Yesterday was hot and I left work early. Literally hot. And yesterday it was winter. But then today it hovered around 55 for most of the day, and in came Spring, and who knew? We have six months of daylight to look forward to. I’m excited about waking up at 5 to sunshine.
Of course, as ever, we continue apace in our destruction of the planet, which is a shame because I have friends here. But what else would we do, really?
What the fuck happened at the Republican Presidential debate last night?
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I stopped live-blogging these things a while ago, because they just made me want to cut myself. Or self-immolate on the floor of Congress. In the above, we go from a discussion about birth control to a discussion about… I don’t even know. How denying access to birth control to women is the definition of freedom, or some such. I honestly can’t understand how half the country thinks that giving these people the reins of government would be a good idea. And it’s been depressing the hell out of me (in case you haven’t noticed that I’ve been shying away from this sort of stuff lately). We’re all going to die, and that’s sad (if slightly liberating) enough. But the fact that we’re going to be bossed around by madmen until we finally do perish is, for me, not particularly funny right now.
Umberto Eco wrote, in The Name of the Rose, about Aristotle’s lost works, and particularly a treatise on comedy, whose supposed existence in an obscure monastery’s library in the Middle Ages led to several mysterious deaths, around which the main plot revolves. The professor who taught it to me in my 20th Century Italian Literature class (senior slide, baby), suggested that it was the fear of comedy and the absurd — and their capacity to undermine authority by replacing our fear of the iron fist with laughter at its very existence — that made the antagonist resort to murdering anyone who dared try to find it. And it’s certainly true that satire is an extremely effective method of political protest. Two of the most trusted news sources in American politics today work for Comedy Central, after all. There’s certainly something to be said for that.
The people in the video above? They are pure comedy and absolute absurdism. The shit they’re throwing out is so staggeringly incoherent that the “jokes,” so to speak, write themselves. But to me, that signals something like the end of parody. When all you have to do is quote a politician to get a laugh, a la Tina Fey on SNL, you’ve taken all the fun out of it. It’s not hilarious that people are arguing that easy access to birth control leads to single welfare moms and/or drug addicts. It’s not funny that they’re getting applause for it. And it’s not rotfl that these people are serious contenders for the leadership of the free world.
Or maybe it still is for some people, and maybe I’m just doing a bad job of coping with the deep depravity of human existence right now. At any rate, I’m certainly not laughing about it.
Part II of Sam Cheuk’s series of meditations on his subarctic, Dawson (Yukon) life. Part I. They’re also running in a column in the Klondike Sun.
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Strange games our minds play with us. Wedged somewhere between the last article and now was the decision to leave Dawson, and ever since I’ve been enjoying Dawson almost as much as when I had first stepped foot here. I suspect that my renewed good spirits are, in part, due to my self-removal from having any stake in the town. Makes sense enough on some basic gut level, but I can’t ignore the obvious contradiction at play here: the more I had tried to ascribe some personal investment to the town, the more the simple act of being here gnawed at me. Fickle beast, that desire. Back to square one then.
Holy moly guacamole, it’s almost 3AM right now and I have to teach early in the morning, best to keep it short and preemptive apology should my logic be tenuous.
Over the Christmas break, I chatted with a few friends and acquaintances about my previous article and the pros and cons of Dawson. What surprised me was not so much their answers as their being in the same position as me. Some, like me, are doing the same plus/minus arithmetic, while others have set definitive exit strategies, albeit in terms of years.
What separates me from them is that they have been here longer, and seem better integrated into the social fabric of this town than myself. (I’d like to think that I’ve done an admirable job thus far in doing just that. A friend, born and raised here, whom I had met over pool games at Downtown is bringing me moose meat! That seems like a milestone, in my mind anyways.) Simply put, I never would have suspected the fidelity in circumstance, even more so I was surprised by the grace with which they can harbour the tension between a genuine love for Dawson and sober recognition of their eventual departure. I would have thought they’re here for good otherwise.
In the conversations I had, the constant theme that emerged was entrapment. While I can relate experientially, I’ve had a hard time pinpointing the locus behind the feeling, or articulating adequately to capture (compartmentalize?) the sensation. Allow me two travelogue-y anecdotes to approximate my understanding of this sense of enclosure before I skedaddle off to bed.
Scheisse, it’s 4:15. Conclusion: good night.
Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, y’all. We’re in this shit for the long haul.
Oh. Apparently while I was in my dungeon surrounded by thousands of volumes of literature, non-fiction, Harry Potters, and copies of Eat, Pray, Love, Rick Perry learned how to read a poll and dropped out of the presidential race.
Who gives a flying fuck?
As American consumers ogle over shiny new gadgets at this week’s Consumer Electronic’s Show, the workers that make those products are threatening mass suicide for the horrid working conditions at Foxconn. 300 employees who worked making the Xbox 360 stood at the edge of the factory building, about to jump, after their boss reneged on promised compensation, reports English news site Want China Times. It’s not like this is the first time working conditions at Foxconn have made news outside China. But iPhone and Xbox sales surely haven’t lagged in the wake of those revelations and neither Apple nor Microsoft has done much of anything to fix things.
The most recent This American Life has a long segment on the working conditions at Foxconn (and companies like it). Worth a listen.
Also relevant: Jia Zhangke’s movies. He gets to the human in the bleak reality of being a worker in the new China. ‘Specially Still Life, though I’ve heard The World is also good.
Hey, everyone, guess what! Todd Palin announced his super-official Republican Presidential endorsement today! You know what that means? It means that our Very Serious press corps is all over this story like white on rice, or brown on rice, or yellow on rice. It really depends what kind of rice you’re eating! (Hint: this rice makes you go blind, bleed internally, and is not FDA approved):
Sarah Palin’s husband is endorsing Newt Gingrich for president, Todd Palin told ABC News today.
But Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and John McCain’s 2008 Republican running mate, has yet to decide “who is best able to go up against Barack Obama,” Todd Palin said.
Palin said he has not spoken to Gingrich or anyone from the former House speaker’s campaign. But he said he respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency.
Todd Palin said he believes that being in the political trenches and experiencing the highs and lows help prepare a candidate for the future and the job of president.
He did not criticize any of the other candidates and said his “hat is off to everyone” in the Republican race.
THIS IS NEWS, PEOPLE! BREAKING NEWS! Where to begin?
FIRST OF ALL, we’re talking about Todd Palin. He is Sarah Palin’s husband. In that capacity he has gone snowmobiling, fathered 16 children, and , uh, lived in Alaska. Maybe he caught some fish, too, I dunno. Anyway, so this is obviously a very big deal, know what I mean? It would be like asking Pat Nixon who she endorsed, except that her endorsement, by virtue of being delivered from the grave, would carry a little more gravitas, even if it was anonymously sourced, due to an aide’s “inability to speak about the matter on the record, since Pat Nixon is dead and the endorsement was revealed to a shaman deep in the Ecuadorean rainforest, who then communicated it via a translator while both were high on peyote and firewater.” Or something. You get what I’m saying. This is a big deal. Todd Palin just endorsed Newt Gingrich, y’all. Wise the fuck up.
SECONDLY, this? “[Todd Palin] respects Gingrich for what he went through in the 1990s and compared that scrutiny in public life to what Sarah Palin went through during her run for the vice presidency” — this might be the most important statement from an American politician since the Monroe Doctrine. THAT WAS IN 1820, PEOPLE! WE’VE GOT A JUGGERNAUT ON OUR HANDS! Clearly, what Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich endured in their time in the public spotlight was shameful, shameful. I mean, people HELD THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR SHIT! That’s insanity! What kind of country do we live in, a communist one?
Didn’t think so, librul media.
THIRDLY, “hats off to everyone” in the Republican field? Even Mitt Romney? That guy’s practically a socialist. I’ll excuse it, because it’s Todd Palin, and as mentioned, he just delivered the 21st century equivalent of the Emancipation Proclamation, but by golly if I’m not a bit flummoxed. Flummoxed, I say. Mitt Romney will be the death of the Republican party, the American way, apple pie, moms, fetuses, and God Him or Herself. Okay, Himself (what am I, a lesbian?), but you get the picture. At least, I hope you do. Todd Palin is the picture, and he just caught fifty pounds of salmon with his bare hands, strutted up to the cold Alaskan beach front with his shirt off, and endorsed Newt Gingrich for President. Now is not the time to let your guard down, even if he did take his hat off for Mitt Romney.
FOURTHLY, another excerpt:
Gingrich’s ability to overcome the obstacle and still move up in the polls showed his ability to campaign and survive, according to Todd Palin, who said Gingrich is not one of the typical “beltway types” and that his campaign has “burst out of the political arena and touched many Americans.”
Do you know what I think of when I think about the phrase “beltway type”? I think about Levi Strauss, and Lee, and Calvin Klein, and Osh-Kosh-b-Gosh. I think about jeans, because when I wear jeans I wear a belt, and the “way” to be the “type” of person who wears “belts” is to wear jeans. But I never see Newt Gingrich in jeans. Have you ever seen Newt Gingrich in jeans? I have not. Oh, sure, maybe he’s worn them once or twice, but certainly not enough to be called a “belt” “way” “type.” I mean, the guy’s a former Speaker of the House, lobbyist, and current Presidential candidate. If that’s what a “belt” “way” “type” is, you can sign me right up. It’s better than wearing jeans, that’s for sure.
LASTLY, Sarah Palin. I’ll tell you what, I admire her restraint. The Republican field this year has been a little bit like a game of hot potato. It’s smart not to commit to a candidate too rashly. It would be embarrassing, after all, if she bet all her money on the Romney potato and the Santorum potato exploded into a slick, white mash. She has to show caution and resolve. She has to act Presidential. If she’s going to go around the country pretending to run for President for the rest of her life, after all, she may as well know the part. What I’m saying: hedge your bets, Sarah. Choose wisely!
The end.
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My Google Reader has 155 unread items in it, and I don’t want to read a goddamn one. It’s been like this for a while now. Or, not a while, but a couple of weeks. Maybe it’s the holiday burnout, the creaking of the clock as it eked into 2012 — the feeling that I’d just gotten over one of the shittier years of my life, so now what? Back to the same old thing? Obsessing about political theater and events over which I have no control? Making fun of Republicans and Libertarians, lamenting the Deomcrats’ incompetence and callousness? For what? Who gives a shit what Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum says in Iowa? Who gives a shit what I think about it?
In 2010, I spent five months — three in India, and two in California — almost entirely detached from the day-to-day goings-on of American politics. Sure, I’d check in every once in a while at an Internet cafe in an alley or a hotel in the redwoods, but if it didn’t have any resonance with what the India Times or the hippies on the hill in Mendocino county were preaching, I was entirely lost. Hell, I didn’t even know who’d won the Superbowl until 24 hours later. And I certainly wasn’t keeping up with the midterm elections from my tent on pond.
Those were good times. The world carried on without me hearing about it, and that was just fine. I could drink chai on the ghats, write in my journal, watch the sun go down over the Coast Range, splashing the hills with pink and lemon. I didn’t feel an obligation to care, because there was no way for me to reasonably do so. There’s no email in Varansi, baby. And there’s no internet under the pine trees.
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Let me perform a thought experiment. Suppose that for the last few months, I had completely ignored the Republican Presidential race. Just, “Nope, it’s invisible, because it’s this topic.” I didn’t see the stories in the papers, hear the segments on NPR, watch the YouTube clips, none of it. Let’s just suppose that for a second. What would I have missed?
I would have missed absolutely nothing.
What has this race shown other than the fact the the Republican party is filled with cynical careerist corporate hacks who will say anything, no matter how vile, hateful, demonstrably untrue, or ignorant, in order to gain power? Has it shown anything else at all? Sure, it’s now abundantly clear that the current crop of Republican leaders is pathetically lacking anything resembling a conscience. But, guess what? I ALREADY KNEW ALL THAT! I DIDN’T NEED TO WASTE SO MUCH TIME BASHING IT INTO MY BRAIN OVER AND OVER AGAIN! I COULD HAVE LEARNED LATIN WITH ALL THE TIME I’VE SPENT FOLLOWING POLITICS FOR THE PAST YEAR!
So do I want to dive into my Reader, which is now at 163 unread items, and remind myself, again, of how profoundly screwed this country is for the umpteenth time? No. I do not. I want to wrap myself in blankets, lay on the couch, and watch a sad movie. Or a funny movie. It doesn’t really matter. The last thing I want to do is pretend I care about what happened in the world today. There are lots of things that happened, and I’m sure that plenty of them are important, and I’m sure that on another day I would care, or I might care — hell, I might not care on other days, either. But today, no. Today, yesterday, the past couple of weeks, I cannot bring myself to care, because I cannot bring myself to feel that I have any sort of agency whatsoever.
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There is a point, I feel, when you realize that nothing you once hoped to accomplish is going to work out. (There are exceptions, to be sure. Maybe, like, Jackie Robinson is an exception. Maybe him. MAYBE.) It’s simply growing old, I think (he says from 28). You aren’t going to write that novel. You aren’t going to be that moderately successful musician. You’re going to work, possibly get married, have a couple kids, and die. And you’re going to die a failure. But here’s the thing: failing is okay if you have a good time doing it. When failing is accompanied by making yourself miserable, that’s when it’s not okay.
Right now, I can’t stand politics. It is the insipid shadow-puppetry of our civilization’s long march toward doom. So I’m going to go ahead and mark all those unread items in my RSS feed as read, if you don’t mind. It will make me feel better.
