Apollo of the Torments' -- this being
the god's aspect in one city district.
Which may be where Gaiman picked up that phrase (Augustus
mentions "Apollo of the Torments" when Morpheus appears).
p. 96 section 76, describes Augustus' diet, which is consistent
with Gaiman's description.
And on p. 97, section 78 we get something of his sleeping habits,
inluding the detail about keeping a story-teller on hand:
If he found it hard to fall asleep again
on such occasions, as frequently
happened, he sent for readers or
story-tellers; and on dropping off would
not wake until the sun was up. He could
not bear lying sleepless in the dark
with no one by his side; and if he had
to officiate at some official or
religious ceremony that involved early
rising -- which he also loathed -- would
spend the previous night at a friend's
house as near the appointed place as
possible. Even so, he often needed more
sleep than he got, and would doze off
during his litter journeys through the
city if anything delayed his progress
and the bearers set the litter down.
And on p 103, we have his attitude toward dreams, and the
premise of Gaiman's story:
91. Warnings conveyed in dreams,
wither his own or those dreamed by
others, were not lost on him: for
example, before the battle of Philippi,
when so ill that he decided not to leave
his tent, he changed his mind on account
of a friend's dream -- most fortunately,
too, as it proved. For the camp was
captured and a party of the enemy,
breaking into the tent, plunged their
swords through and through his bed under
the impression that he was still in it,
tearing the bed-clothes to ribbons.
Every spring he had a series of ugly
dreams, but none of the horrid visions
seen in them came true; whereas what he
occasionally dreamed at other seasons
tended to be reliable. [...]
Because of another dream he used to sit
in a public place once a year holding
out his hand for the people to give him
coppers, as though he were a beggar.
--------
THERMIDOR -- The Ides of August (1991)
Hanging out at printer's ink, trying
to read this article in the latest (This is a long detailed
issue of nature about using a story that includes
Scanning Tunneling Microscope as an everything except the point.
"atomic switch", twiddling a Xenon So what is the point?)
atom back and forth between the tip
and a kink site on the substrate,
changing the capacitence of the
junction, I sit down at the counter
with some coffee.
One of the women who works
there sometimes and hangs
out there much, sits
next to me, reading
something.
When there's a slack moment, the women working behind the
counter come over to her, and say "So what happened?"
I look up. They glance at me, and lean over to talk to each
other "privately". I can still hear them, but I can tell
I'm supposed to pretend I can't.
They start gossipping about some
complicated web of bisexual
relationships that I can't quite
follow. She was complaining about
some woman who was hitting on her,
who "started kissing her and stuff"
and was asking her if she wanted to
go to Watercourse Way. "You know
Watercourse way? They have hot tubs
there, but you can fuck there.
They've got beds and stuff." She
considered this scandalous because one
or the other or both of them were
"seriously seeing" someone.
"I mean I'd heard that she liked to
play games, and play with people's
heads, but I'd always thought she was
a nice person. I mean, I still think
she's a nice person, but --"
Somewhere along the way, I noticed
she was reading "The Fountainhead".
Later she was saying something like
"I wonder if she got back together
with them later on? I mean, I went
hot tubbing with Margot that
Saturday, so I know *she* wasn't with
her."
Still later, one of the other women
was saying something about a bite. A
bug bite? She pulled up her shorts (she sported a golden triangle-
to show a large white welt on her in-a-circle medallion, which
upper thigh. The other woman behind took me a while to connect with
the counter said "Wait a minute. You the pink triangle emblem)
were just driving along in your car,
and she bit you on the leg? No-- I
don't want to hear about it."
And later: "Well, now I know if I want something from you I
should get you drunk."
"No. When I get drunk I get really _stupid_."
One of the bookstore workers comes by. They comment on the
amount of gossip. "Well, this is what it's like, working in
a Cafe."
I gave up and walked out of the place. Didn't even make any
arch comments about how freaking the straights is all part
of the game...
Personally, I wonder what
this story has to do with
the Sandman story Thermidor,
except that I'd read it
around then and it was
definitely echoing around
in my head...
-----------------
EYE
So. Article in SF Eye, about Horror "Amoral Responsibility"
fiction. A guy presents his manifesto by Peter Lamborn Wilson
fairly persuasively, but really his
point of view is pretty narrow. He's
just fallen into another trap, and I'll
be amazed if he can take this anywhere.
Essentially, he's taking the side that
"Fiction should be moral", that
everything an author chooses to write is
a presentation of the way things
_should_ be. Using erotica as an
example, he takes the (conventional for
asb) side that everthing is fair game as
long as it's consenual and "loving".
So for instance, it's okay to write about people playing
pretend rape in some kind of bondange scene, but actual rape
is a no-no. Would it be okay to write about two people who
get off together by reading/writing stories about rape?
How many levels of indirection do you need, before it
becomes palatable?
Of course, the position that Tom Maddox was taking on the
net a few years back (about how art must be amoral, because
didactic fiction is inevitably boring) is *also* too
limited. You can't say anything meaningful without it
having some moral dimension to it...
I think he misses the real evil of Horror: The problem is
not that it lacks compassion, but that it's inherently
opposed to rationality. Reference Algis Budrys?
-----------------
ECODIS
Another knotty problem, that ecology thing.
Would be neat to come up with an elegant solution.
Something nicely libertarian and systematic that'll save the
rainforests before they crash in 25/50/100 years. ECODOOM
Instead, I keep thinking about stories. A future with
increasingly limited ecological diversity. A defense
complex looking for something to justify itself in a world
without communism. A stagnant "developing" world that won't
give up it's dirty old ways unless it's forced.
Sounds a lot like Miller's "Liberty". Or that *old* Baen
suggestion at an Icon at SUSB... can we *allow* them to
continue doing this?
--------
EDUCATION
2.5.... You want to know why the Star System is a bad way to run
higher education? This is how it goes: Take the top ten percent
from the high schools across the country. Cram them into a few
"competitive" universities. Watch half of the people who wanted
to study technical subjects bail out for easier majors.
If they'd started at less "stellar" schools, they might still
be techies => the star system produces good stars, but fewer
"average" techies than they could.
--------
NIN
Industrial music snobs like to put down Nine Inch Nails, but
the stuff really does sound okay... if you could convince
them it was by Skinny Puppy they'd love it.
It might be worth asking some time, is there a reason
that NIN has developed a cult like following when many
equally good, if not better, industrial dance groups
haven't?
I would guess it's something about Trent's voice/distortion
combination that gives it a unique quality.
Similar to Kurt Cobain in Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit"?
Hm, this could be the kind of insight of which hits are made.
Or at least, record contracts.
-------
LOOPY
Hey, I just wanted to tell you about the greatest 7" piece
of vinyl ever manufactured: RRR-100. This is a collection
of 100 locked tracks, i.e. you put the needle down and it
just goes around and around looping a 1.8 second sample (60
* 1/33.3) of some random musical source. A few cuts have a
"classical" sound, a few are random noise, a few have a punk
sound, but most of them have that distinctive Industrial
feel we all know and love.
This record is currently being over-played like crazy by the
DJs at the Stanford radio station (KZSU 90.1FM), mostly
being used as sound beds to talk over. It also works great
as another element when you feel like doing a weird mix of
several things at once...
Gives new meaning to the term "Long Playing Record"...
--------
BELLADONNA 9/3/92
Last Wednesday night I sat down in front of a NeXt machine,
with a walkman tuned to Beladonna on KFJC (89.7 FM, here
around the south end of the SF bay), and this is what
happened:
_X10_, "the beast": some classic
industrial.
New from _Schnitt Acht_. Okay.
Suprisingly far in the direction of
mellow, though not quite all the
way.
_Stereotaxic Device_: Eerie
gothicesque ambient. A bit
Fripper(eno?)tronic.
Brand new stuff from _Out, Out_: A
bit hard to classify. Sort of
acid-housey. Indust dance, w/some
edge... a tad overproduced? Trite
sexual lyrics like "each time it
gets better..."
Jon Druckman vouches for the coolness of the guy who is
_Out, Out_, says he went to college with him.
Hasn't heard a lot of his music, though.
_Borghesia_. The song is: "Rumors
Space". A Boris Karloff voice,
slightly demented, a slow melody
(with bongo sounds in the
background?). "They found found him
dead/with a smashed head." Dirgy.
Live _Christian Death_: "Iron Mask":
Some sort of modern rock retread.
Sounds okay, maybe an improvement on
the original mix, but who cares?
New from _Hunting Lodge_: Tap tap
clunk of drum sticks, flying saucer
effects, windstorms, distant
screams. Muffled pounding on the
door. A pleasant cacophony.
Old from Hunting Lodge, but off the newly re-issued "Will+" CD
from Dark Vinyl. It's a CD reissue of their first LP with some
extra tracks added (including the above one).
-- Mason Jones, Charnel House
_Einstuerzende Neubauten_: Breaking
glass, hints of dead TV screen
static, cutting in and out,
switching between the two,
incomprehensible babble like a
bubbling fishtank, a sudden
interruption, silence, and a hushed
voice in German. Later: "Ich bin
war Hamlet." The German voices
alternate with noises, fading in and
out quickly. Atonal and arhytmic.
Interesting, though a bit
overdone... "Kind of a performace
thing", Beladonna says, but I'm
hearing it, not seeing it.
"the one and only" _Delerium_ --
Droning, slow, ambient industrial.
_Dive_ off the "Object 5"
Compilation. "ddDDivvee." slow
motion, slowed down, distored voice.
A single deep tone, repeated
endlessly, sounding like some cheesy
submarine movie music, only deeper,
stranger. Some other faint
string-like sounds join in. An
indistinguishable, repetitious voice
comes in, still deep in the
background. The foreground is just
that throbbing monotonous "Dive!"
sound, though the tonality shifts
slowly, other noises, other little
bits of music fade in and out, some
structure appears in the pattern of
reprisals... Good stuff, though you
gotta be in the mood.
_Grotus_: Some most annoying staticy
sounds, with wailing Indian voices,
calms down into another repetitious
thundering basenote, but with less
distortion, and a more conventional
connection to the background
melodies and rhtyms (far back there,
a sound like bongos?) shifting
tonalities in the base note, other
faster rhythms come in, and then the
vocals "push down at the root,
slipping from somewhere"...
_Force Incorporated_: some midnight
techno, a bit harsher than rave
music, though (Ooh! that high
"beeeeep!" it kicks off with could
kill you). Kind of annoying, but it
works.
"Down!" "Down!" "Down!" Really
good, harder edged
technoindustrialhousewhatever. I
*think* this is: _Bazz_: "House of
Pak".
_My Dying Bride_ Song:"Silent Dance"
Drawn out, almost traditional Chanel ("rancid") Wheeler says most of
Dramatic movie music... Call it their stuff is really more grindcore
okay, at least. with strings added.
New stuff from _In The Nursery_:
Nice vocals, probably french, a
woman singing in a hushed voice.
Dirge like music also seems
movieish, but it plays it straight,
it's not a satire like the _My Dying
Bride_ cut was.
_Cyclops Joint_, of off the Manifest
Destiny (vol II) compilation: Nice
germanesque grumbling, scifi sounds
like the star trek elevator, "I
heard him--", "Insane", "Slit his
wrists", "She came an angel/sucking
on his fist". The voice quavers
from left track to right. Could
this be *live* drums here?! "Not I.
Not I!"
"Memories of Sound" by _ClockDVA_:
"Performance perfect is perfect
performance" A female voice over a
PA in a nightmare factory of the
future, murky sounds like huge tubes
of plastic banging into each other,
and resonating as the cranes carry
them throughout the night. Long
drifting resonant notes, oboe like?
Brilliant. A really sinister little
ambient, but not without it's
soothing qualities. Album:
_Man-Amplified_.
New _Lycia_, from Projekt:
Monotonous base strumming, sawing
through the base of the tree of
life.. Or just twigging the
branches? More synthetic organ
notes, slow, melodic compared to the
strumming. An unusually short
piece.
_Terminal Power Company_, "the
hunger the heat": Traditional funky
dance rhythm. Weird for Belladona.
What is this? Lyrics "Caught in a
trap/No way back/Their firing the
gate/ My ordered state/ the midnight
life/ the rising sun/the hunger the
hate/ out they come/ the hunger in
here/ that keeps me alive/ the hate
in here/ that lets me survive"
Four in a row by _SkinnyPuppy_, "Pupmeister":
(1) Just another industrial track.
(2) Now this one is cool. Sort of
like movie sneaking around music,
"the pink panther", but *not* cute.
Some neat voices just making noises,
just part of the melody.
Jon says: "probably "fritter (stella's home)" or "the
mourn" or "draining faces."
(3) "The Choke": At first it's just
another industrial track. "you cover
my head", "are you in my head, or
only in my body" then it cuts in:
"too late/the stench/inside/inside",
"lies/arise", "decide/which side"...
more like free association than
poetry. But "...smile/your social
style" that's not a bad rhyme there.
(4) Dirgy ambient. Minimal. Little
to distinguish it.
_Switchblade Symphony_, "Chain":
Nice female vocals, comprehensible
in places "You are wicked..."
_Diatribe_, "Therapy": "you're
young, you don't know" Deep drums.
Like sinister native music from a
bad tarzan movie. Pretty cool. But
then it's just the usual horse
screaming, could be NIN or
anything... But it's still good.
"You can never show your face out on
the streets again.", "....in every
worst case scenario.", "Lies. You
can never do it without any
violence/Sex. You can put aside the
damage because it's permanent."
And Beladdona finishes up with
_Nurse with wound_: The humming of
an electric motor. Sounds like
pneumatic valves closing. Then just
the hum, for longer than you expect.
Suddenly: *meep* *meep* *meep* over
and over again, then a high pitched
buzzing noise, and the trite,
over-used 60s movie computer sound
effect. Beep beep boop type stuff.
Or is it just a xylophone? And then
it all crashes. Except the *meeps*.
Other noises come in, and all the
oscillations actually become
_music_. Interesting, but an oddly
distant intellectual piece, no
visceral snarl to it at all...
(Added some corrections from Al
Crawford, Univ of Edinburgh, And
Mason Jones, of Charnel House. And
Jon Druckman, of the Ultraviolet
Catastrophe.)
--------
VISION -- my fourth rave 9/15/92
A late VISION...
Sorry if this
is hard to read. (It wasn't easy
to write either.)
I recommend using
something like emacs Or just
to look at it. think of it
as one easy-
to-delete
package...
I'd been staying away from the expensive raves, but "The
Gathering" folks came highly recommended by some sfravers,
so I thought VISION might be a good one to try.
The end of the message
at the VISION number: I thought: Exactly!
"Peace. Keep it alive." The rave spirit,
such as it is,
seems a fragile
thing.
This made my friend
want to vomit.
And I can understand his point of
view. That "Peace" bit turns me
off: it's a very retro, Whatever the sixties were
self-conscious, neo-hippie thing. about, it wasn't nostalgia.
KESEY
The gas station at the Livermore
exit was overrun with young
ravers that night. I talked with
one of the locals about things:
"What's that big party up
the road...". Oh, just a dance party. (Nothing to worry
about sir. Really.)
"Any live bands?" No, just DJs, playing (Just like a
records. high school dance)
"How far away are people coming Well, we're from Palo (Rich suburbs only.
from?" Alto. No sleazy urban
areas.)
"They're going to sell lots of Actually there won't be (A non sequitur.
beer here tonight." a lot of alcohol I was playing
there. Because then my tapes at him.
you have to hassle with Got to watch
liquor permits. that...)
Still, it was one happy
Indian dude behind the
cash register, looking
at everyone buying
stuff.
Talked with some guys in the parking
lot, locals getting off work, they'd
found the bus making a supermarket
stop, and picked up on the energy of
the bus riders. They'd heard that it
was going to be $15 at the door.
It was $20.
This was really annoying, but
We Were There Already, so...
And from the desk you could see
the bright green Argon laser
flashing through the dust and
smoke, behind a long row of
silhouetted pillars. Shadowy
figures were moving around in a
space literally the size of a
few football fields.
We bought tickets. Then I
noticed the no in-and-outs rule.
I tried to ask a security guard if
they'd mind if I brought in some
water bottles. He immediately
assumed I was asking if I could go
out some time later to get them.
And in general he acted like a I worked out a way to smuggle in
serious jerk. (He said, in a low, water inside my leather jacket.
threatening tone: "Are you trying This was completely unnecessary,
to give me a hard time...") If I but the security pinhead had made
hadn't bought my ticket already, I me paranoid.
would have left right then.
Later, inside one of the
porta-cans, by the light
of my flash light, I
found a little wad of You can take this as my
cash lying on the floor. life in microcosm:
Enough to pay for the
evening. To find this money, you needed to
be anal retentive enough to
carry a flashlight around with
you, but not too anal retentive
to pick something up off of a
rather slimy, grimy floor.
Like a friend said to me
once: "You seem like a
weird mixture of laid- And maybe I'm
back and compulsive." also a mix of
"cynical and
idealistic".
Overall my friend was much impressed:
"This looks like a scene from Blade
Runner, except we're *here* we're
walking around in it."
He was also much impressed by
the money involved. You could
practically hear the sound of a
cash register, and see the
dollar signs lighting up his
eyes:
At least two thousand people,
at $20 each, that's a gate
value of at least $40,000.
He came up with a high
estimate of the costs to the
promoter of around $12K. I tried to argue that
$28K in profit, in one night? he must be underestimating
the costs, probably by
a factor of two or so,
as people often do.
Later, he talked about this with Could there be considerations
various people. Turns out his boss we don't know about, like
knows someone who puts on raves. bribing the authorities?
The guy said he was really nervous
about the first one he put on, but I notice that I know, this
after that he knew he couldn't many ravers is America.
lose. Supposedly it only costs seem to have You can't
about $8K to put on a typical rave. a similar bribe The
The most he's ever made in a night: attitude: Man here,
$65,000. "Hey, the right?
Gathering,
Also, a friend of his knows a guy these are There are crack
in Sacramento who organizes good people, houses out there
raves. This guy is also raking right? They that don't get
in money, using the fact that he wouldn't rip hassled, but
can get DJs to work for him for us off, raves do. Why?
next to nothing, out of right?"
friendship, or for "the good of
the scene" or something. So our first impulse
is to make excuses for
So-- much as I hate being the the $20 cover charges.
voice of doom in rave
paradise-- watch out for
these people. There are
really good guys around, but
there are also people quite
capable of poor-mouthing
about all the money they're
losing so their workers won't
gripe about being paid zilch.
If you believe in free market
capitalism, you expect a certain Someone was saying that one
rough justice in prices. point of the charity rave
Competitive pressures are supposed was to help overcome negative
to force people to bring prices competitive relationships
down to the level of their costs... among promoters.
prices far above costs are supposed
to be unstable. Things like this don't
have such an innocent ring
to my ears.
So what's going on here?
Can we expect the cost of a
rave to drop soon?
Are the major promoters
price-fixing somehow?
But what would maintain
the monopoly? (I have similar questions
about CD prices, but that's
What keeps cheaper guys another story.)
from competing?
Out on the dance floor, Vitamin B
found me, and said something
about how he was afraid this
might have been like a big LA
rave, but it was a lot better,
the people were great, like if
you touch them it was all
right... you know?
I said sure, but I hadn't known it
until he said it. At that moment,
I realized I was still warming up,
I hadn't quite blended into the An uptightness example:
raviness of the scene yet. There
was a kind of uptight, nightclub On a typical night in
paranoia going on in my head that the Underground, I
disappeared instantly. was shirtless but
still dripping with
sweat. One of the
women working there
put her arm around me
and hugged me. So, I
start thinking things
like "does she want
to sleep with me, or
is she hustling for
tips or what?"
At a rave there wouldn't
be that sense about it.
She just hugged me,
that's all.
I said hello to some other
sfravers, and I wound up
over in front of the left Compulsive: I've always
speaker column. Time to put got a handful of disposable
my ear plugs in. ear plugs in my jacket.
Still more compulsive:
I've almost always got
my jacket with me, no matter
how hot or awkward it is.
Dancing in front of the speakers
was an experience in itself.
Moving your head completely
changed the sound.
Up is treble down is bass...
Dancing where your physical
attitude controls what you
With my head right hear...
down in front of
the woofers, it I can imagine a literal
was easy to hear a "sonic space", sound
buzzing distortion beamed in different
with each beat. places so that the
motion of dancing through
So yeah, it would provide the
the only modulation for the
sound music.
could've
been A subjective interactive
cleaner. experience. The true anti-
thesis of "performance".
I could feel each
beat on my out stretched Which could of course be
hands, like regular made objective (simply
gusts of wind. recorded?) and used as
a musical instrument.
Other people were crowded
around the speakers.
Acoustic energy junkies, A full-body theremin?
who like to feel the sound
against their skin.
One girl was leaning into
the speakers face first,
feeling the vibrations on
her body, while a guy-
friend caressed her from
behind.
Interesting people there all
right... But am I really one
of them? They were all
without ear plugs...
I was getting tired of the weight of
a can of jolt cola banging on my
hip. My friend didn't want any, so
I went over to the the next circle
of people in the "chill" region.
I started talking to the guys,
rather then the girls to diffuse any
anti-pick-up paranoia. "Do you
want some of this?" I said, and
opened it in front of them so they (Just bringing something
could see that it had been sealed. to give away is such an
The guys turned me down, but the easy thing to do, but
girls on my left took it from me. people are so impressed
And one of them says "Can I ask you by it... "Thanks a lot,
something? Is there any acid in that was really cool...")
this?"
Later on, a tall, pretty, dark-skinned
girl wearing a silver back-pack came
by and smiled at me again, and
offered me a drink of her Cranberry
juice. I said "Is this straight?"
as I took a sip. It took her a
moment to figure out what I was
asking, but then she was emphatic
"No, no, there's nothing funny in it!"
Maybe there's more drug paranoia
than drugs around.
Not far from the speaker column,
a woman started doing things
like clearing a space in the
crowd, and getting people to I've got no problem with
play catch with a couple of silly ice-breaking games,
water bottles with glow-toys and I'm a great joiner-inner,
inside them. so I start playing along.
Just as we were getting into
playing catch, then she
suddenly decides that that's So I could see that she could
enough, it's time for be annoying... I began to
something else. suspect she was really
getting off on control as
much as anything else.
Playing Queen of the Rave.
(But then, this is
the kind of issue
I'm sensitive to:
She makes another clearing in I'm often attracted
the crowd, and gets a friend to to people who are
play this little game where dominant, but I have
they hyperventilate, then both no interest in
stand facing each other, being submissive...)
squeezing each other's necks
until one goes unconscious and
collapses. S
t
She comes up to me and tells r
me to hyperventilate, as a
though I'm going to join her n
in this game. g
u
I joined in as a spotter, instead: l
I was one of the people who caught a
them as they fell. Mostly I was t
catching the Rave Queen herself, i
and she fell a *lot*. They did o
this dozens of times, and she was n
always the one to go under first. .
.
Her group of freinds tried .
variations of this. Can you .
get four people to do it .
in a circle, a hand from .
two different people on .
each side of your neck? .
.
They wound up with two crossed .
pairs of people: four people .
at once. So then we were .
short of spotters. .
.
I tried to recruit some people. .
There were a couple of guys .
dancing behind me. I said .
"These people are playing some .
strangulation games." They .
laughed, shook their heads and .
help up their hands in the .
"hold it" gesture and backed (I'm more anal retentive .
off a bit. I said "No, no, than some, but not as much .
just catch them!" They still as others...) .
backed off. I gave up. .
.
.
.
.
An old sexual
practice...
It features heavily in
"In The Realm of The
Senses", a bizarre
Japananese erotic
Vaughn Bode -- an early underground movie I've always
comic artist -- died doing this, liked.
using an "automatically" releasing (A sound track
bondage device that failed to from this would
release. be great for a
chill space.)
It's a controversial topic in
places like alt.sex.bondage:
some say it's far too
dangerous to ever consider,
others say that if someone is
really into it, they're going
to do it, so you should
explain ways of minimizing
risk.
(A different version
of the safe sex vs.
abstinence
debate...)
I'd heard about people doing this
only once in a non-sexual
context. A stupid-things-we-did-
at-summer-camp story.
I'd never seen anyone do it
before...
Seemed kind of twisted, but I
suppose it's a more direct
route to hypoxia than say,
sniffing glue, or inhaling
nitrous oxide.
It wasn't likely these people
were going to seriously hurt
themselves. They had some
decent safety features worked However, hyperventilating
out, like the fact that they first strikes me as bullshit.
were standing up, so that you Okay, so you oxygenate your
would fall away from the system first, but you won't go
hands that were pressing on unconscious until your brain
your cartoid arteries. is starved for oxygen, so
hyperventilating can't
possibly do much more than
Even so, I can imagine some delay the onset of
catastrophic failure modes, unconsciousness.
e.g. a clueless catcher does
too good a job of holding you If this game is supposed to be
up, while a slightly dazed competitive (see who passes out
(or unconsciously homicidal?) first), then hyperventilating
partner squeezes you a bit makes sense as a defensive
too long... measure...
What bothers me a bit more about A game where you'd have an
this is the possibility of doing advantage if you happened to
minor, almost unnoticeable know some "pressure breathing"
damage. Be kind to your brain techniques for mountaineering.
cells, I say.
But more than this, I just don't get
the point. I *like* being conscious.
Except of course... the very fact
that it's so extreme makes it work
as a ritual of trust and bonding.
Anyway, I think what I
should've done was direct
them toward a different game.
Some guys near by were dancing
with women on their shoulders.
I could've tried talking this I don't know why I didn't
one Buff Dude in the strangler's exactly... except that I was
circle into picking up his having trouble getting their
partner, and I could've tried attention, and it isn't easy to
to pick up the Queen. This is communicate twenty feet away
a game with much of the same from the speakers. Or maybe I
features -- trust, physical felt intimated by The Queen,
contact -- but I much prefer it and I knew it wasn't my place
to the strangulation ritual. to give her orders.
All in all this was an interesting rave...
I'm much greatful to the folks on the
list who recommended it. But I think I'll
stick to the under $20 range in the future.
--------
((Some outtakes from the above... probably they should be cut here too.))
My first three raves:
Golden Gate Park
A Full Moon Rave -- In August. The route 80/richmondesque site.
Connection.
The fourth rave: (VISION)
The Charity Rave -- Afternoon in GG Park at the Bandshell
Alternity
Stand-up -- a Saturday GG Park rave.
October Full Moon Rave
--------
RAVES 4/93
Sean Casey:
> And who's to say eroticism doesn't have it's part at raves? Why does
> everyone try to hide it or think that it's a bad thing?
Well the idea with me isn't so much to run away from
eroticism (I couldn't care less if you've got images of
naked women around), but to realize that raves are a very
broad based movement with lots of different kind of people,
and you've got to have some respect for their
tastes/inhibitions/whatever or your going to drive a lot of
them away.
It's like that flyer for "Sin" awhile back with the picture
of a couple fucking on it. My reaction was not "how
disgusting" but how astoundingly clueless. What kind of
frat-boy jock assholes were they trying to attract? Didn't
they realize how many women they were driving away with that
kind of advertising?
And we've all seen the way "eroticism" works in the singles
bar scene, and we'd do almost anything to stay away from
that particular nightmare... people get so focused on
getting laid that they can't even talk to each other like
human beings (and consequently can't get laid either).
Actually, I think it's one of the reasons you might get
women dancing topless at a rave is that they feel
*comfortable* there.
(There's other things I could say... like there's an
unresolved tension between "raves as a mass movement"
and "raves as an elite, underground,
sub-culture"... but I'll save it for another day.)
--------
IDEAL_SEX
I knew a woman a few years ago who I thought fairly sexually
experienced, who still believed in simultaneous orgasms. For
those of you who missed this one, people used to think that the
ideal sexual experience involved both partners reaching orgasm at
the same time. A lot of people felt anxious and worried when
they didn't have them, which is to say they felt anxious and worried
all of the time (except when someone faked it). For instance,
there's a line in Kerouac's THE SUBTERRANEANS: "I think we're
getting closer together."
The current ideal is more like "Taking Turns" (or "Ladies
First"?), and it's probably a lot healthier (it isn't tough to
do, provided you're not fanatic about fucking being the centerpiece
of making love), but I think it still has it's problems. For
instance, try convincing a woman that she shouldn't be insulted
because you haven't had an orgasm, and that you really don't care
about it.
And I guess there was the idea of multiple orgasms, but it
didn't last very long. I don't know of any women interested
in having them, or willing to give them. Maybe it was never
much more than a fantasy, a paper tiger set up to be attacked
in magazine articles. ((Turns out I was wrong about this: I've met one.))
There's the more traditional sex-is-evil ideas, but I don't know
enough history to sort out whether or not anyone really believed
in No Orgasms as an ideal.
Back in the mid-seventies, I remember hearing Margot Adler read
"The Asexual Manifesto" over the air on WBAI ("Listener Sponsored
Radio in New York."). The general idea had to do with the liberation
of people who are into solo sex. This, to my knowledge is not
an idea that has ever caught on, despite more recent appearences,
such as in a poster I've seen which was prematurely withdrawn from
an academic confrence. (Trivia for psychologists: Margot is Adler's
grand-daughter).
There's a recent short story by Bruce Sterling called "The Beautiful
and the Sublime" which is about a future with technology advanced
enough that no one cares about technology or science much anymore.
People have become something like 19th century aesthethes, who sit
around debating things like the precise distinction between the
"beautiful" and the "sublime". Anyway, their sexual ideal seems
to be to get close to the edge of orgasm and stay there for as
long as possible without crossing over.
And I guess I want to propose another one, which I might call
Assisted Masturbation, because I'm too stupid to think of a more
elegant name. This is something like a compromise between the
Asexual Manifesto and Taking Turns. The point being that most
people really do know what they like best (or more accurately,
they've trained themselves to like what they've trained themselves
to do through years of living in a really tight feedback loop).
Anyway, I think that one of the most intense, simplest things you
can do with another person is simply to help them masturbate.
(I don't mean "mutual masturbation", by the way. I mean something
like working on a woman's breasts while she uses her hands on
herself.)
It's always seemed like a shame to me that most women won't masturbate
in front of you until fairly late in a relationship. It's really the
easiest way to find out what they like...
Anyway, so how do you define "successful" sex?
-------
FEAR -- No show of fear is ever forgiven.
Advice from a woman on how to impress other women:
"You just need to act interesting and aloof."
SISTER
So, my sister has come and gone. She did her two weeks in California
and has returned to New York. I didn't drag her up Half Dome again
this time, instead I concentrated on finding men for her to meet
(which seems to be more what she's into on her vacations).
I came up with a short list of about three I thought were suitable:
Bachelor number one is a recent Stanford grad, working
as an engineer in the area. A quintessentially nice
guy, fun to talk to, a hard core dancer frequently to
be found on weekends in the clubs in San Francisco.
Bachelor number two has always impressed the women at
my place as being pretty cute, he's a grad student in a
humanties department and something of a musician.
And bachelor number three is a techie grad student who
plays with computers too much, gets good reviews
occasionally from some women, and is expected to move
to the east coast soon.
So we've got a dancer, a musician and a soon to be local boy, and
I had some really nasty scheduling problems to work out. As well
as a delicate problem in issuing invitations without weirding
anyone out.
I got B-1 to come over to dinner the night after she arrived:
something weird happened though, and he started getting kind of
nervous. Took him a while to relax. The three of us hung around
together in the city the next Saturday, and my sister was really
impressed with him then ("He's one of the realest people I've
ever met."). But she wasn't attracted to him.
I took her to a party up in North Beach, where she came up with
some dark horse candidates of her own. She told me about some
guys she was talking to in the kitchen, (Boston computer types, I
gather) who seemed nice, but once again, too nervous. She blew
them off pretty quickly, and was off in the living room dancing
with this guy from Stanford (he claimed to know me from some
Stanford parties: evidently we've both dated the same girl).
This was interesting, because he was coming on really strong, in
what I thought were some very stupid ways. Like trapping her
against the wall, leaning on his arms. Or trying to dance closer
and closer to her as she was continually backing away from him.
But, *this* guy she was willing to give a second chance: they
went out to dinner later in the week, and he may visit her in New
York after he gets through his orals.
The next weekend, we held a party at my place, and she got to
meet both B-2 and B-3 at once. She really got into hanging
around talking to B-2 late into the night (she was surprised to
hear the next day that he had been one of the people on my list).
I was glad to see them hit it off, even though it was too late in
her vacation for them to really spend any time together. After
seeing what happened with the first guy, I was afraid it was
going to be another case of nice but too shy and wimpy somehow.
Also, oddly enough, she was somewhat impressed with B-3's style
though he is not always known for being tough and assertive. She
said he had seemed like an interesting guy, and when she heard he
was moving to the east coast she said she probably should've
spent more time talking to him.
So I scored one or two out of three, I guess, and in general my
sister was impressed with the sheer numbers of men here in
California. She says she never seems to meet anyone in New York.
She seems to want to move out here, but I don't she'll be leaving
her job any time soon.
---------
As it happens, zfarthing has zeroed in on what I think the central
issue of the little story I told about by sister's vacation.
Had I written a moral to it, it would have been "Nice guys finish
last." Any trace of nervousness is grounds for immediate rejection.
If you're somewhat obnoxious and overbearing, on the other hand,
you may get a second chance.
I've seen a number of examples of macho idiots that women make
excuses for ("deep down, he's a nice guy.") I don't think I've
ever heard any one say something like "He seemed really nervous,
I must have really impressed him."
Notably, my sister also complains about always getting involved
with men who don't care about her that much. I think there's a
connection here.
"If tough means the character to endure (and even overcome) life's
defeats with grace, toughness has my vote. If it means some sort of
macho pose that a man feels he has to wear to impress people, that's
not impressive at all."
Bravo. I hope this is true. My sister might *say* something like
this herself. You should've heard her complain about the way
"the dark horse" acted... but she *did* give him another chance.
-- JB
jane says, I'm through with sergio, he treats me like a rag doll
--------
JEALOUS
When I was very young,
I associated too much
ridiculous behavior with
jealousy. I'd seen too "I am not a jealous person."
many "I Love Lucy"
episodes. I decided that
I would live without it.
I believed that one could use reason
to design new ways of living, that
My first test: my first humanity could consciously change it's
girlfriend broke up with culture, that there can be new things
me and started sleeping under the sun.
with my older brother. UNCONSTRAINED
I didn't even get what was happening
at first. she was giving me the "just
friends" line, but sneaking around and
avoiding me for some reason... I was I had known that she liked my
angry at her hypocritical, irrational brother. We often talked
behavior. about things like that.
I was embarrassed I hadn't
seen it. A stupid mental
block, excusable because
it's conventional but The convention: They had an
contemptible to me for the age difference of over ten
same reason. years. She was 17, he was
30.
When I did figure it out,
the anger evaporated. I
think I did a fair job of
dealing with the Though there were tense times..
situation.
I remember trying to cover
I think I felt sorry for my brother-- the sound of their voices
he was willing to let her seduce him, in the next room with
despite the risk about what might music, choosing a Leonard
happen between us -- was he so Cohen song: "the walls of
desperate? He felt guilty about it this motel are paper
later, and he was worried that we thin..."
were drifting apart because of this,
long after I'd forgotten about it.
If I was going to be mad at him for
anything it would be about him not
telling me what was happening.
Later on, by the way, when the
third Brenner brother got into town,
she tried to seduce him, too.
I respect her for this: she's
probably not the only person who would
have a strange notion like "wouldn't
it be neat to collect a set of three
brothers", but very few people would
actually try and do it. Most people
are so trapped by their conception of
he normal they can't live up to their
own weirdness.
I'm still on good terms with
her. Recently she apologized to me
about this whole thing ("I wasn't
very cool about that.").
My second test: my second
girl friend transfered out
of state. We had talked
about "open relationships"
so she immediately began
sleeping around. Later
I understood this was a
preemptive strike: she
didn't want to be rejected
first.
Didn't bother me that much that she was
actually doing it, though I had to
insist that I wanted her to tell me the
details. I felt like if she was willing
to talk to me about it, then our It did put me into a strange
relationship was still the primary one. head. I was continually
She had trouble understanding this. listening down inside of
myself, looking for traces
of anxiety. Or staring at
the world intently, laughing
at some strange pieces of
internal humor.
Another test: A girl I'd been trying
to seduce said she was really
interested in a friend of mine. I did
what I could to help set her up with The conventional eye takes this as
him. It didn't get to me, so I count proof I didn't really care about
it as a win. her. It was a non-standard
relationship, ergo it must have
been "shallow".
Conventional wisdom
always comes wrapped
in a neat ribbon of
circular reasoning.
The Nth test: The other
guy gets the girl.
If I can see why, it isn't "The better man won."
all that distressing.
The worst times though
are when I think the
guy is a jerk
That kicks in a complex
of furious thoughts:
Did I really make
that bad an
impression on her?
If she likes someone
that worthless,
does this mean What does she
she's worthless? think of me?
I'm not missing
If she's so something, am I?
screwed up that Does this guy KNOTS
she likes guys have some good
like that, then points?
maybe there's
something wrong Am I deluding
with me for myself by ragging If all women like
liking her this on him like this? worthless men,
much. maybe I should
Maybe I haven't try and be
really succeeded worthless.
in removing all
traces of
jealousy.
KNOTS
Another piece of jargon I picked up from my brother?
"Knots" as a term for a self-reinforcing pattern. PROVIDENCE
There's a book by R.D. Laing
called KNOTS. Here's one of them:
Jack is afraid of Jill Jill is afraid of Jack
Jack is more afraid of Jill Jill is more afraid of Jack
if Jack thinks if Jill thinks
that Jill thinks that Jack thinks
that Jack is afraid of Jill that Jill is afraid of Jack
Since Jack is afraid
that Jill will think that
Jack is afraid
Jack pretends that
Jack is not afraid of Jill
so that Jill will be more afraid of Jack
and since Jill is afraid
that Jack will think that
Jill is afraid
Jill pretends that
Jill is not afraid of Jack
Thus
Jack tries to make Jill afraid
by not being afraid of Jill
and Jill tries to make Jack afraid
by not being afraid of Jack
The more Jack is afraid of Jill
the more frightened is Jack that
Jill will think
that Jack is afraid
the more Jill is afraid of Jack
the more frightened is Jill that
Jack will think
that Jill is afraid
the more afraid Jack is of Jill
the more frightened Jack is
_not_ to be frightened of Jill
because it is very dangerous not to be afraid when
faced with one so dangerous
Jack is frightened because Jill is dangerous
Jill appears dangerous because Jack is frightened
the more afraid Jill is of Jack
the more frightened Jill is
_not_ to be frightened of Jack
----------
This is a knot I like better, though:
It is boring that you are frightened
you are boring me by being interested in me.
In trying to be interesting,
you are _very_ boring.
You are frightened of being boring, you
try to be interesting by not being interested,
but are interested only in not being boring.
You are not interested in me.
You are only interested that I be interested in you.
You pretend to be bored
because I am not interested
that you are frightened
that I am not frightened
that you are not interested in me.
((I should write a few knots of my own....))
((Of course, it could be that that's what this whole
thing is...))
----------
DELANY
This could be about:
Delany, the academic.
Delany, the musician.
Delany, the madman. Some of these terms ("madman",
Delany, the mulatto. "hippie", "queer"...) probably
Delany, the queer. seem too negative: they call up
Delany, the hippie. stereotypes with associations
that don't match reality.
This is mostly about Delany,
the science fiction writer.
The same can be said of the term
"science fiction writer".
Delany hit the scene in the late
sixties, cranking SF novels in
his teens and picking up Nebula
awards in his early twenties. Just about everything he's done
Back then he and Zelazny were is great by me, except for the
often compared, though as the Neveryon books, which I must
seventies went by they diverged: concede I just may not
Zelazny went low brow and Delany understand ("A Child's Garden
went high brow. of Semiotics"?).
His last novel was _Star's In My
Pockets Like Grains of Sand_, a
beautiful job of detailing I don't have a lot to say about it
hypothetical future cultures. now, except to recommend it.
Everything is complex, ambiguity
abounds, and nothing is ever explained
away in a pat little lecture. The One of the thing's it's
exact opposite of the simple-minded about is interspecies homosexual
crap that usually passes as SF. orgies. There's supposedly a
sequel written that Delany has
decided not to publish immediately,
on the theory that it would be
irresponsible to do so before the
Aids issue is resolved...
EXCUSES
_BABEL-17_:
An SF novel working with the This is an amazingly cohesive kitchen
idea that language is the medium sink of a novel... it's jammed with
of thought. an impressive amount of sheer Stuff,
but still there are resonances that
Poet/linguist/starship captain echo between all the different
Rydra Wong is called upon by the events, the different premises.
military to decipher a "code" -- Maybe *the* central theme is
really a new language -- called communication between different
"Babel-17". Babel-17 is a tight, cultures. Or the importance of
logical, language designed for empathy, seeing things from the other
efficiency of thought, but it person's side.
turns out to be intentionally
crippled in one particular way.
All in all, it sounds like the
perfect novel for Harper to read, no?
I thought so, too.
Some pieces of the Stuff:
Two prospective pilots wrestle
in a ring in a crowded bar, to Rydra follows the action
show off their reflexes to by watching the body
potential captains that may want language of someone who
to hire them. understands the fighting
better than she does.
The crowd is very blue collar,
the interstellar transport
underclass necessary for the
existence of the over class....
Elaborate cosmetic surgery It took about twenty years
transforms them into a colorful before the cyberpunks caught up
array of monstrosities. with Delany on this.
One of the necessary components of
a starship crew is three people,
the "triple": the eyes, ears, and
nose of the ship. For the triple
to work, there must be a tight
emotional/sexual connection
between the three. Rydra finds a
broken triple: two men mourning
the loss of a woman. To replace Rydra plays a clever trick in
her, Rydra makes a trip to the selecting a woman who knows no
"morgue" where she selects a woman language understood by the two
in cryogenic storage. The woman men, on the theory that by the
she chooses is another remnant of time they've learned to
a broken triple who had herself understand each other they'll
frozen in grief when the two have learned to love each
others with her died. other.
At the beginning of the novel,
Rydra is frustrated about
an inability to get across to
someone that she likes him.
A communication problem that
acts as a barrier to love.
So, this is a really great book.
There are other Delany books that are
great in the same way:
_The Einstein Intersection_; _Nova_;
The stories in _Driftglass_.
One that's great in a different way:
_Dhalgren_:
A long piece of prose, detailing
the wanderings of a partially
amnesiac character through a
surrealistic, post-disaster city
that almost looks like it's
going to make sense in a few
places.
One of my brothers had to explain
to me what this book really is: a
device for frustrating the This book *could* have been awful
expectations of a typical SF and unreadable, except that Delany
reader. Things repeatedly look took exceptional care to produce
like they're about to be perfect crystalline prose and
"explained" but it never happens. throughly detailed characters.
So this is a piece of meta-fiction.
(A nitwit SF critic named Darryl
Schweitzer used to like to complain
It was intensely popular with about how this book is a
college students, I presume because "non-functional word pattern".
they like to read about people Ridiculous. The words work fine.
aimlessly wandering around. A It has a non-functional *plot*
sequel to Kerouac. perhaps, in that it doesn't
function as a story. But there are
other prose forms besides stories.)
One of the things that goes on:
three characters fall
into a menage et trios. Once
again, two men and a woman.
The way this happens is strangely (I had a girl friend who found this
symmetric: each pair of people meet upsetting: It seemed to her as
and sleep together before the three though *all* of the character's had
of them join together. betrayed each other. Her ideal
would be to have three people
The way this triple ends: a spontaneously drawn to each other
disaster of sorts strikes the city at the same time...)
and in the emergency the main
characters are separated.
Some permutations are discussed...
a gang bang, men on women is shown,
the converse situation, women on men
happens off stage.
More interestingly, there's an
example of a triple that doesn't
work out: The two male main
characters first have sex with a
different woman, but
she regrets it in the morning
for reasons she won't explain.
"It just wasn't my thing."
Recently Delany published an
autobiography, covering the early
60s: _The Motion of Light in
Water_.
He got married to a girl from
his high school: Marilyn Some of the best things in the
Hacker. He was gay. They book are the excerpts of Marilyn
both knew it. He talks about Hacker's poetry.
a menage et trios that
developed with the two of I looked at a recent book of
them and a male lover of his. hers: a bit disappointing,
closer to autobiographical
sketches than poems.
Pieces of all these
experiences can be She's become obsessed with
seen throughout a lesbian sex... there is no
lot of Delany's hint of this in _The Motion
work. Most of Light in Water_, but
directly with somehow it doesn't come as
_Dhalgren_: that big a surpise.
"I've always wondered if
three people can kiss at
the same time."
The way this particular group
breaks up: One day the man
decides he must leave -- maybe
temporarily? -- to visit his
ex-wife.
He runs into a problem with the
law (his ex has been writing bad In this case, it's not just
checks, the cops think he was external factors - death, disaster,
doing it... because he had a the law -- that split up the
history of doing it). triple. There's an internal
He ends up in jail. component. What made him decide to
leave?
Delany laments the lack of permanence
in non-standard relationships.
He doesn't speculate about why they aren't.
_The Heavenly Breakfast_ is
another autobiography, this one
structured like a novel,
covering the "winter of love":
the winter of 1968.
At that time Delany was living in
a commune: a large group of
people living in an apartment
with just a kitchen, a living
room and a bathroom, all without
doors. They were all in a band
called "The Heavenly Breakfast",
though the bills were paid mostly
by drug dealing.
One scene: Delany sits at the
kitchen table, writing in a note
book. Two women get up to go into
the main room to have sex with each
other. A guy who had been hanging
around the commune off and on looks
at Delany and says something like
"Should I follow them?" Delany
shrugs and says that that's up to
him to decide. The guy goes into
the other room, but a little while
later comes back. He says
something about how they kept doing
things to each other even after he
joined them. Evidently his fantasy
was to have the two of them focused
on him? He leaves, and after that
isn't seen around very much.
The commune itself eventually
breaks up: Delany says this is
because their common purpose I'm not sure I believe this exactly...
disappeared with the it seems like an attempt to blame it
disappearance of the small music on outside pressures. Why not
studios in New York that their continue to live together if it worked
ambitions centered around. for them?
_Tides of Lust_ is Delany's one (Delany defends pornography,
(intentionally) pornographic novel. as an uncoventional,
repressed art form,
There's a scene where a young that lacks approval
woman enthusiastically from the intelligentsia.
enters an orgy room: no lights, He presents a list of
no windows, full of people of "good" pornographers in
various inclinations and no The _Jewell-Hinged Jaw_:
inhibitions. She quickly I niavely tried to look
freaks for some reason and them up in the Stanford
leaves immediately. Somehow Library. You can find
there's a big difference between critical books *about*
her fantasies about what the them, but not the books
experience would be like and themselves.
the experience itself.
And with Delany himself? Has he ever noticed the
differences between his fictional relationships,
and the reality? I presume so, but I've never seen
him discuss it...
STRANGER
In _Stranger in a Strange Land_
Heinlein writes about a new
religion loosely based on many
other religions, but centered One of the more notable
around some sexual ceremonies. tenents:
Orgies for the inner circle. "Thou art God."
A fairly neat little philosophy:
The book was very popular Intelligence, consciousness, anything
in sixties. Among the that can understand the statement
various social experiments "Thou art God." is definied as godlike.
of the time, a version of
this relgion was actually
tried out by some people.
It doesn't seem to have
caught on, though I suppose Heinlein publically refused to be
some people may practice it associated with this religion,
to this day. evidentally consciously choosing
not to follow in the footsteps of
his friend L. Ron Hubbard.
In the novel, the religion has problems,
but _only_ external problems. The
masses are outraged, the powers that be
are threatened, so there is an all out
attack on the faithful. The main (Perhaps Heinlein's reason
character is stoned to death. for not playing the new
("Look at me... I am a son of man.") religion game?)
Among the insiders, there are no
attacks of jealousy. No power (Christ without
plays. No disgruntled betrayals. a Judas?)
In the real world, the various experiments with
alternate lifestyles of the sixties saw very
little of the kind of hostile opposition that
Heinlein predicted. Instead, they all seemed
to fizzle out due to internal pressures...
because of the imperfections built into the
experimenters?
Like it or not, you carry your culture with you,
wired into your consciousness...
Thou art Mrs. Grundy. HRESP
GROUPS
Another time, another girlfriend...
Once upon a time, a girl friend my girl friend wanted to seduce
wanted both of us to seduce another couple that we hung out
another woman who was a friend with, a friend of mine and
of ours. The three of us were his girl friend. I said I
hanging around in her bedroom, thought he would go for it,
one afternoon. I made some but I thought she'd be
"joke" about it. Our friend offended by the idea.
laughed at it, but made a Later, *he* brought it up...
disparaging remark, and I we'd been arguing about who
decided to change the subject. should take a shower first
My girl friend interrupted: and he said, "Okay, we'll
"Coward!" *all* take a shower!"
I said, "I took that as a 'No.'" His girl friend said: "Fine,
There was a brief awkward *you* can all take a shower."
silence, and that was that. My girl friend turned to me and
said "You're right."
(Very often people try and make inside
comments that the other people won't
get. Very often this fails completely
and everyone knows what's being said.)
Walking down a street in suburbia at night,
a woman leaving a bar yelled out to me
"Hey, want to go to an orgy?" (her speech
was slightly slurred). I looked at her
(pretty. slim. short brown hair) and said
"No thanks" (there were some men with her,
who looked at me with blank -- guilty? --
expressions. She was setting up a gang
bang). After I'd turned the corner I could
hear her yell "What's the matter, dont you I couldn't tell you
know ya got to party hearty?!" exactly why I said no.
At a halloween costume party, (I was
dressed in black vinyl, green tights,
lots of green makeup) a woman I'd been
talking to suddenly said "So, do you
want to have sex?" I said "Sure.
Sometime." She looked disappointed.
*Then* I figured out what she had said.
(I realize that a line like "So do you
want to have sex?" probably doesn't seem
like it should take a genius to
interpret. I don't think you can just
blame this on my usual stupidity: it's
really hard to follow someone when they
go outside the bounds of accepted social
behavior. It just doesn't register.) (This is one of the reasons
most people have quit reading
SOCIAL_REGISTER this by now.)
Very later that night, we hung out with
a small group of people in a bedroom up
stairs. She was laying on a futon, I
was lying with my head in her lap. Her
boyfriend was sitting on the futon,
leaning against the wall. We were all
having very abstract, intellectual
conversations about group relationships
(one of my friends couldn't accept the
idea at all, making the usual
non-arguments about the shallowness of
meaningless casual sex). LOOSE
Her boyfriend seemed like a fairly
reasonable guy. He was a little tense
about the scene, but he was doing a good
job of suppressing whatever nervousness
or jealousy he might feel.
She seemed kind of shallow and phoney
herself... like a typical amateur
actress. She liked being the shocking But nobody's perfect
femme fetale (her costume included a Don't know why
long feather boa she could dance with). I didn' go for it.
Well, there's other things I could go into...
one time when I was with some people passing
some girls around in a hot tub in a hotel in MORMAN
Salt Lake City... another night that began
with a group of friends in the Holiday Cocktail
Lounge in New York and ended up with some HOLIDAY
musical beds in an apartment uptown...
And there is the question of definition. I
mean how far do you stretch your definition of
group sex? Slam dancing. Twister games.
Back-rub chains. Watching pornography with
friends. (A lot of people would insist that
these are not sexual experiences. I wouldn't.)
But it's all pretty much the same story.
Some close calls, but no cigars.
A moral for a story without any:
"Seems, though, that when the
chips are down you don't get
the cigar because, at the last,
you don't reach for it."
--- garygm
((
Why the fascination?
If I'm so fascinated, why haven't I done it?
And so on.
))
MORMAN
(( Aside: attitudes of Mormon women...
Further, current adventures of Mormon
polygamists.)) ((One of them was interviewed in the Daily recently.
Also a cover story for _Reason_ in the later 80s))
((Include the SLC hottub story))
This is the favorite Morman joke of a
Morman I knew who collected them:
Q: Why should you always take _two_ Mormons
with you when you go fishing?
A: So that one of them won't drink all your
beer.
HOLIDAY
Holiday cocktail lounge story.
lead into:
DATE_RAPE
((
Side trip into "date rape": hard to take the concept as seriously
as many feminists would like.
))
Date: Wed 18 Apr 90 19:48:57-PDT
From: Joe Brenner
Subject: rapo
The three part series on rape at Stanford, as I see it had
two main themes: first, that the university doesn't do a good
job of handling such cases, the second that men need to be
educated about what rape is (so they won't do it by accident).
There's a third possible message that was ignored, probably
because it could be mistaken for blaming the victum:
women need to take more responsibilty for their own
defense.
It *is* difficult to convict someone of rape, in fact it's
difficult to convict someone of any crime. The system was
set up that way intentionally, and with good reason.
(On the side of the conservatives who want to chip away at
the rights of the accused?)
There's probably room for improvement in the way our legal
system and the stanford administration deals with rape cases,
but it probably isn't going to get all that much bettter. ((>>)
(Anyone who expects "sensitivity" and "empathy" out of a bureaucracy
is crazy. Personally I would be happy if we could be assured
of competence and fairness.)
For example, if you want to maintain some control over your
life, maybe you shouldn't go out and get totally wasted.
Or if you say no, and the guy your with ignores it, maybe you
should walk away from him. Imagine how this sounds in a court room:
"Why didn't you run away?" "I just froze."
You might consider some self-defense classes, and so on.
-------
LOOSE
The way the argument goes against
alternatives to serial monogamy:
"Open relationships seem so shallow."
Why doesn't anyone ever go around
measuring the depth of monogamous
relationships?
"And they're so unstable."
Most monogamous relationships are
unstable too. Usually people just try
again.
"It seems so meaningless."
If it were meaningless, then why *not*
do it sometimes? Like watching TV.
Just because it's not ideal isn't
a reason to avoid it. How is it harmful?
"Casual sex is degrading."
Not everyone feels that way.
If you do, then don't do it.
(Out of curiosity: do you find
casual dinner parties degrading?)
"Sex should be an expression of
love."
Ok. How about a tight, intimiate
relationship between three people?
"What about AIDS?"
That's a good reason for playing EXCUSES
with latex, a lousy reason for not
having sex.
--------
RELIGION -- That's me in the corner, designing a religion.
Observation: Most religions I'm familar with
seem to capitalize on repressed sexual
energy.
Is it possible to design a religion that
captializes on releasing sexual energy? Like some Indian
By making it safe and acceptable... relgions? Tantric
Birth control a sacrament, disease prevention whatever? Yet
a ritual. another thing to read
up on some day.
I theorize that Heinlein's unstructured
orgies would not work for most people. STRANGER
So what sort of structure is needed?
And is there any way this structure could
not be repressive?
I find Sargent (_Venus Of Shadows_)
more realistic than Heinlein: women
begin shrouded, their identities So shyness is overcome
concealed. The ritual begins with by the device of anonymity,
three men approaching three women in until everyone is sexually
darkness. They form three couples, excited enough to no longer
as the men begin to touch the women care.
over the shrouds... then under
them. Later the shrouds are Notably, this routine
removed and the lights are turned doesn't sound like
up, and the couples contiune to a lot of fun: all
have sex with the rest of the personalities are
congregation as an audience. concealed by the
rigidities of the
ritual.
There's no
individuality.
Homosexuals are strictly not It *could* be
allowed: there's no room for that I think it's
diversity in this sort of more realistic
structure. just because it's
more depressing,
more greyed out...
PROVIDENCE
--------
REALCHECK 6/15/93
So, I started the doomfile with this kind of stuff:
But I know what to do about DESPERATE
it. Make some more money,
buy a new car, get some
more clothes, get a more
expensive hair cut, move to
a bigger place... All to
impress women I think are
fools for being impressed.
A few years and two or three girlfriends
later, I seem to be in a steady relationship
with someone, and despite my usual pessimism
there doesn't seem to be any problems with it.
How did I succeed? A friend of mine points
out I did almost the exact opposite of
strategy above: I quit working for over a
year to the point where I'm flat broke, I'm
still driving the same wreck of a car which
is deteriorating nicely, thank you, and I
gave up on haircuts and let my hair grow out.
I've almost achieved Pony Tail.
--------
IRRAT -- irrationality flame (4/23/92)
It's always kind of awkward to discover that some friend of
yours, despite seeming like a very nice, intelligent,
reasonable person has some completely nutty, irrational
beliefs.
I mean, look around the usenet,
here you've got a bunch of people
who are at least bright enough to
use a computer, most of them are
hanging out at universities or
working jobs that require a
degree... what do you
find? People who believe in:
Astrology.
"magick".
the holocaust is a myth
AIDS is a government conspiracy
AIDS is the wrath of god.
Bill Clinton can get elected.
vi is better than emacs.
And...
There are all the religious people.
Who would be raving lunatics,
except that most of them are
carefully living their lives so
that their religion doesn't make
much difference.
The world seems to be full of
people who were awfully lucky to be
born into the right religion. I could go on, but it all
seems so stale to me.
The God hypothesis just doesn't
tell you anything new.
You ask any serious questions
about god, you'll get told
something like "The ways of the
lord are mysterious".
Go ahead, make some testable More recently (10/94)
predictions using the religious I was reading the
model. Skeptical Inquirer
and I discover that
I don't even care which there apparently are
religious model, pick one. people who've
attempted to do
"scientific"
experiments studying
the efficacy of
prayer as a factor in
healing.
The world continues
to amaze me.
(Bill Clinton got
elected too! For one
term, anyway.)
-------
ONERELIGION
H.G. Wells places his hopes for
a world government on yet another
hope: a new universal rational
religion.
From the _Outline of History_, 3rd ed:
p.1089
"But out of the trouble and tragedy
of this present time there may
emerge a moral and intellectual
revival, a religious revival, of a
simplicity and scope to draw
together men of alien races and now
discrete traditions into one common
and sustained way of living for the
world's service."
"Religious emotion -- stripped of
corruptions and freed from its last
priestly entanglements -- may
presently blow through life again
like a great wind, bursting the
doors and flinging open the
shutters of the individual life,
and making many things possible and
easy that in these present days of
exhaustion seem almost too
difficult to desire."
This notion of a world religion
seems very peculiar to my eyes,
since I would've believed Wells a
rationalist along the lines of
Arthur C. Clarke, whose _Songs of
Distant Earth_ suggests in passing
that religion is merely the remains
of primitive science. A new
humanity raised with no knowledge
of religion would not spontaneously
invent any substitute for it, or so
he asserts.
Is Wells a believer in the Big Lie?
Or is his notion of "religion"
something closer to what I would
call "philosophy"?
((A subject heading DEATH OF GOD?
Alt: Waiting for the -- God ain't
dead, he just smells real bad.)
(Alt title: The Swampland. Ref. Elliot o' course.))
--------
SOCIAL_REGISTER
This was a friend of a
There once was a young lady from friend of mine, if
Stanford... who decided to hit that helps.
on a guy by going to his room
one night and using a routine Don't know the guy.
like "It's hot in here, do you
mind if I take my sweater off?"
She had nothing on under the
sweater. He did nothing to
acknowledge that she was sitting
there, topless. She put her
sweater back on and left.
Not the way men are supposed to react, right?
At least not in stories. But in reality, this is
so far away from the way women are supposed to act
(outside of stories) that I would guess the guy had no
idea about what to do, and probably not even an idea
about why he has none.
(On the other hand, this
*was* a Stanford man.
maybe I'm giving him too
much credit.)
A scene from Delany's STARS IN MY POCKET
LIKE GRAINS OF SAND: An elaborate social DELANY
eating ritual involves formal dinners where
everyone offers food to each other on the
end of long ornamental forks. Normally, each
accepts the food by taking a small bite of it.
A group of outsiders decide to snub everyone
by refusing to participate. This isn't something
that anyone inside that culture would do... it
isn't so much taboo as literally unthinkable.
The main character stupidly offers his fork
to them over and over, with no way to break the
programmed loop.
HARD
What is Science Fiction? What is Fantasy?
What is it that makes something Hard Science
Fiction? Is Hard SF better? And why would you care?
Many people find these to be
exceedingly dull questions, even
(especially?) fans of SF. The reader is warned.
I just re-read Vernor Vinge's "The Peace War",
the first novel in a volume issued by Baen
books as _Across Realtime_. Vinge doesn't
have the flash of a Gibson, but he does manage
to provide enough novelistic weight to carry
his premises (characters, plot, imagery are
all at least ok).
But what about those premises, huh? You got
this lone genius working at Livermore who
comes up with this boffo idea for generating
these weird little semi-permanent,
impenetrable force fields they call "bobbles".
Some idealistic/power hungry forces in the
bureaucracy at Livermore decide to try and
save the world (bobbling nuclear weapons, and
so on) and end up (a) taking over the world
(b) crushing all heavy industry for fear it
could be used to make weapons. The "Tinkers"
(read "Hackers") in the outback continue
making technical advances in secret, until
they outstrip the capabilities of the
stultified bureacracy of "The Peace
Authority". Ultimately, the same lone genius
(now in hiding) with the help of an apprentice
genius make some advances in bobble
technology. They learn to project bobbles
using radically less energy, though their
techniques are slower, and the size of the
bobbles limited, and so on.
So what do you make of all this stuff? I mean, first of
all, bobbles are bullshit. There's no physics behind this.
No speculative physics even, just a magical effect
the author has come up with, and back-filled with a small
amount of technical gobbldygook. So this is science
fiction, as opposed to fantasy?
Well maybe. Fantasy tends to focus on things like "What if
you had three wishes." Even bad Science Fiction tends to
focus on questions like "What if *everyone* had three
wishes? What if you could buy three wishes?" So, SF gets DISCH
closer to reality than F, even if there isn't much S in it.
And I give Vinge some points for picking a fairly creative
piece of fantastic technology to write about, rather than
sticking to the usual cliched things like faster-than-light
travel.
Okay then, how about this business of a conspiracy within a
government lab to take over the world? A bit much? Well,
maybe not... If you start taking the nanotech scenarios NANOTECH
seriously, this sort of thing starts looking really
tempting. If you hit on a really big technical advance,
what should you do with it? Would you tell your bosses how
to make the first atom bomb, and hope they do the right
thing with it? Maybe the way to preserving world stability
is to get to the next break through first, and use it before
the "bad guys" do, whoever you think the bad guys might be.
(This probably isn't a *good* way to go, but it might be the
*only* way...). So the villains are believable to me.
And the heroes? Is it really possible to beat the big,
slow, government labs, with clever, cheap experiments
performed by small groups of individuals on their own?
I dunno. Maybe it's worth thinking about though... before ALONE
you decide to try and get rich quick by writing yet another
piece of video game software.
So Vernor Vinge gets a "thumbs-up" without reluctance from
me, even if his stuff isn't perfect... (like, check out the
stories in Poul Anderson's MAURI & KITH. Isn't Vinge
covering a lot of the same ground?).
-------
NANOTECH
Nanotechnology means technology that
works on the scale of nanometers, in
analogy to microtechnology that works
on the scale of micrometers.
In other words, the manipulation of
matter with atomic scale precision.
The capability to build devices
atom by atom.
We don't have it yet, really. Some
things are getting close, though.
For example, atoms of silicon can be
moved one at a time with an STM (Scanning
Tunneling Microscope) tip. The folks
at Almaden have spelled out "IBM" in
Xenon atoms (on a _cold_ surface).
Drexler argues that the advance of
several fields (Physics, Chemistry,
Biology...) make it innevitable that
we'll have true nanotechnology
before long.
He predicts that nanotech will be
used to build "Assemblers"
self-replicating, programmable
machines the size of viruses,
capable of manipulating matter
into any form not prohibited by
laws of physics or chemistry...
He expects that hordes of these My expectation is that
assemblers will be capable of the software will prove
doing various amazing things, to be the hard part. ARTY
for example, in the medical
realm they could act as cell Pattern recognition
repair machines that cure on human DNA? How tough
cancer, prevent aging, fix is that?
damage from freezing, etc.
And if self-replication
turns out to be a difficult
trick, then Drexler's hordes
turn into a handful, and
the whole technology is
much less powerful.
Eric Drexler's ENGINES OF CREATION
is still the best introductary
reference, even if it was
published in 1987. The I've always hated works
more recent _Unbounding The Future_ about speculative
is popularized in a very annoying technology that include
way. detailed fictional
scenarios, like the
"Desert Industries"
routine in _Unbounding_.
It has the air of bogus
prophecy about it.
Science Fiction be
Science Fiction, and
Science Fact be Science
Fact, and you should
write one or the other.
Or so it seems to me.
--------
ARTY
I have doubts about the I am not a "vitalist", however.
feasibility of artificial All living things are indeed
intelligence. physical objects, and the soul
is just a particularly complex
pattern.
I do not beleive that
human capability
always expands to the
limits of the
physically possible.
Humanity _may_ have fundamental
limitations that prevent it
from transforming itself into
something that can make anything
that can be made.
Perhaps we're too stupid to make
something as smart as we are.
If so, biological mechanisms
are not existance proofs of
technological possibilites.
There are some possible endruns
around this block, if it exists:
Perhaps instead of
writing an intelligent
algorithm, it could be (This doesn't impress me.
simpler to write a program I'd say that intelligence
that learns to be smarter. _is_ the capability to learn.)
Perhaps an intelligent
algorithm could be
generated by trial and (Sounds like it'd take
error in some a while, no?)
simulated analog of
natural evolution.
Perhaps natural intelligence
can be boosted by artificial
means, without first
understanding how _Really_ "Smart" drugs?
intelligence works.
Translation of humanity
into faster running
hardware?
MORAVEC
Side issue:
What about the _ethics_ of all
this? If you can get anywhere
close to artificial intelligence,
then by definition you're going
to be experimenting on the artifical
equivalent of human beings. What do
you do with you failed experiments?
Don't they have rights?
--------
MORAVEC
Hans Moravec's MIND CHILDREN is
usually the first reference you
hear about when people talk about
uploading" human intelligence
into machine form.
Actually, he doesn't say all that
much about it, and it isn't clear
to me he's actually thought about
it that much.
I think the neatest stuff he
presents are some graphs that try and
track the rate of increase in the He does not however
power of computer hardware. He predicts present an estimate
hardware with human scale capability for the development
within a few decades. of human equivalent
software. He just
assumes that programs
that learn will be
fairly simple to do.
--------
CORRECT 4/92
The current Politically
Correct line on the Political
Correctness issue seems to be
that there is no such
phenomena.
But the term was originally
used among the left as a kind
of joke, out of a sense of
exasperation about keeping up (Are all the girls "women" or
with all the shifts in "womyn" this week? Are the
expectations. black guys still black, or
are they "African-Americans"?
"Oh, is that the next thing Or maybe just "people of
we're going to have to be color"? Are lesbians "gay
Politically Correct about?" people" Or maybe "queer"?)
ORIGNALPC
The Politically Correct seem A friend of mine once
to substitute a desire for asked some members of the
social acceptance over rational "People's Platform" TOON
thought. whether Jews were one of
the "historically
They're people who believe what oppressed peoples" they
they think they're supposed to. were always talking about.
The first people he talked
People whose standards of right to said "No." He found
and wrong are determined more someone higher up in the
by sociology than by philosophy. chain though, who said
"Yes." Later, he asked
Characterized by intolerance of someone again, and at
opinions that deviate from the first the answer was "No",
accepted standard. but when he pointed out
that one of their fearless
And an inability to understand leaders had said "Yes",
why anyone would question the then the answer became
Word, as handed down by those "Yes".
faithful to the Cause.
Maybe that's a lead:
Being blind to any approach
but your own. The difficulty
But there are older of understanding something
terms than PC to outside of your old, comfortable
describe this kind paradigm.
of problem...
Orthodoxy. Everyone keeps insisting
Parochialism. "That's *not* what I said!"
It is not only left-
liberal-radical- There are well known
progressives who are problems with the
guilty of this. religious right. Scopes
monkey trial. Rights of
abortion choice.
(Hm. Maybe .... Intolerance of
"leliraprogs"? homosexuality.
Or "lebraprogs"? Opposition to sex-ed, to
What do you making contraceptives
think?) available to teenagers.
Suppression of erotica.
The thing that's really Prohibition of drugs.
galling about this
is the sense that It's actually kind of amazing
children of the to me that the self-proclaimed
enlightenment really "faithful" of various religious
ought to know better. sects aren't constantly engaged
in jihads of some sort.
After all, what can you
expect from But then, there are
conservatives preaching probably some
the value of tradition? strong selection
But those who believe pressures in favor
in the power of reason of the current
ought to understand situation: the
about the importance of believers set up
freedom. their lives so that
beliefs don't matter,
Instead, you get things developing various
like "feminists" who hypocritical dodges IRRAT
want laws against as necessary.
pornography. And people
in the universities who
don't understand why
racist remarks are
protected by the first As currently
amendment. interpreted by the
Supreme Court...
unfortunately they're
not equally vigilant at
slapping down the
pornography police.
("The public evil of nudity"?)
Lots of interesting Another interesting
questions here: Like, how question: why do people
is it determined what feel compelled to divide
will be politically into two camps?
correct? How does the
word go out, and who You ask a series
chooses it? of questions "How do you
feel about abortion?";
I don't believe there's a "Defense Spending?";
Conspiracy Central Office "Prayer in the schools?";
that you have to check and so on, and look at
with periodically in their answers and you
order to be periodically find that people mostly
re-registered as a split up into a couple of
Liberal. And yet there groups people who answer
does indeed seem to be an the same way.
orthodoxy, and it does
undergo change. So, is there one hidden
fundamental question, an
I think the occasional attitude, a belief that
public crisis of the determines your answers
faithful is interesting. to all these other
Like Susie Bright and questions?
friends pointing out to UNCONSTRAINED
Andrea Dworkin and co
that some S&M Of is it all just
pornography is actually sociological factors,
written and enjoyed by accidents of history, a
women. There were some desire to belong to a
fights between the group?
"militant vanilla"
feminists and the much
less puritanical
feminists who wanted to
do things like S&M
fashion shows at women's
conferences.
It looks like Susie
Bright has won. Dworkin,
MacKinnon, et. al. have
been retroactively
marginalize. It's now
claimed that they are not
mainstream feminists.
FEMINISM
--------
ORIGINALPC
"Oh, is that the next thing
we're going to have to be
Politically Correct about?"
That line is quoted from
memory from a New York
Times article, all about the I've pinned it down. PCSOURCE
early meaning of the term...
My first encounter with the
term "PC" back in 1984 or so.
I was hanging around outside
in Ithaca with a group of
friends, two of whom happened
to be hairy feminists. We
were doing various things.
Studying. Flying kites. I
took out a chess set.
One of the hairy feminists (who
I've known for a long time, and
often engaged in heated debate)
said: "Chess? But that's
not Politically Correct!"
I reached out with my foot and
pushed her over in exasperation.
I couldn't believe she would judge
things in such a simple-minded
way.
Someone commented "Violence, yet."
I said "Yeah, that's right, I'm
violent because I play
politically incorrect games
like chess."
I didn't understand until
later that she hadn't been
serious about condemning me for
being "politically incorrect".
Really, it was a running
in-joke between her and the
other HF in the group.
The other early usage of the
term that I can remember is
from some dialog overheard in a
club, as quoted in the Village
Voice:
A man says: "I think I'm going
to ask that woman to take me
home and do me with
cigarettes."
His friend says: "I think she's
with that other woman over
there."
"So? They can both do me with
cigarettes."
"That's not only exciting, it's
also Politically Correct."
--------
PCSOURCE
I'm sure it was reprinted
in the Times, but the first publication seems to
be in _Sinister Wisdom 28_, back in 1985.
The author is Susanna J. Sturgis:
"Is this the new thing we're going to have to be
politically correct about?"
P.C.: politically correct. I have two rubber
stamps that I use indiscriminately on outgoing
correspondence, one reading "politically
correct," and the other (of course) "politically
incorrect." I do not like to believe that we
are swayed, or even influenced, by prevailing
dogmas. I use "p.c." and "p.i." lightly,
ironically, in jest. For me "p.i." denotes
independence and originality, and "p.c."
suggests an absence of humor and a lack of
flexibility. Someone who is p.c. would probably
not duck to get through a low doorway.
In her excellent essay "Traveling Fat,"[1]
Elana Dykewomon describes her experiences as a
fat poet-writer on the road giving readings. At
the request of reading organizers in one city,
she prepared a brief statement on some fat
liberation issues: she explained that the
selling of diet drinks and the unavailability of
t-shirts in multiple-X sizes made it unsafe for
fat women to attend women's events. When she
made the statement at a reading in another city,
the response that reached her, second hand, was,
"Is this the new thing we're going to have to be
p.c. about?"
Although this was presumably encountering fat
liberation for the first time she was already
dismissing it as "the new thing we're going to
have to be p.c. about." It is unlikely that she
would then turn her critical attention to the
essential feminist issues that fat activists
have raised -- to , for instance, the diet
industry, which uses billions of women's dollars
to tell us that our bodies are not good enough.
It is unlikely that she would bother to try to
imagine what it is like to be perpetually too
big for "standard" sizes, in feminist t-shirts
as well as required-for-work clothes.
And I was chastened to realize that, though
the fat liberation movement has deeply affected
my life, I recognized myself in this woman. I
recognized her exasperation, since I have felt
it too: oh, god, something else I'm supposed to
feel guilty about and shut up about. Reading
Elana's essay, hearing over and over again that
woman's response, convinced me once and for all
that p.c./p.i. is more than a joke.
[1] In _Shadow on a Tightrope: Writings by Women
on Fat Oppression, edited by Lisa Schoenfielder
and Barb Wieser, Aunt Lute Book Co., 1983, pp.
144-145
--------
FEMINISM
You don't think feminists are a homogenous group?
Well, I checked in at the Feminist Registration Bureau, and they
gave me a list of all things that feminists are required to do:
Explain why govenment censorship of pornography
doesn't violate the first amendment and isn't as
dumb as it sounds.
Insist on the media's responsibility to provide
positive role models and to self-censor anything
else.
Reject any public display of heterosexual
behavior, on the grounds that it is demeaning to
women, and makes closeted homosexuals feel
uncomfortable.
Demand the right to convict men of rape based on
accusation alone, irrespective any lack of legal
evidence.
Demand legally mandated equal pay for equal work,
despite lack of any means of objectively measuring
ability, training or experience. Don't forget
gender quotas for all professions... football
players, politicians, etc.
Rationalize taking money from men on dates as
being the fair redistribution of wealth.
Be fanatical about enforcing the use of approved
terminlogy (e.g. "The pre-women at the Junior High
completed a symbolic mural depicting the
castration of the ruling class."). The greater
contortion of the language required the better.
Complain about "objectification of women" when
general interest magazines show the kind of photos
that women's magazines do.
Defend women's right to be what they want to be as
long as it's not a traditional house wife.
Demand government subsidy of child care,
socialized abortions, and free tampons.
Pretend that leather-clad S&M lesbians who don't
hate men don't exist. If confronted by one, be
prepared to explain why they are not real
feminists.
Display no understanding of humor or satire,
particularly if it involves sexuality or gender
roles.
When feminism comes under attack, deny all of the
above and insist that feminism just means "equal
rights for women."
((Like the weird defense amongst PC
types:
You are not allowed to complain about
PCness,
Because PCness does not exist.
Feminism has no center, no definition,
Saying feminists are X is indulging in
unfair sterotyping,
One can not be anti-feminist.
And therefore one cannot be
profeminist? ))
----------
No, of course "feminists" aren't quite that homogenous.
You got your Hairy Feminists, you got your Weekday Feminists.
You got your man-hating lesbian types, you got your
man-not-hating lesbian types. There's radical feminists,
raging feminists, and probably closet feminists for all I
know. There used to be a lot of male feminists, back when
they thought it would get them laid. Maybe there still are
a few.
But anyway, it's pretty clear the word means something,
right? There's been a number of people representing
themselves as feminists over the years, and quite a few of
them have been extreme enough to make feminism a dirty name
in a lot of people's books. If they've been abusing the
term "feminist", maybe you should've been arguing with them
and not snarling at the rest of us whenever we say something
vaugely critical about them.
----------
This is what's really been bothering me:
feminists" want credit for their successes"
without taking responsibility for their excesses.
They're doing the politician's shuck and jive...
--------
UNCONSTRAINED
Thomas Sowell in his book A CONFLICT OF VISIONS talks
about two views of humanity.
Unconstrained: Constrained:
Human capability is Human capability is
fundamentally unlimited. fundamentally limited.
No problems are beyond Some problems we just
the reach of a dedicated, have to learn to live
benevolent intellect. with, because no one is smart
All the parameters of humanity enough to think of everything,
can ultimately be modified to and attempts at solutions lead
achieve an end to suffering. to unexpected consequences.
You can't change human nature.
Loosely, these coincide with:
LIBERALS and CONSERVATIVES.
But only loosely. Personally, I think it's really
interesting that conservatives are strictly
speaking conservative on economic and social
issues whereas liberals are quite conservative on
environmental issues.
The world ecology is a very The national economy is a very
complex structure. As yet complex structure. As yet
we do not fully understand it we do not fully understand it
perhaps we never will). (perhaps we never will).(
Since we can not fully predict Since we can not fully predict
the results of the changes we the results of the changes we
make, we should try and avoid make, we should try and avoid
making changes, particularly making changes, particularly
major ones, considering how major ones, considering how
many lives are at stake. many lives are at stake.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau John Locke
_Du Contrat Social_ _An Essay concerning Human Understanding_
"Man was born free, "All men are liable to error;
and everywhere he and most men are, in many
is in chains." points, by passion or
interest, under temptation
("L'homme est ne' libre, to it."
et partout il est dans (1690)
les fers".)
(1712-1778)
A friend of mine pointed out to me that
Sowell's schtick bears much resemblance Sometime I'll try and
to this old Locke-Rousseau business... look up Rousseau and
Locke in Sowell's
I felt pretty stupid I hadn't index. Maybe I just
noticed this. missed it?
Reading through Wells _Outline_ I realize
something else I should've noticed long
ago:
I've tended to think of Socrates as being
a rational christ, a martyr to reason as
opposed to faith. ONERELIGION
But from another point of view,
Socrates genuinely was a man capable
of "corrupting" youth. If you preach
skeptisism, if you demand to know the
reason for everything, than you run
the risk of breaking some very sensible
rules just because you aren't yet able
to understand the reasons for them.
--------
CONSERVATIVE (6-15-92)
A good conservative argument
(perhaps the *only* conservative
argument):
The traditional is the
time-tested, it consists of
customs evolved over time, and
it functions for reasons we may ((A bit repetitious?
not understand. Experimentation Also above.))
with new ways is dangerous,
since by definition we are not
smart enough to anticipate the
ways they will fail.
You don't experiment with your (Is this from David Friedman
grandmother on the operating table. or Charles Murray?)
MURRAY
-------
LIBERAL (6-15-92)
But without experimentation,
no progress is possible.
The way the world can be
is forever held prisoner by
the way the world is.
Can fear of failure really
justify this paralysis? PROVIDENCE
One answer:
Keep the scale of the
experiment as small as possible.
Limit the consequences of
failure to a small population,
rather than gamble on system
wide changes. State programs
are then better than Federal
programs, for example.
Local is good.
But. If you believe that you
have a solution to a problem,
there are costs to not implementing
it. Can you justify condemning
a nation die of a plague, while
you experiment with a vaccine in
just one city?
One solution: Let people make up
their own minds and take their
own chances. A new idea takes LIBERTY
a while to catch on, and before
it becomes tremdously popular,
everyone has a chance to see it
fail elsewhere. The damage is
somewhat limited, even for really
popular fads, because it's rare
for any where near *everyone* to
do the same thing at once.
--------
PERM
Run through all the permutations?
What would a conservative
slut be? Or a liberal
whore? Make sure it's
gender invariant... Try
and imagine male sluts or
whores, or female studs...
--------
NIETZSCHE
"Go to women with whips."
But did he really say that?
_Thus Spake Zarathustra_ part one:
"Of little old and young women",
An old woman says:
"You are going to women?
Do not forget the whip!"
Maybe that's what I was Or maybe it's another case
thinking of. of multiple translations
floating around.
Walter Kaufmann describes a
photograph that "shows Like:
Nietzsche and his freind
Paul Ree ... pretending to "That which doesn't kill
pull a little cart on which you makes you stronger."
Lou Salome, then their Seems pretty extreme, but
mutal freind, is enthroned a better translation is
with a whip. We have it on "That which doesn't destroy
her authority that the you makes you stronger."
picture was posed under
Nietzsche's direction..."
TRAGEDY
--------
THUROW
Thoreau is a very well
known, intelligent guy who I
usually disagree with As such, I tend to think
completely. he might be valuable as a
check on my own thinking.
He's written a series of
popular economics books, DISSONANCE
like "The Zero-Sum
Society". Lately though, I've begun
to wonder if Thurow is really
One of the things I disliked good enough.
about "Zero-Sum" is that he
actually seems to believe He was profiled in the 1/90
it's a worthwhile goal to _Atlantic_. I thought it
eliminate sources for human was fascinating that he's
envy: i.e. no one should outraged by the common
have to feel bad because bumper sticker "Question
someone else has more than Authority". It seems we're
they do. all supposed to quietly
listen to benevolent experts
such as himself.
I'd really like to see him
debate Milton Friedman some
day. Or better yet, David
Friedman.
--------
MURRAY
Charles Murray wrote
a book called _Losing
Ground_, that pushes
the thesis that the
liberal social programs
beginning with Johnson's
"Great Society" are
literally useless.
The heart of the book
is some trendline analysis
that shows a steady
reduction of #s of people
below the poverty line --
until government social
spending kicks in, and then
all progress stops.
Murray's explanation of this
might be called the standard
conservative line: government
welfare programs are seductive,
once you're on them there's little
incentive to try and improve your
earnings, because once you do you
lose the income from the welfare,
from your point of view you have
to put in a lot of work just to
stay in one place before things
can get better.
There are a number of obvious
responses to his trendline analysis,
most of which he claims to have
covered... deciding whether he
really has is complicated.
As far as I can tell, he sometimes plays
with the way his numbers are presented
to make his case look a little stronger.
I haven't found anything completely
outragous.
I've looked at some of the criticism of
the book... Lester Thurow screams like
a stuck pig, but says very little thats
coherent about it... probably his most
interesting point is that Murray doesn't
mention the GI bill, which is a case of
government intervention which most people
agree was beneficial.
It was also a one shot deal, that no
recipient planned on in the first place.
-------
MONOPOLY
peercy@crhc.uiuc.edu (Mike Peercy) quotes:
The worst railroads in America are in the West. The worst railroads
on the Pacific Coast are those operated by the Southern Pacific
Company. The worst railroad operated by the Southern Pacific Company
is the Central Pacific. It owes the government more millions of
dollars than Leland Stanford has vanities; it will pay it fewer cents
than Collis P. Huntington has virtues. It has always been managed
by rapacity tempered by incompetence. Let Leland Stanford remove
his dull face from the United States Senate and exert some of his
boasted 'executive ability' disentangling the complexities in which
his frankly brainless subordinates have involved the movements of
his trains.
Ambrose Bierce
August 4, 1888
----------
EXCUSES
The topic here is supposed
to be about fear of Whenever I try and talk
diseases like AIDS used as about this, usually someone
a smoke screen to cover a accuses me of denial.
more generalized fear of
sex.
Try and reserve judgement
for a minute, we can point
fingers at each other
later.
I always had a hard time
understanding why non IV
using heterosexuals in the
US are supposed to worry
about it so much... Blood
and Semen are the two
transmission fluids, no?
So how am I supposed to get
it? Presuming I'm not into
drinking menstral blood,
why would I worry about
cunnilinguis with a woman?
((Some old air.bboard
posts, follow... ))
Speaking of urine, does
anybody have a good
reference for the quantites Check: AIDS hotline.
HIV in various fluids? I'm not sure I'll trust
I've got a strong suspicion it, though.
that the quantity in
cervical fluid and in
salvia is about comparible,
which makes me wonder why
they tell you to watch out
for cunnilinguis, but don't
recommend condoms for
kissing. One of these
days, I'll look it up.
As for precious bodily
fluids: I understand that
the concentration of HIV in
semen greatly exceeds that
in saliva. What I want to
know is why it took them so
long to discover that
there's HIV in cervical
fluid. Since the
transmission rate among
lesbians looks *very* low,
I'd guess the concentration
must be pretty low. If so,
why were they pushing the
dental dam business in the It's kind of interesting
first place? how few people have even
heard about "dental dams".
It seemed to me like the
word was out all over the
place, but even very the
intelligent & well-informed
Zfarthing understands what seem to have missed it.
I'm getting at, though:
there's a tendency to
assume that "abnormal" sex
must be "unsafe".
It's the usual problem with
the idiot news media, and
maybe the health
organizations that decide
what "safe sex" is, they'd
rather tell us things like
"Do this/Don't do that"
rather than worry our
pretty heads with data.
----------
GOOD
((An issue from rec.arts.sf-lovers,
though it could be from anywhere.))
"How do you know what is good?"
Good and Bad vs Like and Dislike. And greatness?
Objective vs. Subjective
Objective defined as stable group consensus.
Consensus of trained minds, i.e. experts.
Clearly all of this is crucial.
And clearly all of it is shakey as hell.
What can you do with this,
but throw up your hands? MANIFESTO
--------
SELF
A common vision of human Another common vision of
nature: human nature:
We choose to do the The self is a product of
things we do. The self is physical processes, it
responsible for actions. is determined by
environmental and
Ideas are created inside of genetic inheritence.
the self.
Ideas are the product of
Individuals must be given individuals circumstances
the credit they deserve and histories.
for having ideas. A reflection of the zeigeist.
Output is recycled input.
An idea that you create is
your property. Intellectual property
must belong to society,
for the benefit of society.
At a guess, everyone switches between
these two doctrines, whenever
it seems convienient.
Arguments based on them surface
continually, under many names:
"free will" vs. "determinism",
"justice" vs. "mercy"...
The first vision here, seems
to have little factual
basis. How can an "idea" be
expected to magically emerge The second vision, seems more
from a single mind, without "scientific", in that it postulates
reference to anything that some natural mechanism behind
has gone before? individual thought. No
mysticism here.
At best, this view seems to be
a reflection of our ignorence
of how the mind works. And yet, this view is
disastrous wherever implemented.
And yet it seems necessary It undermines the incentive
for any functional system of structure that keeps human
ethics. society working.
Note issue amongst libertarians:
is alcholism a "disease", and
hence the alchoholic is out
of control, not responsible,
or are they guilty of lapses
Note on Free Will as of self-control, people who
something which is need to take responsibility for
experienced, rather than their actions.
an abstraction to be
"proved". Connect to BATESON on
alch anon. (really ADDICTION).
Side issue: environmentally,
genetically determined... to
some extent it hardly matters.
it's still determinism.
Perception that environmentally
determined things are easier
to change may be a misconception
(thou art Mrs. Grundy).
Would it be beter if human
behavior were random?
But it's interesting to watch people
manipulate the issue as seems
convienient. E.g. racial issues
vs. sexual preference.
Further note: idea that
grounding humanity in
physical mechanisms
somehow demeans it. If
love is just biochemsitry,
then it is worthless:
"merely" physical, not
spiritual.
The soul considered as
a complex pattern.
(as opposed to mystical,
vitalist notions).
4-17-92))
if you drop the model of human behavior as being
goal-directed and rational, then what is it? i mean, we
don't really create ideas within us, right? we don't really
"choose goals" though we talk as though we do. so the self
is like a node in an information network, or something.
But what do you do with this vision?
--------
IRONTHORN 8/27/92
There's this Algis Budrys novel,
a crazy piece of work on the face
of it. There are these people trapped
on Mars, for generations living a grim
desperate existance where everthing they
do has to be oriented toward survival,
and practically nothing but survial,
and because of this the life they live
seems pointless, without meaning.
Then midway through the book, there's
this crazy shift: the main character
stumbles into a working space ship that
takes him to earth... a utopian earth,
where all physical needs are met, "...and you shall not
nd nothing is left for anyone to want more..."
do except play with fashions,
create artwork, go to parties, and
somehow... life seems pointless, without
meaning.
Idiotic Interpretation #1:
Budrys is saying that
life is meaningless.
Closer to the point:
The things that give life
meaning are not at all
understood.
And me, I do assert
that life "means"
whatever you make it
mean.
Vanilla
Existentialism.
Though of course, it's
more logically
rigorous to say:
the universe is not
the medium for a
message. There is
no mysterious creator
trying to communicate
with you. Life can not
mean anything.
DRIBBLE -- Dribble Movie idea.
A dribble file could be used to record *all* of the changes
made to a document as it was written... the bursts of text,
the sudden shifts backward to strike words as intentions
change, the insertion of new parenthetic asides that grow to
dominate the work...
A piece of software could be written This is not unlike
to make it easier to play back a one of the purposes
dribble file... e.g. plain text of Ted Nelson's HYPER
should be played in one step, a Xanadu Project.
single burst, as should, for Convienient historical
example, a long chain of control Ps, backtrack of all versions.
perhaps of cursor movement in
general. So during play back, you
repeatedly hit the space bar, and
you might see something like: a word
appears, The cursor jumps up five
lines and over three words a new
sentence squirts into the text the
cursor skips to the end three
sentences squirt into place.
Might be more interesting to watch a poem being written than
an essay, no? Something short with lots changes made on a
small scale level.
Of course, the next step is to design something you+re
intended to watch play back. A verbal movie...
(Like those silly ASCII movies people write sometimes?)
A fixed time delay (rather than space bar trigger)
might be interesting...
Still better would be a time delay that's proportional
to the size of the chunk.
Possibly, every sentence should be it's own chunk.
----------
LEARNING
In Ted Nelson's _Computer Lib/Dream Machines_
there's a side bar on strategies for learning.
One of his points is that magazines&journals are
more up to date than books, and usually deserve
more attention.
Frequently I start out searching
((lost some stuff again... anyway, the whole point is that
sometimes older is better. The papers don't cover the
"elementary" stuff in the books, and the older the book is,
the more detail and enthusiasm is lavished on the stuff that
today is considered old hat.))
___________________
DISCH
Here are some quotes (some of the beginning and most of the
end) of Thomas Disch's "Big Ideas and Dead-End Thrills" in
the February 1992 ATLANTIC:
In 1975 I gave a talk on the theme "The Embarrassments of Science
Fiction," in which I developed a notion... that science fiction
should be accounted, and can best be understood as, a branch of
children's literature. I noted how often a taste for SF is
acquired in early adolescence... And I deplored, at some length,
the limitations that resulted from the genre's readership
demographics. Implicit in my critique was an agenda for an
aesthetically and intellectually mature science-fiction, written
by grown-ups for grown-up tastes; the sort of science fiction I
supposed that I and some few of my friends were writing at the
time...
...science fiction has never been more popular than in these past
fifteen years...
Nearly without exception, the genre works that have enjoyed such
popularity have been of the type that I characterized... as
children's literature. For while I had faintheartedly bemoaned
the genre's juvenility, more-farsighted souls -- editior's,
notably Ballantine's Judy Lynne del Rey -- had taken the same
estimate of the situation and seen an enourmous untapped market.
Del Rey and those who followed in her footsteps discovered and
groomed writers like Stephan Donaldson, Terry Brooks, and Piers
Anthony, who could scale down Tolkein or Asimov from the seventh-
or eigth-grade reading levels of the overeducated fifties...
[...]
The final and most excruciating callowness of youth is what SF
readers particularly prize: Big Ideas. Now, there are some ideas
that genuinely are big, which is to say, full of implication and
repercussion. Copernicus's remodeled universe is such an idea.
But an idea need not even be valid to be big: Spengler's
_Decline of the West_ is as big as all history, and its central
thesis is pure twaddle. But when I was twenty-five, I revered
Spengler, and I was willing to accept any amount of twaddle on
faith for the sake of his system, the wonderfully lucid pattern
that provided a pigeonhole for every datum of history.
There is nothing that so militates against the sense of one's own
vast ignorance as adopting some such Big Idea, and the young,
whose ignorance is largest and rawest and most exasperating, have
a natural predilection for Big Ideas. Marxists, Ayn Randers,
Scientologists, and deconstructionists have one thing in common:
they tend to have been recruited young. Once in the fold, they
may remain there indefinitely and turn into fossils, but twigs
are bent in the teens and twenties.
To a certain degree SF provides a natural playground for the
harmless exercise of Big Ideas, even those that are radically
unsound. Utopias that could never be implemented in the real
world are fun to explore in simulation. Witness the utopian SF
novels by writers of such diverse temperaments as LeGuin, Suzy
McKee Charnas, Heinlein, Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle. The
Gaia hypothesis is also a natural for science-fictionalization.
Indeed, SF anticipated it, in stories including Richard McKenna's
1963 work "Hunter Come Home." However, not all writers approach
Big Ideas in a spirit of intellectual playfulness. Some come to
believe in their privileged wisdom and become intolerant of
contradiction, and this can happen at various levels of
sophistication. The most gullible can simply report to the local
Scientology recruiting office. Others dope their SF hobbyhorses
with an ideological fix. Ursula LeGUinn promotes a return to the
wisdom of a Native American never-never land. Michael Moorcock
has become an advocate of Andrea Dworkin. The tendency is always
to venture toward the current ideological limit as an inherently
more dramatic situation, which is also, however, inherently
silly.
Ideological sillyness is an afflction more tolerable in the
young, and, for reasons I've tried to lay out, exactly the same
may be said of a taste for science ficition...
Disch has overreacted to
the some earnest, strident
idealists and ideologes He also seems
become something close to a horrified that anyone would
nihilist. write something based on
wish-fufillment.
This air of nihilism shows
up in his fiction, and has I'd say you should
something to do with his tap into any source of
lack of success. How many energy you can find.
people would you offer a
copy of _334_ to in order
to turn them on to SF?
What bothers me about the
current state of SF is almost
exactly the opposite of what
Disch is complaining about.
There are some SF writers
willing to play around with Big
Ideas, but they *only* play
around with them. MANIFESTO
Very few writers actually take
themselves seriously enough to
write a book like Ayn RAND's
_Atlas Shrugged_, which takes some ((ragged edge of lunacy?
ideas and pushes them to the As opposed to the smooth
ragged edge of lunacy. Like it blade of sanity?))
or not _Atlas_ is one of the truly
Great Works of the century that
every educated person has to
come to terms with. In
comparison most SF just doodles
around. If it doesn't just
photocopy, that is.
SF, even bad SF, can and sometimes
does do things that other kinds of
(Actually, there's a converse fiction can't, or doesn't usually.
problem that bugs me some
times: writer's with an
unconscious -- one hopes --
belief in patent nonsense,
like FTL or psionics...)
----------
DREAMS
In response to a Shedevil question (2/19/92):
Dreams seem to me to be improvised as they go along.
Things shift from one thing to another to satisfy the needs
of the current scene without regard to the history of what's
gone before. I find that the character's in my dreams
shuffle around... my late father will turn into John
McCarthy, or a sister may turn into a girl friend, and so
on (I remember one dream in particular where I was having an
incestuous affair with one of my "sisters" except that she
looked like a girl I'd been chasing after... who had been
telling me something about how she was in love
with her brothers and her problem was she couldn't find men
like them.)
The setting in my dreams also shuffle around in the same way.
In a recent dream, I was climbing across the high facades of
a shopping mall composed of churches and temples of various
religions... but I'm pretty sure the scene started out as
a dance club, and the nature of the mall changed as this
"religious mall" concept emerged.
Dreams are the first drafts of a hack writter that can't be
bothered to worry about consistency.
(HAIR) (3/21/92)
I had a dream last night, that centered around my image in
the mirror. My hair was cut much shorter than it is now...
in fact it looks like I'm developing a bald spot. This
frightens the hell out of me. I check my image in various
mirrors. It turns out that it isn't just thinning out, it's
coming out in chunks. What kind of chemicals have I been
exposed to? I'm going to look like I've been through
chemotherapy.
I tilt my head When I realize all Consciously, I would
forward to look my hair is falling have denied that
at the bald spot. out, I feel relieved. any of this mattered.
It stretches all I'd rather be a I've kidded guys
the way down the skinhead than just younger than me
back of my neck. another guy with about their bald
It's perfectly a bald spot. spots.
smooth, like an Just at a guess,
inverse mohawk. Fear of they didn't think
growing it was funny.
But you can't see old.
the back of your But then, there
head this way. How conventional. isn't any way that
I'm ever going to
go bald. I've got
incredibly thick,
stiff hair. I could
lose half of it and
it would just look
normal.
(Gotta go. Time for me to go get a hair cut.)
--------
(ATTACK) 7/1/92
I'm in a nondescript hallway. Perhaps the
hallway of the Brenner House I grew up in
in Huntington, in New York.
I'm being attacked by a couch. Long
reddish, 1950's style: it's the couch we COUCH
have on the front porch here in Palo Alto
right now.
The couch slides after me, I lay down on
the ground and put my feet against it.
Where ever it tries to move, up down
left or right, I shift my feet to push
it away. In this contest, it seems at
first that it isn't really any stronger
than me. I can push it back and hold it
at bay without too much trouble. But
then, my legs start to tire. I try to
extend my legs far to lock them and give
them a chance to rest, but I can't quite
make it. After some maneuvering, the
couch flips up its back end and tries to
roll over my legs to get at me. But it
wedges itself against the top of the
doorway I'm lying in. I smile: I'm free
now to move and go on the attack. I
break it's "back", doubling it over, but
I take care to hold it making sure that
I'm killing it, and not just multiplying
my antagonists. It breaks up easily (In fact the pieces look
into small pieces. like they really belong
to the "library" chair
from my old room).
CHAIR
Around the house, I find some odd wires
stretching across walkways in different
places. I gather they're some sort of
sensors for burglar alarms. I hope I haven't
disturbed anyone, which indicates I'm awake
when everyone else is asleep, which isn't
unusual.
Later on, my mother is working on one of
our usual huge Christmas trees (now it's
clear we're in the Brenner house). For
some reason, I have another tree lying on
the ground, already partly decorated. Why
did I buy it? We already have one. My
father thinks I should bring it in with the
other tree, but I decided to drag it down
into the basement to put it up in my room.
I think my father recommends I set up one
of the odd wires I've seen around the
house, saying something about clear
reception? This part isn't clear to me, now
or then.
My younger sister follows me. I'm lying in
a chair in my room (tired?) talking about This is a dream I had
setting up the tree, I guess. She looks at after falling asleep in
something next to me and says something a chair in my room. My
like "Not like that." I look at it: it's actual physical posture
the trunk of a Christmas tree with branches was bleeding into the
stripped off of it. I say "that's really dream.
old." Though I notice it's sprouted some
new green needles: there's life in it yet.
"Why did I do that?" Shaking my head at
the thought of taking the trouble to strip STICKS
the branches and save the trunk. Did I
want to burn it? She says "Because Judy
didn't have a car yet?" (This is cute, but
doesn't really make sense. Judy wasn't
even my girlfriend. I ignore it.)
I get up to bring the tree in. I see that
a corner of my room has been cleared
already. My desk has been moved across the Note: the room is clearly my
room. I ask my sister "Did you move my basement room, nothing to
desk?" She shakes her head like she argue against it: brown wooden
doesn't remember. I warn her to be careful paneling, black tile floor,
of it, because I've had some problems with grungy with dust and crud in
poltergeist phenomena lately. She nods her the empty corner. But there
head. isn't enough clutter in it.
It shouldn't be that easy to
completely clear a corner of
it. And the books that
dominate it are not in
evidence in this dream, though
I don't remember looking in
their direction either.
--------
COUCH
The couch in question has a long
history with me, a long chain of
associations. When we were
first setting up the group house
I'm in, I spotted a nifty couche
at Thrift Mart, on sale for $20:
a grotesque orange and green
floral pattern, with a high back
and wooden trim. Oddly enough,
one of my housemates didn't
appreciate the idea, and
couldn't believe I didn't want
another couch that was there:
low, red, fifitiesish, and to my
eye terribly boring. It's only
advantage was that it was very
long. We wound up playing One of the first of many
Roe-sham-bo to settle it, and I lost. house decisions I lost.
ROE
Over time, I got it moved from the
living room to the front porch (it's
so long it tends to dominate any
living room arrangements). Though
more recently I've unsuccesfully
argued for moving it back in in The joys of group living.
favor of the ugly shapless blue couch
we have now.
I suppose I could talk about things that've happened
on the couch, but this is clearly too long already. (see WARNING
below)
--------
CHAIR
The "library chair" has another set of long
associations for me.
High school, south library. Stage Crew.
Room in the basement. Idaho. Back to the
basement. Abandoned (stored?) there now.
((Which I've discussed very briefly as a side bar
of something about Stage Crew, right? SOmehow I think
that that's yet another piece that was lost...))
The point of these digressions, if any, is that
inanimate objects take on a life of their own.
Which is perhaps what the dream above is about.
--------
SIXLIMB 5/94
A couple of creatures with six legs, something between a
daschund and a centipede. The fore part of their bodies had
great mobility, they could rear up and stand on their hind
pairs of legs like centaurs. Tremendously ugly faces, like
bull-dogs taken to an extreme. They stood less than a foot
high, with odd almost indescribabble features on their
bodies places where their short fur would be replaces by
scalely/leathery patches, they looked like nipples or
perhaps like lubrication points on a machine. The toy
stuffed animal version would have to use patches of
lizardoid plastic amid the false fur.
One of them stood on my chest as I was lying down, letting
me pet it. I leaned down and it nuzzled me under the chin. It
tickled unbearably.
--------
When I was around, oh say 8 or WARNING
9, I and a friend of mine once
got into carrying "staffs" You sometimes see amateur
around with us, i.e. sticks. day-hikers carrying sticks.
Finding a really worthy stick I have trouble understanding
(straight, strong, smooth) why. (To poke non-existent
wasn't a trivial problem. bears in the nose?)
I once Other fads But they're also likely
started were: to have hunting knives
whittling all Carrying plastic and sierra cups on their
the branches Y shaped boomerangs, belts.
from a dead usually down the back
christmas of our necks, neon The knife might be useful,
tree. Couldn't wings protruding from if you somehow got into
get it smooth each side. a critical survival situation
enough. an hours walk from the
(clearly we were into parking lot.
Mostly these function over form.)
sticks were It's not clear that
used for things Eating various forms sierra cups are ever
like pole-vaulting. of petfood, e.g. useful.
I remember working parrot grade sunflower
on using pole seeds, hamster salt
vaulting as spools.
a long distance
method of Shrieking like a
locomotion. terradactyl for long
distance signaling.
Tree-climbing as a
sport.
--------
WARNING
EARLY
I'm opposed to the death
penalty except for Britsh
writers who persit in babbling
about their childhood.
I ain't Britsh, but you
might want to skip this
section.
You've been
warned.
Until I was thirteen or so I
pretty regularly got
crewcuts. When I got my
hair cut at all. As I There's a second grade class
remember it, my pattern was photo of me: Hair long,
to let it grow out, then uncombed, sprouting out of No wonder
chop it all off. my head wildly (my hair is those
straight, but it does not teachers
Understand: during the late just come out and go down... hated me.
60s and early 70s, when all when I was wearing my hair
good non-conformists were long, i.e. high school, it Being
wearing their hair long, was a thick glossy helmet alternately
I insisted on cutting it around my head, that bounced loud and
short. One of the main as I walked.) undisciplined
reasons I did this was or bored
because people were putting At least I combed and listless
pressure on me to let it it by then. probably
grow long. Though I didn't didn't help
shave much. either.
CONFORM Since then I've
decided that
compulsive non-
conformity isn't
necesarily any Though, if you always
better than choose the road less
compulsive traveled by, you at Oh yeah.
conformity. least have a shot at I thought
doing something new, that Robert
I try and pick getting somplace other Frost poem
my battles better people don't go. was really
than that. cool when
Even a symbolic I was around
difference becomes ten or so.
a real difference
very quickly.
Tattoo a pink triangle
on your forehead;
Stick a saftey pin
through your cheek;
or just shave your
head clean. You'll
find out what it's
like to be a nigger
very quickly.
And you'll find out
who the straights
really are, and why
being a straight is
such an evil thing.
--------
Sent to alt.cyberpunk, 8/8/92:
dewind@acsu.buffalo.edu (Padraig) says (on alt.cyberpunk 8/92):
"I laugh at those folks who think they are being rebellious
while looking exactly the same as every other "rebel" that they hang out
with. Personally I think that Non-comformity is more a state of mind than
a way of cutting (or not cutting) your hair, or of wearing your clothes."
This is all very true, but it's not the whole truth.
Choosing a subculture can be a rebellious action.
Individuals are not islands.
And appearance is not irrelevant. Shave your head, tattoo
the sides, & pierce your nose and you'll find out very quickly
what it's like to be an outcast. Finding out who can't
handle trivial changes like this is not a small thing.
I laugh at the people who laugh at the "pretentious" types
dressed in black, when they themselves are committed to
their own uniforms (e.g. T-shirts and blue jeans).
There are all sorts of pretensions.
--------
RESUME
(A list of lists from my finger plan... a summary of me? 2/19/92)
Materials Science
Crystal Growth
Mixing Techniques Shriekback
High Tc Fibers The Replacements
Magnetic Films Tom Waites
Sputtering The Neon Judgement
The Havering Thomas Sowell
Rock Climbing Eric Drexler
Downhill Skiing Freeman Dyson
Cross-Country Skiing Hunter S. Thompson
Artichokes
Bruce Sterling Broccoli James Ensor
Pamela Sargent Snow Peas Vincent van Goh
Nietzsche Gregory Benford Picasso
de Beauvoir Samuel R. Delany
Frank Miller Flashlights in the rain
Antonio's Wind off the glacier at midnight
The Holy Cow Dust in the tunnel under the highway
The Underground A dozen frozen snakes, escaping.
------
(Ideally: every entry in the above .plan could be used as a keyword
to jump to a section of the doomfile.)
------
SUNY at Stony Brook
Let me tell you about Stony
Brook, that fine example State
sponsored education two hours
away from New York City, out
in the suburban blandness of
Long Island...
Despite having some excellent
academic departments, the
primary theme of Stony Brook
always seems to be "screwed
up". The unofficial school
slogan was "Stony Brook
Sucks." Some people had
T-shirts made up with this on
it...
A huge place, with an enormous
amount of land donated by Ward
Melville, I believe, in the
late 60s, Nelson Rockefeller,
then govenor of New York,
pointed his finger, and a
furious explosion of
construction took place, none
of which they could get right.
They were constructing a long
bridge connecting the second
floor the new Student Union
with newly expanded library,
but when the bridge reached
the library they realized that
there was nothing to connect
it to. Apparently they
flipped the plans over and put
the entrance on the wrong
side. So they walled off the
end, and The Bridge To Nowhere
became the symbol of the
university. Many people were
annoyed when they eventually
put a right turn on the end of
it and connected it up with
something.
They were pouring the
foundations for this new
student union building on the
same day that they were
pouring the concrete for the
walls of the lecture center,
and they apparently got the
loads of concrete
backwards... Hence the student
union foundations were had
problems with cracking and the
lecture center turned out a
very ugly drab gray color. I
often wondered what it was
supposed to look like...
The lecture center itself was
a very odd building in any
case. A big lump of
windowless modernistic
concrete, often compared to a
bomb shelter. Some people
seemed very proud of the way
it completely avoided the use
of right angles in it's
structure. Going up the
staircases was an interesting
vertigo inducing experience:
you're inner ear tells you
your standing straight up, but
the slope of the walls tell
you you're leaning over
fifteen degrees...
Another classic Stony Brook
story: when they built the
South Campus Complex, some
bright person did an analysis
that supposedly proved that
installing light switches was
a waste of money. Their cost
wasn't supposed to be worth
the little bit of power saved
by turning off florescent
lights. But then the
seventies rolled around, and
you could drive by South
Campus at 3 AM, watching the
lights blaze away in the midst
of the "Energy Crisis".
Then, there's the Health
Science Center, a truly
gigantic structure, a huge
cube formed by a cluster of
smaller cubes, all elevetated
on stilts, visible from miles
around, which was not
appreciated by the Long Island
suburbanites at all. Among my
circle of friends it was often
compared to Chronos, a big
alien robot from some old
science fiction movie, and it
does indeed have the imposing
presence of a Godzilla-class
monster... As you walk up to
it, there's something
deceptive about it's size, you
keep thinking you're almost
there, but actually it's still
bigger and further away than
you thought... finally you
approach the entrance, and the
tremendous cube is looming
over you, and you look at the
structures great legs... and
you realize they're _rusting_.
Is this thing safe? Why
didn't they paint those things
or something? The answer is
that the architects _wanted_
them to look that way. They
put a cladding on the pillars
that was intended to rust,
which is sometimes used to
give things a kind of soft,
natural appearence (on a
high-tech science fictional
concrete cube? Don't ask me,
I'm no architect).
One story I've heard about the
Health Science Center: they
installed a large number of
ventilating fans, mounted on
the roof, all of them wired to
start at the same time. The
combined torque of these
things accelerating was
apparently enough to make the
building creak (think about
the stability of a huge cube
up on stilts...). The
solution: they replaced half
of the motors with models that
spin in the opposite
direction, so they would
cancel the effect of the other
half of the motors.
But my absolute favorite story
about the Health Science
Center: as originally
constructed, they forgot to
include a morgue. Cadavers
had to be refrigerated in the
cafeteria facilities... I
understand they didn't fix
this problem until they built
an adjacent hospital
complex. .
But I've just been talking
about the problems with the
buildings at Stony Brook.
There's more to a university
than just buildings, right?
For example, there was the
time the adminstration decided
to make a change in the rules
concerning continuing housing
on campus. If you wanted to
stay where you were, you
needed to get a certain form
stamped... on the ONE
particular day they set aside
for this process. _Thousands_
of people mobbed the
adminstration building,
forming a line a mile long
with a completely stationary
tail, since more people were
cutting the line than standing
in it. What was this all
about? Why did anyone think
this proceedure was necessary
or desireable? An amazing
place.
The year that I graduated, a
new President wanted to hold a
single, university wide
graduation ceremony, rather
than the smaller departmental
graduations they had been
doing. The only place
remotely big enough to hold an
entire graduating class at
Stony Brook was the football
field, which is where they
decided to do it (Stony Brook
is not exactly a big football
school, and having thousands of
people trampling the football
field wasn't as unthinkable as
it would be some other
places). Reporters for the
school newspaper interviewed
the adminstration, asking them
about rain-out plans. They
said "For something like this,
you just have to assume that
it isn't going to rain." So
of course, it does. Nearly
everyone left early, except
for a small hardcore crowd
that clustered up front by the
stage, heckling the speakers,
and chanting in unison "Stony
Brook Sucks! Stony Brook
Sucks!"
I'm not very big on graduation
ceremonies, so I didn't go to
that one, but I wish that I
had. A more fitting
expression of the Stony Brook
spirit, I can't imagine.
------
FUTURE
One of my sister's once told me
that the world is catching up
to me. I'm getting
progressively less weird by
standing still...
alchohol and drugs in general (Well, as of 6/25/93, it looks
are going out of style, like I *might* be right about
alcohol, but psychedelics
science fiction has become are back in.)
mainstream,
rock climbing is more common,
everyone listens to punk rock
(though it's not called that)
microcomputers are no longer
unusual
So, starting with the Shella
principle as my guide (As doom
goes, so goes the country), what
next?
Keep an eye out for these new hot trends: (8/11/90)
Architecture
Neo-modernism
Interior Design
Unstained wood. Steel painted grey or black.
The cluttered look.
Music
Metallic Industrial Folk
Philosophy
existential positivist materialism
Politics
Libertarian
Literature
Traditional structures exploited
Single viewpoint narratives
Fashion
Black is easy, and yet too powerful FASHION
a symbol to become trite anytime soon.
Relationships/Kinship/Sexuality
Greater contact and more distance from humanity
The right to be weird WEIRD
Punk esthetic. PUNK
--------
HAVERING -- a band plug on rec.music.misc
Some friends of mine in a group called
"The Havering", have put out a tape
(produced by Bart over at CFY Record's
The House of Faith, if you're into these
things). I think it's worth checking
out.
They've got a sound somewhere between the Housemartins and
Stiff Little Fingers, which around the San Francisco area gets
called "Modern Rock" by a lot of people.
There's always been some tension between their two main
singer/song-writers... Jeff Adams is a guy from Virginia who
plays an acoustic 12-string, and sings with a really gentle,
melodic voice. He tends to focus more on songs about personal
relationships. For example, "Dysphoria":
You're just an umbrella that keeps out the sun,
A mirror that reflects back the rain.
And the ghost that you made from the time that you cried,
You sleep with him now, and you'll die by his side.
On the other hand, Yusuf Jaffry is a guy from Glasgow, and he's
more into a classic punk sound, and also more likely to write
political songs. I think one of his best is "Todays Pig", based
on an Edward Albee novel and a Hunter S. Thompson line:
She looks across at Henry Lightcap
His lights are on, but no one's home,
He's got ten wives, but he's not a bad chap,
He's working too hard and he'll die alone,
Because --
He didn't hear what Gonzo was saying:
"Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon."
In working it out between them, I think they've managed to
make some music that appeals to a pretty wide range of
people. Their tape is well done enough that when I put it
on people frequently mistake it for the radio, but on the
other hand you don't get college radio art snobs (like me)
turning up their noses at them for being just another pop
band.
If you'd like to get a copy of their cassette (two sides, 17
songs, reasonable prices) send some email to
chaney@leland.stanford.edu.
One last quote, from "House of Mirrors":
I'm trapped in this house of mirrors
A thousand and one copies of myself
I lost the door when it shut behind me
Too nice, too nice, to see you again...
--------
Someone was asking me who the Havering are.
Ken: giant blond haired guy from LA, plays bass.
really gets into clowning around on stage, somewhat to the
annoyance of the rest of the band. Jeff has taken
to calling him their "trained bass player."
Yusef: Indian genetics and Glasgow birth. Confuses the
hell out of people with his accent. Plays lead guitar,
writes some of the songs, does some singing, does most of
the introductions. Has an obnoxious punk attitude, that
plays well off of
Jeff: Who comes off as a nice, somewhat shy guy who writes
most of the songs, sings most of the lyrics and plays 12
string guitar. He's got a very sweet, mod-rock type of
voice that the band is centered around. Good looking.
(The audience is always packed with women.)
Walt: Drummer. Gets lost behind Ken on stage. A KFJC fan, who
answered an on the air ad, and now commutes down from UCSF,
and helps Jeff keep the band popular with women.
Majors, if you care, are Aeroastro, aeroastro, med school, and
english, respectively. None of them are undergrads.
--------
THIRDBIGLIE
The 3rd Big Lie
A really good band that I heard rehearse in New York. Country
influenced rock, but not rockabilly... maybe they sound a
little like The Movie Stars.
Kath:
A great voice, a great person. She also plays bass.
Serious women wear Doc Marten's.
Randy:
Kath's husband. Dangerous to let a person who enjoys being
obnoxious pick up a guitar. Does awful renditions of
"Blackbird", with mistakes that must be intentional because they
disappear when he plays lead in the band. I recommended
Heinlein's: "Have Spacesuit Will Travel" to him. He and Kath
both got into it.
Jamie:
The song-writer/drummer. "Thank you for corrupting my
band. They keep telling me to read Heinlein."
Michael:
At first I was worried that he didn't take my sister's
criticism very seriously. Then I worried that she nags him
too much. Realization: maybe they're perfectly matched.
He plays pedal steel guitar. Writes stuff of his own, but
not for third big lie.
Now I've got the songs off their demo tape running through
my head ("Darling, I'm older than you,/Let me be your first
mistake...").
By the way, they tell me that "The third big lie" is really
"I promise not to come in your mouth."
--------
--------
KFJC 7/27/92
89.7 FM, The Foothills Junior College station:
The best radio station in the area, maybe in the world.
Many a college station plays interesting,
cutting edge stuff on occasion, but usually
they have to vary the mix to the point that
they can't develop an audience. The Serbo-Croatian
Folk Hour comes on after the Barque period show,
and it's followed by Metal Death and then the
Progressive Art Rock Memory Ring. Realistically,
when you can't predict what's going to be on,
you just don't listen.
But at Foothill,
somehow control has been maintained by
a clique of the insiders, the alternative
college radio crowd, the punks and the
post-punks.
Which is not to say that there aren't
variations. Mike Destiny's big guitar
show is a far cry from Beladonna who
comes on Wednesday nights, from 10PM to
2AM, with her "Disco Dirge and Death"
show. Moody, droning industrial music
with a little bit of techno thrown in
at midnight. Strictly no human
drummers allowed. BELADONNA
Friday (really Sat) at 2PM, The Crimson
Retrospect does a similar thing, but
later in the morning, Robert Emmett
comes on with the "Norman Bates
Memorial Sountrack Show", listening to
which is an odd experience ("I know
I've heard this before. Is it the
theme to "I Dream of Jeanne" or "The
Time Machine"?). Sometimes I can't
really tell if Emmett cares whether the
music is any *good* or not. In a way
it's almost irrelevant.
And then there's Hawkeye Joe with the
"Lose Your Breakfast Club"... at 8AM
there's a feature where he reads
several headlines and gets people to
call up and vote on which news story
they want him to read. "Remember: here
at Kfjc, You Choose The News."... but
at 9AM there's the infamous "Sick
pick": a top-40 hit from the 70s that
you can't imagine anyone ever having
wanted to listen to. But you *do*: and
in fact the rest of the music he plays
seems to be not much better at times...
a crazy mix of anything he feels like
picking up. Once again, being *good*
isn't exactly the criteria.
It's like there's a series of stages:
(1) Oh my god, this is really awful,
annoying, repetitious...
(2) This is so awful it's funny.
(3) Hm, but this and that is interesting
in spite of (maybe *because*?) it's so
annoying... PUNK
(4) An appreciation of the subtlties of
arrangement of the annoying.
And still later: a disgust at trite imitations
of the pioneers of this particular form of
annoyance.
--------
KZSU 1992 !
Honarable mention: Faustina at KZSU,
the Stanford station does a really
interesting show. She'll put classical
from Debussy back to back with
industrial from SPK and get them to
sound *right* together.
Wednesday Night Live followed by the
local music show is worth a listen, too.
And again, 1994:
The above impressions of KFJC vs. KZSU were formed back in
the mid to late 80s, but in the last few years, I've begun
to favor KZSU, and not just because I've been a DJ there
for a year.
It almost seems to me like KFJC has backed itself into a
post-punk corner, where it's hard for them to do much
else... while KZSU has hung loose and been able to move in
many directions KFJC has missed. KZSU's Hip-hop programming
is legendary, for example, and it's one of the first
stations to put an excellent techno show out...
And again, still later in 1994 (11/94):
KFJC now seems to me to be a much more ecclectic
station than they used to be... In fact the punks
are complaining that they don't play enough
punk any more.
I'd have to listen to it much more than
I have in the passed to get a clear
impression of what they're about...
--------
FASHION
Leather isn't as expensive as it seems, because really it's
indestructible. Capital outlay is high, but you can wear it
constantly for years and not wear it out.
--------
Bomber jackets are for people who are trying to pretend that
they don't wear leather jackets.
--------
What is the ideal leather jacket? I figure it's gotta be black. Brown
is too middle-of-the-road. Grey or green seems like a nice idea in
theory, but I've never seen it work. Has to be functional, too. None
of that fashion leather stuff. Has to cut the wind, and give some
protection from abrasions (just in case I buy a motorcycle some day).
A good leather jacket should help out in a knife fight, too. (Two hits
per attack.)
But... I don't usually like the basic motorcycle style jackets everybody
wears on Haight Street (which is too bad, cause they're on sale at
Headlines for $99). I don't like the wide lapels, or the excess of
chrome zips and studs, or the long dangling waist belts. Waist length
seems pretty cool though (I'm talking jackets, not coats).
In general I'm not impressed with the fruity bells and whistles they
hang on leather jackets. Lots of pockets are good, but who needs cowboy
punk fringe? For that matter, I don't want lots of seams running around
on my back, either. And strips of fur, or even elastic/cloth is right
out.
I've been looking around for awhile now, and I'm beginning to think that
they don't make the kind of jacket I'm looking for. Or maybe my
criteria is contradictory? For instance, I'd reject a jacket that
looked too loose or bulky, but short of personalized tailoring, maybe
the only way you can get away from that is to add something I'd consider
a silly fringe (e.g. like the waist belts). Maybe the least offensive
thing is to go with small lace-up panels on the sides, but I haven't
seen any of those I like for sale.
Actually, the only one I saw that I did like had a weird asymmetric
zipper, offset to one side. Nehru jacket style.
Sometimes I think I should just buy one and see if I get used to it, but
I refuse to spend a few hundred bucks on an indestructible jacket that
I'm hardly ever going to want to wear.
--------
Chasing after a mirage.
I'd searched through many places in California and New
York, and I'd found many close things but I'd rejected them
all for one reason or another. After a while, everything
started to seem the same, because a lot of it really was.
The same jacket kept catching my eye. It looked good, it
looked functional... but it had features I'd been avoiding
(like the odd little elastic panel at the base of the
spine) and lacked features I wanted (like a removable
lining). Each place I found it listed the price a little
cheaper. Canal Jeans (which is now on Broadway in SoHo and
no where near Canal Street) had it for $150. I was in
despair at ever finding The Ideal Leather Jacket, so I
decided to buy the Mirage instead: like a traditional biker
jacket, but with tarnished black zips and snaps (not
chrome) and a set of small adjustment straps on each side
(no long waist belt). My housemates seem to like it, at
least.
Damn thing sets off airport metal detectors, though. Next
time I get one with non-magnetic hardware.
--------
November 24 1990
There was a cover story in the Wall Street Journal last week
talking about latest trend in hair styles: avoid shampooing
your hair for weeks. (The Homeless Look)
Once again, the world of fashion is catching up to me.
--------
CRIME
Knife fight #1.
Planning a party that night, some members of my usual gang (no
not a Gang gang, just the high school stage crew gang, though
there isn't necessarily a lot of difference) parked a shopping
cart full of groceries along the side of my house. I don't
remember if they'd paid full price for them. We had some
insiders working at the local supermarket. Anyway, fifteen
minutes later they went outside and discovered the shopping cart
gone. We split up and started searching in different directions.
I asked some little kids if they'd seen anything: they said "So
*that's* where he got it." and told me who'd taken it (after
getting me to promise not to say who told me). I knew the guy.
He was the younger brother of a member of my gang (Gang?). He
was famous for doing stuff like beating up on his older brother,
stealing things, doing lots of drugs, etc. Thought he was Jim
Morrison or something. He was on the street largely because his
parents had gotten good at talking other parents into dropping
charges against him. I think he was up on charges at the time,
and he was still doing petty burglaries: really dumb. I went
over to his house, and found him outside (he'd just closed the
garage door after stashing the cart of groceries). I demanded
the stuff back, etc. Eventually some of my freinds came and
found us arguing outside (they were impressed with how fast I'd
zeroed in on the place... me I'm impressed with how fast they'd
found me there). We followed this guy and his friend inside.
One of my friends was really pissed off: he grabbed a plastic
bong out of their hands and broke it on the floor. This, in
turn, seriously pissed off my least favorite juvenile delinquent.
He went into one of his famous rages, grabbed a large kitchen
knife and started threatening us all with it. I thought about
throwing a chair at him, but the one's at hand looked a bit too
large and bulky to use for lion taming. He walked around and got
close enough to let me make a grab for his right hand. He
transfered the knife to his left hand and tried to bring it down
on my back, over-hand style. One of my friends got a hold of his
left hand, though. We pushed him up against the wall, and I hit
his face with my forehead (hands were busy, and it was too tight
for a kick) until my freinds had got the knife away from him. We
let go of him, and he took it easier after that. I was in a
somewhat paranoid mood, though, and I remained prepared with a
"quarter-staff" in my hands (it had a lawn rake attached to one
end of it). Eventually, the Bad Guys left the house (after
stealing the microphone from the telephone, evidentally in fear
we were going to call the cops).
It was all pretty stupid and clumsy. Nothing like the image the
phrase "knife fight" calls to mind, right?
While I'm on the subject of the younger brother from hell:
soon after this I suggested to his older brother that we set this
kid up, and get him locked up for a while. He didn't like the
idea (this was his brother, after all), but I couldn't see
anything else to do, except wait for him to keep going until he
killed someone.
It turns out I was naive about this. I assumed that if he killed
someone he would spend a significant amount of time in jail.
What actually happened: he and a friend got into a fight with
someone in a bar. They went away and came back with a knife.
The walking advertisment for abortion held the guy from behind
while his friend stabbed the guy and killed him. The Suffolk
County cops then screwed up the arrest so badly that they needed
to go the plea bargaining route: the first killer I've ever had
the pleasure of meeting got out free and clear, in return for
ratting on his friend.
But then, the second killer I've met has never even been
arrested, as far as I know, so maybe I shouldn't complain too
much.
--------
SIZE
Before the nineteenth century there were no ships
in the world much over 2,000 tons burthen; now
there is nothing wonderful about a 50,000-ton
liner. There are people who sneer at this kind
of progress as being a progress in "mere size,"
but that sort of sneering merely marks the
intellectual limitations of those who indulge in
it. The great ship of the steel-frame building
is not, as they imagine, a magnified version of
the small ship or building of the past; it is a
thing different in kind, more lightly and
strongly built, of finer and stronger materials;
instead of being a thing of precedent and
rule-of-thumb, it is a thing of subtle and
intricate calculation. In the old house or ship,
matter was dominant--the material and its needs
had to be slavishly obeyed; in the new, matter
has been captured, changed, coerced.
--- H.G. Wells, 1922
_The Outline of History_
p 926 of the 3rd Edition.
((Preceed with a quote, illustrating what Wells is
talking about... Maybe from Stanislaw Lem?))
------
GOODMAN
Paul Goodman is probably best known as an anarchist intellectual,
writing in the fifties and sixties, the author of non-fiction works
like _Growing Up Absurd_. He also wrote a considerable amount of
fiction, such as the novel _The Empire City_. He was also gay, if
that matters (and it might: after used books stores, you might want
to check a "gay" bookstore for his books. I notice that the one on
Castro Street in San Francisco usually has quite a few of them).
_Five Years_ is a collection of excerpts from his notebooks over a
five year period, loosely collected into sections on different
topics ("Art", "Method", "Psychology", "Florence" etc).
For me, the floating disjointed paragraphs of this book, each
describing some random idea or experience, has always worked like
prose poetry. On nearly every page there's another a starting point
that I can take in a number of directions.
From Paul Goodman's _Five Years:
Thoughts During a Useless Time_
My social existence is absurd. In
God's creation I'm a kind of juvenile
delinquent, a little Manfred. But I
move in a society so devoid of ordinary
reality that I am continually stopping
to teach good sense, to give support,
to help out, as a young gangster might
help an old lady across the street on
his way to the stick-up. So I cut
quite a respectable figure, though on
the pious and boring side. all this
does nothing for me except to confuse
me and use up my time. When the Devil
quotes Scriptures, it's not, really, to
deceive but simply that the masses are
so ignorant of the theology that
somebody has to teach them the
elementary texts before he can seduce
them. When long ago I threw in my lot
with Cain and Ishmael because they were
able to get to talk to God, I little
realized that I was dooming myself to
become a pillar of humane culture.
--------
BATESON
One of my teenage enthusiasms:
Gregory Bateson's
_Steps Toward An Ecology Of Mind_.
A collection of pieces ranging
over different topics: entropy,
alcholism, epistemology,
schizophrenia, arms races.
Bits and pieces I remember:
Schismogenic curves: gradually,
expotentially rising, then reaching
an inflection point where they
suddenly crash.
A model for:
Arms Races.
Population Growth.
Sexual activity.
(SELF)
Analyzing Alcholics Anonymous Actually, this is one of
precepts, thinking about why the first places I actually
it's helpful to think in read about AA and their
terms of enitites outside of 12-steps and all. The importance
your self that really must be of avoiding the "first" drink was
internal, e.g. "The a big influence on me. DRUGS
bottle is stronger than I
am." Another way of putting it:
And I suppose: You can't always trust
"The muse is speaking your self. The rhetoric
through me." rather of "willpower" is dangerous.
than "Some mysterious Maybe no one has willpower:
mental process that some people are just lucky
I can't describe is enough not to need it.
selecting words."
(ENTROPY)
Some really beautiful "Metalogues",
philosophical dialogues between a
father and daughter. One topic:
entropy.
It had always puzzled me how
an essentially human concept
like "order" could be
governed by physical law.
Isn't the perception of
order unique to a given
culture, a given viewpoint?
Why then should order
spontaneously decrease?
Bateson supplies an answer: Whatever your (Someday, I'm going to
conception of order, there is always more learn something more
ways for things to be wrong than for about Stat Mech and
things to be right... hence probability see if this qualitative
favors disorder. understanding holds up.)
PRIGOGINE
(SHIFTS)
A social theory of schizophrenia as a
disease of logical context shifts. "Double binds"
Visiting the mother, offering her flowers
saying "Your home is so tidy, I wanted to
offer you something beautiful but messy."
Response: "Oh they're not messy, I'll just
trim some of the brown spots off."
Conclusion: She ignored what was said, and
more than that, tried to transform it into
a different thing, an apology rather than
an attack. Could growing up with someone A beautiful, though
like this lead to schizophrenia? quite messy, theory.
(BLACKBOX)
Perhaps an important Bateson
notion: The Freudians often
imply that all that is
unconscious should be made
conscious.
Bateson pointed out that
many things the mind does
may need to be unconscious,
e.g. control of autonomic
functions.
All questions can not be
asked at once. Engineers
use tricks of abstraction,
and treat sub-assemblies like
"black boxes" to manage this
problem.
When you ask "What would be
a good thing for me to do
this morning?" To deal with
the question, many things
must be kept in black boxes:
What is the GOOD?
What is the SELF?
IGNORANT
--------
IGNORANT
"How ignorant we really are!" He read a great deal, but he
had little real knowledge excepting in the field of
literature. And even in literature... Until now it hadn't
bothered him -- no need for any specialized knowledge to
fight in the Resistance or to found a clandestine newspaper.
He had believed that that was the way it would continue to
be. Obviously he had been wrong. What is an opinion? What
is an idea? What power do words have? On whom? And under
what circumstances? If you publish a newspaper, you have to
be able to answer those questions. And, what with one thing
leading to another, you eventually question everything.
"You have to decide in ignorance," Henri said to himself.
"Even Dubreuilh often acts blindly -- Dubreuilh, with all
his learning." Henri sighed; he was unable to resign
himself to this defeat. There are degrees of ignorance, and
the simple fact was that he was particularly ill-equipped
for the political life. "Well, I'll just have to start
working at it," he said to himself. But if he really wanted
to extend his knowledge, it would require years of study.
Economics, history, philosophy -- he would never be done
with it! What a job! And all that just to come to terms
with Marxism! Writing would be completely out of the
question, and he wanted to write. Well? Whatever happened,
one thing was sure: he wasn't going to let the L'Espor fail
simply because he wasn't an expert on all the fine points of
historical materialism. He closed his eyes. There was
something unfair in the whole thing. He felt obligated,
like everyone else, to take an active interest in politics.
That being the case, it shouldn't require a specialized
apprenticeship; if politics was a field reserved for
technicians, then they shouldn't be asking him to get mixed
up in it.
-- Henri (Camus) as portrayed by
Simone de Beauvoir in _The Mandarins_.
Translated by Leonard M. Friedman
(Dubreuilh is an analog of Sartre.)
So, how do you know
what you need to know?
How do you choose
what information you
need to search for,
in advance of knowing
the information?
--------
META -- the meaning of the doomfile (4/17/92)
Perhaps a new theme of the doomfile
is emerging: the agnony of realizing Tortured by Goedel ?
that rationality is *not* enough...
No matter how carefully you try to
consider all options, no matter how
exhaustively you try and list every
possible permutation... You will never
finish the job.
Somewhere, you are going to have to rely (METHOD, lack of --)
on instinct or intuition. You will have
to make guesses.
We exist without complete information,
without any certain wisdom.
Beyond the Wasteland, there is another Wasteland.
IRONTHORN
Analogy to chess.
At first glance,
a game that should
be ideally suited to
machines. But the
combinatorics of
different moves explode
so quickly, that
the process of parsing
the decision tree
is a very tough
problem. The mental
process actually employed
by humans is deeply
mysterious.
((Another beginning:))
Is the Friday-night whining that DESPERATE
begins this piece about
chasing perfection rather than
settling for the merely
Providential? UTOPIA
I suspect it's about learning
to settle for what is, rather
than striving for the best that
can be.
Accomodating yourself to
short-run imperfections
that may very well
change in the long run.
Still, it could be worth It's about personal limitations,
some time to think about not an ultimate, final
possible ideal endings, constraint on the fate of
even if acheiving them humanity.
seems unlikely... POLY
UNCONSTRAINED
--------
Too many quotations, too much explication of other people's
ideas.
Not enough originality.
Not enough application?
--------
THIRD
In praise of Whigs --
I mean the American political party that used to be the
opposition to the Democrats, until around 1856. As I
understand it, they lost out on the slavery issue, and that
crazy, upstart third party, The Republicans, took over.
I should really read up on this... it's hard for me to
imagine how this could happen. These days, if a third party
starts to gather votes, one (or both) of the other parties
rush in to co-opt their positions. (The reason there's no
Socialist party to speak of in this country is that the
Democratic party *became* the socialist party.)
But I guess the Whigs actually stuck to their ideals (such
as they were), and refused to waffle on slavery. They
weren't the kind of slippery professional politicians
that seem to dominate these days.
And the Democrats deserve some credit, too. They *could*
nominate Tsongas, and have a chance of winning the election.
But instead, they're sticking to their guns and going with A brilliant
Clinton, win or lose (I bet the later). analysis of
the 1992
Not that it matters much to me, since I'm just going to vote election, huh?
Libertarian again. Andre Marrou, this year, if you haven't
heard.
---------
DEMOCRACY
Date: Sun 15 Oct 89 09:48:11-PDT
Democracy vs. Philospher Kings => Republic
Democratic Republic
Problems
Time/Energy/motivation of Politicians focused on re-election
(mirrors the difficulty of direct democracy...)
Politicians change direction once elected. (If we can't judge
issues, how do you judge people?)
Politicians follow polls, which reflect an uniformed/unconsidered
mass of opinion (no advantage in using experts if the experts
mimic the inexpert).
Under-representation of minority opinions.
"Special Interest" problem. Some programs benefit a few enormously
at the slight expense of many. (Over-representation of
minorities!)
Growth of appointed government. Bureaucracy without check by
voters...
From the other direction. Free Assoc some alternate systems. >
Draft (like jury selection)
Random.
Random from a "qualified" pool.
Random nomination, followed by election.
Tweak the parameters.
Longer/shorter terms.
Easier impeachment.
Electronic Republic: continuous votes of confidence?
Run-off elections (eliminate parties)
Tighter qualifications (e.g. standardized tests)
Electronic Democracy (Direct Polling)
Questions posed by elected representatives *or* by petition, etc.
Polling restricted to the "qualified".
Concievably, only economists settle economic ques, etc.
Another direction: select general principles to try and follow.
Maximize Freedom
Open it up: Increase flow of information
Increase power of individuals OVER THEIR OWN LIVES
Markets work.
Privatize gov. operations...
Redirect gov regulation to "fix" markets rather than eliminate
Establish mock markets
Choose your own government:
Allow tradeoffs between freedom and responsibility ?
Diversity is good
Currently, the feds act to homogenize state gov. Try the opposite?
Evolution over Revolution
Experiments should be small scale...
People are slimey
--------
BOUNDARIES
"And even when
the question finds the answer,
Then even then,
There's something like a dancer..."
"Day and Night"
by Jim Carrol
The rational does not exist on I think I first
it's own. You can't proceed came across this
without guesses, intuition, idea in _Zen & the
without art? Art of Motorcycle A book I
Science Maintenance_. first
The Apollonian connected to heard read
and the Dionysian, esthetics. on WBAI,
a dialect ripe for then read
synthesis? myself a
TRAGEDY few times.
I thought
that "cyber- Very well
punk" might written,
become such lots of
a synthesis. interesting
stuff in it,
"I have hopes though it's
that it can be ultimate
a place to take conclusion
new stances across seemed weak.
some of the old Those silly
boundaries -- What do you do diagrams.
passion and PUNK with the (probably A hierarchy
intellect; quite true) with quality
freedom and acusation that on top.
organization." there is no such What do you
-- Me, in REM:4 thing as _do_ with it?
dated July '86. objectivity,
that on some
It mostly hasn't level you always
worked out that see what you look I.e., you see
way, though Bruce for rather than with a sense
Sterling gets "what's actually of values,
close on occasion. there"? of quality...
Like the short Even when I say that
"The Beautiful this accusation is
and the Sublime", "quite true", I'm
where he plays contradicting it,
role reversal Can you objectively
games with know that subjectivity
scientists and rules?
artists. OBJECT
--------
BLAKE
Madmen see outlines Geniuses see outlines
therefore they draw them. therefore they draw them.
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(And the above outline of Blake, was sketched
by BATESON in one of his Metalogues...)
Further, though:
think about Blake's
artwork, all thick lines
and heavy borders.
(Much like comic book
art is today).
And: "If the doors of perception were cleansed
everthing would appear as it is, infinite."
i.e. unbounded?
--------
MONSTERS
In a typical skiffy story the (Better SF, however tends
hero goes on adventures in to be about the transformation
strange places, encountering of humanity into some new state.
monsters of some sort. Much Clarke's _Childhood's End_.
of it is based on the fear of Blish's "Surface Tension".)
becoming a monster (e.g.
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers").
The essence of cyberpunk as
written by Gibson and company Molly with implanted Sterling's
seems to be on the importance mirrorshades and _Schismatrix_
of becoming a monster. blades in her fingers. has a character
A still better example: who's chosen
The intentional transformation "Johnny Mnemonic" to be sealed
of yourself into something... permanently
abnormal. into an exo-
skelleton.
The punk esthetic? Piercing. Also,
Tattoos. Black leather. "Spider Rose"
MAGIC (?)
"The superhero is just the monster in bright light."
--- Fritz Leiber
--------
SUPERHERO 12/28/92
A brief history of superhero comicbooks:
Back in the 50's, monsters were all the
rage. EC comic books were selling really My favorite example:
well, doing a lot of clever, graphic a story about modern
horror stuff. A psychologist named vampires that don't
Frederick Werthiem decided that this was all hunt for themselves,
harmful to young delicate minds, and this but rather go to
being the Fascist Fifties, the idea of restaurants where
censoring them caught on. Thus the you can fill a glass from
Comics Code was born, and the monster a tap sunk into the neck
was driven underground. of a fresh corpse.
The thing that filled the void
left by the monster was the
superhero. A character with some
bizarre capabilities that need to
be hidden from other people, who
only went out in strange skintight
disguises, and worked outside of I remember sitting in anthropology
the law. A Marvel comics innovation 101, as the prof. listed the
in the sixties: rather than characteristics of witches
these heroes being beloved and universal in all cultures, and I
respected by all, they're feared realized that Spider-Man fit most
and hunted. of them.
"The superhero is just the monster in bright light."
--- Fritz Leiber
The premise of a typical superhero
comic is usually that some strange
accident has occured that confers
great power on one single individual.
This is pathetic.
We have a need to believe in the
value of our own individuality, in
spite of the reality that almost
all people are _replaceable_. An
employee quits, you hire
another one, if a lover dies, you
get another one.
The difference between
fantasy and science fiction?
A lone magic sword
vs. a factory that manufactures
magic swords, a world populated
by people with magic swords.
--------
TRAGEDY
From "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music"
by Friedrich Nietzsche (trans. Walter Kaufman):
The joyous necessity of the dream
experience has been embodied by
the Greeks in their Apollo:
Apollo, the god of all plastic
energies, is at the same time the
soothsaying god, He, who (as the
etymology of the name indicates)
is the "shining one," the deity
of light, is also ruler over the
beautiful illusion of the inner
world of fantasy. [...] But we
must also include in our image of
Apollo that delicate boundary
which the dream image must not
overstep lest it have a
pathological effect [...] We
must keep in mind the measured
restraint, the freedom from the
wilder emotions, that calm of the
sculptor god. His eye must be
"sunlike," as befits his origin;
even when it is angry and
distempered it is still hallowed
by beautiful illusion [...]
[...]Schopenhauer has depicted
for us the tremendous _terror_
which seizes man when he is
suddenly dumbfounded by the
cognitive form of phenomena
because the principle of
sufficient reason, in some one of
its manifestations, seems to
suffer an exception. If we add
to this terror the blissful
ecstasy that wells from the
innermost depths of man, indeed
of nature, at this collapse of
the _principium individuationis_,
we steal a glimpse into the
nature of the _Dionysian_, which
is brought home to us most
intimately by the analogy of Note that this is an
intoxication. "analogy": the point then
is not to be drunk all
Even under the influence of the the time, but to be drunk
narcotic draught, of which songs without drinking.
of all primitive men and peoples
speak, or with the potent coming DRUGS (?)
of spring that penetrates all
nature with joy, these Dionysian
emotions awake, and as they grow
in intensity everything
subjective vanishes into complete
self-forgetfulness. In the
German Middle Ages, too, singing
and dancing crowds, ever
increasing in number, whirled
themselves from place to place
under this same Dionysian
impulse. [...] There are some
who, from obtuseness or lack of
experience, turn away from such
phenomena as from
"folk-diseases," with contempt of
pity born of consciousness of
their own "healthy-mindedness."
But of course such poor wretches
have no idea how corpselike and
ghostly their so-called
"healthy-mindedness" looks when
the glowing life of the Dionysian
revelers roars past them.
((If this thing weren't overburdened with quotations already,
I'd insert a section called COMEDY with quotes from self-proclaimed
Apolloinan, Any Rand. Equal time, and all.))
--------
OBJECT Objectivity beseiged 7/4/92
Let's get more concrete.
Look at the front page of
the Times. Occasionally
there are articles labeled
"News Analysis", but
most of the articles could
be labeled this way.
Nearly ever article has
a slant, frequently
reflecting the bias of
the writer more than that It's not unusual for the
of the editors. front page to be going one
way, and the editorial
These are writers page going another.
raised on the idea that
there is no such thing
as objective reporting,
hence they make no A National Public Radio news
attempt to get headline: "Health Care Advocates
anywhere near it. Recommend National Health Policy."
If you read to the end What's a "Health Care Advocate"?
of the article, you Does someone oppose health care?
find that it has a
conclusion on it, Can you imagine someone calling
as though it were an themselves that who isn't an
essay... though sometimes advocate of socialized medicine?
the conclusion is
inserted in the form The entire headline is manufactured.
of a quote. Daily plugs are made on the current
hot items, irrespective of whehter
"I didn't editorialize. there have been any developments.
I just reported the facts:
that's what the guy said."
I submit that this is all
a cop-out: Objectivity may
be difficult, pure objectivity
may be impossible, but you can
get a lot closer to it than
this.
Telling "both sides of the story." Covering the
is the _minimum_ that should be nth side is
done. This much isn't _that_ hard. the real trick.
I once spent a lot of time arguing
with a philosophy student who Awful examples:
argued for a kind of subjectivity, Compernicus was
against my "scientific realism". right for the wrong
Copernicus's discoveries were inspired reasons (orbits are
by a quest for the perfection of the ellipses), and
circle, Einstein said "God does not play Einstein seems to have
dice" and pursued his vision of a non-random wasted decades of
universe, why should he feel bound his life running
to a notion of the objective existance away from the randomness
of reality? of quantum mechanics.
All I could say is that the universe
shows no great tendency to align itself
in accordance with our desires.
Things are. We believe.
And belief does not effect what is. Not usually.
Sometimes I think
this is only an
approximation, though.
It really is hard
to see the completely
unexpected.
SOCIAL-REGISTER
So the things you "see",
that which can be
observed, is at least
partly determined by
what you believe, what you
expect to see.
--------
MAGIC 7/7/92
Once upon a time, I was methodically reading through the
Science Fiction and Fantasy books in my grade school
library, because I reasoned that I wouldn't have access to
them forever and I should get through them before I read the
stuff my brother's had at home.
This was a really dumb idea, because the kind of fiction they
tended to stock in the school library was intended to encourage
Good Attitudes.
For example, I remember a tedious story about a young boy who was
selected to be one of the first astronauts (because weight
considerations precluded sending an adult). The entire book
focuses on his training, and in the end they change their minds
and he *doesn't* get to go. One scene I remember: the boy is
briefly separated from his bodyguards in a crowd at a fair. A
gang of kids hassles him, and he meekly gets on his knees and
licks their boots as ordered. The moral being that he swallowed
his rage and avoided doing anything that might get him hurt and
put the mission in jeopardy. So, remember boys and girls,
passivity is the better part of valor. (In reality, guess what
happens after you lick their boots?)
(I could've been reading Heinlein, or Asimov, or something when I
was ten, but *no* I had to read dreck like this instead.)
Here's a "fantasy" book I read around the same time: A boy gets
this one bottle of a magic potion that lets him sprout wings and
fly. He spends one summer sneaking out at night and flying around
doing neat things, always coming home and speaking the magic words
(or whatever) that transform him back. Finally, the potion is
running out, and he uses the last dose to produce his last set of
wings. He decides to spy on his mother and her new suitor who are
sitting on the front porch. He flies over there and lands on the
roof, eavesdropping for a while, but he makes a noise: they're
going to look on the roof. So what does he do? He could fly
away, but they'd _see_ him with his wings, and maybe that would
even scare away his mom's boyfriend-- so he says the
transformation spell, and all they discover is an embarrassed kid
caught playing around on the roof.
So, just because it's dressed up like SF & F doesn't mean it's not
really mundane. This stuff is all about the importance of fitting
in, of being normal and grown-up and responsible. "Home, sweet
closet."
Me, I say, all this business about "magic" is symbolic of other
things.... imagination, independence, intelligence, power...
And if life hands you a wild card, you should play it just as high
as you can, even if it means being different and strange.
And whatever you do, don't let anyone tell you to throw
away your last wings.
All of this is one of the reasons
I like things like "Peter Pan" or
"Bell, Book and Candle". They
_look_ like they're going to end up being
a celebration of being normal and
boring, but instead some people slip
through the net. There is more than
one way to go.
--------
WORD -- Poetry, the SF style, and points south. (6/92)
((I'm gonna see where this goes, and avoid being too anal
about subject headings... ))
Once there were "poetry readings".
Now there are "spoken word performances".
(And "stand-up comedy" I suppose.
All hail the spirt of Lenny Bruce).
Think about the SF Poetry style, 6-20-92
The S&M G&L subcultures. Children of punk,
of Jim Carrol... William Burroughs?
It may not be great poetry,
but it's not bad as journalism,
Or maybe as rock n' roll
without the music.
Stark, nasty, _honest_... POETS
Danielle Willis in _Dogs in Lingerie_
has a prose piece about the transvestite,
who complains about Art Photographers
who always want you to look _ugly_,
using bright lights to show off every
wrinkle and zit. She/he complains,
what's wrong with looking good, with
glamour?
But isn't Willis herself the prose
equivalent of an Art Photographer?
She tries to make things as ugly as possible...
Glorification is _not_ the punk esthetic... PUNK
Connect this to:
Paul Goodman again, the "gentler curiosity".
Contrast this to Sturgeon, the feeling
you get reading a work like _Godbody_, compared GODBODY
to, say, the _High Risk_ anthology.
Another connection: "Diplomacy is what you use on your
enemies." The idea that there should be no need to be
polite, to take it easy, to be _nice_...
Some data: A poster found in the Ground Zero coffee house,
on the lower Haight.
NO BULLSHIT
Poetry/Writing Workshop...
FOCUS ON POETRY
toward developing
terse decisive
language, to
set aside
the myth of "writing
poems..."
Logo: A medical diagram of a human heart,
subdivided and with sections labeled,
reminiscent of a butcher's diagram.
(Workshop by: Richard Loranger)
--------
6-24-92
Ah the Satoris of yesterday...
They just don't hold their zing, do they?
The above was such a hot set of insights, as
I wandered around the Castro, a little short on
sleep, a little high on caffiene...
Go back to the modoid file, written that evening.
I bet that doesn't look as hot, either...
Still, the work is all good, even if it
doesn't seem great anymore... and maybe
I owe it to myself to carry through on
it even if it's no longer so exciting...
Maybe I need to psyche myself up about
it, get excited about it again, and not
be so harshly critical of my own ideas?
And maybe this isn't such a digression from the above
little satori?
--------
SPLIT - Living between planets. 6-27-92
(In a divided self?)
Doing some capsule reviews of San Francisco bookstores, I
stop in at "A Different Light", a gay and lesbian bookstore
on Castro Street.
I feel noticeable nervous about being mistaken for gay,
which is weird since that's not really one of my phobias.
Certainly I didn't feel out of place the last time I was
here. But then, that was with a girl on a date, so it wasn't
really an issue...
That was the time K. had called me out of the blue, and
asked me to go see "Unbearable Lightness of Being" with her
at the Castro Theatre.
I am a very weird, underground character, to someone as
fundamentally straight as K, so taking me to SF to see an
arty soft core porn movie in a gay neighborhood probably
seemed like an obvious idea.
But to someone really into the Bohemian scene, I am far too
straight, too conservative, to really belong.
For example, last Saturday, I met C., a woman who lives in
SF who was down at the Edge to help "George" do the light
show. She was talking about how she was on mushrooms that
night in order to stay awake for the show, but she felt like
she needed to eat something to cut the effect a little bit.
She was studying horticulture at SF State I think.
When I told her I was into Materials Science, she seemed to
seize on the phrase "materialistic" and went into an
enviromental screed, increasingly vitriolic, because my
reactions were too non-commital.
Living between worlds, across borders.
--------
((connect to Jennifer Blowdryer piece, about seeming like rough
trade to some yuppie lesbian... Thinking about the way
people see you.))
--------
((Connects all over the place... problems of being both
athletic and intellectual, for example.
Or the DESPERATE node, about being uninterested in
accumulating wealth, or projecting ideological uniformity...
Or maybe to places like LESBIAN-DETECTOR?
All has to do with not being someone who fits in.
Does it also connect to BOUNDARIES? ))
-------
PEEVES
Another node: 6-20-92
The peeves that are not peeves,
the mountainous molehills.
Where *would* this be filed?
((
Aluminum foil placement.
Shoes in the living room floor.
(A few fragments of glass?)
(The Eric Holtz affair?)
(and... the case of the missing house log book. 12/28/92.)
))
Why argue about such silly things? TIT (?)
Because it's just a symbol of a larger issue.
Who has control?
A sense of outrage,
fighting for justice
even in trivial causes.
--------
EDLET -- Some outakes from a letter to Ed. 4-20-92 and 5-31-92
((Integrate this stuff better into the doomfile.))
GRUMBLES
Was _Grumbles_ included in that package? Maybe I wrote you something
about it already... I thought that the section about his struggles
with Dalgliesh (?) over the Juveniles was the most interesting
section. The general review of his career was somewhat interesting...
I think of him as being a Campbell writer, but really he spent very
little of his career with Campbell. Only a few novels and about 20
short stories (not even all that much of _The Past Through Tomorrow_)
were born under Campbell's wing. Most of his great work was done after
his marriage to Virginia. Speaking of which: why didn't he and
Virginia have any children? All of those later stories put so much
emphasis on the importance of raising kids... was that some kind of
compensation for his wife's sterility (or lack of interest)?
Heinlein's attitude toward _Starship Troopers_ was interesting: back
then, he called it an inquiry, a book that tries to raise questions.
In _Expanded Universe_, an older, crankier, Heinlein seems to be
calling it a book full of answers...
5-31-92
I can't say I recommend Heinlein's _Job_. I thought it started out
okay, but by the end it descends into another arbitrary Universe, an
"Everyone is Right", whatever-you-believe-is-true cosmology. On the
other hand, I read _The Cat Who Walks Through Walls_ and _To Sail
Beyond The Sunset_ recently and I was actually a bit impressed with
_To Sail_. It's not great (it's mostly a sequel to "Da Capo" from
_Time Enough_, the best things about it being the turn-of-the-century
stuff, the Howard family libertines living undercover in a puritanical
world), but at least there's a little bit of reality injected into all
of the sexual wish-fufillment. Before it's over, our perfectly
well-adjusted Heinlein heroes have to deal with divorce, and there's
an interesting bit about psychological problems in families where
incest is an accepted form of recreation.
POETS
Poetry... why so little good stuff? I don't know I suppose. I've
surrounded myself here with a few stacks of poetry I've been flipping
through off and on, trying to see if there's anything of obvious
goodness to offer.
One thing that's impressed me lately is that there are interesting
things happening out in the world of the San Francisco S&M lesbians.
You may have heard about Susie Bright, the former editor of "On Our
Backs" and author of "Susie Sexperts Lesbian Sex World"... the people
at "On Our Backs" have been fighting against the rigid 70's style
feminists (sometimes called "militant vanilas"), essentially fighting
for their right to play around with domination games, leather, dildos,
etc without being accused of being Bad Feminists or something. A few
years ago there was some heavy controversy arising from attempts at
holding S&M fashion shows at women's conferences. (and as far as I
can tell, the "militant vanillas" have lost, and feminists like
Dworkin and MacKinnon are now considered extremists far from the
mainstream of feminism). Anyway, this culture has produced some
things like the book I have in front of me DOGS IN LINGERIE by
Danielle Willis. The cover features the author posing in various
shiny black vinyl outfits, so in many ways this work is packaged and
sold like rock and roll: the image of the artist is an important part
of the effect.
From "Pigbaby":
They say I'm strange and I wish I were
but every time I've gone to the cemetery and
laid my head on the earth
listening for muffled breathing and
the stirring of limbs
I've heard nothing MONSTERS
but beetles
Another book, slimer but similarly packaged from the Zeitgeist Press,
"Where's My Wife" by Jennifer Blowdryer. This is from "Why White
People Are Quaint":
This thrills me. It's been obvious for some time now
that white people are on the decline, just like the
British Empire once was. To go from being on the
decline, the dullest, least relevant, whiniest, out-of-
touchiest; to being quaint, is more than I hoped to
occur in my own humble generation.
Once your're quaint, which my husband, baby and I
will be, you can be sought after for meaning. Like
people go to New Mexico and buy goods from
overweight American Indians who have to cooly play up
to their customers, a constantly flip flopping seller/buyer
game.
A couple of things from the _High Risk_ anthology. Pat Califia's
"Heroin":
you wrap the narrow belt
you used to cinch up your own forearm
around my neck and
pull it tight as you
fuck me from behind
my face turns into a ceramic mask
I cannot breathe but
oh God I come I go
swimming fast underwater
like a crocodile after carrion or a mate
and I understand what you say about
how it makes you mean when you do a lot of it
it is the gift that heroin brings
to make you capable of doing
whatever you must
to get more of it
And the first line of "Butch" by Jane Delyn:
She was so ugly I found her attractive, though of course I
didn't want anybody to see me with her.
And "Black Russian" a song by a local band named X-Tal:
You and me, we belong together
Like Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky
We can talk about our endless pain
And the failure of our ideology
Spill your guts all over a canvas
And from my exile I'll fire off another tract
We walk a thin line between faith and fate
But right now I'd rather not talk about _that_, so...
Pour me another Black Russian
And put off the serious part of the discussion
It's my downfall, it's my poison
It's my platform, it's my position
So: is any of this "great"? Maybe yes, maybe no. These people don't
really have any deep underlying grasp of how the world works, so
they're nowhere near the level of, say, Blake's "Marriage of Heaven
and Hell" (and maybe not even that of Ginsberg's "Howl"). At their
worst they're just paintings on a black velvet underground. But at
their best they have an uncompromising will to honesty (which they
sometimes confuse with pessimism). They're trying hard to speak the
truth about their own experience (even though it sometimes seems to
degenerate into a contest to see who can be the most degenerate...)
and I think it works by the standards of today, if not of eternity.
And does it really need to work for an eternity? Maybe I've said this
to you before, but I really do think an obssession with "immortal" art
may be besides the point... Science Fiction, for example, may be more
like technical literature or perhaps newspaper writing, than a typical
entry into a Norton's Anthology of whatever. While it lives, it
performs a certain function, and once it's filed away as history,
perhaps it can perform a different function, but that isn't and
shouldn't be the point of doing it in the first place.
From my file of favorite Algis Budry's quotes:
For them it was always now -- _this_ piece of work, for its own sake
in the fatigue-ridden reaches of _this_ night, for _this_ reader and
for what you thought of yourself.
It shows. This stuff does not grow old. It is born of everything you
had thought and tried up to _now_, and it cannot grow old, for nothing
about it was postponed for a time which might not come.
(that was from the May 1978 issue of F&SF)
And as for good rock n' roll: no people haven't given up. There are a
lot of people trying different things... Right now, I like X-Tal and
Bad Religion, myself: something like traditional Punk Rock by some
people who believe in lyrics, in songs that are about something. I
also like some Industrial Music (roughly, a kind of pounding, noisy,
synthesizer created music, that frequently sounds something like some
clanking nineteenth century machine), though the lack of lyrics limits
a lot of what's been done with it.
So, what did you think of the Havering demo tape I sent you? The
Havering was a band put together by some freinds of mine. I thought
they were really good, though they never took it very far, largely
because they were too busy getting degrees in engineering, medicine
and english. They played at parties at our house a half dozen times
and they were always well recieved: this is a difficult trick,
really, since usually a band that doesn't do covers of beach boys
songs or something impresses people as being too weird to be
listenable. Anyway, they've broken up now that Jeff is doing his
internship up in Seattle and Yusuf is working for the European Space
Agency in Holland on some sort of Gravity Probe project. But the fact
that bands like this exist, writing original songs and trying to tap
into some kind of Dionysian spirit and also make some sort of
statement about they way the world is, when the chances of actually
making any money at it is so slim... I think it means that people
haven't quite given up. There's a lot of energy out there, though it
seems increasingly that the slick world of CD distribution is designed
to insulate people from it, though I don't quite understand how it is
that this all works, and maybe that's a topic for another time (the
central question though: why do CDs cost twice what vinly does, when
they're production costs are the same or lower?).
ECODOOM
Now, as for eco-doom... which of "the environmentalist predictions of
the 60's" is it that you think "do indeed seem to be coming true"? I
mean, the ones that I'd worry about the most are things like the
Rain Forests; maybe the Ozone hole; maybe global warming... but these
warnings aren't so obviously coming true, and even if they are true, I
have my doubts that they're really global crash we're-all-gonna-die
problems.
Maybe you're getting too much of your info from the newspapers/TV? I
see that stuff, but I also see a lot of things in the Libertarian
press (magazines like Reason and Liberty) that make it clear that much
of the environmental warnings you hear are more religious than
scientific. Which isn't to say that I think you can use Reason &
Liberty as sole sources of scientific information on environmental
problems... sometime I'd like to sit down and research this a bit, to
see what the real problems are...
Anyway, to take an example where I'm convinced the libs have it right:
There was a scientist working for the EPA investigating acid rain. He
came to the conclusion that acid rain wasn't really a problem at all.
There was an outcry from environmetalist types about this: obvious
government propaganda, right? Except that the EPA didn't like it much
either: bureaucracies don't like it much when you undercut one of
their reasons for existance. Krug refused to recant, however and has
been fired and essentially black-listed, despite the lack of any
scientific attack on his work. (I'll try and send you some copies of
the articles about this, to see what you think of them.)
Another impession I get from the same sources (without any insistance
that it's correct, you understand): The global warming problem isn't
at all an established fact, despite the line delivered by the popular
press (even some of the more technicaly respectible branches of it
like _Science_ and _Scientific American_. It's alleged that both of
these have a habit of rejecting articles that might lead people to the
"wrong" conclusion on politicized issues, e.g. "Star Wars", global
warming, etc. I was reading an article in _Science_ about the missing
Carbon -- thus far the increased production of CO2 by human beings is
being absorbed by something out there, the best guess being that
plants are using it -- but the spin control on the article was
definitely oriented in the direction of preventing the reader from
thinking "Huh, so maybe this CO2 thing isn't such a big deal.").
So, I don't know entirely what to make of all this, except that my gut
level impression is that whenever you hear people raving about some
environmental problem, it's usually really exagerated. The way the
debate over nuclear power was conducted is more the rule rather than
the exception.
Which isn't to say that these things should be shrugged off... loss of
bio-diversity probably bothers me the most of the various problems
I've heard about.
I'm not convinced that the ozone hole over the Antarctic is a really
on the expansion, but I really would like to see a non-alarmist
examination of what the stakes really are. For example, let's say
you've got an increase in the UV in the southern hemisphere. Does
that do anything more catastrophic than up the skin cancer rates of
some species? (At a guess, a break down in the ocean ecology is the
thing we should be watching out for).
So what is it that makes you so certain of the doom of the earth
(outside of wishful thinking?).
WELLES
I also spend a fair amount of time reading different things, like H.G.
Wells _Outline of History_ for example... a book I picked up because I
expected it would be a good overview of a field I'm weaker in than I
should be, but written from a point of view I'd be in sympathy with.
I find that it's a bit me than this: it was written between the World
Wars, and leads up to an argument for the formation of a world
government. This isn't a project I believe in myself (I'm more
inclined to Dyson's "defense-dominated world" of stable independant
states, where a single political error is less likely to eat the whole
planet. But I find it isn't as easy to sneer at Wells for being niave
as I might have thought. He was not a believer in the League of
Nations, though he hoped it might be succeeded by something better (as
the U.S. Constituition followed the Articles of Confederacy). He
fully understands that the line of progress that history traces is a
very rough thing at best, and that there may well be many disasters
ahead. What I find particularly interesting is that I gather that
this book is the first attempt at writing a history of humanity, as
opposed to a nationally oriented history... Wells believed that it was
important for us to start thinking of humanity as a whole, hence his
history was an important first step toward his World Government. In
other words, he set out to conquer the world with a book.
NETACT
And there are things that I write, largely for the world of unix
machines and the usenet... I spent some time attacking Thomas Disch
and then wound up spending a lot of time defending him when I realized
how silly most peoples complaints were about his work. I've been
arguing with a standard issue liberal at Stanford here, who calls
himself Dove (I don't remember if I ever mentioned this to you, but
for possibly silly reasons, I am called Doom, specifically
doom@leland.stanford.edu, should you ever come up with internet access
somehow) about some local issues like the speech codes at Stanford
intended to prohibit racist attacks. I've also been trying to write
on various subjects (really all subjects) in a single file (the
"doomfile") which is not read-protected (so that anyone at Stanford
can look at it). I've been using a format that's supposed to be
somewhat hypertext-like -- somewhere between poetry and a flow chart.
I think it's an interesting project, though for the amount of work I
put into it, it would be nice if there was someway of actually
publishing it so as to make some money off of it... the trouble is
that it really does need to be in electronic format so you can use
search commands on it to jump around (and currently, it's set up with
GNU Emacs in mind as the editor to be used to view it): so printouts,
paper versions aren't really good enough. If I ever get around to it,
I'll down load a version to a 5-1/4 IBM floppy and see what you think
of it (it's up to arond 300K now).
--------
FLIRT
It occurs to me I was once disgusted with the
concept of flirtation.
Going through the motions of acting like you
want to sleep with someone, usually without
being serious.
Dancing around the topic.
Delaying/Hiding from the decision?
Stalling?
What purpose is there to it, except for
some kind of twisted game of deception
or evasion?
"No, I'm not really interested in adultery.
We're only flirting."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to lead you on.
I was just flirting."
I really disliked the idea,
in part because I figured I
was horrible at it, because
I usually cared too much to
be able to think fast enough
to pull it off.
In fact, I suspected that that
was one of the functions of
flirtation, to screen out the
"desperate", i.e. to select for
people who don't really care.
But these days, I fall in love
much less quickly.
I tend to expect that things
will not work out.
And I find it really
frustrating, dealing with
women who seem incapable
of dealing with men (or maybe, just with me?)
on any level.
Far better a woman who
knows how to flirt, Maybe, this is a decent
at least you can talk example of the problems
to each other for awhile with feminist thought
and find out if you're of the 70's: by attacking
interested in anything all sexual/gender-related
else. behavior at once, you're
left with "consciousness"
And it's certainly better and especially self-
than the dreaded invisibility consciousness raised to
treatment, no? the max, but you're
paralyzed. You have no
alternative customs
you can use to relate
to people.
----------
GHOST
((I don't know what should go here. Best typo of the week:
the file called ghost is about "Exercising ghosts".
something too recent and someone
too local to be made public as it
stands.... Eventually I'll trim it
down some and stick it in here...
Or maybe I should just babble a bit about Playing Ghost....
Walking the streets alone at night, glancing at glowing
TV sets inside windows (connect KEROUAC, connect BRONSON?),
or hanging back at parties, watching what happens ("They should
hang a sign on you that says 'Observer'") or the game of
Light Ray I played when I was around ten, trying to travel at night
without being seen by anyone in a car... )))
BRONSON
"Going down that long, lonsome highway...
Gonna, live life my way..."
A very sixties TV show: like a more
loosely structured version of _The
Fugitive_, in which Michael Parks For a James Dean clone,
plays a dropout, a drifter, who he was pretty cool.
rides across the country on his Sometimes he was the avatar
motorcycle. A repeated theme: of cool.
people react weirdly to him because
he's on a motorcycle (Hell's Angels Something like Mickey Rourke,
fantasies), but he's actually very I guess.
soft-spoken, very polite.
Anyway, I thought it was great back then.
I figured I couldn't carry enough books on a
motorcycle, though, so I tired to figure out
how I could squeeze my life into a van. (A very 70s notion, that.)
Never did quite make it.
Though I live in a room
not much bigger than a van.
CAVE
--------
KEROUAC
((Insert K. quote here: "Let the movement of the mind
provide the structure of the artwork." Is that from Mexico
City Blues? ))
The excesses of Kerouac's "spontaneous prose" hurt many of
his books (_Dr. Sax_ is infinitely tedious, for example), but
several of them work quite well. _The Dharma Bums_ seems to
be his best. _The Subterraneans_ is also pretty tight.
And even the ever popular, notorious _On the Road_... well,
what *is* the point of the book, except a celebration of
spontaneity, of aimlessness, of dropping out of the
incredibly anal, conformist 1950s world? How could this
theme be better executed than with an improvised, random
structure? And what
does the
structure
of the
doomfile
imply?
Ultimately, Between
no questions poetry and
Because... should be flow charts
the rhetorical rhetorical. is the dream;
(But the question question is To be logical
was clearly a device to So, I try but not linear;
not "rhetorical" block further to answer. To be artistic
so this inquiry. and yet rational.
retrograde It's pretentious
digression but deceptive, BOUNDARIES
ought to go forcing a sense
elsewhere.) that the issue Any node may be
is settled when a step in a
(Which ques? it may not be. chain, or it may
structure of a branch point
doomfile, no in a tree.
it was merely
left dangling. Streams of
Structure of K, consciousness,
however, that's organized into
a screaming rhet a logical web.
ques fersure.)
Spontaniety,
followed by
editing, an
attempt at
eliminating
reduncancies.
What do I hope to
build with this
structure?
--------
DISSONANCE -- To seek cognitive dissonance?
I watch the way most people
charge ahead with their own
train of thought, refusing to
consider possible counter-
arguments, refusing to see
anything that might contradict
their world view.
One thought: How can I get
through to people like this?
What's the right approach
to plant doubt in the mind
of a fanatic?
A second thought: What if I But be reasonable! I put so
am also a person like this? much energy into questioning
myself... it's so rare when
What can you do to check your someone else can challenge
own blind spots? me with a thought I haven't
had before.
One answer: pay attention to
the enemy. Take their arguments It's entirely possible
seriously. Make sure you can that I spend too much
really refute them to your own time keeping myself honest.
satisfaction.
Here's an assignment To really
But this is *really* hard work. for me: read accomplish
It's so much easier to learn Thurow's "Zero-Sum anything
something from sources with Solution". you have
prejudices that agree with your to take
own. The elements fit into your Choosing such a stand,
own conceptual framework assignments is try and
smoothly, without a lot of difficult. How defend a
reshuffling and reorganizing. do you judge position.
the value of
Much more efficient for me to a work when Whether or
read Milton Friedman then, your first not it's
rather than Lester Thurow. impulse is to an honest
say it has none? position or
A perfect example: a correct
H.G. Well's _The Outline position...
of History_. maybe that's
someone
I felt like my knowledge else's
of Western history MANIFESTO problem.
was really weak, so I
selected a book that You can rely on adversaries
gives a good over view to arise around you, without
of exactly the areas creating them in your own
I wanted to, but also head.
approaches things with
the same set of values
that I have (importance And I certainly didn't need
of human freedom, of to read some trendy stuff
technical progress, etc.) SIZE repeatedly emphasizing things like:
I was pleased to see that The dark ages weren't so
A similar Wells is hardly a flaming dark.
idea: to socialist, though of course Women were alive back then.
learn he's no Von Mises. Western culture isn't
about the perfect.
bible I And non-white people are
should The book also scores as cool, too.
track a historical document
down in it's own right: I can
Asimov's get a sense of what a
Guide, prominent intellectual of
and read the time thought about
about it the shape of the world
from the between the World Wars.
point of
view of a In the final section,
rational he goes into the case for
atheist. a world government. LONG_VIEW
Asimov's understand-
ing is not likely
to be very deep, but
depth can be an
impediment in the
early stages of learning
about something.
Maybe I should supply my
own "deep" interpretations
without having to fight
Asimov's.
--------
LONG_VIEW -- H.G. Wells and the _Outline of History_
H.G. Welles, in his _Outline of SCALE
History_, around p. 815 (of the
3rd edition) discusses the
conclusion of Gibbons _The
Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_. He uses his writings
as an example of the blindness There's some irony in this in
of the men of his class and that Wells _Outline_ can also
times. be used this way. ARYAN
Gibbon's writing around 1780, Wells, writing around 1920 in
wonders if the British Empire his final chapter "The Next
could fall just as Rome fell. Stage of History" argues that
a world government is
Gibbon: "Europe is now divided necessary and desireable.
into twelve powerful, though
unequal kingdoms, three WORLDGOV
respectable commonwealths, and a
variety of smaller, though
independent, states; the chances
of royal and ministerial talents According to Wells,
are multiplied, at least with the Gibbon is a "gentleman"
number of its rulers.... The who expects that all rulers
abuses of tyranny are restrained will naturally be "gentlemen",
by the mutual influence and fear by the nature of things.
of shame; republics have acquired
order and stability; monarchies
have imbibed the principles of
freedom, or, at least, of
moderation; and some sense of
honour and justice is introduced Wells chides Gibbon for
into the most defective being blind to the internal
constitutions by the general pressures building up that
manner of the times. In peace, would lead to the conflicts
the progress of knowledge and between the rulers and the
industry is accelerated by the ruled.
emulation of so many active
rivals: in war, the European And further: "Gibbon forgets
forces are exercised by temperate here that cannon and the
and undecisive contests." fundamentals of modern
military method came to
Europe with the Mongols."
"Europe is secure from any future
irruption of Barbarians; since, (Common wishful thinking in
before they can conquer, they must SF: anyone advanced enough
cease to be barabrous..." to cross interstellar space
will be socially advanced enough
to treat us better than we've
treated "inferior" cultures in
the past.
"The Day the Earth Stood Still".)
An important lesson, I think, of the _Outline_:
p. 1091
"History has never gone simply
forward."
The curve of history is not smooth.
Extrapolating from current conditions
is always dangerous, since they may be
a minor deviation from the broad trend.
It wasn't until two centuries after
Roger Bacon that Sir Francis Bacon
was able to popularize the idea of
Science.
If Roger Bacon had to wait that long,
how can I complain if humanity seems
to be sleepwalking?
p. 1100 "One cannot foretell the
surprises or disappointments the
future has in store."
"It may be that 'private enterprise' The lesson of service?
will refuse to learn the lesson of How exactly should an
service without some quite enlightened capitalist
catastrophic revolution, and that a behave?
phase of confiscation and Current libertarian
amateurish socialistic government This, seems thought would be
lies before us." all too that this
prophetic. enlightenment,
this altruism,
"Human history becomes more Oft quoted. should be
and more a race between Like Fuller's unnecessary.
education and catastrophe." Choice between
"Utopia or Oblivion"
"Yet clumsily or smoothly, the
world, it seems, progresses and
will progress."
--------
WORLDGOV -- World Government.
H.G. Wells indulges in much wishful
thinking about the prospects for
a world government:
"Our true nationality is
mankind." p.1087
Oddly enough (to my thinking)
Wells ties his hope for a
world government into a hope
for a new religious revival. ONERELIGION
I'm tempted to sneer at Wells naivete:
did he believe that the War to End All Wars might
have really done it? That the League of Nations
was really the ultimate hope of mankind?
But Wells isn't quite that silly
"History has never gone simply
forward." p. 1091
He's well aware that there may yet
be many set backs, many more wars,
and he doesn't believe in the
League, so much as hold out hope
for a successor (as the US Const.
followed the Articles of Confed.)
A "world league of men".
Also: "It may well be
that several partial leagues may
precede any world league. The
common misfortunes and urgent
common needs of Europe and Asia
may be more efficacious in bringing
the European and Asiastic states
to reason and a sort of unity,
than the mere intellectual and This is not so very far
sentimental ties of the United from the current state
States and Great Britain and of the world. (5/6/92)
France." p. 1091
And I can't help but be impressed
with the audacity of Well's project.
I gather that his _Outline_ is really
the first attempt at a World History.
He attempted it not just because he
thought it was a neat project, but
because he thought of it as a first step
toward global unification.
"There can be no peace now, we
realize, but a common peace in all
the world; no prosperity but a
general prosperity. But _there can
no common peace and prosperity
without common historical ideas._" p.vi
There's the goal, stated right up
front, right out in the open:
To conquer the world... with a book. "break some necks
for me." ?
I'm almost tempted to join in on his
project. Perhaps a new set of
footnotes to the _Outline_, and a
supplement bringing it up to date.
But still, I can't help reject this
obssession with unification:
One world,
One religion,
One neck.
MULTIPLICITY (as opposed to Unity)
I am more persuaded by Freeman
Dyson who argues against the One
World idea as not being robust
enough. All of humanity in a
single system means that a single
error can condemn it. In his
_Weapons and Hope_ he describes a
vision of a "defense dominated"
world.
National boundaries as firebreaks
to protect the whole of humanity
against a system wide mistake.
Being a creature of my own time, I
tend to focus on diversity over
unification, and I assume it is
difficult for a single government
to allow for it.
I hope for a stable matrix within
which different cultures can
independently exist.
(Sterling's _Schismatrix_) The
ultimate fragmentation of mankind,
as we learn to modify ourselves,
and each make different choices of
direction.
(Sargent's _The Golden Space_ also
deserves mention).
An opposing view:
Gerald Feinberg's book... suggesting that
humanity should choose a single goal for
itself. _The Prometheus Project_, from 1968.
Feinberg has
written a number
of other books.
I have _Solid
Clues_. There's
also a book about
the consequences
of growth that
I should read...
Wells p.1099: "There are unhopeful
prophets who see in the gathering
together of men into one community
the possibility of violent race
conflicts, conflicts for
"ascendancy," but that is to
suppose that civilization is
incapable of adjustments by which
men of different qualities and
temperaments and appearences will
live side by side, following
different roles and contributing
diverse gifts. The weaving of
mankind into one community does not
imply the creation of a homogenous
community..."
"The community to which we may be
moving will be more mixed -- which
does not necessarily mean more
interbred -- more various and more
interesting than any existing
community. Communities all to one
pattern, like boxes of toy
soldiers, are things of the past
rather than the future."
--------
SCALE
From Paul Goodman's _Five Years: GOODMAN
Thoughts During a Useless Time_:
It was 35 years, not one lifetime,
between the death of Bach and Mozart.
All that style was almost a fad! It
was not two long lives between the
settlement of Boston and the
Revolution! I am 45 years old and I
recall most of my life, such as it has
been; it takes 120 such remembered
spans and we have all of human culture
from the Egyptians and the Chinese.
120 pretty good biographies and there
is History. By "immemorial" we simply
mean infantile forgetting; the
infantile amnesia of 2 generations is
eternity. When we see that the whole
of history is so brief, it becomes
again possible to be an agent of
history. The change we can make in
history might be small, but is _is_
commensurable. Indeed, these days when
I read the _Times_, I find that the
doings of my acquaintances make up a
large part of the news. Every day more
so. When I was an adolescent, up to
about last week, I certainly did not
consider the great world as the stage
of me and my friends, but now, alas!
it is precisely we who have become the
actors of that great world. This makes
me think poorly of the great world, if
I and my friends are its actors; but
perhaps I shall come to think bigger of
me and my friends, since we act out
that great world. (I doubt it).
Surely there must be some other value,
some quite different kind of
experience, "outside" this History.
--------
MANIFESTO
The Manifesto Manifesto: The primary artistic act
is the selection of the
The importance of taking a stand. rules that all subsequent
acts will follow.
You need some big ideas to guide
the artwork. Some grand vision
of how the world works, and what
purpose your art will serve.
Ultimately, a false ideology will
show itself in the art itself,
rather than through "rational"
counter-argument.
All of which would be irrelevant
if the art worked in spite of the
"flaws" in the manifesto.
--------
quirky: two newspaper
capsul reviews used
this word, and
contaminated my head
with it. Part of the
press release?
--------
TETSUO
Tetsuo: The Iron Man (another usenet review 7/21/92).
A Japanese, arty flick, supposedly using horror movie tropes
to make some sort of cyberpunk comment on modern culture.
It's got some moments, but it's mostly just dull and stupid.
To understand the plot of this movie, it helps a lot to read
one of the newspaper reviews that are floating around.
There's nothing particularly deep about it, but the movie
isn't very good at communicating what's supposed to be
happening: a "metal fetishist" inserts a piece of rusty
metal tubing into his leg, freaks out and runs in front of a
car which is being driven by a "salary man" and his girl
friend. The salary man then seems to be infected with some
sort of disease that progressively transforms him into
metal. The thankfully black and white look of this movie,
involves various disgusting looking chaotic masses of old
machine parts protruding from peoples bodies (like
"Videodrome", but not done as well).
In the only scene that's worth anything in the movie, the
"salary man" undergoes the bulk of his transformation into
metal while making love with his girlfriend. At first it
seems like they might do something interesting with it (she
says something like "No, show it to me. I don't frighten
easily."), but it degenerates into the usual horror movie
hysterics (a suggestion for directors: prevent the actors
from screaming, using gags if necessary). Anyway, he
emerges from hiding covered in metal, his penis transformed
into a huge power drill. They spend some time running
around, fighting. While she has him briefly subdued,
there's a hint that she's turned on by his new body, but he
kills her with his new tool. It isn't clear if she meant for
this to happen, but if you believe the reviews she "dies
in ecstasy".
I might excuse the excesses and clumsiness of this movie if
I thought they really had something worthwhile to say, but
they just don't. This whole business about the
transformation "just happening" like some sort of disease is
dumb any way you look at it. Cyberpunk is about turning
yourself into a monster *on purpose*, not by accident. And
this general theme of technology being out of control, an
implacable, inhuman force... it isn't just wrong, it's old
and stale too.
(Oh, the music is pretty good though. If you're into moody
industrial music, you might want to check out the
sound track. For that matter, this movie would probably be
okay as a dance club light show).
--------
LOCAL -- thinking locally 6-13-92
Most people consider local
politics to be beneath their
notice. Unimportant.
This is funny, because the
national politics that get so
much attention, because it gets
so much attention, is too big
for your actions to count much. I understand that among
What are the odds that your own politcial scientists, this
vote is going to matter in an is a puzzle: why does anyone
election? bother to vote?
In local politics, the number of
players is so small that your own
actions may be of great
significance.
And the results of the local
politics can have direct impact on
your life. Many aspects of the
big league politics have *only*
remote ramifications.
So on occasion, I get involved
with political causes that most
people think of as trivial...
Like:
The defense of Stuart Reges. REGES
The grey interpretaion. GREY
Unrestricted public street parking COUNCIL
Censorship of rec.humor.funny. RHF
Western Culture vs... CIV
Write-ins for campus elections TOON
Oddly enough, though, being
located at Stanford and (to a
lesser extent) Palo Alto and
California, means that I'm in one
of the places that other places
look to as an example. Here,
local issues may have non-local
ramifications.
--------
GREY 5-92
Let's say I (in my capacity as a white guy)
get into a heated discussion with a black guy.
He gets upset and calls me "stupid white
trash". I get upset and call him a "stupid
nigger". Under the Grey intrepretation, I can
be brought up on Fun Stan charges, for
"harassing" him, but not vice versa. GREYASSYM
Note that this is a single incident.
(Personally, I think the word "harassment"
implies an ongoing situation, e.g. if I were The reasoning according
to scream "nigger" outside his window every to Grey, seems to be that
night.) since these folks may
have had to deal with
Also note, that in the above example it's a bunch of other dudes
clear that I'm on one side of the Grey line, screaming a similar
and the rhetorical black guy is on the other. epithet, doing it once
If you pick a different group, a different is really another entry
epithet, it may not be so clear. in a campaign of repeated
harrasment.
You know, I think the Grey amendment to the
Fun Stan is amazingly silly and irrelevant. Completely ignores
It doesn't really address the incidents that the chilling effect
led up to it's creation, it's never been of this ruling,
applied to any real case (possibly, because focusing entirely
they either know it won't stand up or are on the _victim_'s
afraid of the consequences if it *did* stand point of view...
up).
So Grey is a joke. At best it's a symbolic
issue, and the things it symbolizes to me all
make it seem incredibly dumb that it was
enacted and that people defend it. I mean
dumb, dumb, dumb! You can't write a set of
rules to legislate being Nice without throwing
away the bill of rights.
So what's really going on? I mean, guys like
Grey may not be geniuses, but they're not
(dumb)^3. So what does it symbolize to
them?
--------
GREYASSYM -- supporting the point that grey is racially assymertric (racist?)
Okay, here's the Brenner interpretation of the Comments in
the Grey Interpretation of the Fundamental
Standard of the university that Leland built.
Grey doesn't just say "You're not allowed to say anything
racist", because then a black guy who called a white guy
"white trash" really could be brought up on Fun Stan
charges.
But what they actually do say isn't as clear as I remembered
it. Probably I'm remembering one of the remarks that Grey
made to clarify his Comments on the Interpretation, or some
such.
Anyway, I think the key words are "pervasive
discrimination". For a particular remark to be prohibited,
it has to be understood as being one of the standard
epithets that everyone knows is typically directed against
the standard oppressed groups.
Here's some quotes of the first three occurrences of the word
"pervasive".
Why then enumerate "sex, race, color, handicap,
religion, sexual orientation, and national or ethnic
origin" as specially prohibited bases for
discrimination? The reason is that, in this society at
this time, these characteristics tend to make
individuals the target of socially pervasive invidious
discrimination. These characteristics thus tend to
serve as the basis for cumulative discrimination:
repetitive stigma, insult, and indignity on the basis
of a fundamental personal trait.
It is the cumulative and socially pervasive
discrimination, often linked to violence, that
distinguishes the intolerable injury of wounded
identity caused by discriminatory harassment from the
tolerable, and relatively randomly distributed, hurt of
bruised feelings that result from single incidents of
ordinary personally motivated name-calling, a form of
hurt that we do not believe the Fundamental Standard
protects against.
Just as a single sexually coercive proposal can
constitute prohibited sexual harassment, so can a
single instance of vilification constitute prohibited
discriminatory harassment. The reason for this is,
again, the socially pervasive character of the
prohibited forms of discrimination.
(If you want to see the full text of Grey,
look in the doomout file under FULLGRAY.)
--------
COUNCIL
((Visiting the Palo Alto city council to help oppose a scheme to
impose a ban on overnight parking for vehicles without permits,
much as is done in the most evil Menlo Park. Fazzino the
fascist. And the most woolly Wooley. ))
--------
RHF
((rec.humor.funny, a unix newsgroup briefly censored here by AIR.
Street, The prince of darkness, who seems to lead a charmed
life in the Stanford bueracracy. Other sins include denying
choice of long distance carrier to students.))
--------
CIV
((Revision of the Stanford Western Culture program into Cultures
Ideas and Values. ))
It took me awhile to wrap my head around the conservative
view point concerning "demonstrations"... Maybe it'll help
if I try and explain it (though I'm not so sure I agree with
it).
Around the time of the Western Culture debates, there were a
lot of snide remarks from conservatives concerning the
"intimidation" tactics supposedly being practiced by the
other side. They seemed to think that all groups of
demonstrators were violent mobs ready to string them up.
These remarks looked ridiculous to me, as I'm sure they did
to a lot of other people.
But if you think about it, demonstrations are a really odd
custom. I mean, why not, say write a letter to the editor,
or distribute a petition? What exactly is the point of
getting a big bunch of people together to chant something?
Maybe there is some kind of implicit threat of violence
behind every demonstration: "If you don't listen to reason,
maybe next time we won't be so peaceful..." After all,
there certainly are examples of demonstrations that get out
of control and turn violent.
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that there's something of
a cultural difference here: what may look like a peaceful
demonstration to one person may look like an angry mob to
someone else.
--------
TOON
"The People's Platform" is the name
chosen by the faction that was in power Their name kind
in the student government at Stanford, of says it all.
near the end of my reign as a Graduate
Student. There were some
dark rumors floating
In the last election that they "won", around about them
they did it by changing the rules funneling funds to
midstream. The rule in question some left-wing
requires that the Council of Presient's revolutionary organization.
must win by a majority of the vote,
if not a run-off election must be An interesting These rumors
held. solution to the were never
problem of proved, or
They didn't *quite* get a majority. splitting the vote else they'd
But if you pretended that the in multi-candidate have gone
"frivolous" write-ins didn't elections. Too to jail.
exist, then they would just barely bad the federal
have one. govenment doesn't This is
have something an inter-
They decided to pretend that similar, it would esting
these write-ins didn't exist. be easier for thing to
third parties to think
This move evidentally seemed get established. about
quite reasonable to many people though.
on the inside of the situation. All that
student
To people on the outside it government
looked incredibly sleazy. money...
Where does
I joined a bunch of students in it go?
a "24 hour sit-in" of the student
government's offices (organized
by a different type of sleazeballs:
the people from the campus "humor"
magazine, the "Chaparral").
This was not the most unpleasant
environment to hold a sit-in.
The offices have a huge lobby with
lots of comfortable couches. People
brought in a TV and a VCR so we
could hold a marathon showing of A seperate though related
Simpsons cartoons. And all of us event at this election is
weren't exactly present at the that Bart Simpson got enough
same time... in fact, in many cases write-ins to be elected a
one person was appointed to stay Senator.
behind so we could officially claim
to have the place occupied.
However whenever there was a rumor that
the police were going to throw us out,
someone would get on the phone and get
everyone to come down so there would
be a whole bunch of us. We spent many
hours hovering around playing with
a video camera, hoping that the police
in the parking lot would come on in
so we could get it over with and get
the hell out of there.
Probably my main contribution to this event
was suggesting that the fledgling student
punk band "The Turdgid Miasma of Existence"
(later rechristened "Mindslam", unfortunately
in my opinion) to do a benefit performance
at this demonstration. The people in the band
stayed up late the night before writing
protest songs appropriate for the event (like
"I Can't Get No Fair Elections", to the tune of...
well, you get it). They set up their equipment
on the balcony outside of the student offices
and from one point of view, it was a failure:
it did not attract a crowd of people to the
protest. On the other hand, it annoyed the
hell out of some of the People's Platform types,
and it did get us on the cover of the Daily
for one more day (Jessica, at that time
one of the vocalist/guitarists of the band
eaisly met the Daily's high photojournalistic standards...).
The first "Mindslam" tape has one of these
protest songs enshrined on it:
This election sucks
And every vote, is a vote cast
This election sucks
And I want my vote to last
The resolution of this controversy?
The Chappie guys went on to collect
enough signatures to force a recall
election. If 2/3 of the people vote
to recall, then the current government
is out of office, and a new election
must be held. A majority voted to
recall, but the numbers fell a bit short
of 2/3.
Had the People's Platform any class,
they would've resigned at that point,
and possibly won the next election.
They didn't. They were voted out the
next year.
--------
REGES
((Stuart Reges, fired because he chose to speak out against the
Drug Policy forced on Staford by the federal government.))
SNITCH
Rough of an unsent posting to su.etc, back when a somewhat
inane argument was being held on the subject of "snitching".
The term "snitching" is not usually applied to informers
concerning a serious matter. I think it implies turning
someone in on a trivial offense.
While the majority of Stanford professors chose not to stand by
Stuart Reges...
But how would they feel about a colleague
ratting on another colleague for smoking grass?
If you don't think someone should be turned in for a
particular crime, maybe it's an indication that you really
feel it shouldn't be illegal?
Certainly I tend to think the laws should be simpler --
fewer things should be illegal -- but this is an alleged
case of contract violation, and it would seem that contracts
can be arbitrarily complicated.
Though maybe there's a similar argument that a good contract
should be a simple contract. It sounds to me like a worthy
goal for consumer boycotts.
Perhaps something like this has already happened with
microcomputer software: Jerry Pournelle used to campaign
against the complex, incomprehensible legal agreements that
used to come with software. I think it's gotten a little
better because of this.
In general things would be better with more competition in
the airline business. I'd go with the libertarian line that
the trouble is that airports need to be deregulated, as well
as airlines.
(One way of looking at the Bill of Rights: a document
to protect lawbreakers, designed by a group of people who
were rebels at heart.)
--------
MANNERS
topic: the function of gentlemanly tabboo's against discussing
"private" subjects. Work, salaries: obviously prevent effective
bargaining. Ditto discussing relationships? Take an example: if
someone sends you a piece of mail with a pretty foul accusation in
it, why shouldn't you talk about it in public? Who are you covering
for?
---------
SHAKESPERE
Sonnet 52
The big S: The big D:
So am I as the rich whose blesse'd key If you look at your stuff
Can bring him to his sweet up-locke'd treasure, all the time, you get
The which he will not ev'ry hour survey, bored with it. You
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure. appreciate it more if you
lock it away and look at
it only occasionally.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare You value holidays
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set because they don't
Like stones of worth they thinly place'd are, happen often.
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest, It's a good thing I
don't see you more
often or I wouldn't
"treasure" you as
much.
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide, Just like it's a really
To make some special instant special blest striking effect to,
By new unfolding his imprisoned pride. say, yank open your
trenchcoat to
reveal the leather
lingerie underneath.
But if you wore it all
the time, people would
just get used to it.
Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope, You're so great, it's
Being had, to triumph; being lacked, to hope. great when we're
together, and when
we're not, it's great
looking forward to it.
So, the gist seems to be: "Sorry I can't see you tonight babe, but
don't worry we'll get in some quality time later."
- - - - - - - -
After my first attempts at reading the sonnets,
I thought they played a lot like songs on FM radio. My
first impression was always confusion, then after a
little work I'd get an appreciation for the way some of
the phrases ring, but then comes the serious
disappointment when I realized the whole thing was just
an absurdly hyperbolic hymn in praise of some woman.
Couldn't this guy find something better to do that write
elaborate pick up lines?
But yeah, actually he could. I had started reading them
in numerical order, which is presumably close to the
order he wrote them in. The later sonnets have a much
more complex, cynical attitude, like "My mistress' eyes
are nothing like the sun." Shakespere turns punk.
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still.
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
To win me soon to hell my female evil
Tempteth my better angel from my side,
And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her foul pride;
And whether that my angel be turned fiend
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell;
But being both from me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell.
Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
- - - - - - - - -
Understanding the Sonnets:
Essentially they're letters.
Understanding them requires
imagining a context for them...
who were they sent to, what
was going on then, etc.
Some people point out to me a popular
theory that Shakespere was bisexual...
and some of the pronouns in some of the
sonnets suddenly make a lot more sense.. .
- - - - - - - -
Okay, so the consensus here seems to be that the big S was bi.
That's okay by me, I can dig it. Really the sonnets are love
notes to Lord Pembroke or Frances Bacon or someone.
Certainly it's a pretty tidy interpretation of "Two loves
have I of comfort and despair": He's in a weird mood because
his two lovers are sleeping with each other.
Me, I always liked the notion that his friend is sleeping with
his lover, and instead of being jealous he's just worried about
what she's going to do to him.
- - - - - - - -
I was reading some Ben Johnson ("Volpone or The Fox"),
a playwrite from the early 1600s, and imagine my
surprise when I found in the ever-so-scholarly
footnotes a definition of "will" as "sexual appetite".
Throws a whole new light on Sonnet number 135, doesn't
it? "Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will,/
And Will to boot, and Will in overplus." Pretty
blatant, huh?
And what must it have been like for Shakespere when
he was growing up? Who the hell would name a kid
"Will", anyway?
--------
EDGES -- Once around the edges 4/30/92
After the conference, we're driving
down Mission, looking to make a
right on 9th St or so. A bright red
car is sitting at an odd angle in
the middle of the road. Why isn't
this jerk moving? There's a
flashing red light in the window.
Two cops are sitting in the car,
wearing black helmets, waving night
sticks. We give up on turning "Huh. Some kind of Rodney King
there. As we drive away, I catch a sympathy riot?"
glimpse of crowds on Market St.
I meet a friend's housemate. She
starts to tell us about what was
going on at Market St. I laugh
and nod about it, and she said:
"We're you there?"
I told her about the cops in riot gear No, I really hadn't been there.
in the unmarked car.
She tells us more:
"It was really _weird_. People
would go 'Look, they're coming!'
and close up shop, and lower those
metal gates."
"But that makes sense!" I said.
"No, but it was really weird, like..." Like what?
And other things she said:
There were thousands of people there.
There were video cameras all over.
She felt safe there, even though she's white.
One person said "Thank you for coming."
But she said that maybe if she'd really known what was
happening in LA she wouldn't have felt safe.
Much too late to do any good or bad,
I saw a magic marker notice in the
window of a closed bookstore on
Haight: a schedule for the
demonstration. Glide in the
afternoon. Ellis later on.
Walking up Market St, from Oak to
4th St at 10 PM. The streets full
of small groups of people cruising
around, like the parking lot scene
after an arena rock concert. Lots
of cops, and sirens. I was wearing
wool: pants, sweater, jacket, and
feeling self-conscious. Am I a target? I'm wearing wool
today in order to
Broken glass in the street from the pass for a Suit.
windows. Radio Shack. Other small
stores. Newspaper machines pushed Can I complain if
over. I'm mistaken for
one?
They're hitting the wrong people. Because they
Because the right people are hard to hit. don't see the It's easy for
faces behind _me_ to pass.
Can you blame them? the windows? I can change
What else could they do? my clothes.
Striking at the innocent.
They're not much better than the
cops who beat King.
But the system has failed.
It's demonstrated it's unjust.
"Revolutionary right to over-
throw it." Right?
Who organized this? What did the
guys at the Glide Memorial Methodist Is the looting
Church tell these people? What and vandalism just
about "_Respect_ the neighborhood!" opportunistic?
Isn't this war? Should
it be
Willingly doing evil in blamed
hopes that it will on the
correct a greater evil. demon-
Waging war means hurting strators?
the innocent.
Of course things are out
of control.
Maybe I should've been out here.
Too busy running around after Science
to have even heard about it.
But would I really want
to associate with these
people? Look at what
they've done!
I'm always fence sitting.
Looking for a pure Cause.
I _believe_ in this one! For once
The acquittal really _is_ they're not
an outrage. fighting
for warmed
Maybe I could have tried over Marxism.
to help keep things calmer.
A couple of girls come Some guys walking passed yet
down the street holding another crew of window
signs like: repairmen:
NO JUSTICE. "And this is just the
NO PEACE. _first_ day!"
FUCK THE POLICE!
Two people on a small motorcycle,
both dressed in leather. He stops Some woman is
the bike at an intersection, while arguing with a
she videotapes some burning debris. cop. I hear
"Curfew?"
As I get near the Marriott Hotel,
cops keep ordering me to detour. A
cordon of police guard the windows
of Nordstroms. A trio on motorcycles
stop me from going down the alley
behind Big Heart City. The doors
of the hotel are "barricaded" with
wood blocks. Someone removes the Because I'm wearing wool.
block as I approach the door, Because my skin's the
to talk to me. I show him my right color.
conference badge, he lets me in.
Then I hear someone talking about
how the cops have told them not to
let anyone out on the street.
"Are you serious?
I wouldn't have come I should call the FBI
in here if I'd know that." and report them for
kidnapping.
A piece of glass stuck to the bottom
of my shoe scrapes along the floor.
I pick up my stuff. I try and
concentrate on the poster session.
I wave to an acquaintance, but avoid
talking. I make eye contact with a
woman I've never met and we smile at
each other, but I keep going. I
over hear someone say "Did you see
some of the action out there?" Like An appreciation for
he's talking about a football game. chaos? Yeah, okay.
But still.
I don't belong here.
I leave the hotel.
"Good evening sir. How are you?"
"I'm fine."
"Do you know there's a curfew?" I hadn't realized there was
"I know what's going on." a "curfew".
Shades of
Casablanca.
Random vehicles of mostly white
kids (the motorized analog of Who has authority to
the black foot soldiers? the declare a curfew?
counterpart of the police
cars?) cruise the streets. How about the right of
assembly?
A voice from one of them,
heavy with irony:
"That's anarchy!"
Is he mocking someone? Well, it is anarchy all right.
Or just celebrating the But unfortunately it's also chaos.
idea?
Three cops are hustling a black girl
in a white skirt into the back of a
car. "FUCK. YOU." she yells into
one's face. He replies sweetly in a
high voice "Fuuuck, YooUuu." Good, they're being cool.
"I didn't break no window."
"Well you were robbing someone,
weren't you?"
She spits on their shoes. He says
"Oh, yeah..." calmly. Yeah, they're definitely
I walk by another smashed window, Being Cool.
a big stereo speaker just inside.
And you know, it _is_ only day one.
--------
On day two they broke up a curfew The amount of liberty
demonstration by arresting we're willing to sacrifice
people two hours *before* the for just a little safety...
curfew went into effect.
I wasn't there for that one, either.
Luckilly, they came up with an
excuse to fire that bastard Hongisto
(the Police Chief) soon afterwards.
--------
LIZARD -- The Strange Tale of the Cowardly Lizard. 5/3/92
(Or, Milking the Lizard.)
Yesterday, I was leaving the house to go to a three year
old's birthday party. But my car was missing. Because I'd
left it parked at SLAC a couple of days ago. Funny I hadn't
thought of it before.
So I had to walk to SLAC. This was somewhat annoying, since
I'd already gone running for nearly an hour that afternoon,
and I could've just run over there to pick my car up.
Also, I was now dressed in black since I hadn't expected to
be out in the sun.
I will skip the various minor adventures of the trip --
meeting people at Tressdier, exploring the golf course and
stables, hanging out at the Sharon Heights shopping center,
and so on.
Once at SLAC, the guard didn't want to let me in, and I
kicked myself for not having done a cross-country
commando-style assault short-cut like I'd been thinking
about. While hassling with the guard, I discovered the
curious fact that there was a lizard in my right hand
pocket.
I'd been standing there with my hands in my pockets, dimly
wondering "Huh, what's this rubbery thing doing here?" It
seemed to be kind of sticky, and it didn't want to let me
take it out and throw it away...
"Hey! There's a lizard in my pocket!" I exclaimed. The
guards ignored me. Now what? Taking my pants off seemed
like a bad idea, under the circumstances. I considered
leaving the lizard there until I got my car back, but
unfortunately my car keys were under the lizard. Well, I
guessed it *probably* wasn't poisonous. And it hadn't
bitten me yet, but still... I asked the guards again for
some background info on the local lizards. One of them told
me it was considered good luck when a lizard jumped on you.
The other was interested in whether or not the lizard was
alive or dead. "I hope it's not dead!" he said. I wasn't
sure about which way to hope, myself.
I tried lying down on the ground and coaxing the lizard out
of my pocket. But the lizard insisted on burrowing deeper
into the nice safe, dark area it had found. It's little
claws were admirably adapted to hanging onto cloth.
However, everything else fell out of my pocket, so at least
I had my car keys.
After going through some more guard nonsense, one of them
escorted me up to my car and left me in peace. I considered
grabbing the lizard by the tail and giving it a yank, but with my
luck the tail would probably come off and I'd wind up with
an oozing lizard.
So, I put on about five layers of used clean room gloves (I
have lots of weird stuff in my car) and easily removed and
released the adventurous but cowardly lizard.
And somehow, the rest of the day was anti-climax: I quickly
bought a stuffed animal at Sears (an incredibly sad blue
mutant donkey), wrapped it (not a simple feat, at Sears) and
delivered it to the aforementioned three year old at the
absolute last moment of the party (she picked it up and said
"Ruff! Ruff! Ruff!" How could I disillusion her?).
I then rushed out to yet another party -- at a Japanese
woman's house, who had us remove our shoes, making me wonder
(a) if anyone would gag on my socks after the ten mile hike
I'd done, and (b) what other lovely surprises I'd find in my
shoes later that evening.
(Incidentally, to my knowledge, I don't have any lizards
crawling around in my bed room. My bet is it was the
Sharon Heights Shopping Center, which is somehow appropriate
considering it's froofy up-scale oh-so-nice pretensions...)
--------
FUNNY
So what did you think? Was it, like funny? I put some
thought into polishing it up, so I'd be interested to
know...
Like for instance, I think it's important to state
that there was a lizard in my pocket first, before
describing reaching into my pocket and feeling some
"rubbery" thing. The way I did it is a little funnier, I
think, that doing it the other way which would just be
confusing.
It may not seem like much, but this little bit of technique
was a major revelation to me... I tend to think that the
reader should never know something before the main character
does. But verbal description is too blunt a tool to describe
a sensation accurately, unless you've already narrowed down
the range by supplying an interpretation. Lots of things
are rubbery. A lizard is rubbery in one particularly way.
But then, this might be a particular case of the general
problem that it's hard to perceive anything without
preconceptions.
Anyway, this humor business is hard work.
--------
Subject: More lizard's milk
Ever thought about the problem of what to
say at parties?
(Actually, hopefully you haven't, because
if you don't need to then you're "healthy"
as opposed to "neurotic", at least
according to Paul Goodman, who had a GOODMAN
tendency to sing the praises of
spontaneity, as you might expect from a
1950s intellectual liberal anarchist.
Anyway, I was raised on something more
like the "unexamined life" philosophy,
hence I tend to analyze most everything --
or hadn't you noticed?)
Anyway, so you're at a party. You're
surrounded by strangers, acquaintances,
and a small number of freinds. What do
you talk about? The weather is an
underrated topic, but you do have to sound
enthusiastic and sincere about it, and it
gets played out fairly quickly. Movies
are usually good for ten or twenty
minutes. Politics is kind of useless
unless all your opinions fit on a bumper
sticker, and you expect complete agreement
from everyone around you. You will be
repeatedly asked things like "What do you
do?", but answers like "I'm a Materials
Science Graduate student doing research on
ion implantation of polymers for toliet
bowl seats" tend to kill things pretty
quickly, since you're only allowed a few
seconds to explain each of the terms you
just used.
Last night, I wound up milking the
lizard story. Too bad they don't
crawl in my pocket every day. LIZARD
I have learned a few tricks from a
freind of mine, who when things get
slow just starts talking about sex
(e.g. if she's bored at dinner she
might turn to the guy next to her Though "Are you
and ask him how big his penis is). gay?" is
Something to remember, anyway. probably her
favorite line.
--------
6/29/92
My favorite Monty Python joke. Some guys are standing
around in a bookstore, playing out some schtick or other.
In the background, unacknowledged, unrelated to the
forground action, there's an ad for a book (I think
Desmond Morris's _The Naked Ape_). Emblazoned
across it in huge letters is the advertising hype:
INTELLIGENCE PACKED!
I think this is tremendously funny. I can't find anyone
else who does.
--------
THORNE 7/29/92
_Rain in The Doorway_ is a book by Thorne Smith, a really
funny (in more than one sense) fantasy novel from 1933. It
begins with a man standing in the doorway of a department
store, to escape a torrential down pour. Rain dripping down
his nose, he feels depressed and dissatisfied... and the
doorway behind him opens, a hand reaches out to grab him and
he's drawn through into another universe. It seems much
like ours, except that people take things much less
seriously... as with all Thorne Smith books (he's best
known for _Topper_) there is much drunkenness and nudity and
silly dialog.
--------
SATIRE 7/14/93
Okay, I'm going to babble a bit about the lowness of satire.
Maybe I can get across what I mean by this. Probably I
should've distinguished between political satire and
fictional satire, since sometimes I think the former
stuff works well, but the later really is the lowest of the
low.
To me, stories, even though they're stories work best when
they're about something real, even when they're primarily
about a real fantasy someone has or a real set of values.
Briefly, the reason I rate satire as a low artform is
because of the added distance between the story and anything
real.
I might also point out that satire, or less pretentiously,
"making fun of something" is ridiculously easy to do. Very
few things exist that can't be made to seem ridiculous when
portrayed in an unkind light.
The hard thing to do, the "highest" thing to do is not to
make fun of something, but to find something worth being
serious about.
Which isn't to say that I don't believe in humor or
comedy... to me, the funniest jokes are the serious ones.
And from this point of view, satire of fiction is the lowest
of the low. It's another step removed from anything real: a
story about a story...
Getting back to Cerebus, some of the things I liked best in
it were the political satire ("Lower Interest Rates or
Death!"), but the satire of other comic books was almost
always completely pointless. So Cerebus is vaugely like
Conan, except a bit sleazier, so what? Or take the Dark
Knight satire: when I read that stuff, by a quirk of fate I
hadn't yet read the Dark Knight itself. I thought lines
like "Have to finish this quickly." were really funny. When
I realized they were lifted whole hog from Frank Miller
I was disappointed. Something I'd thought was somewhat
creative was just a matter of cut and paste. Take a quote
from anyone, put it in the mouth of a buffon, and it'll
sound like buffonery.
So why would I want to read Dave Sim making fun of The
Sandman? I could do that myself if I felt like it. You
probably could too.
This is something that I've never entirely understood about
fans of comic books (or heroic fantasy or science fiction or
whatever)... The fans are obviously people who are *really*
into it, they live and breath the stuff, it's the closest
thing to a religion that they ever have. But for some
reason they're reluctant to take it seriously, or to admit
that they do. They really like silly take-offs that poke
idiotic fingers at the things they care about the most.
They like to crack jokes about how silly some comic book is
while they're really thinking "isn't the next issue out
soon?"
-----
Bit of a sidestep here, let's talk about political satire
for a moment. I can't comment on Swift, since I've never
read _Gulliver's Travels_, so I'm going to talk about Shaw's
_Pygmalion_ instead. On one level, _Pygmalion_ is a
brilliant satire of the British upper class, it rubs their
noses in the triviality of everything that they hold most
important. But this alone is _not_ what makes it a great
play... even if you're completely ignorant of the cultural
context it comes from, if you miss the satiric element
entirely, there's something about the plot and characters
that is really engaging. And the "message" of the play
could be condensed into an essay a few paragraphs long and
work just about as well. It's one of the elements that
makes it a great play, but not the only element. So anyway,
political satire has it's virtues, but even it seems like a
very thin thing to me
--------
KIDS
If parent's deserve to be paid, where is the money going to
come from?
If well-raised children are valuable commodities, you should
be able to sell them at a profit to pay back your investment.
So say, when you're kids get out of college, and you place
them with some corporation, you should get a cut of the
money. It could be a one time payment from the company to
the parents, in which case they'd probably want the kid to
sign a long term contract.
Or maybe the idea would be that parents own their children
until the kids can pay back what their parents have invested
in them. So you might be responsible for paying a
percentage of your income to your parents for most of your
life.
What other possibilities are there? You could just have tax
money given to people with kids (just increase the size of
the deductions in place all ready).
Kids could be taken from parents at birth and raised in
state controlled institutions, (after all, this is obviously
too crucial a matter to trust to unqualified people).
Or maybe the way to go is to have all child-rearing adults
get together and form a union, where they could threaten to
go on strike unless explicitly paid for their efforts. So
the idea would be that the "bread-winner" would have to pay
for the privilege of having their genes replicated and/or
their personality impressed on the child.
But then, it's fashionable to argue that human beings are a
glut, you know? Population explosion. Burden on the
environment. Like that.
In which case, I would think there should be financial
disincentives to raising children. Parent's should be fined
or taxed for doing it (rather than the slight
encouragement they get under the present tax codes).
Though it might be argued that raising kids is it's own
punishment. (It is a little difficult for me to understand
why an intelligent person would do it. It seems like a poor
stab at immortality. The rewards -- fun? -- seem small
compared to the amount of work.)
--------
GONZO 7-27-92
Ah, Hunter S. Thompson...
Well, the one, ultimate, infamous HST book to read is _Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas_, a crazy (hopefully?) exaggerated
story of our depraved hero-journalist Raoul Duke (later
plagiarized by Gary Trudeau), a man out to *cover the
story*, whatever the story might be...
(There's a Vintage Books edition, from 1989, A Random House
edition from 1976. I read it in the original serialized
form in _Rolling Stone_, I guess around 1971).
I also really liked _Hell's Angels : a strange and terrible
saga_. Thompson talks about how some politician decided he
could score points using the Angels as boogeyman, and the
New York Times bought his story without question, and thus
the Angels reputation was born. A strange and terrible
saga, indeed.
Of course, Thompson, being a good journalist, also hung out
with a bunch of the Hells Angels for awhile, bought himself
a bike, got himself hospitalized "going over the high side",
and ended up running away from them in fear of his life...
(There was a Balantine edition, copyright 1967.)
I was less impressed with _Fear and loathing: on the
campaign trail '72_. It's a collection of articles he wrote
at the time, while covering the '72 election. Mostly it was
kind of dull, with only a few interesting bits... probably
much like the '72 election itself. (Warner books, '83)
I haven't read a lot of his recent stuff... his irregular
column in the _Examiner_ was okay, but mostly a rehash of
things said before. Maybe P.J. O'Rourke is the new Thompson.
(There's a friend of mine who's still really into Thompson,
though. He showed me some news clips from around his drug
bust of a few years back: Thompson turned to the press
photographers and said "Let me do a Nixon," and gave 'em the
two handed peace sign, arms outstretched. Thompson also
said something like "Just remember: today's pig is
tommorow's bacon", which impressed my friend so much he
wrote a song around it. I think you can probably still HAVERING
order a tape though chaney@leland.stanford.edu if you're
interested.)
--------
STURGEON
Ah, a Theodore Sturgeon fan. There is still hope for the net.
And the world.
There's a story called "To Here and The Easel" that I need to
re-read ever few years in order to remain sane. It's about an
artist named Giles, who is blocked and needs to learn why.
The story oscillates between his manic, streaming consciousness
and a medieval fantasy world (which may be a hallucination)
about a knight distracted from his quest by a blind Christian
girl with a faith so pure it's painful.
There's a novel called _Some of Your Blood_, which is
unfortunately rare possibly because it's so difficult to
classify, but possibly because people are afraid of it...
I refuse to say much more about it except that it's brilliant,
and that I hope you enjoy searching many used book stores,
because that's what you'll need to do to find a copy.
It's funny: I don't really believe in spoiler warnings as a
rule (a mystery novel that's not worth reading just because
you know who did it would be a very poor mystery novel), but
in this case I believe everyone deserves the experience of
a first, fresh, reading.
The story "If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry
Your Sister?" appeared in the _Dangerous Visions_ anthology,
and was one of the few stories worthy of the theme. Sturgeon
decided to attack the incest taboo with logic that's close to
unassailable. And along the way he comes up with a narrative
trick that's so elegant in retrospect it seems obvious: the
story is told as a dialog with an official personage, but the
narrator repeatedly interrupts himself, and thinks to himself
all the things that can't be said.
And what other authors should a Sturgeon fan try? That's a
tough one. Maybe these aren't too far off:
Cordwainer Smith (such as "The Lady Who Sailed The Soul").
R.A. Lafferty (say, the collection, _Nine Thousand Grandmothers_).
Samuel R. Delany's "The Star Pit".
Alan Garner's _Redshift_.
Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes".
Alfred Bester's "5,271,009"
Kim Stanly Robinson's "A Short, Sharp Shock"
--------
GODBODY 6-13-92
Lying naked in the sun
in the one small private spot
on the roof of our house,
I finish reading _Godbody_,
Theodore Sturgeon's last novel.
As I'm reading, I note resemblences
to other things Sturgeon has
written, that I read when I was
younger. This detail about
Lieben-tote, that was used in
another story. The basic idea is
fairly similar to _The Skills of
Xanadu_. The loving, sympathetic
focus on the psychologically
maimed, that's a recurrent theme, too.
Also, as I'm reading, I step outside
the story and take a more
unsympathetic eye than I once might
have. All of these people converted
into nicey-nice moonie-types at the
mere physical contact of the pivotal
character. Doesn't this "We can all
be one" stuff trivilize the real
challenge of living in the world: to
maintain our freedom to be ourselves
when we are most definitely _not_
one. The hard won realization that
we can't expect unification, that
one of the few things we have in
common is the need to defend
ourselves the from forces of That is, the right to be free.
unification.
Take something more specific: all
this glorification of nudity.
Sturgeon tries to make it a "A naked person can lie to
transcendent condition, something another naked person. But
magical. Is there anything really it ain't easy."
that special about it? Wouldn't it
be an empty symbol without the
forces of prudery to charge it with
meaning?
But isn't this true of everything?
What thing can hold on to what it
symbolizes under the glare of the
unsympathetic eye?
Does the cynical eye see the
unsavory truth underlying the
surface, or does it create it?
"What is needed is a gentler curiosity."
When I take on someone on
the net, sometimes it seems like
things get away from me. I start
out intending to get at the truth
of things, to try and apply some
insight and express what I find in
a tight, entertaining way. But
instead it comes out sarcastic and
negative, and whatever I was trying
to say gets lost in the hassles of
dealing with people wriggling on
the hook, complaining about things
that are irrelevant, trying to come
up with a snarl, a shot, a way to strike
back. Once it gets to this
level, any hope of proceeding to
something like an understanding is
long gone.
And this is not only a problem There was some magic in this
with the net. chain of thought, but
I feel like I'm losing it...
Sturgeon himself, was a master
of the sense of magic...
Like in _Silken Swift_, where
unicorns are not just
horses with horns, but a special
thing. Or _A Touch of Strange_
where mermaids are both more
down to earth, and yet more
spiritually uplifting than any
cutsefied Disney creation...
STURGEON
From Paul Goodman's _Five Years: GOODMAN
Thoughts During a Useless Time_:
It is an annoying style in argument
to listen intently until you catch
the crux and then cut him off,
saying, "Yah! I see your point,
but it's besides the point. The
point is this-- " Most often you
have grasped the point correctly--
sometimes not-- but your opponent
is annoyed at being interrupted,
and it doesn't help if you have
caught his point correctly on the
fly. Nevertheless, though
annoying, this style is necessary,
for if you hold your water you
cannot keep paying attention: you
can't pay attention to what is
beside the point, or to a point
once you have grasped the point.
You become bored and surly. This
is therefore a bad dilemma. Here
is a possible solution: Attend to
the _speaker_ even after you have
got the point, he does hold and
advance and expand (!) this point.
Listen to the tone of his voice,
his syntax, the wrinkles on his
brow and mouth. Intuit, while you
are waiting, his psychosexual
nature and the incidents of his
childhood. And when it comes again
your turn to speak, you will have
become concerned with _this_
complex object; and it is to this,
rather than to the original point
of argument, that you will now
address yourself. Thus you will
have acquired a style of argument
that is still more annoying.
--------
NUDE 6-13-92
Nude sunbathing. What for?
Mindlessly worshipping the natural
isn't my style.
Vanity. Bluring, removing my
tanlines. No more pasty white
cotton tail.
Sunlight an anti-depressant.
Connected to vitamin production
in the skin.
Symbolic of freedom, released from
restraints, from convention.
Sexual charge associated with nudity.
Nudity in public places. Mild version
of the flasher perversion.
Theodore Sturgeon himself was an
ardent nudist. For some time,
according to Harlan Ellison, he had
a sign on his front door, stating
that no one in the house wore
clothes, and if this bothered you
you should ring the door bell and
they'd put some one. If not, you
should knock.
--------
SLOWSCULPT (6/19/92)
A Sturgeon story that I read long
ago called "Slow Sculpture", uses
raising Banzai trees as a metaphor
to propose another way of thinking
besides "being in control"/"being
controlled".
The owners of Banzai's are more
properly called companions. In
rasing a banzai tree, you
imagine a goal, and try and
encourage the tree to move in
that direction. And it does
indeed respond, but usually in
a way you hadn't quite So, a question like
imagined. So you get new "What factors in my life
ideas, and imagine a new are under my control?"
goal... The point being that should be transformed into...?
you don't just influence the
tree, the tree influences you. What can I influence?
What influences me?
Sturgeon's point, is that two people And what's the
living together grow together in intersection of the
much the same way. two sets.
But how is a person living alone CIRCLES
any different?
"You" have an idea of what
"You" should be like, and
"You" make an effort to
encourage yourself to
change in that direction...
Here the feedback loop is
closed even more tightly. So why is the sculpture so slow?
Knots must exist in the loops.
I think it's clear Self-reinforcing problems. KNOTS
that the usual
language like "You One way out:
must control Subdivide the self.
yourself" is a The super-ego must
mess of unexamined SELF control the id.
assumptions. Morton Rigor must MANIACS
control Nunzio Nasuno.
What are the
other ways out?
---------
MANIACS (6/19/92)
Once upon a time, there
was a radio station.
A most peculiar radio
station in New York,
called WBAI, 99.5 FM,
"listener sponsored
radio" (as opposed to
"commercial", *and*
as opposed to
"government-funded").
There was a man who made tapes
in his kitchen, and sent them into
this radio station, and somehow they
made their way to the air, and
eventually he followed them.
He called himself "Guru Lou Fongoo",
and he had a theory of human nature:
All of us contain Four Maniacs, Jungified Freud?
The Big Baby ("Nunzio Nusuno") (Freud Jung
The Big Daddy ("Morton Rigor") Fried Young?
The Big Mommy (I forget) Why do I
and... Morton Rigor, standing think of
outside of the other three, things like
perpetually analytical. The this?)
rational impulse. The death
impulse.
--------
CIRCLES 7/2/92
Roe-Sham-Bo, Scissors-Paper-Stone.
Circular Power Structures.
Hierarchies with a glitch, a link in the
chain of command that connects back up
above...
An old story idea, which I don't think I'll
get into here.
And loops. Recursion?
Just free associating. Don't mind me.
If there's a point to this, it's probably this:
When you consider indirect links, the structures
(of the self, of the world) get complicated (knotty?)
I influence A which influences B which influences me.
--------
PARSIMONY Date: 26 May 92 20:40:01 GMT
There's a barrier at the beginning of every story that takes
effort to penetrate. You need to learn something about the
characters, the style of writing, and get a sense of the
direction of the plot before you get can get sucked into the
story. With Science Fiction and Fantasy this barrier is
even larger, since fewer things are given: you also need to
understand the social and technological premises of the
story. If you're reading for "escape", then most of the
effort is spent at the beginning, and the payoff is whatever
follows.
So you get series. And really *long* books. Sometimes you
get series of long books.
It used to be assumed that entertaining fiction should have
as few words as possible, because people with poor reading
skills would be intimidated by massive tomes. Now, the
opposite idea seems to be in play. Algis Budry's theorizes
that the "unnecessary" verbiage in bestsellers gives poor
readers a chance to catch up.
So, once upon a time, novels were tight, parsimonious, like
say, Delany's _Babel-17_, or Algis Budrys' _Rogue Moon_.
Now they tend to be sprawling, overweight monstrosities. It
seems to me that everything reads like it's in need of
cutting, even a lot of the books that I like. For example
Pamela Sargent's _Venus of Dreams_ and _Venus of Shadows_
both drag in places.
So, how about creating a new Hugo category for books over a
certain length? "Bloats" wouldn't be a bad name, though I
have a certain fondness for "Damn Fat Books".
--------
ROMANCE 9/8/93
In the interests of openmindedness, I read a romance novel.
I think it was by Johanna Lindsey. Writing was pretty
awful, but I could get used to it. The main character was
entirely useless, completely passive. I mean, this is a
plot: "No, no, no, no, no, yes..."?
Recently, Dawn Friedman makes an odd remark about some
convention panel discussion about what SF can learn from
Romance novels.
(1) I think, yeah right, you can do an SF novel about an
entirely passive character who just sits around saying "No,
no, no... yes."
(2) Except you could actually do that. A character could be in
control of something extremely valuable... a resource, an
industry, an alien race, an alien artificat... and various
factions could come up offering him deals, that he keeps
rejecting.
(3) Actually, this is what _Season of the Mists_ is about,
isn't it.
(4) And I suppose this is the opposite of my old idea of
translating the appeal of male-fantasy fiction (e.g.
Detective stories) into women's fiction.
--------
UHURU 3/7/92
Last night I was hanging around at Nassim's place, with Kavi
and Walt, and a housemate I hadn't met before came home: a
young black woman named Rachel. She and Kavi immediately
began talking about some all day confrence she had been at,
evidently a Black Uhuru meeting.
I had trouble understanding what exactly she was talking
about for a while. For example, she kept talking about
"counter-insurgency", which is evidentally jargon for
FBI actions against Black rights organizations.
Toward the end, she and Kavi were getting into a captailism
bashing mode that I didn't have the energy to deal with.
Captialsim is evil because the wealth it generates is all
stolen, e.g. land of native americans, labor of black
slaves, and so on.
Appaling, because it's a conception of wealth even more
primitive than the labor theory of economics that Marx
believed in. Wealth isn't created soley by physcal labor...
wealth isn't created at all, just stolen. No room for the
role of intelligence, etc.
But on the other hand... if you believe in property rights,
if you believe in inheritence... then doesn't someone owe
quite a bit of restitution to the desendants of slaves, of
native americans? Libertarian economic theory has no good
answer to this that I'm aware of.
Anyway: the major thing to be learned from Raquel is that
she claims there is extensive FBI covert activity against
the Uhuru movement, and that there's a tendency to ignore
unjust violence against black groups. This is somethng to
look for, and speak out against...
(Her example was some actions against the Panthers that no
one remembers, versus the events at Kent State... )
--------
NEUTRAL posted to Future Culture list 11/3/92 rev 2/5/93
Technology isn't neutral.
If technology were merely
neutral, there would be no
reason to be interested in
it.
Overall, the advance of
technology has brought along
with it advances in human
life span, and life style.
Technology is biased toward
freedom.
It seems odd to me that many
people get the opposite
impression... too much media
attention and exaggeration of
some of the failures, and no
thought put into the obvious
successes, is my guess.
If technology is just another
name for the chief products
and activities of humanity,
then hatred of technology may
be just another name for
hatred of humanity. A form
of self-loathing.
--------
CENTRAL
Centralization is evil?
In order for nuclear power to
be operated safely, it
requires too much centralized
authority? I have my doubts,
but this is an interesting
direction to argue in.
How about this one: the
trouble with most plans for
achieving social justice is
that they require too much
authority concentrated in the
government (e.g. the IRS,
welfare agencies, regulatory
agencies, etc).
Conservatives aren't the only
ones that talk a libertarian
line only when it suits
them...
--------
NUKE Yes, Nukes
I'm reluctant to rehash the
nuke debate of the 70s just
now, but I'm a firm believer
that nuclear power has gotten
a bad rap.
A few points in support: lung
cancer and such from the It's really interesting to
emissions of coal-burning me that so many intelligent,
power plants has been well-educated people deeply
estimated to kill on the believe that nuclear power
order of thousands of people is overwhelmingly dangerous.
a year. You'd need to have a Or maybe they believe that
melt down every year for it's worse to die from lung
nuclear to be worse than the cancer from a nuclear
coal we're using. accident that from coal
power emissions?
And the actual effects of the
anti-nuke movement was not to I might be able to
promote solar power use. The understand coming down on
utilities shelved plans for the opposite side of this
nukes and built coal burners debate, but many people seem
instead. to think that there isn't
even anything that can be
The cost of nuclear power, by debated.
the way, was also much
inflated by the actions of This is a case worthy of
the anti-nuke movement, and inclusion in a modern sequel
complaining about it is a lot to _Extraordinary Popular
like burning someone's house Delusions and the Madness of
down and then arresting them Crowds_. Maybe our
for vagrancy. collective intelligence
hasn't progressed very far
As for nuclear waste since the Victorian era?
disposal, this is much more
of a political problem than a
technical one. Radioactive
ore occurs naturally,
and digging it up,
concentrating it, and
stashing it in a site chosen ((I need to verify
for it's isolation and the physics of this.
stability hardly strikes me I think roughly this is
as a defect of this true, but is there any
technology. reason for waste products
to be more dangerous than
Note that there is no "coal ore?))
waste disposal problem"
because it's just accepted
that the bulk of the crap
(including radioactive stuff
in the coal) will be pumped
into the air.
--------
Consider just as a
thought experiment, dumping
the waste in the ocean. If
your canisters are good,
maybe it gets buried and you
don't release anything. If
they leak somehow, and it
gets into the sea water,
there still wouldn't be any
measurable change in the
concentration in the stuff
that's there already.
This probably isn't the right
way to do it, but I take it
as the baseline: we can
clearly do better than this.
(Mander's idea that we need armed guards (see MILCOMP for ref).
on nuclear waste strikes me as kind of
whacky. Does he expect a terrorist
attack in the southwest US, by people
equipped to transport massive amounts of
hot stuff without getting fried, who have
the capabilities to refine spent nuclear
fuel enough to squeeze enough weapons
grade material to make some bombs? If
this was doable, I would guess the
material wouldn't be called "waste", it'd
be recycled and reused as fuel.)
(Try this factoid for a reality check:
nuclear fuel is enriched about 5%.
Weapons grade material is enriched about
95%. Two different animals.)
Peter Beckman's book "The Health Hazards of _Not_ Going
Nuclear" isn't bad. Here's a couple of paragraphs from
p.102, Ch.4 "Waste Disposal":
The much used rhetoric about wastes remaining
"radioactive for thousands of years," while perfectly
true (the halflife of plutonium 239 is 24,400 years), is
quite misleading and largely meaningless... the longer
the halflife of an isotope, the less intense it's
radiation. Arsenic, which is not radioactive at all,
has an infinite halflife, and indeed, while plutonium
will be around for a long time, arsenic will be around
forever.
Nor is the point about arsenic (for example) a cheap
trick of demagoguery. As Prof. B. Cohen of the
University of Pittsburgh has pointed out, arsenic
trioxide is a poison used as a pesticide. It is not a
very commonly used one, but more of it (in weight) is
imported every year than all the nuclear wastes would
amount to if all US power were nuclear. Arsenic
trioxide is about 50 times more toxic than plutonium
when ingested (for plutonium being "the most toxic
substance known to man" is more melodramatic piffle),
but the main difference compared with the threat of
wastes is this: Nuclear wastes, when there are enough of
them, will be buried deep underground in carefully
chosen geological formations. But the arsenic trioxide
is dispersed in random places on the earth's surface,
mainly where food is grown. Long after the nuclear
wastes have decayed to negligible levels, it will still
be around in the biosphere.
--------
MILCOMP Computers and the military
Computers have clearly had an This discussion was all inspired
effect on modern warfare, but by a section of a book by Jerry
I don't entirely understand Mander called "IN THE ABSENCE OF
the sense of alarm that Mander THE SACRED: THE FAILURE OF
approaches this with, TECHNOLOGY AND THE SURVIVAL OF
from what little I know about THE INDIAN NATIONS".
it, most of the clearly Distributed by Sierra Club
stupid mistakes have been Books. (Richard Balcon quoted a
avoided, for example we don't big chunk of Chapter 3 on
use anything like "launch on sfraves in Oct, and it should be
warning", and we've thus far archived at soda.berkeley.edu.)
insisted on keeping human
beings in the loop on
friend-or-foe identification
(the only reason jet fighters
still have pilots is because
machines can't recognize the
enemy with any reliability).
--------
THOUGHTSPACE
I think that Jerry Mander underestimates (see MILCOMP)
the importance of computers on the human
intellectual environment... they don't
just "help writers" crank out fluff...
automated literature searches are
becoming common, dwellers in places like
the usenet are confronted with at least a
crude form of intellectual debate, a
number of public domain texts are
becoming available via ftp so the texts
themselves can be analyzed by keyword
searches, and so on.
I have hopes that someday all of this
activity will lead up to the Grand
Hypertext (that is to say, all
information in the world accessible in a
computerized, easily indexed form),
perhaps using PAX (Public Access Xanadu)
as designed by Ted Nelson himself. HYPER
This Sierra Club book by Mander is an
example of a nasty problem I hope Xanadu
may be able to solve. It was published
in 1991, but from skimming through this
excerpt it looks like a collection of
urban myths, half truths, and perhaps an
occasional good point. It doesn't matter
that half or more of these notions have
been rigorously disproved, the memes are
still out there replicating and spreading
faster than the anti-memes can catch up
to them... The hope is that in a more
hypertextual world, links would form
faster between arguments and refutations,
speeding up the resolution of public
technical debates like this.
Just to make it clear what I'm talking
about, here are my picks for "obvious"
myths, half truths, and good points:
Myths:
(1) Nuclear energy is
dangerous.
(2) Nuclear waste must be
guarded for 250,000 years.
(3) Nuclear energy is
expensive.
(4) "Workers and the general
population are being exposed
to the most deadly chemicals
that have ever been
synthesized."
(5) VDT radiation causes
"fatigue, eye strain,
migraines, cataracts". And
miscarriages.
(6) Workers don't benefit
from technical advance under
capitalism.
(7) Computerization increases
unemployment.
Half-truths:
(1) Solar energy
is completely decentralized.
(what about semiconductor fab
lines? Or pipe
manufacturing?)
(2) Solar
energy is clean
(manufacturing photocells is
no cleaner than any other
semiconductor process).
(3) Semiconductors are a dirty
technology (certainly it used
to be, to some extent. I
think it's much cleaner now,
for example they use lower
quantities of solvents, and
safer ones where possible.)
(4) Centralization always
leads to autocracy.
(5) Military applications are
evil.
Good points:
(1) Technology isn't neutral.
(2) The consequences of
computerization are worth
thinking about.
(Now I bet you'd like me to support my claims with some good
references, right? I wish I could give them to without
spending a year on it. That's what Xanadu is all about.)
--------
((topic is?))
I think there's another
contributing problem that a
global hypertext alone won't
solve. (Maybe "science
courts" or "fact forums"
would help).
The rules of thumb that many
people use to judge issues in
the absence of evidence are
faulty. The formal principle
may be that the speech should
be judged, not the speaker,
but in practice, when you're
short on time (and we almost
always are) the rule is
"consider the source".
And I disagree with the way
people judge their sources.
For example, it's usually
assumed that you can't trust
a company spokesman. If a
researcher has been funded by
someone with an interest at
stake, then they must be
corrupt, right?
On the other hand, an
independent, "altruistic"
source like Ralph Nader is
always trusted. But I would
argue that Ralph Nader is in
the hysteria business. The
more he can frighten people
the more money and power his
organization gets (and if you
want to be a little
charitable, the more able he
is to do the things he
believes need doing).
An interesting detail: RJ
Reynolds is the classic
example of slimy corporate
liars, always citing research
results that "prove" that
cigarettes aren't so bad. So
these researches must all
have been corrupted by their
source of funding right? Not
really: I understand that
even Reynolds funded research
comes to the conclusion that
cigarettes are evil, the PR
flacks just lie about the
results.
(But still: wouldn't it be
the duty of the scientists
involved to publicize their
results, to let everyone know
that RJ Reynolds is
misrepresenting their work?
Why don't they? There are
degrees of corruption...)
Anyway, one might conclude
that a university
Health-Physics department is
a good place to find out
about nuclear energy, even if
both the utility companies
and the naderites are biased.
--------
Some things left out:
--------
Alternate approach: Personal
odyssey. When I was a kid I
was really into solar. Then
I heard some disquieting
things about nukes, e.g. Paul
MacIssac. Thought about it
some more, talked to some
anti nukes in my high school,
noted fanaticism... Started
getting into Jerry
Pournelle's column in galaxy
(modulo criticism). Read
some other things... became
convinced that...
--------
DRUGS
I have a resounding lack of
interest in recreational
drugs.
I use caffiene, sometimes.
I try to keep it moderate.
That's about it...
except for sugar and chocolate,
of course.
"You don't have any
curiosity about --"
No, not much.
They're not real. REALITY
The experience may
seem engaging, the
effects may be intense,
you might feel good,
but it's all cut off
from anything that
matters.
Your mind/body complex
has a biochemical level,
and the signals between
components can be faked,
forged, you can fool your
self many ways... but why NATURE
would you want to? Why
con yourself?
A classic example: "wire-heading".
Supposedly you can stick a wire
into the "pleasure center" of your
brain. The apocryphal story has it
that organisms cannot resist this
stimulus. A lab rat will press the In Niven's version, once
button untill it dies, rather than jolted this way, the
stop for food. memory of the experience
haunts you forever, and
I used to tell this story to you *will* come back for
people snorting cocaine, and more, eventually.
ask them if they'd do it.
(If the surgical aspects bothered them,
I'd add in Niven's fillip about doing it I also used to like
non-invasively with a current induced to ask cocaine-people
by a magnetic field). if they thought it
should be legalized.
Usually they still said no...
Usually
My point was that I don't see what they said
the difference is. no.
Rewards
disconnected
from the behavior
they're normally
connected to.
Another example:
A John Sladek story called "The Happy
Breed" (from the _Dangerous Visions_
anthology). The unstated background
to this story is Asimov's Laws of
Robotics. The benevolent machines
are taking over, doing their best to
keep everyone *safe* (no swimming
under water! It's dangerous!). RISK
But there's another problem...
creativity, intelligence,
seems to be slipping. Many
people are going into a kind
of catatonia, their bodies
stashed in life support
machines in hospitals. And
the point is that the
benevolent machines *like* it
this way, an immobilized
person is a safe person.
So add a detail to this scenario,
suppose the machines slice your
spinal cord, disconnect your optic
and aural nerves, and run them all Indeed, these days they call
to a computer that can simulate a this sort of thing is called
fufilling existance. You'll live your Virtual Reality. But mostly
life in this box, but your mind will that's a different concept:
think it's utopia. Gibson's cyberspace is about
interfacing with the Real in
So, would you do it? a different way, the world's
information turned into a
I wouldn't. I know people who would. 3-D time-varying graph, a
data scape.
To me, it represents the
diffence between pleasure
and happiness, between feeling
good, and doing something IRONTHORN
worthwhile.
From a conversation about LSD:
I say: She said:
Drug addictions are just
symptoms of some other
problem. The people who
get compulsive about
them are already really
insecure and neurotic.
Translation: I'm immune. Things
like that don't happen to me.
This kind of talk sets off
alarm bells in my head, it
sounds so much like just
another rationalization, like
all the others I've heard too
often in my life ("I'm a good
drunk driver. All of my
accidents have been when I was
sober.")
LSD is fun. There's a sense
of discovery about seeing
things in a new way. For
example, Looking at a moss
bank, you might suddenly
imagine what it would be
like to be really small and
be able to crawl around in
there, and if you tried to
explain what you meant to a
straight person they'd go
"so? It's just a moss bank."
This sounds like a particularly
empty kind of fun to me. You
get a sense of discovery without
really discovering anything.
Well it is playing with fire.
The effects are unpredictable.
But it *is* fun. You know,
some people like going on
amusement park rides, and
they think that's fun. FUN
So the sense of risk adds
to the sense of adventure?
And then, any attempt at
arguing against it can become
an incentive to do it. "Can
you take the acid test." RISK
ALCOHOL
I've always avoided getting involved
with drinking alcohol.
I've had about two sips of beer in
my life (one of which I spit out).
I even try and avoid things cooked
with alcohol.
This is very peculiar behavior in
this culture. It's taken me a while
to learn how to deal with other
people about it. When offered a
drink, I originally just said "No
thanks", but it was awkward when
they kept repeatedly offering me
drinks when we met. So I
experimented with saying "No thanks,
I don't drink." This earned me some (In fact, I used to get this
very curious looks, and the bolder reaction a lot: "You don't
people would ask me why. At first drink, or smoke? What do you
I tried things like "Oh, it's just *do*?"),
a personal decision, I don't really
like to get into it. I don't go
around making Temperance speeches."
This didn't work at all.
So finally I settled on "No thanks,
actually I don't drink. My mother
was an alcoholic and it always seemed
like a good idea to stay away from it."
This shuts most people right up.
But somtimes I run into people
who are also children of alcoholics
and it didn't stop *them* from
drinking so why should it stop me?
So I have to try another tactic.
I literally don't know what to say
to that one... WHY
If I had to pick one solid reason that
I never started drinking, it would
probably be that I was a compulsive
non-conformist when I was a teenager,
and too smart to fall into the usual trap
of conforming to the other non-conformists. CONFORM
Drugs were too popular, too *normal* for
me too want to get involved with.
But I'm no longer such a knee-jerk
conformist, and there have to be
reasons I've never changed my mind
about it. One of them is a passion
for "real" experience (see above),
one is a realization that peoples
perceptions of risk are so screwed
up the fact that "everyone is doing
it" means *nothing* about whether or
not its really dangerous, another is
a genuine appreciation that I'm not
necesarily such a strong person in some
ways... I take things to extremes. ADDICTION
But what do you say to people about
all this? I'm still working on it.
((
Problem of making extremism comprehensible. e.g. no alchohol
in food.))
((An appreciation of the fact that many people forget.
It means that I'm accepted, they're treating me like
they would any person, inspite of my fundamental weirdness.))
((More related to drugs:))
Sfnal veiw. Possible improvements. e.g.
removal of obvious disadvantages, like physical
addictivness. Possibly real temptations to come, like smart
drugs that really work. Nightmare scenario: a powerful
smart drug has negative effects that only show up 20 years
later. A generation of intellectuals gutted. ("I saw the
best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,/dragging themselves through the negro
streets at dawn looking for an angry fix" -- Howl
(though, there's a nightmare scenario I
kick around in my head sometimes, that
goes like this: suppose someone comes up
with a really useful drug, say a smart
drug that improves your memory
tremendously. Legal or illegal, every
college student in the world winds up
using this stuff frequently. Ten years
later it turns out to have some nasty
long term effects, and the world loses
an entire generation of intellectuals.)
Side issue: Impossibility of conveying experience in language.
Occasional triumphs of poetry. "Heroin is like coming home."
Another side topic: why so many impressive, creative people who've
been involved with drugs ? Lou Reed. Jim Carrol. David Bowie.
A trap for those who believe themselves to be intelligent,
people who are willing to experiment, and who don't take the
official word as the final word. Or a spur to weirdness,
something that kicks you out of the normal orbit.
General evilness of alcohol in comparision to other prevalent
drugs. Civic duty to promote an alternate, e.g. MJ?
An argument against alchohol... I've known some older
Mormons, people who have never drank, who looked 20 years
younger than they are. I've know some young alchoholics who
looked much older than they are. (Personally, I can usually pass
for being younger than I am). How much of what we think of
as the effects of aging are really the effects of alchohol?
Common argument: moderate drinking is good for you.
Supported by stats showing more heart problems
amongst tea-totalers. Problem w/this data: to be
a teatotaler, you must be weird, an extremist,
driven. Stress of being abnormal?
(There's a simpler counter-argument: grape juice is
apparently as good as moderate wine drinking.)
Spin off topics, legalization, "war on drugs".
Useful also as an analogy in libertarian arguments,
e.g. impossiblity of gov. control shown by prevalence of black market.
Also, inter-gang violence... will it ultimately evolve into a cooperative
situation with analogs of legal contracts and enforcement? i.e. can
order arise from the chaos that often accompanies the introduction of
anrachy (connect to world international situation: no laws, i.e. anarchy.
given states as analogs of individuals, does international situation
most resemble chaos or ordered anarchy?) (note need to clearly distinguish
between this chaos and the mathematical concept). ))
Definition of alcholism.
A friend of mine who been through the AA bit struck me
as having a very broad definition of what alcholism was.
Anyone who talked alot about getting drunk on weekends
(a popular activity amongst many an undergrad) was flagged
as a possible alcholic. I argued that this was silly...
A lot of people go through phases in their life where they
drink a lot but then they suddenly quit without any apparent
effort: doesn't look a lot like an addiction to me...
Another friend of the AA persuasion said that alchoholism is
"using alchohol to change your personality."
Sounds to me like a definition of what alchohol does,
rather than alchoholism. A common refuge of the nervous
and insecure is to anethesize their higher faculties,
temporarily... Some good freinds of mine wound up getting
married as the culmination of a chain of events beginning
at one particular drunken party. At a guess they never would've
met without alchohol. (And I *doubt* that they're alchoholics,
though I don't see them often enough these days to swear to it,
I suppose.)
--------
ADDICTION 6-15-92
When you admit you're an
addict, you're admitting
that you are unable to ELVIRA
control certain behavior.
A failing of will power, All of which puts you in
perhaps a failing of the model the very peculiar position
of Free Will. of making choices to restrict
choices, of making
According to the principles of AA, decisions based on
of the twelve steps, to conquer BATESON your inability to
an addiction, you must first admit correctly make
that it is stronger than you are. decisions.
You must appeal to a "higher power".
Of developing
In practice, this really means that strategies to deal
you have to stay completely away with your own
from whatever it is you have problems limitations...
with.
UNCONSTRAINED
You must avoid the "first drink"
Because you can't count on being IGNORANT
able to avoid going "just one more"
indefinitely.
Moderation is easy to
argue for, but impossible
to define.
The nice thing
about extremes is
that you always
know what side
of the line you're
on.
The author of
_I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional_
makes the point that twelve step groups
insist on focusing on the personal...
before you can work on the worlds problems
you must work on your own problems.
But when will your own problems ever
be solved?
And isn't it possible that you make work
out your personal own problems, by trying to apply
yourself to a larger problem?
Lack of a sense of purpose could be part
of the problem.
--------
KESEY 4/93
In response to a question on the sfraves list:
_The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_ is a book by Tom Wolfe
about Ken Keasey dropping out of his "job" as a novelist
(_One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_ and even better
_Sometimes a Great Notion_) to lead a band of merry
pranksters called The Merry Pranksters on an acid drenched
trip around the country in a psychedelically painted bus.
The main bus driver was Neal Cassady, also written about
(under the name Dean Moriarty) by Jack Kerouac in the book KEROUAC
_On the Road_. Included in the band of pranksters was the
young Stewart Brand, later to become involved with the Whole
Earth Catalog, Whole Earth Review, book about the MIT Media
Lab, and so on.
People who insist on drawing parallels between the 60s and
raves are likely to refer to this frequently. Ditto people
who think raves are about doing drugs. It has some
interesting stuff in it I suppose, but also lots of boring
stuff... it's hard for me to avoid the conclusion that it
mainly documents a long period in Kesey's life wasted on
(chemical) mental masturbation. Personally, I wish he'd
spent the time writing more books.
(In case I haven't editorialized enough already: yeah,
knowing some history is a good idea, but nostalgia is, if
you'll excuse the expression, a bad trip. And whatever the
Pranksters were about, it certainly wasn't nostalgia, and if
anyone out there is harboring ideas like "wouldn't it be
cool to be like the Pranksters and bring back the good old
days of Acid Tests and Woodstock" I'd like to suggest it's a
better idea to twist your head around and look in the other
direction.)
Hm. Did I answer the question? Should I have mentioned
that "Acid Tests" were acid parties, begun in the days when
it was legal (imagine posters hung up on college campuses:
"Can you take the Acid Test?"). The title of the story
refers to a party at Kesey's place, where Tom Wolfe got
himself involuntarily dosed by drinking Kool-Aid spiked with
acid that was put out for anyone to drink (just possibly,
that practice was a tad irresponsible, no?).
But then, should I talk about the Hell's Angels invited to
the party? The now archetypal gang bang that I still see
discussed in places like the New York Times? Maybe I should
explain that this was before Altamont? Should I mention
Hunter S. Thomphson's _Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible
Saga_?
Once you get started, where do you stop, anyway?
--------
RISK 6/29/93
A very short story by Joanna Russ
where a man complains that the bright
new world of the future has killed
Man's spirit because it is too safe,
it leaves no element of risk. His
judges listen to him, and agree, and
inject him with the bubonic plauge.
I've always thought it would be nice
to pair this story with the chapter
"G in the Air" from Dashiel Hammet's
_The Maltese Falcon_.
--------
FUN 6/29/93
Sometime, think
about what people
mean by "fun".
Sometimes the word
can be used to
conceal deeper
purposes, no?
Like "Oh, I was just
flirting, it was all
just for fun." FLIRT
Clearly, there are different
kinds of fun: like downhill
skiing versus rock climbing.
One may have some skill
involved, but it's all
farily easy: You go "Wheee!"
and slide down hill fast.
Rock climbing, on the other
hand, is the kind of "fun"
where you may be grunting
with effort, wondering why
you ever got into it. The
"fun" part is perhaps the
sense of accomplishment when
you pull yourself over the
top and the climb is over.
This is a good pair of
things to compare, since both
are essentially purposeless,
clearly just games.
Consider that the actual
risks involved are probably
higher in skiing (zipping
downhill fast passed rocks
and trees is really pretty
dangerous) compared to rock
climbing (which is a very
slow deliberate sport, where
the equipment is designed to
keep you just as safe as you
want to be). But the
perceived risks are
opposite: the adrenalin rush
of a typical downhill move
isn't based much on a fear
of killing yourself, but in
rock climbing, even for an
experienced climber, much of
the game involves overcoming
your own psychological
blocks, convincing yourself
that you really are safe
even though it feels like
you may fall to your death
at any moment.
--------
WHY 6/29/93
Really, I think that there
is no way I can explain "why"
I do or don't do anything,
because I don't know myself.
And the more important the
actions are, the least likely
I am to understand my
motivations.
When it is necessary, I can come
up with many plausible sounding
explanations for most anything
I do.
I doubt that I'm alone on this.
--------
REALITY 6/29/93
Ah, now repeat after me:
"What is Reality?"
I place a high value on
Reality.
I was arguing that a drugged
experience is somehow unreal.
How about fiction? Reading
novels, watching movies?
Why is it I think those are
okay?
What about dreams? All of us seem
to have the capacity to hallucinate
built into us. The conventional
wisdom is that this haullucination
is needed to keep you sane. So how
can I argue that hallucinations are
unnatural, that psychedelic
experience is necessarily
wortheless?
Once I stood looking through the
screen door at our back yard on a
sunny day. I thought it was
beautiful: sunlight on the grass
and trees, so I swung the door open
to plunge outside: and then I
realized that it was even more
beautiful, the colors were all much
more intense, the boundaries much
clearer when I wasn't peering
through a screen door. Moral:
imposing a distortion on your
perceptions can at least make you
appreciate the way they work when
the distortion isn't present.
((there are probably some connections here
to BLAKE. Try the phrase "doors of perception"?
And Rimbaud is worth looking up "Intentional
derrangement of the senses" It's a bit of a
stretch but there's Poe's Usher, "hypersensitivity".))
NATURE 6/29/93
So, buried in my manifesto
about why drugs are fundamentally
pointless is the idea that they're
"unnatural".
This is the sort of argument that
sets off alarms when I hear it from
other people.
What's natural? Is it natural for a
human being to live passed 35?
To write things on computers?
What's the difference between a
food and a drug? I used to drink
Decafe coffee a lot, and
congratulate myself on avoiding the
caffiene. But I've since heard
that all coffee, even decafe
contains a number of opiate like
compounds that may be responsible
for the feeling of "relaxation" and
also for it's addictiveness. I can
certainly get withdrawl symptoms
from decafe, and I know other people
who report the same thing.
Now when I want something non-drug like,
I may have some Mint tea. But how do I
know there may not be something else in
the "herbal" teas that no one has bothered
to tell me about?
Something like alcohol has calories associated
with it, so it has some food-like properties,
and many foods have some drug like properites,
e.g. sugar, chocalate, etc.
I take lecithin capsules these days, on the
theory that it may improve my short term
memory. Does this count as a drug?
TOLERANCE
So, despite how deeply I
feel the argument against
drug use, I have to admit
that the arguments that
persuade me are far from
complete. Hence, I try
to be very tolerant of
other people's choices
about this. I don't, and
never will use recreational
drugs, but if other people
do, that's okay by me.
Mostly this works okay. I've spent
most of my life hanging around with
people who use some sort of drugs.
It's really only recently that I've
found people who also tend to avoid
them (though usually not as
fanatically as I do).
The one case where I've been know to
have some problems is with people who
are really close to me, e.g. girl
friends.
There was a girl I was seeing who
did a transition from being a
complete abstainer, to being
someone who would experiment with
just about anything her friends
were doing.
It was a lot of work to break off the
self-identification, to try and respect
what she was doing as being at least
possibly valid for her.
Since then, I've never quite fallen
into the trap of expecting my girl
friends to be mirrors of myself.
Though I still have a hard time
with friends who claim to be casual
cigarette smokers... once-a-weekers
who claim that there's no way
they'll ever become addicted to
them.
--------
TUBE 1/19/93
I don't hate TV, I hate the idiots who turn on
TVs at stupid moments, crank up the volume, and then expect
everyone else to treat it like a goddamn shrine and pay no
attention to anything or anyone else in the room.
I also hate the people who turn on TVs for a reason, and
then let them run for no reason.
I hate idiots like myself who allow themselves to be
hypnotized by the flashing glowing lights and are unable to
think clearly when the almost-hypersonic flyback whine of
the TV is ringing out.
Anyway, do you see what I'm getting at? We've all been through
this before: technologies aren't neutral. It ain't just how you
use the tool, the tool has built into it bias toward certain
uses.
And I'm a pro-tech person myself. Will some luck and some
intelligence, the very human act of rational creation, of
tool-building will indeed save us.
--------
BEYOND 8/1/92
I finished reading _Beyond the Fall of Night_ recently, and
while I wouldn't say it was great, I wasn't quite as hostile
to it as most of the people on rec.arts.sf.written.
The packaging was certainly confusing. Nothing, including
the long introduction by Clarke, made it clear that the text
of the original book was included in this volume. I had to
start reading it to figure it out. I kept wondering if I
might be reading still a third version of Alvin's life, as
re-written by Benford.
I think the main trouble with the sequel itself is that the
viewpoint character is almost completely passive,
just along for the ride. Maybe this should be called
"Female Protagonist Syndrome"... Bruce Sterling's _Islands
in the Net_ suffers from the same problem.
The problem with the sequel as a sequel, though (and I guess
I'll give this a SPOILER warning, though I doubt it matters)
is that the real problem facing the union of Lys and Diaspar
is that in Lys, a choice has been made to keep the human life
span short, but in Diaspar it is indefinite. The tradeoff
is that Diaspar maintains a fixed population by having no
births, no children, and hence no new minds: they stagnate.
In Lys, on the other hand, lives may be shorter but they get
to experience the "joys" of raising children (I'm a little
dubious of this myself, but that's how Clarke laid it out).
All this may work in theory as long as both cultures are
ignorant of each other, but how are the people in Lys going
to feel about friends and relatives dying when the
technology clearly exists to save them? Anyway, that's the
problem that seems to be set up at the end of the book.
So, how does Benford deal with it? He changes the rules of
the game. The fact that the people in Lys are telepaths is
no coincidence: the capability involves picking up and
broadcasting EM signals with magnetite in their brain cells,
which puts stress on their systems over time, and eventually
results in an early death. So now, the tradeoff is between
immortality and the joys of telepathic social communion.
But all that said, the Benford half of the book is a
bewildering travelog of strange life forms showing off some
odd ideas about evolution. There's a fair amount of
interesting stuff here, but it's not the first Benford book
I'd recommend.
((More to say. That image about the permanence of all
images of everything in the machines of diaspar. Platonic
forms ex machina? Resonates with endings of _If the Stars are
Gods_ and _Against Infinity_. ))
--------
HUGO 7/29/92
Buffalo by John Kessel.
A story built on the skeleton of Bruce Sterling's "Dori
Bangs". But instead of working over the lives of some
weirdos no fan-boy has ever heard of, this story is based on
a more local deity: H.G.Wells.
Fair enough, Wells is one of my deities, too. So this is a
story I wanted to like a lot. And I did appreciate the
autobigoraphical sketch of the elder Wells.
Kessel had me with him, right up to the point where he
decided to state his thesis baldly. Then I felt like
arguing with him. The point is that art don't have to have
a message, and you shouldn't feel guilty for liking crap?
That Kessel isn't going to feel guilty for doing whatever
pandering needs to be done to sell the stories?
Kessel seems a man without ideas, thumbing his nose at his
betters, secure in his right to be a boob.
Still, I got to give this an O+ on the Brenner scale.
--------
I just finished rating the Hugo nominated stories. After
mulling it over a bit, I decided to give Geoffrey Landis'
"A Walk in the Sun" the number one rating. It's not
perfect, but I thought it was a really good job of doing a
traditional hard SF story, somewhere between Hal Clement and
the early Heinlein. I don't see any where near enough work
like this, and I'd say it deserves to be encouraged.
Some of the things that aren't quite right with it: the main
character's histrionics/hallucinations get a little tiresome
about midway through the story. Why does everyone always
*overdo* things? For instance, take the ending: wouldn't it
be better if the guy said "I'm sure you will" *just once*
and then CURTAIN? Saying it twice is corny, and the last
paragraph is even worse.
Second best I gave to John Kessel's "Buffalo". It's true
that it's not strictly SF, but it addresses things of
interest to people with a science fictional mind-set, and
what the hell, why be rigid with these things.
What bothered me about it most probably was that it was so
strongly influenced by Bruce Sterling's "Dori Bangs". (When
you come right down to it, most of the stories on the ballot
were a bit lacking in originality.)
But I did get into the biographical sketch of the later
Welles. I've been reading his _Outline of History_ lately,
and I think I'm turning into a fan of his, so this is a
story I wanted to like a lot.
Kessel had me with him, right up to the point where he
decided to state his thesis baldly, then I felt like arguing
with him. His moral is that stories don't need morals?
That Kessel isn't going to feel guilty for doing whatever
pandering needs to be done to sell the stories?
Kessel is taking pot shots at a man who was far greater than
he'll ever be. I wonder how accurate his autobiographical
sketch is? If you read the _Outline_, I think you'll be
surprised at Well's depth. Don't immediately write him off
with some stereotype of a naive socialist one-worlder.
At a fairly distant third, I placed Mike Resnick's "One
Perfect Morning, With Jackals". I'm not impressed much with
what it is, but it was fairly well done. Fourth place I
gave to "No Award". Most SF "humor" strikes me as (a) not
funny and (b) pointless fluff, and that's what I thought of
"Press Ann", "Dog's Life", and "In the Late Cretaceous" (if
you're going to complain about "Buffalo" not being SF, what
are you going to do with this one?). And "Winter Solstice"
struck me as an odd attempt at capturing the feel of going
senile, translated into fantasy for no apparent reason. The
whole business about Merlin and King Arthur and so on struck
me as little more than name dropping.
--------
ARYAN 9/2/92
Well's _Outline of History_ uses the
word Aryan all over the place. At
first I tended to assume that this was
just a neutral, descriptive term he was
using, that the word hadn't yet been
charged with evil significance by the
Nazis.
Unfortunately it is actually used in
a racist sense all too often.
For example, near the beginning of the
chapter on Buddhism, Wells speaks glowingly
of Guatama seeking after greatness as
though the Aryan spirit was waking up inside
of him. Wells says that his doctrine is
called "The Aryan Path", which is very
interesting, since I'd always heard it
called "The Shining Path". Shining=Bright=White=Aryan ?
So the ideas Wells pushes are perhaps
part of the spirit that led to fascism.
A mystical, Aryan world state....
--------
SCAFFOLDING (various scribbling about the way the doomfile is)
Well, it's 5/6/92 and the doomfile has
finally broken 300K... but much of this
is just quotation. My recent additions
of extensive Well's quotes from the _Outline_
put it over, and there are big chunks of
extraneous Delany quotes under Dsource,
not to mention the long Enough section,
which is essentially a paraphrase of
Ted Nelson.
So what's with all the quoting? I'm
acting like a grad student writing
a thesis, trying to impress the profs
with the depth of my familarity with
the literature, and my knowledge of
precedent...
It is possible that a Wells quote can make
a good starting point... but wouldn't it be
just as good if I reached the same ideas
following my own chain of thought, in
ignorence of the giants I may or may not
be standing on?
Delany sneers at typical male academics
being "ever-obssessed with paternity",
and maybe he's right.
- - - - -
Wells _Outline_
(work area, for now. how to organize?) (clipped around 5/6/92)
(These are the four topics:
1.The long view: history is not a smooth curve.
2.World Government idea.
3.The converse, multiplicity. The schismmatrix. The defense-dominated world.
4.Religion: What is Wells hoping for, in his universal belief structure?
Place after "Irrat." Note existing "Religion" is only about orgies.
Compare to Thomas Paine?
The alternative: systems that allow cooperation without agreement.
Axelrod?)
(The difficulty, as always is that there has to be one default organization,
and a very simple set of interconnections to indicate other ways...)
--------
INBOX - Chunks to be filed away for future use
Lower back pains?
Use Lesbigay!
(Keywords that
double as
Pomo Poems!)
Sweat & thundering The first block or two here
industrial noise; is not so bad. Move it back up
and the silence top, with a goto... to what?
of snowy spaces... the plan?
The old "triad"?
Truth over beauty,
intellect over passion,
freedom over security--
Still...
A beauty in the cold truth,
A passion for the intellect,
And freedom is the only security.
Contempt for the mundane,
A refusal to conform,
even to the non-conformists.
The constellation
of my interests
and ideas also
can repel other
kinds of women.
- - - - - -
fate vt fated; fating
(1601)
:DESTINE; also: DOOM (the deep antipathy...seeming to fate
them to antagonism - Les Savage)
fated adj
(1715)
:decreed, controlled, or marked by fate
- - - - - - - -
Virtue may not be it's own reward.
But vice is usually it's own punishment.
"Hobbes is REAL and IS ALIVE!!!!!"
--- timothy.j.burke
--------
"You are trapped in that bright moment when you learned your doom."
--- Vol Nonik, in Delany's _Fall of the Towers_
Courtesy of djdaneh@pbhyc.pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes)
--------
You do know about
libertarians, right? If you
don't, try and search (^S) for
LIBERTY (and don't forget the
caps).
And hide my contempt
of someone with a
standard-issue mind
that goes group thinking along...
________
((For now, recycling some old bboard postings,
letters, and so on, editing them down a bit.))
BTW: Fisting is putting your fist inside someone, three guesses
where (and only three). Of course it's possible, just takes
some stretching exercises. Nothing like a good workout to
develop your muscles.
--------
HTML
You know, that's "Hypertext Markup Language".
I think.
I hate acronyms.
One of these days I'll stick a pointer here
to someone who knows what they're talking about.
--------
DVA
I'm told that DVA originally meant "two"
in the name "Clock DVA".
Which would mean, "two o'clock".
In a true dark night of the soul, it's always two o'clock in the morning.
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald.
--------
MANY
Well, maybe not that many.
--------
FCC
That's the Federal Communications Commision.
--------
HISTORY -- A brief history of the doomfile 11/2/94
The doomfile was originally conceived
(about 5 years ago) as an attempt at The node that was
writing a hypertext implemented only originally at the
as a plain text file. top of the file has
since been renamed
It was intended to push the limits of DESPERATE. It was
what I'd seen done with a genre that originally posted
might be called the "File Without Read to a local newsgroup
Protection". Back then there was one in part to advertise
main Unix system at Stanford that all the presence of the
Stanford types had access to. These file.
people were the intended audience.
The intended viewer for the
doomfile was Emacs. The long
distance hypertext jumps were
intended to be done just by doing
text searches on keywords
indicated in uppercase. (I forced
searches to be case-sensitive with
some codes at the bottom of the
file.)
You may still see some archaic
references to those days here in
this new edition of the doomfile.
Someday I'll probably strip them
all out.
All of this explains why I
once felt the need to write
the following emacs tutorial...
--------
EMACS
You've probably just done a search using C-s To go back, use C-r
(that's Control S) on the keyword EMACS. (Control r for reverse).
You might need to hit it
Here's some commands useful for a few times.
looking at this file:
CTRL V and ESC V
A double C-S are page up and down. C-g cancels a
repeats the command, and
last search. Cursor control: C-n will get you out
A double C-R and C-p go up and of most anything.
brings you down. C-L centers
back. the window. Sometimes it takes
several to kill a
Note: a C-s does C-L is also good for search, though.
a forward search refreshing the screen
that proceeds if some glitch screws
from the cursor up the display.
location. If it
"fails", try
hitting C-s A cool technique:
again, C-s C-w snags the
immediately to word out from
force a under the cursor
"wrapped" search and searches for
from the the next occurence.
beginning.
Now, I suggest hitting C-R several times to jump back to
where you came from. Alternately, you might want to try doing
a C-S DEEP_GNU to see some more stuff about emacs.
--------
HEINLEIN
(Some things have been said, under STRANGER, a note under LIBERTY,
but much more remains....) (some additions under GRUMBLES).
From a brief note to: "Thomas Hyer"
Fri, 31 Jan 92
Comparing "Coventry" to the Outlaw zones in
_I Will Fear No Evil_:
Coventry is clearly the better story, but there the idea
is that the government has set aside a large area to isolate
malcontents. In _Fear_ the idea isn't that these zones
are prisons, but regions the government decided they just
couldn't control, or weren't worth controlling... or more
likely, were bribed to let run free by the interests
controlling the casinos/night-clubs, etc...
((Another note written for the net: ))
The primary stuff as far as I'm concerned is in
_Grumbles from the Grave_ (a collection of letters and such,
largely from the early period) and in _Expanded Universe_
where the later Heinlein allowed himself to rant about
various topics. There may be some interesting info the
newer books _Requiem_ and _Tramp Royale_, but I haven't read
them yet.
I see that the Stanford Library has some biographies/
criticism which I'm not familiar with:
_Robert A Heinlein Stranger in His Own Land_
Slusser, George Edgar. (San Bernardino, Calif. : Borgo Press, 1976)
_Robert A Heinlein America as Science Fiction_
Franklin, H. Bruce (Howard Bruce). (New York : Oxford University Press, 1980)
_Robert A Heinlein_
Stover, Leon E. (Boston : Twayne Publishers, c1987)
_Classic Years of Robert A Heinlein_
Slusser, George Edgar. (San Bernardino, Calif. : Borgo Press, 1977)
Funny they don't seem to have Alexi Panshin's _Heinlein in
Dimension_, which has got to be _the_ first critical work
about Heinlein.
Anyway, if you want _my_ opinion (and in my opinion, the
later Heinlein is clearly the lesser, but hey what do I
know? All those people who buy the books on the bestseller
lists can't be wrong, right?) there are a number of factors:
(1) Yeah, to some extent Heinlein was getting interested in
different things. He seemed to be trying to systematically,
rationally attack the various taboos inherent in our culture,
and as time went on he was less interested in the technical
and political speculation he was originally famous for.
(2) As the times changed, he probably felt that he could get
away with more. Even if he had wanted to, say, write about
incest fantasies back in the 50s, he probably felt like he
would've been either (a) unpublished or (b) stoned to death.
(4) As he became more successful, his editors no longer had
the clout or the desire to request rewrites. (And anyway,
the fashion went from short works and tight writing to
longer and meandering works). So, his writing became much
less disciplined: there was no longer any need to edit
anything. The uncut versions of _The Puppet Masters_ and
_Stranger in a Strange Land_ both seem to me to be similar
to the writing of the later Heinlein.
(5) His health became increasingly bad as
time went on... he literally did develop "brain damage" (a
stroke? I can never remember the medical details).
_I Will Fear No Evil_ was released in a first draft form by
Virginia Heinlein, because he was too sick to do any
re-writes. Between _The Number of the Beast_ and _Friday_,
he had some major surgery that supposedly cleared up his
mind quite a bit.
- - - - - - - --
Catching up on my bad Heinlein
Second to last on my list was _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_,
by which I was pleasantly surprised. I don't expect much of
the later Heinlein books (they tend to begin with some sort
of mystery that's resolved by pulling some awfully fantastic
rabbits out of every hat on stage, and many that aren't),
but this one _almost_ avoids all of that stuff. A
reasonably entertaining story, largely a follow-up to _Time
Enough for Love_ (or rather, "Da Capo", the incest fantasy
at the end of _Time Enough_).
One thing that really impressed me is that our Heinlein
heroes-- those perfect entities who are always in charge of
their emotions, never get unreasonably jealous, are
infinitely flexible in their responses to weird situations--
they have to deal with (1) a divorce, when hubby decides he
prefers the younger woman in the menage et trois and (2)
some psychological problems in teenagers raised in a family
where recreational incest was the norm. Not only do they
have to deal with the Mrs. Grundy without, they have to deal
with the flaws within themselves.
This book strikes me as Heinlein grappling with some of the
realities of the experiments with alternate lifestyles
that fascinated him so much... makes me wonder what his next
book would've been like.
- - - - - - - -
((A later and probably better versin of the above:))
Subject: Catching up on my bad Heinlein: _To Sail_
Second to last on my list of lesser Heinlein to read was _To
Sail Beyond the Sunset_. I was pleasantly surprised by it.
I don't expect much of the later Heinlein books (they tend
to begin with some sort of mystery that's "resolved" by the
author pulling some awfully fantastic rabbits out of his
hat), but this one _almost_ avoids all of that stuff. I
thought it was fairly entertaining... largely a follow-up to
_Time Enough for Love_ (or rather, "Da Capo", the incest
fantasy at the end of _Time Enough_).
One thing that really impressed me is that our Heinlein
heroes-- those perfect entities who are almost always in
charge of their emotions, are never unreasonably jealous,
and are always able to experiment at will alternate social
arrangements without any problems-- they have to deal with
(1) a divorce, when hubby decides he prefers the younger
woman in the menage et trios and (2) some psychological
problems in teenagers raised in a family where recreational
incest was the norm.
At last, it's not just the Good Guys vs. the Grundys... in
this story, even some of best can have their grundy-like
aspects.
This book strikes me as Heinlein beginning to grapple with
some of the realities of his fantasies... It makes me wonder
what his next book would've been like, which is saying
something: I'd pretty much given up hope.
Some further rambling, (and thinking)...
Usually Heinlein's heroes have to contend with Mrs. Grundy's
of the world, but here they also have to deal with the flaws
within themselves.
Maybe he could've gotten beyond the level of softcore sexual
fantasy, and gotten back to the sort of thing he could do
best...
Imagination tempered by realism,
A wildcat. Dozens of useless, crazy notions, but with an
occasional insight that stabs deep in a direction no one
else would've thought to go.
In _Expanded Universe_, in discussing _Starship Troopers_,
he reels off a half dozen ideas about alternate ways
democracies could be set up.
His early career, focusing on the dream of space exploration
probably did much to develop public interest in the idea,
culminating (unfortunately) with the Apollo program...
In his later career, when he wasn't indulging in the empty
absurdities like "The World as Myth", he was playing with
fantasies of alternate sexual relationships... But never
more than just fantasies.
This is a fairly young culture, with many gaps in our
customs and institutions. Could a healthier, longer-lived
Heinlein have helped fill in some of the gaps?
- - - - - - -
Subject: Catching up on my bad Heinlein: _The Beast_
Well, last on my list was _The Number of the Beast_, and for
good reason. I knew that this entire book was centered on
the kind of thing I hate most in the later Heinlein books:
"the world as myth" idea, an arbitrary universe where
anything can happen without rhyme or reason.
But my expectations weren't very high, so I could enjoy some
of it, despite various problems. Like, why did Heinlein
choose to swap viewpoints between the four main characters
when they all sound alike anyway? (There's maybe *one*
place where this works, where we see the differences between
Jake's view of things and everyone else's and get a clear
demonstration of his capacity for self-delusion.) And does
Heinlein really believe that there's no way a group of four
people can deal with each other without strict military
discipline?
But anyway, even in the worst of Heinlein, you can find a
really neat idea, like this one (Heinlein is describing a
different version of the United States, on an alternate
earth):
Taxation is low, simple-- and contains a surprise.
The Federal government is supported by a head tax paid
by the States , and is mostly for military and foreign
affairs. This state derives most of it's revenue from
real estate taxes. It is a uniform rate set annually,
with no property exempted, not even churches, hospitals,
or schools-- or roads; the best roads are toll roads.
The surprise lies in this: _The_owner_appraises_his_own_
property._
There is a sting in the tail: _Anyone_ can buy
property _against_the_owner's_wishes_ at the appraisal
the owner placed on it. The owner can hang on only by
raising his appraisal _at_once_ to a figure so high that
no buyer wants it-- and pay _three_years_back_taxes_ at
his _new_ appraisal.
--------
This posting got quite a bit of comment. Here are my replies:
((Trim/doomify all this stuff. Too long!.))
This is why I was impressed by the "beastly" method of
handling property taxes. What are the ways can you figure
the value of someone's land?
(1) Have a "neutral" appraiser tell you what it's worth.
The law sometimes requires things like this, but I dislike
the idea myself. It seems much too arbitrary. Different
appraisers sometimes differ by quite a bit (I've heard of a
factor of two difference, in one case), so in practice you
get several appraisals done, and pick the favorable one.
Wouldn't be surprised if there was a fair amount of bribery
going on to get favorable assessments. In general, the idea
of having every piece of property reappraised every year
sounds like the kind of scheme only an appraisers union
could love.
There's another disadvantage to this scheme: As property
values rise, your taxes can go up, forcing people (in
particular older people on fixed incomes) to sell. I'll
come back to this one.
(2) Use the original purchase price.
This is what's currently done in California (under
Proposition 13). This wonderful system has helped
contribute to a shortage of housing by freezing people in
place: for example, an aging couple with kids long gone
can't trade a large house for a small one without losing
their tax break. (There was some talk about a patch to the
law, a special deal for people moving within the same
region. I can't remember what became of it.)
Another chronic problem is that the people who bought
recently are at a severe disadvantage compared to those who
bought earlier. Their taxes can differ by as much as a
factor of ten. This system survived a constitutional
challenge recently ("equal protection"?), but in my opinion
it can not last. The more newcomers, the more unfair it
will seem.
(3) The "beastly" system: the owner publicly announces the
value of the land, and any buyer is free to take them up on
it.
What's really elegant about this is that it uses something
like market forces to determine the land's value. If
someone decides to do a "forced" buy from you, you can't
complain _too_ much, since that's what you've declared the
land is worth (and you do have the option of upping the
price on them, though you'll get stung by the governments
one-time triple-tax penalty if you do).
The kind of thing Gavin Steyn was complaining about doesn't
really strike me as that big of a problem: So you're a small
farmer. You're forced to sell out to some guy who wants to
set up a factory to manufacture something useless, like
computers. Okay, so it's tough that you've got to hit the
road... but on the other hand, you can probably buy another
small farm someplace where the property values are lower.
And notice that _any_ scheme that uses taxes based on the
market value of the property has disadvantages like this
(like the first one I mentioned, above). But if you shield
people from the effects of a change in the market (as in the
California system), you run into some nasty unintended
consequences.
You've always got to think about what incentives you're
setting up when you interfere with the market (as any form
of taxation has to), and the "beastly" system strikes me as
a sort of modified free market idea that's at least a step
in the right direction. Maybe it's not really ideal (Ken
Arromdee came up with a few good practical problems that
would need to be ironed out) and maybe it's not politically
feasible, but at least it sounds like it would be more
robust over the long haul than California's.
--------
Ken Arromdee was saying:
> Some other flaws:
>
> What is considered a piece of property?
[odd scenario deleted]
I would guess the property owner and the owner only would have
the right to subdivide the property. If you call it one chunk,
then it would have to be bought as one chunk.
> What about property with a different value to different people?
Well hopefully, the most important interest is willing to pay
more, and therefore the "right" person gets it. Of course, the
guy with the most money is usually willing to pay more, too,
which can cause some problems, but that's capitalism, you know?
> How much above market price must I pay taxes on to, say, keep
> property that lets me live near my aging grandmother, given that
> a developer wishes to buy the land at normal market price?
Well, that's a fair question. In practice, how much would you
overvalue your land (and hence pay some higher taxes) just to
avoid the hassle of people trying to buy it? Hopefully not too
much, but every person has to make their own decision. It'd be
tough if you had to sell some land with some sort of sentimental
value, but sometimes life is tough, you know? (Other ways of
assessing taxes have different "Well, tough" problems connected
to them.)
Anyway, maybe you'd have to rent a place for awhile. Maybe
you'd have to move in with your grandmother.
> If someone wants my farmland to build a shopping mall on, do I
> have to pay shopping-mall taxes on my land even though I don't
> have the capital to build a shopping mall myself?
No, I think the idea is if someone _really_ wants to put a
shopping mall on that land, maybe it should be there. And
you've got to buy a farm someplace else (or get out of farming).
> What about changes which affect property values? If the value
> of my property suddenly goes up, I'd have to raise the
> assessment to keep people from buying it--and immediately have
> to pay three years back taxes even though the property just went
> up in value recently. In effect, the state would get three
> years extra taxes each time property values went up. What if I
> have to raise the assessment several times in a year; do I have
> to pay 3 years back taxes each time?
Now *this* sounds like some good thinking. Really, I expect the
system would have to be patched somehow (for example, instead of
paying three times the value of the new tax, you should really
only have to pay some multiple of the value of the _change_ in
the tax: why penalize someone more than once for the same
error?).
But let's look at it using just the system Heinlein described.
Really, you're probably going to over value your property a bit,
so that buys you *some* slack. If you know the market is
ramping up, then you might have to anticipate this in your
public announced price (in effect, making a guess as to what the
maximum value of the land is going to be throughout the next
year). If you don't have cash on hand to do any of these
things, then I suppose you'd be forced to sell.
> What if responsible use of property costs more money than
> irresponsible use?
This is a real problem under any system, I'm not sure it's
strictly relevant to Heinlein's idea. Currently, our system is
patched with anti-pollution laws and zoning regulations and the
like, but it probably isn't adequate. I don't know what would
be.
But I guess I should quote the whole scenario:
> I can have property with lots of trees, and
> I could either strip the land bare, or harvest only a
> sustainable amount of wood. The value of the land for an
> "irresponsible" landowner is greater the first year (when the
> land has lots of trees he can get rid of), and zero after he has
> sold all the trees.
> "Irresponsible" land-owner: pays "irresponsible" tax
> price the first year. Pays no tax the years after that, since
> all the value of the land has moved, via sales of wood, into his
> bank account.
> "responsible" land-owner: Must constantly keep his land
> valuation at an "irresponsible" price, since if he fails to do
> so in any specific year the "irresponsible" person will buy him
> out. Net result: must pay "irresponsible" price each year.
So yeah: this could be a problem in Heinlein's system, but it
would also be a problem under a system that used any sort of
market-value appraisal. It is true that the California system,
based on purchase price, may be better off on this point.
--------
Another comment:
From: brad@clarinet.com (Brad Templeton)
Property tax does make sense to pay for things like military, police,
fire, etc. They protect your property, so the more you have, the more
valuable that protection is. I suspect that's what RAH was trying
to get at. They also protect your life, but the political consequences
of a life tax...
--------
Well, it's been real, but I'm going to bag this one after
this posting.
Interesting the way the arguments have tended to parallel
the usual free-market debate ("Oh, the market is cruel!",
"But ah, the market is just."), even though the beastly
scheme is really a not-quite-so free market.
One point I do want to make: you all understand about
trade-offs, right? In the real world, you can never have
everything, so you always wind up having to decide what
problems *have* to fixed, and what you can live with. So
it's not just enough to say "Look, a bad thing can happen."
You also have to ask yourself things like: how often is it
likely to happen? Is it really that bad compared to the
alternatives? I think a lot of people are (perhaps
unconsciously?) very utopian: they believe that nothing bad
should ever be allowed to happen under any circumstances,
and therefore tend to be paralyzed by the first problem that
arises.
Maybe worse, than this though, is it possible that there's a
failure of imagination going on here? When you're talking
about this kind of fundamental change in the laws, you have
to try and imagine how people would actually live under
them. I mean, *our* laws are pretty crazy, pretty
arbitrary, but people accommodate themselves to them as best
as they can. In the beastly case, maybe everyone would just
get used to claiming an official value for their property
twice what they believe the actual value is, so forced sales
would be very rare... (Remember, if you take Heinlein's
story as a given, taxes are "low" anyway, so paying double
the minimum might not be such a hardship.)
But in any case, I'm ready to give up on the beastly idea,
because I can't think of a way out of this one: Suppose
you're trying to start a semi-conductor company. You get
your fab line set up, and then Intel decides you're a threat
to their business. What's to stop them from buying your
factory and forcing you to move? You've got two choices:
either you let Intel repeatedly chase you around (losing a
tremendous amount of time, breaking down the line and
reassembling it elsewhere), or you use a huge factor of
safety to overvalue your property, and you take a penalty in
excessively high taxes (not very attractive to a struggling,
cash poor company). In practice, you'd probably have to set
up shop outside the country, just to avoid this kind of
harassment.
Anyway, I'd argue that this beastly business is the kind of
thing that Heinlein was really valuable for: he could come
up with notions that sound outrageous, but with an
underlying logic to it that may take quite a bit of thought
to dismiss. At the very least, it's good for challenging
your assumptions, and stretching your mind a little bit, (if
you can take it...)
--------
I posted that bit "Thou Art Mrs. Grundy" to the net,
and got a response...
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
From: xrcjd@mudpuppy.gsfc.nasa.gov (Charles J. Divine)
Subject: Re: I am but an egg. (RAH flame attractor)
Nntp-Posting-Host: mudpuppy.gsfc.nasa.gov
Organization: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt MD
Distribution: rec
Date: Fri, 5 Jun 1992 15:45:41 GMT
What? I must ask -- it is relevant in this case -- how old are you? And, if
you are young (less than say, 30), what history have you read?
I lived in the San Francisco bay area in the late 60s. I participated -- to
some extent -- in the cultural and social experimentation of the time. I
continued this experimentation when I moved to New York State and City in
the 70s.
This is the kind of opposition we encountered:
1. Being sent to jail (the infamous drug war)
2. Being fired from jobs (too much hair)
3. The occasional officially sanctioned police riot (Chicago)
4. Being sent to jail(not wanting to fight in Vietnam)
5. Less violent pressures from family, friends, employers to conform
There were problems with alternative lifestyles -- like there are with
traditional lifestyles. But to say that they fizzled out purely from
internal pressures is a very inaccurate rewriting of history. Indeed, it
is still possible to see positive outcomes of those efforts today.
>
>Like it or not, you carry your culture with you,
>wired into your consciousness...
>
> Thou art Mrs. Grundy.
>
This is true for us all in differing degrees. Some struggle against their
cultural conditioning -- reasonably successfully, thank you. If humans
didn't have the ability to change -- well, most of us would still be living
in Europe bowing to kings and popes. Mrs. Grundy is quite real in the US.
--
Chuck Divine
(Talked to him awhile by email... it seems he thought I was
presenting a conservative argument. Anyway, he probably has a point
but I still say the Mrs. Grundy within is stronger than that without.)
Still another version of this stuff (repeating myself too
much. condense all this crap...):
May, 1994
Throughout Heinlein's life, questioning taboo's (asking "Why
Not?") was one of his standard approaches to problems, in
his later (and unfortunately lesser, in my opinion) novels
he started attacking sexual taboos, including incest. One
of the reason these things seem like such weak novels to me
is that there's no recognition that such social experiments
can fail, that writting your own rules for living is diving
off into an unknown sea where you may win big or lose
horribly.
However, in _To Sail Beyond the Sunset_, we're shown the
other side of these things. Maureen's open relationship
leads to a divorce. The recreational incest her family
indulges in leads to a jealous rivalry between two of her
sons fighting for the attentions of a daughter.
Anyway, that's what I think it is: a matter of balance.
Maureen is left with at least some doubt about how she's
lived...
It's the difference between writing a novel and an
advertisement.
--------
GUI
Very gooey ideas. Maybe you should skip this if you're not me.
General Crit: How come these WIMPs don't incorp.
standard unix concepts. e.g. hierarchies, like
hierarchial directories => imply hierarchial windows?
A use: Marginal notes attached to particular points in a document.
How about filters and pipes for windows? Like why can't I look at
Terminal trhough a filter that changes the type face?
Playing with all these GUI things
what goes on here? No real new ideas since the Xerox Star interface.
WHy not a *real* Unix windowing system, where windows can be
manipulated unix style, where you can build new things out of the
already existing pieces.
For example, as far as I can tell, they neglected to put in This is a
a way to change the typeface on the Terminal program on the NeXTStep 1.0
next. Weird: what are standardized interfaces for except to problem, only.
do this kind of thing? What I'd like to have is a filter I
can put on the output of a window that modifies it into
something I can stand to look at... Maybe it would look like
a real "filter", a transluscent window you put over another
window.
Also, how about sub-windows, in analogy to sub-directories? Then you
could do hypertextual style things like attach marginal notations to
a document, written in little windows attached to a specific point in
the main text.
More GUI: OBERON interface has some neat features.
Non-overlapping windows. (i.e. "tiled" windows).
All text is editiable text.
In fact, it sounds a lot like Gnu Emacs.
--------
POSTMODERN
(The following is my brief experiment with the postmodern, in way too much
detail. Feel free to kill any or all of it... it's on at least one floppy
disk...)
==> mod <==
Xerox Machine Recycling.
There are no such things as "things". Objects are ghostly, with no
definite properties. A new, endogenously created regional security
system -- aimed at regional cooperation and the nurturing of long-run
common interests in fields of defense -- has become a must. Picture a
football game without goals. Dying is a period of categorical
ambiguity in which a person is still among the mundane living, but
babbles of the past, a sign that he or she is also in the process of
becoming one with the ancestral shades. The transition between these
two is often referred to as the wetting--non-wetting transition. They
can experience this loss as a break in the continuity of the life
cycle. On the other hand, the left rotations of each gyroscope yield
zero weight change for all frequencies of rotation and both attitudes.
Couples also need help "in deciding when enough is enough," she said.
Further progress means eroding.
Angular derviatives are zero. The great clustered eyes breaking and
remaking the spontaneous repertoire of the infant. Aesthetic practice
toward a science of ultimates. Imitative responses title the
enlightenment, the legacy, of principal curvatures. The way of symbols.
The two psychotherapies were selected because they were brief,
well-defined and easily distinguished from other psychotherapies. We
had no chamber pots in the room for the boys, but the girls had one.
It's at this juncture that more than a few falter, wondering if they
picked the wrong goal. A tangle of nameless limbs, whiplike
filaments, claws, wings...
Moustache. Imipramine. Nadzornika.
==> mod4 <==
The great clustered eyes break in the continuity.
Categorical ambiguity for the boys,
practice toward a science. No chamber.
The ancestral shades, the life cycle, the other hand:
wetting--non-wetting. A tangle.
The nurturing of long-run nameless limbs.
The girls had one for all frequencies.
More couples also need the transition between the two psychotherapies.
There are the spontaneous ultimates:
Picture a football, a sign that claws, wings...
definite properties.
Endogenously created fields of defense
means eroding of each repertoire of the infant, imitative Imipramine.
Whiplike filaments, among the mundane living, breaking and remaking...
the left rotations, the process of becoming, this loss...
Easily distinguished moustache, aesthetic game without goals.
Angular dying is a period when enough is enough.
Further progress: Recycling, recycling,
The way they can experience babbles of the past,
derviatives, common interests.
This juncture. He or she.
Few falter, wondering they picked the wrong pots in the room.
Objects are ghostly. Nadzornika.
==> modresp <==
In article <1990Apr18.212033.27798@sun.soe.clarkson.edu> jensenjp@clutx.clarkson.edu writes:
>From article <1990Apr18.043618.17369@sun.soe.clarkson.edu>, by jensenjp@clutx.clarkson.edu (Johnny "Rotten" Lydon,The Abyss,,9):
>>>
>>> Whiplike filaments, among the mundane living, breaking and remaking...
>>> [...] the process of becoming, this loss... [...]
>>> aesthetic game without goals.
>>> [...] dying is a period [...]
>>> progress: [...]
>>> babbles of the past,
>>> [...]
>>> [...] [...] [...] Objects
>> [...] ...
>>
>> can you define the meaning of postmodern, this news group,
>> or the color blue?
Postmodern is what people who don't like to admit that they are
pre-modern call themselves. The definition of this newsgroup is
low. Blue is the color of conformist's flesh, suffocated by uniforms
of three piece suits and "casual" denim.
==> modzbcktalk <==
So, wemaronef@hemlock.ucvl.edu (The Masked Avenger) evidently
used the "R" key by mistake. I thought I'd do him a favor
and post this for him:
>Keywords: Nadzornika. Imipramine. Moustache. Stupidity. Emperor's New Clothes.
>
>Great. More pretentious, incomprehensible dreck. Just what the usenet
>needs.
>
>I don't know why I'm bothering, but here goes:
>
>In article <11146@portia.Stanford.EDU> doom@portia.Stanford.EDU (Joseph Brenner) writes:
>
>>There are no such things as "things". Objects are ghostly, with no
>>definite properties.
>
>Bullshit. You drop a big rock on your foot, it's going to hurt.
>How much more definite can you get?
>
>>A new, endogenously
>
>Gee, so you can use a dictionary. I'm impressed.
>
>> created regional security
>>system -- aimed at regional cooperation and the nurturing of long-run
>>common interests in fields of defense -- has become a must.
>
>You mean like NATO? Like Interpol? What the hell is this supposed
>to mean?
>
>>Picture a football game without goals.
>
>I don't have to. I have your posting in front of me.
>
>>Dying is a period of categorical ambiguity
>
>Are you sure about that? Maybe you should try it some time.
>Soon.
>
>>in which a person is still among the mundane living,
>
>What's so "mundane" about living? Is death supposed to be
>more exciting? Phrases like this make the irrational, suicidal
>quality of this crap all too clear.
>
>>but babbles of the past, a sign that he or she is also in the process of
>>becoming one with the ancestral shades.
>
>Gee, I didn't realize you were Jewish :-) :-)
>
>>The transition between these
>>two is often referred to as the wetting--non-wetting transition.
>
>Right. Just what I was saying yesterday.
>
>>They can experience this loss as a break in the continuity of the life
>
>Good point. Dying is often experienced as death.
>
>>On the other hand, the left rotations of each gyroscope yield
>>zero weight change for all frequencies of rotation and both attitudes.
>
>And on the third hand, this line yields zero meaning. Is this supposed
>to be artistic or something? I know, I bet it's a metaphor. The
>gyroscope is Marx, spinning in his grave ("left" rotations, get it?),
>but that has no effect on the world, which almost unanimously has
>decided that he was a jerk.
>
>>Couples also need help "in deciding when enough is enough," she said.
>
>Maybe, but I don't. I know when I've had enough. It all just goes
>on and on like that, and if anything it gets worse. Where do you get
>this stuff from?
>
>If you think you can make further progress by eroding, go right ahead
>and try it and let us know how it works out, huh? Be sure to get in
>some more "aesthetic practice" before getting involved with the "way
>of symbols" again, though, okay? And do select your psychotherapy
>real carefully (you need it), try not to miss the chamber pot again,
>and take lots of Impiramine. And keep your tangle of nameless prose
>off of the net in the future.
>
>"Nadzornika" to you too, buddy.
>
==> modzbcktalk2 <==
Hmm. wemaronef@ucvl.edu is still having trouble finding the
"F" key. Guess I've got to help him out again. Here's his stuff:
Okay, okay already. It was a cut and paste job, I get it
("recycling"). Jesus, the guy who invented that trick is pushing
eighty, and we still have to put up with every sophmore that thinks
it's a new idea.
So you clipped a bunch of disjointed phrases, and arranged them
randomly. Big deal. The trick of rearranging them a second time to
form something closer to complete sentences may be slightly more
clever, but as far as I'm concerned it's wasted cleverness. By
working at it really hard you can get them to almost look like they
mean something. What does that prove? Is this supposed to be an
attack on the validity of language as a means of communication? And
by extension, the validity of human thought (since, as all good little
intellectuals know, since Mario Pei has told them, "language is the
medium of thought")? The whole thing smells of a kind of cannibalism:
The human brain eating itself in an orgy of anti-intellectual
intellectualism. Yet another over-educated undergrad shows us how
intelligent they are by claiming that intelligence is useless, or
non-existent. This whole postmodern thing seems like just the latest
manifestation of the cynical disease popular among the very fuzziest
of the fuzzies ever since Sartre, if not earlier.
And how would you like to be sued for publically posting some of
my private correpsondence without my permission?
==> modzbckup <==
>From: wemaronef@hemlock.ucvl.edu (The Masked Avenger) writes:
>
> Where do you get this stuff from?
You're absolutely right, I should've listed my sources.
Unscholarly of me.
First of all, there was the recycling bins on the second floor
of Meyer library. Then there's the bins in the Current Periodicals
section of Green library. Also, the copy machine room in the
Peterson building, and the room in the Branner earth science library.
Also there's the one next to the machine in the Terman engineering
library. Not the machines upstairs, but the one in the little room
downstairs that goes *Mrnnnnerh! Mrnnnnerh!* all the time and gives
you a headache. And don't forget to check the dumpsters behind
the student union.
==> nextmod <==
A critical inside review of Xerox Machine Recylcing.
and Recline Recycling.
Revealing the fact that, though it appears to be a case
of a simple repeated application of the cut-up technique,
in actuality it began as a simple prose description of a
typival university professor, lying his way through funding
reviews, sleeping with female students, etc.
==> oddlines <==
# !/bin/csh/ -f
#
# shell routine that echos every other line of input file
# uses routine "line" that gets the given line of a file name.
#
set numblines = `cat $argv[1]|wc -l`
@ i = 1
while ($i <= $numblines)
echo `line $i $argv[1]`
@ i = $i + 2
end
---------
PRIGOGINE
In "Order Out of Chaos" by Prigogine and Stengers, he attributes
the understanding of ENTROPY presented by Bateson to Boltzman, and
makes the point that it only applies to near-equilibrium processes.
((I should really flesh this out here....))
WRITTING
You aspiring science fiction writers want some advice?
Start out writing "short stories", with occasional
"novellettes". Magazine editors are desperate for short
stuff they can pad the table of contents with. Once you've
attracted some editor's attention, write a few "novellas".
If you can get them published, they're much more likely to
win an award, because so few of them are actually written.
(You want to know how to win a Hugo? Go to the World Cons
and hold parties with lots of free beer. I'm not kidding.)
After that you're an "award winning" author, and it's time
to think about agents & novels and all that. If you're
really smart, you've written a series of "novellas" that can
be stuck together into a book.
---------
CONTENT - List of nodes. A table of contents. (5/8/91)
Thoughts During Some Useless Cycles
DESPERATE -- Friday night whining... the original topnode. (Late 80s?)
MISOGYNY
DATA
WHORE
SLUT
DECADENCE -- style over substance
GUISE
THINK
CAGEY
LOOKS
PNASH
EXTERNAL (seeing yourself as though someone else was seeing you) 4-26-92
GENERAL -- Being a renaissance man, a generalist....
EARLY
COSMETIC
LESBIAN-DETECTOR
NOT-SERIOUS
SEARCHING
ANVIL
TOLERANCE
DAWKINS node is missing. Huh?))
TIT (no link in, yet)
AXELROD, Evolution of Cooperation
METHOD
HYPER "Hypertext is non-sequential text."
PRODUCT
NELSON
BOTTOMSUP
BENFORD
FINISHED
RAT3 (6/2/92)
EXAMPLES
REVIEWS
LIBERTY
RELUCTANT
REVOLUTION
RANDY
RAND
RANDRHET
HORSING AROUND
TRUTH
WEIRD
NICE
SLAVERY
DIDACTICS
COLOR
UTOPIA
PROVIDENCE
LEGUIN
POLY
LOVE
FREE LOVE
POLYANDRY
BLOVE (3/17/92)
ACCIDENT
ELVIRA
DEEP_GNU
ROLES Soft Roles vs Hard Roles?
TRANS (an old bboard posting) ((integrate with the above?))
PAGLITE (4/13/92)
GAIMAN
ORESTEIA -- A review of Aeschylus for Comic fans (10/1/94)
THERMIDOR -- The Ides of August (1991)
EYE
ECODIS
EDUCATION
MUSICOUT
IDEAL_SEX
FEAR -- No show of fear is ever forgiven.
SISTER
JEALOUS
KNOTS
DELANY
STRANGER
GROUPS
MORMAN
HOLIDAY
DATE_RAPE
LOOSE
RELIGION -- That's me in the corner, designing a religion.
IRRAT -- irrationality flame (4/23/92)
ONERELIGION
SOCIAL_REGISTER
HARD
NANOTECH
ARTY
MORAVEC
CORRECT
ORIGINALPC
FEMINISM
PERM
NIETZSCHE
THUROW
MURRAY
MONOPOLY
GOOD
SELF
DRIBBLE -- Dribble Movie idea.
LEARNING
DREAMS
EARLY
RESUME
FUTURE
MUSIC
FASHION
CRIME
SIZE
GOODMAN
BATESON
IGNORANT
META -- the meaning of the doomfile (4/17/92)
THIRD
DEMOCRACY
HEINLEIN
BOUNDARIES
BLAKE
MONSTERS
TRAGEDY
FLIRT
GHOST
BRONSON
KEROUAC
DISSONANCE -- To seek cognitive dissonance?
LONG_VIEW -- H.G. Wells and the _Outline of History_
WORLDGOV -- World Government.
MULTIPLICITY (as opposed to Unity)
MANIFESTO
STOPGAPS
PORN
MOVIES
DESIGN
HORTON
LOCAL -- thinking locally 6-13-92
GREY 5-92
GREYASSYM -- supporting the point that grey is racially assymertric
COUNCIL
RHF
CIV
TOON
REGES
SNITCH
MANNERS
SHAKESPERE
EDGES -- Once around the edges 4/30/92
LIZARD -- The Strange Tale of the Cowardly Lizard. 5/3/92
FUNNY
KIDS
STURGEON
GODBODY 6-13-92
NUDE 6-13-92
PARSIMONY Date: 26 May 92 20:40:01 GMT
DRUGS
SCAFFOLDING (various scribbling about the way the doomfile is)
INBOX - Chunks to be filed away for future use
EMACS
GUI
POSTMODERN
PRIGOGINE
CONTENT - List of keywords. A table of contents. (5/8/91)
WORK
TECHNICAL
CAREER
--------
WORK
Monday, last week after solving our
"last" problem (the vacuum gauge wasn't
working because we hadn't opened the
valve between it and the vacuum... at
least we had it plugged in), we fired up
the Ultra-High Vacuumm Sputter
Deposition system I've been assembling
for months. Got a plasma giving off a
really neat violet-blue glow inside the
chamber. We also got some impressive
plumes of smoke pouring out the top of
the Magnetron unit as some flimsy RF
bridge fried way below it's rated power.
(No point in being a scientist if you
can't blow something up once in awhile,
I always say.) Later on something
popped and something glowing white hot
fell off of the target onto the
substrates. Then something happened to
the seals and we started losing vacuum.
Well, we were planning on changing to a
six inch target, anyway, might as well
replace the whole head assembly, right?
On another front, I finally convinced
Boss #2b that that 100 degree overshoots
in our rapid thermal annealing furnace
were unacceptable, and "we've been doing
it that way for three years" is not a
good reason for encasing one's control
thermocouple inside a glob of insulating
ceramic cement. The test runs with a
new (and nude) thermocouple looked good
(though it's puzzling that both samples
got slightly *better* -- a small
improvement in coercivity in each -- but
I guess things can't go wrong all of the
time). The next problem is to introduce
some materials science into our choice
of annealing atmospheres, the only
problem being that I suspect we should
be using Chlorine (i.e. Mustard Gas).
Or maybe just hydrochloric acid vapor
would work...
But by the end of the week, I was
getting into fights with Boss #2a.
(Distressing, because usually our only
problem is he wants me to quit work and
take coffee breaks too often). He
insisted on re-designing and replacing
the substrate holder pallets in all
three chambers, when I was arguing for
re-designing just the substrate holder
that has to fit on top of them. And
then, I started asking him questions
about how the cooling in the pallets
work. He didn't know the answer, and
didn't care because he'd been doing it
that way for the last X years...
Personally, I think I've hit on
something that's a serious flaw in the History vindicated
design... a possible failure mode, and me rather quickly
a definite uncontrolled variable. The on this account,
cooling conditions in the substrate anyway.
holder partly depend on how you happen
to tighten up the brass fittings from
the water lines. This does not seem
like a great situation to me.
All in all, it was a pretty good week.
--------
TECHNICAL
Lets try and apply the doomfile approaches to thinking about
technical shit... look for neat research ideas.
((Keep this stuff buried deep where most people will
never be bothered by it.))
Here's a wonky idea:
If there are general characteristics
of replicators, general principles
that apply to ecologies, economys,
systems of ideas... then how about
crystal growth?
Analogy, genes => memes => Crystenes (incidentally:
what's the economic
What is a Crystene? The smallest possible analogy?)
seed crystal to produce a given structure?
The old Scientific American article on Xtal Growth
Implies that a way you can get *long* repeat distances
in crystals (e.g. greater than 5 n-n interactions) is
through the pattern of defects that just happened
to be on the surface of the seed.
Prof Tiller talks about this kind of thing
arising from the "long range stress tensor"
but I believe he's openminded about other
possibilities.
--------
In response to a question on bboard... Nessie asked how
DNA could possibly crystallize, wouldnt the kinetics be
awful?
Nessie: crystal growth of proteins to obtain the structure
via x-rays is an old technique. C.P. Snow has people doing
it in his novel THE SEARCH which takes place pre-world war II.
Yes, getting crystals of such things is a bitch (the guy in
CMR who does this would be pleased to get a cubic millimeter
of solid Urea, I'm sure).
I thought of two possibilities: this is too weird to be
right, but I'll mention it first: maybe each DNA mol
xtalizes with itself first, forming a predictable shape that
then links with other molecules. Second thought: they may
work with pieces of DNA at a time, really crystallyzing only
a small sub-set of a DNA at any given time.
I looked at a few papers, and got the impression that the
latter was right...
(But from a talk at AACG West, I gather my first thought was
correct. The DNA molecules form a kind of colloidal
suspension that crystallyzes with a layer of water between
molecules.
--------
Been thinking quite a bit about Puthoff's stuff.
Zero-point energy. Vaccum energy.
The Casimir effect: Bring two conductive plates close
together. Many ZPE modes are excluded from this tight
resonance cavity. Hence there is radiation pressure pushing
the plates together. It's possible to extract energy from
this force... which becomes quite large at around 1 micron,
supposedly.
Now Puthoff speculates that there may be some sort of way
you can use this to get a Casimir force plasma pinch effect,
and extract energy in a way similar to fusion.
Forward talks about building a vacuum energy battery, where
charged plates would repel each other just enough to balance
the Casimir force attracting them.
Me, I think they're both thinking too much like physicists.
Micron scale mechanical devices are within the reach of
photolithographic micro-machining techniques. How about a
design with a couple of plates with a one micron gap between
them that get pushed together, then you slide a box over
them (with one micron clearence on either side). If my
simple understanding of the effect is correct, then this box
should act as a shield to the ZPE fluctuations, so it would
take much less energy to seperate the plates than was
generated by letting them close. You then slide the
box/shield back, and let them close again.
I mentioned this to a friend of mine: His first thought was
that all the energy expended to slide the shield in place
and back must be greater than you would generate, or else
you've violated the First Law of thermo.
As far as I can tell, this is dead wrong. I don't know
where the energy comes from -- maybe the universe gets a
little smaller, or something -- but the way Puthoff/Forward
and all the rest talk about this, there isn't any reason you
can't get useful energy out of this effect.
On the other hand, there could be a gotcha I don't
understand, such as some ZPE resistance force that might
make it harder to slide the shield over the two plates.
For example, Milonni et.al. says that "In the case of a
spherically conducting shell... the effect of the vacuum
field is to produce a radially _outward_ force, as first
shown by Boyer." His point is that simple intuition may not
be enough to predict the force on a given geometry.
Anyway, here's another crazy idea:
Puthoff claims that gravity is a result of the vacuum field
interaction with matter. But, then, it might be possible to
build an anti-gravity capillary, using a conductive tube a
micron in diameter. This seems like a nifty experiment to
test the theory: try and float a submicron particle inside
such a capillary. Try and measure the transit time of a
particle falling through one, if it isn't possible to
observe it directly.
Further, it suggests another
crazy energy generation idea:
a bundle of micron scale
capillaries to suck up water
which is then poured down
through a hydro-power
generator.
Another thought: why don't
people do this with ordinary
capillaries? Slow? But so
what? I mean, it works for
trees, right? What scale is
an ordinary capillary that
works on chemical adhesion?
And now for a really crazy
idea: could it be that the
chemical adhesion is really
another ZPE effect? After
all, these guys all seem to
take it for granted that
Van der Waals forces are
really a ZPE effect.
Once again, where would the
energy come from? Would the
water get colder? The earth
less massive?
Wait a minute: "the water get
colder" would imply the direct
conversion of heat into useful
energy, wouldn't it? Doesn't
seem likely.
But then:
For the crazy idea of the evening...
I was talking to a friend of
mine recently about these
sorts of notions, and I was
surprised to learn that he
doesn't really believe in the
second law of thermo. It
seems obvious to him that
there ought to be a way to
create a device that can
convert the thermal energy of
a gas into useful work. A
perpetual motion machine of
the second type.
I find this quite surprising,
because I've suspected this is
true for a few years now, but
have been very reluctant to
talk about it for fear of
seeming completely bonkers.
Here's my original notion:
Take a cyllinder with a gas
inside it, at some temperature
above absolute zero. You've
got a lot of molecules
randomly banging against the
piston, but it doesn't move up
and down much, because the
effect of all these collisions
tend to average each other
out. But suppose you could
make a smaller cyllinder, with
very few gas molecules in it,
perhaps only one. Then every
time the molecule collides
with the piston, it should
bump it up a bit (against
gravity). Couldn't you put
some sort of transducer on it
(say, a piezo) and extract Another thought:
energy from this motion? cut out the middle man,
try and work directly
One good objection I've heard: with the thermally
A nanoscale cyllinder wouldn't induced fluctuations in
be perfectly rigid unless it the voltage out of the
was at absolute zero. Really, piezo?
it would be something like a
fulleresque tube of carbon
molecules bouncing around
their equilibrium positions.
It might not be possible to
construct a piston to move
smoothly though such a
cyllinder.
But still, I'm not so sure
this is a fundamental
objection.
It might not be possible to
However, the small amount of create a diode small enough to
energy in the single gas deal with these small voltage
molecule could be lost against changes.
the thermal noise of the
piston motion.
--------
CAREER
About time I decided what my next move is right?
Let's doomify past decisions in my life,
and some of my possible options for the future.
Maybe I'll come up with something...
There's the King of Hearts papers somewhere that could be typed in.
That's a major one.
One night, when I was around 17,
doing the long walk back from downtown
Huntington, after seeing the "King of Hearts"
at the "New Community Cinema"...
For reasons I couldn't tell you, that was the
time I picked to think about Life.
I remember considering various altruistic things
like joining the peace core. Going where things are
bad, trying to make them work better.
But actually, that was a kind of simpleminded approach,
correct? Technological advances were more likely to solve
those sort of problems long before the Peace Core could
make much of a dent in them.
So I started thinking more about going the "hard sciences"
route. Engineering/physics, whatever. I think I wanted
to work on Space Industrialization, the Third Industrial
Revolution.
Previously I'd thought of myself as a Science Fiction writer, if
anything. But if I didn't make it as a techie, clearly I could
always fall back on the idea of being a writer.
So my grades took a sudden upswing from the 11th grade on,
And on that basis I made it into SUNY Stony Brook...
Where I did fairly well... winding up as a Mechanical Engineer
after dropping ideas such as being a physicist or an EE.
My math probably wasn't good enough then, but oddly enough
that's not the reason I dropped ideas like physics.
I think the reason I picked engineering over science was
that I thought of it as a choice between doing things and
understanding things. I wanted to do both, but it seemed more
likely I'd make more money as an engineer, so I might as well
let that decide it.
ALso, the College of Arts and Sciences requred some Foreign
Language credits. The College of Engineering didn't. There were some
other things I thought saner about the distribution requirements:
Engineers were encouraged to take a sequence in some non-techy field
a sort of minor minor (I picked economics, as many engineers did).
The scientists, on the other hand were encouraged to take more
stuff scattered around in different fields.
ME over EE was a choice made on the basis of the idea that as a EE
I'd more likely wind up working on some small subsystems, while
MEs seemed to have a better shot at over all designs.
(Innumerate the misconceptions here?)
I concentrated on Fluids Mechanics courses, on the theory that
I would get hired by Grumman, gradually work my way up through
the company and edge into the "space" side of aerospace.
I also took a lot of math electives, despite the fact that I was
getting weak grades in them, on the misguided theory that
college was a place where you were supposed to try and learn things.
Another decision: work first, or grad school? I liked the idea
of learning something about industry before continuing on in
school. The argument that I'd get addicted to money and
never go back to school didn't impress me. I was determined/
weird enough to do it. I didn't apply to any grad schools.
I graduated into a recession: six months earlier, engineers were
getting a half dozen offers each. I wound up with only one I
would even consider: The Advanced Projects Group of the
Expended Core Facility at the Naval Reactor Facility run by
Westinghouse at the Idaho National Engineering Lab site.
This required a major move on my part.
Amazingly enough, my girl friend decided to follow me out there
(she was miserable there).
I told myself I would only be there for a few years,
after which I'd try and get another company to move me back east,
and then I'd start thinking about grad school.
After Westinghouse. Two years were up. Time to change jobs.
I didn't come up with an offer from an East Coast company,
but then, I don't think I worked very hard at it.
I decided to quit, and do the move on my own,
and work out what I wanted to do later.
My girl friend broke up with me at that point.
My efforts at finding a job weren't working out.
I screwed up on graduate school deadlines. I couldn've gone to
RPI (which has a reasonable deadline), but I decided to
sit out a year, during which I did very little of consequence..
Eventually I did some work for Space Structures Incorporated.
I also did some temp work in a bank.
There were also some major road trips around the country.
Anyway, back to decisions: should I continue with ME,
perhaps in robotics? Should I try and switch to EE and
digital electronics (which I'd done some studying in
at Idaho State University)? Or should I switch to something
like Materials Science?
Still thinking about Space Industrialization, I reasoned that
there were plenty of AeroAstro majors around working on
methods of reaching orbit. The Space Shuttle was flying,
and it was expensive, but you might hope the cost would come
down, over time. The thing that was really needed was
a "driver", a product that could only be made in space that
would increase demand for access to orbit, bring down prices
further, and so on...
I knew vaugely about some successes in experiments with
microgravity crystal growth, so that was high on my list.
I also considered some other things, like research into
Extractive Metallurgy, to figure out ways of turning something
like lunar dust into something worthwhile.
I was turned down by MIT, but got accepted into the half dozen other
grad schools I'd applied to. Three of them were in California
(I liked the idea of moving to CA because of the proximity of
(a) mountains, (b) ocean (c) urban areas. This is fairly unique
in the US). I was offered fellowships by UCLA and Berkeley,
but I'd had enough of big state schools, so I went with
Stanford, to study Xtal growth.
Somewhat ironically, I was put to work on mixing techinques:
the exact opposition of what had attracted me to Xtal growth.
(Another odd note: as of May 92, it looks like a hot topic
is _High_ Gravity Crystallization...)
And then there's the third phase I'm stuck in right now.
ALONE
Can I work alone?
--------
FIN
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Deep in the muck of unregarded doom,
Where none can make a conquest, none have room
To stretch an aching muscle, -- there might be
Intersticies where impulse could go free. . .
There, where accomplishment cannot achieve,
Valour defend, religion quite believe,
Or vengence plot behavior, -- there may still
be cracks, uneasy instinct well might fill
And even worm its way along, until
All might begin again; and Man receive
In prospect, what he never can retrieve.