No Safeword

As I continue to read Pynchon's Against the Day, one thought that keeps popping up is "holy shit." And most of that is just for how a-mazing the writing is. There is this urge to rip out the page and to gobble up the words, and then a paragraph later, sentences later even, same thing: tear page shove in mouth words in belly.

Then the whole Obama thing, as in his campaign for a Peace Prize repeat with the cruise missile strikes in Yemen and corresponding mass murder of civilians, including lots of children, fuck sake. He's our (or your) hero?

Or two other hot button issues of climate policies and healthcare reform. I can afford brevity because as anyone (if any) following along here might already predict about my perspective on the O-administration tackling of any significant issue or its agenda as a whole: nothing is happening. Nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing. And that's the optimistic take.

Being the good leftist that I fake out to be, the last Bill Moyers Journal was pretty interesting.1 Robert Kuttner, whoever the fuck he is, sez he (and I think by extension, the public) would do the hold-nose-vote-bad-bill for healthcare reform to bolster the failed president and the failed Democratic party. And saying failed is being kind, cause what we have here is a betrayal. I mean seriously, ain't it like, okay, he got elected already, that ain't enough for his confidence? The American folks have to get another round of mass anal raping and wish something good will happen in 2010. Really? Tighten the buckles, slip on the ball gag, and assume the strappado, is that right? And in this BDSM passion play, the politicians never tell you, there is no safeword.

1. Um, well, this entry was conceived, and more or less mostly written, end of December 09, so "last" would be very inaccurate. December 18, 2009 episode? Similarly, the Yemen missile attack, dated, though relevance hardly outdated.

For Obama and the Democrats and their waterlogged healthcare reform, I think, rather, Tupac: We might fight amongst each other but I promise you this / we’ll burn this bitch down, get us pissed.

The second segment of Bill Moyers' television show was on battling in the foreclosure crisis. What might not be obvious but I should make so, is that I don't really care about a lot of the banking problem. For the most part, I realize the politicians are in bed with the banking industry to screw ordinary people. And admit that a hella lot of money has been burned to save the banking fat cats. But I give them more of a pass because within the banking industry there is more competition with each company to screw each other (as well as other big corporate interest) over. And most players are financially sophisticated. Even Mr. Joe and Mrs. Josie Shmoe home buyer, the contracts and mortgages are there for their due diligence review. So I'm not naturally sympathetic to all the get-aheaders who got in over their heads.

I'm also befuddled over the freakout over bonuses. Especially with the absence of parallel outrage for bonus payouts in pharmaceuticals, information technology, industrials, sports, entertainment, agriculture, and so forth. It's like some talks with my dad about the Yankees, he's steamed about Alex Rodriguez's salary, but ignores the fistful of money stuffed in ownership's pockets. I can't see the exact sense, or intellectual honesty, in joining the bank bonus boo chorus. I also own some shares in a couple of such financial institutions, but seems to me, considering the widespread criticism, that doesn't imply bias, one way or the other.

But back to the point, the Moyers Journal foreclosure segment was a feature on Steve Meachum of City Life/Vida Urbana and it brought up alot of good points that I'ma guessing I need to re-think part, if not all, of this housing meltdown business. Something to do with not evicting these miserable loser legions and allowing them to repurchase (or refinance?) their homes at the "fair market" rate, which coincidentally is what the banks would be doing anyway via the foreclosure proceedings, but don't for the original owner out of a profound belief in punishing (aka moral hazard) the poor suckers. Huh? There is something seriously wrong, or seriously can be improved upon, here.

Meachum's story also spotlights why I'm increasingly antsy with what the media or politicians or pundits state as a lack of protest or unrest with all the rotten happening in business and politics. I see plenty of folks putting up fights, mostly brave, sometimes hopeless. If anything, I see the media, politicians, and pundits not paying due attention to the populous movements, and more, much more, tragically missing out on the chance to join in them.

A fine goldmine of a Moyers Journal also had his 2009 book recommendations. Oh social consciousness wet dream! I'ma maybe taking too much liberty in saying "recommendations" for what are instead his 2009 top book picks. Ain't exactly the same thing as recommendations, I'da think? Oh wellz. But I've been seeking to restock my to read pile with a new Amazon order and the list has a couple of need-to-get. Like Why School? by Mike Rose.

As valid as voodoo maybe, but it is like making a connection to read on a subject that I think H (for Helen) has a more than passing interest in, amirite? The assumption is that anyone working in education must have a stronger than strict professional interest. At least until he or she is so tenured and then it's just joining forces with the teacher's union to leech the system, uh, maybe? Anyway, who's to say whether Why School will be hardcore or relevant enough. But that's all I got, and it's as a good of a source I got for guidance on the state of education, which I have to assume is a freakin mess.

Once upon a time via internet chats, H would, uh, chat with me off and on, less so for what's been a pretty long time already. Other professional or personal priorities might be filling her down time commitments, or maybe a late discovery that I'm a rotten to the core cad. Or nothing, just one of those things that happen. Whatever, if any, connection that occurs from reading a book, I suppose it's one sided. Certain things from our past conversations resurface, some matters that are of concern for her are shared, aspects of her daily/professional life textualize, and so forth. Not in a definitive or emphatic way, but in a rather measly but tonal way. Still, it's hard to say, for example, whether reading up on education will be ultimately reductive, as in anticipating or foreclosing what H might say, or expansive, giving color or shape to her stories. In any case, when (if) I chat with her again... well, hopefully we'll find amusement with life's simpler digressions and not broach on work related ho-hum. And if a talk don't come up as soon as I may like, Why School will just be a makeshift pathway to be around some of her preoccupations.

This past holiday, among other gifts Santa-surrogates gave me, was Superfreakonomics and Logicomix. Logicomix was not super. For a lot of reasons. One of which is that the chicks in the comic are so poorly written. Objects for men to, on whim, lust, pity and ignore. Half objects even. In a better universe, Alys or Evelyn would step out in flesh, blood, and bone, find the co-writers, and slap them bloody and hard. But then again, if they somehow did join our real life world, they'd probably have more pressing matters to attend than my revenge fantasy.

As faint praise, I would say Annie Di Donna did a bang up coloring job in Logicomix, a lot of the warm vibrancy, say, of Herges' Tintin or Krahulik's Penny Arcade stuff. I'm geek enough that coloring is interesting. Otherwise, Logicomix flunks the decent graphic novel standard. I took Superfreakonomics with me on my trip, expecting or fearing I'd finish it super quick and it'd be a deadweight for the rest of the trip. But even with double digits flight duration - each way - I read only a lil over 100 or so pages. So much for stressing that I would run dry of vacation reading material.

Also otherwise, now that I did finish it, Superfreakonomics is pretty good, and useful.

A bit of some odds and ends. In a recent blog entry, I listed some directors not mentioned at all in either of Time Out NY's or London's decade's best list. And you know what? about my snubbed list, not one of em a chick. Which, in typical I'm never wrong recalcitrant fashion, those eight directors I named were for those that had two great flicks this past decade (and from my viewing, wouldn't have resulted in any female directors not already listed). A wider net with 1 great flick probably would have resulted in more female directors (such as Mia Hansen-Love).

But I don't think I could too vigorously defend my excuses. One thing about blogging is I can go back and kinda see, when I did such exercises, the representation of female directors in my past yearly top 10 (or 5) lists. 2006 none; 2005 Claire Denis, Agnes Varda, Lucrecia Martel & Zana Briski; 2004 none again(!); 2003 Lynne Ramsay; 2002 Lee Jeong-hyang, Jeong Jae-eun, Claire Denis, & Nicole Holofcener (as an honorable mention). Gee, that ain't much of a record. I ignore the so so movies of Ann Hui, Nora Ephron, Nancy Meyer, Mira Nair, Sofia Coppola, etc. Ultimately, I haven't really caught that many chick directors. I've never seen any Catherine Breillat, Kelly Reichardt, Jane Champion, Chantal Akerman, or Rebecca Miller, from the brighter batch of chick directors, if a confession is called for.

Still, more than my own viewing habits (without mitigating the narrow scope of those choices), it's the industry that really is not giving the gals opportunities to make and then to showcase/distribute/market their movies. And by extension to the industry, critics and the media are also implicated. From Time Out NY's decade's top 50 list, only two chick directors were represented Claire Denis and Mary Harron. Time Out London's decade's top 101 list has 4 chicks: Marjane Satrapi, Catherine Breillat, Kelly Reichardt, and Sofia Coppola. Not a lot of chicks there. Rather pitiful. Film Comments 2000-decade survey has 4 female directors in the top 50: Claire Denis, Agnes Varda, Kathryn Bigelow, & Lucrecia Martel.2 Over at Film Salon, in its discussion for Films of the Decade and Directors of the Decade, you know how many female directors or female directed flicks were mentioned? 1. 1 for Rebecca Miller's The Ballad of Jack and Rose.

2. I absolutely love Agnes Varda, and she is a first rate director, but lists that mix documentaries and narrative movies suggest, to me, insufficient rigor. Or, not enough consideration is given to either form of moviemaking, and hipness, splashiness, or name checking becomes central. Or that's my first take problem with it.

At some point, a movie needs to stand on its own merit, without consideration to class, age, gender, ethnicity, sex orientation, nationality, etc. There's been entire years that no movies by female directors (if I saw any) placed in my fav/top list. And I haven't considered a decade's ranking. So all and all, who's to say where'I'd rank movies by chick directors. But there is something tangibly and terribly amiss going on if one considered the state of women directors or women made movies. Maybe.

This all is so inadequate, ain't it? I know. I'll leave it as is.

This is UK's movie rag Sight & Sound compiled top 10 for 2009:

1 A Prophet (Un Prophète) (Jacques Audiard, France/Italy)
=2 The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow, USA)
=2 35 Shots of Rum (35 rhums) (Claire Denis, France/Germany)
4 The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band) (Michael Haneke, Germany/Austria/France/Italy)
5 Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden/Norway)
=6 Up (Pete Docter, USA)
=6 White Material (Claire Denis, France)
=8 Bright Star (Jane Campion, UK/Australia)
=8 Antichrist (Lars von Trier, Denmark/Germany/France/Sweden/Italy/Poland/Belgium)
10 Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, USA/Germany)

And here's NY's Film Comment version:

1. The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow, U.S. 772 points
2. The Headless Woman, Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/Spain/France/Italy 762
3. Summer Hours, Olivier Assayas, France 745
4. 35 Shots of Rum, Claire Denis, France/Germany 605
5. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson, U.S. 552
6. Police, Adjective, Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania 542
7. Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino, U.S./Germany 499
8. A Serious Man, Joel & Ethan Coen, U.S./U.K./France 472
9. The Beaches of Agnès, Agnès Varda, France 404
10. Lorna’s Silence, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy/Germany 382

Nothing to say about this except: Let the Right One In, awesome, awesome, awesome movie.

Keeping in spirit with nothing to say, also this. I don't know anything about A Prophet, or haven't followed the publicity for it. About Jacques Audiard, back in 05, I caught The Beat That My Heart Skipped with my favorite gal C (for Christine) cuz she was hot for Romain Duris. I wasn't too bowled over by the movie or Duris's performance.

These days, in the ww-web, Pascal's Wager is most prominently raised in association with the disaster that is the environment. Summarized as: the benefits of treating the global warming as a real threat, even if the catastrophe never materializes, far outweighs the gamble from doing nothing against global warming. The argument goes: taking steps as if the threat was real means (A) catastrophe is averted, if global warming were to happen or (B) net boon of long term advantages such as cleaner environment, energy independence, better national security, renewed manufacture & tech base, and so forth, if global meltdown is a sham; not taking any steps against climate change means (C) catastrophe dooms everyone, if global meltdown occurs or (D) long term disadvantage of bad environment, continued dependence on foreign oil, increased national security threats, lost opportunities with new manufacturing and technology, etc., if global warming is fake.

Which, when I first came across such formulation, seemed imminently sensible to me. Other e-folks quickly shot back that it was an updated Pascal's Wager argument, for which I mistakenly thought validated it. Too easily impressed with fancy terms. But it was apparent that the term was not meant to reinforce said argument, but to debunk. I wondered, then, how or why.

I'ma willing to bet the fallacies or drawbacks with employing a Pascal's Wager type argument would be easily obvious to many. Cause most folks are just plain smarta than me. If I hada cook up sumthing to counter the climate Cassandras, I'd go:

1) Erroneous faith in ability to predict the right steps to be undertaken.
2) Erroneous faith in whoever or whatever is planning/executing the steps.
3) Erroneous assumption that other individual, corporations, or governments will share similar views/goals/steps/etc.
4) Related, but distinct enough I think, unpossibility that sufficient coordination/cooperation among other parties (individual, corporate, or inter/national level) can ever happen.
5) Erroneous faith that the right problems are targeted.
6) Erroneous faith that the right causes to the problems are identified.
7) Erroneous calculations on the (net) boon slash cost.
8) Etc.

Extending a line of inquiry or injecting a lil more complexity (scientific, economic, social, personal, etc.) and the Pascal's Wager type justification for climate action starts to look silly, or naive, or wrong - depending on how nice or not nice you wanna be to the person bring up that gambit. I'll take as example something that seems kind of removed from the core stance of many climate doomsayers, grass fed cows. At first blush, or for the half informed like usually myself, grass fed beef is the way to go, for many reasons, including the suggestion that it's a more natural product: pasture land, wilderness, and all that mother earth jazz. While grain/lot fed beef is another abuser of fossil fuel, natural gas for fertilizers and oil for pesticides. But things get mightily complex and murky but fast with even tiny bit of secondary examination or googling. Contrary to the idyllic image of cows in pastures, grass feeding (if even close to similar beef production is maintained) would lead to mass deforestation, way above the mass pollution and land degradation already. Plus, the rumination byproduct methane burped out by grass fed cows are much greater, as in several times much greater, than from grain fed cows. Methane is considered a much more harmful contributor to global warming. So... what's someone making an environmental wager suppose to do? go toxic methane belching, expensive (again, id'be by several factors more so), healthier grass fed beef or go fossil fuel propelled, science engineered, affordable grain/lot fed beef?

Or is one's individual/city's/state's/nation's/continent's preference on this question enough of a difference maker to curb/correct global warming? Or what authority (moral, scientific, etc) is sufficient to coerce or persuade others to the same decision? Or does grass versus grain feeding even warrant serious, if not policy level, at least mass movement changes? If so, how certain is the benefit or cost of these changes? If so, how fair is it for certain groups, like the cow people, to bear the cost? And all this is just from a cursory thought exercising, if you forgive my indulgence and/or inaccuracies. But just taking the question a little further out points to how complicated and serious things can get.

And I'm far from saying to maintain the status quo or be paralyzed with inaction. Climate change is surely real, and the danger of it is clearly serious and real. I'ma just saying what a non starter it is to frame the global warming inquiry as "gambling" on catastrophic climate change, or finding only/net benefit in taking such a gamble. Or if Pascal's Wager is hole riddled to justify faith in (a) god, similar holes gap for legitimizing climate action.

And about the grass- v. grain-fed cow dilemma, as if I possibly could, I'll get back with the answer to this, don't worry.3

3. In this instance, I even might, for reals.

So anyway, the internet remains a glorious thing. I was visiting a forum, or blog, or however you wanna describe a website that allows folks to vigorously interact via posted comments, and some other visitors posted about a/the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I had no idea what the heck they were talking about, but hey, I didn't think too much of it at the time, because it was the web after all, who has spare time to google every weirdo tidbits that comes up? And who needs to know everything about everything? But it would be a testament on how terminally unhip I am. Later on, I guess while surfing to get a better grasp of the differing opinions on Pascal's Wager, which I'm gonna just shorten to PW going forward, cuz typing it and mentally "speaking" it in my head, that term really ain't too catchy, Flying Spaghetti Monster appeared again. At which time, I did Googled at last, and neato.4 Blasphemy aside, or a sign of fervent devotion? that perhaps explains my frequent pasta craving.

4. As you are e-reading, not too hard for ya to likewise Google, if you don't know and wanna know.

More recently, at the same site where I first came across Flying Spaghetti Monster, one of the dudes there used the term "shown throat." Which again, I hadn't the foggiest idea what it meant. This time, I wasn't the only one caught in the cloud of confusion, and another site visitor succinctly replied, "?" Though shown throat must be more broadly recognized as the next post, by someone other than the dude who originally used the term, explained it.5 Essentially some animals, like dogs for example, present their undefended vital as a sign of submission. Neat, again. Such an endless source of surprise/diversion, that internet thing.

5. "Amirite" was also something that I saw a bunch of e-people use, that I didn't know what it was, and wasn't compelled to figure its definition. Or at least until I eventually was compelled to figure it out.