Tropic Thunder

I just saw Tropic Thunder, and I was a little underwhelmed by how offensive it was. After reading about all the controversy in the paper, I was expecting some really depraved shit and I didn't get it. I almost felt like the movie was in fact criticizing people who profit making movies about retarded people, and I thought what some of what they said was salient. Has this gone over everyone's heads? Is it just me? Were people paying attention to the movie, or did they get pissed and walk out when they heard a forbidden word?

Bonobos

Does anyone ever wonder if bonobos are just the liberals of the chimpanzee community? For those of you who aren't up on your primatology, you can read about bonobos and their more patriarchal cousins the common chimpanzees on Wikipedia. What if a long time ago, bonobos and common chimps lived together, and the bonobos were the liberals of their society with the common chimps the conservatives. I remember in the early days of the Bush administration frustrated liberals would always joke about moving to Canda; what if bonobos did something similar? Sometime in the ancient past, some primitive liberal chimps said:

"We are tired of this conservative chimpanzee government. We are crossing the Congo River and not coming back."

These liberal chimps would later become the modern day bonobos. You don' t have to tell me this is an awesome idea, because I already know. Do you think something similar could happen in the human future? Do you think that different branches of society with different politics might be isolated from one another long enough for those politics to impact their biology?

DOS

Does anybody else miss MS-DOS a little bit? I do, and I thought some the other day about why. Operating systems today both look too good and still work too poorly, and that doesn't fit with my primal expectations about how fancy machinery should work. In 50s sci-fi, you saw sentient robots that still looked like toasters, and somehow I feel like that's a natural expectation. If computer screens are going to start looking like the future, why aren't the machines driving them acting like the future? Shouldn't they be talking to me and cooking my breakfast by now? It just doesn't seem right that they've become so shiny and flashy without conforming to other futurist expectations.

DOS on the other hand felt more like a primal fantasy of a computer. It was just you and a blinking cursor, and it didn't do anything you didn't initiate with one of a vast universe of arcane typed commands. It was like communing with a reclusive machine spirit that demanded exactly the precise incantations to respond. I feel like a caveman could become comfortable with DOS, imagining that a spirit lived in the keyboard which demanded his or her appeasement.

Madden

When I first started at Wash U, getting drunk and chasing freshmen girls around seemed like a much cooler use of my time than playing video games. I was thus a bit skeptical when Tyler and Brian told me Madden was crunk. However, after playing a few games, I was hooked, and that addiction has blossomed into a beautiful and ongoing video game romance I treasure to this day. Below I will try to give a summary of some of its highpoints.

At first Tyler and Brian were both vastly better than me, and I played a long string of back to back losses. Brian said something to the effect of "I've never seen anyone so excited about losing over and over" which I interpreted as a compliment. In time, I got decent enough to beat the CPU on All-Madden, and I started to play Tower's team in the Dauten franchise league. A while later, I developed the ability to beat it consistently, and I would have the opportunity to play Tyler or Brian in the playoffs (I had also developed the ability to make these games interesting). These were always challenging and emotional games.

I should start with my rivalry with Tyler, who was always the Superman to my Lex Luther. When I started playing, it had been my specific goal to learn to beat Tyler, and I ran into him in the playoffs far more often than Brian. Tyler would usually practice a small number of big yardage plays to a ridiculous pitch of perfection, and beating him always involved guessing how to counter a couple of known but overpowering and versatile deep passing plays. Tyler was also the running guru I originally studied under, and his running game was nothing to be sneered at. His prowess in beating the computer by a zillion points also meant his teams were very talented, and he was all in all a very challenging opponent. I think we went approximately 50/50 over the history of those games, although I was never sure how I was pulling off the wins I did.

I only played Brian in the playoffs a couple of times, and they were both close games that left me uncertain how to appraise him. Like Tyler, he was very good ar ridiculously stomping the computer and his teams were very talented. He would usually beat Tyler, which I thought very impressive, but then often lose to Tower (who I thought to be second-tier, no offense). He also used play-calling I thought would never work if I personally tried it, and his success with it mystified me. Nevertheless, Tyler often beat me and then lost the Super Bowl to Brian, making him the frequent Dauten (and later Trinity) champion.

Another Madden highlight was the Madden tournament Jon hosted in 06. Me and Tyler ended up in the championship, which I thought was pretty cool because we had previously honed our skills mostly playing one another. I ended up winning; I dug out my victor's t-shirt this past week, and it made me think we should have another tournament. Any of you reading this that are interested in making that happen, holler at me.

Me and Tyler also played "drinking Madden" once, which was a very spontaneous and informal (and fun) game. The rules were basically that if you scored or did something cool that made the other person look stupid, they had to drink. This turned out to be a lot of drinking, resulting in me and Tyler draining most of a 4 litre Carlo Rossi BAJOW. Tyler later puked straight red wine all over Jon's shirt, which was hilarious.

More to come...

madden and dos

and also bonobos

Tupac Shakur

What was so great about Tupac? Unfortunately, not his rap in my opinion. Lyrically, I think it unfair to put him on the level of some of the other "Greatest Rapper" nominees. What he did have was a smooth, interesting delivery and wildly charismatic on-mic persona; the latter alone could have taken him places, and together these traits were more than enough to conceal his other failings and allow him a different kind of greatness. And what kind of greatness was this?

People want artists to live their art, and for the totality of an artist's life to harmonize with their work can be mesmerizing. No one in popular music has ever done so well as Tupac. For example, many rappers diss their rivals; Tupac took the extra step of fucking his rivals wife, and he did not hesitate to tell the fans. Many rappers describe crime and gun violence; Tupac was shot, left the hospital 3 hours after surgery, went to jail for sexual assault and got out just to taunt the DA and shooter from the microphone. He seemed to be describing his life, and never before or since has it been so hard to deny the sincerity of an active gangster rap artist.

Tupac also had the benefit of rapping in an era where the court of public opinion was still out on gangster rap. Tupac seemed to embody his music to such a degree we had to look on him as an expert witness, and in some ways he was an extraordinary advocate for the genre. However scandalous his lyrics and off-mic adventures, in interviews he was hypnotically articulate and charismatic. He seemed as if he were the philosopher-king of gangster rap, and his magnetism compelled you to see him this way also.

One can regard an artist as a technician who produces specific, well-defined pieces of art; a rapper is someone who writes lyrics and records rap albums. If one thinks of an artist this way, and judges them purely by the things they have produced, then Tupac is only mediocre. However, one can also consider an artist in a broader sense; an artist is a public figure who has a status in the public imagination which can transcend their art. Considered in this way, Tupac is a unique in the history of hip-hop. His whole life was a work of art that paralleled the music he produced, ending in the sort elaborately foreshadowed tragedy one sees often in Shakespeare but rarely on CNN. He was himself an unparalleled gangster rap narrative, and for that he was a great artist.

Writing Is Hard

I was writing something else, and I decided to stop in the middle to rant about limitations I perceive in my education. Throughout high school and college, I was taught to produce a very specific type of writing; I was taught to write expository or argumentative papers arguing a specific point to an impartial observer. The papers averaged about 7 pages in length, very rarely longer than 15 pages or shorter than 3. When I think back on this education, I remember being taught very specific things about how to organize paragraph contents and where to place paragraphs of specific type. I feel like this education could easily produce someone who is able to robotically produce cogent, readable writing in this format and fail miserably at writing anything else. I think I have had some success breaking out of this trap, but I still suffer from a sort of generalized confusion when I try to write outside of the 7 page expo. / argu. box. When I write well outside of it I often do it by randomly perturbing my structure and style until I randomly produce something I enjoy as a reader.

I am a big hip hop fan, and I listen to a lot of artists that are not college or even high school graduates. At the same time, I often have the feeling that I am experiencing real visionary creativity of a nature I find it difficult to see someone of my background producing. I wonder what the artistic cost of formal education is; in particular I wonder what it costs to make that formal education conform to a uniform standard. I know there are ways of thinking that society needs to produce in its citizens in order to function, and that education is the way to produce them. However, I also feel that there has to be a price, and I wonder what it is. What kinds of creative doors are we closing?

What do you think?

Disgustingly Compromising

It may be 5 in the morning, but this article on human rights in China is almost certainly a disgusting sell out.

Ying Yang

Rhapsody took a bunch of Ying Yang Twins offline recently and its really stressing me out. I might even resort to buying real physical CDs.

HAHAHA

Speaking of covers from The New Yorker, as part of the endless parade of turgid media coverage of the Obama cover, I saw this and its hilarious! Just imagine it. For those of you who aren't news addicts, this references the Larry Craig scandal, and you are supposed to imagine Larry Craig's foot sneaking under the stall to try to score some gay sex from Ahmadinejad. I can't imagine anything more exciting than Ahmadinejad getting caught having gay sex with a Congressman in a bathroom. Can you?

Snooty Over Educated Liberals

I am sick of hearing people on cable news yak on and on about this cover from The New Yorker. I could be wrong, but isn't The New Yorker a magazine for snooty, dangerously overeducated liberals? And if you're picking a magazine cover, shouldn't you pick something targeted at your readers? All the news coverage I read talks about how its not satire if no one gets it, but as a snooty overeducated liberal I got it. I thought,

"Hey, heres a caricature of a caricature of the second coming of liberal elitism, it must be making fun of the knuckle draggers in rural Ohio that actually believe these things."

I feel like most other snooty overeducated liberals, when they're not being partisan about the Obama campaign, can see what the The New Yorker was going for. That in mind, you can't really blame the magazine for running it, in the following sense. Why should they worry about certain kinds of people (the humble, the reasonably educated, the conservative) appreciating their cover, when those same people are probably never going to appreciate the magazine? They shouldn't. Not that the cover wasn't a bit much, because it was, but I think its been blown totally out of proportion.

If the people in the media don't get the joke, then maybe they should get another degree, or find another means of becoming more liberal and snooty. Then they might get it, and if they had taken these kinds of steps first, they might have thought twice about plastering these images all over the news. That way, only the snooty liberals that read The New Yorker would have seen the cover (people capable of appreciating it) and we all could have avoided wasting time.

Rock Superstardom

I am becoming more and more convinced that its going to take something extraordinary for Barack Obama to lose this election. Maybe a really extraordinarily awkward remark, an extraordinarily stupid strategic move in terms of message, or maybe extraordinary racism. Barring one of those things, it seems like he has become too much of an international superstar to lose.

During the primaries, my impression is that his public magnetism was what really allowed him to break out. His rallies were described in the media in terms similar to those used for Beatles concerts in the 60s, and it seems lately that that kind of idolization is becoming an international phenomenon. When I was in Germany this past June, it was Obama-mania everywhere. Some German pundit had recently declared Germany "Obamaland" or something that effect; a girl in the subway selling newspapers, on discovering I was an American, proceeded to unleash a cavalcade of Obama questions. And today I read in the NY Times that a lot of big media outlets are covering Obama's trip to Europe like he was President and taking Coldplay and Tom Brady with him.

...which is all good, because I want him to win, but geez...

Crunk Animals

I thought my readership might be interested learning about some obscure animals that I think are cool, so I am compiling a list. Some of these animals are extinct, and some may or may not exist, but all are fucking sweet.

Megalodon
The megalodon was a shark that went extinct a few million years ago, and its main claim to fame was that it was ENORMOUS. The fossil record of the megalodon sucks because sharks have cartilaginous skeletons, but it is believed that they commonly grew to a length of 18m (and some scientists believe this could even be an underestimation). Great white sharks, for comparison, tend to only reach lengths of around 6m. Check out the picture above...isn't that a huge critter? The green is a great white, and the big red one is the megalodon. Its like a goddamn tour bus of shark.

Trunko
This animal has only been sighted once, so I should concede that it probably doesn't really exist. Witnesses described this thing (more or less) as a giant polar bear with a trunk and a lobster tail. As ridiculous as that sounds, a whole boatload of people claim to have seen this thing locked in a 3 hour death match with two orcas, which it eventually lost. If your skeptical about this story, I don't blame you, but it would sure be cool if it was for real. I should also mention that science knows very little about life in the deep ocean, and its very possible there are large and strange animals still undiscovered.

Ambulocetus
This animal is an ancestor of the whales, and I learned about it on one of those TV shows where they computer generate images of extinct animals running around. Its an interesting example of convergent evolution in that its basically a mammalian crocodile; it has a similar body plan and they believe that it lived and hunted in similar ways.

Horseshoe Crabs
Horseshoe crabs are cool because they are an incredibly ancient animal; the fossil record suggests they have not changed significantly in approx. 500 million years, which means they are a holdover from a period when animal life was just getting started. They have copper based hemoglobin (like Vulcans in Star Trek) so their blood is blue/green, and they have a crazy ancient and primitive respiratory system. If you're on the beach on the east coast at the right time of year, these guys are laid up out on the beach everywhere, and you should give them props because they are real survivors. And by props, I mean flip them over if you see them on their backs, because they die from that :(

Ocean Sunfish
This is just a really weird looking fish. Its narrow and almost circular when viewed in profile and unlike other fish, it doesn't swim by moving its tail but instead by wiggling its dorsal and ventral fins. These guys are also enormous (they can weigh up to 2.5 tonnes) which increases my feeling that they are weird looking. The sunfish lives and feeds in the deep ocean, but comes up to the surface to lie on its side and bask in the sun for reasons that aren't totally understood. There is a picture of this weird fish and its weird behavior in the linked Wikipedia article, which you might want to check out.

The Greatest Rapper

Rappers all love to claim to be "the greatest." Although its obvious who is famous, who sells a lot of records, or who has a lot of fans, it is not so easy to look beyond those things to say what really makes for "good" or "bad" rap. Attempting to do so has become a hobby of mine, and although I do not have an authoritative system, I think there are a few subcategories of rap ability (rap sub-skills if you will) in which one can say what is good and bad. I also think different fans way these different areas differently, and thus a clearer idea of which components a great rapper should have could clear up a lot of disagreements. What follows is an attempt to do this, to sort of develop a rubric for evaluating rap.

There are a few categories to consider (in no particular order):
Wordplay: Is the rapper's diction varied, obscure, interesting, etc? Is there use of metaphor or other figurative language, and is it clever, funny, subtle, etc? Does the rapper play on words? Are the rappers rhyme schemes varied, complex, etc? This category essentially deals with how creative and sophisticated the rapper is in his choice of rhymes. This is what people are usually thinking about when they talk about a rapper having "good" lyrics.
Lyrical Content: What's the rapper rapping about? Are songs topically cohesive, or does the rapper seem to be just bringing up whatever pops into his/her head? Does the rapper tell interesting stories? Is he/she a good storyteller? Does the rapper talk about topics that are deep or emotionally heavy for the storyteller or audience?
Delivery: This is what I believe is commonly referred to as the "flow" or "style" and it deals with how the rapper actually utters their rhymes. For example, does the rapper seem to have any kind of meter or sophisticated cadence in their delivery? Do they vary their delivery, and is there evidence they do so for deliberate effect? Can they rap really fast? Do they have a cool voice, and do they manipulate it for effect? Do they sound articulate or is their delivery awkward?
Creativity: Is the rapper giving you the same old stories in the same style everyone has been using, or are they an innovator?
Personality: If you are listening to someone rap an album's worth, you are going to get some sense of their personality, or at the very least of the rap persona they are trying to construct. Is your reaction to that personality positive or negative? Obviously, this category is more subjective than the others. Does the rapper seem sincere, or does it seem like their persona is forced and artificial?
Production: How do the beats sound? Obviously, the rappers cant take all the credit for this one, but some seem to have better instincts in selecting their production than others.

Obviously, one would want the greatest rapper to do all these things consistently.

Baller Status

This quote is from Gilbert Gifford, an English dude back in the Elizabethan days who wanted to get into the spy business. He wrote the following in a letter to the Queen's spymaster:

"I have heard of the work you do and I want to serve you. I have no scruples and no fear of danger."

Isn't that baller? He's certainly to the point.

Yay, the government!

In The New York Times

Shrooms

This is from an article about amanita mushrooms, and it reminded me of the Fremen Water of Life ritual in Dune...but way grosser...

"In eastern Siberia, the shaman would consume the mushrooms, and others would drink his urine. This urine, still containing active hallucinogens may actually be more potent than the A. muscaria mushrooms with fewer negative effects, such as sweating and twitching, suggesting that the initial user may act as a screening filter for other components in the mushroom."

Getting that oil!!! pt. 2

In The Washington Post

Extinct Animals

I have been watching a lot of old documentaries about prehistoric animals, and I've noticed something. It seems like when there is a really major to disruption to an ecosystem, like one caused by an asteroid impact, the apex predators and other really large animals are really vulnerable because they need so much food (and thus such a large range). It also seems like if an ecosystem is relatively stable for a long time, there are always bigger niches to fill; if you are a herbivore, being larger takes you out of the reach of many predators (among other advantages), and then being a larger predator brings the larger prey within your reach. It seems like the pattern is that larger and larger animals evolve until there is a major disruption. A lot of them die off, and then the process begins again in the next stable period.

If any of you know anything about ecology / biology and can verify / invalidate this theory, let me know.

Toward a Scientific ID

As a thought experiment, let's reject evolution, accept the theory of intelligent design as commonly formulated and really consider the implications. Here are a few of my thoughts below.

Strictly Decreasing Bio-Diversity:
If you throw out macro-evolution, there is no mechanism by which new species can arise. Barring repeat and future visits by our intelligent designer, this means that biodiversity on the Earth will always be decreasing and has been decreasing for all of history. This would have pretty serious implications for environmental politics. It would also turn paleontology on its head, as it would necessitate considering all modern animals as participants in prehistoric ecosystems.

Similarity of Organisms
Many organisms are similar in structure to one another, and there seem to be familial relationships in certain groups. This is naturally explained in the theory of evolution, but what what explanation for this exists in the theory of intelligent design? Could the creator have been working using templates of some kind? It seems to imply that the creator faced some kind of constraints on design time.

Motivations / Extra-Terrestrial Life
If you accept the notion of an intelligent creator, its natural to speculate about their motivations. I know that some people in the ID community already have a storyline in mind, but there is no reason the rest of us can't speculate more adventurously. If the creator saw fit to create life here, could the same motivations have led them to create life on other worlds? As discussed above, the creator my have had limited design resources, so could this life be similar to ours?

Creative Inspiration
Where did the creator draw inspiration for their designs? If our creator's design resources were limited, might they have been working from existing archetypes? If the creator was biological, could these archetypes been creatures on the creators own world?

Relative Intellect
Was our creator more intelligent than us? If so, why did they choose to limit our intellect? Were they incapable of producing beings intelligent as themselves? This seems unlikely to me, but to do so deliberately seems oddly nefarious to me. If we are as intelligent as they are, might we someday develop the ability to design life?

Regression of Causes
If the evidence demands we have an intelligent creator, then it probably demands our creator has an intelligent creator as well. And that that creator has an intelligent creator, ad infinitum. An infinite regression of prior causes is unpalatable to many people , so what is to be done?

The ID Movement

At this point this is a very rough and unfinished draft, but I appreciate anyone's thoughts...

What bothers me about intelligent design is not the theory itself but my perception of the culture that surrounds it. Specifically, intelligent design seems to be more a visceral and non-scientific rejection of evolutionary biology that a free-standing scientific theory. I think no one will deny that the ID movement began in response to the theory of evolution, and I would argue that without evolution to react against, the dishonesty of intelligent design as a "scientific" movement becomes apparent.

To makes this point, I would ask that you first consider the simplest possible intelligent design theory, which is the statement "An intelligent force had a hand in the development of life on earth." I claim that this position is not inherently in conflict with the theory of evolution as a theory intelligent design need not constraints on the methods or timeline employed by the creative force. ID proponents rarely speculate on these issues (the aspect of their culture which is most suspicious) but it is not difficult to imagine our creator using coincidence and evolution as his creative tools.

For example, perhaps millions of years ago the creator came to the young earth, dumped out some organic goo and zapped it with some lasers and electricity. Any intelligent designer would likely have an intellect and an understanding of biochemistry vastly in excess of ours, and could set initial conditions to guarantee development of complex life; from a carefully chosen starting point, the chance mutations that produce evolution might be statistical certainties to a more sophisticated intelligence. Taking a step even further back, the creator of the universe might have chosen its laws knowing they would allow the formation of life on Earth. Such a creator would only have to make the universe sufficiently large to make our occurrence a near certainty.

I would like you to consider the question: If ID and evolution are reconciled, what is left of ID as a scientific theory? It is with this question in mind that I ask you forgive my simplification of ID given above, which ignores the many arguments ID proponents give against the theory of evolution. I did so because I believe the answer to my question above is "Very Little" and that the proponents of ID themselves are not interested in what remains.

An important aspect of scientific culture is curiousity; if you solve a problem, you ask new questions and try to solve them. If we accept intelligent design as a scientific theory, there are a number of new questions that any curious person would ask. For example: Who is the intelligent designer? What methods did they use? What can we infer about them based on their creations? For what purpose did they create us? Who created them? How do we avoid an infinite regression of creators? My opinion is that in mainstream scientific culture, people would have begun to broach these questions 10-15 years ago, and it is telling that the ID community has not touched them.

Gettin' that oil!

In The New York Times

Italics Added

Two weeks ago, one of Mr. Tsvangirai’s most senior aides, Tendai Biti, was arrested on treason charges carrying a potential death penalty but was freed Thursday on bail of a trillion Zimbabwe dollars, or about $90.

Intelligent Design

Lately, I have been reading a lot about intelligent design. There are a number of (flimsy) arguments in its favor I have seen repeated again and again, and that I feel compelled to respond to. I am always in favor of an intelligent debate, but the positions that follow range from subtly flawed to criminally ignorant, and the need to be retired from the sphere of publicly circulating ideas.

These first three begin on the criminally ignorant end, and I found them on the following website:
http://darwinconspiracy.com/
This webpage is a sponsored link on Google, and it is somewhat depressing that someone thought these arguments were worth paying to share. I will refute their 3 "Fatal Flaw"s one by one.

"Evolution is Missing a Mathematical Formula"
Last time I checked, there were a number of mathematical formulas associated with genetics, as well as a number of reputable scientific theories that are not mathematically formulated. This criticism could also be applied (even more) effectively to intelligent design, which not only lacks a mathematical formulation but is intrinsically incapable of acquiring one.

"Darwinian Evolution is missing a way to add genes"
First note that the above is a direct quote, and it annoys me that whoever wrote this garbage can't decide what proportion of the words in their titles they'd like to capitalize. This is also flat not true. Occasionally, people are even born with a partial or complete extra 21st chromosome (Down syndrome) and there are numerous less spectacular instances of mutation producing new genes.

"Helpless Babies Contradict 'Survival Of The Fittest'"
This argument works if you consider the phrase "Survival Of The Fittest" a complete and exhaustive summary of evolutionary biology, but that is not the case. If you expand that phrase just a bit to "Survival Of The Offspring Of Fit And Responsible Parents" this argument evaporates, and I think its definitely still within the sphere of what Darwin envisioned.

The next argument originates with William Paley, who was an English theologian in the 1800s. It is summarized here:
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html
Its a bit better, but it still has some serious flaws. Since I'm too lazy to make my links clickable, I'll summarize it here. The gist is that if you were out walking and you found a pocket watch, you wouldn' t think that the plants in the field had somehow generated it; because of its unusual and complex structure, you would have to attribute its construction to some external, intelligent power.

I think this is a pretty reasonable response to a watch in a field, but the analogy is flawed. Observing a sophisticated organism is not like finding a watch in a field, because the organism is not so alien from the other objects around it. A more appropriate analogy would be this: you enter a room full of a dizzying array of self repairing and self reproducing timepieces. Some are very complicated, some are not so complicated, and there seems to be a continuum of sophistication in between. Considering one watch in this room, it becomes a lot more reasonable to think its related to some of the less sophisticated watches. This is essentially the statement of the theory of evolution; it does not demand something from nothing, but that more sophisticated things develop from less sophisticated ones.

More to come...

A Canticle for Liebowitz

This kind of reminds me of 'A Canticle for Liebowitz', for those of you who have read it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/world/middleeast/01babylon.html?hp

Sentient Life

People who take a scientific, materialist view on the world have largely arrived at the idea that consciousness is a purely physical process. If some combination of chemical interactions in the brain can produce sentience, what other types of interaction could combine to produce it? In science fiction, there is already a plethora of movies and books dealing with the possible creation of sentient computers. What about more arcane possibilities? In some ways, governments and other large organizations behave like single organisms; could a large enough bureaucracy become self-aware and intelligent, with flows of paperwork acting like neurons in the brain? Could slang terms and catch phrases begin to interact in a way that mirrors transistors in a computer?

GWB

This article makes me love our president:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/17/AR2008051702474_2.html?hpid=topnews

Here's a choice quotation:

"And last month, the company lost a federal appellate court battle over whether it could ignore a vote by workers at its Brooklyn distribution center to unionize, on grounds that those in favor were illegal immigrants and not entitled to federal labor protections."

It sure is nice that the government is just punishing workers and not asshole companies like this one, which admitted to employing illegal immigrants to attempt an excuse for other wrongdoing.

Great Rap Albums

I am going to attempt to list my top ten favorite rap albums. I do not claim these are all "good" in some absolute artistic sense, although I reserve the right to do so at a future date. Here goes...

7. 504 Boyz "Goodfellaz"
This album was nicely produced, but also was not afraid to be trashy...
"When you shake that ass, I get rocked up,
You got a boyfriend, boo? 'My man locked up.'"
...which really opened up some possibilities. A fun album in general.

6. OutKast "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik"
This is OutKast's very first full-length album, from back in the days when they were actually a rap group. Really funky, wonderful production and good lyrics. I particular enjoy Andre 3000, which is kind of unfortunate because he seems to have lost interest in doing verses of late. If I haven't been clear enough already, this album doesn't really sound that much like what they did later, so it is interesting on that level. And its awesome.

5. Ying Yang Twins "Alley: Return of the Ying Yang Twins"
I consider this album the ultimate in trashy booty rap. The lyrics are funny, wacky, and at least vaguely obscene at all times. Thematically, the album focuses exclusively on the D-Roc and Kaine's efforts picking up women in clubs, something they seem to approach with great enthusiasm. Their sense of adventure is contagious, and as usual as they are ridiculous to the point of being lovable. Every song on this album hits (which I couldn't say of their others) and beginning to end it is a really enjoyable listen.

4. Nas "Stillmatic"
Nas is really intelligent and has a supernaturally vivid imagination, and he really shows it on this album. I also think he's genuinely really ghetto, more so than any other rapper of comparable sophistication. Nas is able to take stock gangster rap stories and tell them with a vividness and originality that is really unmatched. On this album, I would recommend "2nd Childhood" "What Goes Around" and "Rewind" in particular as examples.

3. Dr. Dre "The Chronic"
The swagger and fuck you attitude of this album are fantastic. The production is also amazing; there's a reason Dr. Dre could take a hack like 50 Cent and make him famous. "The Chronic" is a timeless classic.

2. UGK "Ridin' Dirty"
1. UGK "Super Tight"
Both these albums are amazing. For the genre, they are uniquely emotionally complex; in one song they brag about selling drugs and the next describes the horrors of watching junkies go to pieces. They achieve conflicting goals at once in that each album maintains a cohesive feel without feeling monotous. All the songs are great: great lyrics, each has a focused theme, and the mood of the product is always topically appropriate. These two are not so well known, so if you are a rap afficionado and you haven't checked them out, you should ASAP.

Ok, I'm only at seven. Hopefully I can come back to this later.

Saudi Arabia

This is something from outer space:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/middleeast/13girls.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login

Role Models

I've noticed an emerging pattern. I come home for a few days, get really drunk and talk to some random people...and in doing so, I have an important epiphany about something. So here is Example 2:

I was at Pin-Up, and I was (wasted) talking to some lesbians. I think it was their first date, and looking back I was maybe giving them a rash. This is significant because they were giving me a hard time about stuff, and somehow the ultra-feminist vibe about being messed with by lesbians stirred up my thoughts in a really novel and positive way.

Naturally, at some point I unearth some repressed emotional shit and I start crying. I am talking about all these good role models I have had, and how I never thanked any of them. I had and still have this vague feeling that you're not supposed to do that, but I frankly think thats pretty messed up.

I'd really like to write more, but its pretty late. So I am just going to promise my readership I am going to start thanking all of my good role models, retroactively, starting today.

jesus is for poor people

If I was a writing teacher (and someone turned this in) I would anally violate this essay. If you are bored, you can anally violate it too. If you are interested in getting deeper into the issues, thats even better.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52402

On a scriptural level (ignoring the other problems) this author is ignoring the fact that our society is radically different from the one Jesus directly commented on. That fact demands we translate some of Jesus's ideas to the present environment; in particular, the role of the state has radically changed. Although Jesus did not comment on the role of the state in redistributing wealth, he really didn't have an opportunity, and if he had tried to no one would have understood (much less written it done for modern commentators to read).

I respect private philanthropy, and I recognize that many wealthy people in our society are trying to do constructive and altruistic things (Bill Gates IMO being a good example). I also know that many aren't. The secular debate about these things today is complicated, but Jesus's statements in the bible about the self-interested wealthy are not.

Marvin Gaye

Perhaps the pervasive element of tragedy that ruled Marvin Gaye's life accounts for the profound intimacy found in his songs.

-I stole this from a Rhapsody review

Sean Bell

I don't know the facts, but there has to be something wrong when you empty a whole clip at someone who isn't shooting back. Or really, even when you fire 17 bullets at a number of targets you can count up to on one hand. I'm pretty sure thats not what they teach you about how to use a gun. It could just be incompetence, but that doesn't really make me feel that much better.

Lefties

Historically, a lack of unity has been a problem for the political left. Generally it's something that comes up in countries where you have a proportional representation system and lots of political parties; on the left, you tend to see a dizzying array of small parties in addition to one or two big ones in the mainstream. The other end of the spectrum tends to be a bit less balkanized.

Occasionally this situation is really debilitating for liberal politics. The best example I can think of was when Le Pen made it to the presidential run-off in France a few years ago. For those of you who don't remember this one, Le Pen is this vaguely fascist creep on the far right of French politics (he would be far right anywhere). Le Pen was not very popular, and in this particular election he only drew something like 15% of the votes; many more votes were cast in favor of candidates far to his left. However, because there were so many leftist parties each running their own candidate, the liberal vote was split up and Le Pen actually came out ahead. He ended up getting obliterated in the run-off, but had electoral rules been different he would have been the president.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the Democratic Party is about to pay the price for its own unity problems. I know there are arguments both ways; the long running battle for the nomination does generate a lot of noise in the media and whoever wins it will not suffer for name recognition. However, its also a maxim in politics that you have to get your base out to vote if you want to win, and one half of hard core Democrats are going to come out of this primary contest with their feelings hurt. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the loser's supporters don't feel like getting out to the polls, particularly if Hilary manages to snatch the nomination from Obama.

McCain has none of these liabilities, and is confronting opponents that at the moment can only devote a small portion of their time to engaging him. There is also a strategic component; McCain has some small ability to choose his opponent. I have noticed that he has more heavily attacked Obama recently; this could be because Obama is the likely nominee, but it could also be because he would rather face Hilary in the general election and exploit the 15 years of experience the religious right has in ripping on her.

As I said before, there are arguments both ways about this, but if the Democrats manage to piss away victory in this election I have some ideas about who they can blame.

Civil War (cont.)

I think TI approves of eating pussy, so if you are southern rap fan who also enjoys seafood you can rest a bit easier.

Forgive Yourself

Last night I was out boozing in the loop...

I'm walking home with some people, and I start talking to this homeless dude. I zone out, and the next thing I knew all my friends are gone. At this point, I am pretty wasted. I buy this homeless dude a hot dog, and I am chilling out by the hot dog stand with him and some other loop denizens. As is my custom I start crying and talking crazy shit...

...and now I am going to try to reconstruct what I said, because I think its important...

If you're driving East on MO 40 coming out of downtown, on your right there is a warehouse with some really impressive graffiti on the roof. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to climb up onto this roof and write "Forgive Yourself" in giant letters. Every time I drive back to St. Louis from Michigan I see that shit and it hits me like a freight train.

In anybody's life, there is a cycle of hurting other people. Nobody indigenously wants to be selfish, or to fuck other people over, or hurt other people's feelings, but sometimes it happens by accident. Sometimes you have good intentions but you fuck someone over, and that shit hurts you too. You feel that you have betrayed something important and good inside of you and you fall into a kind of despair that is deep below the level of conscious thought. You become angry with yourself, and that subconscious leaks out. You turn it against other people, and the cycle starts again.

Sometimes, I find myself doing things I know are wrong, and I honestly can't say why I am doing them. And... I just wish I could live my life better. Whenever I see that graffiti, its this epiphany like ..."Thats what the fucking problem is. Why couldn't I think of that by myself?" I realize that I have got that cycle going on deep in my mind, and that I am not going to be able to break out of it until I forgive myself for the shit that I fucked up in the past.

...so last night I was saying this shit, and me and some random dude at the hot dog stand promised each other we would spread the word about the sign and about forgiving yourself.

So...this is that. Forgive yourself.

In a World Lit Only By Christmas Lights

What follows is a series of nostalgic anecdotes about a summer I spent living in semi-alcoholic squalor (in no particular order)...

Earlier today I was browsing through the Facebook photo albums of total strangers, and I saw something great: Christmas lights used as interior lighting. It reminded me of the ridiculous summer I sublet from Tower on Trinity with James and (sort of) Vito. We had a huge living room with no light fixtures, and obviously we were too cheap and lazy to buy a lamp. What we did have was a huge bucket of Tyler's Christmas lights, which we nailed to the walls all over the room. They ended up being the only lighting in that room for the whole summer.

Right at the beginning of the summer James turned 21. James was the first person in my crew of friends to turn 21, and as his birthday expanded our access to alcohol it was kind of an event for everyone. We bought (or had James buy) a really excessive amount of liquor and threw a big party. The people at the party didn't get close to drinking it all up, so we opened the summer with just bottles and bottles of liquor lying around. I guess at some point we all developed this subconscious desire to get rid of it all, and we started playing beirut with all kinds of mixed drinks to try and drink it up. We did rum and coke, vodka and sprite, and on one occasion I think I did gin and orange juice.

There are some humorous bedwetting stories behind the vodka and sprite, of which I will omit the details. For those of you that were there, wasn't that some funny shit?

At another point in the summer Andrew basically moved in with us for a week (I think Alice was out of town). He was sleeping on our couch, which was right by the door to James's room. James vanished for two days, off doing whatever the shit is that James likes to disappear for a couple days and do. He left this 45 second clip of the Battlestar Galactica theme playing on his computer (on a loop), and because he had his door locked nobody could go in and turn that shit off. It was clearly audible in the living room, and Andrew had to spend a whole night listening to it loop over and over. I would have gone fucking crazy.

There was also a night when Vito randomly decided to sleep on the pool table (instead of his bed). He wasn't even drunk or anything. I guess if you know Vito that's not too weird, but if you don't, it sure is.

Oh...I shouldn't forget when Tower's sister visited, got plastered, and totally wigged out. I can't remember what she was in town for, but as it was Tower's apartment anyway we were letting her crash on our couch. We were playing the board game Diplomacy upstairs, and at one point she went downstairs for a bit. Later on I went down to get a snack, and I see her just chilling out by herself with a bottle of Jack Daniels. She said something to the effect of "Oh, I am just cleaning up a bit down here..." and skittered off. Later, she came back upstairs and seemed totally fine. Then there was a moment when it seemed like she snapped and Pop! all of a sudden she was wasted. It was like night and day. Diplomacy involves a lot of passing notes, and she handed someone this note like she had written down the most diabolical plan imaginable on it...but she had actually just written the number "3" over and over again in different sizes. It was pretty funny.

Back then Battlestar Galactica was still good, and we were pretty into it. We made plaques with the characters names on them (with the corners cut off, naturally) and hung them above our doors. We also had a masturbation alarm; when someone rang it, everyone had to run back to room and masturbate as if it were an emergency. We only used it once, but thats probably pretty messed up as it is.

Forgive Yourself

If you read this, remind me about it when you see me. I mean it.

Forgive Yourself

"I'd Rather Be With You" by Bootsy Collins

I have this song stuck in my head in a good way.

Civil War in Rap (Over Oral Sex)

I have joked for years about writing this, so I will begin now...

Over the course of many years of listening to (mostly) trashy rap, I have noticed a regional disagreement. Rappers from New York and the vicinity will often rap about performing oral sex on women, and its implicit that to do so is a socially acceptable and even a macho act. Rappers from the South are generally anti-cunnilingus, and seem to view the act as disgusting and un-macho. In both cases, artists bring the issue up with conspicuous frequency.

Below is a list of songs where the issue comes up, perhaps with some brief discussion from me. Note that this list is nowhere near exhaustive, and will perpetually be a work in progress. Note also that henceforth I will refer to the act as "the dolphin kick" (which is an inside joke I will not bother to explain) because I find it amusing to do so.

The South- Anti- Dolphin Kick

Juvenile "I Got That Fire"

Its actually one of the Fresh brothers who speaks out on the issue in this song, but Juvenile brings it up in about every other song he puts out as well. If I ever have a week to piss away listen to old Juvenile albums, I will create an exhaustive list.

Petey Pablo "Freek-a-leek"

Note that Petey Pablo says its desirable for girls to go down on each other, but that he's "not drunk enough to do that shit." Classy guy.

Ying-Yang Twins "Georgia Dome"

The North- Pro- Dolphin Kick

Nas "The Flyest"

One of my all time favorite pro-references: "Eat em so much the girls call me seafood lover"

50 Cent "21 Questions"

This one is especially significant, because I would consider 50 Cent the champion of ridiculous macho posturing in popular music today. There are quite a few more 50 Cent songs with references. I am not interested in figuring out what they are, however, because 50 Cent sucks.

More to come on this

Interesting Quotations from Odd Sources

I was on a wikipedia binge and I happened on this quotation from Lexington Steele, who is a famous adult film star (did you guess from the name?)  I think this is about as real as a Baptist porn star can keep it.  Check it out...

"Yes, I am religious. I am Christian, Baptist. I grew up in as close to a Cosby-show lifestyle as you can get. Doing porno, on a repeated basis, I am committing adultery; I’m not married, so I’m fornicating for a living; I’m paid to have sex, which means what? I’m prostituting by definition. These are things I have to reckon with my God on a daily basis. I knowingly do these things.

My decision to do porno has forced me to take my religion within: because of my job I am stronger in my relationship with God, because now I take God with me everywhere I go; if I don’t, I’ll fail. I didn’t know that god blessed me with an abnormally large penis that allows me to make porno. But I feel blessed. I believe I am blessed because I am meant to please one woman for the rest of our lives together. True, I haven’t met her yet."

All-Time Greatest Ultra Secret Crushes (Two)

If you're out there somewhere, call me. Also, if you're out there somewhere, I apologize in advance for the following use of the third person.

(In chronological order)
Pegi Fogerty [sp?]-
Oh my god Pegi! When I was in high school, I took guitar lessons one hour a week, and Pegi was an (amazing) girl who took guitar lessons at the same time and place. So many things were amazing about her. First of all, she was a beautiful girl. The kind you could take home to your mom, and your mom would have no choice but to high five you afterwards. It made me feel warm inside just to see her.

She also had a totally awesome personality. Sometimes, people would hang out after their lessons and shoot the shit with David ("of the guitar," the studio owner). I would go out of my way to be there when she was. I loved to talk to her; she had some amazing, casual, comfortable conversation. She had really good sense for what was interesting, and she listened really well. She also had sweet interests! Sometimes I would talk about a movie only weirdos like me enjoy, and she would have always seen and enjoyed it (example: Freddy Got Fingered). At the time, she was amazing to me in every way.

I knew she had a boyfriend, and I have never believed in coming between people, so I left it alone. Later on, she moved her lesson to another time of day, and I never saw her again. Pegi, where are you now?

Sarah Schell-
This one is a bit weirder.

Sarah was the neighbor of some of my good friends in college. At that time, I was in the business of getting ridiculously drunk at least once a week, and I spent a lot of time staggering around their dorm. One night I wandered into Sarah's suite and ended up hanging out for a while. Its possible I was really creepy and / or really awkward, but at the time being out of control just felt so good I wouldn't have noticed either.

I vividly remember I was talking to her by a door out onto a balcony. She was standing akimbo on one leg, kind of running one leg over the other, and I thought "This girl has the sexiest legs I have ever seen anywhere." We were talking about different physical sciences and the relationships between them, and I thought "This is the deepest girl I have ever met." Never before or since has a girl bowled me over so much the in the first few hours after our meeting.

Thats the end of the nice part of the story, unfortunately. Later on, I got the feeling that her roommates and my friends didn't get along, and I didn't feel comfortable staggering in. Maybe today I would be loyal enough my feelings to just go for it anyway, but at the time I was still shy and fearful of being awkward.

Sometimes, when I am drunk and I meet a beautiful girl, I have an intensely spiritual and religious feeling of how beautiful and terrible the world is. I am not even going to attempt to explain what I mean, and I am aware that I might sound vaguely ridiculous. But for those of you with an idea of what I am talking about, the night I met Sarah was the perfection of that experience.

Great Music Videos (Great for mostly ridiculous reasons)

Alright, what are some of my all time favorite music videos?

Most of these are first few outside what I normally listen to, which is what I love about music video TV back in the day. It was all the trendiest music getting shoved down your throat, and you would watch it just for the spectacle of the video. And you know, after a while some of it grows on you.

Pearl Jam "Do the Evolution"
Whenever I hear this song on its own, I don't even like it, but with this video it blows my mind. The song is just scratchy and weird and it sucks, but when you put this angry hippy's nightmare behind it they mesh diabolically well.

Beastie Boys "Sabotage"
Once again, a song that doesn't thrill me on its own. It sounds kind of sloppily produced and I find the Beastie Boys vaguely ridiculous. But this video, man... It takes this perfect 1970s cop fantasy and brings out everything ridiculous about it. Its deliberately shittily produced and has these great sequences of white guys with afros and aviator sunglasses clambering over random obstacles. It makes me feel just silly enough to love the Beastie Boys for 5 minutes.

Smashing Pumpkins "Tonight, Tonight"
I won't say too much about this one. Don't like this song at all. But I still have dreams about the video (which I see on TV about twice a decade, tops).

These next few are videos that filled me with frustrated adolescent lust in those first few golden years of puberty. Its normal to be nostalgic about that, right?

Christina Aguilera "Come On Over, Baby"
In the 8th grade, this video gave me a kind of a boner I had never experienced before. There were weekends when I would just sit at home watching The Box (if anyone remembers The Box) all night waiting for this to come on, and when it did it was always worth it. It had all these different sets with ridiculous color schemes, and for each she had a matching outfit. They were all sexy, in a way that was (to an 8th grader) marvelously overpowering.

Notice that I include no videos in which I think Britney Spears is sexy, because I could always sense that that ho is crazy. I only include this remark because at the time, she and Christina were competitors. I want people to know what side I am on.

Christina Aguilera "What a Girl Wants"
In this video, Christina Aguilera pulls off the aggressively flirtatious routine spectacularly. So you know, its great right there, but thats not all. The video has these changes in mood that really play with your emotions, and it really enhances the effect. It starts out shitty and poppy, and you're like (imagine again that you're in 8th grade)

"this chick man, shes hot, but her hotness might be too ditsy."

So at this point you're profoundly torn.? Then in the end it goes all R & B and you say

"oh yeah, shes sexy for feal. M! MMM!"

Its the tease that makes it great.

Mariah Carey "Fantasy"
I will admit to you that I have a secret crush on Mariah Carey, but that is a terrible shameful secret which will have to remain between you and me. Its just so great to see some titties in Hollywood. Specific to this video, her body looks so sexy and she still holds on to that girl next door feel, which is an amazing combination. There are a couple other Mariah Carey videos I would put on here, but I am already too embarassed.

Arlight, now for some stuff I might normally listen to.

Soundgarden "Black Hole Sun"
Love the song, love the video. The images are so trippy and vaguely terrifying, and the music just has a dark malaise to it. Its like being depressed in another dimension. Timeless classic.

Juvenile "I Got That Fire"
First of all, I had to include some classic Cash Money from The Box, for those of you that are down with that. Shots of people throwing money in the air, cruising around in ridiculous SUVs, and (of course) lots of random shots of people in white tees rapping. Second, you have to love Juvenile's crazy ghetto Louisiana accent "I got somethin foo ya." It's almost hypnotic. Finally, we all love the ridiculously explicit lyrics. Also, one of the great ridiculously explicit anti-cunnilingus references in southern rap. More on cunnilingus in rap later.

Big Tymers "Get Your Roll On"
To a real Cash Money connossieur [sp?], this is the ultimate. First, imagine shots of ridiculous sports cars (which they almost certainly don't really own) doing donuts in a parking lot. The rapping sucks, but its so filthy and ridiculous that you love it! I just can't rave enough.

To be continued

animals

A while ago I was watching BBC Planet Earth, and there was a scene where an arctic wolf was stalking some reindeer (or one of those other tundra-deer critters) in this field. It started chasing them, and they all bugged out across the tundra (awesome photography by the way). Eventually it ran down one of the younger sicklier ones and ate it.

When I was watching it, I wondered why the reindeer didn't just kick the wolf's ass. Reindeer are pretty big, and one healthy adult buck could certainly give a lone wolf a run for its. And thats just one; there are a zillion of them and together they could totally wreck the wolf's shit.

A couple weeks later, I was thinking about really dark events in history and how people respond to them. Like, if I had lived 150 years ago, would I be risking my neck to smuggle escaped slaves into Canada? If I had lived in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation, would I have Anne Frank hiding in my attic? I would like to think that I would, and that other people would too, but I know that a lot of people would not really internalize what was going on, and a lot more would tolerate it in order to protect themselves. Looking inside myself, I had to admit I would find it terrifyingly difficult to do the right thing and risk terrible punishment when I could just as easily say

"I have an obligation to take care of myself first"

and leave it at that.

I thought about it some more and it reminded me of all those reindeer. If only one stayed to tangle with the wolf, it would probably get pretty messed up; I guess none of them want to be that first one. It just seems that its the same as a lot of the evil shit that goes on in society. A lot of people might know its wrong, but the first person that stands up and says it is fucked, no matter how many people quietly agree. So nobody tries to be the hero, and the villains get away. The really sad thing is that if everyone just reflexively resisted, you couldn't martyr them fast enough. You couldn't keep slaves or industrially murder Jews if even 10% of the people who sensed it was wrong resisted reflexively, and people were stepping forward to be the hero every day.

More on this later...

This week has really been a mindfuck.

Shortly before I left for home, a high school classmate of mine went missing suddenly. She apparently had dinner plans with her mother that night, and had not called home or made any contact.

The news came a few days later that she had committed suicide. I felt surprised; I had not confronted the reality that she was missing, nor had I considered what her disappearance likely implied. She had always had problems with depression, and a part of me was ashamed that I was surprised; I was ashamed I had not had attempted to connect the dots and that I had allowed myself to be casual about her disappearance in my own thoughts.

The thoughts and emotions that these events generate in me are a tangled mess. Something inside of me says the natural response is to be purely sad. I want to be just purely sad, I feel like I need appear to be purely sad, but my mind races everywhere. I think about the living. I wonder what kind of person I am, what people would say about me; I try to think what I would say about others. I become desperate to organize my thoughts about every person I have ever met. I try to experience in my mind the funeral of all these people; I imagine how I hear the news and who speaks and how I have to remember them.

And then I am ashamed that I am allowing my mind to wander. A few seconds later I am disgusted with myself for caving in to an external idea of how I should feel. And then I wonder if other people in the room are having the same thought, and how they are reacting.

What are my memories of her?
I had an embarassing, awkward crush on her in middle school. I remember thinking she was very beautiful in a very delicate and interesting way. She had long hair at the time, and I remember I perceived there was something very gentle about the way she moved (I was brutally shy at that point in my life and that was something that really got me). I will always remember her as the first girl that let me feel that kind of marvelously fucked up spritual infatuation.

I went to college in St. Louis, and during those years she took some time off of school and was back in town. She worked at a burger joint I liked to go to sometimes. I knew she had had some struggles with depression, and seeing her back suggested to me she was having a hard time. I always had the painful feeling of wanting to help and not knowing how. I would also occasionally accuse myself of being a patronizing prick for even imagining I could help.

I didn't ever really know her well, and I don't really think I know how she would want me to keep her memory. Sometimes I think all the things you do in your life are little tiny waves on the ocean, and they all combine into one wave thats your life. Then after you die, all the little vibrations you've made live on. And it occurred to me at the funeral that the vibrations shes left in the world are good ones. I hope if she is still out there somewhere she saw that too and takes it to heart.

More on this later

gotta start writing shit down

I decided today that I am letting too much slip away from me, and I need to start writing down my thoughts. So I got this blog