Write Essays Archive

0

Is my iPhone Racist?: A personal struggle

By
Aliya Pabani
– August 22, 2011

Yesterday evening, I was writing an email that began with an account of how Judy Blume’s adult-novel-that-was-mistakenly-read-by-a-lot-of-preteens, Summer Sisters, fundamentally altered my notions of what one’s first sexual experiences were supposed to be like.

I had the AutoCorrect on, because my text-fingers aren’t nimble enough to go it alone.  I was trying to describe the part in which the novel’s two main characters (the Summer Sisters) prance around at night on a Martha’s Vineyard beach in white dresses with their two crushes1, when the AutoCorrect changed the phrase “prancing around in white dresses” to “prancing around in White dresses”. I manually corrected the error twice before realizing that my iPhone was changing my colour adjective into one denoting ethnicity.

Curious.  I tried to write the same phrase, substituting “white” for “black”, to see if the AutoCorrect would kick in.  It didn’t.  For good measure, I tried substituting some of the less commonly used colour adjectives/indicators of ethnicity, “brown”, “yellow” and “red”.  Predictably, the AutoCorrect did nothing.

So I decided to call Apple’s toll free iPhone support line to see whether the representative might offer some justification, or at least a heartfelt apology.  I felt a bit guilty about forcing her to conceal her slight irritation under the veneer of scripted empathy, but she eventually suggested that the autocorrect might be considering “white” as a common last name.  She also suggested that I write to apple.com/feedback, but I didn’t/probably won’t do that.  Instead, I tried substituting other common Anglo surnames like “smith” and “jones”.

“prancing around in smith dresses”
“prancing around in jones dresses”

No AutoCorrect.

Read the rest of this entry »

0

Rallies Against Corruption in India Remind Me of My Own Experience Dealing with Corruption in India

By
Tom OHare
– August 17, 2011

(WARNING: The link to the relevant news article that inspired the below is waaayy down the bottom. It can also function as the tl;dr version of the post)

I traveled in India for three months last year, and in the process I met a lot of desperate people trying to swindle my rich Western ass. I didn’t take it at all personally; instead I just learned to adapt and not be played like a fiddle (or, I guess, if this were Trevor’s post, a SITAR — zing!). That poor people in a foreign country try to get rich people on holidays to pay more for their goods and services than their Indian counterparts isn’t surprising or insulting. It’s natural. It’s healthy. It’s perfectly rational. And it goes some way toward making up for what white people have done to the entire state of Goa. (Think fat Russians, tropical raves, dirty hippies monopolizing the beachfront, billboards, shitty hash, and overpriced biryani, and you’ve got something of an idea of what a tourist economy can do to a third world state.)

Anyway, the only time I ever got seriously pissed off when I was forced to pay baksheesh was at the hands of the authorities. (This is a lie. I got pissed off several times, but I didn’t hold a grudge about it.) I was walking outside of the Red Fort in Delhi, taking these photos, when the coppers approached me.

(Pigeons! Now chase them, Tom!)

So, right. I’m all feeling like, “Shit yeah, I just chased a bunch of pigeons for a photo-op” when some Indian official starts yelling out at me. “My friend, my friend!” I’m just thinking, “Great,” because at this point, I’d gotten into Tom-in-India mode, and Tom-in-India is a cold, jaded fuck who wears a money belt and gives not a single rupee — not a one — to the poor, poor cripple who drags himself around on a cobbled-together board with wheels on the bottom. Tom-in-India is heartless and suspicious. Don’t get me wrong; he still has a good time! But… you just kind of have to go. You would understand. It’s sensory overload in India, and if you don’t forcibly inure yourself to it, you will simply leave. If you cannot make yourself internally normalize crushing poverty all around you, you will have absolutely no fun in India.

You can understand the poverty, but you can’t be everyone’s savior. Which is why when the copper approached with a smile on his face, I knew I was in for it.

“My friend, you cannot be here, sir.”

“The gate was open.”

“Where? Where is this gate?”

“Over there,” here pointing to a spot a half a mile away, because the Red Fort is a behemoth.

“My friend, you cannot be here. It is not allowed to be here.”

We’re walking the whole time toward the main entrance/exit.

“Why can’t I be here?” I say. We’re both sort of laughing, because by this point in my trip I’ve decided that the best way to deal with my problems is with a play of incredulous humor. I can’t be here? Hahaha, perish the thought. The gate was open, sir!

“There is a fee, sir…” And here I don’t know (Aliya, Namrata, and Tejas would tell me later, but at the time, nope) that I just need to laugh it off and walk away. That this is what any respectable Indian would do. (In India, you are given more and more props the more Indian you become in your behavior. Such that, by my last days in Bombay, back at the hotel I began at months earlier — having come full circle — the manager was giving me respect for getting a set of teacup saucers for 80 rupees. “Though I would have paid 50,” he added.)

“How much do I need to pay?” I asked the officer at Red Fort.

“50 rupees,” he replied.

I talked him down to 10.

This kind of exploitation — exploitation at the hands of the security apparatus — is much more degrading than a shopkeeper taking advantage of the fact that you don’t know how much a bunch of bananas costs. Or a hotel charging you the full price for a double room when they’re under booked and you forgot to ask for the single rate. That’s just the inherent exploitation that is entering into a capitalist relationship with somebody. I’m pretty okay with it. What I’m less okay with is when a guy with a baton and a badge starts asking me for bribes.

Moral of the story: fight the power, India. Fight the power.

1

Sometimes a Great Notion (Or, On Permanent Marks)

By
Tom OHare
– August 15, 2011

I started re-reading my favorite novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, again over the weekend. I found a copy when I was going through books on Friday, and since my own had long since been lost to whoever I lent it out to in Portland, I figured I would keep the tattered one I came across (I couldn’t sell it anyway; but, in all honesty, I’ve taken home around a hundred books I could’ve sold, and I’m just making excuses here). Ken Kesey’s meandering stream-of-consciousness prose and richly etched characters (as well as me knowing where everything is going, plot-wise, even if the details are a bit fuzzy) drew me right back in. I’m already worried about Joby’s inevitable death, about Lee and Hank butting heads, about Viv and Draeger in the bar at the end of the story, rolling their eyes at the obstinacy of the anti-heroes, even if they can’t help but admire them a little bit.

It’s a book that inspired me to move 3,000 miles across the country once; to spend three years in Oregon — three years of rain, volcanic mountains, rocky coastlines, unemployment, bad credit, and struggle. Three years on a bicycle, in a shitty 1984 Subaru, in houses with no heat. Gardens, lovers, deadlines missed, friends made and departed. All the wonderful nothing you can put into wanderlust turned semi-permanent (no matter how tenuous). It’s easily the book that had the greatest impact on my life so far, and reading it again is both a lovely stroll down memory lane and an exercise in retrospective self-doubt. Of course (turning the page) I see what I was thinking, but what the hell (turning it again) was I thinking?

Before I left Portland, I walked to my local tattoo parlor one day and asked, “How much would it cost to get some text done on my arm?” The man behind the counter, younger than me, said it was something like $35 an inch, depending on the size, and (me being somewhat flush at the time, relatively speaking) I sat down in his chair and told him to put “never give an inch” in Courier New on my arm. Down the vain, towards my left palm. Never give an inch. It would be there forever.

Will had already gotten the same tattoo, except on his foot in a drunken haze in Missoula, Montana (during which roadtrip I stayed at our mutual flophouse and broke my fifth metatarsal playing softball)… but this was years later when I got myself tattooed. And I wound up thinking that my gesture was different from his. It was different from Henry Stamper’s, too, when he nailed the slogan above his eldest son’s crib in lieu of a religious plaque. Will and Henry wielding “Never give an inch” were somehow more defiant than me. My wielding it was simply a grim acknowledgement of what had gotten me to where I was in the first place: about to drive alone across the country a failure, tired, beat down, in a shitty Subaru with an alternator on the fritz and an axle quite literally about to fall out of place. Wouldn’t that be fun descending the Rockies? Isn’t that what karma delivers when you don’t give an inch? The Rocky Mountains?

Read the rest of this entry »

3

No True Christian

By
Tom OHare
– July 28, 2011

M. pointed us in the direction of this Stewart clip, posted below. If you don’t feel like watching, I’ll summarize. Basically, a gaggle of right-wing rabble-rousers has taken to the fainting couch because The Norway Psychopath has been accurately described as a Christian. A Right-Wing Christian, to be precise.

Just watch the video:

 
I could quibble with Stewart a bit and point out that people who proclaim faith in Jesus Christ ought to, in fact, be considered Christians, regardless of their affiliation with a church or the horror caused by their actions in the name of their faith — all that being a Christian really involves, after all, is sincere belief that Jesus Christ was the son of God and is the path to heaven. Faith is the supreme command; the other 10 are predicated on it. Good deeds are certainly part of it, and sinning is still frowned upon, but even Catholics pretty much believe this now, thanks to Luther.

[Some Catholics (thinking here, my Irish-Catholic grandmother, R.I.P.) are a bit stringent on the whole going-through-the-sacraments thing, blah blah blah, but a large percentage of the ones I grew up around didn't put too much stock in it. Maybe it was the whole Vatican II thing. (I know, I know. Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal. So sue me.)]

Anyway, obviously my criticism of Stewart in that case would be simply that he let O’Reilly get away with a lie, a distortion of what most people think Christianity constitutes, and that he parroted O’Reilly’s lie while also rather deftly skewering him.

The real beef is with O’Reilly.

O’Reilly is a Catholic. Surely he knows, from reading the comments at his website, that a goodly portion of his commentariat doesn’t believe he’s a true Christian. In fact, there’s a fairly rich tradition of people who believe that the Pope is the anti-Christ. O’Reilly would surely call himself a Christian. I would call him one, too. But those people wouldn’t.

In this instance, O’Reilly would likely agree with me. The irony is that the people we’d both be disagreeing with are his intellectual allies.

Let’s take a little stroll down I’m-going-to-try-to-remember-this-from-my-undergraduate-days, if you would.

Part of what was radical about Christianity when it came about was the degree of its inclusivity. Unlike the Judaic religion from which it was derived (no offense, Jews: you know I love ya!), all one had to do to be a Christian was accept Jesus as Lord and Savior and so forth. All of the ritualistic brouhaha, the basilicas, the hierarchies, the backdoor meetings, the piddling of schoolboys — that came later. Originally it was a horribly oppressed group of little hippies talking about peace and love and Jesus and rainbows. People dug that message and it grew. It grew, in fact, to such an extent that one crazy Roman emperor thought that it would be to his political gain to embrace it as the imperial religion, rather than continue the polytheistic tradition that had been dominant throughout antiquity.

Bam! Just like that.

Then a thousand+ years passed, during which time, you know, Christianity flourished, and, oh sure, the Dark Ages were a bit of a rough patch, and gosh, let’s try to forget about those Crusades; but you get the point because you’re an intelligent and erudite reader of Brutish&Short.com LLC, and you’re vaguely familiar with the history from this period, and you’re hip to the fact that ideologies can often be co-opted by parties whose only aim is the attainment of power, no matter what stands in the way (even — egads! — intellectual consistency).

So then, Martin Luther comes and hammers some damn scroll to a wall, and well, you’ll recall how swimmingly that turned out.

Etc, etc. To the present day.

My point is that if O’Reilly wants to be consistent in his definition of what a true Christian is, he has to either 1) accept the Protestant version, or 2) assert that only Catholics are true Christians. I would maintain that he wouldn’t go for (2), that his audience wouldn’t go for (2), and that even if he privately goes for (2), he’s not stupid enough to say it out loud. Since we’re judging people based on what they say and not what we believe them to think, we should operate on the assumption that Bill O’Reilly believes Protestants to be Christians, and that the broad Protestant definition of Christianity is what we’re working with here. He did, remember, say “No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder,” not, “No Catholic commits mass murder.”

That’s a problem for Bill O’Reilly.

You see, contra O’Reilly, a person either believes or doesn’t believe, in his or her heart of hearts, that Jesus is the Lord and Savior. You can’t explain that. It’s a belief, and since we generally take people at their word when they profess religious beliefs, it’s apt to point out, as Stewart and the press do, that Norway Psycho Killer professed to be a Christian.

It is, indeed, central to my point!

Bill O’Reilly is a laughingstock. No doubt, his ratings are terrific. He and the corporation he does the bidding of make their living by playing off the internalized sexism, racism, and homophobia of a large swath of the American body politic, which has been a winning formula from time immemorial. But on top of all the other hypocrisies that are his various hobbyhorses lies the most salient one of all — that Bill O’Reilly, guardian of the Christian faith and protector of the Lord Jesus Himself, can’t even get his own religion straight. By Bill O’Reilly’s definition, espoused on national television and shared by millions around the world, Anders Breivik is a true Christian. By Bill O’Reilly’s bloviating, he is no such thing.

But, of course, both Anders Breivik and Bill O’Reilly are making claims about a state of affairs that’s unverifiable by me. I choose to believe them, because most people are hypocrites, and generally their encroachment upon their principles in practice doesn’t have any effect on them in theory. With faith, it’s the theoretical that matters above all. I mean, in theory no true Christian would set off a car bomb and go on a shooting rampage, and in theory no true Christian would go on national television and advocate for policies that are actively detrimental to the interests of the poor.

But we’re not dealing with theory, we’re dealing with the way it manifests itself in reality. And in reality, people can make theory do whatever they want it to do if no one’s willing to call them on it.

***

The Times ran a good editorial today, which is somewhat related and deserving of quotation:

The global Islamophobic blogosphere consists of loosely connected networks of people — including students, civil servants, capitalists, and neo-Nazis. Many do not even see themselves as “right-wing,” but as defenders of enlightened values, including feminism.

The Islamophobes of Norway have no manifesto, but they share three fundamental views: that Norway is in the hands of a treacherous, spineless, politically correct elite that has betrayed the pure spirit of Norwegian culture by permitting demographic contamination; that Muslims will never be truly integrated (even if they pretend to be); and that there is a Muslim conspiracy to gain political dominance across Europe.

Replace the European references with American ones and you see the problems with the rightwing in this country today. It’s a hell of a shame. I hope that no one gets hurt.

4

Meghan Overdeep is confused

By
Trevor Macomber
– July 28, 2011

I don’t know Meghan Overdeep, and unlike Tom, I’m not particular apt at heaping scathing globules of enmity on anonymous bloggers, but after chancing upon her piece in the Huffington Post last week, “On Singers Who Act and Actors Who Sing, Inspired by Justin Timberlake,” I, too, felt the stirrings of inspiration.

Let’s start at the beginning, shall we?

Forgive me for a moment while I make a gross generalization: Actors should stick to acting and singers should stick to singing.

Okay, premise established. Not saying I agree with you, but convince me: what’s your opening salvo?

I mean, come on people, remember when Michael Jordan played baseball? Just say no.

Uhhh, WTF? Your idea of supporting the claim that “Actors should stick to acting and singers should stick to singing” is to cite the example of someone who — an epic performance in Space Jam aside — is neither an actor nor a singer? FAIL.

I’ve felt this way for a long time, but the excessive promotion of Justin Timberlake’s new movie Friends With Benefits has driven me to the edge. I love you Justin, I do, but watching you in The Social Network was about all I can take. So maybe you’re not the best actor, but you’re a damn good singer. Why don’t you stick with crying a river and bringing sexy back? Those were good times. Or better yet, join the cast of Saturday Night Live! I think you’re hilarious.

Nobody ever said Justin Timberlake is the best actor. In fact, given that, by definition, there can only be one “best” actor in the world at any given moment, it’s hardly disparaging to say that he isn’t it. Plus, I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that JT was actually pretty good in The Social Network. (Example: Roger Ebert says, “Timberlake pulls off the tricky assignment of playing Sean Parker as both a hot shot and someone who engages Zuckerberg as an intellectual equal.”)

Of course, none of that parsing matters when Overdeep’s last sentence encourages Timberlake to “join the cast of Saturday Night Live” because he’s “hilarious.” She does know that SNL is a TV show, right? Not only that, but it’s a live TV show that would actually require Timberlake to act week after week — the very thing Overdeep claims she would like to prevent him from doing. Newsflash: not many people win Oscars for acting funny, but that doesn’t mean they’re not good actors.

Skipping ahead a few grafs:

And of course there are exceptions to the rule. Bette Midler, Barbara Streisand, Meatloaf, Cher, Jared Leto, Jack Black, Jennifer Lopez and all the Disney kids all manage to straddle the actor/singer line with ease. Just to name a few.

But the rule is: Unless you are uniquely talented and/or have been on Broadway, you should not try. Chances are good that it won’t end well, for any of us. I understand that like anybody else, celebrities get bored and want to try new things. In that case, why not find a hobby? Or better yet, use your skills and experience to help find and cultivate new talent.

This one’s painfully obvious, but I’m gonna harp on it anyway: If there are so many exceptions to a rule (“just to name a few“), then it’s not much of a rule, is it, Meghan? And that reference to Disney kids straddling the line? Where the hell do you think Timberlake got his start.

As for being “uniquely talented,” all talent is unique in some way — it’s merely a question of how much of it you’ve got. I can truthfully say that I’m a uniquely talented juggler, vocalist, and writer, but if you’re going to hire me to do any of the three, you’ll probably also want to know that while my juggling skills are limited and my vocal abilities passable within a certain range, my writing chops are actually fairly advanced. In any case, talent can evolve, and just because you sucked your first time on stage or in front of the camera doesn’t mean that you’re going to continue doing so. Maybe you’re a genuine double, triple, or dodecatuple threat, but for various reasons only had the opportunity to pursue one performing path early in your career. Does that mean you should never try to succeed in another artistic field — especially now that the success you’ve experienced in your original field has given you an undeniable leg up over your heretofore undiscovered competition? Shit no! So for Overdeep to pretend that she or I wouldn’t do the exact same thing if we, too, had varied interests in the performing arts is not only disingenuous — it’s downright silly.

Of course, even a broken clock is right twice a day:

And then there’s Gwyneth Paltrow’s new singing career. Watching her sing on Glee is like watching a dog walk on its hind legs — it looks forced, awkward and plain old unnatural.

Yeah, I’ll give you that one.

0

Gimme a ring sometime

By
Trevor Macomber
– July 12, 2011

In less than a week, I will be a married man. I’m sure that at that time I will have many witty and insightful things to say on the subject — to say nothing of the brain-meltingly detailed planning required to get to such a stage (teaser: coordinating an out-of-state, 200-person wedding while both parties have full-time jobs = Alix can go to hell) — but until then, let’s talk about sex, baby.

I mean bling. Let’s talk about bling. After all, I’m marrying a girl, and diamonds — not husbands — are a girl’s best friend, doncha know.

 

That sung, I thank the gods that my almost-wife does not have a Marilyn-level obsession with shiny neck, wrist, and finger baubles. Yes, she enjoys a sparkly rock as much as the next red-blooded XXer, but for the most part, her taste for mineral-based lady candy is simple and nonurgent. Because of this pressure- and guilt-trip-free environment, I am able to state honestly and unequivocally that I do not regret the $[FIGURE REDACTED] that I cumulatively spent on her diamond engagement ring and subsequent diamond wedding band. (Sure, I could have used that black market kidney, but who couldn’t have? I mean, they’re delicious!) Likewise, I’m sure the future Mrs. would say the same about my own less-than-thrifty, custom-designed hunka hunka burnin’ white gold — despite it being the most expensive item (by a factor of five, at least) that will have ever adorned my body for more than a few seconds. To be sure, none of the purchases cost either of us a patently absurd two months’ salary, but they weren’t a mere two nights on the town, either — unless you habitually dine at Masa.

Fortunately, we’ve been lucky, industrious, and forward-looking enough with our money over the years to be in a position where we could indulge our baser material instincts in this instance without affecting our day-to-day lives.

And yet, all that disclaimed, I’ve still gotta say: this Slate article is right on.

Read the rest of this entry »

0

The Week is Over

By
Tom OHare
– July 1, 2011

Various obligations came up and I didn’t give this spot as much attention as I would’ve liked to. What can I say? I had to build a fence. The fence isn’t done yet, but that’s only because the scheisskopfs at Northeastern Fencing sold me these weird 4.5 X 4.5s, and nobody makes fence post caps that fit them.

Here is a list of what you missed.

All lies and glosses, of course, but I really do wish we’d published something about how people with hair implants are statistically 700% more likely than the merely balding to be criminals. Some lies are so funny that they’re true.

I’ve posted this song before, and I’m posting it again, because it reminds me of Montana, and crossing the Burnside Bridge on a hot Portland morning on my way to work, and waking up in Bombay scared and… scared-er.

0

Metcalf and the Libertarians, Ctd., AND Considering the Thought Experiment As Method (wonkish)

By
Ben Nolan
– June 25, 2011

The Metcalf himself (pictured at right in a Tokyo club about to fight O-Ren Ishii’s private army, the Crazy 88 — O-Ren being a fervent libertarian) takes up the “factual errors” meme I addressed earlier this week in a new, artillery barrage counterstrike of a post.

Read it. It’s tremendously entertaining, and not conciliatory in the slightest.

Examples:

About Brad DeLong who caught that Metcalf mis-sourced a cutting line Keynes had written about Hayek (though that he had written it about Hayek is not disputed):

Delong is right in saying Keynes wrote Hayek telling him he admired Road (“a grand book”), but since Delong’s primary interest is in pampering his own self-image as the scourge of a lazy world, he leaves his reader with a false, or at least, incomplete impression.

Metcalf goes on to point out that with proper context the “grand book” comment is revealed as rather clearly patronizing considering Keynes thought its economics only functioned in an ideal set of circumstances and were of little practical use.

In other words, “POW!”

To Julian Sanchez:

I’m tempted to let the essay speak for itself, but let me add: Why, if Nozick did not want to game his example, did he choose Wilt? After all, if Sanchez is correct, isn’t the point made just as well with, say, a happy-go-lucky doofus who rides a wave of Internet exuberance and cashes out big, all while adding to the world precisely zero utility

Delicious. That said, I did appreciate Sanchez’ introduction of the term “epistemic closure” to the popular blog-cabulary a couple years back.

Metcalf also responds to the claim made by many that he doesn’t “get” thought experiments using an elaborate (by the standards of your average thousand word article) counterfactual. Toss Slate a click and read it. In the mean time, I thought I might more directly take up the problem of thought experiments as a social theoretic method… 

Read the rest of this entry »

4

A Review of Your Favorite Album of the Summer

By
Tom OHare
– June 24, 2011

I first heard Bon Iver on a mix CD (do those even exist anymore?) that my brother’s girlfriend had compiled for him. I think it was probably Skinny Love that made me shiver most, though I confess to not remembering — there were a couple of his songs on there, and they were all mindbogglingly good. At any rate, I promptly bought For Emma and obsessed for a few months. I was painting houses at the the time, and I remember just completely not giving a shit when other contractors would show up (the house I was painting at the time had a lot of problems, there were lots of contractors) and hear me listening to emo-lonely folk, because it was beautiful, and because not every house painter gives a shit about your make-believe machismo — at least, not all the time. (Sometimes, I confess, we do.) The album would end, I’d hang my paint on the ladder, climb down, and press play again. I’d swat a mosquito. I’d climb back up the ladder. I’d make it through the day with my cigarettes and my boombox.

I’ve spent the better part of my life listening to music, but I still don’t understand it. For the longest time, my dream was to be a musician, and some of the best moments of my life — blurry as they may be — are visceral recollections of moments of pure release onstage, or the time the groupie bought us shots of Patrón in the middle of the set, or even just driving through lonely South Dakota on my way home from miserable defeat at the hands of the West Coast, singing with Spencer Krug and the rolling plains — singing my heart out, because it’s the only way to sing — about finality and gypsies and ghosts. In other words, music has informed the person I am, and I’ve never figured out why that is.

How is an aesthetic molded by popular taste, and how much should we trust our own? How much should we trust others’? To whom do we defer in the battle of tastemakers? Would aliens be impressed by Beethoven? What the hell are we really talking about anyway? Well we’re talking about a lot. We’re talking about how it feels to walk in subzero temperatures to the Leacock building on McGill campus and take an elevator up to the 9th floor, and we’re talking about landing a striper, and climbing ladders, and back and forth, back and forth. We’re talking about blood-sugar levels, chronic depression, climate conditions, what time it is, what we ate for breakfast, what we read yesterday, what we read twenty years ago. We’re talking about all of that messy subjective experience that goes into dealing with something as abstract as “art,” and we’re arguing about where art begins and propaganda ends, where propaganda is simply communicating the agenda of whatever we call not-art.

There’s an extent to which I’m sympathetic to the argument that declarations about an artwork’s ultimate merit are inherently wrongheaded. After all, a pompous ass is a pompous ass, and they’re not at all fun to hang out with at parties. But on the other hand, despite my egalitarian sensibilities, my firm belief that philosophy is not adequately equipped to deal with art, and my conviction that no one has ever given an anywhere-near-justified rubric for his or her own aesthetic theory, I feel like judging art — which we all do on a daily basis — is so goddamn natural that there must exist (somehow, somewhere) a Form of Wonderful Art to which everything aspires. Everything. I repeat. Because everything is in some way artful, and everything is beautiful and tragic, even when it’s the opposite.

And so maybe this is my god — art. And maybe my god is an idol. And maybe that’s all we can ask from art: to mystify us, help us understand, allow us to heal, permit us to believe in something when we would otherwise believe in nothing. Perhaps we don’t have to worry about how exactly it works, because it just does, and because a placebo this great doesn’t deserve something as coarse and blunt as an explanation — especially when the explanations never do it justice. If there’s to be mystery in the world, let us simply interpret it through our particular rose-colored glasses, soak in it, eat it all up until we’ve had our fill. Let’s never forget, though, that we’re wearing glasses.

So what I can tell you about the new Bon Iver album is this:

It is almost three o’clock in the afternoon. I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning, went back to bed, woke up again at 10 a.m., went to work to fill out paperwork, came home. It’s been cloudy all day. I’m kind of hungover. I had a cup of coffee at the coffee shop and listened to a surly-looking barista talk about his band and their tour, and I kind of wished him ill, because he’s really surly-looking. Then I felt slightly guilty for judging him, but not really. I currently wish the sun would come out. My feet are kind of cold. I will probably eat lunch soon. I’m listening to the new Bon Iver album for the second time today, and though there will probably come a day when I stop finding things I love in it, that hasn’t happened yet.

Think Peter Gabriel mixed with Superwolf. Think mesmerizing harmonies and reverb on cash register clangs. Consider the possibility that that which is unexpected only gives you more room to improvise. And consider the possibility that you aren’t going to die tomorrow, or that if you are, that it’s not the end of the world.

One way or another, Bon Iver is a great album.

5

This is What Happens When Words are Monetized (Or, Two Different Stories, Only Tangentially Related, Crammed into One Post)

By
Tom OHare
– June 20, 2011

Maybe the model was more sustainable in Victorian times, when writers were paid to write novels in serial form for magazines in weekly or monthly installments (and people like Charles Dickens added all those extra, glittery paragraphs so he could afford butter for his bread), but writing for AOL/HuffPo sounds a little bit less appealing than leaping into a giant pit of lava in an age of 24-7 interconnected-ness:

I had panic attacks; we all did. My fellow writers would fall asleep, and then wake up in cold sweats. I worked the graveyard shift — 11PM to 7 or 8AM or later — but even the AOL slaves who wrote during the day would report the same universal experience.  Finally falling asleep after work, they would awake with a jump, certain that they had forgotten something — certain that they hadn’t produced their allotted number of articles every thirty minutes. One night, I awoke out of a dead sleep, and jumped to my computer, and instantly began typing up an article about David Letterman. I kept going for ten minutes, until I realized I had dreamed it all. There was no article to write; I was simply typing up the same meaningless phrases that we all always used: “LADY GAGA PANTLESS ON LATE NIGHT WITH DAVID LETTERMAN,” or some such.

Here’s a slide from an internal AOL document about “content” (itself an icky word), entitled “Decide What Topics to Cover:”

Crazy bones. And to think, we got all righteous and indignant about someone wanting us to add a throwaway sentence and a link! But worse than the terms and conditions you agree to when you write for AOL is the censorship, and subsequent indifference to it, that goes on if you happen to cross the wrong person in an otherwise meaningless post. If the person you have offended has just signed a “multi-million dollar contract to promote the AOL “brand,’” you are in for a world of hurt indeed.

I was called into AOL’s offices in Manhattan for the first time and only time. I was reprimanded. I was put on notice. And from then on, my days at AOL were numbered. I wasn’t fired, but a special editor was assigned to review all my articles and tweak them as needed. My new editor would change my articles… and add grammatical errors to them.  Lots of grammatical errors. “Its” became “it’s”; “their” became “there” — but with the horrifying result that these things were all wrong.

When I pointed this out to my bosses, they were annoyed by my complaints.  Errors didn’t matter.  Grammatical errors — be they major or minor — didn’t matter. The brainless peons who read the website simply wouldn’t notice. What mattered was getting the “product” published.

What was happening was that words were starting not to matter. The words that we wrote didn’t matter, and the words that we got in response to them definitely didn’t matter.

For some reason, reading Miller’s account reminded me of the various times I’ve worked as a door-to-door hippie. You know the types. The ones with the fire in their eyes and the silver tongues, who somehow convince you to give them $36 or $25, or $12, or $120 to a cause you vaguely support, even if you don’t know exactly how the money is going to be spent. (And maybe thirty minutes later, you’re sitting down to dinner and wondering, “Wait. Did I just give $60 to that dude with the long hair who was standing in my breezeway with a clipboard, or was that all merely a dream?”)

I’ve met you all, and I’ve categorized you all. You are A doors, B doors, and C doors. A doors = warm and receptive, perhaps working in the garden, pulling weeds, a Prius parked in the driveway, a PBS sticker in the window. As they are Natural Allies, a canvasser fails if he or she doesn’t get a donation from A doors. B doors = 70% of you. Cautious, skeptical, just home from work, wanting to get on with life, but too impolite to say “Get the fuck off my doorstep, or I’m going to get my gun,” because you’ve been socialized well (btw, good on you). B doors are the job. (In fact, I always pretend to be a B door when a door-to-door hippie knocks on my door, to fuck with them for a bit, before revealing that I’ve been there, and here’s $18, $1.50 a month, cause that’s all I can afford.”) C doors are the flat Nos, the I’ve-got-a-baseball-bat-in-my-hand types, the “Don’t you know what ‘No Soliciting’ means!?”-ers. (Sidenote: I do, and by the letter of the law, as I sometimes took very much glee in pointing out as you threatened to call the police, I was not functioning as a solicitor in my capacity as a canvasser. Also, “Have a nice night!”) The greatest satisfaction was achieved when I solicited a donation from a C door.

I have been a preacher of the faith, after a fashion. But what struck me as coincidental about the AOL article was that the people being exploited were thankful for the opportunity to sell out, thankful for the chance to lie. I quit one canvassing job in good standing, and two more in fits of inspired fury; in all three cases, as in the case of AOL, the goal was not the truth-value of the canvasser’s rap, but to the sustainability of the door-to-door hippie industry.

Which — don’t get me wrong! — is better than trying to sustain sensationalism and bad journalism. But whoring is whoring. I have listened to people bash Mexicans, ignored this outright racism with a smle, and tried to get money out of them anyway in order to hit my nightly door-to-door hippie quota. I have in fact succeeded using this tactic more than a few times! What’s more, I learned not to even flinch when I encountered those doors, because not flinching is essential when your job is selling ideas.

Sometimes I think I’m a bad person. Other times I think I was just trying to get by.

All three times, though, I was thankful for the work. The last two times, I eventually decided that I’d rather be broke than go on having nightmares about not making quota three days in a row (you’re put on notice if that happens, and yes, there were nightmares [I am not cut out for sales]). I got sick of lying for a paycheck, pretending that abiding racism on a daily basis didn’t matter, pretending that swears didn’t exist, no matter how bad the day (you were not allowed to swear at work as a door-to-door hippie), pretending that the money I collected would go anywhere other than the office’s justification for an existence.

Eventually your principles catch up with you. Eventually, a corporation decides that you’re expendable. Sometimes, eventually everything you say amounts to a lie, and you either live with that fact or you exit stage left. It’s an interesting time, folks. I don’t know where we’re going.

Long story short? Go boycott the Huffington Post!

Page 3 of 712345...Last »