It's Been A While

I haven't updated in a long time because I took a trip to Alberta at the end of July and then I was terribly busy the month of August finishing my thesis. I guess I got out of the habit of updating, but I'd like to get back into it. The last three weeks (since I submitted my thesis) have been kind of a blur; I've basically been alternating between sleeping, piano, and drinking. It's like being on vacation in my own home. I've been spending a lot of time following the election. It's like an addiction. I enthusiastically support Obama! We're having an election in Canada, and although it's also important, it's not as close and there isn't really the media circus of our American counterparts. I really don't want the Conservatives to get a majority; they're messing up the economy for one thing. My main issue is strengthening animal protection and appropriate consequences for abuse. I also care about the environment of course, and support a carbon tax. We'll see how it goes. I hope to update again soon and write more at length. Also, I bought a camera as my post-thesis present to myself so I'll try to post some pictures at some point.

Piano

Can you believe I wrote 7 pages today? Neither can I. But somehow I worked for 10 hours and wrote and wrote. I think this chapter will be the best one.

I have been playing piano a lot. I was thinking about how it's been a part of my life, and really my primary emotional outlet, but it's not like it naturally evolved somehow. It's not like a talent for singing or dance or writing, which require minimal training. With piano, I had to learn how to read music, and there's a lot of technique as well that you have to develop before you can use the instrument with enough proficiency that you're thinking about the music and not how to play the notes. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I'm really grateful to my parents for providing me with the opportunity to learn something that I'll use the rest of the my life. They're not musicians, no one in my family is, but they saw it as something from which I would benefit. I just wish I could have continued with lessons. Next goal: to recommence lessons and work towards getting my grade 10 and teaching certificate!

90's music (plus gross generalizations)

I am feeling nostalgic. I recently acquired a "Top 250" compilation of 90's pop songs, and, I must say, it's awesome. For a long time I've said that 1992-3 was the best time for music. I'm not sure if I believe that now, but it's true that you can't have the same sort of collective moments for good music now, because basically everything good's fragmented. The only stuff that everyone hears now is the shitty ultra-commercial stuff. But come on, didn't Nevermind pretty much blow everyone's minds? Siamese Dream? Gosh, it's too bad the Smashing Pumpkins never did anything as good as that album...

Though, the main thing is that there was this sort of absent referent to all this angst, which made it even more pathetic (in a kind of good way). I mean, no one could really feel bad about much except their own existential struggle. Post Cold-War, pre-9/11, the focus was inwards. I don't even really think about it in same terms as the interwar period I study academically, because there was really visible tension then. In the 90s, we were too busy with OJ and MJ and John Bobbitt to realize all the shit that was going down. But yeah, I do think that it made people focus on the absurdity of the banal since there wasn't anything exciting going on on a larger scale (that people noticed).

Sometimes when discussing popular culture with my students I would make distinctions between culture pre- and post-9/11, and it occured to me belatedly that they probably don't even really remember pre-9/11. I mean, they do, but it's not like they remember much of the 1990's. It would be like me remembering before the USSR became Russia-et-al.

Obama New Yorker cover

I love satire and I generally really like the New Yorker. When I saw this cover, I didn't know what to think at first but I've since been mulling it over. I'm all for freedom of the press with extremely limited restrictions (generally, hate speech), and was even for the reprinting of the Mohammed cartoons, but this cover bothered me (not rioting bothered me, mind you, just a fleeting sense of annoyance). I saw Hardball with Chris Matthews, and to paraphrase his point, caricature (the type of satire in this case) should be about taking something that exists and exaggerating it ad absurdum. My extrapolation: the cover caricatures the wrong thing. The object of satire--the idiots who actually believe what's depicted--make no appearance in the image. We see only what those people have falsely interpollated into the Obama narrative, with no relation to any known reality. I think that's why there's all this talk about whether or not people are "getting it." Well, yes, most people are, but it takes a cognitive leap (that only takes a few moments, one would hope) to identify what's missing ("the point"). Subsequently, the problem is that Obama himself is mistaken for the object of satire--this is why it's not only tasteless, but a poor example of the form. It's not that I think that liberal magazines have a responsibility to portray the liberal candidate in a good light, but I do think they need to understand the complexities of representation and reception (that is their business, after all)!

The other issue, of course, is that some of the generally neutral signifiers (dap, afro, Islam) are made negative by association (black militancy, terrorism). This whole "being a Muslim" as a negative thing is quite disturbing, as in and of itself Islam's not any worse than religion-in-general (but then again, how can we decontextualize it from its manifest fundamental interpretations? then "neutrality" as a concept is untenable--nothing is innocent, ha ha). In the US, I would say Christian fundamentalists are more scary, because they're more unified--the Muslims are too few and diverse to become a strong political force.

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Addendum: Here's a funny cartoon.

Thinking about this a bit more, it seems like perhaps simply including title of the article, "The Politics of Fear" would be sufficient (and would serve as the object). It would also put the image in quotation marks, so to speak.

Of course, in a perfect world, this wouldn't even be a big deal at all. To quote the Russian from America's Next Top Model, "some people have war in their country."

Print Media

Today I renewed my subscription to the Globe and Mail. I always feel some hesitation at this, but I do like getting a newspaper. I don't really like the Globe though, and I complain about it often. I don't think they have any really excellent columnists, and there are two writers that I think are consistently idiotic, illogical, vapid (Margaret Wente and Leah McLaren -- does anyone read these bozos seriously?). There's something I like about holding the paper, reading it while I have my breakfast and coffee. I think it's part of my addiction to information. I like that it's a national paper, which is why I don't subscribe to the Montreal Gazette. Perhaps if I move to Ottawa, I'll subscribe to the Ottawa Citizen, though I really don't know anything about it.

I love magazines. I also renewed my subscription to the Walrus, and I hope the magazine stays good under the new editor. I usually like Vogue, but sometimes it bothers me (the whole Sex and the City spread, recently). I got a copy of Vogue India recently, and it's pretty good, but I hope it will improve with time. For a more local take on fashion I subscribe to Fashion magazine, based in Toronto--I like their pages on different shops in Canadian cities. I've been trying to save money, so I've been reading Vanity Fair and the New Yorker online instead of buying them. When I feel like splurging I get the Sunday Times...so good but $10/issue! I have so many books to read and so much work, but I do love newspapers and magazines. It's too bad getting a job in journalism is so impossible...maybe more so than academe!

The obligatory comment: I don't think the internet will kill print media. Yes, it's suffering, but I'm online more than most people and I still enjoy holding what I'm reading, being able to take it around. And I always recycle!

P.S. I'm getting the hang of using the links feature, as you can tell.

The Incompetence and Casual Cruelty of Fritz LeChat

A very large moth that flew in a couple days ago re-emerged today. I held Fritz like a gun (like a laser cat, if you've seen the SNL digital shorts) and went hunting for the moth. Fritz, despite his heightened feline senses, could not see the moth when it wasn't moving. When it was flying, he went crazy leaping into the air and chirruping after it. When he couldn't see the moth anymore, he sniffed, looked around, and meowed after it--"where have you gone? can't you hear me meowing for you?" It was cute and funny to watch him being incompetent hunting the moth, but as Fritz started winning, it became kind of sad. The moth was a real survivor. He got it in his mouth maybe half a dozen times and it always managed to fly out, even the time when he carried it across the apartment in triumph (when he reached his arbitrary destination, he opened his mouth and of course it escaped). Eventually, Fritz wore it down and it couldn't fly anymore, but it took about 20 minutes for him to deliver the coup de grace. He simply could not manage to chew it enough to prevent it from creeping out. I felt so sorry for the moth. Can they feel pain? Fritz kept giving up, looking around, meowing at me, putting his fluffy head down, and then returning to the moth. I don't know where it is now or if he did eventually eat it, but I do regret that this fun activity turned sour; I thought he would give it a quick death. Maybe I'm trying to disavow agency for the moth's suffering...

I prefer winter to summer. It's tooooo hot. Even when it's cool outside, it's hot in my apartment. Rargh!

Wall-E (mild spoilers)

I adore Wall-E. It's always interesting to look at, but parts of it are actually breathtaking. It's simple, with minimal dialogue, but still detailed visually. 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of my favourite movies, and Wall-E is an explicit homage. More subtly, the ending is like City Lights (well, the emphasis on slapstick, chance, charm, etc. is all Chaplinesque), but of course since it's Disney the mere recognition isn't enough for narrative closure, there has to be the final union (coinciding with the commencement of a new civilization). So much of it is about how we are a product of our environment, but ultimately it's about how we can transcend that. We don't have any access to the interiority of the robots, really, since they don't talk much. We get a sense from their actions and genstures, of course, but what's really smart is that we learn about Wall-E through external stuff like Hello Dolly--he's a hopeless romantic. So, in the end, they manage to give the robots their own subjectivity and consciousness even though they're programmed (at one point the plot turns on a robot going against programming). Anyway, it's a great romp through film history and a well-constructed story. It almost makes up for me having to sit through Sex and the City, if anything can.

Also I'm finishing up DS9. Sooooo gooood! I wish I'd gone through Seasons 4-6 more slowly. I'm going to have DS9 withdrawal soon! Voyager isn't as good, neither is Battlestar Galactica. Alas, nothing can make up for the loss of DS9...