Current State of Stuff

I haven't written anything substantive in awhile (and I am not exactly promising that now), instead leaning on fun and interesting videos in order to entertain or expand your mind. I hope you were entertained and/or expanded. A great deal of stuff has gone on in this world (the general world and that more internal one which takes place inside the boundaries of this country's wet Northwest and my own mind) and I can say things about that stuff. Let's go through some things.

Muammar al-Gaddafi

Libya is a goddamned mess and so are we. Gaddafi (or Qaddafi) is still alive and NATO's concerted efforts to cease his heartbeat have resulted in many other stopped pulses. I think they should go after him, personally, but for a coalition of futuristic military forces the attempt seems rather sloppy and dangerous (like all those special secret wars of the Clinton era). Now, don't get me wrong, I'd rather we all, worldwide, dumped our collective weapons caches into some well-contained blackhole to be effectively dismantled, molecule by molecule, but we don't live in such a world where this could be the case. We are a rather unevolved species for all of our loud celebration of technological supremacy. Give up your cell phone and be a bonobo. Yet, to live in the world we do, we must think about the world we live in and work at things from what's there. This isn't to say that we can't aid our own evolution by fostering progressive ideas and tossing those which obviously lead to dead ends. We can. Certainly. I won't get into what those dead ends are as I hope they are obvious.

We are a mess, as was said before. Here the "we" I unfortunately automatically use is to mean the United States of America. This is a large country with wildly divergent and polarized political beliefs (which I think are a result of a mostly worthless though otherwise motivated news media and an incredibly dumbed-down electorate). Political wins from these polarized points are more prized than the enactment of legislation which will help the people as a whole. This is a country where a politician's sex life is more damaging to them than the awful things they do in the name of their constituents. I know that the temptation of writing a Weiner headline is tremendous, but we are adults here. Can we not get over the fact that men have penises and women have vaginas? A good politician was brought down by some silly personal thing which the public shouldn't know or care about. Shame on us all.

Debt ceiling? Yeah, really stupid. China is even telling us to raise it. How ignorant can the GOP be on this front (let alone all the other fronts)? I will leave it there.

At least we saw American progression recently in New York. Men are welcome to join in matrimony with men, and women with women, in that state's legal eye. This is wonderful. Another stepping stone towards real equality in a world somehow mystified into thinking they are already free and equal. I am sure Pat Robertson will soon be shaking violently in prayer for some natural disaster to befall that small state. What a small and ridiculous old man. Anyway, congratulations to the many gay of New York.

More personally, I have been recently enthralled with Neil deGrasse Tyson, poetic astrophysicist. This is to say that recently I have been becoming a science nerd, and as a result, there was Tyson.



I volunteer at the Space Travel Supply Store in Seattle and we carry many science books which are fairly digestible by the not-so-astrophysicist. We carry two of Tyson's books, the last of which is called Death by Black Hole, and I am super excited to read them both. I am now reading Brian Greene's The Hidden Reality, which deals with the field of quantum physics and the insane implications of these theories. It is thoroughly blowing my mind. That is all I can say semi-intelligently about the subject. In keeping with my earlier hope that people would take responsibility for our species' evolution (and that said evolution must first take place in the realm of ideas), I am doing my damnedest to flood my gray matter with the particulars of our physical universe, domestic, extra-terrestrial and intra-cellular. This education of self must also take into account all that came before us and thus I am itching to better inform myself on the science of evolution. I am tasking myself with reading On the Origin of Species in the next year if all goes well and accompanying that with a side of Richard Dawkins. OK, enough science nerd stuff.

Notice the fancy new wheels

Bike nerd stuff. In the past few months I have been riding my bike to work and going on occasional "big" rides just outside of the city (the quotes around big meaning that twenty to forty miles isn't anywhere near a big ride for some particular readers). My bike is thoroughly vintage, and though this has an allure for a certain type of rider, it means to me that my bike is old. In fact, the whole thing looks to be from the mid-seventies, perhaps 1976 if you are to believe the internet. I have begun to augment my ride, starting with new wheels. All that should remain of the seventies by the end of this will be the old steel frame, a beautiful maroon ordeal that calls itself "Shogun". It is exciting for me. I can understand if it isn't for you.

One week in, spicy and delicious

Food nerd stuff. Not too much on this front, though I am now an entirely free man in my vege-/pescatarian world, roaming the naked streets of Seattle in search of yeast-risen buns and cloudy dry-hopped grain fermentations. I will soon be biking to wine country in order to further indulge. Things are good, for the most part, in that way. My culinary pursuits, however interesting, have mostly been toward the simple function of pleasantly sating the hunger of me and mine. I have, though, started the lacto-fermentation of some jalapeno peppers to start the fermentation season in a real spicy way. This was easy and anyone with a mason jar can play. A pound of peppers, half an onion or less, 1-6 garlic cloves, a tablespoon of sea salt and a few tablespoons of whey (or the juice from some previously fermented concoction) will do the job. I added some carrot and sugar to the mix for a little sweetness. All things go into the jar, sprinkling salt as you go, and then some spring water (no tap water!) until about an inch from the top. I left it out with the lid screwed down just a little so that gas could escape. Then you just watch it over some days. Sniff it. Be a tactile creature. This is an ancient practice. Soon you will have pickled jalapenos, but not sooner than me.

That's the state of some stuff as I know it right now. Hope it was worth reading.

Solstice Celebration in the Rain

Today, moist and gray, was the Solstice Parade in Seattle. Not a parade of tired old men driving SUVs with lazy designs plastered on the sides. No engines at all actually. All floats are required to be powered only by the petroleum-free machinations of the human form. Pushed or pedaled, brilliantly designed, the floats are a celebration of the sun, the day during which we see the most of it (which is actually the 21st). But today that sun didn't come out to be praised. We did it anyway. Further, people get naked. And ride bikes (which I will add after the jump).




Naked bikers after the jump...

Random, Cool

Yeah?

Open-Source Futures

This gives me hope for the future of humanity. There is reasoned sanity. There is people caring for people.



Enjoy.

Yeast

These eukaryotic micro-organisms make our beer, our wine; they leaven our bread and make our pitas pocketed. Yeast, a significant member of the Fungi kingdom, has been in use for thousands of years, much of that time without our understanding of the why or the what. You let juiced grapes sit out for awhile, and ta-da! we're incredibly ebullient and talkative (or possibly asleep). Live yeast, bought in paper packets from the grocery, bubbles and foams when reinvigorated in warm water, and inflates balls of dough triplefold. Don't forget vinegar either, which itself is only possible through the tireless efforts of these singular creatures. These little unicellular beings sustain themselves on sugars, and depending on the venue (i.e. drowning in a sweet grain or grape soup or enveloped in wetted flour) defecate alcohol or carbon dioxide or both. It lives in our guts, on our skin and in the barely visible particulates of the air.

Imagine France without yeast. Or say, any other place wherein good things are had. The wines, the breads, the dipping vinegars. The flavor imparted upon baked goods is palpable, it is the identity of the thing. To take it away from that bread or roll or bun is to be left with not only an uninspired and airless slag of grain, but also one without that thick and succulent je ne sais quoi flavor. To leave it out of wine or beer is to leave them out entirely, to be left with grape juice and soda. Vinegar, pivotal in most common condiments, is the most unavoidable though, seconded only by soy sauce. Try to go to a restaurant and order around these obvious obstacles. Forget Chinese. No more casual sushi (not only the problem of soy sauce here but also the vinegared rice). You'll have difficulty eating Italian too and most salads are out of the question. You might even go home and attempt to hobble together a ketchup or mayo analogue, in hopes that you could carry it along in a to-go bottle and again enjoy slathering fries in dip. It won't be the same though. You'll notice the unfettered joy on the faces of your devil-may-care companions as they swallow down goblets of wine or pints of beer, getting it on their upper lips or spilling it down their faces, and smiling as they lick it or wipe it away and go after another handful of sweet potato fries in curry ketchup or pesto mayo. You'll know. And you'll cordone yourself off at the bakery, investigating only the scones and the cookies, the muffins and cupcakes (all the while you wanted something savory). You'll take to the internet on fruitless searches for those yeasty borderlands (does rindy cheese have yeast? which restaurants use liquid aminos?) and come out less informed, more confused and in want of all those things you can't have and all the stuff you aren't sure of. Then you'll pull the vodka from the freezer (as it is distilled and filtered) and make a drink. These are the facts and my impressions upon denying it past my lips the last weeks.

Just over a month ago, after completing three fruitless months of a gluten-free life, I got my food-panel blood test back. Yeast (brewer's and baker's) among other less dramatic items showed up as an allergy for me, which I hadn't ever considered previously. A daily fact of my life, from nutritional yeast to wine and beer to vinegars and kombucha, had to be eliminated for an indeterminate period of time. It is still indeterminate, but there has been marked improvement in the state of my digestive system, in the state of that overraw length of piping from throat to gut. And that is where I stand, or sit, or lay. I've friended distilled alcohol and lemon juice. I sigh less when my friends eat things I can't. I am attempting creativity in the kitchen in the face of this adversity, and when all is said and done, it is a hell of a lot easier than divorcing gluten. We've become great friends again. Absence makes the heart grow fond, and the stomach grow wanton.

Facts, Not Sensationalism

Just a pie chart:

Krugman on Political-Economic Ignorance

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/26/worse-is-better/

Absolutely Devastating

This really gives you an idea of the scope of damage incurred in Japan, satellite images before and after. Whole homes ripped from the ground like loose debris. Beyond that, they are estimating 10,000 deaths and climbing, radiation sickness from overheating and exploding nuclear plants, and it is being called the country's worst disaster since World War II. In the whole scheme of things, looking out over geological time, this is a hiccup. The Earth has made no promises to us about our survival. We are just another animal, susceptible to extinction. This shows that no matter how advanced we become, no matter the supposed strength of our structures and the robustness of our technology, it can all come down in minutes. Be thankful for this moment, for those that surround you, the food and drink you get to enjoy and the comings and goings of the sun. The present is the only thing that we can be sure of and revel in. Enjoy it.


In other news, Libya's revolutionary spirit isn't ebbing a bit, with some youth turning it towards rebel violence (interactive map of the clashes). And the protests are spreading across the Arab world, from Yemen to Bahrain to Tunisia and of course, Egypt. Things are happening. The people are realizing that they outnumber the ruling class. This should be infectious and empowering. Hopefully some beneficial outcome will sprout from this unrest. Hopefully this can be an example to us as well. We should be the ones who dictate our existences, not power-hungry and greedy politicians. They are often in it for themselves, as we have seen countless times globally and in our own country.

Thanks to the New York Times and their wonderful resources, which I linked like crazy.

Ridiculousness, Starring Bottled Water

Most bottled water is just bottled tap water anyway. A lot of petroleum for a little bit of convenience.



Let's talk about the supposed cleanliness of bottled water vs. tap water:



How about we pull out those metal bottles and stop adding to this pointless waste.

Arguing For A Robust Public Media

There's been much threatening from the political right in Senate on cutting everything they can (save, of course, for the massive and unrivaled amount set aside for wars, secret and reported, reasoned and industrially motivated). They would love to cut anything too high brow, say education and the arts, and while they are at it, PBS and NPR. This comparably small sum given over to these organizations (in relation to the aforementioned sum for sanctioned murder) should not be taken away. Who wants to live in a world without Sesame Street or All Things Considered? NPR is a bright light in the increasingly dim world of news. They have journalists all over the world, reporting on events as they happen, without surrounding each item in a cultural and political aura based on any particular bias. This cannot be said for many other sources, and one in particular. Read this article out of The Atlantic concerning this very issue. Here is a segment:

There are jobs where people are mainly motivated by the hope of big money. (Finance in general.) There are jobs where the main motivation is job-security. And there is a category of jobs where, as absolutely everyone recognizes, it makes a tremendous difference that "employees" care about something beyond pay, hours, and security. Teachers. Soldiers. Doctors and nurses. Judges and police. Political leaders, if they want to be more than hacks. And, people in news organizations.

Comment away.

A New Website...

I found a new website. It is called typetrigger.

So, every six hours a new trigger word or phrase is given (say "dog collar" or "remaining nameless") and then you (or someone else) write up to 300 words from it. This can be shared with no-one, only members or everyone. You pick.

I have done two so far. It's nice to be able to just write a little, without any express impressive purpose. Try it out yourself or tell someone about it.

Shifting Educational Paradigms or Are Our Kids Learned Much?

So, Western education. How is that going for us? Well, the U.S. consistently falls way behind in tests given internationally. And, generally, many parents must rely on expensive private schooling. That shouldn't be. Maybe, instead of enacting legislation that assumes all kids are the same and patting oneself on the back for that crippling maneuver, we should change the way in which we teach. Maybe we should spend less on war and more on arts and education. I know, it sounds crazy. Check out this video. It is not only entertaining but informative.



Feel free to leave comments.

Writing 50,000 Words in a Month

So, for the month of November, I wrote. I wrote a lot. I wrote about 55,000 words in total. The event was the National Novel Writing Month, or for those in the know, NaNoWriMo. 50,000 words in a month (30 days) equals out to about 1,667 words a day on average. This means about an hour to two a day for a month. I must say, it was difficult. At first. But, after doing it for awhile and foregoing social events, I felt inspired by my own abilities and I wrote with relish most days following the initial ten or so. This was what I was engaged in while I was leaving this blog to disuse. So, now I have spent the day logging posts for the possible enjoyment of my small crowd. The novel in question is a ramshackle affair whose parts may be stronger than its whole. A rubric of ideas from which I may pull, if you will. I will share a small section and cease my bloggish rambling.

"The bus was an experience which truly showed the heart of the city and which varied depending on the part of the city the bus was in. In this section, the University District to Ballard, it tended to be quiet weirdos, loud weirdos, totally middle of the road new generation business men (who read the Seattle Times and tried not to look uncomfortable in their suits), or students. His experience on the bus was mostly one of scholarship, or rather he would read vigorously, shutting out the world around him and occasionally peeking his head out of the words to check his location. To be able to read on a moving vehicle, he had had to train himself, tune certain parts of his brain into not reacting to the movement of the bus and rather focusing on the movement of the eyes across the landscape of words. He was very pleased with himself whenever he thought of it. The bus allowed certain opportunities such as this which were not an option on the bike. This made him feel less guilty about leaving his spry little bike hiding in the bike room, gathering dust. He read and sometimes wrote. When he wrote he would look out in front of him into the infinite cave of thought, or observe his neighbors for inspiration. At this moment, on this day of his riding, just in front of him, in the seat before him, were two young men, students it seemed, who thought everything was funny and whose laughs were an awkward ordeal that couldn’t hide their own uncomfortableness with their own man bodies and man voices and man to man relationships.
One of the two man-boys was a small giant with knobby sausage fingers, whose nails looked like small square plates pushed deep into putty. These fingers were the outlet of his insecurities and his uncomfortableness. He grabbed the purple plastic handle on the seat in front of him like he was grabbing the ears of a small child, big putty hands on each side of the thing, and he began to thumb at the middle for no reason at all, his oily thumb tips massaging the hard plastic. He would do this and also use his thumb-looking fore fingers to roughly stroke the thing with outward motions. The third and grossest of the activities with this poor plastic handle was a right handed twisting and stroking, some unconscious masturbatory gesture he hadn’t yet excelled from expressing. Henry’s face twisted up in disgust. This was not the morning image that he wanted. He couldn’t stop watching though. The man-boy couldn’t stop molesting the thing either, like there was still some un-oiled surfaces he had to cover with the sick ritualistic gestures of a pastor with his altar boy. Henry began to express his feelings of disgust on the page, describing the display very much similarly as this narrator has done above, his script jarred often by the bumps.
When he was reading on the bus, he always got the feeling like something was going on that he needed to see, some scenery or event, something he couldn’t see just anytime. He could have gone without the man-boy event. But, when he was not reading, just staring, and nothing happened, as it was apt to, he felt as though he should be productive and read. He couldn’t win, even with himself. There were always at least two books to read, and two notebooks in which to write. Besides that he kept a camera. He liked to take pictures and didn’t care if they turned out to be anything or spent an eternity catching byte dust on his computer. The act itself was enjoyable. He knew nothing about framing, technically, or really what many of the settings did. He just took the pictures how he thought they looked good. It wasn’t an analogue for experience though as it is for many these days, the Asian tourists and the Hipsters in particular. He felt that they never actually lived life but rather made proof of a life lived. They weren’t there for any of it, personally, just their human forms. There were all the Asian tourists with their factory smiles giving the V for Victory sign with their hands in every single shot, waiting until they could get home and put it on their social networking site. The Hipsters as well just made evidence of life in order for it to be posted online, going further though into that sickly realm of irony. The ironic mustaches and poses, the ironic mimicry of Asian tourists even possibly, creating some facsimile of reality that seemed labyrinthine and inescapable."

I must say that I have done no editing and would be so very fine with anyone telling me if something sounded weird or was just outright wrong. It is very possible that both things have occurred, possibly simultaneously. Anyway, that's all I got. Plus this cartoon which identifies my situation near perfectly:

That Whole Wikileaks Thing...

So, unless you are a cave-dweller (in which case you wouldn't be reading this right now), you know about Julian Assange and his secretive assemblage of super-hackers. In the last few months, several thousands of documents have been released, some of which have shown the public things they assumed but didn't have proof of directly (like say, from the horse's very own mouth where the horse is the government or the Pentagon). People have been stunned and appalled by the relish with which innocent people were mown down with helicopter super-machine guns (whose bullets are made to pierce tank armor). Yes, we all know that war is hell, but we all hope that the mindset which made the Third Reich possible wouldn't seep so easily into the skulls of our supposed protectors. From "Collateral Murder" to the more recent slow dissemination of diplomatic cables, Wikileaks has made a name for itself.

Ridiculous calls to action by certain entertainers/politicians, calling Assange a traitor (which he isn't, obviously, not being a U.S. citizen or acting within the U.S.), a terrorist (again silly and ignorant), and targeting him for assassination, show that this has stirred some pots and some people are scared about the implications (not to the structure of foreign relations, I'll say, but to their own exposition possibly). Wikileaks has so far put out more leaked documents than have all the news organizations combined over the years. This is significant. That the current leaks, the cables, haven't turned out to be shocking or game-changers exactly, doesn't mean that they don't have huge implications to not only government transparency but also the meaning of free speech and the function of an increasingly impotent journalism. These leaks reveal something of all shades of government, throughout the whole world, no matter what ideology is at work. Therefore this has the amazing ability to surpass political identity within the public and let them see exactly in what their representative government has been engaged, be it bad or good.

Already, those who didn't agree with the secrecy of the transparency-obsessed Wikileaks have split off to create Openleaks, which will launch tomorrow. The basis of this more transparent organization would be to act as a protected go-between for leakers and publications, where they themselves publish nothing at all. This is a good thing. And this is not to say that I don't agree with the secretive workings of Wikileaks, but it means that the ideas are finding footing in which to evolve this beneficial process of stopping illegalities on the governmental level. Julian Assange, the media doll, has added mystery-novel flourishes to the story with the news of his insurance file (his "poison pill"), a 256-bit encrypted file (called "nearly impossible to crack" by a major cyber security expert) which includes 1.4 gigabytes of leaked material which may include information leaked from Bank of America and BP and the convenience of the Interpol warrant's timing on spurious charges. The key to the encryption lies with him and will be released to the thousands who have downloaded the archived file from the site in the event of his indictment or murder. That is, I have to say, pretty cool. Since his arrest, so called "hacktivists" have attacked the sites of Amazon, PayPal, Mastercard and Visa for pulling their services from Wikileaks. It looks like an effort by a small and mobilized group representing goals antithetical to the overly secretive governments. This I can applaud, no matter how little it will really affect those companies' abilities to make money.

What does it mean? What will happen in the long run? How will this affect the happenings in the worlds of government and journalism? This is not yet apparent. But, at the least, Wikileaks has garnered a response by the U.S. government and its allies which shows their disregard for transparency and how easily they can slip into tyrannical muscle flexing. Whatever happens, it will be something to watch.

Here are some articles and websites of note:

• http://mirror.wikileaks.info/
• http://twitter.com/wikileaks
•  https://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/2010/11/29/julian-assange-and-the-computer-conspiracy-%E2%80%9Cto-destroy-this-invisible-government%E2%80%9D/#
• http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/12/information-antidote-fear-wikileaks-law-and-you
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/wikileaks-oil-giants-squeeze-chavez
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/08/wikileaks-cables-shell-nigeria-spying
• http://www.beehivecity.com/hightech/icelandic-it-firm-to-sue-visa-mastercard-over-wikileaks-cut-off-229282/
• http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/indoleaks-touts-revealing-wikileaks-documents-but-technical-problems-persist/411333
• Interesting Documentary -- http://pulsemedia.org/2010/12/12/wikirebels/
• http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/12/10/the_sunshine_policy?page=0,0
• Supposedly launching tomorrow -- http://openleaks.org/
• Mirror site Wikileaks -- http://213.251.145.96/

Infinite Jest, Rightly Named

A couple months ago I decided to pick up a mammoth book that had been sitting on a bookshelf, weighing down a bookshelf, in my apartment, to commit myself to this book fully, as full commitment is required before taking on such a task. This book, as mentioned in this post's title, is Infinite Jest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Jest) by the late great David Foster Wallace or, more intimately, DFW. And I have enjoyed it greatly ever since. For the most part. The beginnings were rocky for me as it takes place in a world set apart from our own, although based on our own. A world in which there is something called the O.N.A.N. (supposedly the Organization of North American Nations), Anti-O.N.A.N. Quebecois groups, a Great Convexity/Concavity (a great swath of land between Canada and the U.S. occupied by waste, both nuclear and domestic, which both sides try to claim is the other's, with the name variation dependent on which side one lives on), and years that are no longer numeral but nominal and subsidized (i.e. instead of 1998, Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment or Year of the Tuck's Medicated Pad) among other things. To synthesize these and many many more pieces of information into an understandable whole was difficult, as the writing, though engaging, is dense and it took about two hundred of the thousand pages to grasp the world of IJ. He also uses a variety of obscure words and numerous endnotes, with further endnotes and footnotes attached sometimes to the original endnotes. There is a website, I think there are many actually, that helps guide one through the reading of Infinite Jest, in which each page is broken down with definitions of words and explanations of phrases or dialectical difficulties (i.e. the Brogue monologue at an AA meeting). It helps and I have come to see this book as an education. I am learning words and ideas which I didn't know before. There is homework.

Here is an image of the book that I will insert to break up the text of this post:

Ever since I began reading this monolithic book, many other people I know or have met have also starting reading David Foster Wallace works. I am on a mailing list now. I am part of the cult. We have a secret handshake. He is dead, but alive in this silent network. I was outside during my lunch some days ago, with my book open, seemingly unidentifiable, enjoying the sun, when a man walked by, stopped and came back to ask me if I was reading IJ. We conversed and he confessed to being on page 108 very specifically, and we nodded to each other knowingly, holding special DFW knowledge. He walked away, stopped and turned, yelling something back to me. I couldn't hear him. He walked back to me and told me cryptically about the mailing list and how to find it. Now, I am on the mailing list. Involved in the cult, happily.

I am now on page 788 myself. Seven hundred and eighty eight Biblically-thin pages crammed to the margins with small text. And this doesn't even include the endnotes I have tackled. Even smaller text. I do love it though. Thinking about the book excites me. A central character in the book is something referred to throughout variably as "The Entertainment" or "samizdat." It is a weapon of sorts. It is a film that is so addictive to watch that the viewer no longer wants anything but to watch it, and invariably they, the viewer, ends up dying from malnutrition or thirst or destruction of self (an act referred to in the book as obliteration of "one's own map" or their own personal "cartography"). This idea of the "entertainment" is so original and refreshing, as a literary idea, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it lately.

Wallace has an amazing voice throughout. It is one of total experience and depth. The novel's meat is primarily divided between characters at the hilltopped Enfield Tennis Academy (a place of grooming teenagers to go to "The Show," i.e. professional tennis) and those of the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House which sits at the bottom of said hill in Enfield, MA, a suburb of Boston. Wallace's ability to dive into the psychological minutiae of both the teenagers of the tennis academy and the dark and addicted husks of people at the Ennet House was surprising and emotional, involving a large amount of personal investment. He seems to know so well the internal world of addiction, depression and abuse, as well as the whole realm of competitive tennis, mentally and technically. There are so many intricately laid out literary parallels between storylines of the separate locations and people, which gives the reader a seeming direct connection between themselves and the narrator, a little wink and nudge from the fifth wall where the audience and the writer both sit. There are numerous articles and message boards and dissertations and mailing lists that all deal with these intricacies and themes. They are too numerous to even begin to deal with inside of this post. The story is too vast to even outline in this post. I am doing injustice to it by even discussing only this much.

I would highly suggest this book, with a caveat. If one is interested in taking on such an adventure as this, they should first read some of DFW's essays and short stories (for David Lynch fans, read "David Lynch Keeps His Head" from A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again). This will allow one to get an idea of his writing style and his predilection for foot- and endnotes. He was a genius, as judged by the MacArthur Fellowship in 1997. One shouldn't feel bad about having to look up some words, but know that one is probably going to have to look up those words. Think of it as learning. Remember doing that? Crosswords aren't enough, despite what you think. Sudoku, the same. Then, seeing that you have a liking for his writing and his incisiveness and his big words and his sort of comedy, you should find resources for support during the reading. I will link to some at the end. Then, after reading it, and hopefully enjoying it, tell me about it. I would love to hear from a fellow cultist.

Resources:
http://infinitejest.wallacewiki.com/david-foster-wallace/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.thehowlingfantods.com/inf.htm
http://infinitesummer.org/

David Foster Wallace himself had depression issues and, after bad luck with various anti-depressants, ended up "eliminating his own map." He hung himself on September 12th, 2008. RIP DFW.

Music I Ignored Two Years Ago

Well, The National has a new album out, called High Violet, and back when they were impressing everyone two years ago, I was ignoring it. I am very good at that skill. I shined on a certain video the other day and found, within the next two days of watching it, that I had gained some sort of crush upon the band, without my knowing it while it was building up within me. Now, maybe it was merely the effect of the video and the lead singer in the video, a mister Matt Berninger, whose strange little non-committal dance-and-sing act throughout the video was mesmerizing, but I think that I have to get all of their albums, all five of them, and probably illegally. Here is the video:



I hope it is enjoyable, or at least ignorable.

South Park, Muhummad and The Stranger

On April 14th, the infamously controversial and insanely entertaining animated show, South Park, aired their 200th episode in which the Prophet Muhammad is heard speaking from a U-Haul trailer and later comes out dressed in a bear costume. I have not seen this episode as it is not available to watch online as the episodes usually are. I am betting it was funny. Comedy Central, in responding to threats from a humorless group called Revolution Muslim, took the episode down and in the continuing storyline of this week's episode both the visual depiction (in a bear suit, nonetheless) and his name were blacked and bleeped out. A member of this group said that it was an insult to the Prophet and warned the creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, that they might end up like the filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Van Gogh, a Dutch filmmaker, was stabbed killed in 2004 by an Islamic militant for making a movie critical of abuse of women in some Islamic societies. Ridiculous. These incidents and threats are horrific and in no way represent the actions of people with 1) brains and 2) hearts. 1) If any religion has so affected one's mental faculties in such a way that they can justify murder (or for that matter, fleecing anyone else's rights), then maybe it isn't the best way to get to one's own personal heaven. 2) Anyone with a scrap of emotion (i.e. a heart, see "Tin Man") knows that they shouldn't kill other people who presumably have emotions and hearts. Heartless and brainless people aren't supposed to be the clergy, they are supposed to replace us in the work force and are fueled by old people's medicine (i.e. they are robots, see Saturday Night Live Season 21, Episode 6). Anyway, here is a link to the story: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/arts/television/23park.html. And if you'd rather, the British version of things: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/22/south-park-muhammad-episode-censored.

The Stranger is Seattle's local weekly. They often have cool/funny/relevant covers. This week the cover is all three.

If you can't see it, up in the corner it says "It's Wrong To Draw Muhammad! Don't Connect The Dots!" This is obviously a plea to connect the dots, vis-a-vis reverse psychology. So I did.

Truthfully, it looks more like a Santa to me. If no one was ever supposed to draw the Prophet Muhammad, then how would anyone know what he looked like? Mentioning that it "is" Muhammad inside that bear costume means that it is a valid depiction worth killing for? This religion stuff can be exhausting to understand sometimes, I think, because each person has a bit of their sacred book to back up any action they take. Next thing you know someone is going to religiously justify killing a doctor. I am glad that day has not yet come to pass.

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Addendum to post now considering a comment made concerning post -
There is apparently, in a certain old text, a description of what our old friend the Prophet looks like. The Shia do not forbid his depiction I have been told. The Sunni then must make up the radical perspective of "No Connecting The Dots or Pay With Death!" I think I may have found, based on the descriptions, a painting of Muhammad, or at least a likeness. Let's see:

Thanks to the beautiful artist, Anne Petty, for her rendition of this fellow, also known more casually as simply "Lucas."

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Further addendum:
The connected dots figure, after a long look, is actually the Burger King. It has a BK on the crown that is on its head. Hmmm... even better.