we the sheeple

I've been letting some of my political rage simmer. It is summertime and I've got a beautiful community of people around to love enjoy the (occasional) sunshine with. But I'm still just as pissed off at all the stupid.

Among the more odious things happening at the moment are these asshole teabaggers trying to shout down townhalls meant to be opportunities to discuss healthcare reform. Over at Talking Points Memo they are doing a great job reporting on this. Shamefully, not so many other news outfits can have the same said of them. They are looking at how this push is being framed in the media, today suggesting that this is likethe Brooks Brothers protests used to disrupt the 2000 recount. I take their point; this is the same monster and some of the same players, but I think we have a more iconic comparison to made. Is it possible to learn of this activity and not think of Animal Farm? Even if you where in this bleating blob, surely you must know that in our game of George Orwell edition if-we-were-who-would-we-be? that these players are the sheep. The stupid, stupid sheep.

the hills: no wonder our enemies hate us

This will sound disingenuous, but I don't normally watch the hills. Everyone says that, because even if you like watching the show it is impossible to not know that it is a horrible thing. Watching it is bad, that it exists is bad, that people produce something like this is bad. I've been unable to justify its existence at all, at least until last night. I may finally be able to make a (feeble) argument in its defense.

SOMEONE made me watch it last night, though I've been told I'm not allowed to tell anyone that he watches it because he is appropriately ashamed of this vile habit, but why would I sit through such torture if I can't make fun of it afterwards? Well, I'm nicer than I look, so I'll let this person remain nameless. Let's call him "Beth". Beth and I had gotten in a squabble and there was that moment where you feel like you've already had all the arguments a couple can manage and that you are doomed to repeat ridiculous gripes forever and ever. In that shortsighted moment, it is easy to blind yourself with all the ways that you and this other person are incompatible and also question whether or not you really are just a jackass. Maybe I'm retarded and don't know how to manage a relationship. Maybe I don't know how to communicate my feelings effectively or listen when someone else is trying to communicate them to me. Maybe we just don't work together...

None of this is true. I know that and even when feeling frustrated facing the picked scab of slow healing old fights, I still know that we've got a real good thing going on. I'm no fatalist and know better than to wallow too deeply or believe that moments of frustration are doomed to be eternal, but it is nice sometimes to have something external to your situation remind you how good you've got it.

When Beth wanted to quit talking and watch the hills, you can (if you have ever met me) imagine the look I shot in his direction. It was somewhere between over-my-dead-body and i-dare-you-to-try. Watching the hills isn't something you should wish on your worst enemy, much less someone you love. Had there been someone else to protect from this blight, I might have stood strong but he made an impassioned plea and I relented.

If you've never seen the hills, don't. It is a bunch of horrible vapid people who do horrible vapid things. Actually, that is being generous: the cast is entirely RealDolls and motorized mannikins. The purported main character, Lauren, almost comes across as human and occasionally says things that make sense. The worst people in the show are heidi and spencer. She is on the show because she is pretty. She looks like she has escaped from the Playboy Mansion and and flounces around with layered blonde extensions and a pouty, perpetually surprised/confused look. And why not? spencer doesn't make any sense. There is no reason he should be on television. She is at least pretty. He is not, and while she isn't particularly likable, her abject idiocy allows for occasional flashes of unintended humor. He isn't even funny. This is the second episode of the show I have ever seen, but just that small snippet leaves an indelible bad taste in the mouth towards this couple and him in particular. In this episode, the two are going through couples counseling. The counselor winces as she listens to their idiocy. heidi is flipping out over a bartender who he flirts with and who is sending him text messages and squares off against this jezebel when she and her brunette gang step to her blonde fembot gang at a club. All of them come across as stupid monkeys dancing in front of a camera, but the brunette wins the round by pointing out that at the end of the day, heidi is still dating a douche bag who hits on other girls and always will.

The other main drama of the show was some awful girl (named "Jayde") with bad collagen injections and a bottle of Jaegermeister acting like an idiot over a dumb boyfriend. But I'm not really here to give a play-by-play recap; I have no desire to recreate this horror. Watching all this absurdity though, suddenly my own relationship seemed incredibly healthy. We get in fights and sometimes silly fights and sometimes the same silly fights over and over, but there is no way either of us is ever going to be that disagreeable. The show's value seems to be in showing what is purported to be a fabulous life (glamor, parties, clothes, etc.) and making it look like the worst hell imaginable. And not even a fun sort of wretched hell. Lost occasionally looks like hell, being stuck on some time-travel island with an atomic bomb and people trying to kill you and your friends, but it is an interesting dynamic hell. The hell that is the hills just looks so painfully boring. They make leisure and money look awful.

And then there is what they do for relationships. If they make hanging out in bars look painful, they make dating look like pure torture (and not the waterboarding kind, but the ripping-off-fingernails-with-pliers kind). Sitting watching these... people(?) after having my own spat suddenly made me appreciate what I've got. We (like every couple) come up with some stupid things to fight about, but contrast against this alternate universe displayed in the hills we suddenly seem remarkably sane and stable. And there was a certain vicious catharsis to answering "Yes," when asked by Beth if he sounded like a particularly awful character as she picked a pointless fight. Having this televised nightmare to remind me how beautiful -even if occasionally frustrating- my reality is made the night a little easier, but I'd still rather it just didn't exist.

I would have still felt sour about the experience of being subjected to the show had we not followed it with the current episode of Family Guy, which spoofs the hills. Family Guy treated it with all the delicacy and tenderness that it treats any subject. If watching the hills made me feel better about my own small social sphere, it made me cringe for humanity in general. If this is a hit show, if people in droves are choosing to watch this eagerly, how can one have faith in our fellow man? Looking around the world today, it is easy to bump up against these terrifying dilemmas ("How can people do such horrible things?"), but then Family Guy dives in to save us. The brutal satire reminded the self-important jerk inside me that perhaps my negative reaction to the hills is the point. The show is done in arch seriousness, but everyone watching is in on the joke: no one watches it thinking these are likable people. Some are more likable than others, but all of them are kind of walking caricatures of our pop-generic obsessions and desires. Family Guy reminds that we all know this beast is absurd, that even Lauren Conrad is in on the joke, voicing herself as a character in the episode even as they present her as dating a (literal) dog (culminating with a scene of her dragging her ass around on a rug after Brian gives her worms) and lampooning the emptiness of the show.

In the end, rather than ruining my night and deepening our divide and prolonging our disagreement, the hills (I am still not going to capitalize it) actually salved the wound and gave us a common horror to be happy we weren't a part of. This isn't to say I plan on watching it again or that I don't think it should be cancelled, but you know me: always looking on the bright side.

What's so scary about a little kiss?

So I finally watched Y Tu Mama Tambien. People always assume I've seen it and when it came out, all my friends saw it. But I've put off seeing it. I didn't intentionally avoid it in the theater, but I miss most things in the theater unless Ben drags me there. Not that I don't like going to see movies, I do; but it just usually isn't what I'll chose to do unless someone else tips the decision that direction.

I have intentionally avoided it on video, however. Not that I haven't wanted to see it and on multiple occasions would have rented it except that I had read how most rental copies of it are edited and what is the point of seeing a movie that is famous for being a love story fantasy if it has been edited? Of course they will cut the best bits! Actually, who in hell wants to watch any edited movie? It is like reading an abridged book. Not that there are no stories out their which might benefit from well placed pruning, but books are abridged to make them shorter and easier to digest and movies are edited to make them tamer (and, if it is for tv, to make room for commercials). I knew that this cut was to make it less offensive and if I wanted a less offensive movie, I'd have picked one. So anyway, I've refused to watch this movie multiple times because I couldn't be sure to get the unedited version.

I remember now that I had refused to watch Ben's copy because a little questioning revealed it to be one of the chop shop versions, but I forgot this. I suppose I am glad I did forget, because I enjoyed watching it and otherwise would have continued my silent protest.

I was worried at the beginning of the movie when the quick disclaimer flashed by that it had been "edited for content and language". Yuck. And even with my poor language skills I was able to tell some of the language had been blurred, but it seemed more just for simplicity than prudishness. The cuss words were generalized or not completely literally translated (of course the cuss words are always the most familiar vocabulary for one like myself who only knows a little of a language), but who cares? They didn't blur the message and didn't really sanitize the story in that area. And at first I supposed they hadn't really edited the content that much. The movie opens with two naked people in bed and before the scene changes you see -soft, of course- a pecker, which is usually the first thing edited out of a movie. Male genitals are so terribly distressing to the idiots who rate movies. This isn't the last of the nudity either, male or female, and sexual acts are also shown, though rather as a side note that anything titillating.

Actually, the only way that I know this is a chopped version, even if it isn't a fully block-bustered bastard, is that the one thing which got so many panties in a wad and made the movie such an intriguing success was the one thing they cut out! The whole damn movie builds up to this love scene with both the boys and the woman. It builds and builds and then we get there, the crucial moment, during which the two guys kiss... except they don't. Here, they get back to the room, the chick begins making out with one of them... and cut! The morning after! The boys wake up looking at each other, but other than that we are left to just guess what has made them so awkward towards each other.

When this movie came out, the shared affair with the older woman wasn't the scandal but that the two male leads' friendship tipped over into the romantic at the climax with her. Every stupid interview with the actors asked them moronic questions about how awkward it must have been to kiss the other guy, which to their credit, they generally just brushed off. Two guys kissing shouldn't be a big fucking deal, but apparently it was and it got this movie tons of publicity and, truth be told, peaked my interest too. When it comes time to trim the movie down, for whatever fucking stupid reason they have, the kiss is the first thing to go. So we see the three leads naked, we see them urinate, we see at least partial sexual acts, but the two guys kissing is a shade too far. It is so fucking irritating.

Dean always complained that even in gay themed movies directed at gay audiences that you are more likely to see two men having sex than see them kiss. He got completely flustered and angry when we watched... damn, I can't remember the name of the movie. It is from Argentina and featured two bank robber lovers in their violent and sexual downward spiral. Completely out of character, I had suggested the movie when we went to pick something to watch. I can't remember the movie, but I remember the night because it was (at least before the movie) one of the most fun and silly nights ever with my friends. I was back in Charleston and rambling about with Dean, Michael, and Preot. We've all been friends for years but hadn't really all been together like that in a long time and all sort of queened out when we found a potted plant that someone had thrown out. It was actually pretty healthy, a very tall Diffenbachia with a few ratty leaves in a gallon pot and descending upon it, we started pruning leaves and propping it up and talking to it and about it like we were giving a make-over and as we walked away (carrying our new plant, I can't remember what we named it, Sheena maybe?) suddenly realized we had never been gayer in our whole lives. So we decided to keep the ball rolling and go pick out a gay movie and pop some gay popcorn and have a slumber party.

Burnt Money, that was the name of the movie. I had read something about it and I think it was the only gay movie that none of us had seen and it had gotten good reviews. I think Y Tu Mama Tambien had been suggested even though it wasn't a gay movie because of the dudes kissing, but also passed over because we had heard that scene was edited out in lots of rental copies. I totally loved Burnt Money, which was surprising because I am usually the one who complains that movies are too gorey or violent and this one was violent. Something about it I really liked, but it killed the fun mood for everyone else and at some point Dean pointed out how much sex there had been but no kissing. I think that the guys finally got their kiss towards the end of the movie and I think I argued just to be contrary, but he had a point. Tonight at least, he is right. More than sex between men, affection terrifies.

the fountainhead: Part III

(written early last year, during my second trip in Hawaii)

Ok, so I may have softened a little on the fountainhead. Yes, I still think it is mostly pompous rape/cuckoldry fantasy done up in flimsy drag as radical philosophy. But it can be a reasonably readable book when it isn't busy monologuing and explaining everything.

If you haven't noticed, I've been kind of hard on this book from the start. My irritation comes from three sources. One is obvious: the book itself is irritating. The hero worship starts on the first page and only get cringingly more fawning as it goes. The philosophy of the whole thing is so black and white and so condescending and pedantic that even when a good point is made, you want to disagree with it because you know that had that point been made in that same way in real life, it would have been made by someone you hate.

The second is a few well-meaning friends commenting when they heard that I was going to read it that I should be careful and not be taken in by Ms. Rand's wily storytelling. I know that they are afraid of me becoming as annoying as they were when they were fifteen and read it and thought it was mind-blowing that someone could suggest that being selfish was something to aspire to and felt it really spoke to their frustrations with all the mindless imbeciles that every teenager feels surrounded by (and not always without reason). I'm not exactly a teenager and don't exactly shy away from fairly difficult reading, so I'll admit to being mildly offended by this well-meant warning. Ok, initially miffed and increasingly full stop offended as I've proceeded through the book.

The third reason is that over the years too many people have made comments like, "Have you read the fountainhead? I think you'd like it. Your take on things reminds me of it." Which is not unlike when I worked at a summer camp one year and was told repeatedly that I was just like Dan Edge who had worked there the year before. "You are just like Dan Edge, except he was a total asshole." Thanks. So my take on things reminds people of the philosophy expounded in what may be the most annoying book I have ever read? Great.

So, yes, I walked into this with unfair baggage, already prepped to dislike the book. But the baggage was only unfair because I hadn't read it yet, not because the book wasn't annoying enough to deserve the derision outright.

Actually, I should be clear. If this were a random tome picked out of obscurity from some shelf, I would have nicer things to say about it. It is reasonably well written. The characters are well developed, even if annoyingly developed as one-note sychophants, and the plot keeps sort of twisting til the end. As just a book that had managed to get published, I would judge it kindly and might have finished it, though probably not and if I had would have found it reasonably thought provoking even if a little naked about its intentions. But it isn't just some random book. It is a book which tons of people hold up as this life changing experience and a brilliant mind expanding read. At the end of the day, it is a bold attempt at sexualized hero worship, a story about a woman getting to be bored by the mediocrity of the world and lashing out with her beauty and competence and status to keep it all at bay until she meets this powerful machine of a man-god to ravage her. Yawn.

the fountainhead: Part II

(written early last year, on my second trip in Hawaii)


I don't know if I am going to make it. I really don't. I'll put down a book because I think it is wasting my time or I'm just not in the right frame of mind to digest it at the moment; normally not a problem. But this isn't just a book which sucks, this is a book which sucks and has a rampant following of people who felt led to adolescent epiphanies by this book's bold declaration that most people are obnoxious and that only the defiant artist (and very few of them) could have true integrity. And being who I am, I'm certain at some point I'll end up surrounded by people whose lives were changed or whose minds were opened by the fountainhead and someone will see me roll my eyes and say, "What?" and I'll answer. And then it would come out that I couldn't finish the book and they'll smugly dismiss my opinion and suggest that I didn't have the strength of character to finish such a noble and challenging book blah blah blah. And I'd rather finish it and be able to say it all was annoying instead of having to listen to someone say that the last little chunk was where it was all tied together and that of course I didn't get it if I didn't finish it.

And I may not finish it, but if I can't, it won't be for lack of stamina but for lack of stomach. I finally took a break and decided to read something else, so I've just finished Battlefield Earth, the longest sci-fi novel in history. I'll write about that separately, but a total joy to read and let no one say it was the length of the novel that turned me off from the fountainhead. I'm trying, I really am.

I still think that the novel is pompous rape-fantasy, which at the end of the day is the most cowardly kind of fantasy, but perhaps also one of the most common. I don't think the prevalence of it as fantasy is acknowledged enough. The desire to be violated. It is the secret dark dream of the pious and holier-than-thou. It is the wish to experience carnal things but without having to experience any of the responsibility for the act. "I was forced!" This is not to make light of rape or to suggest that in real life that people who demurely suggest that they won't go any further are asking for it or that no really means yes; this isn't about that at all. I'm talking strictly in the realm of fantasy and how so many people use secret rape fantasy as the route to accessing taboo desires. If they imagine themselves as violated, then they couldn't be guilty of dreaming about sex or whatever guilty pleasure they dream of, can they? Not that this doesn't have its real world correlaries, with people who aren't yet comfortable in their sexuality seeking out predatory or manipulative types so they can feel compelled into something they desire but still feel guilty about.

Perhaps I am getting off track. I really don't mean this to be simply sexual or for it to all be simply guilt centered. (Unfortunately, I can't remember what the hell else I meant to write about it, though. This is the point where I cut it off when I was originally writing about it and never seemed to get back to it. I've read and reread it thinking I'll one day finish it and so have gone almost a year now without publishing these three essays on the fountainhead, but I've decided enough is enough so here they are in all their unfinished glory).

the fountainhead: Part I

(written early last year, on my second trip in Hawaii)


On my first trip, I headed to sea with far too few books. I didn't think this when I left; the weight of the books was a ridiculous addition to an already cumbersome collection of junk. But you never realize how quickly you can read books when you take away other forms of distraction. Suddenly held tight on a boat where only one other person really speaks english well enough to hold a conversation and you suddenly plow through books like a maniac. Not all because you necessarily love them, but simply by the fact of them being there. Anyway, this trip I swore I wouldn't spend three days straight playing Snood on my cell phone and grabbed books like crazy.

"Like crazy" may be a more appropriate description than I would like to admit. I had all these plans of going book hunting and buying tons of great books and reading them and being all excited, but somehow with all the days spent in the office and then running around doing all my other tasks in that short valuable time that we spend on land, I didn't go out book shopping. Thankfully, as I unloaded the books I had read, I picked through the assorted books left behind at the house and the gear shed and came away with a motley crew of things which I had thought perhaps in the past of reading, but knew there was no way on earth I would ever read most of them in any other situation. So here I find myself in the middle of the ocean with Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard, The Good Earth by Pearl Buck, Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, Jewell by Brett Lott, The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck, and the fountainhead by ayn rand (I also have Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood and A Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes, but since these made the previous trip with me and have both been read and picked apart many times, they seem to require separate mention). For some unknown reason, I decided to pick up the fountainhead. It had to happen sometime.

Why do I persist in refusing to capitalize the title of the book or its authors name? Because I have begun reading the book. THIS is the heralded beacon of reason and objectivity that annoying goth kids in high school and pretentious college antagonists have gushed so enthusiastically about? Granted, I'm not finished with the book, but I wouldn't have trudged past the first chapter if I wasn't stuck on a boat and wasn't rationing my few precious downloaded episodes of America's Next Top Model like they were manna from heaven. But I am on a boat, so I'm going to finish the damn thing.

It isn't exactly a painful read. It might be reasonably enjoyable if it didn't have all that reverent hoojab about how great and life changing it is. It is written as poorly as Ishmael (speaking of reverently adored, eye-opening, badly written books), but at least Ishmael did have some eye opening insight to offer which wasn't found laid out as directly or as challengingly in other books, even if it was clunkily chinked into a silly story. the fountainhead doesn't have all that much which is eye opening and unavailable elsewhere. It is basically just elaborate rape fantasy spruced up as Frank Lloyd Wright fan fiction. If she manages to cram in the description of a shirt clinging to the shoulder blades of another man, I'll throw up. The book starts with a naked dude looking at nature and thinking about how he would control it and overpower it, how it was waiting for him to take control and improve upon it. Force himself upon it, if you will, but as it has been waiting for someone to do, for someone to bring it to that climax that only this ultimate man could deliver. Throw in some other characters, some time, a perfect beautiful stone-cold bitch, a nice trajectory to the bring them together... whatever.

The book is fine as what it is. The story is reasonably engaging, the characters sometimes border on likeable and you even find yourself wanting to see Mr. Roark's buildings get built. But unless there is something really waiting for the last half of the book to bring it all together and make this profound commentary that people have told me this book makes, this is just one more book that I really couldn't recommend anyone devoting the time to unless they find themselves stuck in the middle of the Pacific with only a few books at hand.

The Purpose Driven Tripe

I'm back from the provinces, however temporarily. Much to write about and hard to decide where to start, but before I scramble through a backlog of impressions from Alaska and crab fishing, I'm struck by an annoying bit of news that keeps popping up in headlines and irritating the shit out of me (and what is this blog for if not for griping about current events?).

It seems that richard warren is to give the invocation at Obama's inauguration. I suppose that there are more toxic religious figures out there. It could be worse, much worse, but I have to register how much this decision irritates me. Why him? Why did they have that stupid thing at his bloated church before? Because he sells a lot of books? His books are stupid. My mother sent me The Purpose Filled Life back when it first came out and I tried to read it. I wanted to like it is theory, but it just isn't very good. The writing is crap and the ideas are vapid. And he's anything but a biblical scholar. It is just feel good crap for dumb middle class people not quite happy enough with all their excess who want a religious leader to give them a quick fix to feeling better about their lives. I read for a few days (it is a daily devotional guide) and then flipped through looking for anything that suggested it shouldn't be shelved then dropped it. When I admitted to Mom that I thought it was crap, she admitted that she had also found it kind of useless and quit reading after a few days.

I'm not the most religious fellow these days, but I'm pretty fierce about it when I've got to deal with it. I appreciate the desire to find and feel magic and the supernatural in everyday life (and that is exactly what religion at its best is about), but most of these modern bullshit artist peddling god for mass consumption and easy digestion kill all that with their assembly line vacuum packing of the Word. I was a uptight religious nerd in an earlier incarnation and read and poured through the Bible nightly, seeking and analyzing and praying and meditating. And I thankfully made my way out someone intact and avoided the looney bin that would be the likely end point of my trajectory had I gone to these false prophets and snake-oil peddlers instead of straight to the text. And even that would have likely left me mentally crippled had I not had people to challenge the popular interpretations and assumptions and force me to also find the Word scattered as it is through so much other text. All of this is just to say that having invested so much time in this subject matter I'm not inclined to be particularly generous to folks who condescend on it and proceed to talk out of their ass.

People are going on about mr. warren's support for prop 8 and of course that pisses me off. All his idiot blather about "a five-thousand year old definition" and crap about every culture having the same definition of marriage as between one man and one woman... has he even read the Bible? The definition of marriage changes through out the Bible and even if it doesn't endorse same sex relationships (other than David and Jonathan's love for one another), it certainly explicitly endorses polygamous marriages. I'm not so concerned that he is just one more homophobic prick (who, irritatingly says, "I'm not homophobic; be nice to gay people," right after saying vote to make the law say we are lesser citizens), but rather that he just isn't much of a religious leader. He is apparently effective and people seem to eat it up, but what the man may have in organization, he lacks in charisma. Billy Graham is a rock star; even if you disagree with the man, there is no denying that he has that umph. If we've got to have a religious invocation, could we at least have someone dynamic instead of some fat mega-church fool?

Most of religous leaders (at least on the national level) in this country are idiots. And so are most of their followers. Surely though, there is someone else? I suppose it is only fair, this guy gave Obama something of a fair shake and leveraged his visibility into an opportunity to reach out to evangelicals, so I can't say that it doesn't make some kind of sense. But it is still a dissappointment; it is a failure, if not of standards, then certainly of style.

fucking idiot

You can suggest that much stupider things have been accomplished by someone attempting to come up with the singularly most idiotic action possible by a human, but at this very moment I personally doubt even the possibility. I have a bag filled with cords and cables: power cords for my computer, cell-phone, old cell-phone, external hard drive, USB cable to connect my phone to my computer and another to connect my camera to it as well. I have anywhere from three to five sets of headphones and two different battery chargers for my camera. But somehow, I managed to take the only cord which isn't a uniform black and forget to return it to my bag.

So I'm now out at sea, where the single most difficult part of my job is staying awake during long hauls and have the single most useful tool for keeping me awake, the i-pod, but not the cable to synch it with my computer and which is also used for charging it. On white little bundle of wires carelessly forgotten on my bedroom floor even as I obsessively downloaded songs and podcasts and audiobooks. So now I've got a half charged i-pod to dole out preciously over three weeks of 10-14 hr. shifts.

Harumphh.