My Recent Realizations

I went out of my way to pick up a new CD, something that I haven’t done in a long time.  But Screeching Weasel has a new album out after 11 years or so, and I thought I would give it a shot.  Unfortunately, I didn’t like it.  But while I was at the record store, I did pick up a used copy of an old NOFX album that I hadn’t heard in years, and I liked that very much.

I haven’t bought new music in months, probably almost a year.  I can’t even remember what that new album was that I picked up last time.  I came to realize that I don’t buy new music like I used to, and I don’t evolve with the music that still comes out.  Part of the reason is that the music scene I enjoyed was dead (see this entry at yourscenesucks.com), but it’s also because I don’t have the money to spend on music anymore.

Once upon a time, I would work, or perhaps not, and somehow have money in my pocket that was not already accounted for in bills and living expenses.  I would have almost nothing to spend my money on, so I would throw it into my music collection.  I was on top of things, enjoying what music I could find, always aware of what band’s album was coming out next week or what show was playing that weekend.  Somewhere along the line, I lost touch with that.

Eventually, I found a conflict between what value I was putting on music and how much money I had.  I could justify buying music less and less, as I saw the music I liked being less and less worthy of my money.  I also had other responsibilities: rent, bills, food, and other people relying on me and those things.

It hit me recently that as we age, eventually our tastes in music stagnate.  We enjoy music from our slice of youth and don’t like new things as much.  A lot of that comes from what we enjoyed during the time we were searching for our identities, but I discovered this: aging means taking our money and using it to live comfortably, rather than sparsely with more entertainment.  If I hear about an album (like this Screeching Weasel album), it’s already been out for a few weeks, and I MAY get around to buying it a few weeks from now.  Usually, I think  to myself, “Well, I need to pick that up.  But this week I have to buy a new faucet for the sink, so I’ll just wait until next week and hope I don’t have a house expense then.”

But there’s always a house expense!  Eventually, I pick up the album and feel a little guilty about it because it wasn’t in my budget.  When I’m not impressed with the album, partially because the band changed the way it sounds during my absence from active participation in the music scene, I am less inclined to buy an album the next time I see one.  Thus, my taste in music stagnates a little more, and I become more and more of an old man.

I still have to pick up the new Dead Milkmen album, despite the fact that it will be terrible.  Luckily, that’s what makes the band so endearing in the first place, and the money won’t feel like a waste.

Related Websites

The Official Dead Milkmen Website

Rodney Anonymous Tells You How To Live

The Screeching Weasel Website

The Dying Art of Ghost Hunting

First, let me express my condolences to the family and friends of Christopher Kaiser, who died early Friday morning.  He was struck by a train in Statesville, North Carolina while he and others were walking along the tracks on a 300-foot bridge.  Reportedly, he showed incredible strength of character by sacrificing himself while throwing his girlfriend clear of the oncoming train.  She fell from the bridge and is now in serious condition, but she survived thanks to his efforts.

The group was investigating the rumors of a ghost train that is reported to race across the bridge on the anniversary of a massive crash that occurred in 1891.  They say that the sounds of a train, a crash, and more can be heard, and sometimes one can see the train itself.

“Professional” paranormal investigation teams point to the dangers of their profession and urge people to go through proper channels when investigating hauntings.  They also encourage safety, caution and preparation.

However, the explosion of ghost hunting is starting to fade away, at least in “professional” circles.  Of what constitutes professionalism I am not sure, but it seems that anyone who can assemble friends, promote themselves as an organization, and contact the proper authorities before entering purportedly haunted locations can call themselves a professional.  With these simple qualifications in mind, it is no wonder that the ghost hunting community is starting to splinter.  Television shows like Ghost Hunters and Most Haunted have been criticized by “real” ghost hunters as sensationalism and fiction, and I think it’s safe to say that we are hearing about those big programs less and less.  This may have something to do with fading interest by typical television watchers and active boycotts by “professional” ghost hunters.

That doesn’t mean the phenomenon of ghosts is going away.  The focus now has been on individuals rather than objective teams.  Two programs in particular, Celebrity Ghost Stories and My Ghost Story focus on an individual relating personal experiences, with no investigation, counter-examples, or even base interview as a balance.  Nor does the show need those things.  The idea is of a person telling a story that is a combination of what they heard and what they may have experienced (sometimes the storyteller isn’t even sure).

These stories are a great example of folk tales as tools of enculturation.  Many stories are similar, supposedly because the nature of ghosts is consistent.  Variations, of course, add to the mystique and suspense because,since ghosts can not be completely defined, the true nature of these things can not be determined.  The ghost tale is about confronting the unknown and coming to terms with it – especially the experience of death and what may happen afterward.

This experience is a personal one, which may be why ghost hunting as an institution is deteriorating.  This is also a result of postmodern religious thinking.  Either way, when a group begins claiming specialized knowledge that other groups within the same field do not have, that inevitably leads to in-fighting and unhealthy criticism.  Everyone disassociates themselves from everyone else, hostilely derides one another, and splinters off into their own factions.  The ones on top of the heap (namely the TAPS organization on the Ghost Hunters show) are both prime targets for criticism and often the most likely to criticize.

It’s a strange situation.  Scientific investigation relies on peer review processes.  Articles written for scientific journals receive such peer reviews both before and after publication.  There tends to be consent among scientists because of this reason, but new ideas are treated with the most critical observation, comment, and review.  Ideally, this would happen to paranormal investigations as well, and it seems to be occurring ever-so quickly.  Unfortunately, there is no consensus to even basic principles of that “discipline.”  Combine that with the aforementioned personal nature of the event being studied, and you have a flux of interest and communication.  Everyone claims authority, willing to afford it to none.

Such is what happens with a folktale developed for transmitting beliefs in personal validation.  How can a group or institution possibly sustain itself when what is perceived as a too rigid and impersonal draconic organization (science) is brought into question?   If the belief is to sustain itself, it has to relinquish some form of organizational authority and become one of personal validation and unorganized learned beliefs.  Even when ideas and ideals are shared and encouraged, the path to such knowledge has to be one of individual discovery.

That is one of the ironic manifestations of postmodernism.  How do we reconcile a group belief in individuality and unique experiences that must be reached through those experiences?  When the Truth that everyone shares is that there IS no Truth, or that Truth is subjective, how can we be sure of that?  It becomes a paradox unless one arbitrarily decides what that Truth is.  Some will allow for it to be whatever we decide it is, while others insist on their version of it.  Then Truth becomes synonymous with God.  (Is there Truth? How do we know what Truth is? Everyone has their own path to discover Truth.  Your Truth is not my Truth.  etc.)

And that’s where ghost hunting stagnates, at least as a manifestation of a belief system.  As a science, well, ghost hunting certainly leaves something to be desired, but that’s another post for another time…

Related Sites:

Ghost Hunters TV Show – Fake?

Don’t Watch Ghost Hunters Tonight!

Amateur “Ghost Hunter” Killed in Toronto

‘Ghost Train’ Hunter Killed in North Carolina

No special effects… except, you know, for those special effects…

I just read an article on Yahoo! Movies about “The Last Exorcism” and the special effects they used, or lack thereof.

I think we’re getting jaded.  Or stupider.

Do people not realize that special effects do not have to involve CGI or explosions?  Here is an excerpt from the article:

This week’s horror movie release “The Last Exorcism” has been garnering much attention with a shot just as impressive as anything from a big-budget blockbuster. The trailer ends with the image of a young woman in a nightgown and boots bent over backwards at an impossible angle. It’s so memorable and unsettling that the studio used it for the movie’s poster. What makes it impressive, though, is that it does not use any special effects. No CGI, no puppets. That shot is actress Ashley Bell bending like that for real.

Now, that sounds pretty amazing.  I was impressed.  Then they say this later in the article:

She joked, “[Director Daniel Stamm] nailed my boots down, pushed me over and yelled, ‘Action!’”

Okay, right there.  When is nailing someone’s feet to the floor (special actions) to produce a specific effect NOT a special effect?  It doesn’t take away from the girl’s dedication to the role or her flexibility, but don’t lie to us about a lack of special effects.

Here’s another quote from the same article:

Producer Eli Roth (“Hostel”) says the goal of the film was to make everything happening on screen look as real as possible, and Bell made that happen: “What you see is one-hundred percent Ashley Bell — we did not use any makeup, CGI, or special effects in her scenes.”

When do actors NOT wear makeup during filming?  No CGI? Okay.  No special effects? Aside from nailing her feet to the floor or some other camera tricks that don’t qualify as ‘special’ for some reason, fine.  But no makeup?  There’s ALWAYS makeup.

And here is one more:

Patrick Fabian, who plays the exorcist, Reverend Cotton Marcus, confirmed that Bell’s performance was just as chilling to watch on the set as it is in the movie. He said, “Ashley would be turning her neck or slithering on the floor and a voice would come out and it just creeped us out. There was no acting involved in there.”

No acting? So you mean she was REALLY POSSESSED?!  Holy SHIT, I have to see this movie…

People, curb your hyperbole.  You’re not making any sense any more.

Art and Video Games

It wasn’t long ago that Roger Ebert made the assertion that video games could never be categorized as art.  The statement had such a backlash that Ebert had to retract his initial claim and restate it thusly: “[N]o video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.”  This, too, has come under fire, and Ebert modified his claim again: “[G]ames could not be high art.”  That is an assertion I can agree with.  However, the idea of what is “high” or “fine” art has a lot of stigmata attached to it: it is elitist, exclusive, pretentious, presumptuous, and conformist.  So say the people who do not study art.

Video games are like drugs.  They produce an inaccurate view of reality.  The more one immerses themselves into the world of video games, the less able to interact with the world around them the players become.  See my post “Theory of Mind in Literature” to understand how this works and why this is a problem.

Keep in mind that I have a rather low opinion of contemporary “art” when I make these claims.  I have seen more value in simpler expressions of things I would consider to be “common” art than in what gallery owners hold up as worthy to show.  The main problem with this is the difference between personal expression and artistic expression, and knowing that there is a difference between the two.  Also, the definition of art tends to be open for interpretation, as Ebert’s discussion on the subject points out.

Few people who study art, though – and I mean the people who study art and art history, not the people who only study the processes by which to produce artistic works – more often than not share similar perspectives.  (Another aside – study need not occur only in a classroom.  Go visit a gallery, read some books on your own, and try to understand something rather than viscerally react to it.)  Generally speaking, Kellee Santiago, who made a grand presentation arguing against Roger Ebert, is close to the mark when she says, “Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way that the audience finds engaging.”  Close.  This may include many things that are absolutely not art: advertisements, text books, mnemonic rhymes, and others.  Some people might find a bus schedule to be engaging.  As you can see, this definition is a bit broad and could use some narrowing down. I would add that the communication MUST be done through the artistic medium as opposed to some other, for the sake of communicating the idea as accurately as possible.

Here is an example.  To simply ask, “What kind of god would create evil and suffering in the world?” only states a question.  Should the person asked try to answer it?  Is it only asked rhetorically?  Or is the point only to illustrate the fear and confusion behind the question itself?  However, something entirely different occurs when we read Blake:

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Suddenly, the question becomes much more complex and intriguing.  Why is God not mentioned explicitly in that poem?  Why is it so childish in its form and rhyme?  There is power there, gravity and seriousness in those words that are lacking from a simple verbal communication.

For video games to become high art, they would need to do more than simply elicit emotions.  Any Maxwell House commercial can do that.  Also, they would have to do more than simply be crafted and constructed into a pretty package, whether we’re talking about visuals or story.  They need to explore the medium itself and express ideas that could only come by means of the medium.

They would also need to relate a world view that the audience can or will experience in real life, not just in the mind of the creator or within the context of a fantasy world.  Most contemporary art, especially cinema, fails on this standard.  For something like a video game, that explores the realm of fantasy fiction regularly (or even, perhaps, exclusively), that task is even more difficult.  Rod Serling once pointed out that the audience will only believe the unbelievable if human nature stays constant and rational within the context of the story.  (If you have the Twilight Zone DVD set, it’s during the audio commentary to the episode “Walking Distance,” I believe.)

On a side note, I wish more film makers understood that concept.  Visual effects have become so easy to create that things are starting to get out of hand.  There has also been a push towards emotion over logic (Spock be damned), so much so that characterization is based only on emotional responses to things rather than through a character’s rational mind that consists of emotions, logic, and the capacity to regulate the two.  For example, when Batman stopped being wholly, completely in control of his emotional state and started to just emotionally react to everything around him, we lost him as a cultural icon.  But I digress…

Video games elicit emotions without rationality.  They promote “messages” without the internal ability to scrutinize them.  They exhibit craft without the capacity to use the medium itself as a necessary method of communication.  Simple entertainment is not high or fine art; it is just simple escapism.  Escapism does nothing except allow temporary relief from the mundane world and prevents engagement with it.  For these reasons, video games may be considered “art,” but will never be considered…

Fine Art.

Related pages:

Video Games Can Never Be Art

Game Designer Kellee Santiago Responds to Roger Ebert

Science poetry

The human soul is a singularity

existing in theory, but as yet undiscovered,

emitting virtual particles, undetectable,

that can only be observed indirectly

by the effect they have on nearby systems:

the heart, the mind, the world.

We observe the effects,

hypothesize and experiment,

and we call this experiment Art.

Daily Distractions – PoMo Poetry

[insert postmodern picture here]

The most fun I have by myself

is reading terrible poetry that

people post on their blogs.  It’s fun

and easy to find.  I am usually

horrified at the postmodern

implications of the phenomenon.

It’s easy to slap together a poorly

planned poem and post it on a blog.

While I was letting the WordPress

Readomatic find random new blog

entries for me, based either on tags

or categories that show up on my

own blog, I see a new poem posted

nearly every five minutes.  Maybe

it’s a Monday phenomenon.  Maybe

people have an urge on a Monday

lunch break to reduce their stress

and find an outlet for their frustrations

by posting a poem about something

unrelated to their boss acting like

an asshole, rather than tell their boss

that he is, in fact, an asshole.  They

would probably help themselves much

more by blogging or even writing a

poem about their shitty boss instead

of the most popular postmodern poetry

themes: their individuality, their love life,

or their secret Christianity.  (For some

reason, everybody wants to write about

Jesus, but nobody wants to admit it.)

Light Summer Reading

June 16 came and went, and I spent most of the day at work.  This year I made it through the Telemachus chapters of Ulysses and through the first Bloom chapter before Bloomsday was over.  Bloomsday is never the raucous event that I always pretend it’s going to be.  But I kept the day in my heart and made my students listen to the Dubliners while I lectured.  There were a few complaints.

Meanwhile, my daughter poked me in the eye during finals week last semester and I had an eyepatch for a few days.  It was acting up again, so I went to the eye doctor.  She told me that they don’t use eyepatches anymore because they can cause infections.  So much for my Joycean portrait.

I’m on to Hemingway, now, and have been for a little over a week.  Papa makes me feel better about where I am in my struggles and inspires me to move forward despite adversity.  A student came into the Writing Center looking for help with his research paper yesterday, which happened to be on Hemingway.  I don’t believe in destiny or fate, but I do keep my eyes open for synchronicity.  I don’t know how much I actually helped him, but I did open his eyes to Hemingway a little more.  He left with the insight that there is more to Papa than drinking and fishing.

I’ll be teaching Women’s Lit next month, which will be an odd and welcome contrast to the Hemingway I’m reading now.  My sister doubts my qualifications to teach it based on my dislike for Jane Austin, which is strange since I tend to be in the anti-Austin pro-Feminism camp in my analysis.

Here are a few of the women writers I do like:  Mary Wolstonecraft, Mary Shelly, the Bronte sisters, George Elliot, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Willa Cather, Gwendolyn Brooks, Zora Neale Hurston, Louise Erdrich, Charlotte Smith, Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson sometimes, Maya Angelou occasionally, and Virginia Woolf always.  That’s not a complete list.  It’s going to be an interesting class.

Of Pigs and Men

People, please read more than one work of literature in your lives, and stay away from Orwell, especially if you’re politically minded. Everyone always misunderstands Orwell because they think he writes well and they want to agree with him.

Orwell was a communist, through and through. 1984 and Animal Farm are (ironically) about the way people misunderstand and misuse what Orwell saw as true communism for their own purposes, and how the ideals of revolution are ultimately betrayed by new totalitarian regimes.   Neither one is about the evils of communism, and even suggesting that they painted capitalism as the opposing evil to good and pure communism is incorrect.

Even though Orwell knows how to turn a phrase, those works are not exactly considered the height of literature.  Both of those books are severely limited by the time in which they were written and can rarely be applied to contemporary politics. Unless you can take into account the European and American post-WWII, early Cold War, Russian Revolutionary political climate, stop using Orwell to support your OWN culturally limited views.

Incidentally, here is the webpage that had the header picture I borrowed.  A nice blog entry here about postmodernism at its worst.

Evangelical Reporting

As some of you may have learned, evangelical groups are claiming to have found Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey very recently.   This discovery was covered very differently by two news sources: FOX News, and MSNBC.

FOX news took an expectedly ‘open-minded’ approach to the topic.  That means they have taken the discoverer’s claims and published them without checking facts or other sources.  They simply present the material as it was in the press release sent out from the Noah’s Ark Ministries research team.  Of course, FOX News represents a predominantly conservative Christian viewer base, and to question or poke fun at such irrational topics as Noah’s Ark would drive them away.  You won’t find objective reporting here.

MSNBC has taken a different approach.  Instead of interviewing the research team, or publishing much of its press release, MSNBC reporters interviewed a few academicians - anthropologists, archeologists, historians – to give a scientific view of the discovery.  Of course, their reaction was less than enthusiastic and contained more than one accusation towards the evangelical research team of poor scientific skills, bias, and/or fraud.  MSNBC, it should be noted, has a predominantly liberal viewer base.

CNN, the usual leader in sensationalist reporting, remains suspiciously silent on the issue.  Back logs of CNN reports, however, contain stories about previous Ark discoveries that turned out to be bogus.  Maybe, on the Noah issue at least, CNN has learned a hard lesson from the past.  More likely, though, is that they are intentionally not speaking on the issue because of audience alienation.  Their viewer base is about as lowest common denominator as it gets, as the news network panders to ignorant atheists and Christians alike.

Now, I looked through some of the comments on this new story on both the FOX and MSNBC News sites.  Most of the pro-ark comments are misinformed about many things, so I thought I would clear them up here.

1. Science is based on peer review.  For some reason, people seem to think that just because a scientist had an idea, that everyone will blindly accept that idea.  The truth is, every scientific discovery is scrutinized down to the smallest detail before the scientific community comes to a consensus.  There are very few biases that spring from nowhere.  Most of them are based on my next point…

2. Consistency.  Science is consistent.  We know when science is correct because the end result was predicted correctly.  Ark discoveries have been consistent, too.  Each one has been consistently debunked and forgotten.  There is no surprise, then, when scientists admit to a certain level of skepticism when confronted with a new ark discovery.  Not only that, but

3. Carbon dating.  It’s consistent, too.  Stories of false data from insufficient collection practices are false because of the time, care, and repetition of carbon dating techniques.  A big controversy (if you want to call it that) in the Ark commentary is a question of who admits to carbon dating being useful when.  I want to point out that scientists are, again, very consistent with their carbon dating.  In the case of this ark that was supposedly dated to 4,800 years ago, scientists dismiss the evangelical team because DATING WAS ALREADY DONE ON THIS SITE, and the results were different.  Several times.  As MSNBC points out, “previous tests reportedly came up with more recent dates.”  That’s right, TESTS.  Plural.  As in more than one.  Consistent.  When there is a suddenly different result, that indicates a problem, mistake, flaw, or falsity with the testing method that one time.

And finally,

4. Science is not atheism.  There is no law anywhere, except in specifically literal-minded fundamentalist prosperity-religions, that believing science makes someone an atheist.  Arguing with science on subjects such as these is a veil for promoting literal-minded Creationism, not for promoting Christianity as a whole.  Most Christian sects – most world religions, for that matter – do not have a problem with science or  that unspoken subject, Evolution.  And that, folks, is the big, big issue with ark discoveries.  Inevitably, the new find will be debunked (if the scientific community gives another thought to it at all) and people will move on.  BUT a few folks, believers hope, will be fooled long enough for their minds to be opened to chicanery and lies.

Below are some links to pages on ReligiousTolerance.org about religious views on evolution.  Enjoy

Evolution and religion overview

Christian beliefs about evolution

World Religion beliefs about evolution

Pagan/aboriginal beliefs about evolution

Weird Searches…

Older posts of mine are still getting traffic, and occasionally still getting comments.  I must be doing something right if these older posts are still topical.  For reference, here is a list of recent search terms that have led people to my blog:

necronomicon, dorian gray, anime sucks, dorian gray 2009, the emotional let down after love making 18th century

I don’t know who is interested in 18th Century post-coital depression, but that’s the funniest damn search I’ve seen yet.  I’m also happy to know that people stumble on my blog when searching for Lovecraft-inspired fictional texts. 

I remember in high school, and maybe slightly before, during the epidemic of satanic cult hysteria that swept the nataion.  Nothing made kids tread dark paths more than parents freaking out about it.  Anyway, the Necronomicon was a powerful tool of initiation for pimple-faced teenagers looking to shock their parents and teachers with Dark Majicks.  Nevermind the fact that Lovecraft invented the whole idea of the Necronomicon.  It frightened parents and made scary kids scarier.