Great Great Grand

Open and Closed Questions

2011-06-20T13:16:00.000-04:00

49 Up is an incredible concept. It's the seventh documentary in a series that visits the lives of 14 British folk since they were children. The film crew has interviewed them every seven years since they were seven.

This is the only one I have seen in this beautiful format and I was surprised to see how many subjects (some of whom have dropped out of the project) reflect on how much they dislike taking part. Every seven years it's a reminder of how their lives haven't turned out the way they envisioned. A confrontation most of us can avoid since, as a whole, humans love justifying their present lives and block out our past in the healthy way a censor would take all of the deaths out of children's book.

I would think the subjects would be aware that they were simply the documented examples of a process that happens to us all. Unfortunately, the director/interviewer has shit for brains.

If you listen to the few times that he leaves his question in the edit you can pick up how many closed questions he asks. I think he should take his camera around during the day to record how many shitty conversations he must have.

The difference between a closed and open question. A closed question has an answer built in, causing the person asked to squirm in the confines of making someone else's choice.

Aren't you happy to be reading this?

That shitty question implies "happy" as the dominant emotion you should be feeling and you should respond in a simplified "yes" or "no" format, knowing I want you to say yes.

What do you think of what I have written?

This open question allows you to say what you think and feel instead of fit what you think and feel into my shitty closed question box.

Closed questions have their place but to use them in a documentary series about people's personal lives crushes their own spirits and casts the whole project in the mind of the documenter. "Don't you want to be married?" is very different than "I'd like to know if you have any strong feelings about marriage. What does it make you think or feel?"

Sigh. Once again I have proved that every film would have been better if those assholes would get out of the way and let me do it all.

Thoughts on Photography

2011-04-03T22:09:00.000-04:00

What intrigues me about a photo is the relationship between the subject and the person behind the lens.

This explains why I find advertisements and models so boring. It's a narrow range of relationships playing out over and over. The subject does their best to look pretty, serious, excited, etc. The photographer attempts to capture a predetermined emotion in order to move product. Certainly, this is an interesting relationship but, due to its abundance, I find it the least compelling.

The purpose of photography is to make a permanent record of a fleeting moment. We desire careful control over these eternal moments, often grinding out anything interesting in place of capturing a banal agreement between photographer and subject that things 'look nice'. I would much prefer photographs of arguments from a child's point of view to a family photo.

I like candid shots in which a photographer captures a subject's spontaneous relationship to something else. Although now we are too wise to the beauty of these images and must plan them as well.

If a photo is a snapshot of the relationship between photographer and subject then what is a "selfie"? Surely, not ourselves through our own eyes but through the eyes of some imaginary photographer encouraging us to add another safely constructed image to the archive.

The Torture of Minnows

2011-02-21T23:46:00.000-05:00

Today, as I sat in an ice fishing hut, I watched a young, skilled fisherman use a sharp knife to slice up a pike and a walleye. He sat with a board on his lap as he went about his work in a casual and inviting manner. The two adults nodding with appreciation. The two children were riveted. The four-year old leaned in, inches from the face of the pike, straining to see it's teeth as the father held the mouth open.

When a fish is cleaned the head remains eerily untouched while the rest of its dismembered body stretches out in a sloppy pile. The skilled fisherman cut open the stomach to reveal the sucker minnow used as bait. The other child eagerly scooped it up in his hand.

Not once did the children shirk at the blood or ask a question about the death of the fish. They were content, as were the adults, smiling and eager as they palmed two more minnows from the bucket, pushing the hooks through their bodies and setting the fishing rod back in place.

Hunger Games

2011-02-20T12:56:00.000-05:00

I finished reading Hunger Games a while ago and I wanted to reflect on the author's (Suzanne Collins) use of violence. As I was reading the book I remember thinking that Collins' fight scenes seemed amateur. There was something about them that wasn't quite right. Later, I reflected on why her style seemed so unfamiliar to me.

In books like The Lord of the Flies, violence is portrayed as a force that is barely under the surface of civilization, waiting for its chance to boil up and over. The boys are sadistic and wild when left to their own devices. Similarly, the television series Spartacus depicts slaves forced to take part in the gladiatorial games. The characters show no reluctance once on the sand, easily tapping into their "inner monster" for scene after scene of computer animated throat slashing and decapitation.

What I came to realize about Hunger Games was that the author did not present violence as the beast that sleeps within us all. In Collins' story characters fight because of their relationships. All of these stories share the similarity of forcing their characters into a situation where there will be violent conflict. Collins' story proposes that people are most likely to be violent to protect the ones that they love. In contrast, the fiction written by male authors emphasizes the inevitability of the violent beast within us all. Is gender a useful category for analysis here? Are males trained to see violence as inevitable and females trained to see it as a last resort to protect our loved ones?

The Creature

2010-10-14T14:31:00.004-04:00

Shortly after three AM he came downstairs and caught his wife running away. She turned to face him, still gripping the screen door, eyes flickering from the artificial glow of the small TV. It was difficult to imagine her as the woman who would hike over a glacier with a broken forearm a mere two years from this moment. She looked frail, built of cold fingers, thin wrists, and irresponsibly wild hair except for her eyes which were glowing white hot from an eerie inner furnace or the reflection of the TV. He flipped on the kitchen light, walking to the fridge in his matching pajamas. He owned seven pairs, one for each day of the week, even though he found them itchy and restrictive. Adherence to routine had saved the lives of so many of his patients. It was easy to imagine him as the author of Psychopathological Explorers of The Delusional Mind, right down to the thoughtful pose for the book jacket. She was tall and thin, he was taller and thinner. Together they looked like two lost locusts.

"Lime sherbet?" He asked, opening the freezer. The cottage had never been as silent, the television remained muted, and the chubby June bugs halted their clumsy assault on the window. It seemed entirely possible that they were the only two people awake in Wasaga Beach. He carefully placed two scoops in a dessert bowl while his mind blazed with plots to get between her and the door. They both knew that if she ran he could catch her before she reached the main road. They both knew she had stopped taking her medication.

The children were asleep. It might work in his favour if they were awake. He pulled a chair out from the kitchen table, allowing it to drag across the floor, sitting as casually as possible under the circumstances. If he hadn't woken up, if he hadn't had a craving, the woman he loved would be gone.

“Out for a walk?” he asked.

“No,” she said, watching him. He had yet to make eye contact.

“You could have lied.”

“I'm leaving.”

“You've made up your mind?” He waited two full spoons for an answer. “If you've made up your mind why don't you go?”

“You can't watch me all the time.” He considered this. That wasn't true. She could be committed again. They could start over in the long hallways, large pictorial schedules, and padded rooms. He didn't want that; he wanted his wife.

“Can I talk to my wife?”

“I'm your wife.” she responded. He took a slow bite, leaving the spoon in his mouth, letting the flavour melt. He should have destroyed that picture. It was optimistic to think it could be buried beneath Polaroids and VHS tapes in the basement. She was compelled to find it. How many days had she snuck away to search the corners of this cottage? He watched her take her medication -how had she deceived him? These were errors in professional judgment and they stung him to the core. He smiled. He was practically the greatest psychopathologist of the delusional mind, once the German died he would be the unequivocal leader in his field. He had an outside shot at the Nobel. And it was he who had kept a promise to a lunatic for love. He was determined to redeem his error. The proper way to show his commitment would be to destroy the picture that held so much power over her mind. Shred and burn that image to set her free.

“I'm not going to force you to take any medication.” he said. “I'm here to remind you that you chose to take the medication. It was a long process and a choice that you made several times with a clear head before we-”

“Shut the fuck up.” she said, regretting it. She knew he was weighing her words, observing, dissecting and diagnosing them, building an expert opinion that would lead to her freedom or imprisonment. In an instant she saw the horrible labyrinth of medical literature that had always been between them, a grotesque maze of twisted steel corridors, her strongest convictions marching in endless circles, stepping over emotions, starved to death for attention. She looked at her husband, a man who loved a version of her deeply. In her hand she held the drawing, a deteriorating piece of gray construction paper marked by pastel crayons almost thirty years ago. The picture of the creature.

“What about Matty and Vicky? You're going to walk out on your family?”

“I already have.” she said. He shrugged, .

“You're still here.”

“No.”

“There must be something keeping you here.”

“You're not my first family.”

“You're sick. You need a safe place to rest and your medication.”

“I had a family in Oregon. A husband and two kids.”

“You've never been to Oregon.”

“I had a child in Oregon when I was seventeen.” She watched him finish his sherbet. “It's not a
delusion. I had a family and I had to leave them and I have to leave again.” He looked at her. “You've always known that my records didn't add up. The medical-”

“What are you going to do? Say it. I'd like to hear you say it.”

“I'm going to find this.” She held up the picture.

“What is that?”

“You know what it is.”

“I'd like to hear you say it. I think it would be good to hear it out in the open.”

“This is the creature that I saw when I was seven,”

“Where?”

“You know where.” He kept his clinical silence, demanding her to continue. “In the forest. When I was in the car I looked out the window and saw it in the forest.”

“How old were you?”

“I told you.”

“Will you say it again?”

“I was seven.”

"If that's sounds normal to you then there's nothing I can do.” He said. “Did you want to leave a note for the children?"

"Tell them that I have to find it."

“Here.” He pulled out a chair. “This will take two minutes. I'll write the note, what should it say?”

“I have to find it.”

"Find what?" She gestured to the drawing in her hand. "I know," he said "but how do you want to tell them?" She paused, unable to say it aloud. He felt her hand on his leg. He put his arm around her as she started to sob.

"The creature. I have to find the creature."

“Why not sleep on it and we'll talk in the morning?" She sat up."The creature is going to be out there tomorrow." He was playing a dangerous game, reinforcing her delusions. "Come back to bed and we'll talk with clearer heads in the morning."

"I'm leaving." She walked back to the screen door. He tried to follow but he could not. He looked down. His leg had been handcuffed to the thick ornamental trim of the table. Panic ran through him. He might be able to free himself. He may be able to crack the oak table. If he could reach the bottom drawer he could get the meat cleaver to break the chain. It would take too much time. She would be out of sight. He couldn't reach the phone. He could yell for the neighbours. He prepared to yell.

"Goodbye." She turned to leave.

"Mom?" asked a voice from the stairs.

I Couldn't Sleep

2010-09-16T01:17:00.001-04:00

I couldn't sleep. The world caught up to me today. I had been submerged in schoolwork, throwing myself into crafting the ultimate center of gravity lesson plan.

For inspiration, our teachers point us to a vast online archive of mediocrity. It's frightening. We have access to special Ontario teacher resource sites where, at the press of a button, we find hundreds of lesson plans jam-packed with boring. I'm going on the record here: these bland "educational" resources are joining Betamax as anecdotes to be brought up at history's wedding so we can all laugh at how crazy she was before she settled down. In my lifetime education will move online, dominated by a few resources that do learning right.

I realized this when I was asked to write several reflection papers on my education. It's hard to quantify what I learned in school but most of the skills I am currently using in my life (from needlepoint, to cooking, to bike repair, etc.) I got online. Maybe my education prepared me to be an independent learner but there's also a case that

I stood up for Wikipedia in my class, arguing that it was more articulate and better sourced than our textbook. Some people laughed at this which didn't surprise me since technophobic teachers have been instilling the Great Fear of Wikipedia without ever visiting the site.

Wow. I can't sleep. I have to be careful because I'm a very passionate person. I throw myself into what I do. I think what is keeping me up tonight is my internal instinct to look up and make sure that I've thrown myself in the right direction.

I'm going to read some more of Doctorow' Little Brother and get some sleep. It would be nice to start eating breakfast and lunch, put myself into a nice routine, and stay up one night thinking about death in that useful, contemplative way, bringing perspective and resolve to my life.

I Live in Thunder Bay

2010-09-03T13:54:00.002-04:00

And now I live in Thunder Bay.

I've learned a month of information in the last five days, distorting my sense of time.

A friend of a friend picked me up at the airport. A quick driving tour of the city landed my a free bike.

Me: How much for this bike with the sale sign?
Stranger: $200.
Me: That's too much. I was looking for a beater to ride to school.
Stranger: Take that one.
Friend of friend: Put it in the truck. What a score!

The tires needed some air, that was all.

Discovery makes a life feel full.

I'm attending a one-year program at Lakehead to earn my teaching certification for Ontario. I've had a week of class from experienced instructors who can't help but treat us like children.

In Thunder Bay, the grocery store "Safeway" is said "Safeways". No reason.

I watched a friendly Pastor rock a three run home run in a close softball game.

I've met seven great children and their six wonderful parents. They've opened their homes to me while I wait to move in to my place in Current River. I settled on a distant location for the beautiful forty minute bike ride to campus. Today is the first day of cold and rain and I realized I am a fool.

I know that we pronounce a hard 't' in Junot Road.

I check Google Maps using my iTouch when I'm lost. It's a lot easier to find an open network here compared to Toronto.

I delight myself by impressing the locals with my rapidly accumluating Thunder Bay knowledge.

*Quality Market moved next to the University on Golf Links and their old building is going to be a No Frills.
*There's a looming transit strike. Mid-September.
*They use kijiji here over craigslist
*I think Rogers is abandoning Thunder Bay and handing their clients over to the dreaded TBayTel.
*The ravens are like Toronto's raccoons. Some people through a blanket over their garbage bags if they don't have cans.
*I was helping friend of friend's brother-in-law move to a new house. It was a rough scene. In the end, a car caught on fire and the fire department had to put it out.

Kafka in Ontario. My Police Background Check

2010-08-16T18:07:00.001-04:00

Recently, I got my police background check.

At first glance, it costs $45. This is already ridiculous in the age of digital databases. I imagine that Canadian bureaucratic record keeping is an indoor ocean of little slips of paper. Seniors wearing old tyme bathing suits take handwritten requests and then dive for information.

Once I'm in the front of the line I give them my driver's license. The friendly person helping me returns with a forced smile.
"I have some... news."
"I like news!"
"There's a new RCMP initiative. Your birthday matches that of a known sex offender."
"Okay..."
"You have to be fingerprinted. (beat) But we don't have to keep the records of it. (beat) It's because of Homolka."
"Sorry?"
"Karla Homolka. She tried to change her name. Now they're checking birthdays. Did you ever change your name?"
"Nope."
"You'll still have to be fingerprinted."
"Awesome! Let's do it!"
"Well... we can't."
"???"
"It costs an additional $25."
"I just paid $45 using interac. What's another $25?"
"You can't pay with interac."
"???"
"It has to be in the form of a certified cheque made out to the Receiver General of Canada."
"The fuck?"
"And you'll have to make an appointment to be fingerprinted."

Fortunately, my saint sister is there with her two-year old. The bureaucrat assumes we are married and bumps me to an immediate appointment. My sister heads to the bank to get a certified cheque. As I fill out two more forms with my name and address.

"There's a charge for these forms."
"Okay."
"It's $23."
"I just paid $45 using interac. My sister is getting a certified cheque for $25, What's another $23?"
"No... our machine only recognizes a bank card once."
"???"
"You can't pay with interac."
"Credit card?"

So I pay with my credit card. My sister returns with the cheque and I get all of my fingers slathered in ink and recorded for the government. I hope the elderly divers find the right slips of paper so that I get these back in times.

Seriously though,
I need this police records check so I wasn't about to take my freak out moment but this process seems unfair. Obviously, I'm only noticing this because I got the shit end of the shitstick. The cost of my police check doubled because of my birthday? Shouldn't such a cost be shared by all taxpayers? Also, a certified cheque to the Receiver General? What is that?

Good News

2010-07-04T11:53:00.001-04:00

I am in need of good news.

It's an observation that has been around as long as mass media. "News" is skewed to show us a world filled with people dying from explosions and the failures of famous people. We are a tortured consumer society gawking at our human-made disasters. But sometimes, when I feel like a scarecrow losing my straw, held together by the thinnest of stitches, I look for something else. Not fluff but a joyful celebration. Someone is going to make a fortune with an online news source called "Good News", reporting stories like this:

One Year Old Child Invents Hug

A small child in Wasaga Beach (my niece) designed a new type of loving physical connection. In a spur of the moment decision young Andie turned the world of hugging upside down, taking the classic expression of love in a bold new direction. The child was walking outside, followed by the family dog who shares an undying bond with her since she's allowed to give him treats. When Andie was asked by her mother if she wanted to hug the dog the young genius responded with a gesture that still has local residents buzzing. Instead of using her arms in the traditional approach she walked to the side of the dog, bending at the waist and touching her head to the dog's back. She rested her forehead there, hands free, for a while to let the dog know that they shared a connection.

Sleep Paralysis

2010-06-03T14:42:00.003-04:00

The first time it happened I was about eighteen. I was lying on my back in bed and I couldn't move my neck. My eyes were open and I could look to my posters of batman and Jim Harbaugh. When my eyes shut I had a zoomed in image of a fat brown rat running in a metal wheel. I kept opening and closing my eyes. Unable to move. Suddenly, I was aware that I wasn't breathing. I tried to shout but I couldn't. I was frantically sending the message for my body to breathe, scream, move but nothing happened. Eventually I woke up.

This is what it feels like. Stop breathing. See how your body feels unnaturally quiet without the rhythm of breath? Then stare at your hand. Pretend you're telling yourself to make a fist but simply watch it ignore your command. That is the exact feeling.

Every six months I get one of these dreams. A few days ago I felt it coming on. I was trying to fall asleep when I found myself looking around the room -not breathing. When I try to will myself out of these situations ("scream!", "breathe!", "get up!") nothing happens. The solution is to relax. Ignore the illusion that I'm not breathing and go to sleep in the dreamworld. The rat has never come back.

*side note. I wanted a picture of a face screaming as it pressed into a sheet. What do I google image to find that?

serendipitous Montreal

2010-05-25T23:49:00.000-04:00

Tired now. But if I sleep I may sleep through my bus leaving.

Old and new friends. Showed up as a comedy duo needing a third to complete the show. Made the 6 o'clock news in brief clip by performing in the afternoon for a CTV reporter in an empty theater. It looks like no one finds us funny.

The other night I could not find the theater only to hear my name being called. I was rescued by a face I had not expected to see in this city and brought to a magical, sweltering theater to find more pleasant surprises. Then I went to La Banquise and ate poutine.

I climbed a mountain and ended up in a cemetery, walking through a plantation of gravestones, finding myself on the other side consulting a public map that revealed how severe I was lost. Jean Brilliant is a hilarious street with the power to vanish and reappear at a more confusing intersection. At the peak of my misdirection I found forty dollars sitting on the sidewalk. They bought the delicious bagels I am smelling. Like it was planned.

This theater where I have slept turns into party central after a good show. It usually wraps up by 4am. I watched one of the owners clean this building from top to bottom like I have watched the Zamboni clear the ice.

At tonight's party, tongues loosened as alcohol was poured and I overheard discussions on food and incest. Conversation took a turn for the better when a wonderful small world moment led to a refreshing burst of honesty and reflection from a surprise speaker.

Throw that Fight

2010-04-26T13:00:00.010-04:00

I attended the T.O. Jam festival this weekend. They provide the space and encouragement to make a video game in three day. It was held at George Brown in three fully equipped rooms.

Before the fest

The theme of the event was missing. Although I discovered most people ignored the theme and made a game they wanted. This was in keeping with the laissez faire spirit of the festival: do whatever you want but finish it.

We thought of a boxer who tried to "miss convincingly" to throw his fights. Our concept was to build a rhythm game (like Rhythm Heaven DS) combined with a puzzler (like Henry Hatsworth DS).

The story is set in 1885, following a kindhearted bare knuckle boxer who helps people by throwing his fights.

During the fest

-We worked in a beautiful college computer lab surrounded by thirty other programmers. Our team, Andrew Gardner and teh Andrew Gardner Group of Companies, sat side-by-side at one long table, working together but separately. Three was the perfect number for a team.

-The demographic was mostly young, male, awkward social skills and weak jokes. It was easy to overlook all of these traits because of the passion, camaraderie, and skill evident in each room. The people I met were kind, humble, and friendly.

-At the end of the second day they fed us free Chinese food. There was more than enough for everyone. I was impressed by the organization of the festival.

-Our first programmer, Andrew, had experimented with pygame. He built the rhythm component and a handler for cutscenes.

-Our second programmer, my brother Andrew, was new to pygame and was crafting our puzzler component. We made the mistake, mostly to my insistence, of picking a poorly-thought-out-overly-complex puzzle game. My brother figured out a brilliant, simple solution during the festival but there was not enough time to get it done for the final version.

-We had a vision that the graphics of the game should be raw, black and white sketches so the whole game would look like storyboards. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any of my talented artist friends. For me, the turning point of the festival was when I turned to my team and apologized for not being able to find a real talent to do graphics. My brother shrugged and said "you're our graphics guy." Then I really set to work.

-Deadline was 8pm. We ate free pizza, a raffle was held (two of us won headphones... what?), and we got to see everyone else's game. I wrote down the titles of my favourites. I'll do a follow-up post when they put them all online. There will also be an arcade where they play the games at a bar, showcasing each on on the big screen.

After the fest

Our work schedule:

-Day 1: 6pm - 4am

-Day 2: 10am - 4am

-Day 3: 10am - 8pm. We worked until the last minute.

-I laughed at my brother because his eyes erupted after the second day but mine also went extreme bloodshotty last night. I think I need a break from pixels.

-I arrived home around 11:30pm. Andrew came and we showcased the game to Liz. She beat it in four tries. It was exactly what we were hoping for.

Here's a gallery of more of the art from this game.

UPDATE
Neato. We were mentioned and shown in the Torontoist.

Quoted

2010-04-06T21:05:00.001-04:00

This is an interview I gave via email for an upcoming comedy festival that I'm performing in. Can you guess which chosen few of my many words ran in the article? Her questions, my answers.

How and why did you get into comedy?

It starts at the dinner table. The family laughs and a little attention monster is born, always feeding, never satisfied. I've always had supportive friends and family so I have had plenty of opportunity to develop my comedy barometer. In university, it was my sketch comedy and improv director, Mike "Nug" Nahrgang, who showed us how easy it was to craft a show, book a venue, and perform. Now I perform at the Comedy Bar with my sketch group Elephant Empire once a month.

How would you describe what you do on stage?

We like imagination. Our sketches take place in outer space or quicksand traps often poking fun at people being petty. Between the slice-of-life appeal of Corner Gas and the silliness of Monty Python, we're closer to the latter. Although, I think I care more about my audience "getting it". There's a small part of me that always wants my parents to enjoy the show.

Who do you think will like your routine?

Our target demographic is the female, self-employed, small pet owners between the ages of 80-85. Seriously, everyone likes the lifeguard sketch. And milk. You will all laugh at milk. And the Benson family remix. I think you're all going to like it.

What kind of thing makes you laugh?

I find myself laughing at reality then I remember it's real and I get scared. Like what Justin Bieber sings about. Sometimes I think tweenagers singing about love is a sketch I dreamed up. I still can't believe the Iraq War was sold on the punchline of weapons of mass destruction. Did that really happen? I guess laugh a lot at injustice.

Have you been to Guelph before?

I've been to Guelph a few times. Jeff Bersche, one of the festival organizers, was my high school improv coach. Occasionally, I do improv workshops with his team.

It appears you’re connected with some of the other groups that are also coming to Guelph. Explain those connections. Will it feel like old home week, seeing some old buddies?

Many of the people in this festival are some of my favourite performers in the comedy scene. I see most of them on a semi-regular basis. I've done shows with half of them. Three of them I play floor hockey with. Two of them I asked to open for me. One I saw earlier today to discuss her new improv project.

Do you think people laugh as much as they need to? Has the recession made us all a bunch of grumps?

I don't get to see the grumps. I get to see people who come to a comedy show, they want to laugh. I think the recession made people stay in, watching an extra video of a cat sneezing on YouTube instead of going out to a live show. But we can only stay in our caves for so long. I'm a firm believer that if you see us once you'll be hooked. I think any performer worth seeing thinks the same thing. We'll turn you into an addict, recession or not, you'll sell your child's bike to see us.

I guess Peter is your real name. Where did Nemo Dally come from?

Don't you have an imaginary name that you feel an unexplainable attachment to? It started because stage names are fun. I force everyone in Elephant Empire (my sketch group) to choose one. That way I get to work with people like Mort Swindle and Claxico Anfrostellar and not with my boring friends. Also, it has advantageous in the Age of Google, search for my real name and you'll find a really popular car designer guy.

The article.
http://news.guelphmercury.com/arts/article/617442

Answer key:
"Between the slice-of-life appeal of Corner Gas and the silliness of Monty Python, we're closer to the latter. Although, I think I care more about my audience "getting it"." (paraphrased)

"I find myself laughing at reality then I remember it's real and I get scared. Like what Justin Bieber sings about. Sometimes I think tweenagers singing about love is a sketch I dreamed up. I still can't believe the Iraq War was sold on the punchline of weapons of mass destruction. Did that really happen? I guess laugh a lot at injustice. "

Text Search

2010-03-31T23:58:00.000-04:00

The ability to run a search for words (try ctrl+f in your browser) has changed our relationship with the written word.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition -thank you Liz) has made it possible to text search books. That, more than anything else, will cause the death of the page and the rise of the ebook.

It's funny, my great great grand, to live in this technological time. Will you hold and read a paper book?

Why Not Lie on Facebook?

2010-03-27T18:21:00.001-04:00

I don't know what it is about me. Maybe I'm just an asshole looking to make life difficult for others. Market researchers want to get inside my head so they can show me relevant ads. Cut through the crap and target me with commercials for things I might by for reasons I care about. I can see they want to help me, so why do I insist on throwing wrenches in Helpbot's gears?

Switching gears.
The "social networking site" Facebook is collecting information about its members. In return, we get a personal internet, filled with friends. What's the big deal? It's free! Shouldn't they be allowed to collect anonymous information? Doesn't hurt me if they know how many people have birthdays in December. Or how many people listed Night as their favourite books.

Think of all the text on there. Facebeast can step back, run a search, and look at the buzz. They know what words are most often used, what ads people most often click on, what products are most often mentioned. Information that market researchers will pay for, assuming it's reliable.

Facebook has the delicate job of informing its users that they want more access to our behviours without scaring us away. Everyone's worried that Facebook is going to "own their photos" or "own their blog posts". Facebook doesn't give a shit about owning those things. They're not going to publish your stuff and claim it as their own -that would cause a massive exodus. What they do want (and have) is access to what we click on and what we write about.

We're all worried that people are reading our facebook messages and laughing at our grammar. Truth is, they don't give a shit about individuals, the money is in the group. They want your gender, age, occupation, location, and they want to know where that fits into consumer patterns. There is no TV without commercials. There is no Facebook without access to your information.

Bring me to my point -took me long enough.

Why not lie on Facebook?
I firmly believe that Facebook's power (over social network sites like MySpace) was pressuring people to use their real names. No one's going to pay for ad info about all the 101 year old 5cm tall MySpace profiles. Facebook is much more reliable. Funny. Why don't we lie? What psychological power keeps people in check, using their real names when they sign up for things online? Our friends already know our birthday and gender what keeps us from switching them?

Worst Sleep of My Life

2010-03-09T11:55:00.000-05:00

We were camping, chatting around the campfire at night. I was telling one of my fabulously entertaining stories, laughing at my own jokes, really getting into it. Suddenly, a rock the size of a double hamburger (ad size not actual size) rolled toward me. In mid-sentence I picked it up, carefully placing it back in the ring around the fire to do it's job, containing the flames.

The others seemed shocked. That's when I realized that I must be a very good storyteller because I could elicit a variety of emotional responses from surprise to my hand is burning my hand is burning. I plunged my hand into a bucket of ice water. Afterward there was some degree of argument over if this was the proper treatment for the degree of burn.

Now that pointer, middle and thumb had immense, throbbing blisters it was time for sleep. I took action to avoid being awoken by the constant pain, dipping into the cooler and filling a bag with ice. As I nodded off to sleep I would let go of the ice and wake up in agony. My right hand still felt on fire.

Being a genius, I decided to tie the bag to my hand. Imagine my surprise when I awoke, about ninety minutes later, discovering my bag of ice had been replaced with cold water. It is true that if you put someone's hand in liquid when they're sleeping they will feel an urgent need to urinate. I woke up with my bladder screaming. Never watch a desperate man trying to open a tent without his glasses, in the dark, unable to use his burning right hand. I can only imagine what a sad, frustrating spectacle I was. Unfortunately, I was unable to directly experience the ordeal. In order to cope with my twinging bladder my personality split, creating an alternate universe in which I was a master thief breaking out of prison. I vaguely remember getting free, stumbling to my equally difficult first heist, barely able to liberate the jewels before the alarms went off.

I had made it to 1am.

What is a story?

2010-02-27T00:29:00.002-05:00

I think a lot about storytelling because I perform improv and I like to write stories. I've memorized Vonnegut's advice about writing "make your characters want something" which is such bullsh*t because his characters are shoddy puppets tossed about to express his ideas. So here is my own bullsh*t wisdom from what I see in good stories and try to emulate in my own work. It's shameful but I feel compelled to watch the ending of bad movies if they simply employ these two storytelling tricks.

1. Have a clear ending point.
Heist movies, mysteries, and sports films (I'm sure there are more genres) all have the advantage of a clear finale. The inevitable last job/game/confrontation. This promise to the audience is made early and gives us a sense that we're going somewhere. I just watched Where the Wild Things Are. While I love Spike Jonze and the visual style of this film it was sorely lacking in this area. I found myself quite bored watching the film which was simply a montage of interesting monsters standing around, bitching about their lives. You might say the structure was: boy goes to island, has adventure, boy leaves island. But I really felt he left the island because he checked his watch and the movie was about over. They weren't moving toward any final action and it bored me.

2. Give me a chance to guess.
Reward attentive viewers. We should be able to foresee how the main character will solve their problems by what we have learned about their character and environment. This is such a key skill in improv that I realized with the help of Keith Johnstone's work.

I land my spaceship on the moon. I drive my moon rover around. Then I'm attacked by an alien. If I shoot it with a gun, it's bad storytelling. Where the f*ck did I get a gun? Bad storytellers solve problems by pulling things out of their asses. Good storytelling goes back to what we already know. I could hit the alien with the moon rover or, better yet, I could drive back to the ship, letting it chase me, only to fry it with my spaceship's engine. That incorporates the things that the audience knew. I love this feature of storytelling. It's a very artistic dance that storytellers do. If you call something back in a way that's too obvious or too obscure then you lose them. It's a careful, interesting balance. When it's done right everyone has a sense of how the movie will end, leaves saying "I saw that coming", but wasn't sure enough to speak up.

Was Avatar racist?

2010-02-10T13:54:00.004-05:00

WARNING I spoil Avatar in this post.

I watched Avatar in a surprisingly filled IMAX theater on a Monday afternoon over a month after it opened. I didn't find it very memorable but I did like the villain and the final fight. There's been a lot of talk about the offensive storyline in Avatar and I wanted to attack and defend it.

TAKING SHOT AT AVATAR:

Typical Whitey Saves the Day
Undeniably, the story contains a heavy dose of colonial mentality. Basically: the savages need a white male savior. The message here is that foreigners are waiting for a Westerner to save them. This mentality is also very prevalent in our various "save Africa" charity campaigns. From (Red)'s "spend money until we save Africans from AIDS" to the classic "only your money can buy African children food, water, and to learn to read the Bible". In the film the natives are pretty cool but absolutely useless when it comes to fighting the humans. The protagonist saves the day by throwing grenades in the attacking aircraft engines. All of his training to become a native warrior did fuck all. Good thing he was also a trained soldier.

The Alien Natives
The way the aliens all sit cross-legged and chant to their tree-god made me uncomfortable. Hollywood storytellers always portray natives with the same connection to nature. They are "purer", living with a spiritual (and in Avatar literal) bond with plants and animals. Savages love nature and civilized people hate it. Savages live in balance and civilized people live in greed. This is the classic dichotomy. For once I'd like to see a tribe that hates nature as much as everyone else and focuses on the constant struggle to tame it with technology. Although I was excited to see that the forest creatures came to the aid of the natives -that choice also made me uncomfortable. So did the film's use of the words 'shaman' and 'race'.

I also felt like I could overhear meetings that included comments like "make sure the warpaint looks tribal and cool" and "the aliens should have dreadlocks and if anyone asks tell them that they're organic internet cables" and "I told you not too African but this other one isn't African enough."

IN DEFENSE OF AVATAR:

Cheering when White People Die
We're meant to enjoy the death of regular white soldiers who are killed in the line of duty. This is an unusual choice for mainstream action. During the climactic air battle sequence the tough alien warrior jumps on the ship and begins tossing humans to their doom. It's clear that we're meant to be on his side emotionally and feel sadness only after he is shot and falls to his own slow motion doom. Usually, when white people die in cinema, especially at the hands of natives, it's important to show them doing something cruel beforehand.

Woman Saves Day
Why aren't more people pointing this out? I was most impressed by the choice to have the female hero save the protagonist's life twice at the end of the movie. This is a big deal. Action movies do not end this way. In Avatar it seemed very natural. First, she has to kill the villain because he can't. Then she has to save his ass again because he fails to put on an oxygen mask. Also, she's not overtly sexualized in the film. I know all of the Aliens have intergalactic runway model body types but I'm talking about bending over, taking her top off, or coming out of the waterfall shower. I feel that they consciously avoided the sex object route. Also, she's a ten foot tall blue-animal-woman. I would argue that Avatar is a good feminist film because it expands our expectations of women in cinema. She trains the protagonist, she saves his life three times in the film, and she isn't overtly sexualized.

If Frantz Fanon wrote Avatar:
One of the interesting aspects of Avatar is language (it's a constant struggle in sci-fi movies to explain why everyone can understand each other). The aliens speak english because a school had been set up but later kicked out. The film stays pretty superficial on this topic. The teacher of the school learned to speak the alien's language. And we're meant to like her because she shows respect for foreign culture and she like children. Even our hero trains for three months and speak their language as often as a mainstream audience can stomach subtitles. For the sake of Fanon, I was really hoping they were going to show more of a disillusioned generation that had been trained to speak English and then discovered that humans didn't give a shit about their opinions. Then they would have been outcasts from both sides. Shunned by the aliens for acting "too-human" and never taken seriously by those who taught them.

The epiphany
The aliens don't need us. They have a thriving, independent culture with a long history. This is an interesting linchpin of the plot. Our protagonist reveals that there is nothing humans can offer the aliens. At which point the corporation decides to kill them. Interesting note, the military villain mentions he had done three tours of duty in Nigeria which I feel is an intentional reference to Shell Oil's dirty business.

IN CONCLUSION:
Avatar is a film that reinforces the idea that white people are here to save the world while working very hard to show a respect for other cultures. Obviously these contradict and, in the end, white people rule!

The Furthest Fall 3 - King Tutankhamen

2010-02-02T14:36:00.006-05:00

How's this for cruel:

King "Tut" died and was buried in the Valley of the Kings over 3000 years ago. He was buried in a very expensive and particular way. He was mummified so that he could make a successful transition into the afterlife. His vital organs were placed in canopic jars. His body was wrapped with a few scarabs to ensure everything would work when he woke up. His ba was raring to go. And everything was hidden so that it would not be disturbed.

He was a relatively unimportant Pharaoh -except for one thing. We found his tomb intact. Other tombs had been completely robbed but his was full of ornate, crafted, golden goods.

Now, his body is sitting in a glass case inside his tomb and visited daily by hundreds of tourists. He is covered by a blanket that does not cover his toes so that everyone can comment on how disgusting they look. THERE IS A SECURITY CAMERA PERPETUALLY POINTED AT HIS BODY while his sacred artifacts tour the world for more people to see.

For all of the careful preparations to keep his body safe and hidden he may be one of the most looked at corpses in the history of the world.

Sci Fi Summaries. Best Gifts.

2010-01-18T21:47:00.004-05:00

For a long time the best gift I ever gave was an obscure book about draining Kirkland Lake for mining that my dad vaguely remembered. Thanks to the internet for finding that one. I had never got my mom a 'next level' gift until, one Christmas, I realized that she was an insomniac who read Grisham all night. Well now, thanks to me, she's also read everything James Patterson wrote.

I can understand how gifts in a relationship can become very symbolic. Will early handmade presents give way to hastily bought chocolates? Liz and I have set our bar frighteningly high. We make shirts for each other with obscure stencils of Nagi Noda or Song Kang-ho. Now, since I spend my days writing, she created this blog, of sci fi novel summaries, to inspire me. Check it out: 365daysofscifi.tumblr.com

Shifting Identities

2010-01-13T11:13:00.004-05:00

I've noticed that when a mix of people are brought together (particularly in a high school class) there are generally the same amount of leaders, troublemakers, keeners and quitters -which make me wonder what personalities have shifted.

Leaders will emerge in a room full of shy people and troublemakers will emerge in a room of squares.

That our lives are not our own but a matter of the room we are in.

It's fascinating and frustrating to realize that our lives are conforming to broad statistical predictions.

And now I'm going to see if this sketch involving a bear attacking the pope is still funny or if we were in a mood.

I miss SPAM?

2010-01-03T23:14:00.005-05:00

Gmail is excellent at filtering spam. I've started to miss the amazing community of assholes known as Spammers. They still bombard me with their demands to click on their links. I have 804 right now, these are the gems from the first two pages. Charm someone tonight by reading these in your best poet's voice. They're short and to the point -except the one with Russian literature.

1.
Get pretty strong bone-on!
Make her feel your wang

2.
Make it intense
Genital growth secrets

3.
Women prefer steel in your pants than gold on your hands.

One more question, count, he said, which beg you to answer in all sincerity not as a future mason but as an honest man.
He went in a traveling coach with six horses, surrounded by pages, aides de camp, and an escort, along the road to posen, thorn, danzig, and konigsberg.
There is everything, everything in her, continued this man.
Anatole kept on refilling pierres glass while explaining that dolokhov was betting with stevens, an english naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.

By the way, a quick google search reveals this talk of Anatole is an excerpt from Tolstoy's War and Peace. Nice try Spammer but your copy lit and paste failed to fool the filter.

4.
Be a love rhino
Bring hot-rod to life

Mark that book

2009-12-09T15:22:00.005-05:00

This is my favourite bookmark. The winner of last year's Toronto Public Library competition in the 10 - 13 year old category. Varvara's bears are amazing, the touch of red, and the frog saying "kwaa" is a great touch.

Her use of space seals the deal for me.

I'm an amateur bookmark designer myself, having done pixel portraits of the members of my book club last year. Actually, I was thinking of starting a deviant-art account for my pixel work.

I rediscovered that site recently and was very impressed by the variety of artists and overall organization. I hope to see Varvara's work on there one day.

In other book news, Novemeber produced a great book reading streak. Haruki Murakami's Wind Up Bird Chronicle, Antjie Krog's Country of My Skull, Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, and yesterday I finished Greg Costikya's First Contract -a unique mix of light science fiction and economics.

I found Costikya at this incredible independant games blog.

I've only known Any Rand's Atlas Shrugged to make economic philosophy the grounds for a novel. In Costikya's book Earth's economy is ruined by the introduction of aliens and their superior technology. The protagonist seeks to put himself and Earth back on the economic map. It didn't change my life (the bar for all fiction) but it was unique enough to leave an impression.

I liked the author's political agenda. He seemed to appreciate the right-wing's emphasis on individual power for change over the conditions of their life and a left-winger's cultural sensitivity. It was the only science fiction I can think of where the lead was not a white male or hot female robot.

Western Civilization

2009-12-05T10:27:00.001-05:00

Mouse

2009-11-27T12:21:00.002-05:00

Caught a mouse with a wonderfully simple Tip Trap.

I find mice to be beautiful, inventive, creatures living tragic, frantic lives. It's a pity they're such a health hazard or I would leave food out for them.

I would like to go on record saying.

If I find out that you kill mice I may:

Calmly ask why you would destroy life.
OR
Punch you in your f*cking face.

*If you are a cat then I understand. But you may want to see someone about that sadistic "toy with them" instinct.

My Dating Advice

2009-11-20T18:44:00.002-05:00

If I were to add a chapter to the Great Book of Dating I would write about the cold shoulder.

Many people are amazed that they are attracted to people who spurn them. Are we drawn to rejection? Common macho dating philosophy encourages one to resist the urge to call back and never appear available. In this clip, Jon Favreau fails to do that and that makes it a comedy (Swingers. 1996)

But there is another way to give the "cold shoulder". Genuinely have a life of one's own. Remember that the project of this life is yourself. You should be busy, doing things that interest you and when others ask for your time it should be difficult to fit them in because you are busy doing the things that you are passionate about. If your time is precious then you are attractive. If you are doting on someone, waiting for their next command then you have become uninteresting.

In summary, there are two ways to be alluringly unavailable. One is to play the game and pretend you're disinterested and busy, the other is to live a genuinely busy, interesting life.

Bonus Advice:
Additionally, if you want someone to find you interesting simply ask them questions.

The Kind of Surveillance I Can Get Behind

2009-11-10T12:53:00.005-05:00

This site (DineSafe Toronto) allows you to look up any restaurant in Toronto's public health record.

Also, the police put Toronto Crime Statistics on a map. Wow! Two cars have been stolen near me. I'm not sure if this information makes me feel safer or simply acknowledge that crime is everywhere.

Problem - Video Game Skin Tone

2009-11-05T14:12:00.004-05:00

I'm making a video game for fun using Construct. I've run into a problem -what gender and skin tone do I choose for the main character?

I decided to:

A. Leave the gender of the main character ambiguous. Use an androgynous figure and never mention 'he' or 'she' in the game.

B. Make the game randomly generate the skin tone of the main character.

Then I ran into more problems:
-How many skin tones should I include? Four? Three? Five?
-Are these hairstyle androgynous? (personally, I only think one of them captures that look)
-Should the user be able to choose their skin tone? (including a "doesn't matter, randomly assign my skin tone" option?)

These are problems that mainstream games do not deal with. They simply use white male, white female large breasts, or Italian plumber.

Let Them Eat Shit for Breakfast

2009-10-28T14:04:00.003-04:00

Here's a fun way to find out your personal politics.

Imagine a new breakfast cereal on the market: Shit! It's not a clever name, it's actually human shit. Some consumers are convinced to buy Shit from their impressive ad campaign Actually, to your horror, Shit becomes the number one selling breakfast food.

What's your reaction:

A) They wanna eat shit? Let them eat shit.
B) Somebody has to intervene.

Your answer to this question defines your political perspective. What the fuck does that mean? Simply put, who you think should have the power to make decisions. A) Every person should decide for oneself or B) Someone who knows best should decide.

You can see this divide in the past and present. In 1 AD The Romans had optimates and populares politicians and in 2009 the Americans have the Republican and Democratic party. For instance, why is there such anger toward public healthcare in America? The general ethos in the United States is that people should decide for themselves -fuck government intervention. It's often hard for Canadians to relate since we're used to a higher level of the government regulating our lives (healthcare, liquor stores, television, etc.)

So, you chose A:
Congratulations, you believe in people! We are all able to make rational choices. Life! What an adventure!
Unfortunately, you recognize the right for stupid people to have an equal say in the laws that govern your life.

So, you chose B
Congratulations, you can help people who are being manipulated by powerful corporations that care more about profit than their consumer's health.
Unfortunately, you're stomping on our freedoms you fascist son of a bitch. You don't trust people to know what's good for them. Why don't we just let you and your panel of experts build your perfect world and shoot anyone who disagrees?

Level 2
Does your opinion change if we make it more personal? Instead of thinking about the dull masses, what if it was your friend or family member eating Shit? Still think the same thing?

Comments steal:
-Hey! Replace Shit with Froot Loops and you have a real world example.

The Reader

2009-10-07T17:07:00.004-04:00

Usually, I criticize oversimplifications. For instance: the Nazis were evil. In fact, in historical context the Nazi party was appealing. Hitler did not trick Germany, he was the manifestation of a frustrated nation. Blah, blah, blah. Secretly, I've always appreciated the ignorant condemnation of the Nazi party. It has mass appeal and maybe our stupid outrage would strengthen each generation against fascism and genocide.

Then I read The Reader. It's clear that resolve is weakening.

It's the story of an unlikely intimate relationship between a young man and older woman. Years later he becomes a lawyer and discovers she's on trial as a Nazi war criminal. The book is intelligent, thoughtful but it lacks the crass condemnation of Nazis. In The Reader, we're meant to see the Nazi war criminal as a human being. This requires a careful dance to ensure the reader doesn't drum up instant hate. I was unnerved by this approach. Specifically, I felt the vague term 'prisoners' was often used to avoid 'Jews' sidestepping our emotional reactions to the Holocaust.

Again, we're meant to see the Nazi war criminal as a human being. While I have always argued for this on an intellectual level, I felt safer in a world where we simply chanted Nazis are bad. I guess I believe that most adults should be treated as children.

Literature is an insult to history. It's like turning 9/11 into a rom-com. Historical fiction is a distasteful reduction of facts into recognizable story arcs and emotion. I watched Tarentino's revenge fantasy Inglorious Basterds. I realized that a generation will grow up thinking that the Americans killed Hitler (or at the very least threatened him -we still deny the Soviets their victory).

Inspired by this new 'Holocaust lite' resurgence of WWII in fiction I am going to write a one hour lecture teaching the Nazi party the way I wish I learned about it in high school.

I believe outrage and storytelling miss the point.

Sunday (villain)

2009-09-18T14:33:00.003-04:00

Meeting the villains was my favourite part of GK Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday.

I found Sunday to be quite memorable and I kept picturing this statue: the head of an Emperor that was part of an exhibit in the Roman Forum. I would design him with sausage like fingers and focus on the size of his shadow. I'd adapt the book to screenplay if Tim Burton and Jim Henson would bring it to life.

Then, as Syme continued to stare at them, he saw something that he had not seen before. He had not seen it literally because it was too large to see. At the nearest end of the balcony, blocking up a great part of the perspective, was the back of a great mountain of a man. When Syme had seen him, his first thought was that the weight of him must break down the balcony of stone. His vastness did not lie only in the fact that he was abnormally tall and quite incredibly fat. This man was planned enormously in his original proportions, like a statue carved deliberately as colossal. His head, crowned with white hair, as seen from behind looked bigger than a head ought to be. The ears that stood out from it looked larger than human ears. He was enlarged terribly to scale; and this sense of size was so staggering, that when Syme saw him all the other figures seemed quite suddenly to dwindle and become dwarfish. They were still sitting there as before with their flowers and frock-coats, but now it looked as if the big man was entertaining five children to tea.

I'm sure his existence inspired the design of Marvel's Kingpin.

Public Deletion

2009-09-13T13:29:00.002-04:00

Facebook is an introductory course in public relations. Members constantly think about their online image, experimenting with branding and spin.

Facebook, my great great grand, is a website that encourages members to put pictures, videos and text online. They share your media with members that you have selected, granting them the power to view and make comments ("friends" in the jargon of the site). In return for this space, Facebook shares a rudimentary level of your information with advertising firms who hope to target you with more relevant and persuasive advertising.

I have added many young friends on facebook. They are part of a generation that had been more woven into expressing themselves online. I have noticed some long term relationships come and go. A few times, I have noticed that when they break up they systemically delete all of the profile pics with their former partner. Many of the photos of cute kissing and mutual silliness disappear. What must it feel like to remove someone from your digital identity? Like burning a shoebox of love letters and gifts only in a more public forum. I think this is why I like tattoos. More permanent reminders of the past.

I feel they are specially suited to understand modern propaganda and that history is an active, daily process of selecting the past.

Photos. Stalin and Yezhov no longer in love.

What I Learned from Eichmann in Jerusalem

2009-09-09T20:44:00.006-04:00

Book Review

I finally found Eichmann in Jerusalem in Washinton DC in a used book store. It proved to be one of my favourite nonfiction books for its topic (the trial of a Nazi in Israel) and for the author's (Hannah Arendt's) insight.

Background
After World War II, most of the defeated Nazi leadership had committed suicide. The remains were hung at the Nuremberg Trials (1945). Some of the Nazi leadership had escaped abroad. In 1960, Adolf Eichmann was abducted from Argentina by Israeli agents and put on trial in Israel for 'crimes against humanity'. His role in the Nazi party was in transportation -first deporting Jews abroad and then to extermination camps.

1. The banality of Eichmann
Yes, Eichmann was guilty and it was obvious that he would hang. But the trial was tied up in Israel announcing its power to the world and seeking a dramatic catharsis. The proceedings became a stage for Holocaust survivors to tell their stories (and who would deny them that right?). It was a long attempt to paint Eichmann as a murderous monster. The truth was more sinister. Arendt paints Eichmann as a cliche bureaucrat still irked from being passed over for promotion. He seemed equally satisfied deporting Jews (and wasn't this saving them?) from Germany before he was ordered to send them to death camps when the Final Solution began. He's frustrating because he fails at being a villain.

2. Judenrat. Jewish collaboration with Nazis.
Eichmann, who began his job by helping to deport Jews, often sought leaders in the Jewish community. Arendt insists that the Holocaust would not have been as successful without the help of local Jewish leadership collecting information for Nazis, maintaining a semblance of normality, and policing the ghettos. "The whole truth was that if the Jewish people had really been unorganized and leaderless, there would have been chaos and plenty of misery but the total number of victims would hardly have been between four and a half and six million people."

3. Stateless people.
The people that the Nazi party had the most success deporting and murdering where stateless. There was more resistance if they had citizenship. I feel that this provides real preventative information for future state extermination projects. If your state is denying citizenship to refugees they are enabling genocide. Romania and Hungry had particularly murderous governments. Eichmann was more active in these areas than in Poland where most of atocities from the testimonies took place.

4. Denmark was the exception
In Denmark there was more assistance for Jews to escape (to Sweden) than any other country. I have seen this mentioned several times. In Glover's book about 20th Century morality called Humanity and in this book. Both times there are were no specific cases only general mentions of money and lodging provided for escaping Jews.

5. Justice
Justice cannot be separated from history. Even the judges striving for objective sentencing end up performers in a revenge play.

The top photo is notorious. A man looks at the camera about to be executed in a ditch. It is a memento for the murderers who wrote "Last Jew of Vinnitsa" on the back.

I Knew That?

2009-08-27T20:08:00.007-04:00

Tales from Room cleaning II.

Found an old History of Japan exam. Let's see how I'd do if tested today!

5. Discuss the causes and results of the Meiji Restoration. First, define it either narrowly, as the change in government in 1868, or broadly, as the change of government plus the sweeping social, economic, and political changes of the following twenty years. Then proceed.

Uh... the thing about the Meiji Restoration (of 1868 of course) is that it or she or he restored all or most or some of the Meiji back to where it had been removed and needed restoration, socially, economically, and most importantly, politically. By 1888 (twenty years of changes after 1868 of course) things were socially, economically, and politically different, sweepingly. PleaseIneedthiscredittograduate. This is clear when one looks at the quantity of Meiji because many had been restored.

Uh-oh. Meiji Restoration guy looks pretty disappointed.

Looking back at Looking Back

2009-08-27T19:41:00.003-04:00

Cleaning out my room.
I have about 100 half filled journals. Considering scanning and freeing up some volume...

This is an excerpt from late high school. It's about looking back at my early high school writing about a crush and knowing it ends unreciprocated.

I am not that person. We are different. Nonetheless the optimistic light in which most of the entries find themselves in turns my stomach. The loss of one is the gaining of the other. Innocence Experience.

I see an innocent boy wanting the best. I read his hopes and, although no tears come, my stomach aches. Like watching a bad stand-up comic waiting for laughs that won't come. I read words coming from the pen of the truly naive. I know there is an unhappy ending, I've already seen that movie (hell, I'm in it!). I wish we had Cornflakes for tomorrow morning's breakfast.

I love how naive they both seem to me. How these words seem silly to you, future me.

Washington DC

2009-08-25T13:56:00.011-04:00

DC is the America that I did not expect.

The announcer for the Metro had a lot of character. Cracking jokes, relaying travel advice and naming the next stop as if he hadn't been doing it forever. There is no fashionable shopping, only free museums and used bookstores. People read in public (saw two Vonnegut-ers). People jog, lots of fit bodies. It's a friendly collection of enthusiastic tourists. I traveled to the NE of town to visit a Salvation Army store. I found myself the only white person on the streets watching female police officers with their notepads out, interviewing tired looking people.

The sounds of sirens are frequent throughout the city. There is a multitude of security agencies, FBI, local DC Police, private guards. A man in a suit stands on top of the White House, using binoculars to watch the gate where the tourists gather. A child waves and he waves back. Between the Washington Monument and the Capitol Building a row of free museums and galleries displaying stuffed orangutans, Nigerian art, the capsule that the crew of Apollo 11 returned in, Watson and the Shark, brutal images of the Holocaust on the Eastern Front, paintings of plump nineteenth century children, a V2 rocket, dimetrodon bones, and I didn't go into them all.

Museum fatigue is a challenge and it's nice to head a half hour west where you can stay outside and enjoy the memorial architecture. WWII fountain, the Vietnam Wall, giant Abraham Lincoln, and the hidden gem the Korean War Memorial which I hope to make famous one day by filming at night in the rain.

DC restaurants are on a familiar 'healthy, organic, fresh'. Eating out is pleasant and quite expensive -grocery stores do not exist.

The city prides itself on their global botany. Plants bear tiny plaques explaining their Japanese or Maryland or wherever heritage. Actually, the beautiful old trees run the city. It is very common to see the red brick sidewalks rippling up in waves as the root systems destroy them. Washington DC seems okay with nature bubbling up. I've never stumbled so much in a city. I overestimated American lawsuit culture.

Meanwhile, Liz was working at the Library of Congress which, like the Smithsonian, is actually a grouping of separate buildings. The days were sweltering (still, a break from Egypt). Lots of nice dates. A great Korean brunch (Mandu), Ethiopian lunch, and we caught a few movies. A clean, air-conditioned room to retreat to and prepare breakfast with the microwave, two mugs, and a bowl Liz borrowed from the hotel restaurant.

The one glitch, I didn't bring my laptop and found my writing process to be ineffective. I produced many illegible lists, abandon upon return because they involve too much retyping. I did manage to work myself into an excited frenzy for the writing that I'm doing now. This trip was a break for me after the exhausting Trip of Plagues and I spent my days wandering, listening to psychology lectures, and reading about Ned Kelly. The driving reason I went was to share the beginning and end of each day with Liz. There were many surreal moments of satisfaction when I realized that she was actually beside me.

Took sixteen hours of buses there and about nineteen to get home. I am a professional at sleeping on planes but I'd get cut from the National bus napping squad. I can't get the lights out.

Where did I go?

2009-08-24T23:08:00.007-04:00

I was never bitten by the 'travel bug', considering myself more of a people person than a place person. We're in the golden age of consumption and I don't know if air travel can possibly exist in the same way in your world. Travel has dominated your great great grand's life for the past five months.

It was fun to cross the Atlantic Ocean four times in ten days (in order to MC at my cousin's terrific wedding). I got to imagine my carbon footprint crushing polar bear cubs. The worst travel was the eighteen hour bus home from DC. The most memorable time was South Korea -thanks to Liz, Tom, Simon, and Foster. The worst was working this summer on the 'Trip of the Great Plague'. Stories to follow (including the full itinerary and daily ratings of the legendary trip to South Korea).

Now begins the long and enjoyable process of reflection and writing. I had planned to blog all along my journey but here we are. The only thing I wrote was that last post when the constant uprooting finally started putting cracks in my spirit. I will be creating a nice collection of stories to streamline the catching up process with my friends.

That's me in the War Memorial of Korea (a war museum with a touch of target-shooting interactivity).

Work - School Semester Program.
Paris, France. 9 days.
Strasbourg, France. 4 days.
Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. 4 days.
Munich, Germany. 5 days.
Venice, Italy. 6 days.
Tuscany (region), Italy. 9 days.
Rocca Mare, Italy. 4 days.
Rome, Italy. 7 days.
Olympia, Greece. 1 day.
Tolo, Greece. 5 days.
Athens, Greece. 5 days.
Santorini, Greece. 7 days.
Mykonos, Greece. 6 days.
Athens, Greece. 2 days.

Back home.
Brampton, Canada. 1 day
Toronto, Canada. 1 day.

Travel with Liz.
Seoul, South Korea. 4 days.
Gapyeoung, South Korea. 1 day.
Seoul, South Korea. 5 days.
Busan, South Korea. 1 day
Seoul, South Korea. 3 days.

Back Home
Brampton, Canada. 2 days.

Work - Summer Program
Rome, Italy. 3 days.
Toronto, Canada. 1 day.
Rome Italy. 3 days.
Ravello, Italy. 4 days.
Olympia, Greece. 2 days.
Tolo, Greece. 6 days.
Athens, Greece. 5 days.
Nile Cruise (Luxor to Aswan), Egypt. 5 Days.
Cairo, Egypt. 5 days.

Back Home
Brampton, Canada. 1 day.

Visiting Liz (sent to work at Library of Congress)
Washington DC, USA. 8 days.

Look Past the Collapse

2009-08-01T06:05:00.002-04:00

I'm burning out. Egypt to go. Knowledge is meaningless. Everything I anticipate and understand I cannot prevent from happening. I became my job. The line blurred and now its success if my success. When you try to avoid clear choices you make them in sinister ways. I've always known that and here I am again. I miss Liz and reading Joan Dideon's Year of Magical Thinking has convinced me that every plane I board will crash. Five times I die before I'm home and rational people will read this and claim that everything happens for a reason. It doesn't you dumb beautiful sons of bitches.

I know that, after the performance, all the stress of the show is shed and I look to what is next. This dark spell forgotten. I like Sara's blog. Keep a sense of humour about everything. The Spartans did. There will be so many arrows falling upon you they will blot out the sun, Sparta lol, then we'll fight in the shade.

I need to work as hard for myself as I do for other people. I can make a long list of things that I know. But unless they're habit, irrational-formed-in-childhood habit then I can't see doing them. Catharsis. Purge it all and be reborn. The people on TV don't age.

They Went to Seoul

2009-07-08T20:32:00.005-04:00

They Went to Seoul from Nemo Dally on Vimeo.

Seoul.
Fourteen summer days.

From batting cages to baduk
From televised math to deep market shrimp
From the '76 axe murder to a Buddhist lunch
Beaches and mountains and subways to Samgakji
From kimchee to bagged chickens
And to all the strangefruits, tandoori saunas, love hotels, rockstars, dog cafes, and kids baking cookies preserved in the deteriorating vault of our minds.

Special thanks to our Superhosts.

Glasses

2009-03-21T10:57:00.007-04:00

I need to buy new glasses. Mine are blurred with scratches and some type of expiring coating. So I look on LensCrafters' website. Out of habit, they're the only place Ive ever been to buy glasses. I'm looking for durability. That's my only criteria. They don't sort their glasses by materials. They sort them by designer.

I click on something called "Frame Personality", hoping to find the picture of a pair of glasses wearing construction gear with "I'm tough" in a word balloon. At least that absurdity would be useful to me. Instead I find this quiz.

The documentary Century of the Self comes to mind. Are people really irrational beings, caring more for their "Frame Personality" than actual information?

Mass Movement

2009-03-20T10:43:00.000-04:00

A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness, and meaninglessness of an individual existence. It cures the poignantly frustrated not by conferring on them an absolute truth or by remedying the difficulties and abuses which made their lives miserable, but by freeing them from their ineffectual selves -and it does this by enfolding and absorbing them into a closely knit and exultant corporate whole.

Hoffer, Eric
(p. 41) The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

I began to keep a list of things that I heard about but didn't understand. Manchuria was the first thing on that list back in 2003. The list is the reason that I know a lot of things. There's nothing rigorous about this project, I've been meaning to look up Gottfried Leibniz for years but something always seems to come up. If you keep a list, I would add Eric Hoffer to it. I'm reading The True Believer and I'm impressed. He's also interesting because he's not your typical academic.

Rapture

2009-03-16T22:20:00.006-04:00

Here's a list of Christian-second-coming-end-of-the-world predictions listed in Wikipedia's Rapture article. I was perusing the list and I burst out laughing when I saw poor Harold Camping's name there. Twice. I hope the other radio evangelists don't say things behind his back.

Some notable rapture predictions include the following:

1792 - Shakers calculated this date.^{[citation needed]}
1844 - William Miller predicted Christ would return between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844, then revised his prediction, claiming to have miscalculated Scripture, to October 22, 1844. Miller's theology gave rise to the Advent movement.
1977 - William M. Branham predicted that the Rapture would take place in 1977.^[22]
1981 - Chuck Smith undogmatically predicted that Jesus would likely return by 1981.^{[citation needed]}
1988 - Publication of 88 Reasons why the Rapture is in 1988, by Edgar C. Whisenant.
1989 - Publication of The final shout: Rapture report 1989, by Edgar Whisenant. More predictions by this author appeared for 1992, 1995, and other years.
1992 - Korean group "Mission for the Coming Days" predicted October 28, 1992 as the date for the rapture.^[23]
1993 - Seven years before the year 2000. The rapture would have to start to allow for seven years of the Tribulation before the Return in 2000. Multiple predictions.
1994 - Pastor John Hinkle of Christ Church in Los Angeles predicted June 9, 1994. Radio evangelist Harold Camping predicted September 27, 1994.^[24]
2011 - Harold Camping's revised prediction has May 21, 2011 as the date of the rapture.^[25]
2060 - Sir Isaac Newton undogmatically proposed, based upon his calculations using figures from the book of Daniel, that the rapture could happen no earlier than 2060.^[26]^[27]

** Since writing this I have learned that he originally predicted 1994 or 2011. Might seem like a cop out to pick two years but I look up to anyone who goes on the Armageddon record. Unfortunately, this site's scrutiny of his number crunching reveals a shoddy methodology rivaling the Bible Code.

Old and New

2009-03-16T20:43:00.010-04:00

My new comedy moniker, Elephant Empire, is up with Vimeo's slick service. I was able to check off "create a sketch comedy pilot" from my list of things to do. I envisioned the shows format as a short film told in three acts with silly sketches filling the intermissions.

Spacefighters from Nemo Dally on Vimeo.

Director's Commentary:
It's fun to watch and remember where each cockpit was shot. From my bedroom, to the stage at Unit 102, to the floor of Swindle's kitchen.

Yes, that is an old travel battleship on the right.

Those glasses on Whizzticket and the helmet are so key to this scene. Both were provided out of nowhere by Laroo.

Watching on a high quality TV hurt the production. You could see the texture and tones of various bedsheets providing outer space.

I'm always impressed by Triggs' performance as the Commander. There are countless outtakes of him yelling in error. I also love what he does with his cheek at 1:43.

The scene is missing a sound engineer. It needs the wonderful sounds of spacefighters and some orchestrated battle music to drop out and highlight the punchlines.

I'm a big fan of elaborate set ups for quick shots. I look forward to Mar-mar ya-natawan every time.

I really like my video game ship design. I love pixel art. It added a nice final layer to the scene.

Also, I stumbled upon some of my gifs from the old Ghost Robot website's menu. I quite like my only foray into animation. On the old site they would show the ghost and activate into the word upon mouseover but I don't have the time to find and test the javascript. For a superior look you're better off downloading them. It's worth it. They're adorable.

Press 'B' to Use Diplomacy

2009-03-14T19:04:00.003-04:00

In most video games you can punch or shoot. These are your options when you approach a new thing. How shall I destroy it?

Perhaps they are making a point that to live is to destroy. To eat is to squeeze the life from plants and animals, using their juice as fuel. To decide is to assert your desires on the world, crushing the dreams of your competitors.

Perhaps violence is the simplest story device, providing attachment and excitement in an immediately recognizable conflict. Video games suffer from terrible storytellers.

Perhaps violent fantasies lie behind all of our eyes.

We are a culture that condemns violence, promoting it everywhere. I am not a pacifist calling for better behaviour. I think these contradictions mark our age and are worth thinking about.

Where's the Future?

2009-03-12T20:19:00.002-04:00

2Q Video is doing what I expect of every store. Their inventory is online. You can look up things from home or if you go to the store they have a simple desktop offering their website. More importantly, it's small and simple. I despise the websites of major chains with their broken links, poor search engines, and results informing me that the product is available in a store on the other side of the country.

The only thing that 2Q is missing, as a video store, is a system that recommends titles to you based on what you've looked up. The addictiveness of clicking on recommendations, like the endless digging of wikinauts, will replace browsing shelves.

I'm constantly disappointed by stores that don't offer inventory access. Perhaps I don't understand the complex world of inventory but I thought everything is scanned into "the system". Employees have access to this information and they're irritated when they have to hunt for something. I would enjoy doing it myself and would buy a lot more.

Today, Be a French Intellectual

2009-03-08T03:34:00.004-04:00

Imitate a French scholar. Today, have a carefree personae, take your boldest observation about the world and say it in the most controversial way. Speak in creative riddles and allow your opponents to see what they want in your work.

I like this style of scholarship. Baudrillard claims that 'the Gulf War (1991) did not happen'. Foucault peeks at sinister shadows behind "progress", and Sartre declares that he and his fellow citizens of Paris were free when they were under Nazi rule.

I love being engaged by bold statements. Especially when there's a clever point behind it. Here's the excerpt from Sartre where he points out that freedom, a feeling of deliberate choice, is created in oppressive circumstances.

"WE HAVE NEVER BEEN SO FREE AS UNDER GERMAN OCCUPATION. We had lost every right, and above all the right of speech: we were insulted every day and we had to remain silent; we were deported as laborers, as jews, as political prisoners; everywhere, on the walls, in the newspapers, and on the screen, we saw the foul and listless face which our oppressors wanted to give us. Because of all of this we were free. Since the Nazi venom penetrated our very thoughts, every true thought was a victory. Since an all powerful police tried to force us to be silent, each word became as precious as a declaration of principle. Since we were hounded, every one of our movements had the importance of commitment. The often atrocious circumstances of our struggle had at last put us in a position to live our life without pretences--to live in this torn, unbearable condition which we call the human condition. Exile, captivity, and above all death, which is ably disguised in periods of happiness, became the perpetual object of our concern; we discovered that they were not inevitable accidents or even constant but external threats: they had become our lot, our destiny, the source of our reality as men. Each second we fully realized the meaning of that trite little phrase "All men are mortal."

I don't know who did the translation.
From the essay: La République du Silence (1944)

What was it like to have my Wisdom Teeth removed?

2009-03-05T07:58:00.005-05:00

It's the next morning and I feel fine. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones. I was given antibodies to prevent infection and painkillers (light and serious) which I haven't needed.

They put a needle in me and knocked me out intravenously. I asked the dentist what they were using and he got quite defensive. He was adamant that they were chemicals that I wouldn't remember and seemed suspicious of me for asking. I suspect his authority is challenged a great deal on this subject -Western medicine, anesthesia included, struggles to be authoritative and objective when the reality is full of side effects and uncertainty.

He lightened up after I made it cleat how fun I thought the whole thing was. "Wouldn't you be curious about what was being pumped inside of you?" I asked.

He said they use a variety of chemicals, one makes me sleep, one freezes for pain, one prevents inflammation, and one makes me forget. Despite the high sci-fi value of the last one I changed my questioning to ask if I could keep my x-ray. They treated me as if it were normal for them to send it to my dentist and I stopped pursuing the topic. Now that I'm out of their chair I want it and I think I'm going to get it. Don't I own it?

In fact, I'll call after I write this. Writing my thoughts certainly spurs me to action.
My phone call led to an interesting run around. They are insisting on sending the x-ray to my dentist -although "my dentist" was simply someone who squeezed me in and isn't taking regular patients. The surgeon's receptionist who is currently holding the x-ray said she would talk to my surgeon tomorrow.

What I remember.
I can recall about five minutes of action. I could feel tools clattering around on my wisdom teeth and pulling them. But there was no pain. I could hear my dentist say that I teach history, this may have been a dream, based on a brief conversation before we began. He was on to the next patient before I could ask.

They were worried about me. I was in good spirits but they said I looked quite faint. My heart rate dropped to a surprising low. They sad this happened to athletes. I asked if it was tru for Buddhists too. They missed my vein with the needle the first time and when they started to sedate me it hurt. I love how well the staff ca understand me with my mouth full. The dentist scolded his aid and fixed the needle. I don't remember getting sleepy. Afterward, they dripped two bags of clear juice into me to rehydrate me. After the second bag, I was barely dizzy, walking on my own.

I was walking up and down the stairs when I came home o find a movie. I was worried that it would make me feel faint but it didn't. My brothers bought my drugs and popped the movie in for me. Later that evening, I felt very faint. Apparently I was supposed to start drinking something to get my energy back but I hadn't touched food or water all day. A banana-berry smoothie with a helping of mom's protein powder and some maple sugar in water and I was back. I worked until midnight and slept until 6:30am.

Based on a True Story

2009-02-26T18:05:00.004-05:00

This would be a neat project. Historical figures and the actors who played them.

Excerpt

2009-02-19T00:04:00.007-05:00

I've spent some time in Wasaga Beach writing a book. A teen detective story. An excerpt:

“You're being a baby. I don't believe you.”

“It's not practical.” Noa looks at herself in the mirror. She feels as if she's wearing a costume. It's the first time she's put on a two-piece bathing suit. Rachel insists that she needs to wear one if she's going to look older. Jack's friends are all eighteen and nineteen. Noa looks at herself, noticing her body, a pencil-marked moment, a memory of brushing her teeth, noticing her head was well above the faucet.

“I don't get you. You never wanted to? It was a big deal when my parents caved in.”

“I still think it's going to come off on the slide.” Noa turns sideways and notices a three-year old watching her. The child is wearing massive water wings and her hair is tied in a haphazard bundle near the top of her head. Noa strikes a pose to ask for an opinion. The child looks at her blankly.

“That yellow one would have, it's not really for swimming. But this was has this.” Rachel says, snapping the strap on her cousin's bathing suit. “You still might want to hold it when you go.”

Noa nods instead of drawing attention to the absurdity of a swimsuit not made for swimming. “I'll take them,” she concludes, shaking her head, “this one and the blue one.” Rachel raises her hands in victory, picking it off the rack, filled with the satisfaction of taking her older cousin shopping for bathing suits. “On one condition. If I ever make that face while wearing it,” Noa points to an advertisement where a bikini model curls her lips back in a mock growl, “you have to shoot me.”

“Agreed.”

Noa tries not to think about how she paid so much money for so little fabric. She tries not to think how often young girls looked in the same mirror and sucked in their stomachs, feeling inadequate. She tries to focus on Rachel's excitement, the sense of ritual, wondering if a passing thought might have been an important lesson. It wasn't a test that she could write, or an answer that she could figure out. It had nothing to do with responsibility, capability, or awareness. In the end, it is simply the size and shape of her body that makes her an adult.

Malcolm X vs. Ratatat

2009-02-16T16:59:00.008-05:00

I'm back from hibernation.

Malcolm X vs. Ratatat (download mp3)

At one point during my visit to Wasaga I was designing assignments for high school students. I hope they're tech savvy -I plan on forcing them to make mash ups of famous speeches.

The perfect soundtrack if you feel like his Wikipedia biography.

I tested my assignment and found it fun and educational. I'm pleased with this Malcolm X 'Ballet or the Bullet' speech mashed over Ratatat's Seventeen Years. I'm happy to capture his intense rhetoric but, if I were to recut the speech, I would include:

a) his statement that America could have the first non-violent revolution by the ballot.
and
b) that he admired Asian nationalism for defeating the white man -while referring to the Korean war as whites getting beat by rice eaters.

This assignment is also a good introduction to talking about copyright and fair use. Have I violated your terms of use?

The Great Fruit Tasting

2009-01-25T12:12:00.008-05:00

A while ago we bought twenty obscure beverages and held the Great Drink Tasting. Well, we bought about nineteen fruits to try (most of them from the wonderful markets of Chinatown) for our first Fruit Tasting party.

Highlights:

-freaking out as we cracked granadilla's disgusting skull but liking the taste of the oozing brains
-jack fruit's sudden seeds
-when the innocuous "poison potato" paralyzed tongues and lips
-beautiful dragon fruit's letdown
-after looking up the expected flavour of soursop we concluded it wasn't ripe.

Pictures of the fruits will follow but here's how they fared:

And, since we believe in transparency, the official judge's scores:

Personally, I think papaya is overrated and the tidy, tasty honey pomelo deserves a greater recommendation. Sugar apple and rambutan have flair but I think they lack the stamina to make the playoffs.

I Watch Too Many Movies

2009-01-23T16:13:00.002-05:00

I Watch Too Many Movies

I don't remember the sound of the explosion. The firefighters laughed when they heard that one. There were reports from Main and Elm that a gun had been fired. I remember a tremendous wumf. Like an enormous barbecue burner being turned out. I had to have heard the explosion they laughed, I was right beside it and the doctors said my hearing was damaged.

The old woman had been thrown up the stairs or I never would have found her. You're not supposed to move an injured body but the fire was spreading so I did.

I brought her outside and laid her on my jacket to keep her off the snow. It seemed like the right thing to do but I regretted it later. I wish I had grabbed the curtains because my jacket got all bloody and I had to throw it out. Plus it was freezing. I looked at those curtains for a long time but I thought it would be irresponsible to leave the old lady on the front lawn. Even if I got the curtains she probably had already got blood on my jacket so it's not like I could roll her onto the curtains and put my jacket on. Eventually, I saw the curtains catch fire so that was that. That's the thing in those situations. You can't overthink, you have to act.

A neighbour ran to phone 911. Later, he thanked me for taking control of the situation because he was in shock. He said I told him to call 911, report an explosion and an unconcious, breathing senior female. I don't remember doing that. I guess I was in shock too. That was the frustrating thing about being called a hero. I didn't remember the good parts. I felt like I was getting someone else's award. I remember this old lady. She looked like a bandit who had been caught by a posse and dragged by a horse. Her clothes were ripped up and dusty. I stared at her fragile body. I thought a Western that takes place in the snow would be a neat, new idea. I held her in my arms.

I watch a lot of movies and this felt like the scene where the person is dying in someone else's arms. I knew it would be a good scene if it were shot from above. Then I thought she was dead. I really started to get into my role. I tried to think about everything the old lady meant to me.

“Don't give up on me.” I said.

I don't know. Maybe I watch too many movies. The hero always has to keep the dying person awake. If they fall asleep it means that they're dead. “Fight it.” I yelled. “You can't fall asleep.” She didn't respond. “Not on my watch.” I shouted. I gave her a quick shake, a test shake, and it worried me. You ever shake a frail old lady? It's scary. It's like a bunch of toothpicks in a ziploc bag.

And that's when I did what I did. Like I said maybe I watch too many movies. Maybe she was better off sleeping. But my mind was fixated on waking her up. I wanted her to show signs of life. And maybe I was upset about being cold and using my jacket instead of the curtains. So I started yelling every obscenity I know. It sounds odd now but all I was thinking was, if she sleeps, she's gone, right? So I'm whispering to her that she's a dirty slut who fucked a pig for a dollar. And that's a light one. That's beginner's.

She wasn't responding so I tried everything I knew. And when you work in international shipping, you hear them all. Tu madre es una puta, darashinai onna, tu es un putain, du hast null hoden, pezze di merda, bouffe ma queue calisse de fag. It was hard to place her ethnicity so I called this old lady a whore in every language. I'm trying Polish, Mandarin, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and all the Swahilii I know. Her eyes start to open. I'm really getting to her. Then I think, she's an old woman, maybe she's racist. So I start saying, oh look who's awake for a big white cock, big black cock, brown cock. It's a long process but I find out that she hates Catholics and the Swedish and she speaks Italian and some Polish. So I'm telling her that she wants a Swedish Catholic to take his greasy balls and put them-

Suddenly she's hitting me, she's awake, she's full of life. And then I'm being tackled to the ground. At first the copsy were arresting me but then they found out I was saving her life.

The old lady's family was cool and I got to hug them a lot at the hospital. We really didn't know if she was going to make it. I mentioned my jacket and they were really impressed with my sacrifice but they didn't get the hint. Eventually, the old lady came around and they brought me into the room to celebrate. I couldn't really understand what she said to me and I asked someone to translate. Finally, someone did.

"What is she saying?" I asked.
“I don't like this man.”

But there's no way that's everything because she talked for about three minutes until I was told I had to leave the room for her health.

(2009 snow walk to a movie store in Wasaga.)

Gender of Oz

2009-01-10T12:31:00.009-05:00

A quick introduction to studying gender roles in our culture. These are the top hits when using Google images to search for Wizard of Oz costumes. Click this report to view a better size.What theories of gender would you draw as a total outsider to our culture?
-Females are not allowed to completely cover their legs?
-Only males are allowed to wear face paint?
-Males can't dress as female characters but females can dress as male characters?
-Females must stand awkwardly. Males must stand straight?
-Males should wear bulkier hats?

Anything else?

Why "be yourself" is Sh*tty Advice

2009-01-06T16:14:00.007-05:00

High school students can detect the emptiness behind the phrase "be yourself". Our personalities and passions seem so arbitrary. Who am I? Am I someone who is passionate about being a cop? A pianist? A veterinarian? You don't need Jean-Paul Sartre to see the daunting existential problem of making choices without guidance (God). Yet there is a kernel of important advice in this poorly worded catch phrase.

The phrase "be yourself" is articulated better as:

Every human being is faced with the same struggle: being an individual and living in a group. You strike me as someone who is too accommodating and you should pursue some of your selfish desires for happiness. Consider that a degree of selfishness is good. Being completely selfish will lead to misery -but the same is true of total selflessness. You, like all human beings, must find a balance. Some people have to learn to surrender themselves to the groups so that they can play well with others. You have to learn to find the happiness which lies in asserting yourself against the group and satisfying your desires.

My friends are Pharaohs

2009-01-06T15:47:00.005-05:00

This particular time and place that I have been born into is marked by an abundance of manufactured goods. I am surrounded by different textures produced in foreign places by unknown processes. There is a stack of books beside me and an alarm clock. There isn't one thing in this room that I know how to produce. The effect is intellectual not emotional. I don't feel overwhelmed or upset. There is a vague sense that this situation is proper or "natural". Each of my friends is more powerful than the ancient Pharaohs who blogged by collecting crafts and burying them in tombs. We have flying machines.

In 2009 I wish everyone inspiration. A feeling of restlessness while looking at a statue of Alexander the Great.

Best of 2008

2009-01-03T01:33:00.008-05:00

The best books that I read in 2008

The Remains of the Day 80%
Never Let Me Go 74%
The Reason Why 72%
Humanity 71%
Wittgenstein's Poker 70%
The Painted Bird 68%

The best movies that I saw in 2008

Sympathy for Mr Vengeance 86%
Adaptation 80%
Heart of the Game 78%
The Dark Knight 72%
Rec 64%

A New Sickness

2009-01-02T14:13:00.005-05:00

My Great Great Grand,

How's your health? I'm sick today. I have been for the last four weeks. I have a variation on "the common cold". We don't fully understand how to combat a virus that we refer to as "the common cold". It causes a mucous build up that we cough up and blow out of our nose into a soft paper we call tissue.

Weeks ago I was coughing all day and through the night, frequently waking Liz up. For the first time in my experience, the coughing and runny nose stages are over but the mucous has dug in somewhere above my nose. Occasionally it causes my ears to be plugged. I've never had that before. I went to a walk-in-clinic. That's where I can show my card to prove I'm a citizen of Canada and have a doctor diagnose me for free. Unfortunately the clinic was closing so I couldn't see a doctor. In a real emergency, in my country, I could go to a hospital or phone a number and people would bring me to a hospital to help me right away. (That happened to me when a piece of ice slashed my ten-year old face open and they stitched it shut).

For my current illness, I consulted the internet which suggested Sudafed to relieve congestion. I've taken about fifteen pills over a three-day period and the mucous seems to be giving up. I imagine the future as a paradise with no disease OR an apocalypse with no medicine. I hope you're healthy.

Tips for Comedians #2

2008-12-23T11:29:00.002-05:00

Tip 2: You need a snowball.

If you've ever tuned in to a comedian halfway through their set you might wonder why everyone is laughing. I felt this while watching a DVD of Robin Williams. I was bored but the audience was in love with him. People are in hysterics because comedians are the sum of all the jokes they have told. We're more willing to laugh at a weak joke in The Simpsons than a weak joke from an amateur. Because one has established itself as a reliable source of funny. I've experienced at this venues that I play at frequently. I can feel that people are laughing because of my reputation. They allow themselves to laugh at my weaker material because they can remember a time when I made them laugh hard.

Establish yourself as a reliable source of funny. I'm a big believer in putting the material that I believe will get a great response near the beginning of my set. When we think of a reputation we think of something established over several years. As a comedian you have to establish your reputation each performance. Whether you're playing a show to strangers or family members -immediately strive for a funny reputation. That way, you win people over and have them laughing at later, mildly funny, jokes. It's a snowball effect. You need to unlock the audience's desire to giggle. They need to trust you -the only reason to trust a comedian is laughter.

I don't strive to put "mildly funny" material in my set. But I can predict that some jokes will cause a huge belly laugh while others will inspire a smirk. Usually I put my second favourite piece near the beginning and I save my favourite piece for about 80% of the way through my set (where a more traditional climax will be).

Tips for Comedians #1

2008-12-23T00:16:00.011-05:00

Tip1: Don't tell jokes. Tell pieces.

This is largest difference between an amateur and a professional stand-up comedian. An amateur will tell one joke and then move on to another joke. A professional tends to move from piece to piece.

For clarity, some definitions:
-A joke is anything that you expect will make the audience laugh.
-A piece is several related jokes.

For instance:
I'll use an example of something that got a great response the last time I did stand up. I've bolded each time I expect the audience to laugh.

Right after he had won Superbowl XXXI Terrel Davis looked at his championship ring and said "It's nice to be immortal." Romanowski popped another champagne bottle and patted him on the back "everyone will remember this game." And Terrel said, "No no no, I mean never dying." The locker room went silent. John Elway was the leader of the team so it was his job to break the news. "Um, Terrel... Superbowl rings don't make you live forever." Davis laughed until he realized his teammates were staring at him. Suddenly he got very serious. "Then why did I spend my whole life playing football?"

There's something about this piece that I can make funny because I love storytelling that requires me to play multiple characters. But there is also something in the structure of the piece that audiences enjoy. It keeps delivering jokes within the same piece. Even great one-liner joke comedians work in pieces.

Consider Mitch Hedberg's piece about fish:

You know on TV when they have a fishing show? They catch the fish but they let it go. They don't want to eat the fish but they do want to make it late for something. (audience laughs) Where were ya? I got caught. (audience laughs) Liar, let me see the inside of your lip.

Occasionally he tells a single joke but more often he tells a piece.

Amateur comedians are often disappointed that their material doesn't seem to have an impact. I find it frustrating when someone has a fun topic but only one joke about it. If you think of something funny, make sure you develop some additional jokes to turn it into a piece. Think in terms of how often you will get a response from the audience. Plan at least two separate lines (more commonly three) that you expect will make them laugh.

Duty to Stuffed Animals

2008-12-21T22:30:00.004-05:00

My Great Great Grand, I have always felt a very private concern for my stuffed animals. There are two in particular, Nonny and Brown Dog, who still sit in this room.

I don't talk to them.
I don't believe that they have adventures when I am gone.
But I move them.

I feel that their lives are boring because they're forced to stare at the same section of the room. I think it's cruel to make them look at the ceiling or leave them in positions that are obviously uncomfortable. I don't believe in ghosts. I'm not writing this to be cute. I want you to know that I am a mentally healthy adult who habitually projects life onto stuffed animals.

The Moral Project final thoughts

2008-12-12T16:35:00.006-05:00

Morality is not a rational project. It's not useful to design logical rules. We cannot replace the role God/Truth played in our moral history with theory. The moral answers of Kant and Mill are a flimsy attempt to prop up God up with jargon.

Morality is a psychological project. It's about child-rearing. Not rules but perspective. Train children to see themselves in others. That's the undeniable truth to base a moral code on: other people are like me. I remember reading about Jean Piaget's work about the stages of mental development in children. We have to be trained to understand that others see the world from a different perspective (the Three Mountain Problem). I don't think all adults fully develop this mental ability.

Train people to put themselves in the shoes of others and let morality develop what it will. This psychological state causes people to:

1. Abandon rigidity. It's hard to be certain when you see multiple sides of the story.
2. Be affected. Personalize tragedy instead of being numbed by numbers.

The greatest affront to morality is the inability to see oneself reflected in the enemy. Once you remove the reflection, you become free to persecute, kill, and torture.

If people are going to kill others they should see that they're killing themselves. I don't think that this will stop killing from happening -but it will make it moral.

Is anyone interested in philosophy?

2008-12-07T22:42:00.004-05:00

IN FULL:
I'm doing an unpretentious introduction to Western Philosophy. Socrates, Foucault. Plato, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein, Hobbes and more. A simple summary of why we study them, a couple details, practical examples, and encouragement to investigate your favourites. If you're curious about philosophy and want to be entertained -this is for you. I don't use fancy bullshit jargon. I speak to be understood no intimidate. I have five years of experience teaching senior high school students. A brief glimpse of my style:

-Machiavelli is easily explained by talking about steroid use in the Olympics.
-What Sigmund Freud has to do with perfume commercials.
-Socrates cracking a joke with his life on the line.
-Darwin riding a tortoise.

MORE AGGRESSIVELY:
Give me 90 minutes and get a $40,000 University education. Demand more from your entertainment. Stop waiting for TV to get good. I make philosophy relevant and entertaining and if I don't you can beat the shit out of me. I will awaken your passion for philosophy and then satisfy that passion. The trade-off is I'm no good in bed. I get nervous and "fumbly". The KnowMore Lectures now offers free lecture notes. Come for the cheat sheet, stay for the lecture.

Thursday, December 11th, 2008
8:00pm
Toronto
Unit 102 Theater
46 Noble Street
$5

We've Got to Show Respect for the Dead

2008-12-05T10:42:00.011-05:00

The words of Robert Fisk:
(Conversations with History. Text. Video.)

We desemanticize and make war more lethal in the same way as television, for example, will not show you the worst scenes that we see. I remember once a crew coming back from Basra in the Iraqi/American war, not embedded -- they were on the Iraqi side of the line -- and they came back to Baghdad with terrible pictures. A kid had its hand blown off, a woman is shrieking with shrapnel sticking out of her stomach, and they sent these pictures across to London, to the Reuters bureau, and I remember this haughty voice coming back, "We can't show these pictures. Don't even bother to send anymore." You know: "We're going to have people puking at breakfast time. We -- we -- this is pornography!" You see? And then the worst quote of all. He said -- and I remember his words, I read about it from Baghdad during the war -- he said, "You know, we've got to show respect for the dead." And I thought, "You bloody well don't show any respect for them when they're alive, but when they're in bits we've got to respect their bodies." Heaven spare me.

I always say to people -- on the road, Basra in '91, I saw women, as well as soldiers and civilians, old men, torn apart by British bombs as well as American. And dogs were tearing them to pieces to eat, it was lunchtime in the desert. I tell you, if you saw what I saw you'd never support a war again. But you won't show that on television. And by not showing that on television we present the world with a bloodless sand pit. We pretend war is not that bad. It's "surgical," always "surgical strikes." Surgery's a place where you're cured in the hospital, not where you're murdered or killed or torn apart. Thus, we make it easier for our leaders -- our generals, our prime ministers, our presidents -- to sell us war, and for us to buy into war and go along with that. That makes us lethally culpable and potentially war criminals in a very moral sense of the word -- or immoral sense, I should say.

Really, would anyone support war if they saw it?

Is it immoral to look away?

(the image is from the Vietnam War '68 -not Basra in '91)

The Moral Project

2008-12-05T10:02:00.013-05:00

So far, Jonathan Glover's Humanity has inspired me to think about morality (an excellent book recommendation from Ashleigh and Brian).

I'm halfway through the book and, secretly, I enjoy it because it makes me feel smart. I have a background in everything discussed. I recommend this book as a concise yet detailed summary of modern world history. These are the events that are worth thinking about (The World Wars, Stalin's Soviet Union, Vietnam and the My Lai massacre, the Rwanadan genocide, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and other definitive atrocities of the 20th Century).

I keep expecting Glover to make his move and explain how we can restore a strong moral identity in our culture. He certainly admires individuals who stand against the current (those who opposed civilian bombing, fighting in war, etc). The whole book is presented as an answer to Nietzsche who foresaw that trust in God was declining and that we should admit there is no moral standard.

A Quick History of "The Moral Project" in Europe
Phase I. Obey God because He is Truth.
Phase II. Use our rationality to discover God's Truth.
Phase III. There's no truth. Do what you want.

For instance: let's look at what prevents us from taking candy from a child.

Phase I. Good people don't steal. Besides, God would see it and send me to hell.
Phase II. Good people don't steal. Think rationally: would I want to live in a society where everyone stole all of the time?
Phase III. I might get caught.

In the modern shift (Phase III) we have less of an objective sense of what a good person is. Thus, we don't often take principled stances. A principled stance is when you stand up for something because you have a definite rule of what it should be (as opposed to a changing opinion). It might seem worth arguing how we can define, for everyone, what a good person is. But that approach is only useful if it comes from a universally accepted source. And no one agrees on what the source should be (God doesn't do it for some, rationality doesn't do it for others). That's where we're at.

I propose a different way to look at morality.

*alsoEdward Murrow

is tops.

Because of speeches

like this.

I'd be a teenage dad mathmatician traveler

2008-12-02T14:10:00.003-05:00

If I could do it all again I'd be a teenage dad. I've felt, since 18, that I would be in the top three percentile of quality dads.

If I could do it all again I'd model my life after Paul Erdos -the eccentric mathematician whose name is on the most published papers. He carried his life in his suitcase and would arrive unannounced to stay on your couch and collaborate on a paper.

If I could do it all again I'd try my mind at crime. Large and small. To see how much I could take.

If I could do it all again I would join the army, rise as an officer, and shake my head at civvies.

If I could do it all again I would cover my body with tattoos. Permanent embarrassing reminders of past passions. (Tim Brown #81, StratoViper, and Erik Larson's version of Spiderman).

Lecturing in Figueres

2008-11-30T14:39:00.008-05:00

A student took these pictures of me a couple of years ago to demonstrate that I change position wildly as I lecture.

I remember the place.
It's beside the abstract Isaac Newton statue outside of the Dali Museum in Figueres (Homage to Newton).

I remember the content.
The lecture was about art, genius, and statistics. We were discussing social experiments (like Asch's Milgrim's and Zimbardo's) as well as 'genius' as an outsider personality type (specifically Dali and Newton) .

I have no recollection of why I put my fingers in my mouth.

*This gif is posted at archive.org. It's also where I'm hosting my KnowMore lectures podcast. Communism. Capitalism is up. Available for download or listening online. Unfortunately, the quality is quite poor. I'll improve my equipment for the next lecture. In two weeks: Lecture #3: "All the Philosophers".

Wisdom

2008-11-26T13:02:00.008-05:00

Here are some of my high school revelations:
-When I see the colour blue, is it the same colour that you see? What if my blue was your yellow?
-How is it heaven if my friends go to hell?
-Would I have joined the Nazi Party if I were a German in the 30s?
-If it was funny for us to think that the Greeks believed in Zeus, how do we defend our religions?

And some epiphanies from my adult years:
-You cannot give someone else your experiences (Hesse's book Siddhartha creates this sentiment beautifully).
-What people say to you has more to do with them than it does with you.

Are They All In There?

2008-11-19T22:01:00.004-05:00

Can you remember brushing your teeth three days ago? Are you sure you're not confusing that memory with eight days ago? Or yesterday?

My favourite question to ask a friend when walking a familiar path is "are they all in there? Every time we walked from here, across the field, to the park. Did each walk produce its own memory?" Certainly I can remember walking and carrying the basketball but my mind is generalizing. But if you were to trigger my brain, perhaps by mentioning that we were talking about Tom Hanks' Academy Awards, my mind would burst forth with the relevant walk. I might remember the exact words of the conversation. The sensation of the weather on my skin. The hand I used to hold the basketball.

Looking into my three-month-old niece's eyes today I remembered reading that we don't have memory until we have language. Nothing will trigger the moment that I spent touching her tiny cold hand. Even though it may be having a momentous impact on her personality, I am the only one with the potential to remember.

Of all the things I lost in the Great Deleting the resource I miss the most is a small text file I kept on my desktop. At odd intervals (sometimes not for months) I would log my day in minute detail. Everything I could remember about the day. Sometimes specific dialogue, what I had for breakfast, how much time I spent reading a particular book. It was a continual sense of wonder to open that file, look into my past and discover how much my mind could be triggered. Now that they're gone, I wonder if the circumstances will ever arise to trigger those insignificant memories. Will I lose them or will they lie dormant? (Is that the same thing? Is forgetting the same as destorying? Is amnesia death?)

Are they all in there?

Sometime I am so energized by the realization that I will die that I feel like I'm almost in reach of something. But it's too confusing to grab hold.

The Greatest Post

2008-11-19T12:19:00.004-05:00

My generation uses superlatives because we have to sell our experiences. If what happened to me wasn't the "funniest", "best", or "weirdest", then why would anyone listen? Thus, an office chair with a broken wheel is sold in the package: "the worst thing happened to me at work". The sound of a dropped telephone in the other room becomes "the scariest noise". And a new red shirt can be considered "the nicest".

Have people always had to sell their stories by tacking on exaggerated descriptions? Or is it just because we grew up with commercials that described toys with the word "Turbo"?

I think it has always been a tendency of human beings to exaggerate. To mythologize. Achilles can't be killed. A massive school of dolphins indicates the changing tide of war in the Tale of Heike. The Green Knight is decapitated only to pick up his head and leave the room.

We prefer wild, imaginative interpretations to straightforward facts. A love of exaggeration is prevalent across time and cultures.

Embellish.

Loud

2008-11-11T21:50:00.005-05:00

When my mother talks on the phone, she shouts. I can hear her in every room. I love this family. We are very loud. When my parents watched the movie Pearl Harbour they blasted the volume. Blasting volume isn't a frequent feature of our booming household. But it occasionally happens when action movies are rented. The dog unleashes when the doorbell rings.

My brothers and I yell against the injustices of bad movies and poor plays in sports. We get excited when telling a story. My dad does this as well.

I can hear the clothes dryer humming away downstairs. The click-clacking of these keys. I can hear the fan in the bathroom running.

"you have to enable it from the options"
I can hear my brothers talk in the other room. Now they're laughing.

"sometimes you have to let things fall apart. She has to work it all out."
I can hear my mom talk to an upset friend on the phone. She gives really good advice.

The Evolution of Cool

2008-11-08T00:20:00.006-05:00

It doesn't matter what you think of evolution. Charles Darwin looks like the fucking man in this picture. Look at him lean on that vined wall like it ain't no thing. You know it took him two hours to pick that hat in the morning. And it takes a lot of fluffing to make a beard look effortless.

Work it Darwy. Give me thoughtful, but tortured. Yeah, yeah, yeah! Do that thing with your cape.

He's wearing a fucking cape.

Remember scientists, this was before GQ magazine and hottest celeb lists. Man was ahead of his time.

Literate in the darkness

2008-11-05T23:31:00.007-05:00

Streetlights have taken night away. Before perma-day, Benjamin Franklin and his friends would run away from the maddening black abyss of nightfall and hold hands as they huddled around a candle. They were terrified into developing electricity. An exaggeration. I forget moonlight can be quite bright.

All science began with a curiosity about the stars. A nightly constant that has been observed, predicted and pondered by every civilization. Sometimes they insisted that you should connect some of them because they looked like animals (do you see the lion?). Today, the celestial wildlife is hidden by the artificial glow from our well-lit cities. I guess we're done thinking about them.

I used to work as a maintenance man at a recreation center. We cleaned up from midnight until eight am. Our ice rink was overwhelmingly lit -the glare on the white ice strained tired eyes. Our auditorium was throbbing with the dull glow of artificial light. It gives a peculiar manufactured look to colours as if we were all shot on a worn video. When we took garbage bags outside to the dumpster it was always amazing to see what time nature was trying to suggest. Inside there is one hour: on.

State education may seem like daycare for teenagers to keep their trouble causing instincts off of the street (my brother's interesting theory) but it does provide one useful tool: literacy. At no time in human history have so many people been trained and encouraged to read. I liked the metaphor of knowing the combination to a safe. Without literacy, information remains locked away. But now I prefer to think we are given a light that allows us to see more.

That should be the criteria for what tools we should expect from our teachers: lights that helps to see more. Basically, I'm arguing that our musical theater unit in drama was bullshit.

Talk'n Nietzsche

2008-11-03T23:38:00.004-05:00

My new project is the KnowMore Lectures. I'm part of the Unit120 Collective and it's time I started using the theater space. I'll be delivering a series of straightforward lectures about historical events and philosophical concepts. I've crafted some pretty great lessons from my teaching experience. I always wished someone would cut though the pretentious nature of academia and give me the straight goods. I've realized that I'm at a place where I can do that for others.

I'm going to advertise at U of T campus with these flyer/bookmarks. Advertising is a finicky beast. I remember, years ago, selling zines at the Canzine festival. Plenty of people walk by your table but every so often a crowd forms to investigate your wares. What was it? Was it the way one zine was lying open? Was it that a paltry pile suggested they were selling out? Maddening. Endless second guess fidgeting.

I like these. Even as bookmarks.

Laptop/Sand Mandala

2008-11-02T09:11:00.011-05:00

The Buddhists have it right. Nothing serves as a better reminder of the fleeting nature of life than creating an intricate piece of art and destroying it.

To be safe, I made two backup copies before I wiped my laptop. They both failed. My own mini-burning of the Library of Alexandria. All of my files have been cremated and spread on the wind. Is that what the Buddhists do? Very unlike the Christian maintenance of coffined bones and tombstones.

Thanks to Google, anything I sent to a friend remains. But all of my works-in-progress have vanished. Novels, plays, sketches, stand-up, slam poetry, stencils, pixels, ideas, ideas, ideas. It's an experience of death on a removed intellectual level. Physically, I'm happy to have my health. Emotionally, it has put me in a happy, goofy mood. I've been challenged to ponder nonexistence in a way I would wish on everyone. After all, these files are not lost in the bottoms of a closet they are on a formatted hard drive. Utterly destroyed. They are not buried like our recent ancestors. They have vanished like our ancient ancestors.

I've caught myself sulking to my friends but my heart isn't in it. It's funny to catch myself in patterned behavior. I know I have "the right" to sulk but it feels insincere. I prefer to step back and feel what I really feel instead of play the part of what I "should" feel.

There's always something refreshing about destruction.
(3:24)

You Have to Fight This City

2008-10-27T15:47:00.008-04:00

It is absolutely pouring outside. This is the part of the rain storm that doesn't last. The brief burst where nature turns it on hard to make us little beasts scatter. I'm watching the street corner of College and Huron. Three people are waiting to cross. One of them has an umbrella. The other two are getting soaked. Bone drenched. In a smaller town they would be huddled close together staying dry. But some where along the way the population past that point.

You would imagine that, in a city, if you were carrying your groceries home you would be bombarded with people offering to help carry them. After all, think how many people are traveling in the same direction.

If you want to be a nice person then you have to fight this city. It can be done but the city is working against you. Let's look at what City is saying.

Look how many faces there are. You can not care about all of these people. I dare you to try. What about that driver who cut you off? Can you care about them? Ha! City 1, You 0.

I contain millions of people. Statistically, some of them are bound to be very bad and scary. What if you helped them? You'd end up as another one of my robbed and murdered victims. That happens all the time in me.

You are inside of me, you are very busy. Too busy for this.

You have to fight this city.

Trying to be Quotable

2008-10-23T17:56:00.005-04:00

No one is as simple as others see them. Nor as complicated as they see themselves.

We look down upon other animals from the heights of civilization but it is we who are not allowed to have sex in the sunlight.

Consumers understand little, contribute nothing and demand more.

Environmentalism is a modern millenarian movement. It will be remembered as a relative of the Christian apocalypse.

Time Goes By

2008-10-22T18:58:00.008-04:00

In elementary school I marked my age by grade. Older folk (from High School to parents) were lumped together as "adults" (people who had facial hair and a tame sense of humour). I didn't understand how people could confuse what grade I was in. At the time the distinction between Grade 5s and Grade 4s seemed like night and day. I could tell you the grade of anyone in the schoolyard. It was in the way they ran. Their vocabulary. Their attitude. Now they are all children to me. Currently, my age is marked by other people's kids. I've seen two kids grow from babies to storytellers. And now, my sister has a baby and they plan to record her height in a penciled line on the image of a giraffe. A vague memory of my old house. Old pencil marks on the trim of a doorframe.

When I coached improv I would commonly refer to Jurassic Park. This simple Hollywood film about dinosaurs, made in 1993. This Saturday, when I hold an improv workshop for high school students, some of them will have been born in that year.

I think reading Albert Speer's biography (Sereny's extensive Battle With the Truth) has me thinking a lot about time and memory. Imagine spending twenty years in prison training yourself to regret the greatest time of your life. In Germany, no one dares recall the positive impact of the Nazi party before the war. The Holocaust has left an indelible mark on the world's memory.

As John Toland wrote: "If he [Hitler] had died in 1937, he would undoubtedly have gone down as one of the greatest figures in German history."

In 1984, one passionate member of the Nazi Party, recalling the early contributions, stated,

"I want nothing to do with all those people who now claim they weren't [members of the Nazi Party], that indeed they were resisters. I really sometimes wonder who it was who elected Hitler and fought and won all those battles for him. All of Germany, it now appears, was nothing but anti-Nazis. Disgusting." (pg. 180)

What years? Time is only the quality of your memory. Amnesia means your personality is dead. The endless digital photography of Facebook is a struggle to live. To help the mind remember more life than death. Alternately, Dunbar from Catch-22 tried to live longer by making his life as boring as possible in order to slow time.

In elementary school I used to date each page. They trained us to write the date in the top right corner. How foolish I felt in January when I would catch myself writing the wrong year. It wasn't 1988, it was 1989. Get with the times.

Stacy and the Toxic Zombies

2008-10-20T21:53:00.007-04:00

Friend-made gifts are the best. Right now, I'm wearing a shirt Liz made for my birthday from Mary Blair's concept art for Alice in Wonderland. And the shirt that Andy made for me for Christmas with a Julius Nyerere stencil gets a lot of mileage.

One of the best gifts I've ever made was for Stacy. It was a video game featuring our friends as the characters. It was five years ago that I made Stacy and Toxic Zombies (STZ). I was inspired by Andy and Andrew who were dabbling in their own games at the time.

It features:
Stacy wielding a bow while wearing an elf cap.
Raquel and her inability to hackey-sack,
Peter with his large hair and orange Syracuse jersey.
and secret character Ryan wearing treeplant gear, riding a four-wheeler and firing a shotgun.

Oh, and two hundred plus Toxic Zombies.

I thought it was lost but my brother stumbled upon it and I just finished playing. Amateur but entertaining, it makes me want to make more games. I can remember all of the pain and joy of drawing every animation and coding each feature. Not bad for a first try.

Grins
-Creative design: neat goal, shooting arrows and having to collect them to fire them again, unlockable character Ryan, multiple (eight) endings
-The nostalgic video game music
-I enjoyed the game's balance. It was difficult enough to require vigilance -things can turn bad in an instant.
-The inside jokes (Raquel's language, Ryan's terms: 'layta!' and 'steez', the term' soak'em' from Newsies)
-Part of Stacy's supercool equipment is a skateboard. But all it does is make anyone who touches it, including Stace, fall.

Frowns
-Painfully long intro sequence (recalls my frustration as a kid waiting for a game to begin)
-Some text is cut off.
-Difficult for beginners to figure out how to summon the extremely helpful Ryan.

The game ends when you kill 200 hundred zombies. There's no way for Stacy to lose -she can't be harmed by the pushover Zombies. It's simply a matter of how many of her friends she can rescue and which one of the eight different endings you'll see.

Download here.
I think it'll only work on PCs.

And the Winner is...

2008-10-17T17:45:00.005-04:00

*FRIDAY FILM*

Here's an interesting question:

Why doesn't the Academy Awards combine the Best Actor and Best Actress Oscar into a single Best Performer category?

They make no gender distinction in the Best Director category so why should they split the Best Performer?

I started boycotting the Oscars after 1997 when Kim Bassinger won an Oscar for her supporting role in LA Confidential. I was shocked to discover that the sexy ingenue/helpless victim with thirty seconds of screen time was considered the best that Hollywood had to offer.

Today, I'm looking for gender bias in the Academy Awards.

Judging an artist's ability to 'act' is clearly subjective. I'll attempt to prove my case by comparing how often the Best Performers were in the film that won Best Picture. Why? I want to show that, even though women are winning awards for their performances, they're seldom in, what the Academy considers to be, the year's best cinema.

It may be an odd approach but the data was interesting. Let's look at the numbers.

It is very common for the winners of Best Actor or Actress to be in a film that was, at the very least, nominated for Best Picture.

1962 to 2008 "Best Picture" Award
In this 54 year span, the winners of the Leading Actress Oscar were in 30 films that had been nominated for the Best Picture. Of those times they were in the Best Picture 7 times (23%). The winners of the Leading Actor Oscar were in 34 films that had been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. This proved to be the leading role in the Best Picture 15 times (44%).

1944-1961 "Best Motion Picture" Award
This is a more dismal era. Nine Leading Men doubled up while no Leading Females were in the Best Picture of the year. I think this clearly demonstrates a history of Hollywood gender bias but it's clear that the situation has improved.

Here's a spreadsheet of my gender analysis of the Academy Awards.
A pale yellow block indicates that the film was nominated for Best Picture.
A bright yellow block indicates that the film won Best Picture.

It's also interesting to point out that the last films to boast the Best Picture with the Best Leading Actress have offered some gender-bending roles (Hilary Swank as a professional boxer, Paltrow as a cross-dressing actor, and Jodie Foster as a star FBI agent).

What do you think of combining the acting awards? What about my wild analysis?

Chapter 2 (serialized novel)

2008-10-15T19:19:00.006-04:00

“Tell me what you did.” She doesn’t introduce herself. She simply begins.

"At approximately 0300 we detected overlap in the archives,” the cadet hesitates, “on eighty profiles."

“Eight?”

“Eighty.”

"Emergence pattern?"

"Simultaneous." Inspector Tenka smiles and lets out a long, respectful sigh. She’s exhausted and determined not to let it show. The cadet is expressionless. He’s a muscular giant, the product of the academy’s finest bodymods -a curious physique to sit behind a desk. His hands twitch in the small interface boxes.

She looks around the office. Almost everything has changed. Undoubtedly, this young staff is surprised to find that hitting the emergency connect in the middle of the night has summoned this small, elderly figure. The Inspector’s short, bright white hair is the only sign of seniority in the room. Every data officer is pretending to continue their work. They’re watching through their fashionable heterochromic eyes for her reaction. Eighty overlapping profiles is a legitimate emergency but she shows no sign of panic. She is the only one in the branch who has seen the days of seven percent.

“Continue your report.”

“All profiles were replicas of OrMod’s inner council executive Jana Berrin.“ Now she understands the tension in the room. It’s a corporate job.

“Phantoms?”

“The lowest thirty profiles all register at exactly ninety-six point nine.” Tenka bursts into laughter but the thick-necked cadet only tilts his head in confusion. She realizes that the entire staff is starring at her in anxious silence.

“It’s a game,” she tries to explain. “Games within games within games.” Suddenly she feels lonely and nostalgic. Nothing separates veterans from rookies more than sense of humour.

A data officer’s career can be divided into distinct phases. Cadets take everything very seriously. They want to save the world by discovering the formula that eliminates crime. They analyze the archive with a fervor that soon overwhelms them. Eventually, statistical analysis will make them numb. Force them to step back. They will see human beings as groups of numbers. People become disappointing masses of predictable patterns. By the time they’re mid-career they’ll have become cynical critics of human nature, unable to make the world a better place.
Senior Investigators, the final incarnation of data officers, are at peace. They cease desiring change. It becomes clear to them that every civilization has deviant behaviour. The purpose of law enforcement is to ensure that it stays at four percent. In some generations, the criminals have the advantage, in others, the police. Veterans understand that the role of the data officer is not to stop the pendulum, only to slow its momentum.

“We’ve compiled a list of suspects.” The cadet’s voice brings her back. She can detect a trace of pride in his voice. He thinks he’s close.

“How many?”

“Three hundred.”

“Three hundred suspects,” she contemplates the logistics, “at what level?” The cadet moves his hand in the box and more figures begin to appear. “Let me guess, ninety-six point nine?” He stops in frustration. Games within games. “Have you run a subcon?”

The cadet turns to her in embarrassment. Of course. To this generation, a subcon is an outdated method, something they memorize to pass their exams. They have a dangerous faith in the reliability of the archive. Tenka smiles at the situation. Had not she been as young and misguided? It has come full circle. Now it is her turn to educate the next generation.

"Consider an imp who has been posing as five separate individuals.” She doubts that these cadets have seen a single case of imping in the field. Consider the case of LaMarte, an imposter from the early age of the archive.” Tenka slides her hand into the box and calls up the example. Five people are projected before them. “We knew that LaMarte was masquerading as these five profiles. If you correlate ker features you’ll find a ghost print of the original.” The computer merges the five separate faces into one. The resulting image resembles LaMarte. “There. A subcon scan reveals that imps subconsciously adopt their original features.”

“Inspector,” the cadet asks cautiously, “are you suggesting that these three hundred suspects are the work of one imposter?”

“It seems impossible.” She responds with patience. “But tonight you’ve already seen Jana Berrin appear in eighty places at once. You tell me that there are enough correlating tracks in the archive to suggest that this is the work of three hundred suspects. And everything that you uncover verifies at ninety-six point nine percent. Doesn’t that strike anyone as odd?” The answer is obvious. Ninety-seven percent is the minimum requirement for information to be considered reliable. It was as if all of their data was daring them to discard it. “Someone is playing a game with us to show what they can do. We have no information. We have only what they want us to find. Run the subscan.”

The room fills with projected images of three hundred different people. A small, young woman with a sharp nose poses for a picture in a forest, an elderly man laughs as he holds his wig on in a boat, a middle-aged woman selects a new skin color from a catalogue. Tenka’s peripheral vision picks up a tall, red-headed man waving in a sign-off, a woman saluting in uniform, a well-dressed young man rolling dice, flashes of different skin, eye, and hair colour begin to swirl as the cadet runs the subscan. All of the projected people begin to merge into one. Could all of these lives truly be the work of one imposter? Is the pendulum swinging again? The staff stops pretending to work. They’re all watching for the face to emerge from the overlapping profiles. The room is emptying as all of the data is pulled toward the center. Suddenly, it’s complete and the Inspector is looking at an image of herself.

“We’ve been infiltrated. This imp has detailed knowledge of our investigative methods, khe knows I’ve been assigned ker case, and khe has taken the time to masquerade as three hundred different profiles to play a joke. I need an emergency connect to Daria-Zeh Motema. Now.” Despite the severity of the situation she smiles. You could spend your life in the Department and never see an aberration on this scale. It was genius.

Shades and Ol' Lady Violet (who wants yellow)

2008-10-14T10:36:00.006-04:00

I just watched the shadiest character in Lillian Smith.

He came up to a guy who was working at a table across from me. Clearly he recognized him because he knew his name but they didn't know each other well. He began asking what the guy was working on, where he was living, etc. Eventually they agreed to hang out but Shady said he lost working guy's home number.

So the guy wrote it down but Shady didn't want it. He glanced at it and claimed he had memorized it. Then he asked if he could come and visit sometime 'y'know, just show up' and the working guy said 'maybe if you call first, I have roommates'. And Shades asked 'what would they do if I just showed up? Without you there? Would they let me stay? Would that be cool?' Working guy insisted that he be contacted first but Shady explained that 'my email is not working'. They parted without clear plans.

(15 minutes later)

Holy shit, you just missed my favourite old woman. Some seniors are here with a chaperon. My favourite was complaining about not wanting to look at children's books because she's seen all of them already. She's awesome at muttering. I just watched her mutter something about how she likes yellow as she proceeded to rip a full page out of a children's book.

Now Shady's back talking about his social workers, seeing psychiatrists and taking meds for his sycophrenia. He's living in a shelter. Poor guy's trying to network.

Oh shit, the chaperon just caught old lady rips-a-lot taking another page. My favourite senior is sticking to her guns, claiming 'she's done it before' as she stuffs the page into her purse. The best part is she looks like a picturesque 'nice old person' complete with cane and full body violet outfit (sweater and pants).

Friday Film blog

2008-10-07T14:33:00.004-04:00

I applied to be Shameless magazine's Friday Film blogger (providing Feminist readings of cinema) but I didn't get the gig. The nice feature of the internet is that I can still publish all of the posts that I was planning. So I'm starting a Friday Film column on my blog. For the first installment, here's what I sent them for the application.

Breaking down the Wall-E?

The blogosphere is in love with the gender-bending film Wall-E, Pixar's latest CGI blockbuster. It's a story where a male robot falls in love with a female robot. I know, I know, I was thinking the same thing. Since when do robots need a gender? We all know that Hollywood is obsessed with heterosexual love stories. It would be too scandalous for a movie to show us a toaster in love with a fridge without stressing that they have different hardware. Let's take a closer look at how Pixar chooses to construct their heterosexual robots (Wall-E as male and Eve as female). This week we're asking ourselves:

Does this film break traditional Hollywood portrayals of gender or reinforce them?

It breaks them.
In Wall-E, it is the male who is irrational. Traditionally, Hollywood films show women overcome with emotion but it is Wall-E who makes impulsive decisions for the sake of love. While Eve, the physically stronger of the two, makes rational choices to complete her mission. She's a calm, composed, and fast thinker who takes action when they're in trouble. Eve may be smooth and sleek but she's broad-shouldered and has a gun for a hand -two features that Hollywood usually reserves for males. Eve is never trapped and in need of rescue like a traditional Hollywood action movie where females are typically victims.

It reinforces them.
It's a traditional choice to put the male, in this case Wall-E, at the center (and as the title) of the film. Why do we like Wall-E? Because he's clumsy and rolls around in garbage while Eve's body is clean, sleek, and graceful. This recalls gender rolls from the a 19th century poem where boys are made of "snips and snails and puppy dog tails" and girls are made of "sugar and spice and everything nice". In the end, Eve surrenders to Wall-E's love. She has to change to accommodate him which reinforces the traditional Hollywood perspective that females have to compromise to meet male desire.

I think.
It's great for Pixar to push the gender envelope but it's a shame to see that even they have mainstream limits. Is our culture so homophobic that even our fictional, futuristic, genital-free robots are heterosexual? They score points for broadening Hollywood horizons but, considering we're talking about robots, they could have done a lot more than reinforce the idea of hetero-dominance in the distant future. Read some LeGuin, Pixar.

What do you think?

You might also enjoy Kate Bornstein's excellent analysis.
http://katebornstein.typepad.com/kate_bornsteins_blog/2008/07/walle-a-butchfe.htm

Reflections on the National Debate

2008-10-04T14:39:00.014-04:00

I tried to peer pressure my friends into watching the federal debate by insisting it was their civic duty. I think we'd all like to see a candidate who didn't speak in exaggerated attacks, vague promises, and attempts at coining phrases. It didn't happen this year. Nonetheless, these chumps are the future of Canadian politics.

The most embarrassing part: The discussion about Arts funding. All of the candidates turned this into an awkward "slice of life" answer in which they professed their love of 'culture' and how their kids play clarinet or some shit. I was interested in what specific programs that Harper had cut and why everyone thought that they were worth funding. No one spoke in specifics.

Runnerup embarassment: The sadass at the end who asked: "I haven't voted for ten years, I don't think it matters, why should I vote?" I would have supported any candidate who answered: "wake the fuck up".

Two questions we wanted to ask:

1) Give some respect. What's one idea that one of the other parties created that you wish you had thought of? Don't spin it to take credit.

2) As a voter I know that I'm choosing a government that will have to respond to hundreds of unforeseen issues over the next four years. What guiding principals of your party set you apart from the others?

My review of the candidates:

Dion
Voted most likely to be stuffed in a locker. He seems weak, nervous, and verging on insincere. The accent is an unfortunate drawback but his soft tone doesn't help. I found myself tuning him out. I haven't seen any of the hate-ads that try to brand him as an elite academic. I find watching him does that. This was tough for me since I usually choose between the Liberals and NDP. They're Canada's most reasonable party but they seem to be focusing on garnering immediate votes (their switch to environmental concerns) than proposing a unique Liberal vision.

Duceppe
My favourite. Duceppe seems more wild and less polished. And those eyes? He's a living caricature. It's like a cross between a puffer fish, an owl, and a love of Quebec. It's neat to have someone in the debate who can't actually become the PM. I think the sovereignty issue would ruin our friendship. My brother commented that he seems like a veteran who can draw on an extensive history (I was interested in his allegiance to the "manufacturing sector") His hair could stop a bullet.

Harper
Voted most likely to conceal a hidden agenda. Unshakable. I think Harper plays politics with a real understanding that it is a performance and that he can't wait to get back to real business -away form cameras. He seems reasonable to me but he's also a privileged white male with different social values. I don't want him to have any more power in Parliament. It was funny how he didn't defend the multiple accusations that his party hasn't revealed a platform. Had he been in power in '03, would this man have partnered with the US and sent troops to Iraq? I think the answer is yes.

May
Came across as intelligent and prepared -her inclusion was a major victory. However, I despise the thoughtless obsession that my generation is developing for the environment (because I think it's a modern echo of Christian apocalyptic mythology). The Green Party is going to capitalize on this. I've always thought their social views are too far right from my own but they keep them shrouded in mystery. May, to her credit, was the most willing to bring up historical and international context (such as the effect of NAFTA's Chapter 11 suits on Canadian Public Health Care)

Layton
Voted most likely to appear at your house and have dinner with your family. Layton played 'the man on the street image' so hard we thought he was going to promise to walk our dog. I want to lean toward the NDP but he was overplaying the 'attack Harper' card. Easy for a small opposition party to promise the world.

Prediction
I think Harper is going to return as a minority PM. I'd like to see him face a larger NDP component. That would make him angry. I'm not comfortable with a Harper majority able to lock in some sweeping reforms that he hasn't mentioned.

Human Highlights - Team Litter

2008-09-28T11:48:00.004-04:00

I shared a nice moment with a stranger on a subway.

There was an empty plastic Coca-Cola bottle rattling and rolling on the floor. It rolled toward me and I stopped it with my foot. But I did it in the coolest way possible. I didn't even look at it. I was reading a book (The Reason Why) and I saw it in my peripheral vision. I simply raised my foot to pin it against the floor. I held it there, planning to throw it in the recycle when I got off. Then, five stops later, some other guy picked up the bottle from beneath my foot. "Nice catch." He smiled.

I pick up litter when it's convenient. If I know there's a garbage between me and my destination then I pick it up. Otherwise, I don't sweat it because other travelers will be thinking the same way. I like imagining that I'm on the same team as these strangers.

try not to die or you lose all your weapons

2008-09-27T11:56:00.000-04:00

When we were younger and I was starting the study of history my brother asked me the two great historical questions.
1) Why didn't all of the slaves revolt (specifically in the Southern US)?

2) Why did so many soldiers volunteer to fight in war (specifically the European Wars)?

I know the common answers.
1) Why didn't all of the slaves revolt (specifically in the Southern US)?
-most people cannot move against the current of their culture
-slaves did revolt in small pockets, lacking the resources to unite their struggles

2) Why did so many soldiers volunteer to fight in war (specifically the European Wars)?
-Romantic perceptions of war
-conscription

I still don't find them satisfactory.

I Lack Depth? Three Levels of Analysis

2008-09-14T00:39:00.021-04:00

When I teach, I'm constantly experimenting with new approaches. Occasionally, I surprise myself with something that really works. In a literature class, a student asked me a very straightforward question:

"what do teachers mean when they say that my essay needs 'more depth'?

Usually, 'your essay needs more depth' is a euphemism that teachers use for 'you didn't read the book'. But this student knew the material very well and it was clear that they were looking for a definition of 'depth'. My answer led to this simple and powerful thinking tool. The "three levels of analysis" approach to reading.

Level 1 - The Story
Level 2 - The Author
Level 3 - Critical Analysis
Finally,

What is the What (33%)

2008-09-06T01:32:00.006-04:00

I'm a very severe critic and few books that I read receive a passing grade. Recently, I've been thinking about my harsh review of Dave Eggers' book What is the What. It's hard to accuse the talented Eggers of taking a thoughtless, imperial approach but here I am.

The story is roughly based on Valentino Achak Deng's life and provides Western readers a way to learn about Sudan without reading Wikipedia. I find it hilarious (in a sad way) that both Eggers and Deng are clearly used to explaining that the book is not about 'Darfur'. My great great grand, Darfur is a region in Sudan where the media lets us know that there is authentic African "ethnic conflict" and "genocide". It is a catchphrase amoung wealthy white people who seek to create meaning in their own lives by toying with the idea of being the saviour of a distant, exotic 'other'. At one point in their life every wealthy white person imagines traveling to a far off land to save the Wretched of the Earth. This is an echo from the age of imperialism when Europeans cast themselves in a morality play as the rescuers of inferior Africans.

There's nothing wrong with caring about strangers but do we have to play make believe? Let's take a look at how What is the What was created.

The book is based on interviews with Deng combined with Eggers' research about the Lost Boys. It's a tough sell since it's a fictionlized memoir. Eggers constructs a character but keeps Deng's real name. What? Why not simply write a truthful biography? Well, in the introduction, Deng claims they turned to fiction because he couldn't faithfully reconstruct his childhood conversations. Smoke and mirrors. Don't trust Deng, he'll say anything to get you to donate to his fund and raise awareness about the plight of his loved ones in Sudan.

And rightfully so. There's something f*cked up going on here. The fact is, Deng's real story wasn't tragic enough. There's a real undercurrent in this novel that Eggers and Deng are selling tragedy. The more horrendous the better. The story is about Deng's difficult life. He experienced terrible things as an adult and as a child. But what's more tragic than him having to watch a childhood friend being eaten by a lion? What if it happens two or three times? The book becomes a sensational highlight reel.

"Sometimes I’d [Eggers] read a human rights report about a certain incident during the civil war, and would ask Val if he knew someone who had experienced that incident, or something like it. Sometimes he did know someone, and we could go from there, but other times I had to imagine it on my own. Some of these scenes were necessary to include, even if Val didn’t have personal experience with them." (see interview)

I think there's a more interesting story about how someone who survives an experience that is clearly traumatic and tragic would have to dress it up to sell it. I'm surprised Eggers wasn't tuned to that frequency. The book sacrifices sincerity for sensationalism. In the end, it encourages us to play imperialist make believe by encouraging us to gawk at tragedy.

*I was moved by the scene with Noriaki Takada's family.

Cool War

2008-09-02T16:56:00.006-04:00

My brother proposed a video game in which you play as a mage who works a desk job to pay his mortgage. I added that the purpose of the game should be for the mage to purchase a video game so that they can play as a mage struggling to pay his mortgage within the game. He accused me of not knowing what's cool. What followed was a battle of images where I sought to use my knowledge of cool to attack his stronghold and push him off of cool hill. Little did I know that he was prepared to parry each attack. Who has won the battle of the cool (or are we all losers in this crazy thing called war)?

Round 1
My attack
His parry

Round 2
My attack
His parry

Round 3
My attack
His parry

Round 4
My attack
His parry

Round 5
My attack
His parry

So, who is the king of cool hill?

Serialized Novel

2008-08-29T23:56:00.003-04:00

The previous entry is part of a project that I have embarked on with several friends. Inspired in part by the discovery that Charles Dickens wrote serialized novels (in bi-weekly installments for a newspaper) my friends and I are writing our own novels -with a new chapter every two weeks.

Care to join?

Chapter 1

2008-08-29T22:38:00.002-04:00

"Identification." No answer from the stranger. "Identify." She ignores the security desk as she walks across the lobby. Her steps echo in the empty white dome. "Intruder. Who do you think you are?" The night guard puts his knuckles on the desk and rises to his full height. An animated tattoo of a snake crawling through a skull loops on his muscular forearm. It is his business to appear menacing. He has practiced this face in front of the mirror. He puts on his hat and authoritative tone. "This is your first warning. If you take another step you should know that I’m authorized to-"

Jana Berrin turns and gives him a brief glance. His hat is instantly under his arm as he looks straight ahead. His body becomes rigid like a soldier being inspected and his tone shifts to apologetic. "I didn't realize you'd be here so late Executive Berrin."

"I'm not here. I refuse to work late. Connect the executive lift." She watches as he nervously reaches for the switch. He realizes that he has summoned it too late. He should have recognized her, the instant she arrived. Now he has wasted precious seconds of an Executive’s time. She stands still and watches him. Does he dare proceed with regulations? He is painfully aware of each inefficient passing second in the large, soundless lobby.

“Memento mori.” The night guard’s mind snaps frantically into action to craft a response. Unfortunately its only conclusion is that he should say something relevant and clever immediately. Mercifully, she points to the snake slithering through the skull on his arm.
“My tattoo?” He asks. She smiles,
“A reminder that we are mortal?”
“Oh. No, it means I was wounded in action. From my time in the service. My unit’s retirement gift.”
“Were you regen’d by OrMod?”
“Yes Executive, by an OrMod joint project with Build.” She whistles respectfully as she inspects his body. They share a smile.
“Your hand? This arm?”
“My face.”
“No...” Fascinated, she moves closer to appreciate the detailed wrinkles on the cheekbone, the hair follicles on his upper lip, and the light web of blood vessels in the eye.
“Yes. It wasn’t a consumer procedure.” He adds with pride. “It ranked as the first 99 restoration.” She nods with an expert’s understanding of the significance. Berrin had pushed for OrMod to prioritize their development of facial reconstruction while the general market was still focused on skin pigments.
“To think they could have sculpted you any face and you wanted this ugly one back.” She winks, he laughs.
“If you think this is bad you should have seen me after the blast. All this meat was split open and peeled back-” He catches himself. “Forgive me, Executive Berrin, my manners…” She raises a hand in polite dismissal. He has heard about Jana Berrin from the other night shift staff. He didn’t believe that they had actually spoken to an Executive. Yet now he sees for himself the friendly person behind the pretentious regal portraits.
The elevator arrives; she nods and turns to leave.

"Executive Berrin, since it’s after hours and since we're supposed to be on high alert. I'll need a full sample." She turns and he immediately realizes his mistake. Her face carries the cold indifference of the powerful. He becomes aware that he’s risking his employment. Greater still, his entire consumer relationship with OrMod is being weighed in that look.

Then she smiles, amused at being slowed down by these common measures. They know that the building’s automated Sentinel is actively archiving both of them. The floor is measuring their weight, and a myriad of hidden scanners are correlating bone length, capillary maps, and registered eyeprints. Nonetheless, she offers her arm.

He approaches but hesitates to touch her skin. She is Executive class. Jana Berrin takes the cylinder from his hand without any sign of frustration and injects herself. Then she inserts the sample into the terminal. Immediately the reading announces a 94% match. She smiles and walks toward the elevator.

“Your cloak. That’s why I didn’t recognize you. You’re wearing a new cloak.”
“Perceptive.” The lift door closes.

The night guard sits at his desk and relives the experience. His mind practices the story, deciding what parts his co-workers need not hear. Across the city, Jana Berrin is sleeping. At the top of the OrMod tower, a figure with Jana Berrin’s body, Rei Kent’s eyes, and Daria-Zeh Motema’s memories moves proficiently through security and into the core office.

Desensitive

2008-08-22T13:01:00.012-04:00

I have killed many things. Terrorists, counterterrorists, pedestrians, goombas, orcs, Pharaohman, soldiers, the Flood, robots, The Squids (the entire gang), Odin, and many more. I have no doubt that a crude goal (get to the end, gain XP, clear the screen of enemies, beat the clock) creates a mentality where living things are transformed into expendable obstacles. Indeed, in some video games I go out of my way to kill things in order to improve my character's stats. This is the process of desensitization that mainstream news networks advertise.

I have yet to hear about the higher brow literary desensitization.

I was reading Kosinski's The Painted Bird last night and I reached the part, early in the book, where the main character watches a group of boys torture a squirrel by lighting it on fire. I wasn't emotionally affected at all because I found myself musing over what the author wanted the squirrel to symbolize.

Desensitization is the process of accepting violence. This occurs when it is overshadowed by a goal (as in video games and war) or by assigning it symbolic value (as in literature and politics).

While looking for an image of a Goomba being stomped I stumbled on these two wonderful sites:
Stitched pixel art
Video Game haLOLz

China's Female Athletes

2008-08-16T22:49:00.012-04:00

I hear a lot about Phelps and Bolt and not enough about China's female athletes who are dominating the Olympics. Take a look at the medal count.

Right now they account for 30/55 medals for China -including 17 gold. (The closest competitors are the female athletes from the USA. They have garnered 29 medals -5 gold)

I can understand why our North American bullshit tyrannical body type culture would turn a blind eye to women's weightlifting. But, c'mon Capitalism, this is the time for shooters. Give those FPS video game playing 13-year-old boys a role model like Du Li. Who wouldn't want to sport that sweet jersey?

So, Cap, where can I get one?

Fat Princess - my side of the war

2008-08-12T12:40:00.008-04:00

Titan's new game for Sony, Fat Princess, is taking some flak from intelligent people. I found Holly's critique interesting (and with the great line "I used to think fat people were inherently hilarious too — when I was 15 years old. Then I grew the fuck up and realized it made me an asshole.")

The price of being critical. Once again I'm surprised at the reactionary hate inspired by (what I consider to be moderate) feminist critique. Melissa McEwan writes about the fallout from her letter to Sony. She has received a lot of hate comments. No one can really defend this game from a critical attack that points out it's coming from a male-dominated (patriarchal) perspective that considers obese women as humorous. That's a fact.

What these "debates" often descend into is a war of insecurities. People who want to enjoy the game attack critics for not being able to stop thinking and have fun. They see the attacks as an issue of insecurity from being rejected by mainstream culture. Similarly, critics see the defenders of Fat Princess as insecure children who try to raise their own self-esteem by pushing others down. Thus the debate moves away from observing the game and into the angry world of hurtful comments known as trolling.

Indeed, I am insecure. I fear there is a cultural war going on and the unthinking are winning. I was first aware of the polarizing, side-choosing, warlike nature of these battles when reading about the absurd dispute over feminist Jessica Valenti's sw eater.

I have a tendency to put the blinders on. I try to avoid choosing sides in conflict because I know from playing Apples to Apples how quickly my own righteousnesses makes everyone else's opinion into nonsense.

Yet, in this instance I must choose a side. I side with the criticism of Fat Princess and denounce the game. Boycotted. If you can't see the harmful patriarchal perspective boiling up in this game then you are choosing not to think and have earned my ridicule, asshat.

My own perspective on Fat Princess:

I like the game dynamics. It's a massive (32 player?) multiplayer game where two armies try to capture the other's princess. You can feed your princess in order to make it difficult for the opposing team to lift her for rescue. It's neat because it requires a lot of teamwork, the graphics are my cel-shaded preference, and it looks like there's a lot of nice touches in this preview.

You would have to have your head quite far up your ass not to notice the following things:
1 .The premise is the classic male (warrior, active) saves the female (princess, passive).
2. The image of a fat woman is an intentional source of humour in the game.
3. All of the active characters (rescuers) are male.
4. The sole female character is passive. All of her movement requires others to lift her or to feed her.

FAQ. Crushing your counterattack.
1. Hey, what's wrong with the classic formula: male hero saves female victim?
Nothing. The only thing wrong is its dominance in our entertainment industry. We should throw off the psychological restraint of 'playing the victim' and provide women with a greater variety of female roles to identify with. Notice I did not say discard this formula, merely add some variety.
2. We should laugh at the fat princess since it's an unhealthy lifestyle, right?
Interesting. Did ridicule help you become a 'better' person or is it more likely to lock you into a cycle of self-hate? Additionally, notice that we're dealing with a princess and excluding princes. Our culture is notorious for waging war on the minds of young women by surrounding them with images of minority bodytypes. Finally, stop fucking around. You're not laughing at the "unhealthy lifestyle" so stop playing the bullshit social crusader. You don't laugh at smokers or carbon monoxide emissions. You're laughing because you've been trained, in our culture, to consider certain bodytypes as unacceptable, thus, humorous. The same thing happens in our culture that encourages to think of heterosexuality as normal and homosexuality as unacceptable, thus, humourous. Consider the rise of the terms 'gay' and currently 'no homo'. These things cease to be funny as you grow up and began to think for yourself.

3. Of course all the rescuers are male, aren't playable female characters usually shitty?
Agreed. Their increased speed never compensates for their weak hit power. Honesty, you have to headstomp someone 50,000 times with Chun-li. Video game designers take note. Stop making shitty female playable characters. Make them just as strong and as slow as their male counterparts. Better yet, have users choose their characters on stats alone and then have a male or female skin randomly generate on the mod.
4. Isn't the game pro-women since the object is to protect them?
Great point but I'm not sure I quite understand your complex argument. Let me put my head up your ass so we can see the world together. Shit, now I see how deep it is. Seriously, only ask questions that you can't bury by thinking for yourself for thirty seconds. What is this, baby's-first-debate?

I believe that criticism alone is useless and that the real useful (and difficult) work comes in thinking of solutions:

The following things would improve the game:
1. The 'princess' should be randomly generated as a male or female.
2. The princess or prince should be an active participant in the plan to make themselves fatter and more difficult to carry (as opposed to a passive object that requires stuffing). This shifts the humour from 'images of fat women are funny' to 'the absurd concept of rapidly gaining weight to prevent your own kidnapping is funny'.
3. The playable characters (rescuers) should be male and female.

4. The playable characters should have a variety of body types (not simply 'bearded angry men' and 'overtly sexualized women'). The NES game Ice Hockey had three body types.

The fact that these ideas do not occur to video game designers proves that the industry is patriarchal. Notice, I did not say 'run by men'. The patriarchy can be propagated by men, women, children, parents, even people calling themselves feminist.

A note to those who plan on enjoying playing Fat Princess.
It looks like a lot of fun. Fat Princess is not responsible for all of the crimes of our culture. It is a small patch in a larger quilt of oppression. You can defend the patch but not the quilt. Know that you have to turn your critical mind off to enjoy the game.

Final Fantasy II (94%) the Review

2008-08-10T13:41:00.009-04:00

FF2 for the Super Nintendo was my introduction to Role Playing Games (RPGs) and, while FF3 is a reputable challenger, it remains the ultimate boss of RPGs.

There is nothing to compare the satisfaction of finding a hidden treasure chest, gaining a level of experience, or inflicting the fabled 9999 damage.

Timing and Circumstances
As the eldest of three brothers I held the controller and encouraged my brothers to compete for the role of "chief adviser". It was a tyrannical system for a one player game. But RPGs don't require fast reflexes. There's no carefully timed jumps or dodging bullets. It's a lot of walking around, talking to people, selecting battle orders from a list, and watching the story play out. I thoroughly enjoyed watching this game with my brothers. It was like a thirty hour movie. We were in a frenzy when we finally reached Golbez -we were even allowed to put the game on pause for the entire duration of dinner (that had never happened before).

I found the story captivating, I couldn't wait to defeat the next boss and watch the plot develop. Later, I would speak with someone who had a similar experience with Final Fantasy X -a game that I thought was terrible. Perhaps my appreciation was in my age. My understanding of cliches was also young. Everything in the game seemed so new and daring.

Music
I've always had respect for composers of video game soundtracks. The prolific Nobuo Uematsu is the only rival to Capcom's Megaman series for creating consistently captivating music. An impressive feat considering game tunes are made with po tentially irritating bleeps and bloops and are played on relentless loop. It was the music of the underground world that made me hold a tape player to the television to record the sound. Of course, the music may mean nothing to someone who has never been there.

Graphics
I was forever enamo ured with pixel art since admiring the quality of Tellah and Yang's sprite walking on the world map, a simple two frame animation. As video game systems began to strive for photo realism, I never lost my attachment to 16bit images. Like a Chuck Close portrait, a magnified look reveals abstract patterns that transform into breathtaking order as you step away.

Story
There is a twist of betrayal in the game that had my brothers and I announce our shock and disappointment. This was the first game where the central char acter showed any sign of emotional growth. This was also the first video game that I played where characters sacrificed their lives. I'll always remember the twins, Palom and Parom, redeeming their lackluster characters by turning themselves to stone in order to save us. There was a certain dignity in their deaths that made it hard for us to continue ridiculing their outfits and lack of useful spells.

FF2 has a special place in my heart. I hate poetry. But I am impressed at how some classical poets demonstrate their mastery of language by making the strict form of iambic pentameter seem organic. The designers of FF2 responded to the restrictions of the SNES by crafting a work of art within the 16bit walls. It provided me with hours of entertainment and remains one of the few games that I consider emotionally resonant.

As a sidenote, Final Fantasy IV in Japan was released as Final Fantasy II in North America.

The Future of Academia

2008-08-06T04:13:00.002-04:00

*I couldn't be happier with the style of my last post (thanks to this bit of code). Hypertext is well suited to the dual pursuits of academic writing: clarity and proof . We should train students to write essays in this format.

The form was inspired by this online version of Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

The content was inspired by teaching high school students how to approach a text as if they were a Marxist, Feminist, Postcolonial, or Psychoanalytical scholar. We presented these perspectives in a straightforward and simple manner. The students rose to the challenge and the results were very encouraging.

A Marxist Reading - A 'How To' Guide

2008-08-06T01:05:00.040-04:00

1. A Simple Guide to Marxist Analysis
2. What is Marxism?

Marxism is a perspective that originated with Karl Marx in the mid-1800s. It was the age of industrialization in Europe (factory production, invention, and the growth of cities) and Marx emerged with a long-lasting critic of capitalism.

2.1 How did Marx understand the world?

2.2 What is capitalism?

2.3 Futhermore

3. A Marxist analysis of Pokemon

Here are our three questions of Marxist analysis applied to Pokemon. It may seem silly (I certainly laughed while doing it) but the results are surprisingly indicative of the pervasive triumph of the capitalist mentality (class, competition, hierarchy).

3.1 How does the material portray the relationship between owners (the bourgeoisie) and workers (the proletariat)?
3.2 Does the material encourage class consciousness?
3.3 Does the material support the proletariat revolution?

Underwhelmed by London

2008-07-17T19:43:00.008-04:00

I enjoyed King Lear at the Globe theater. We had tickets as "groundlings" -no seats but allowed to stand. Many people, including myself, held ourselves up by placing our arms on the stage.

I feel like a Spook with my "Tube" pass. We bought these incredibly expensive subway passes that give us unlimited rides while we're here. Single rides on London's tube are hilariously expensive.

I finished the Graham Greene book The Human Factor. Do not recommend.
7word review: Family relationships plus double agents equals boring.

When the students are late we punish them by making them wake up early and jog with me. One of the greatest moments happened today. One of the students was left behind by three others who were running frantically to make it on time. The student left behind arrived late and was punished. However, the other three students (who made it on time) felt so badly about abandoning them that all three of them offered to run in her place. Naturally, I accepted this proposition since it was legendary.

I'm very tired. I yawn wildly as I wait as these photos from Paris are uploaded.

I saw a performance of Shaw's Pygmalion tonight. I was not moved emotionally but found some enjoyment giving the play a feminist reading. In the end, Ms. Dolittle was empowered but only after the insistence of the annoying male.

I don't think I've met anyone from London. all of the servers here are foreigners trying to make it in London. The Londoners must be hiding in suits on top floors. In Paris, I felt bad because of the language gap when I was ordering food. Here, the language gap is the other way. My english is "fine" but the servers speak with accents and don't always understand what we mean.

I met a girl named Rachel at the Globe theater. She was cool. In the crowd of standing groundlings behind us a grown man collapsed. He passed out, falling onto his face. Rachel sprung into action and placed him in semi-prone where he woke up and was whisked away on a wheelchair by Globe staff.

Brokeback Mountain in Paris

2008-07-11T16:31:00.003-04:00

I finally went into that new museum, musée du quai Branly (2006), to see the "Non-European" art (especially since I enjoyed that hidden basement of the Louvre so much). It was a fantastic choice. I was loving the masks from Cameroon and Mali and, since I forgot the camera, I was forced to sketch shitty likenesses.

Deeper into the museum I heard the gunshots and horse whinnies of an old Western movie. It was quite loud. Who the hell was watching a Hollywood Western in a Non-European art museum? Was it my imagination? No, those are gunshots. I had to investigate.

Upstairs was the "melange" section -where cultures collide. 16th Century Mayan art with clear Spanish influences, a model galleon some foreign street artist had made out of discarded coca cola cans, and a little theater with six screens that was comparing Asian cinema to American cinema.

I sat down to watch. It was quite a nice set up. There were three pairs of screens. The first pair was paused. It was some anime movie and, beside it, some space sci fi movie. In the second pair both of the movies were playing but they were only running the audio for one. The sound would switch back and forth so you could get the gist of both films. The movie on the right was Brokeback Mountain. The movie on the left --

WTF?

Was that Tony Leung? Am I watching a Wong Kar-Wai film in Paris? Yes I am. That was a surprising-

WTF?

Look at the third pair. I know those faces. I don't know the name of the American movie but that's Ernest Borgnine! Wait... the movie there comparing it to is... that Vietnamese Western/Melodrama that we didn't finish watching!!!

One nice and surprising thing that I have noticed about the students is that no one carries an iPod. No one is plugged in and they all walk and talk together.

Today we did the best poetry lesson that has been done in the last, oh... 150 years.
Morning: we taught all of the standard poetry terms -particularly iambic pentameter, and had them scan a classic and modern poem. Afterward they had to take a side on two questions:
1. Are classic or modern poets more talented?
2. Does close study of a poem ruin it or increase your appreciation?

Evening: Went into the Rodin museum for inspiration. They all wrote 20 line poems. Then we sat on the grass boulevard south of Napoleon's Tomb and made them condense the poem to 10 lines. Naturally, this was agonizing for them. Their reward for their hard work was to condense it into 2 lines.

Then we had them reconstruct those two lines as imabic pentameter.

A learning experience that has been informative, fun, and produced creative work.

Paris - Day 3?

2008-07-09T20:45:00.006-04:00

I didn't think I'd ever be here again.
Landed in Paris with 43 students and 4 staff.

We've been to the Louvre twice,
The Latin Quarter for a lunch and group dinners,
Picked the statue of Charlemagne at Notre Dame as a meeting spot,
My fave building, the Pantheon,
We've done group discussions on Great Expectations,
Lunched on Rue Mouffetard,
Had lectures about and form, content, context, and great writers,
Monmartre, with a group photo at Sacre Couer and then crepes,
They've written in their journals about their own great expectations,
The Pompidou museum featuring the most traumatic art I have seen there yet: photos of Austrian genital mutilation, a video of a naked woman razoring the star of david onto her belly, a hauntingly life-like mannequin of Hitler with real hair (I had to look away because I thought I saw it move. Seriously, this thing had pores. Also it was alone in a room. Creepy. Kneeling, facing the wall so you had to walk around to see the face...)
I've fiddled with about thirty laptops to bring our digital coursepack to life (including a tiny ASUS that's running linux!)
We've had a one-on-one talk with each student about the English course, what they feel about their writing, and they just handed in an assignment designed for that specific individual to develop a particular skill.
I spotted some nice graffiti. Quality stencils of the Dalai Lama and Gandhi.

I was happy to see that they had spectacular poster sized photos from around the world placed on the gates of the Luxembourg Gardens: lava, ladybugs, airplane crashes, soldiers, farmers -there's even a picture from Canada, it's off two polar bears dancing.

We've been here two and a half days.
I take pride in overhearing students say how it feels as if we've been here for a week.