Complete Personality Disintegration

"To rule forever,” continues the Chinaman, later, “it is necessary only to create, among..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:08:28 -0700

““To rule forever,” continues the Chinaman, later, “it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call…Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,— to create thus a Distinction betwixt ‘em,— ‘tis the first stroke.— All else will follow as if predestin’d, unto War and Devastation.””

- Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon

"Rain drips, soaking into the floor, and Slothrop perceives that he is losing his mind. If there is..."

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 02:05:07 -0700

“Rain drips, soaking into the floor, and Slothrop perceives that he is losing his mind. If there is something comforting—religious, if you want—about paranoia, there is also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long. Well right now Slothrop feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky.”

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

Internet.

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:11:04 -0700

yourmandevine:

WELCOME TO OUR WORLD

Jason Fry's Dorkery: On Writing for Free

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:03:00 -0800

Jason Fry's Dorkery: On Writing for Free:

jasonfry:

There’s a firestorm going on today over freelance journalism and writing for free. It started with Nate Thayer, who published an email exchange he had with an editor for the Atlantic. Basically, the editor wanted Thayer to repurpose a piece he’d written for NK News — 1,200 words by the end of…

Of the various responses to the Nate Thayer kerfuffle with The Atlantic over a lack of payment for work, Jason Fry’s is the best. That’s because, instead of just focusing on the issue of money deserved for services rendered — which is an important thing, duh — he’s willing to admit that there is value in work that does not involve money or a long-term plan to advance a career.

I am admittedly not the best person to discuss this issue. I freelance, but in my time as a full-time writer I’ve always had daily jobs that’s kept me from having to scramble for gigs. (I am also an unwed 27-year-old man and have relatively few expenses.)

Nevertheless, I write on the internet and therefore don’t make very much money. The fact of the matter is that there are very few jobs that earn writers a solid living, and any writer who enters the field without knowing that is fairly irresponsible. Unless I have totally misjudged the motives of my peers, we got into this field because we were drawn to it for reasons other than money — the desire to get our ideas out there, to be read, to be acknowledged, to participate in an intellectual community, etc. In other words, not doing it, or not trying to do it, made us like our lives less.

Writers need money because they need to live — as Thayer says, to pay bills and feed children. And, at some point, a writer’s career can reach a point where not getting paid by a publication that usually pays someone of that stature is an insult — that seems to have been the issue with Thayer and The Atlantic. I think money is nice, wish I made more of it, and think any company that willfully exploits its writers for the financial gain of a few employees needs to be called out whenever possible.

But, as my friend Ryland Walker Knight said a few weeks ago, there should be so much more to this job than money. As Fry points out, developing a relationship with an editor who actually considers and improves a piece (a rare experience these days, sadly) can be a beautiful thing, sometimes as close to an act of charity (by which I mean caritas) as our community gets. And there’s great joy in doing work for a friend’s labor of love, in doing a project because you care about its aims and goals and want to be part of something you consider legitimately important.

The economics of this industry are fucked in a way that turns questions of payment into a paramount concern. Yet I have a hard time believing that pieces of great substance are typically compelled by money — hell, even exposure — because if that were the issue then I would be working for a stupidly named startup right now. Money confers respect, appreciation, and a lot else; I would like more of it. I just hope we write for reasons better than getting paid.

As you may have heard, The Onion called Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt on Twitter Sunday...

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 01:58:22 -0800

As you may have heard, The Onion called Oscar nominee Quvenzhané Wallis a cunt on Twitter Sunday night:

RT @TheOnion Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a cunt, right? #Oscars2013

They deleted it about an hour after posting, but by that point they were in deep shit. The story has been picked up by many news outlets, including the Associated Press, and it’s probably not going to die within the next 24 hours, which in internet time is quite long. As of this writing (just after midnight on Sunday), various Twitter users are very upset about it, and not in the meaningless, irony-swaddled ways I’m used to.

My Twitter feed is predominantly white and caustic, so I didn’t notice the tweet until roughly thirty minutes after it went up. Frankly, when I did, I didn’t understand the fuss. To me, it was a not particularly funny attempt to create a shadow world in which someone no one openly dislikes is actually a giant asshole. The Onion relies on that gimmick fairly often — I remember a years-old interview in which one of the publication’s main writers argued that it was easier to write about President Clinton than President Bush because the former suggested an untold life, whereas Bush was always more up front about his opinions and beliefs. I didn’t really understand how anyone could take a comment from The Onion fully seriously, and I rejected any statement that simply chastised them for hurling an awful slur at a young girl. Because, in my mind, there was more to it than that.

I was wrong to look past the criticism, though, because I was ignoring an important racial and social context for the comment. (I do mean “ignoring,” not “ignorant of,” because I know the history and just didn’t come to it first.) The best explanation I’ve seen came in a few tweets from the very upset @prisonculture, an activist attempting to fight the United States’ prison culture and “eradicate youth incarceration.” Here they are in paragraph form:

I’m going to say a few words because they need to be said. Quvenzhané Wallis is a black girl-child living in America and you need to know what this means. Black girls are more likely to be survivors of sexual abuse and assault than ANY OTHER GROUP in AMERICA. Do you hear me? Black girls are the fastest growing group in the juvenile justice system. DO YOU HEAR ME? Black girls have inherited a legacy where they were considered UNRAPABLE by anyone but particularly white men. DO YOU HEAR ME? We were considered UNRAPABLE because we were supposedly so promiscuous that we COULD NOT BE RAPED. Sexualized misogyny is ROTE for us. When you call at 9 year old black child a CUNT, you aren’t doing so in a vacuum. You are doing it as part of a historical legacy of sexual subjugation, violence, and terror. DO YOU HEAR ME? KNOW YOUR GODDAMN HISTORY and its current effects. DO YOU HEAR ME? Enough with this. Enough. I am going 2 say this: if you are a black man (in particular), you have an F’ing responsibility NOT to be on the list of ppl claiming that this is harmless satire. STAND THE F UP for this black CHILD. I can’t believe that there’s a question that you might not. My brothers. Stand with us against this racialized misogyny because it is the right thing but also because we stand with you against racist brutality directed at you. Because we march with you against Stop and Frisk. Because we have stood with you ALWAYS. JEZEBEL, SAPPHIRE, HO, BITCH, JEZEBEL, SAPPHIRE, HO, BITCH, JEZEBEL, SAPPHIRE, HO, BITCH, ANYTHING EXCEPT OUR NAME…

These are experiences that I will never and could never have, and having them explained and reaffirmed is valuable. I do my best to be a thoughtful, respectful citizen of the world, but I’m also a white man who grew up in a very comfortable home and went to private schools his whole life. My best efforts will rarely be enough. I hope I have the humility to listen to people when they tell me I’ve fucked up.

Nevertheless, I think the perspective of The Onion writer — who, let’s face it, is my surrogate in this story — matters here. In the immediate aftermath of the tweet, I exchanged some thoughts with my friend and basketball-writing peer Ethan Strauss, who explained what I had really only gestured to in my thoughts. Quvenzhané Wallis wasn’t the target of the joke, but the easiest way of demonstrating the cognitive dissonance required to rip pretty much every other actress (and especially Anne Hathaway) in contention for an award while lavishing praise upon the child competing against them. As Matt Pearce of the LA Times tweeted, there’s an atmosphere of harassment surrounding all female actresses. The Onion joke could have been meant to note that — to suggest that many zing-minded live-tweeters were one step removed from calling a little girl a cunt. This is the world we know — one where the need to make a joke and express an opinion often bulldozes basic decency. The larger point was about normalized misogyny. And if a joke about demeaning a nine-year-old girl seems offensive and ridiculous and moronic, it’s because the practice is all those things when it’s applied to grown women, or even a not-so-grown one like 22-year-old Jennifer Lawrence.

I don’t think this context excuses any offense that people took from the joke, but it does help explain how it happened in the first place. Malice was not intended; if anything, it was a consciously over-the-top attempt at feminist criticism. (Whether or not feminist criticism can employ the word “cunt” at all is a separate issue — I tend to think that it can when used properly.) In expressing this sentiment, the writer ignorantly ventured into a cruel and unjust history. And now a lot of people are yelling at each other.

I don’t disapprove of that anger — it’s a natural, legitimate reaction. Once we get past that raw emotion, though, both sides deserve to be taken seriously even as one (the side of the offended) carries the more significant moral authority. If we want to have the serious conversation on race (or any divisive topic, really) that our elected leaders only ever seem willing to gesture to — or, conversely, that we continually prove we’re not capable of having — then we need to listen and argue in good faith, rather than assuming the worst of anyone without similar experiences. The goal here should be to trade information, to discuss, to create better habits and routines.

I concede that the onus of effort here is on those who ignore a history of subjugation. I just want to communicate that explaining the perspective of the aggrieving party often has a broader conciliatory purpose. It can even be an invitation to say more.

ryknight: Critical Precepts for the Writer in 2013

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 23:09:00 -0800

ryknight: Critical Precepts for the Writer in 2013:

vinylisheavy:

Write only about what you love. We need more celebrations, not righteousness, in this world.

Let the object tell you how to read it. Find its grammar, and use it.

Reading the object is the goal because anything you should write should be written to expand the argument of the object, not…

The other day, my friend Ryland Walker Knight, erstwhile critic and burgeoning filmmaker, wrote a really great list of precepts for the cultural critic in 2013. It’s a useful, thoughtful set of ideas on how to approach an object of study in an honest, forthright, respectful way.

There’s a tendency to look at an object as if we hold the key to understanding it, to unlocking its mysteries because we (or “I,” since it’s usually a solitary act in this conception) knows what it actually says about our world. One of the things Ryland says here (and what I also believe) is that an opinion is not a verdict. It’s an act of communication, both with the object of study itself and the audience for the work of criticism. The critic is not an oracle, but someone who participates in a conversation with the world.

"I want to talk to you about beauty. Just … exquisite beauty. … I don’t know what..."

Sun, 18 Nov 2012 03:53:04 -0800

““I want to talk to you about beauty. Just … exquisite beauty. … I don’t know what the question is. [Interview ends.]””

- Charlie Rose to Keira Knightley

vinylisheavy: The best promo tie-in in the history of...

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 22:16:40 -0700

vinylisheavy:

The best promo tie-in in the history of cinema.

Truth.

Civic Progress in The Dark Knight Rises

Sun, 22 Jul 2012 02:10:00 -0700

(There’s a lot in here that could be construed as spoiler material, so approach it with that in mind.)

As most reviews have mentioned, The Dark Knight Rises has very muddled politics, and Chris Nolan (and presumably his screenwriting partner/brother Jonathan) seem to want to have things both ways in many instances. Corporations are filled with lots of selfish monsters, but they’re also our best means towards innovation and creation, and a few people at the top should get to decide if and when citizens can access it; the people of Gotham hold great promise, but they’ll also be mindless revolutionaries the minute a weirdo who sounds like an underwater Sean Connery tells them it’s allowed; police are mostly okay, but maybe the best men on the force should resort to vigilantism; etc.

However, there’s a way to read this approach as consistent, though it contradicts the positive message on which the superhero narrative stands. In most of these stories, a great hero like Batman gets a downtrodden people to believe in themselves and the good inherent in Western society. These costumed heroes also save cities that have lost hope, or that fail their citizens in the same way a lot of our real-life governments do. If there were someone to stand up for what’s good, maybe we’d remember what brings us together in the first place and overcome what ails us.

Nolan’s Batman says he stands for those ideals, but in practice he is woefully ineffective at doing anything other than saving Gotham from destruction. At the end of The Dark Knight, he takes the fall so that Harvey Dent’s legacy might live in — the result is eight years of lies so that those in charge can hold criminals (the same people we were led to believe would act nobly in that movie’s ferry scenario) without parole. Naturally, there are still orphans and poor people and shitty parts of the city, because the structure of the society contains great flaws. Yet that infrastructure isn’t really holding anyone back from greatness. When Gothamites are given free reign after Bane’s takeover, they resort to all out hostilities against an upper class that arguably deserves it. There are isolated cases of heroism and kindness, sure, but for the most part Gotham looks like a city beyond help.

The only people who can save it are preternaturally talented people lucky enough to have access to great fortunes that allow them to develop amazing weapons. At best, they keep Gotham’s eventual decay at bay for a few months or years until a new problem comes along. Success is relative — everyone has to be reminded of their supposed capacity to believe in the common good after every victory, because at every opportunity they don’t display a willingness to act in that spirit. It’s a deeply cynical point of view: supervillains hasten the city’s downfall, but the citizens are always complicit.

I have always been a little dubious of this trilogy’s status as “the realistic superhero story,” because there’s a fundamental inconsistency to having a supposedly ordinary man do psychopathic things like dress up as a bat to fight criminals. (The idea that Batman and Catwoman would be happy traipsing around Europe like regular American tourists is particularly laughable.) But if we take the state of Gotham as I describe it above, then these films actually take the superhero myth very seriously. Introducing a caped crusader into a system full of institutional rot won’t lift up the everyday citizens in a transformative way. It’ll do little more than protect them from clear and present dangers. Batman does good but can’t bring about change — he wins battles but not wars.

In Batman Begins, there’s a continuous debate over whether Gotham is worth saving — it only ends when Batman gets Liam Neeson’s train to collapse (public services fail us again!). The series answers many times over that the city isn’t worth destroying. But it depicts a city where salvation could be impossible, as well.

Top 10 Websites on the Internet, By Hotness of Male Writers

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 22:16:14 -0700

1. Roll Call

2. Real Clear Politics

3. Politico

4. Big Hollywood

5. The Situation Room blog on CNN.com

6. Instapundit

7. Drudge Report

8. Grantland

9. The Cato Journal

10. Neal Boortz

Photo

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 16:34:21 -0700

newdesultorybaseball: Random Baseball Card #917: Pascual Perez,...

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:13:22 -0700

newdesultorybaseball:

Random Baseball Card #917: Pascual Perez, pitcher, New York Yankees, 1990, Fleer.

When I was a kid I treasured every Pascual Perez card, because they all looked like this.

Photo

Mon, 28 May 2012 14:11:47 -0700

Daniel Kasman’s Cannes dispatch on David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is really great. I...

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:45:58 -0700

Daniel Kasman’s Cannes dispatch on David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis is really great. I haven’t seen the movie, of course, but from the description it sounds as if Cronenberg has managed to turn DeLillo’s literary style into cinematic style, which is pretty much never done even adequately.

Mike D’Angelo described the film similarly and lamented that it doesn’t always nail that precise tone, but I think doing it even part of the time, w/r/t DeLillo’s style, would be a notable achievement. So yeah, I’m excited to see this one.

judgemyname: Would legitimately buy a map of the US whose only...

Sat, 26 May 2012 03:59:55 -0700

judgemyname:

Would legitimately buy a map of the US whose only listed cities were Brockway, Ogdenville and North Haverbrook.

Someone really should print these up. I’d put it on my wall for sure.

Photo

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:54:44 -0700

I’m done waiting. (Also Dawson’s creepy smile helps...

Sun, 20 May 2012 01:53:52 -0700

I’m done waiting. (Also Dawson’s creepy smile helps explain just how much he was the worst.)

One of the series’ all-time great lines.

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:53:25 -0700

One of the series’ all-time great lines.

This is when I realized that I love the season premiere of The...

Tue, 15 May 2012 20:20:37 -0700

This is when I realized that I love the season premiere of The Bachelorette because every interaction is basically part of the world’s most formal bar scene.

siphotos: Angels DH Vladimir Guerrero swings for the hills...

Tue, 15 May 2012 01:15:15 -0700

siphotos:

Angels DH Vladimir Guerrero swings for the hills during a 2005 spring training game against the Cubs at Tempe Diablo Stadium in Tempe, Ariz. (Brad Mangin/SI)

This might be my new favorite baseball photo.