I am one of those people who defend pornography's existence. However, I do so with a distinct lack of urgency. I can't particularly imagine with world being worse off without porn. I really can't, and at the same time the world isn't worse off with porn. It is there and it is something that will more or less always be present.
To call pornography a new thing is rather silly. Little smut books, pamphlets, and an entire genera of Victorian lesbian erotic has existed before the internet and its pictures.
Still. What I would like to adress is the idea of harm, and the potential harm that pornography can do.
Harm is a funny concept. An article which I just read and which put me in the mood to write this, compares the history of tobaco in the US with the history of pornography in the US. The article was, decent. However, at times I felt that it was spinning wheels and that it was overly touchy with its subject. So to begin some summary. Where I stand.
1) Pornography is not physically addicting, unlike say cocain or heroin. Any addiction caused by the end user is restricted to the end user. The end user has the same potential to become addicted to video games, role playing games, cooking, sewing, reading, religion, gamboling, or any other mundane activity. Pornography can not be held responciple for the foibles of its end user, espeically when there is no direct phycial component with chemicaly alters the body. The end users lack of willpower is more to blame than the product itself. So fuck you end user.
2) Harm caused by practising exotic possition or tecniques seen in pornagraphy. Same as above only replace end user with dumbass.
3) Art/not art/people/I'm offended. There is a funny contradiction right at the very foundation of this country. We have this whole rule of the people, voting, representative thing going on. This whole system empowers people to state thier beliefs long and loudly in the hopes that they will become law. Then we also have the freedom of speach thing, which states (in theory), "We don't give a fuck what you think in terms of this form of expression it will never be banned". When someone was discussing banning gay marriage with a constitutional amendment someone pointed out that the constitution traditionally gives us rights, not restrictions. The one main outlyer being met with hilariouse results. AND YET! Here we have the first amendment which says no matter how offended you are by pornoagraphy that one person over there has a right to view it and you don't have a right to stop him. Funny? Yes I think so.
Even if the majority were to find it offensive it still has the potential for expression, art, and the sort of thing that is important. EVEN IF 90% of it is what it is.
4) Everything in moderation dears.
HOwever, some of the people humping the harm element have a point.
It is thought excercise time. Go to goodsearch, make sure that the name of your favorite charity is selected, turn off the adult content filter, and do a search for soft core porn. NO SERIOUSLY!
Okay now try to find a picture of one or more girls just sort of standing around being naked.
Now open the picture in a new browser window and look at just the picture with no context.
Offended? If so then I think you are wierd but whatever go be offended I don't care everyone else will be joining you in a second.
For everyone who isn't offended I want you to add the caption, "look at my slutty 19 year old daughter who I am just dying to fuck". Now. Offended?
See for the most part it isn't the actual pornographic image itself but rather the context that it is consumed in. And mysognistic language is the order of the day. Words like stupid, bitch, slut, dumb, poor, are all used to describe the actresses/modles in the image or movie. I beleive that this right here is the source of our problems.
When we discover why this language not only excists but what purpose does it serve? Is it some sort of holdover from the "talk dirty to me" desire that some men have? Is it really mysoginy? Or is there much more at stake than we are recognizing? Most importantly how does this context colour our perceptions of the porn we are consuming.
A typical, "pornography is harmful" reading of your average porn scene is that the models are not compleatly shown. It is always closeups of penatration, tits, you know very zoomed in shots. This is because the pornography disassembles women into a series of parts ignoring the whole.
Why is it destruction, instead of enshrinement? Why do we look at a closeup of penatration and see the deconstruction of the whole instead of a tribute to the aweful pain, awkwardness, and beauty that is sexuality? Porn is never really editied, men acidently fall out of women, positionas are changed only with awkwardness, and no one keeps a straight face. This can all be cast in a positive light rather than a negative one. Yet we don't do so. THe production quality is a factor. Calling the modles useless whores before hand is another one.
This is one of those moments where I have a problem but no solution. It is a good question though, and finding an answer to it is nearly impossible. It goes straigh down to the, "talk dirty to me" desire that excistis in the first place, it holds hands with sexual repression which we still have 7 pounds of in a 2 pound box, and all sorts of other individual problems with feed into the societal one. Shit be tough yo.
Anyway. The fact that the slut talk is so wide spread definatly has something to do with it. The problem is that it is an idea. You can't build a law against it and you can never enforce it. You can only hope to change peoples minds.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Well that was short lived
Man my neck hurts. Not the point of this post though. I for about a half hour, had a twitter account. I then decided to delete it.
I looked around it, poked around some famous people's feeds, and some feeds of my friends and I realized a few things. Twitter is about communication. People do comunicate on it rather well. When people communicate to each other it is a lot like slow motion instant messaging. And yet there is something ever so disingenuous about it. Maybe it is the format.
I don't know. There is a lot to be said for constraint though. I love haikus, I still think sonnets have something to offer the world, and writting under rediculous sets of rules is fun for me. And yet...yet...something just seems so fantasticly off about twitter.
I think part of it boils down to the fact that I want to know what my friends are doing and what they are interested in and how everything works. But I would like to be communicated to in chunks larger than 160 charecters ever couple of hours. It is handy for lots of things, but not for what I need.
Disapointment.
Oh well. I think I just prefer blogging. And reading other people's blogs. Of course just about no one I know blogs anymore so whatev.
I looked around it, poked around some famous people's feeds, and some feeds of my friends and I realized a few things. Twitter is about communication. People do comunicate on it rather well. When people communicate to each other it is a lot like slow motion instant messaging. And yet there is something ever so disingenuous about it. Maybe it is the format.
I don't know. There is a lot to be said for constraint though. I love haikus, I still think sonnets have something to offer the world, and writting under rediculous sets of rules is fun for me. And yet...yet...something just seems so fantasticly off about twitter.
I think part of it boils down to the fact that I want to know what my friends are doing and what they are interested in and how everything works. But I would like to be communicated to in chunks larger than 160 charecters ever couple of hours. It is handy for lots of things, but not for what I need.
Disapointment.
Oh well. I think I just prefer blogging. And reading other people's blogs. Of course just about no one I know blogs anymore so whatev.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Wake Up
Man writing fiction for the first time after taking a long break is really weird. I before E my ass that rule is bullshit. Anyway. Yeah.
To fill you in as to what the fuck I am talking about, I decided to start writting fiction again fer reals. It is important because it uses a diffrent part of my brain creatively. Yeah that is the main reason actually, I want to use as much of my brains as possible lest they break. Alot like the rest of the body the brain is, it will fall apart if it isn't used. And other shit you already know.
Sorry I am vaugly upset so this is coming out a little wierd.
ANYWAY. So I had all this writters block, writers block, block block block, then suddenly out of nowhere this story came out of nowhere. I hammered out 7ish pages of stuff, and then for variouse reasons I let it stew for a bit. Today I finnaly fixed one of the things stopping me, the printer ran out of ink and I was able to read over what I wrote and edit it.
It started off pretty rough, no doubts. But as the story progressed I could see myself waking up and writting better and better. It is kind of amazing to watch, as I started connecting important elements of the story together making for a larger whole. It isn't bad!
I had to sit down and come up with an outline as to how I wanted it to end, and I need to insert a few scenes here and there and rewrite a couple of paragraphs but that isn't so much of a big deal and I definatly look fowards to doing just that tomarrow...or maybe the day after it depends.
One of the things that really helped me out is that instead of doing a normal outline I instead made a thematic map of the story. I wrote down a bunch of themes, emotions, ideas, et cetera on a piece of paper. So that way when I wrote I could make sure that every paragraph had at least something to do with a larger idea, and it also made interthemetic reffrence much easyer. It was a great idea and I am glad I did it.
Okay I'm going to do something else cause my brain seems broke.
To fill you in as to what the fuck I am talking about, I decided to start writting fiction again fer reals. It is important because it uses a diffrent part of my brain creatively. Yeah that is the main reason actually, I want to use as much of my brains as possible lest they break. Alot like the rest of the body the brain is, it will fall apart if it isn't used. And other shit you already know.
Sorry I am vaugly upset so this is coming out a little wierd.
ANYWAY. So I had all this writters block, writers block, block block block, then suddenly out of nowhere this story came out of nowhere. I hammered out 7ish pages of stuff, and then for variouse reasons I let it stew for a bit. Today I finnaly fixed one of the things stopping me, the printer ran out of ink and I was able to read over what I wrote and edit it.
It started off pretty rough, no doubts. But as the story progressed I could see myself waking up and writting better and better. It is kind of amazing to watch, as I started connecting important elements of the story together making for a larger whole. It isn't bad!
I had to sit down and come up with an outline as to how I wanted it to end, and I need to insert a few scenes here and there and rewrite a couple of paragraphs but that isn't so much of a big deal and I definatly look fowards to doing just that tomarrow...or maybe the day after it depends.
One of the things that really helped me out is that instead of doing a normal outline I instead made a thematic map of the story. I wrote down a bunch of themes, emotions, ideas, et cetera on a piece of paper. So that way when I wrote I could make sure that every paragraph had at least something to do with a larger idea, and it also made interthemetic reffrence much easyer. It was a great idea and I am glad I did it.
Okay I'm going to do something else cause my brain seems broke.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Putting the thousand words to pictures
So every time my blog reincarnates I have a diffrent vision of what it is going to be like. Then it becomes the thing it actually is contrary to my vision. Oh well. So here is the deal. I spend a lot of time mounting this thing as a sounding board for things everyone should be seeing and watching but I don't really give away spoilers or analysis of anything so I don't ruin anything. Unfortunatly I am bored with that format. Bored to tears. I hate it in fact. So spoilers away. Yeah definantly. There was a part of me that wanted desperatly for people to read this. This is odd, it is something I've never felt before. For the most part I feel a vast indiffrerence to what I write here. I dunno what it is. It was also butting up against my desire to write something that matters. I don't know why I didn't equate the two. Oh well. Whatever went broke in my head is fixed now.
I've been coming up with lots of writting projects recently though which is snazzy. I want to start actually writting things about comic books though. I mean I've been talking a lot about how I want to write about comic books but I suppose I should make sure I can do it.
Sure sure I can do anaysis of comic books that's easy. Heart of Darkness and the Comedian, deconstruction of the super hero and watchmen, guest starring the dc/marvel universes, the humanity of rorcharc and how he takes off his mask at the end, mirror images in watchmen, and blah blah blah. Okay yeah so I can comfortably take watchmen and write about it for the rest of my life. There is also the invisables, there are all sorts of topics in there such as the nature/role of violence in revolution, the conflict between the rich and revolution, viewing the outer church as metaphore for whatever, redefining budda for the punk rock generation, rebelling against the rebellion and the true nature of rebellion, see it is easy.
The thing is though is while all these things are smart and fancy they don't really take advantage of the graphical format provided by the graphic novel. See I'd be treating them just like they were novels and interpreting them thusly. While that is perfectly acceptable and something I will do eventually, it doesn't really do anything exciting with the genra as a whole. I mean this is aa whole new format here, with a new language and sets of symbols and messages and everything. Not recognizing that is doing a grave diservice to the poor genra that is already in need of help. A lot of graphic novels that are acedmicly studied are really obviouse, kinda lame books. Sandman for example sorta has that "mud at the wall" system to it, where everything is so loosly tied together that you can get away with anything. And Maus. God damnit I wish people would stop humping Maus. Seriously, mice as peoples ZOMG we are scholars!!!!! Writting putting himself in the text and restling with representation ZOMG SCHOLARS!!! Then you just slather post modern theory all over it and wonder why the rest of the acedemic world looks down on post modernism *facepalm*. No really looking back now I realize that people have a hard time talking about graphic novles.
There is a reason for this however.
Mostly it has to do with the essay format and the way we quote things. Normally when I need to direct your atension to something in a book I say in this book on this page there is this line then I put the line right in front of you. Then it is up to you to go grab the context yourself should you need it. When writting about both comics, and film this whole system starts to break down. Paraphrasing just doesn't capture the same crisp clear essence that a well selected quote can. It also takes up space and burdens the reader with useless reading. It is handy for going over large topics or whatnot but definatly not for essay meats. THis is also especially true if you want to address the art itself. You need to see the art, which means putting the art directly into the essay. What this boils down to is me either downloading all the stuff I want to write about so I can post the specific pages I want to adress in the blog up here, or getting a scanner. This isn't just for here it is for school too. The whole MLA format is highly inadiquet when it comes to Art and motion picture. Hell it was prolly written when VHS still ruled and cd burners were luxeries. Things are diffrent.
Eh who knows its been ages since I looked at the hand book hopefully this is one of those things that changes as I want it to. Showing the art is important though. Critical I would say. I mean if I am writting a paper that uses the freakish body and the grotesque in Garth Ennis's Preacher it is one thing to describe the meat woman. It is another thing entirely to show it. Oh god. The meat woman what the fuck Garth there is something wrong with you. Something glorius
So what about the art.
Well I have a couple of leads I'd like to persue. The first baby lead is 100 bullets. It really is the perfect source for a project like this. 100 issues long (clever) 13 books long and it maintains the same writer/artist duo the entire way though. WIN! That minor detail aside what actually makes it perfect is that there are many occations where the main charecters will be talking about something, or someone will be waxing poetic about something off screen and on screen a compleatly unrealated thing will be going on. WHat is going on, on screen always themeaticlly adresses what is being discussed off screen but it is never directly related to the plot. In fact the off screen stuff doesn't relate to the main charecters at all. The writter is also a master of the side story which again thematicly ties into the larger tapestry. To call the work brilliant is a massive fucking understatement. I want to wait until it is finnished then I want to give it a fresh read through before I go at it. It is an impressive work and highly worthy of study.
The other thing I want to do is a lil bit more ambitiouse. It involves Animal Man Vol 2/3, Testemant, Air, and Kabuki Circle of Blood. I want to explore what the idea of the comic frame means. All the images take place in these neat little boxes, everything from love, to violence, to loss. However, what happens out side of the boxes, in those little white spaces between the lands of colour. All the books I listed explore these ideas in diffrent ways by having charecters or events happen outside of the little boxes that the action takes place in. Animal Man turns the reader into an acomplice to the horrors these charecters has to suffer and animal man saves all of our lives by thwarting an assault on our world by a legion of pissed off heros and villians. Yeah it is that cool. Air needs to get rolling a little bit more before I can get going with it but one of the major themes of the book is steping outside reality so having conversations between pannels with a metaphorical Aztec snake god is perfectly logical. Testement has all sort of things going on outside of the pannels, and in fact it is the easyest fit. The gods themselves are chilling outside of the panles chattering away about what is going on. The obviouse thing to do would be to link testemant and air but the similarities are superficial. I also like to leave obviouse arguments open so when people try to make them I can curbstomp them into oblivion.
Kabuiki is a wierd choise and wasn't included in the original project. It might also become a tangental project. The thing about Kabuki is that for a large portion of the comic it does away with frames altogether and lets the story progress in a very diffrent fluid sort of way. Since a major theme of Kabuki is dreams it works really well and I beleive it has a place in the over all project. Oh shit I should take another look at nightly news which is also frameless. It also has three unstable narators. Yeah I know right how is that ever possible? I don't fucking know but it is AWESOME. I'll see though. Nightly New's style might be to revolutionary for this project. It isn't really an examination of what the frames mean but more of ignoring what frames are in the first place and doing your own thing. It is kinda like what would happen if you grew someone in a jar told them all about graphic novels and made them create one.
Oh well. So yeah I wanna do that too. Step one would be to talk about what it is frames are doing in the first place. So I guess time to figgure that out.
I've been coming up with lots of writting projects recently though which is snazzy. I want to start actually writting things about comic books though. I mean I've been talking a lot about how I want to write about comic books but I suppose I should make sure I can do it.
Sure sure I can do anaysis of comic books that's easy. Heart of Darkness and the Comedian, deconstruction of the super hero and watchmen, guest starring the dc/marvel universes, the humanity of rorcharc and how he takes off his mask at the end, mirror images in watchmen, and blah blah blah. Okay yeah so I can comfortably take watchmen and write about it for the rest of my life. There is also the invisables, there are all sorts of topics in there such as the nature/role of violence in revolution, the conflict between the rich and revolution, viewing the outer church as metaphore for whatever, redefining budda for the punk rock generation, rebelling against the rebellion and the true nature of rebellion, see it is easy.
The thing is though is while all these things are smart and fancy they don't really take advantage of the graphical format provided by the graphic novel. See I'd be treating them just like they were novels and interpreting them thusly. While that is perfectly acceptable and something I will do eventually, it doesn't really do anything exciting with the genra as a whole. I mean this is aa whole new format here, with a new language and sets of symbols and messages and everything. Not recognizing that is doing a grave diservice to the poor genra that is already in need of help. A lot of graphic novels that are acedmicly studied are really obviouse, kinda lame books. Sandman for example sorta has that "mud at the wall" system to it, where everything is so loosly tied together that you can get away with anything. And Maus. God damnit I wish people would stop humping Maus. Seriously, mice as peoples ZOMG we are scholars!!!!! Writting putting himself in the text and restling with representation ZOMG SCHOLARS!!! Then you just slather post modern theory all over it and wonder why the rest of the acedemic world looks down on post modernism *facepalm*. No really looking back now I realize that people have a hard time talking about graphic novles.
There is a reason for this however.
Mostly it has to do with the essay format and the way we quote things. Normally when I need to direct your atension to something in a book I say in this book on this page there is this line then I put the line right in front of you. Then it is up to you to go grab the context yourself should you need it. When writting about both comics, and film this whole system starts to break down. Paraphrasing just doesn't capture the same crisp clear essence that a well selected quote can. It also takes up space and burdens the reader with useless reading. It is handy for going over large topics or whatnot but definatly not for essay meats. THis is also especially true if you want to address the art itself. You need to see the art, which means putting the art directly into the essay. What this boils down to is me either downloading all the stuff I want to write about so I can post the specific pages I want to adress in the blog up here, or getting a scanner. This isn't just for here it is for school too. The whole MLA format is highly inadiquet when it comes to Art and motion picture. Hell it was prolly written when VHS still ruled and cd burners were luxeries. Things are diffrent.
Eh who knows its been ages since I looked at the hand book hopefully this is one of those things that changes as I want it to. Showing the art is important though. Critical I would say. I mean if I am writting a paper that uses the freakish body and the grotesque in Garth Ennis's Preacher it is one thing to describe the meat woman. It is another thing entirely to show it. Oh god. The meat woman what the fuck Garth there is something wrong with you. Something glorius
So what about the art.
Well I have a couple of leads I'd like to persue. The first baby lead is 100 bullets. It really is the perfect source for a project like this. 100 issues long (clever) 13 books long and it maintains the same writer/artist duo the entire way though. WIN! That minor detail aside what actually makes it perfect is that there are many occations where the main charecters will be talking about something, or someone will be waxing poetic about something off screen and on screen a compleatly unrealated thing will be going on. WHat is going on, on screen always themeaticlly adresses what is being discussed off screen but it is never directly related to the plot. In fact the off screen stuff doesn't relate to the main charecters at all. The writter is also a master of the side story which again thematicly ties into the larger tapestry. To call the work brilliant is a massive fucking understatement. I want to wait until it is finnished then I want to give it a fresh read through before I go at it. It is an impressive work and highly worthy of study.
The other thing I want to do is a lil bit more ambitiouse. It involves Animal Man Vol 2/3, Testemant, Air, and Kabuki Circle of Blood. I want to explore what the idea of the comic frame means. All the images take place in these neat little boxes, everything from love, to violence, to loss. However, what happens out side of the boxes, in those little white spaces between the lands of colour. All the books I listed explore these ideas in diffrent ways by having charecters or events happen outside of the little boxes that the action takes place in. Animal Man turns the reader into an acomplice to the horrors these charecters has to suffer and animal man saves all of our lives by thwarting an assault on our world by a legion of pissed off heros and villians. Yeah it is that cool. Air needs to get rolling a little bit more before I can get going with it but one of the major themes of the book is steping outside reality so having conversations between pannels with a metaphorical Aztec snake god is perfectly logical. Testement has all sort of things going on outside of the pannels, and in fact it is the easyest fit. The gods themselves are chilling outside of the panles chattering away about what is going on. The obviouse thing to do would be to link testemant and air but the similarities are superficial. I also like to leave obviouse arguments open so when people try to make them I can curbstomp them into oblivion.
Kabuiki is a wierd choise and wasn't included in the original project. It might also become a tangental project. The thing about Kabuki is that for a large portion of the comic it does away with frames altogether and lets the story progress in a very diffrent fluid sort of way. Since a major theme of Kabuki is dreams it works really well and I beleive it has a place in the over all project. Oh shit I should take another look at nightly news which is also frameless. It also has three unstable narators. Yeah I know right how is that ever possible? I don't fucking know but it is AWESOME. I'll see though. Nightly New's style might be to revolutionary for this project. It isn't really an examination of what the frames mean but more of ignoring what frames are in the first place and doing your own thing. It is kinda like what would happen if you grew someone in a jar told them all about graphic novels and made them create one.
Oh well. So yeah I wanna do that too. Step one would be to talk about what it is frames are doing in the first place. So I guess time to figgure that out.
Monday, April 20, 2009
So its been awhile...sorry!
It hasn't been THAT long but it feels like a long time for me. Anyway I've been gone because the mission archetect came out for City of Heros, yeah just like it sounds you get to make missions and stuff. Honestly? I've been playing more than creating but I am also having a fuchovalot of fun and tanks are in super high demand which makes me happy! YAY!
I've also been reading The Kindly Ones, which is a 975 odessy involving WW2, genocide, incest, frenchmen with zepplins trying to prove the earth is flat, and I don't know what else. All that before page 400. Yeah not bad! It is decently densly written, and it is highly literary and reading it has just been an absolute delight. I will post much much more on it later.
My birthday is coming up and I will finally engage in my dream of getting to play Vampire the Eternal Struggle soon. Yeah been wanting to play this game since the 8th grade, and now I have plunked down the cash to do it. EXCITMENT!
Oh I also read Air which is something that deserves its own post.
And I reread batman rip which also deserves its own post.
So other things are going on to here and there. Mostly though, I am going to get older soon. I feel a lil meloncholy about that, cause I always do this time of year. Hopefully it will pass without a huge conglageration. Okay I am going to go to bed because it is 3:40 in the morning. NIGHT!
I've also been reading The Kindly Ones, which is a 975 odessy involving WW2, genocide, incest, frenchmen with zepplins trying to prove the earth is flat, and I don't know what else. All that before page 400. Yeah not bad! It is decently densly written, and it is highly literary and reading it has just been an absolute delight. I will post much much more on it later.
My birthday is coming up and I will finally engage in my dream of getting to play Vampire the Eternal Struggle soon. Yeah been wanting to play this game since the 8th grade, and now I have plunked down the cash to do it. EXCITMENT!
Oh I also read Air which is something that deserves its own post.
And I reread batman rip which also deserves its own post.
So other things are going on to here and there. Mostly though, I am going to get older soon. I feel a lil meloncholy about that, cause I always do this time of year. Hopefully it will pass without a huge conglageration. Okay I am going to go to bed because it is 3:40 in the morning. NIGHT!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
The Kindly Ones
So I woke up a lil to early.
Yeah I did. Oh well.
SO! I've been reading a book called The Kindly Ones. I had this idea of giving my impressions all throughout reading it but I am 200 pages in so I am not so sure that still applies. Of course the book is over 900 pages long so I mean I am not even half way through yet. Crazy right?
The weird thing about the book is that it is highly literary, by that I mean it is written to deliberatly cater to smrt people who have long atension spans who are interested in EVERYTHING. You gotta be. Right now I am in the middle of this suprisingly complex linguistic analysis of this tiny little region in russia that somehow managed to develop around 30 languages in it. The book calls it the mountain of languages and the linguist has been going through and discussing the origins of each language, diffrent phonetic sounds which seperates it from the other languages, possible origins of the language, and all sorts of other things. He then goes into some basic linguistic theory like how this Dr. can become functional in anylanguage in about 10-15 days, and can preform complex linguistic analysis that a child would never be able to do despite a much larger vocabulary. Maybe it is because I think linguistics are really really neat. Or maybe it is because I am a dork in general and I am reading about a dork, but I find myself lovingly attached to the main charecter.
In the previouse section he spent, oh god, at least 15 pages seducing another guy. He used Plato's symposium to do it. I wanna seduce someone with Plato.
Oh yeah so the book is from the point of view during WW2, a lot of this stuff is intermixed with scenes of genocide and horror that are, man they are just aweful.
Our main charecter has spent the first 180 pages setting up the story and running around the russian front. This is before they had the gas powered concentration camps over there so thier method of execution involved firieng squads. He talks a lot about how horrible the action was and how hard it was on everyone to spend day after day shotting inncocent people. At one point our main charecter became on the verge of nervose collapse and had to be sent to a rest home.
Enough on that though. Basic plot elements aren't very interesting to write.
What is interesting is that the book uses LONG paragraphs. They usually average 2-3 pages and the thing that interests me about this is how much ground they end up covering. Ack I goota go to work so time to be brief. Essentially, a paragraph will cover the main charecter waking up from a nightmare, doing ordinary office work, dealing with incompetent officials, watching or participating in acts of genocide, then going back to ordinary life. When the paragraph is considered as a grammatical unit that represents one idea, the texture of these long paragraphs becomes increadbly interesting. The book also has been cycling through the charecter's nightmares, the related traumas, then he would go to commit genocide, then back to ordinary life. It is almost as if he escapes his traumas through the genocide or highly acedemic endevours.
THere is also the language where everything from speaches, to writting reports, to off topic musings, to homosexual hookups, to genocide, to nightmares are all presented in this very clipped matter of fact tone, which is awesome. So yeah 200 pages in and I am still increadbly interested in the book. I needed to review some WW2 history to figgure out what the hell was going on, but once I did that things went a little easyer. The author also uses all sorts german military titles so learning the diffrence between them, and the diffrent jobs they do took forever. It prolly would of helped had I noticed the glossary in the back of the book earlyer though, stupid glossary.
SO yeah neat!
Yeah I did. Oh well.
SO! I've been reading a book called The Kindly Ones. I had this idea of giving my impressions all throughout reading it but I am 200 pages in so I am not so sure that still applies. Of course the book is over 900 pages long so I mean I am not even half way through yet. Crazy right?
The weird thing about the book is that it is highly literary, by that I mean it is written to deliberatly cater to smrt people who have long atension spans who are interested in EVERYTHING. You gotta be. Right now I am in the middle of this suprisingly complex linguistic analysis of this tiny little region in russia that somehow managed to develop around 30 languages in it. The book calls it the mountain of languages and the linguist has been going through and discussing the origins of each language, diffrent phonetic sounds which seperates it from the other languages, possible origins of the language, and all sorts of other things. He then goes into some basic linguistic theory like how this Dr. can become functional in anylanguage in about 10-15 days, and can preform complex linguistic analysis that a child would never be able to do despite a much larger vocabulary. Maybe it is because I think linguistics are really really neat. Or maybe it is because I am a dork in general and I am reading about a dork, but I find myself lovingly attached to the main charecter.
In the previouse section he spent, oh god, at least 15 pages seducing another guy. He used Plato's symposium to do it. I wanna seduce someone with Plato.
Oh yeah so the book is from the point of view during WW2, a lot of this stuff is intermixed with scenes of genocide and horror that are, man they are just aweful.
Our main charecter has spent the first 180 pages setting up the story and running around the russian front. This is before they had the gas powered concentration camps over there so thier method of execution involved firieng squads. He talks a lot about how horrible the action was and how hard it was on everyone to spend day after day shotting inncocent people. At one point our main charecter became on the verge of nervose collapse and had to be sent to a rest home.
Enough on that though. Basic plot elements aren't very interesting to write.
What is interesting is that the book uses LONG paragraphs. They usually average 2-3 pages and the thing that interests me about this is how much ground they end up covering. Ack I goota go to work so time to be brief. Essentially, a paragraph will cover the main charecter waking up from a nightmare, doing ordinary office work, dealing with incompetent officials, watching or participating in acts of genocide, then going back to ordinary life. When the paragraph is considered as a grammatical unit that represents one idea, the texture of these long paragraphs becomes increadbly interesting. The book also has been cycling through the charecter's nightmares, the related traumas, then he would go to commit genocide, then back to ordinary life. It is almost as if he escapes his traumas through the genocide or highly acedemic endevours.
THere is also the language where everything from speaches, to writting reports, to off topic musings, to homosexual hookups, to genocide, to nightmares are all presented in this very clipped matter of fact tone, which is awesome. So yeah 200 pages in and I am still increadbly interested in the book. I needed to review some WW2 history to figgure out what the hell was going on, but once I did that things went a little easyer. The author also uses all sorts german military titles so learning the diffrence between them, and the diffrent jobs they do took forever. It prolly would of helped had I noticed the glossary in the back of the book earlyer though, stupid glossary.
SO yeah neat!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Hooray for the Aryan Race
One of the things that impressed me about Oz was Schillinger and his wacky band of Aryan Brotherhood groupies. I mean sure he is a nazi fuck, but he always seemed to know which side of his bread the butter went on, and his dedication to the cause was something I found to be rather impressive.
All around me a hear day in and day out are people complaining. Lets take today for example. Today I was relearned why I don't go and hang out at TBS comics very often. I was happily building netrunner decks and the game next to me went from happily moving along to a conversation about politics. Now most conversations about politics tend to boil down into a pointless shouting match between two groups of people. Which is what would of happened had I joined in. However, I had something to do and I didn't see the point.
Thier conversation consited of being mad at the government. Claiming that a vastly increaded sales tax would eliminate the need for an income tax, american environment concerns are inconsiquencial when it comes to China, how america is a dictatorship, and some increadbly halfbaked conversation about free market monopolies and some other stuff that is so wildy incoherent that I don't even know what was going on.
One of the reoccuring themes of thier conversation that kept coming back over and over again is the future. It is always things are bad now and they will get worse with the future. So things are bad with china and they will get worse because they ignore environmental concerns. America isn't really a dicatorship now but it will be in 15 or 16 years. The future.
The main thing that bothers me about the incident is the way it unfolded. See all the people involved were intellegent. Okay well one kid wasn't but he just kept making stupid comments so he doesn't count. The problem was that they only half understood what they were talking about. They took a highly fractured understanding of the world around them and created reasons for why they are all so unhappy about the way things are. They made myths.
Myths were around to explain why things happened the way they did. Its one of those amazingly human things, myths. People ask what is the diffrence between humans and animals and I got to point to the sun. Just about every culture on the face of the planet has a diffrent reason as to why that thing rises and sets every day. They explain why it gives light, burns, makes crops grow, and why it gets colder sometimes. Everyone did it, and we all did it diffrently.
The Aztecs did it pretty much the best though. Aztecs are badass. Stupid Cortez.
Anyway yeah myths. That's what they all were. Little ideas that they cobbled together from scraps of information gathered up here and there. It was ugly and brutish, and not paticularly well concived. I am kinda disapointed it happened around me.
Mostly because it made me think of the Aryan brotherhood again. See shortly after finnishing Oz season 2 went out and started researching the american nazi movement just out of curiosity. I wanted to know if these people really were as scary as they appeared to be on OZ. No seriously how much do you know about skinheads. Or the diffrence between skinheads, the kkk, and the aryan brotherhood? Yeah not a whole lot right? I generally think that all of their beliefs are supercifially stupid because they are based on a superficial racial qualifyer. But I mean how stupid? Are they dangerouse? How dangerouse?
So I turned to youtube for the answer. Several documentaries later I walked away with some relief and a little bit of disapointment. All in all they are a sad SAD group of individuals that are in seriouse need of a reality check.
Picture a guy with a beer gut hanging over his belt claiming to be a warrior in the upcoming war with the blacks. If that is the case I'll side with the blacks. There was another moment that I think will stick with me for the rest of my life. Okay now this was an A&E documentary that couldn't be more than 5 years old. This guy was saying that the Jew were going to bring about an economic collapse and then the blacks would rise up and take over. When that happens they will be ready.
So now our economy has crashed and there is a black president. What the fuck more are they waiting for? Where is the great uprising? Where is the war? What is going on here.
There was this other guy who would recruit kids to the cause. This guy was creepy. Honeslty though I think he just liked having people around him all the time. Whatever.
Oh yeah I suppose you want a connection between the two? Oh well if you took big corporations and government out of the mouths of the TBS kids and replaced them with jews and blacks, they wouldn't be to far off from the skinheads.
People.
Mindlessly railing against the government makes you no smarter than mindlessly railing against a race. Seriously now.
Learn some shit.
I may not be the smartest person in the world. And I don't have a fully functioning understanding of freemarket ecconomics. But I got enough of a handle to understand that getting rid of your income tax in exchange for a sales tax would be a good idea. Especially when you are in a FUCKING hobby store which is the very epitome of pointless spending. Oh well. I wanna switch topics now so I am just going to start a new post.
All around me a hear day in and day out are people complaining. Lets take today for example. Today I was relearned why I don't go and hang out at TBS comics very often. I was happily building netrunner decks and the game next to me went from happily moving along to a conversation about politics. Now most conversations about politics tend to boil down into a pointless shouting match between two groups of people. Which is what would of happened had I joined in. However, I had something to do and I didn't see the point.
Thier conversation consited of being mad at the government. Claiming that a vastly increaded sales tax would eliminate the need for an income tax, american environment concerns are inconsiquencial when it comes to China, how america is a dictatorship, and some increadbly halfbaked conversation about free market monopolies and some other stuff that is so wildy incoherent that I don't even know what was going on.
One of the reoccuring themes of thier conversation that kept coming back over and over again is the future. It is always things are bad now and they will get worse with the future. So things are bad with china and they will get worse because they ignore environmental concerns. America isn't really a dicatorship now but it will be in 15 or 16 years. The future.
The main thing that bothers me about the incident is the way it unfolded. See all the people involved were intellegent. Okay well one kid wasn't but he just kept making stupid comments so he doesn't count. The problem was that they only half understood what they were talking about. They took a highly fractured understanding of the world around them and created reasons for why they are all so unhappy about the way things are. They made myths.
Myths were around to explain why things happened the way they did. Its one of those amazingly human things, myths. People ask what is the diffrence between humans and animals and I got to point to the sun. Just about every culture on the face of the planet has a diffrent reason as to why that thing rises and sets every day. They explain why it gives light, burns, makes crops grow, and why it gets colder sometimes. Everyone did it, and we all did it diffrently.
The Aztecs did it pretty much the best though. Aztecs are badass. Stupid Cortez.
Anyway yeah myths. That's what they all were. Little ideas that they cobbled together from scraps of information gathered up here and there. It was ugly and brutish, and not paticularly well concived. I am kinda disapointed it happened around me.
Mostly because it made me think of the Aryan brotherhood again. See shortly after finnishing Oz season 2 went out and started researching the american nazi movement just out of curiosity. I wanted to know if these people really were as scary as they appeared to be on OZ. No seriously how much do you know about skinheads. Or the diffrence between skinheads, the kkk, and the aryan brotherhood? Yeah not a whole lot right? I generally think that all of their beliefs are supercifially stupid because they are based on a superficial racial qualifyer. But I mean how stupid? Are they dangerouse? How dangerouse?
So I turned to youtube for the answer. Several documentaries later I walked away with some relief and a little bit of disapointment. All in all they are a sad SAD group of individuals that are in seriouse need of a reality check.
Picture a guy with a beer gut hanging over his belt claiming to be a warrior in the upcoming war with the blacks. If that is the case I'll side with the blacks. There was another moment that I think will stick with me for the rest of my life. Okay now this was an A&E documentary that couldn't be more than 5 years old. This guy was saying that the Jew were going to bring about an economic collapse and then the blacks would rise up and take over. When that happens they will be ready.
So now our economy has crashed and there is a black president. What the fuck more are they waiting for? Where is the great uprising? Where is the war? What is going on here.
There was this other guy who would recruit kids to the cause. This guy was creepy. Honeslty though I think he just liked having people around him all the time. Whatever.
Oh yeah I suppose you want a connection between the two? Oh well if you took big corporations and government out of the mouths of the TBS kids and replaced them with jews and blacks, they wouldn't be to far off from the skinheads.
People.
Mindlessly railing against the government makes you no smarter than mindlessly railing against a race. Seriously now.
Learn some shit.
I may not be the smartest person in the world. And I don't have a fully functioning understanding of freemarket ecconomics. But I got enough of a handle to understand that getting rid of your income tax in exchange for a sales tax would be a good idea. Especially when you are in a FUCKING hobby store which is the very epitome of pointless spending. Oh well. I wanna switch topics now so I am just going to start a new post.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Rush Limbaug is a big stupid...
Or is he?
Alright he is. But sometimes he has a point. Yeah yeah so what the hell was I doing grooving with Limbaug? Well all of his broadcasts are up on demonoid and I like listening to people I don't agree with. It's interesting, and he is not stupid. A lot of his arguements are sound and, as much as it shames me to say it, he agrees with what I was saying about Obama before the election. Ugh.
The boradcast I was listening to in paticular was
March 31, 2009 and it mostly had to do with Obama's handling of the automoblie industry. I can see why he's having such a hard time with it though. It is a nearly impossible argument to make and I am rather torn on it myself. So lets get all the components together.
Problems he has with Obama's auto industry thingy listed in order of merit from stupidest to not so stupid:
Personal Freedom
Environmental Impact
Electric cars are crap
Controling Wages
Personal Freedom
Yeah the freedom is on there twice. Rush has this habit of not argueing very clearly when he rants and as a result he starts tripping over himself. Anyway lets start dismantling this crap.
Personal Freedom- Rush is claiming that Trucks and SUV's are the cars that are selling, and any litigation which restricts our ability to buy trucks and SUV's is horrid. This argument comes out of the fact that Obama is chopping a whole bunch a vehicles out of GM's product lines. Personally I think this line of reasoning is insane. No where are we gaurenteed stuff. I've also feet that the truck/SUV obession is a series of abombinations that leads to innatentive drivers. People drive Trucks because they feel safer way up high, well guess what you do less of when you feel safer, yeah pay atension. There is also a point where he calls anyone who buys a hybrid car stupid and he ends up berating a caller over it. This is starting to step on my later points though so I am going to move on.
Environmental Impact: Rush doesn't believe in global warming. This is one of those things that makes him an idiot. Here is why. Go find a garage. Now close the door. Now turn your car on and sit there for a couple of hours. No its okay I'll wait. Make sure you have at least half a tank. Right yeah you didn't do it because you'd be fucking dead. Now what the hell do you think our atomsphere does? All those emmisions go somewhere and it just plain old isn't good for you, like second hand smoking. So litigation which resticts emission vomiting Trucks/SUVs seems like a great fucking idea to me. They do. I don't disagree what so ever. Also using every drop of oil on the planet is a BAD idea. Switching gears is a good idea. Back to the personal freedom thing which will be a reoccuring thing througout this. You'll see it starts to get muddy. Starting small with smoking. Which would be better, letting the owner decide if his establishment is smoking or non, or letting the government decide? See the propeter always had the right to decide if thier establishment permits smoking. This means that the problem never should of gotten to the state level. Now bars have a smoking ban because non smokers feel that they have the right to go anywhere despite the owners leagally granted rights. So what makes a store owner diffrent from a truck driving gas guzzling asshole? Well the whole world being at stake for one. Still the thing is that laws are not isolated. Thery build off each other, use each other as presidents and when one law is made an eye has to be kept on what can come out of them.
Electric Cars are Crap: Yeah this argument is pretty stupid also and I remeber getting into it with my step dad ages ago. Sure electric cars are crap. I don't think anyone is really argueing with it. The thing is thought that electric cars and hybrids aren't the only kids on the block anymore. Some people figgured out how to make fuel out of this ineditable bean that grows in just about any biom ever. A point which he neatly dodged. He instead focused on the electric cars and the fact that hybrid cars are expensive and that once you have done a cost benifit analysis you'd have to drive one for about 10 years to match the money you save buying an SUV. Yeah he's right there. But the thing is that technology isn't static. As it improves costs go down, pretty soon the cost benifit anaylsis will come out ahead. Also once all the oil is gone then your cost benifit anlysis gets thrown out the window. Rush beleives that Obama will hike gas up to 4 bucks a gallon to force people to buy hybid. Honestly I don't think such measures are beyond Obama. But to write off alternative energy using cars as worthless is foolish. Also for all his talk about personal freedom he sure doesn't seem to afraid of shitting all over people who might want to think just a little greener. Where are there persona rights? Oh yeah not important they aren't the truck driving majority.
Controlling Wages- It is my lunch time so I gott wrap this up later and I can say I'll come back to it but I know I won't. This one is just scary it will let the government control the wages of all employees at gm not just the ceos. All the sudden that personal freedom shit he was ranting about early seems a little bit more logical.
Personal Freedom- Here is where Rush agrees with something I wrote earlyer during the election. I saw what he is willing to do to win and it frightened me. Now I am starting to see it again. It happens to be over a mater I agree with, so it is easy to be pragmatic about it. But what happens when I don't agree.
Rush is still an idiot.
NOM! Linguini with clam sauce awaits!
Alright he is. But sometimes he has a point. Yeah yeah so what the hell was I doing grooving with Limbaug? Well all of his broadcasts are up on demonoid and I like listening to people I don't agree with. It's interesting, and he is not stupid. A lot of his arguements are sound and, as much as it shames me to say it, he agrees with what I was saying about Obama before the election. Ugh.
The boradcast I was listening to in paticular was
March 31, 2009 and it mostly had to do with Obama's handling of the automoblie industry. I can see why he's having such a hard time with it though. It is a nearly impossible argument to make and I am rather torn on it myself. So lets get all the components together.
Problems he has with Obama's auto industry thingy listed in order of merit from stupidest to not so stupid:
Personal Freedom
Environmental Impact
Electric cars are crap
Controling Wages
Personal Freedom
Yeah the freedom is on there twice. Rush has this habit of not argueing very clearly when he rants and as a result he starts tripping over himself. Anyway lets start dismantling this crap.
Personal Freedom- Rush is claiming that Trucks and SUV's are the cars that are selling, and any litigation which restricts our ability to buy trucks and SUV's is horrid. This argument comes out of the fact that Obama is chopping a whole bunch a vehicles out of GM's product lines. Personally I think this line of reasoning is insane. No where are we gaurenteed stuff. I've also feet that the truck/SUV obession is a series of abombinations that leads to innatentive drivers. People drive Trucks because they feel safer way up high, well guess what you do less of when you feel safer, yeah pay atension. There is also a point where he calls anyone who buys a hybrid car stupid and he ends up berating a caller over it. This is starting to step on my later points though so I am going to move on.
Environmental Impact: Rush doesn't believe in global warming. This is one of those things that makes him an idiot. Here is why. Go find a garage. Now close the door. Now turn your car on and sit there for a couple of hours. No its okay I'll wait. Make sure you have at least half a tank. Right yeah you didn't do it because you'd be fucking dead. Now what the hell do you think our atomsphere does? All those emmisions go somewhere and it just plain old isn't good for you, like second hand smoking. So litigation which resticts emission vomiting Trucks/SUVs seems like a great fucking idea to me. They do. I don't disagree what so ever. Also using every drop of oil on the planet is a BAD idea. Switching gears is a good idea. Back to the personal freedom thing which will be a reoccuring thing througout this. You'll see it starts to get muddy. Starting small with smoking. Which would be better, letting the owner decide if his establishment is smoking or non, or letting the government decide? See the propeter always had the right to decide if thier establishment permits smoking. This means that the problem never should of gotten to the state level. Now bars have a smoking ban because non smokers feel that they have the right to go anywhere despite the owners leagally granted rights. So what makes a store owner diffrent from a truck driving gas guzzling asshole? Well the whole world being at stake for one. Still the thing is that laws are not isolated. Thery build off each other, use each other as presidents and when one law is made an eye has to be kept on what can come out of them.
Electric Cars are Crap: Yeah this argument is pretty stupid also and I remeber getting into it with my step dad ages ago. Sure electric cars are crap. I don't think anyone is really argueing with it. The thing is thought that electric cars and hybrids aren't the only kids on the block anymore. Some people figgured out how to make fuel out of this ineditable bean that grows in just about any biom ever. A point which he neatly dodged. He instead focused on the electric cars and the fact that hybrid cars are expensive and that once you have done a cost benifit analysis you'd have to drive one for about 10 years to match the money you save buying an SUV. Yeah he's right there. But the thing is that technology isn't static. As it improves costs go down, pretty soon the cost benifit anaylsis will come out ahead. Also once all the oil is gone then your cost benifit anlysis gets thrown out the window. Rush beleives that Obama will hike gas up to 4 bucks a gallon to force people to buy hybid. Honestly I don't think such measures are beyond Obama. But to write off alternative energy using cars as worthless is foolish. Also for all his talk about personal freedom he sure doesn't seem to afraid of shitting all over people who might want to think just a little greener. Where are there persona rights? Oh yeah not important they aren't the truck driving majority.
Controlling Wages- It is my lunch time so I gott wrap this up later and I can say I'll come back to it but I know I won't. This one is just scary it will let the government control the wages of all employees at gm not just the ceos. All the sudden that personal freedom shit he was ranting about early seems a little bit more logical.
Personal Freedom- Here is where Rush agrees with something I wrote earlyer during the election. I saw what he is willing to do to win and it frightened me. Now I am starting to see it again. It happens to be over a mater I agree with, so it is easy to be pragmatic about it. But what happens when I don't agree.
Rush is still an idiot.
NOM! Linguini with clam sauce awaits!
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