James Patterson tries to save bookstores

At left: The Open Book, the first place I ever worked here in South Carolina, closed its doors permanently four years ago.










Mega-successful author James Patterson is on a mission to save the beleaguered, independent bookstore. Good luck, James!

As I have written here before, I looove bookstores. And so many bookstores are closing; Amazon and e-books and the net have threatened the book industry. (In fact, my photo in that last link, Carolina Book Rack? Like the Open Book, it is now long gone.)

Patterson is giving away $1 million to bookstores, in what he calls a "bookstore bailout":

The best-selling author James Patterson has started a program to give away $1 million of his personal fortune to dozens of bookstores, allowing them to invest in improvements, dole out bonuses to employees and expand literacy outreach programs.

More than 50 stores across the country will begin receiving cash grants this week, from Percy’s Burrow in Topsham, Me., to Page & Palette in Fairhope, Ala., to A Whale of a Tale in Irvine, Calif.

“I just want to get people more aware and involved in what’s going on here, which is that, with the advent of e-books, we either have a great opportunity or a great problem,” he said. “Our bookstores in America are at risk. Publishing and publishers as we’ve known them are at stake. To some extent the future of American literature is at stake.”

The current health of independent bookstores is mixed. While some have benefited from the disappearance of the Borders chain in 2011 and a shrinking Barnes & Noble, the stores have been hit especially hard with consumers switching from paper copies to e-books.

And though many communities remain loyal to their shops, and the American Booksellers Association says its membership has recently grown, the online discounters have wreaked havoc on the independent bookseller’s business model.

Patterson began complaining last year, that the book industry needed a bailout from the feds, just like Wall Street got a bailout. Not surprisingly, nobody paid any attention, so he took matters into his own hands:

Last year, Mr. Patterson placed full-page ads in The New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly arguing that the federal government’s financial support of troubled industries like Wall Street and the automobile sector should extend to the bookstore business. Since that appears to be a pipe dream, Mr. Patterson decided to create his own bailout fund as part of his mission to promote literature, especially for children.

“I’m rich; I don’t need to sell more books,” Mr. Patterson said. “But I do think it’s essential for kids to read more broadly. And people just need to go into bookstores more. It’s not top of mind as much as it used to be.”

He began his project last year by getting the word to store owners that he was willing to begin writing them checks, which will range from $2,000 to $15,000, according to a spokeswoman for Mr. Patterson.

Bookstores responded with informal mini-proposals, explaining what they might do with some extra money. Bank Street Bookstore in Manhattan said it would use the funds to post and stream online video of in-store events. Hicklebee’s in San Jose, Calif., said it wanted to buy a new computer system, replacing its “small, ancient screens with green print” and perhaps bestow a bonus on its hardworking manager, Ann Seaton.

“I think it’s going to have a huge impact,” said Linda Marie Barrett, the general manager of Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in Asheville, N.C., which successfully applied for a grant to replace badly worn carpeting and a damaged parquet floor. “He seems to be keenly aware that bookstores operate on small budgets.”

And I love seeing the name of MALAPROPS, one of my favorite places in the world, in the New York Times. I am SO PLEASED they are getting some of the bailout money... and believe me, their carpet sorely needs replacing!

I am wishing all the best to James Patterson and the bookstores... and wouldn't it be nice if other rich people took this kind of initiative, to help others in their field? Millionaire musicians should be helping music stores; millionaire athletes ought to be helping small-town teams; millionaire chefs should be teaching young folks to cook, etc etc etc. Let's see some civic responsibility, rich peeps!

As it is, it makes international news whenever Bill and Melinda Gates or James Patterson or Bruce Springsteen or Dolly Parton or Oprah or someone like that, spends money altruistically and helps regular people.

That should be the norm, not the exception.

Medea Benjamin in Greenville

Peace activist Medea Benjamin, author and co-founder of CODE PINK, gave a presentation last evening at the Coffee Underground. This was in association with the Upstate Peace Network--with whom I am proudly affiliated.

An excellent discussion followed.

It was thrilling to meet her and grab a copy of her new book, DRONE WARFARE: Killing by remote control, which you should buy and commit to memory immediately.

~*~

Excerpt from the book:

Over fifty countries have the technology and many of them—including Israel, Russia, Turkey, China, India, Iran, the United Kingdom, and France—either have or are seeking weaponized drones.

Some of these countries do not just possess the technology; they are already using it.

During its 2008-2009 invasion of the Gaza Strip known as "Operation Cast Lead," the Israeli Defense Force repeatedly deployed unmanned aircraft to fire on suspected members of Hamas, the elected Palestinian government.

According to a leaked US State Department cable reported on by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in one incident an Israeli drone "shot at two Hamas fighters in front of the mosque and sixteen unintended casualties resulted inside the mosque due to an open door through which shrapnel entered during a time of prayer."[i] While the technology may be precise, fallible human beings are still the ones picking the targets and pulling the trigger.

Israel ostensibly ended its military occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005. But thanks to modern drone technology, it does not need boots on the ground to dominate—and extinguish—Palestinian life.

"For us, drones mean death," said Hamdi Shaqqura of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in an interview with the Washington Post. According to his group, Israeli drones killed at least 825 people between 2006 and 2011, the majority civilians. And that has affected almost every aspect of Palestinian life. According to one study, the majority of children living in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of the constant buzzing and bombing of Israeli death machines. Palestinians even have to take drones into account when trying to do something as benign and banal as fixing a broken-down car—you really don't want a group of people lingering around for long when there's a plane armed with missiles hovering overhead. "When you hear drones," Shaqqura explained, "you hear death."

"It's continuous, watching us, especially at night," said Nabil al-Amassi, a Gaza mechanic and father of eight. "You can't sleep. You can't watch television. It frightens the kids. When they hear it, they say, 'It is going to hit us.'"

Along with Israel and the United States, Britain is the only other country to have employed weaponized drones in war as of 2011. In the 1980s, the UK developed the Phoenix, a drone that was briefly used in the Kosovo War and then in Iraq in 2003. So many were lost or crashed that British troops nicknamed the aircraft the "Bugger Off," as the planes rarely returned from a sortie. For Afghanistan, the UK bought US-made Reapers and rented Israeli Hermes drones. This was part of a stopgap measure while developing their own Watchkeeper drone in a joint venture by Israeli and UK private companies that, after many delays, was supposed to be operational by 2012.
Like their US and Israeli counterparts, the British government sees unmanned aircraft as the way of the future, with the Guardian reporting that UK officials say "almost one third of the [Royal Air Force] could be made up of remotely controlled aircraft within 20 years."

In July 2011, British drone operators made a mistake that underscores the continued fallibility of modern weapons, killing four civilians in Afghanistan with missiles fired from Reaper drones that they were piloting out of a US air base in Nevada. (The Royal Air Force has been piloting Reapers from Creech Air Force base in Nevada since late 2007.) Lest anyone believe the incident exposed flaws with the increased reliance on the almighty drone, UK military officials were quick to explain the deaths were the result of intelligence failures on the ground rather than problems with the aircraft.

That fallible human element does not harm just those on the receiving end of the West's liberating Hellfire missiles. When Iraqis were actually able to see the unencrypted video feeds that the unmanned vehicles were broadcasting back to US troops, it gave them the chance to escape and evade assassination. In 2002, Iraqis were also able to use a Soviet-era MIG-25 to shoot down a US drone. In 2006, the Syrian air force reportedly shot down an Israeli spy drone flying on the Lebanese side of the border with Syria. And in a little-reported incident in February 2011, as Yemeni police were transporting a Predator drone that had crashed in southern Yemen, Al Qaeda gunmen attacked, running off with the downed aircraft.

But the perceived enemies of the US government are doing more than just hijacking and shooting down drones: they are using their own.

During its 2006 war on Lebanon, the Israeli Defense Force claimed to have shot down several surveillance drones that Hezbollah had received from Iran. In Iraq, US troops shot down a similar Iranian drone in March 2009.

Just as US drone technology is falling into the hands of less-than-friendly regimes, the technology—like the Hummer and other military equipment before it—is finding its way back to the homeland. In a September 27, 2011 presentation at the headquarters of the US Air Force on the future of "remotely piloted aircraft," the branch's chief scientist Mark T. Maybury pointed to "homeland security" as a key future use of drones, complete with maps of the United States intended to highlight the need for "Integrating [drones] in National Airspace."

The future is here.

In 2005 Congress authorized Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to buy unarmed Predators. By the end of 2011, CBP was flying eight Predator drones along the southwestern border with Mexico and along the northern Canadian border to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. By 2016, CBP hopes to have two dozen drones in its possession, "giving the agency the ability to deploy a drone anywhere over the continental United States within three hours," according to the Washington Post. And beyond, it seems, as the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has deployed several drones in neighboring Mexico to spy on that country's powerful drug cartels.
In June 2011, the Post reported that CBP's drone fleet had "reached a milestone...having flown 10,000 hours." But they had little to show for it. The paper flatly noted that the 4,835 undocumented immigrants and 238 drug smugglers that the Department of Homeland Security claimed to have apprehended thanks to UAVs were "not very impressive" numbers. What is impressive is the cost: $7,054 for each undocumented immigrant or smuggler who was caught.

"Congress and the taxpayers ought to demand some kind of real cost-benefit analysis of drones," said Tom Barry of the Center for International Policy, a Washington think tank. "My sense is that they would conclude these aircraft aren't worth the money."
But politicians in Washington don't seem too concerned. CBP's Michael Kostelnik told the Post he has never been pressed by a lawmaker to justify his agency's use of drones. "Instead the question is: Why can't we have more of them in my district?"

Remainder of excerpt here.

One of the most disturbing and startling new realities shared by Benjamin: Local law enforcement can't wait to get their hands on drones. It sounds just like the movie Escape from New York--law enforcement will finally be able to physically abandon the inner-cities at last. Nobody needs to get their hands dirty or their shirts bloodied (or worse). That's the plan.

It will all be handled by remote control.

You really MUST buy the book... Medea Benjamin is doing a TEDtalk later in the week, and I will try to link that here as well.

Billie: How we've changed, continued

Old movie time! As I've said before, some movies instruct us in great detail about how far we've come as women, since they almost seem like they came from another planet. One such movie is BILLIE (1965), starring a major DEAD AIR heroine, Oscar winner and former union president, wonderful Patty Duke.

I grew up with Patty, adore her without reservations, read her book (needless to say) and watched a bushel of her movies and various TV-guest appearances, including the bad ones like MARCUS WELBY. (Marcus Welby?!?!?--say the kids in one voice. Who?) And as the list here makes clear, THAT IS A WHOLE LOTTA VIEWING, MY FRIENDS!

Young folks mostly know Duke (if they know her at all) as the mother of Lord of the Rings actor Sean Astin or from the camp classic, Valley of the Dolls, wherein she ferociously chewed the scenery as Neely O'Hara, a character too-obviously based on Judy Garland. (Everybody in the film chewed the scenery, okay? Not just Patty! PS: I loved the pulpy novel too!) The film is widely regarded as one of the worst ever made, and therefore terribly watchable... and it also went down in 60s pop-history because one of the lead actresses was subsequently butchered by the Manson family.

I first saw Patty when I was a wee thing, on BEN CASEY (another TV-doctor you never heard of) and I followed her faithfully forever after. Her weekly sitcom was essential viewing for us Barbie-obsessed little baby-boomer girls. (Although I now know she was miserable through it all, she never seemed unhappy.) We watched Patty's show and then excitedly talked about it the next day, all day long, sometimes acting out favorite scenes. She played a dual-role (Patty and her cousin Cathy), and there were lots of people who didn't even realize she was playing both roles. Patty was the American id, all emotions on the surface and totally unguarded (the TV-theme song explained: "Patty loves to rock 'n' roll, a hot dog makes her lose control!"), while Cathy was her "identical cousin"--the polite, ladylike British girl who knew how to behave. It was the internal drama then being fought by ALL OF US! We all wanted to be demure, sweet Cathy, and yet (at least in my working class neighborhood), we knew we were really extroverted, often-scheming Patty ... and hot dogs made us lose control. (Patty gobbled food, Cathy ate delicately and left some on her plate.)

As a child (age 12), Patty blew everyone away playing Helen Keller on Broadway in The Miracle Worker, and then again in the film version, for which she became (at the time) the youngest person to win an Oscar at age 16. The Broadway play ran for two years, which she wrote about in depth in her book, Call me Anna. She and Anne Bancroft (who played Annie Sullivan) actually became furious at each other. It was riveting; they had an extended, violent scene together (Annie Sullivan fighting hard to subdue Helen, who is having none of it) and they had to repeat this raucous physical battle every night on the stage. They started actually hurting each other, "getting even" with each other during the same scene the next night. It is amazing to read, and so very human. (Bancroft actually knocked one of Duke's teeth loose.) Duke finally went full circle, later in her life playing the Annie Sullivan role in the 1979 TV-version of The Miracle Worker, with Melissa Gilbert playing Keller. Duke had always wanted to play Sullivan, the "adult" in the story, and I just love the "recovery" aspect of that choice! Since the 80s, Duke has been a mental-health advocate, which has made me so happy. My grandmother used to sneer at her for going on talk shows and babbling like "a crazy bitch", and I would get so upset, I would cry about it. Leave Patty alone!!!

Later, we had words for that behavior: bi-polar disorder. But at the time? Everybody just talked about how crazy she was... and yes, she would meet people and marry them after partying with them for a week. (I repeatedly defended her as a tortured artist, but privately worried she was popping amphetamines, like my mother.) After learning of her diagnosis, I was very relieved that Patty would be staying with us for a long time. I had long worried she would jump off a bridge, take too much LSD or something. Of course I read all about her tumultuous personal life in the cast-off movie-magazines I discovered in the magical room at the paper-mill (mentioned in #14 here). I sent her autobiography to my AA sponsor and she was the subject of a whole nother round of discussions. So, I learned from Patty as a girl and as a grown-up.

And now, I learn from her yet again, as I dissect her old movie BILLIE.

~*~

I saw BILLIE as a kid, and remembered it as being about a tomboy trying to femme it up for a boy she develops a crush on. And yes, it surely IS, but it now seems far more insidious and awful in its mid-60s har-har-har misogyny than I ever remembered. (I sometimes wonder what it did to me, mindlessly ingesting this kind of thing during my formative years. Yighhhh! Terrifying to contemplate.)

BILLIE is FAR WORSE than the nice girl/hell-raiser dichotomy we ate up on weekly installments of THE PATTY DUKE SHOW. For example, one line intended to be funny, Billie/Patty whines, "I wish I was a boy!" and Jim Backus, her dad, barks back, "Well, so do I, but you're not!"--something like that. Just awful. The movie is about Jim Backus (whom you know as the voice of Mr Magoo or the redoubtable Thurston Howell the III) running for mayor of Anywhere, USA, and he has assured the town conservatives that females should never compete with males... and then the track team coach asks super-fast Billie (at left) to be on the team. (It is understood that this means THE BOYS TEAM, since at that time, there WERE no girls teams.) HORRORS! This might cost her dad the election (!) and Jim Backus/Thurston Howell tries to make her quit the team.

It goes without saying that Billie falls in love with a boy on the team, who is not as fast as SHE is... and the feminist good news is, by the end of the movie, our young prince doesn't mind that Billie can beat him at sports. But it is only since she has properly feminized herself (finally all dolled up in high-school-dance drag, wearing a short dress and heels) and has also given him her HEART, that this is so. An interesting, and very lucidly-presented message about heterosexual romance TAMING the dangerous demon that is women careening about on sports teams and so forth: As long as they are fuckable, cute and know their place, it's okay. Even if she is a famous television star!

There is actually a short blog on the movie, called Billie's got the Beat. It would appear this is ALSO a cult movie now. (shudders)

Long live Patty! We love you!

Internet Break One

Taking an internet break, sorely needed. Going to Texas, photos to come.

Aside: I hate flying. I have come to regard Southwest Airlines as the equivalent of Greyhound Buses in the Sky (with less leg room).

I have been reading David Buckley's biography of Elton John, wherein I learned of Elton's 70s-era bedroom-in-the-sky, complete with fur bedspreads and all the drugs you want. I guess you have to be Elton John to afford that? (see photo at left, courtesy of Celebrities in Flight blog post at Getty Images.)

Liberace wept!

~*~




Our radio shows this past week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday (sperm donor/IVF edition), Thursday, Friday.

Today at McAlister Square (broadcast location of our show), the Greenville Literacy Association's Really Good, Really Big, Really Cheap Book Sale ... be there or be square!

In addition, OCCUPY THE MICROPHONE will be tabling (and reading Tarot) at the Spartanburg Music and Arts Festival in early September, so come on out.

Also wanted to let people know about the Generous Gardens project. WE APPROVE!

See you in about a week, peoples.

The sparkle of your china

Just returned from the local March Against Monsanto meeting. This event will be nationwide on May 25th.




Next meeting before the event will be at the Swamp Rabbit Cafe and Grocery, next Thursday at 6pm, yall come. In the meantime, please support Vernon Hugh Bowman in his fight against Monsanto's legal abuse.

~*~

As promised on the air today, here is the link to today's show. I started out a little jumbled, since we had some technical issues (we weren't in our usual studio and the acoustics were somewhat off), but I changed microphones, finally got going and tried to make some sense. Our first subject was the confrontation between trans activists and an anarchist group called Deep Green Resistance, while they were selling feminist books at the Law and Disorder Conference at Portland State University this past weekend. I react pretty strongly to defacing books or otherwise rudely rousting politicos at a table because it has happened to me many times; harassed by bikers at outdoor festivals for lefty literature, jeered at by fundamentalists at Occupy, and so forth and so on (in fact, I wrote about one such incident HERE). So, I asked, what IS hate speech and how should we handle it? One's person's hate speech is another person's Gospel (literally!), so what should we do in a pluralistic society that values the First Amendment?

Aside: I used to warn radical feminists that their eagerness to call everything (such as porn) 'hate speech' would some day come back to bite them in the ass, and here we are.

Increasingly, I am puzzled by trans activists' fixation on radical feminists (whom they call 'radscum'). Why not focus on fundamentalist right wingers who are far more numerous and say the same things? More to the point, the radscum do not seek to deny GLBT equal rights or try to keep folks from transitioning; they just argue (endlessly, relentlessly) about the physiological and social meaning(s) of "woman" and "female". The Christian fundamentalist Republicans think trans people should be forced to use their birth names on their drivers licenses and if they don't, locked up in mental institutions and/or arrested for fraud. Who is worse? And who has more power to enforce their prejudices?

Why not go after the REAL scum?

I'm ready when you are.

~*~

Today's blog post title comes from Steely Dan's excellent album, COUNTDOWN TO ECSTASY (1973).

As I continuously plow through Shantideva's The Way of the Bodhisattva, I just keep thinking of the lyrics.

Bodhisattva
Would you take me by the hand
Bodhisattva
Would you take me by the hand
Can you show me
The shine of your Japan
The sparkle of your china
Can you show me
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva
I'm gonna sell my house in town
Bodhisattva
I'm gonna sell my house in town
And I'll be there
To shine in your Japan
To sparkle in your China
Yes I'll be there
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva...

Bodhisattva - Steely Dan

African-American daughter of Strom Thurmond passes away

At left: the cover of Essie Mae Washington-Williams' biography, titled Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond. South Carolina Senator and proud Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond was the third-longest serving Senator in US history.







Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter, conceived with his family's 16-year-old maid and born in 1925, has passed on at the age of 87.

From the time I first moved to South Carolina in 1987, I heard rumors of Essie Mae's existence, but just found it so hard to believe. I didn't think there was any way the rumors could be true. Thurmond was the last of the old-school segregationists.

But I was repeatedly assured that the story was true. When she finally came forward after Thurmond died in 2003, I was not at all surprised, and I doubt anyone else was either.

From the Greenville News:

COLUMBIA — Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race daughter of one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond who kept her parentage secret for more than 70 years to avoid damaging his political career, died Monday. She was 87.

Vann Dozier of Leevy's Funeral Home in Columbia said Washington-Williams died Monday. A cause of death was not given.

Washington-Williams was the daughter of Thurmond and his family's black maid. The identity of her famous father was rumored for decades in political circles and the black community.

But not until after Thurmond's death in 2003 at age 100 did Washington-Williams come forward and say her father was the white man who ran for president on a segregationist platform and served in the U.S. Senate for more than 47 years.

"I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I am completely free," Washington-Williams said at a news conference revealing her secret.

She was born in 1925 after Thurmond, then 22, had an affair with a 16-year-old black maid who worked in his family's Edgefield, S.C., home. She spent years as a school teacher in Los Angeles, keeping in touch with her famous father.

While Thurmond never publicly acknowledged his daughter, his family acknowledged her claim after she came forward. She later said Thurmond's widow, Nancy, was "a very wonderful person," and called Strom Thurmond Jr. "very caring, and interested in what's going on with me."

Several members of Thurmond's family didn't respond to messages seeking comment Monday.

Washington-Williams was raised by Mary and John Washington in Coatesville, Pa. Her world changed when she was 13 when Mary Washington's sister, Carrie Butler, told Essie Mae that she was her mother.

Washington-Williams met Thurmond for the first time a few years later in a law office in Thurmond's hometown of Edgefield.

"He never called my mother by her name. He didn't verbally acknowledge that I was his child," Washington-Williams wrote in her autobiography, "Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond."

"He didn't ask when I was leaving and didn't invite me to come back. It was like an audience with an important man, a job interview, but not a reunion with a father," she said in the book released January 2005.

It was the first of many visits between Washington-Williams and her father.

He supported her, paying for her to attend then-South Carolina State College at the same time Thurmond was governor. He also helped her later after she was widowed in the 1960s.

"It's not that Strom Thurmond ever swore me to secrecy. He never swore me to anything," she wrote. "He trusted me, and I respected him, and we loved each other in our deeply repressed ways, and that was our social contract."

Washington-Williams watched from afar as Thurmond ran for president as a segregationist for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948, saying "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force the Negro race into our theaters, our swimming pools, our schools, our churches, our homes."

Washington-Williams recalled once asking her father about race.

Thurmond defended his beliefs as part of the "culture and custom of the South," she wrote.

"I certainly never did like the idea that he was a segregationist, but there was nothing I could do about it," Washington-Williams said in 2003. "That was his life."

Thurmond later softened his political stance and renounced racism. But he never publicly acknowledged his oldest daughter or the active role he played in her life. Thurmond and his first wife, Jean, were married in 1947; she died in 1960. They had no children. He had four children with his second wife, the former Nancy Moore, whom he married in 1968.

Washington-Williams was left unsettled by her father's death. At her daughter's encouragement she decided to make her story public.

"In a way, my life began at 78, at least my life as who I really was," Washington-Williams wrote. "I may have called it 'closure,' but it was much more like an opening, a very grand opening."

A statue of Thurmond on the Statehouse lawn was originally cast saying he had four children. Thurmond's family agreed to have Washington-Williams' name added.

We mentioned Essie Mae's passing today on our radio show, Occupy the Microphone.

May her soul rest in peace... and may the south one day recover from Jim Crow.

On the radio

Today was our second OCCUPY THE MICROPHONE show in our new radio digs. (At left: my talented radio co-hosts, Double A and Gorgeous Gregg.)







Last week was our first show at WOLT-FM (103.3 FM on your radio dial in Greenville, SC), so I deliberately did not link it, because it was a bit frenzied and I was not at my best. In fact, I was a nervous wreck. We are now broadcasting to a much larger audience; you can hear us in most of the upstate.

Unfortunately, I missed my cue today and started out with "Now?" (sigh) I carried on though, and overall it was a pretty good show. We interviewed Christopher Williams, author of The Killer Job and friend of the old Daisy Deadhead Show on WFIS-AM. We hope you will give us a listen.

I'd also like to give a shout-out for the RAISIN KANE benefit for young Kane DeGeorgis at the Handlebar, tomorrow night at 8pm, featuring my very favorite local band, Mac Arnold and Plate Full O' Blues. Other local artists participating include: Benton Blount, Craig Sorrells, Greg Payne (of The Piedmont Boys), Chuck Beattie, Caesar, Taylor Moore, JJ Woolbright, George Grady, Stacy Bruns, Cynthia Brashier, Jim Peterman, Tez Sherard, Scram, Teresa DeGeer, Gene Brashier, Tom Peterson, Greg Hodges, Jeff Holland and possibly even more. Your $10 ticket goes to a very good cause. Kane has Batten disease, which is so rare that in all my years of medical transcription, I cannot recall typing up a single case. (It occurs in an estimated 2 to 4 out of every 100,000 births in the United States.)

We wish Kane and his family all the very best.

If you'd like to advertise with us, contact Gorgeous Gregg at OccupyTheMicrophone@Yahoo.com.

Yearly round-up: books, movies, etc

At left, DVD cover, George Harrison: Living in the Material World





I just loooooved Martin Scorsese's documentary about George Harrison, my favorite Beatle, incredible talent and just plain awesome individual. George introduced that old-time religion to the West, and for that, he got more karma points than you and I put together. The mind boggles.

I appreciated the film's emphasis on George's spiritual journey, which was given all proper and due respect; possibly for the first time I can recall. In most accounts, it's always been some variation of "ohhhhh there's goes dreamy George off with his Indian gurus again..."

What does it mean when someone has more money, fame, attention, sex, etc than most of us can contemplate in our wildest fantasies... and yet, still feels that something is missing? George's life is an enduring testament to spirituality-as-direct-experience, that I have always found very moving and intense.

"GEORGE!!!!!!!" -- screams, squeals; Daisy momentarily reverts to childhood.

~*~

After viewing the somewhat-interesting Another Earth, I watched the second movie from screenwriter-actress Brit Marling, titled The Sound of My Voice. Great premise, as with Another Earth... but my grandmother's phrase, too clever by half, comes to mind. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it too... the ending is something of a cheat, in my humble opinion... although very clever (too clever by half). Describing the movie further, is to jeopardize the story and the ending, although lots of people have.

Both of these indie movies are similar in that they are 1) weird, and 2) ponderous and thoughtful. But more than that, one gets the impression that everybody sat around brainstorming, figured out the boffo endings first and then WORKED BACKWARD. Both movies seem to work up to the 'surprise' endings, stacking the deck in ways that seem overly obvious in retrospect.

One of the strengths of truly surprising, beloved and inventive film-endings, is NOT stacking the deck, and hitting you upside the head all at once: BAM. Think: The Sixth Sense, Fight Club. You DID NOT see it coming, or only glimmers of it, and those delicious glimmers made you sufficiently curious to continue watching. In addition, these movies were not ALL ABOUT the endings, and in fact, people continue to talk about both movies without even referencing the endings. In short, you do not have to love the endings to enjoy both films, and plenty of people disliked the endings who nonetheless greatly enjoyed the movies as a whole.

I don't think that is possible for either Another Earth or The Sound of My Voice, in which one continues watching just to see their respective endings. The actual content of these movies tends to disappear into some kind of cinematic vortex, and the END is the whole thing. The tension is ratcheted up so high, one is watching just to get to the resolution of the grand puzzle; this viewer-disposition is likely due to the fact that they imagined the ending first, and worked backwards, filling in the blanks.

To briefly summarize, The Sound of My Voice is about a cult leader who claims to be from the future. Is she? Well? And you keep watching to find out. Do you actually find out? That is the pertinent question: I think it cheats and you don't, or do, or sorta-kinda both. Huh?

If this plot-line interests you, check it out. Apparently, this was originally planned as the first film in a trilogy, and I'd be lying to you if I said I wouldn't watch the sequels. In fact, the film makes sense as one of a trilogy, in the sense that it might not (in that case) be a total cheat, but I was still a little pissed. Excuse me, but that's 85 minutes I'd like to have back, if you are not going to answer the fucking question. Hmph! (And at this point, it is not clear that they will even be able to make the sequels.)

Hello, lovely Ms Marling and company, this is what SERIAL TELEVISION is for. Maybe you should go to HBO or somebody like that next time, instead of seeking all that attention at Sundance.

~*~

I was sufficiently blown away by Damien Echols' amazing prison memoir, "Life After Death", that I did most of a podcast about it. I certainly cannot do it justice. If I had to recommend one book for the year, this would be it.

How does one keep from losing one's mind and/or being eaten up with fury, while spending 18 years (half his life) on Arkansas's Death Row, for something you didn't do? Another deeply spiritual testimony. His repeated use of the word "magickal" (for those things that transcend everyday-life and take us elsewhere), is just perfect, and aptly conjures up that momentary experience for us. If not for the magickal, some of us would shrivel up and die... and Damien was forced to cultivate the magickal in small, seemingly-inconsequential things (correspondence and pencil-sketches) and almost-forgotten memories, such as old mud puddles and songs he hadn't heard in decades.

A lesser-soul would have been completely destroyed. Many men (and yes, they are men) are completely destroyed, and he tells us all about that, too.

An uncompromising, poetic, breathtaking account. Go read it. Now.

~*~

Ayn Rand and the World She Made was some great reading, providing us with a detailed year-by-year account of Rand's life. Biographer Anne Heller obviously admired Rand, and that gives us the kind of intensity an Objectivist would deliver. The sexual abuse of starry-eyed-young-acolyte turned self-esteem-theorist Nathaniel Branden, is offered here in bright primary colors, so all you fellow scandal-mongers take note. (PS: And who knew that the former Nathan Blumenthal changed his name to one that had Rand's name embedded within? The book is full of GREAT GOSSIPY DETAILS like that.)

I came away convinced that Rand was a lifelong amphetamine-addict, which explained many of the awful extremes in her personality, particularly her ongoing personal paranoia. The fact that she surrounded herself with idolizing sycophants means that nobody challenged this facet of her character; to challenge her was to be consigned to the outer darkness, and few of her Objectivist cult/crew dared to go there.

And therefore, like so many other famous people we can name, she just got worse.

The book succeeded in making me compassionate for Rand, both as an intelligent woman who was often not taken seriously and/or understood, and as a drug addict who did not realize what was happening to her.

This doesn't mean she wasn't a horrific and selfish person; she was. But now I understand why.

And speaking of karma, Rand has plenty to answer for. Her influence on our government and economy has been widespread and damaging, starting with her acolyte Alan Greenspan getting his bullshit ideas taken seriously (while Rand herself could not) and getting himself repeatedly hired and promoted as some kind of economic genius. You can easily clock the deep influence of Rand on the Republican Party, including the fact that one of her fanboys recently ran for Vice President.

If you are interested in a thoroughly fascinating individual, a cultural touchstone and influential life--check out the Heller biography. Of all the books I have read about Ayn Rand (several), this one is the most comprehensive, descriptive and fair.

~*~

Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan, is indeed extraordinary. If you are a baby-boomer who read the popular SYBIL by Flora Rheta Schreiber in the 70s (and it seems that everyone did) and/or watched the TV-movie starring Sally Field (ditto), THIS IS FOR YOU.

Nathan's investigative account is about the genesis of the book; the psychiatric fraud/fakery and therapeutic-abuse propagated for the sake of money (and goodness, it poured in like water!). One fascinating subplot includes the details of how various psychological 'syndromes' are popularized and then streak through the population like wildfire. (Remember how "multiple personality disorder" became all the rage, with respectable stories on "60 Minutes" and so on?) Hey, when there is big profit to be made, people always materialize to make it. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear... and we might add, when the disease is invented, the doctor/cure will likewise appear, right on cue. For a fee, of course.

I am often reticent to talk about my ongoing skepticism concerning various hip diagnoses going around: bipolar disorder, ADHD, ADD, Aspergers, and so forth and so on. Everybody is depressed all of a sudden. And I see commercials for drugs, drugs, drugs, and dollar-signs are all over them.

This book renewed my skepticism, and made me feel okay about it. Psychobabble and hip mental-states/Dx go through recognizable phases and turn into fads (especially if there is profit at stake)... and somehow (just like religion) psychology always manages to renew itself and stay above the fray it creates. These charlatans never have to answer for themselves, and thus, they never do.

This is one such amazing tale. Highly recommended.

~*~

Other good books I enjoyed this year--

[] We Are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency by Parmy Olsen, was really wonderful. I picked it up and did not put it down; all deep-internet (as in DEEP SPACE) junkies will enjoy it immensely.

[] As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Diaries 1964-1980 by Susan Sontag (which I first mentioned here) has continued to shape my thoughts, months later.

One incisive quote concerning the change-in-consciousness wrought by television (and of course, even more accurate in the internet-era), which I scribbled down:

As the images multiply, the capacity to respond diminishes.

Yes.

[] Inside Scientology by Janet Reitman, is well worth your time. Short version: it's even worse than you think it is.

[] Millennium People, one of the last books by my favorite author, JG Ballard, which has only recently been published in the USA. WE MISS YOU, JAMES GRAHAM BALLARD!. Another excellent, related volume is JG Ballard: Conversations edited by V Vale, which has also been quoted here on DEAD AIR, at some length.

I return to it at regular intervals, to keep my sanity.

~*~

I am currently reading Teachings from the Medicine Buddha Retreat by Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche, which is some rather dense and heavy reading... the kind of density that makes you read and re-read the same few pages, until you are sure you get it. And even then, you probably won't get it.

This encyclical contains lots of what the Baptists would call vain repetitions. The litany-reading, rosary-reciting ex-Catholic in me grimaces at still more verbiage that I must repeat. (sigh) Seriously, is there NO END to it?

Then again, it got George Harrison through. He faced his death on his own terms, unafraid. And it got Damien Echols through 18 years in solitary confinement.

And who could ask for more?

Occupy the Microphone!

As of today, the Daisy Deadhead show (archives here) is no longer on WFIS-AM in Fountain Inn, South Carolina. (Our final show on that radio station was last Saturday.) I am proud to report that our show has now evolved into Occupy the Microphone.

At present, we are an online podcast, but after the first of the year, our plucky broadcast crew will move to WOLT-FM here in Greenville, South Carolina. Onward and Upward! Hopefully, the podcasts AND the radio shows will simultaneously continue.

Double A and Gregg Jocoy have been doing Occupy the Microphone podcasts Monday thru Wednesday at 8:30-9:30pm EST, with Scotty Reid of the indispensable Black Talk Radio Network doing Political Prisoner Radio on Thursdays (also at 8:30pm). Yesterday, I tried my hand at the podcast for the first time at 3pm, and it seemed to go well. I reviewed Damien Echols' fabulous book about being unfairly sentenced to Death Row in Arkansas (as one of the West Memphis Three), titled Life After Death. We talked about prisons and prisoners, the death penalty, the factors of race, class and mental disability in sentencing, and much more. Check it out.

We are getting our act together to take it on the road.

Although I enjoyed having a radio show named after me for well over a year, many folks expected something called "the Daisy Deadhead show" to feature Deadhead-type music instead of political yammering, which is our collective specialty. I figured it was a good idea to change the name. The amazing input (and hard work) of Double A and Gregg make it much more than a show named after ME, and it is important to acknowledge them... as well as the crucial role of the Occupy Wall Street movement in changing the leftist political landscape.

We have much more to say, do, attempt and express... and we very much hope you will join us.

Stay tuned!

The 10,000-Hour Rule

My first-ever diary entry was about my cat, Smokey. I wrote: "I love my cat."

Some things never change. :)

~*~







The upstate's local GLBT pride event was Saturday in Spartanburg. I announced it on my radio show as being on "Saturday"--totally spacing the fact that I was taping the show (on Thursday) and therefore my announcement would be HEARD on Saturday, so I should have said the event was "today"--right? Argh! (Link to the show here)

This is the kind of dumb error that makes me want to scream when I hear the show replayed, and why I sometimes refuse to listen to more than a few minutes.

Obviously, I am still relatively new to the radio biz.

My talented producer and consigliere, Gregg Jocoy, has repeatedly reminded me of Malcolm Gladwell's famous '10,000-hour rule': One can only master a skill after doing it for 10,000 hours.

We have done about 55 radio shows so far, so we only have 9945 hours to go.

Brian Clark Howard writes:

One of the most interesting parts of Malcolm Gladwell’s fantastic book Outliers is his discussion of the “10,000-hour rule,” which posits that it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to truly master a skill, be it playing the violin, computer programming, or skateboarding.

Gladwell covers several tantalizing examples, from the Beatles to Bill Gates, and argues that the biggest factor in their success is not innate talent or blind luck, but rather dedication to their chosen craft. It’s an empowering message, and one that suggests that almost anyone can succeed if they put in the time (could those saccharine posters be right?).

Of course, privilege and luck can greatly ease the way, but there’s little substitute for 10,000 hours of work.

This infographic, created for the blog Zintro by Nowsourcing, takes a closer look at practice and the 10,000-hour rule.

Of course, as Kurt Cobain said, “Practice makes perfect, but nobody’s perfect, so why practice?”

As usual, Kurt had a point.

However, doing some quick math... I realize this may be good news for me. I first started writing in a diary when I was about six years old (photo of six-year-old self, above) and that means if I wrote approx 204 hours a year (which rounds out to about 17 hours a month), from then until now, I am very close to the 10,000-hour mark. The Promised Land awaits!

Unfortunately, I never kept track of that. I do know that some years I wrote passionately and obsessively for many hours a day, every day... and some years I didn't write at all. (I guess even feverish, teenybopper letter-writing about David Cassidy counts?)

I am not sure if it all evens out, but the hours do add up, after decades.

In any event, I must be getting close! One of those unexpectedly-positive things that comes from aging.

Is college worth it?

One of those subjects that interests me a great deal, is whether a college degree is "necessary" or not. Lately, as the price of (even a mediocre) education skyrockets, the question is a getting a new and respectful hearing. Megan McArdle's in-depth Newsweek article on the topic, has prompted extensive discussion.

I am one who has often had my jobs supplanted by college grads. Frequently, these kids couldn't even decently proofread their own ad copy. I have trained college grad after college grad, many as dumb as dirt. It seems they are getting dumber, too... I think this is probably because the actual value of a degree is less than it used to be. I have trained numerous college grads who barely made it through (sometimes taking much longer than four years to do so), but by God, they had that almighty sacred CREDENTIAL that meant they should make more than I do; never mind that they couldn't even answer a customer's simple questions. (One college grad argued with me that there was no such thing as vitamin B-5. Really.) The dimwitted arrogance of "I have a degree and you don't; so I know everything and you know nothing," is worthy of a whole separate post. I collect such stories. Another big problem with college degrees is that the holder of said degree seems to believe that IQ points were magically bestowed when the degree was conferred... which is more proof of stupidity.

I am also one who has lied on occasion (especially in the pre-digital era) and claimed a college degree I don't have. It never seemed to make any real difference in anything an employer expected me to do. Such unnecessary college degrees (say, among video store clerks) are simply about gate-keeping; making sure that People Like Us are the only people in the break-room. The fact that I was easily able to pass as People Like Them, would suggest that it's the (apparent) fact of the degree, nothing tangible that is learned in the actual process of obtaining one.

From McArdle's piece:

Unsurprisingly those 18-year-olds often don’t look quite so hard at the education they’re getting. In Academically Adrift, their recent study of undergraduate learning, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa find that at least a third of students gain no measurable skills during their four years in college. For the remainder who do, the gains are usually minimal. For many students, college is less about providing an education than a credential—a certificate testifying that they are smart enough to get into college, conformist enough to go, and compliant enough to stay there for four years.

When I was a senior, one of my professors asked wonderingly, “Why is it that you guys spend so much time trying to get as little as possible for your money?” The answer, [writer/economist Bryan] Caplan says, is that they’re mostly there for a credential, not learning. “Why does cheating work?” he points out. If you were really just in college to learn skills, it would be totally counterproductive. “If you don’t learn the material, then you will have less human capital and the market will punish you—there’s no reason for us to do it.” But since they think the credential matters more than the education, they look for ways to get the credential as painlessly as possible.

True. Learning itself often seems to be beside the point.

I have lost count of the number of times I have been reading some 'complicated' (but not really), obscure or arcane book (i.e. Jean Paul Sartre) and have been asked by the resident college grad in my office (accompanied by furrowed brow): "Are you reading that for a class?" The idea that one actually reads something "difficult" for oneself, for pleasure, is utterly foreign to them. Sometimes, when I reply "no"--the puzzlement is evident, and they continue, dumbfounded: "Then why are you reading it?" I hardly know what to say. (Tellingly, it is usually the 'uneducated' redneck in the office who giggles, at this point.) They usually punctuate these questions with, "All of that is behind me now! Whew!" or some other amazing comment, expressing relief that they will never have to READ A REAL BOOK again. (Wow, wasn't that shit HARD?) Some have proudly bragged to me they got through their entire college years without actually finishing a single one. I have never doubted it.

Nonetheless, I was surprised to read on Brad DeLong's blog (check the comments), that questioning the nature of COLLEGE UBER ALLES is now regarded as a conservative viewpoint. As Tim Gunn would say, this worries me. Back in the 60s/70s, liberals and radicals made this argument first, offering the common-sense observation that working and living in the real world--as well as a variety of interesting 'learning experiences' (this era marked the birth of that now-common expression)--also conferred 'an education.' I wasn't aware that questioning authority is now up to the right wing. (And how depressing is that?) Are liberals-on-the-coasts THAT out of touch with the situation on-the-ground? Do they interact with college grads from schools that never expected them to do math without calculators, or spell without spellcheck? I don't think they have.

More proof of the disconnect between elite liberals and the great working-class unwashed... and that makes me uneasy.

~*~

Further, there is the increasing importance of teacher evaluations, and whether they are a good or bad thing for education. What does it mean that students now determine whether a teacher stays employed? Is this an education worth paying big bucks for, one that has been "voted on"?

In the New York Times, former Duke professor Stuart Rojstaczer writes:

Student evaluations are a poor indicator of professor performance. The good news is that college students often reward instructors who teach well. The bad news is that students often conflate good instruction with pleasant ambience and low expectations. As a result they also reward instructors who grade easily, require little work, are glib and chatty, wear nice clothes, and are physically attractive. It’s generally impossible to separate all these factors in an evaluation. Plus, students will penalize demanding professors or professors who have given them a bad grade, regardless of the quality of instruction that a professor provides. In the end, deans and tenure committees are using bad data to evaluate professor performance, while professors feel pressure to grade easier and reduce workloads to receive higher evaluations.

In the mid-90s, I had a short-term temp-job processing teacher evaluations for a technical college. I fed the evaluations with the penciled-in answer-dots into a "reader" (which often spit them right back out at me... just like when you stick your dollar in the vending machine and it spits it back for having a crease in it) ... and then made pie charts on a Model-T-Ford-like-Mac, breaking down the teacher-ratings from the students: Excellent, Good, Fair, Below Average, Sucks. Then I deciphered the written gibberish from the students ("I like Mrs X, she is hot!", "Mrs X needs to stop talking about her cat all the time, some of us HATE CATS!" etc etc) and typed it up separately. Then I stapled the pie charts to the comments. (Yes, it was Model-T level stuff, indeed, but I remember thinking how high-tech the pie charts were!)

And do I need to tell you, how many times the teachers came sneaking in, asking WHO I was working on? ("Have you reached the computer/engineering/CAD department yet?") If I answered that I was working on their department, their eyes would go boinnnngggg (like a Tex Avery cartoon) and they would frenetically rifle through the papers (that I had carefully separated into piles, of course, causing me hours of extra work) looking for their own students' names and replies. My skinny, ADHD-supervisor would attempt to circumvent this extracurricular activity, keeping the door open from her adjacent office (where she liked to listen to Aerosmith) and bust them when they did this... scurrying in and shooing them away like kindergartners, reminding them of rules, rules, rules: YOU ARE BREAKING THEM. They didn't care. They did it virtually every day I had the job. (Some departments, I could see, were far more nervous than others; the nursing department was impervious and never showed up a single time.) The rifling of my careful piles of papers continued, and since my supervisor could SEE that this was not MY fault, I often got paid overtime.

I finally got the message, loud and clear, that their jobs were at stake. One teacher started groaning as he looked at his pie chart, his mortgage payment obviously hanging in the balance. One of them asked me if there was any way to fudge the replies, which I pretended I hadn't heard, just as skinny-supervisor bounded through the door and banished him from the room.

I remember a short, stolen conversation with one such crestfallen teacher, as I whispered (Aerosmith momentarily drowning us out) that his pie chart looked okay to me. He whispered back, shaking his head, that OKAY/FAIR was not good enough, you had to have blah-de-blah percent of GOODS... FAIR does not cut it. (I remember being surprised, since I am the product of a lifetime of FAIR public school teachers, and I still know every single one of my state capitals.)

What does this mean, that the opinions of students now dictate whether college instructors get to keep their jobs? (Even in a field like AUTOMOBILE ENGINE MECHANICS?!?)

Might this lead to getting softer and softer on the students?

And take note, this was at the dawn of the online era. "Rate My Professors" and other such sites that rate instructors publicly (and anonymously) had not even been invented yet.

~*~

In today's economy, we now have the sordid spectacle of employers demanding that bartenders and appliance-salesman have college degrees. As a result, we have a class of people who used to self-select out of college and go to work in factories, choosing to trudge through the torture of college, simply to avoid becoming unemployable. Since there are no longer any factory jobs in the USA, such a person is now at loose ends, and preyed upon by all the fake colleges promising a college credential during TV commercials. (Since these particular working-class folks haven't already been hanging out with the college-set, as I have, they are not quite aware that all college degrees are not equal, and some are barely regarded as real degrees at all.)

College is a racket, straight up. The costs are rising, and increasingly staggering. People graduate and can't find work. Worse, due to the magical degree in their hands, they think a job is promised to them. Thus, when they do get work, they expect it to be a certain KIND of work--the exalted occupations promised on the glowing TV commercials. When expected to mop floors with the rest of us, they are unexpectedly indignant: I didn't spend four years in college for this! they fume. As a matter of fact, you did. You did it to get hired, and now you are hired... now, mop.

I know, you didn't read Twelfth Night and go into six-figure debt to push a mop, and do you now see how ridiculous that was?

Vegetarian intestinal distress leads to insightful thinking

I have discovered an excellent reason to stay vegetarian.

After a decade and a half, if you inadvertently eat anything made with meat, you barf your guts out.

I have been sick for several days... and my husband, who ate the same thing (and is not vegetarian) is just fine. It was not food poisoning... or rather, IT WAS, but not the usual kind.

For ME it was.

I guess there is no going back!

The item was already-prepared "chicken-fried tofu"--which I assumed (and you know what they say about that) was not actually fried in chicken. (After all, as Mr Daisy said, frying it in actual chicken fat kinda defeats the whole purpose of eating tofu in the first place, doesn't it?) It seems I have eaten it before (although hardly ever) and did not have this cataclysmic, days-long reaction... but I did eat a significant amount on this occasion. It has been horrific. I am genuinely surprised at my body's response.

It could also be that the person frying it, in this particular instance, went ahead and actually chicken-fried it and didn't consider trying to make it vegetarian. I have often tasted Chinese and other foods, duly advertised as technically "vegetarian" (as in, no meat in the actual recipe) but tasted suspiciously as if possibly dumped into the same wok as the chicken-fried rice, made earlier in the day... after a long time without meat, it jumps right out at you. But imitation-meat flavors are, admittedly, much harder to gauge... the whole focus of the flavor profile is the imitation-meat flavor.

I am not a purist, and I have eaten imitation-bacon-flavored potato chips and so forth, with no negative reactions. I read labels! (Of course, with prepared hot-bar foods, you can't do that.) A "flavor" is usually a chemical, and real meat is not the same as chemically-enhanced "meat-flavor" and never the twain shall meet. So, I assumed I was eating the equivalent of tofu fried in chicken flavors.

Wrong. My ailing intestines and tummy say otherwise.

As I said, sick for days. I even recorded my radio show while still suffering (the show must go on, and all that), so my pissed-off ranting came much easier than usual. Have a listen!

And pity the poor vegetarian who no longer has the 'choice,' as one always likes to think one does.

Perhaps this is a lesson about all such choices: after a certain point, you can't undo that choice, it is permanent. It is not simply a choice of the mind; the body, the life, is irreparably marked with it.

~*~

I have been reading Susan Sontag's diaries... and I am just so jealous of her brilliance. Her one-and-two-sentence observations, just while she is sitting on a beach or whatever, are far more brilliant, incisive, and genius than anyone else's (even as they congratulate themselves for their limited brilliance and clarity). My goodness, how I miss her. I always idolized her, and now I know why: this is the kind of public female intellectual that simply does not exist anymore. She was a pure product of her time.

One thing I did, was trot out to buy a little notebook and resolve to scribble my own (decidedly non-brilliant) observations in it. I can see that she would write lines that later ended up in her other books; ideas that would later direct her thoughts and passions. I can't tell you all how many times I have tried to remember what I was thinking back on Tuesday, only to forget all about it... one thing I have liked about blogging is how it is an accurate, uncensored record of our thoughts and feelings. I have decided keeping a notebook, even of one and two line-passages, is a way to make that even more detailed, more comprehensive, more precise.

~*~


Whilst recovering from my epicurean disaster, I watched TLC network, and although its hard to avoid the constant commercials for Honey Boo Boo (saints preserve us), I was very interested in the new show about conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel. The TLC documentaries about their lives were well-received and popular, and I watched them a couple of times; this show is not surprising. They are extremely likable, smart, capable... and they don't seem at all disturbed that other people are disturbed by them.

In a very real sense, their lack of being disturbed is part of their unique condition: they are together. They are not alone. A person defined as "a freak" by our society, left all alone and gawked at unmercifully (i.e. the Elephant Man), tugs at our heartstrings in an almost-excruciating way. That poor soul, we think, nobody will ever understand him. But Abby and Brittany have each other, and they understand what the other is experiencing. Their very difference itself, makes them strong together. They murmur to each other, they make inaudible one-word remarks and grin. They are able to make fun of us right back. Therefore, they plow onward, unperturbed and undaunted. You can't help but be drawn to them.

And you know, the fact is, it is going to be hard for these girls to make a living in the regular ways. It isn't like they are going to get hired for the local Burger King or Dairy Queen. They are very logical and realistic young women, and at some point, I can see them sitting down for the cost-benefit analysis: okay, how are we going to make money? The Salon article I linked above, asks the obvious question, IS THIS A FREAK SHOW?--but forgets an obvious historic reality: people went into freak shows to be able to eat and find a warm place to sleep. Many of the people in the shows took the proverbial bull by the horns and started running their own shows and were able to retire in relative comfort. Others were exploited by ruthless circus-ringmasters. It was not always obvious which was which, simply by looking.

To me, as in the prostitution business, the question is: who is making the money? The fact is the exploitation, not necessarily the "freak show" aspect. After all, people surround these girls everywhere they go. They might as well start charging. How to do that in a civilized fashion? Reality TV seems to be the ticket. After this TV-series, people will surround them as celebrities, not (only) as 'freaks'. Also, people will have heard of them. They will know who they are and not drop their iced tea in the mall, and start following them around to be sure they saw what they thought they saw, as some reporter did some years ago in Minnesota's Mall of America. (And then, writing a really rude, gee-whiz-guess-what-I-saw article about them, that of course, I cannot readily locate now to properly link.)

Instead, they might actually get some respect, since Reality-TV celebrity is one of the few ways physically-different people can get some respect these days.

And may I also say: Its also very nice to see a whole Reality-TV show in which so many young women are portrayed as decent for a change, instead of the usual nasty, mean-girl bitches. It is heartening to see Abby and Brittany's female support network; when the gawkers descend, they close ranks around them and don't allow them to take unauthorized pictures and videos.

Now, that's something to be proud of, too:

[The TLC show] is unrelentingly positive, and at times flatout heartwarming. In the documentary about them at 16, their mother explained just how protective their friends were, closing ranks whenever anyone would stare at them. In college, the twins seem to have duplicated this kind of sheltered social environment. Unlike so many TV shows — reality and otherwise — “Abby & Brittany” is a kind of soothing ode to the niceness of 20-year-olds, and especially of 20-year-old girls. The women who live with Abby and Brittany [in their college dorm] are normal in that explicitly Midwestern way, which is to say, normal to the point of notability, grounded, smiley, well-adjusted, well-behaved, just like Abby and Brittany. The roommates are a sort of Greek chorus, supplying the audience with the information it needs — about the girls’ physiological differences, how much tuition they pay (one and a half) and the differences in their personalities — and also expressing their endless, genuinely heartfelt admiration of the two and their astounding simpatico.

I won't be able to stay away from the show, and ain't ashamed to say so.

Note: In keeping with the disability-rights concept that disability is a social construct, as I believe it is, I am tagging this blog entry with "disability"--although it is pertinent to note that Abby and Brittany are not "disabled"--as dwarves also are not. But their man-made environment (car seats, college desks, etc) DOES disable them, as it does very small people. People are "disabled" by environments and their minority status, even if they are in perfect health. (i.e. Severely scarred individuals are disabled by other people's reactions to them, not usually by the actual scars.) Just wanted to do a quick commercial for this radical perspective, since Abby and Brittany are a perfect example of it.

~*~

Other links inspired by my new notebook habit:

The Death of Sun Ming Sheu: A Government Sponsored Assassination? Thanks to Onyx Lynx!

William Gibson on Punk Rock, Internet Memes, and ‘Gangnam Style’ Required reading!


As regular readers know, I am fascinated by the multitude of changes wrought by our relatively new internet culture. And so is Gibson:

WIRED: In your essay in the new book Punk: An Aesthetic, you write that punk was the last pre-digital counterculture. That’s a really interesting thought. Can you expand on that?

GIBSON: It was pre-digital in the sense that in 1977, there were no punk websites [laughs]. There was no web to put them on. It was 1977, pre-digital. None of that stuff was there. So you got your punk music on vinyl, or on cassettes. There were no mp3s. There was no way for this thing to propagate. The kind of verbal element of that counterculture spread on mostly photo-offset fanzines that people pasted up at home and picked up at a print shop. And then they mailed it to people or sold it in those little record shops that sold the vinyl records or the tapes. It was pre-digital; it had no internet to spread on, and consequently it spread quickly but relatively more slowly.

I suspect — and I don’t think this is nostalgia — but it may have been able to become kind of a richer sauce, initially. It wasn’t able to instantly go from London to Toronto at the speed of light. Somebody had to carry it back to Toronto or wherever, in their backpack and show it, physically show it to another human. Which is what happened. And compared to the way that news of something new spreads today, it was totally stone age. Totally stone age! There’s something remarkable about it that’s probably not going to be that evident to people looking at it in the future. That the 1977 experience was qualitatively different, in a way, than the 2007 experience, say.

WIRED: What if punk emerged today, instead of in 1977? How do you think it would be different?

GIBSON: You’d pull it up on YouTube, as soon as it was played. It would go up on YouTube among the kazillion other things that went up on YouTube that day. And then how would you find it? How would it become a thing, as we used to say? I think that’s one of the ways in which things are really different today. How can you distinguish your communal new thing — how can that happen? Bohemia used to be self-imposed backwaters of a sort. They were other countries within the landscape of Western industrial civilization. They were countries that most people would never see — mysterious places. You’d pay a price, potentially, for going there. That’s always cool and exciting. Now, where are they? Where can you do that? How are people transacting that today? I am pretty sure that they are, but I don’t have that much firsthand experience of it. But they have to do it in a different way.

He's totally nailed it... and I think this explains why I am so startled by the lack of "loyalty"--the lack of "investment"--that young people have in the ideas and lifestyles they adopt today.

That's because they ran across it on the internet, exactly as if they were leafing through a catalog.

I realize now, this is what is behind my constant requests for "cred" in young internet-denizens who challenge me... their challenges are just another fun thing to do, whereas I take them very seriously as challenges to my self. That's because I take such aspects of MY SELF seriously; I sweat for my ideas and experience. I didn't just thumb through some catalog and decide, "I believe/like this; its cool, so its me."

This may also be the reason they rarely ACT on their political ideas, since no ACT was required to gain the knowledge, other than sitting and clicking. Back in the day, you had to work hard for your counter-cultural knowledge, and thus, for some inexplicable reason, you therefore felt obligated to act.

Yes, I know, this whole post is "tl/dr"--as the kids say. (stands for "too long/didn't read"--you didn't expect them to read anything LONG, did you? Is it longer than a soundbite? Fuhgeddaboudit!)

The protracted length is precisely because: I didn't really write it for them. ;)

Dead Air Church: How we've changed, continued

Blast from the past: Counter-demonstrators at the Democratic Convention in New York in 1980, were given this handy-dandy "non-delegates handbook"--which looked a lot like the official delegate-guide issued to Democratic delegates. (Us scroungy types didn't have to pay the $5; that was for the press, tourists, curious-onlookers and other nosy people who looked like they could afford it.)

~*~




I have been arguing with somebody online about Ayn Rand. Why? Good question. I like banging my head against the wall, obviously.

But as one who has spent most of his life reading about politics and not actually DOING, he hasn't actually met too many Objectivists (Ayn Rand followers) in person. A lot of what I know about them, I realize, has been from arguing with them, up close and personal. For example, I remembered an argument with such a person outside the aforementioned Democratic convention. (It is remarkable how their arguments have NOT changed.)

Thus, when my online-opponent accusingly demands CITATIONS!!!???? --I don't have them. I am reporting what "I have heard Randians say" since it IS what I have heard them SAY. In person. Not write. And not online, since (like Ayn Rand herself) these conversations predate the internet. (Thus, to a great many people of ALL political persuasions, this means my account is disqualified from consideration. Pre-internet history is UNRELIABLE!)

And I heard the Randians say all manner of things, including endorsing euthanasia for old and disabled people. They didn't back down from this position or display any shame. Why should they? They would proudly tally up the savings on their pocket calculators and show you the figures. The more horrified you were, the more GLEE they would take in shocking you. Your shock at their selfishness was just more proof of what a bleeding-heart girlie-girl and/or brainwashed sheep you were. (Slight interruption for amusing link: I Was a Teenage Objectivist.)

In remembering this period of history, I sadly realized, its over. The internet has put an end to it. People just don't blurt out world-class wacko things as often as they used to. It's dangerous; they might get quoted and Tweeted on the spot, or find their rants surreptitiously recorded and saved to YouTube for posterity. This is doubly true for writing: A blog post or forum comment can be copied and circulated by the time you visit the restroom and come back and decide to delete it. Google cache strikes again! Screen shots uber alles!

And so, you just don't get that kind of extreme insanity any more, except from the internet trolls, and they don't count. They don't MEAN IT. (Or maybe they DO, but there is simply no way to know for sure.)

I have been perusing Steven Pinker's recent book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. I haven't exactly been READING it, since I tend to doze off during heavy-science discussions, peppered with data, footnotes and suchlike. But I do perk up when he talks about how animal torture is no longer acceptable (for example), relating a harrowing anecdote about how he once tortured a poor rat to death by accident during a lab experiment. And how that situation simply would not happen now, in the same circumstances.

Pinker's overall concept is that violence is declining. I am skeptical. However, my recent inability to find wacko quotes from Randians (that I KNOW existed back in the day), is a telling testament to his thesis. Hmm. It seems he has a point, and I now have a real-life example of my own: there is less verbal violence and extremism than there used to be. Why? People are held accountable now. You will end up on YouTube! You will end up on Facebook and Twitter and Google Plus; your name will be mud. Your boss and your mom and your boyfriend will SEE IT and you will be HELD ACCOUNTABLE in ways your wacko self could never be held accountable back in the day, before the internet, when you could easily dismiss and deny it all.

That's a real, measurable change in our discourse.

Even the existence of anonymous troll-comments means something: it demarcates the limits of what is acceptable, what people WILL take responsibility for saying and signing their names to.

As the Old Testament, well-known for not messing around, warned us: Be sure your sins will find you out!

That verse now seems oddly prophetic, not merely descriptive.