Summer of Infinite Jest -- 4

My internet reading habits have become governed by an RSS feed, which collects a wide range of stuff from various authors or publications, or on various topics, and which I try to skim through every day. When I find something I want to read at length, I use a widget from readability.com to save it to read later. Then every couple of days I copy all the latest articles from my readability.com collection into a single MS Word document and then print that out. Then I finally read it all over the next day or two, away from the computer. It becomes a sort of self-edited magazine.

Last night in Infinite Jest I reached the chapter which opens with the fairly inane telephone conversation between Hal and Orin Incandenza and then goes on to include four "documents" such as an insurance company email about a wacky construction site accident and an essay of sorts about the introduction, wide adoption, adjustments to, and sudden consumer rejection of videophone technology. These documents are all on different subjects, written in a different style, and it struck me that reading them in succession is not unlike reading my printed-out articles from the RSS feed.

Here we see the author's playfulness, and that's the main thing I took away. The second thing was his willingness to go to exhaustive length about a subject, such as the essay about the adoption and subsequent rejection of "videophony." Its author explains at great length, employing the level of detail that only a geek, such as a "Lord of the Rings" geek, could muster about his chosen subject, while recounting something which is fairly obvious on its face (no one who is not a narcissist or an attractive teenager feels very comfortable using a webcam). Because of this, the essay could probably be cut to a third its length and lose almost nothing. So I conclude that the level of detail is the whole point. It's an exhibition of what it's like to know everything about one little corner of the universe, and happily explain it all to everyone.

That, of course, is why Wikipedia is such a success. There is someone like that for almost every subject in the world -- not just the obvious fan-focused topics such as LOTR or Star Trek. With a little study, I myself might be able to rustle up a pretty good critical essay on the early films of Wim Wenders.

But before Wikipedia, we had novels. Moby Dick, with its exhaustive description of 19th century whaling, is the obvious comparison. But the best novels always give readers a sense that they're learning a lot of important and -- this is very important -- authentic things about something. Readers of Shogun are, by the time they finish the tome, convinced they could get along pretty well in 17th century Japan. Even my mother's 85-year-old husband said to me last month: "I know some Japanese: kimasu. Because I read Shogun." I thought to myself, Hmm, to go? Probably not... Then, remembering the book and the Japanese word which is repeated over and over, I said "You mean wakarimasu -- to understand." And he agreed, yes, that was it.

Life not as exciting as stories, except perhaps for the mentally ill

Most everybody has seen this brief retelling of Kurt Vonnegut explaining narrative arcs and coming to the conclusion that "people think their lives are supposed to be like" those of the characters in stories.

Our lives drifts along with normal things happening. Some ups, some downs, but nothing [that will] go down in history. Nothing so fantastic or terrible that it'll be told for a thousand years. "But because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies," [says Vonnegut,] "we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! So people pretend there is drama where there is none."

I recalled that lecture when I read this passage in the May 30, 2011 New Yorker about mentally ill people:

If a person goes from being a political martyr to a mental patient in just a few days -- the sign of a successful hospital stay, by most standards -- her life may begin to feel banal and useless. Insight is correlated with fewer hospital re-admissions, better performance at work, and more social contacts, but it is also linked with lower self-esteem and depression.

This also recalls the end of the Albert Books film "The Muse," when Sharon Stone's character, who had presented herself as a magical character with the power to evoke brilliance from blocked writers, is nabbed by the men in white coats. Yes, I guess real life as most people lead it is pretty dull compared to a schizophrenic's identity as a world-saver or a hotly pursued secret agent.

Today's fake: figure in Japanese TV commercial is actually computer-generated

We're not talking about crowds enhanced by CGI, we're talking about a pictured pop singer who is actually computer generated using combinations of features from 61 other young women.

Only an early entrant in what I predict will be a brief flood of movies featuring computer-generated characters in live-action films, movies which will garner a little bit of interest before everyone realizes they completely suck. Then the technology will be absorbed by the porn industry and by television commercials. Because really, why pay people who just get sick and die, or have gag reflexes?

I also predict there will be a new term for the flow of jobs to computer-generated figures: not off-shoring or in-sourcing, but something else. I can't think of a good snappy term for it right now. It's too bad "virtual" has three syllables and takes a long time to say. I wonder what the Japanese call it.

Google advertising FAIL

This story in my Google Reader (from the 3 Quarks Daily website) and an advertisement from a trade school resulted in an unfortunate pairing:

Today's fake: "beautiful people" website wasn't really hacked to allow uglies

A website called beautifulpeople.com sent out a press release claiming that a hacking attack had allowed the pictures of allegedly non-beautiful people to be posted -- horrors! Actually, there was no such attack and it was all a publicity stunt to drive traffic to their site.

Interesting -- you put up a website which is supposed to have pictures of only beautiful people. Then in order to drive traffic to the site, you have to claim that gasp! ugly people have appeared there. By this logic, editors could boost the readership of their newspaper's website by alleging that false stories had been maliciously posted, or ministers could increase church attendance by claiming they were sometimes afflicted by demons that would make them do wrong things during the service. Hmm, maybe I really would pay to see that.

Summer of Infinite Jest -- 3

Yesterday and the day before I read the passage from pages 95-125 which alternates between scenes at the tennis academy and a scene on a ridge outside Tucson and a dialogue between two secret agents. I liked the kid scenes enormously. They start in the locker room as several student athletes rest from a long day of classes and sports. In this first scene we hear them complaining to each other in an arch, jokey way that is also somehow formalized -- and indeed it's later referred to as a "ritual" -- about the heavy load of studying and tennis practice. the author also establishes for the reader the academy's system of mentoring, in which an older teenager is responsible for shepherding and encouraging several younger ones, as young as age 10. In the following scenes we see this mentoring several times over; we see how each of the older teenagers goes about it. And it's enormously sweet the way the older kids take the younger ones in hand, rather than bullying them, which is what you'd expect Americans to do, or at the very least holding them at arm's length with the kind of needling that so typifies the emotional immaturity of American males with each other.

The oblique way they talk to each other in the first locker room scene reminded me a little of Don De Lillo and they way his teenaged characters banter, but instead of going the alienated, hostile route that De Lillo's characters usually choose, these kids have an underlying warmth and camaraderie that keeps their talk from becoming the sort of war De Lillo's characters are usually engaged in with each other.

These scenes alternate, as I said, with a single scene on a ridge outside Tucson, as two secret agents -- one Canadian and one American, I think, the former in a wheelchair and one of the "wheelchair assassin" squad -- banter about tradecraft, gossip about the latest news, and feel each other out as to who's responsible for the deaths and injuries caused by the magically compelling videotape. Neither one seems to know much about it, but since they're spies they could be lying to each other. In any case I didn't cotton too much to this scene. I suppose the author is laying plenty groundwork for a geo-political farce having to do with the reapportionment of territories between Canada and the U.S. (perhaps not a union as I earlier surmised). But it just didn't seem that interesting. He imbues the scenes in the tennis academy with much more warmth.

There follows a seven-page scene narrated in first-person by an unknown drug addict and thug, written in an unidentifiable patois that is a mixture of street dialect and intentionally bad spelling. I was surprised that I found myself drawn in by this narrative, because I avoid books written in dialect. But it's a very well-shaped story, a sort of horror tale involving the violence of the narrator and his two comrades in thuggery, and their relations with a sinister Chinatown drug dealer. Again, the author must be setting up some longer thread, because while we've seen stuff about drugs already (an unnamed man waiting for a delivery of high-class weed, and a scene on a psych ward between a shrink and a young woman), I think it's the first time we've seen these characters. Maybe all the drug-related characters will come together later.

Today's fake: Supposed billionaire with money to lend

Author of not a Ponzi scheme but a simple fraud, this fellow advertised himself as a billionaire willing to loan millions out of his personal fortune. Companies only had to put up an "establishment fee":

Mr Johnson was one of many who saw the ads WGA ran in the Australian business press. Favourable stories followed about a Newcastle company so happy with its first $US200 million loan, it said it was after a second.

The Herald has since revealed that no money was ever received and that one of the directors of that company was Sydney lawyer John Mulally, who happens to be WGA's lawyer in Australia.
Mr Johnson paid a $3.8 million establishment fee to secure a desperately needed $150 million loan, which never materialised. He is now struggling to refinance his development company which was hoping to develop 10,000 housing blocks around the central coast and Hunter area.

Not sure how long the scammer expected to get away with that. Sounds like a simple pigeon drop scheme, only with millions of dollars on an international scale.

Lonely, bitter man predicts that in collapse, everyone will become like him

This screed from a collapsitarian contains the usual laundry list of dire predictions of societal collapse. What makes it different is a few side comments the author adds to his prediction. For example:

Alcoholism, drug use and domestic violence will likely soar. I also expect the declining marriage rate to drop at an even faster pace.

Disclosure: I don't believe that a man should get married. There's nothing that marriage offers that he can't already get. Plus, the divorce and family courts will screw him over in a big way. Nevertheless, many women will not be interested in marrying a poor or working class man. And frankly, more men will fall into this category. Moreover, less men will want to get married because they will feel that they have little to offer.

What an insightful view of human behavior! I feel like I know him better now. Let me guess, he's a drunken old asshole whose wife left him after years of abuse, and he feels screwed over by everybody from his ex to the courts.

From what I can gather, this loser mentality seems only too prominent among survivalist and "sovereign" types.

According to the article, the Big Collapse can follow any number of catastrophes, from economic meltdown to a solar storm -- a vague assertion that makes it clear that the author's interest is not in how we get there, but what follows.

I think of this as a primarily pornographic view of the future. Collapsitarians love to repeat to each other the gory details of how bad it's all going to get following the B.C., but they're never too specific about exactly how we would get there. Harrumph, solar storm, ahem! The parallels to the Zombie Apocalypse are unmistakable. No one spends much time thinking about how the Z.A. actually originates; what's important is the stalking, growling, head-exploding, etc. Similarly, what's important to the collapsitarians is the rioting, shooting, general breakdown of everything. It makes them very excited.

Update a few hours later: The same blog has published an entry from one of its regular alarmists, saying that something called a super EMP would disable all electronics in the lower 48 states. Well, I guess it would have to be "super." The entry also includes links to several examples of collapsitarian porn such as the excitingly titled "One Second After."

Hey, it's pride week

This TV commercial from the outdoors equipment retailer REI has a nice little crypto-lesbo moment that's impossible to miss.

Not sure how else to interpret it than "You may be out biking with your 'boyfriend,' but it's the lady bikers you really have your eye on."

25 years!

Yesterday was Cris and my 25th anniversary -- measured from the day we met, an event which Cris charmingly memoir'd at that link. (Excuse the slowness of the link -- the Open Salon system has been impossibly messed up for the last few months, a sign that Salon.com no longer has either the willingness or resources to properly maintain the database of what are probably hundreds of thousands of posts. For database administrators, it could be a job opportunity, but that's only if they can afford to hire anyone.)

Reading that story again, I realize what a connection it makes to the spirituality of one of my best friends, Sara Miles, whose book Take This Bread focuses on a moment of transformation that occurred when she was offered a piece of bread. When I broke bread and offered it to Cris, our lives were not transformed in that moment, but it began a process which has not yet ended.

To mark the day, we went hiking for the first time since Cris's back surgery -- a good three miles and more in Redwood Park -- and then a good meal at Bar Bambino, one of my favorite restaurants.

If my scanner worked, I'd post pictures of what we looked like then. I was certainly cuter; Cris has only gotten more beautiful.

Google "reminder"

Anybody else notice this in your Google Chat window today? It appears by default. Will this start to become like the Google Doodle, which is the name for the fanciful (and sometimes interactive) drawings that  supplant the Google logo on their home search page on certain holidays and commemorations? I can see: "Reminder: Ash Wednesday," perhaps, or "Reminder: change your smoke detectors."

Today's fake: Speculators pursue the Bitcoin, but ... whaaaat?

Last decade's virtual-goods mindfuck was the gold farming industry, in which American entrepreneurs went to China, hired educated but out-of-work tech grads, and put them to work for 12 to 16 hours at a time on repetitive tasks which generated virtual goods in the World of Warcraft game -- goods which could be sold for real money to game players who didn't want to put in the time and effort it took to accumulate those goods within the game. (These goods, such as a "magic sword" object, enable players to play the game at higher levels more successfully.) China made the practice illegal, but that hasn't stopped provincial prison officials from employing prisoners as gold farm slave laborers. So that's still going on.

Then there's the Zynga empire, which essentially turns all its games' players into slave laborers for the company's profit. In a way it's much simpler than the gold farming scheme, which is essentially a parasitical practice on a much larger operation (the WoW platform); Zynga simply creates an addictive product ¹ with no raw ingredients and a potentially worldwide customer base. Zynga is equivalent to a tobacco company which claims cigarette smoking isn't addictive, except it doesn't have to go to the trouble of buying raw materials, manufacturing cigarettes, and shipping them to wholesalers. It simply creates a compelling internet experience and collects an almost unlimited profit stream. It's like putting a video slot machine in everyone's home, only it's a slot machine that never pays out but simply provides its user with the mind-numbing experience of playing.

So it's one thing to create something of value out of nothing, or rather, out of electrons and human sweat. How could you go one better? How about creating nothing out of nothing, putting a value on it, and then having the unlimited greed of speculators do all the work for you? Well, it's happened. Behold the Bitcoin, a virtual currency with no meaning, no tie to any governmental or corporate entity, much less a game or virtual world. It is simply a computer algorithm (no doubt copyrighted) which permits licensees to generate units of valuation.

Bitcoins are snippets of code that use encryption to prevent counterfeiting and double-spending. Complex algorithms control the money supply, in theory replacing the need for banks or a central regulator. Right now Bitcoins can be generated -- or "mined" -- by running a program on a powerful computer. This task requires exponentially more time and processing power as the number of Bitcoins grows, and the absolute number of Bitcoins is capped at 21 million, mimicking the scarcity of gold.

Yes, you too can buy the code and generate your own Bitcoin, but notice that caveat about the "exponentially more time and processing power" needed to do so at a meaningful scale. Indeed:

One college student sustained permanent minor brain damage due to heatstroke after he dozed off in his room next to four computers furiously mining Bitcoins. "I wish I was joking," he said in a forum post that was reposted on the website BitcoinMiningAccidents.com.

Yes, there is a website devoted to "Bitcoin mining accidents"!! It's at this point you wonder what the world is coming to.

Certain cynics and libertarian critics of the monetary system -- the kind who yearn for a return to the gold standard -- would say this isn't much different from the current state of affairs in which we endow pieces of paper, some printed with "1" and others printed with "100," with value simply because we agree to. And they would also point out the similarities of limiting the total number of units of exchange and the ability to produce it. (Only the government can print money, and it controls the supply; in the same way only those holding the code for Bitcoin can generate it, and the code contains a self-limiting feature which will prevent more than a certain amount of Bitcoin to be "mined.") To them, our whole monetary system is a similar hoax.

I see this trend continuing. Last week lots of people were transfixed by the "fake lesbian bloggers," and there are still postings and articles being written on its implications for identity politics, online activism, and the whole question of online identity. At root of this issue is the question of whether or not there is substance behind what we value. The fact that Bitcoin exists and that apparently rational people are investing in it calls this into question even further.

Meanwhile, on Gawker just now: A virus that scans computers for Bitcoin and steals it.


¹ The piece on "my Farmville addiction" is not that informative, but notice the article's raison d'etre: the writer is explaining to his readers why he disappeared for two weeks. In other words, he went into a k-hole, or rather an internet hole, and didn't come out for weeks. Because he was playing Farmville. And couldn't stop.

Summer of Infinite Jest -- 2

I was wrong in my last entry, I wasn't on page 70, I was on page 60.

Now having read 12 more pages I am thinking about the plot thread having to do with the magically compelling videotape (or whatever the so-called "cartridge" is -- we don't know yet whether it's a feature film, a live shot of something, a hypnotic abstract design, or what -- I'll just call it a videotape until I know more).

First of all, at this early point the author is very cagey about the content of the magic videotape and what makes it compelling. And that's obviously the right choice -- you never show the monster in full light and full figure until the last ten minutes of the movie. And this being a literary novel and not, say, Cloverfield, I'm reading and thinking it doesn't really matter what's on the videotape. It is horrifying? Beautiful? Doesn't matter -- what matters is its effect.

Two points here. First, in the current state of ambiguity as to the content of the videotape and even whether it is horrifying or beautiful, it seems to me the author is saying that horrifying and beautiful are in some sense the same thing -- that they meet on both ends of the spectrum. The word "awesome" in its original meaning would apply, as the viewer's reaction of awe is what's important, not whether or not the material is awful.

What do I think about that -- beautiful is the same as horrifying? What's the author trying to say here? Is he suggesting that this equivalence is true, or is he (with a level of irony) suggesting that modern entertainment issues forth from this position of equivalence? The latter would be a more interesting point. The more you think about it, the truer it seems. Think about today's television. On the one hand, some good programming ("The Wire," "Mad Men," etc.). On the other hand, atrocious shit (take your pick). To the television/cable networks, it doesn't really matter. High class? Low class? Who cares as long as it pulls in the viewers? And the magically compelling videotape is the logical extension of this ad absurdam.

Second point: If I were to try to guess what's on the videotape -- an exercise which the author clearly understands is impossible for the reader to resist -- I can't imagine. Being 55 years old, I'm well aware that the avant garde of horrifying filmmaking has long passed me by. Between films like Hostel, with its images of torture, and those of Sion Sono (cf. Suicide Club, where a certain television commercial has the power to drive people to self-destcructive acts), I recoil from stuff that 23-year-olds eagerly consume. (In fact, I began this process when I was 23, when I walked out of Alien. ) In any case, to effect the weaponized hypnotic effect described in "Infinite Jest," the material would have to be geometrically worse.

If such horror (and let's say it's horror, not beauty) is unimaginable by a softy like me, maybe it would be imaginable by some freaky youngster. But I kind of doubt anyone could imagine anything that bad. Such horror is achievable only by a supernatural power; call it Satan. I assume the author is not writing a book about a literal Satan, so that means I have to suspend my disbelief here. In other words, I don't really buy the magical powers of the special evil videotape. But I'll have to take it on faith.

The way I read is, if I have to consciously do this -- say to myself, Okay, there's a hole here in the author's reasoning, a hole he doesn't want me to notice if I'm to continue to invest myself emotionally in his book -- that's sort of a strike. A book can sustain a number of these, the number varying depending on many factors. The book's reputation means I'll cut it a lot of slack.

 
For further reading: Scott Esposito in The Quarterly Conversation with a perspective on Infinite Jest fifteen years after its advent. I had no idea the book was already fifteen years old.

Today's overkill

The headline says it all: Man Uses Shotgun to Remove Wart From Finger.

I wonder if his thinking was based on an incident like the one I experienced when I was about 16. It was a pimply time of life, and at one point I'd had a pimple on the inside of my ear, right in the crest of the helix (see link for explanation), for several weeks. It was really hard to get at, and wouldn't go away. One day I was at a meeting of the church youth group. Another 16-year-old said something insulting and I picked up the nearest object -- a box of kleenex -- and winged it at him. It hit him in the face, which pleased me and made him mad. Seemed like the best outcome to me -- I hit him in the face with something harmless. But in his desire for vengeance he came over and cuffed me on the side of the head. The blow coincidentally ruptured the pimple in my ear. I declined to exchange blows and he went back and sat down, perhaps alarmed by the blood and pus coming out of my ear and wondering if he had actually wounded me gravely. I got up, retrieved the kleenex and wiped myself off, and from then on the pimple healed completely and never bothered me again.

Which makes me think that the fellow with the shotgun might have chosen a more appropriate weapon. Maybe he could have taunted a dog and got the dog to bite it off. (Cf. the classic story of the the dog that saved its master's life by eating his gangrenous toe.) But I guess if all you have is a shotgun, everything looks like ... Hmm, what? Not a finger with a wart.

Brits have no trouble with naughty book title

British newspapers have no trouble publishing the full title of "Go the Fuck to Sleep," the best-selling children's book by American author Adam Mansbach.

By contrast, here's the New York Times, which refuses to print the whole title:

Today's most horrifying image of scientific research

The new research involved numerous experiments in mice aimed at teasing out what happens to both brain and behavior when ketamine takes effect. In one such test, mice were forced to swim in a water-filled tube that they cannot escape. Previous research has shown that mice given antidepressants swim longer before giving up: a sign that the drugs are working.

-- From a Time article
on new uses for the drug ketamine

Isn't that a wonderful image for the use of anti-depressants in modern society: Although you are existentially trapped, you "swim longer before giving up." Lovely.

Summer of Infinite Jest -- 1

On the urging of my friend Katia, we're both reading Infinite Jest this summer. I picked it up on Saturday after seeing it in the window of a local bookstore. It was a new copy, the proprietor said -- "we hardly ever get it used." I guess if you finish it, you want people to know it and you put it on your shelves. But it's odd that there aren't a bunch of used copies out there from people who never finished it.

It's a thousand-plus pages. I'm not intimidated by very large books, having read Underworld, 2666 and The Savage Detectives, Europe Central, and all three volumes of Your Face Tomorrow, a magnum opus by Javier Marías. And yes, they are all proudly on my shelves.

I'm up to about page 70 of Infinite Jest, and I'm learning about this surreal tennis academy and the Incandenza family. Also there seems to be some kind of comic subplot having to do with a union between the U.S. and Canada and a Quebecois separatist movement. And there is some odd obfuscation by the author regarding video storage and viewing technology, perhaps under the assumption that any technology he wrote about would soon be obsolete and would date the book, so he made up something that was slightly off having to do with "cartridges."

I happened to read something today that said Don Gately was the central character, which seems strange since so far it seems Hal Incandenza, the youngest of his family and an obvious stand-in for the author, is the main character.

So far I admire the effort. I'm skipping just a little bit when I decide I don't need every single detail of a character's perceptions of the setting, which is something the author really extends.

When recordings betray you

Harold Camping, the 89-year-old self-proclaimed "Bible teacher" (he never refers to himself as a "minister" or preacher, contrary to references in SF Gate.com and other reports), is being released from the hospital after treatment for a mild stroke which he suffered a few days ago. Camping is the head of Family Radio, an obscure but world-reaching Christian radio station which he used to disseminate a prediction that Christ would return on May 21 this year.

That prediction, its failure, and Camping's rescheduling of the apocalypse to Oct. 21, has been widely covered. In the meantime, what's Family Radio been doing with its main announcer and on-air presence down with a stroke?

Running recorded programs, that's what. And they don't do him any favors. There's no way of telling when the recorded versions of his daily "Open Forum" call-in show were recorded, but they give us a noticeably younger and more in-control Camping. His voice has always been gravelly and monotonous, but in the last year or two has been quivering with age. The recordings only point up the contrast to his present state.

Another program in which Camping has been going through the Old Testament book of Ruth seems to have been recorded even longer ago than the "Open Forum" recordings now running. He sounds positively middle-aged, his voice powerful and steady. All the sadder for this misguided man.

Today's fake: Another 'lesbian' blogger revealed as straight male

Over the weekend a blogger who pretended to be a Syrian lesbian was revealed to be a fiction. Among the bloggers who looked into the hoax was Liz Henry, who in her investigation of "Amina" discovered that the supposedly Syrian woman was first brought to the attention of a wide audience on a blog called Lez Get Real. Digging in to this part of the story, Henry was the first to suggest that Paula Brooks, the author of the Lez Get Real blog, also might not be what she seemed.

A day later: She was right. The author of Lez Get Real, who said "she" was deaf and therefore had to communicate on the phone through her "father," was actually the man pretending to be the "father," 58-year-old Bill Graber.

"Holy CRAP," Henry tweeted. "I'm going to end up writing "Internet Lesbians for Dummies" aren't I? .. Or maybe do a video with Olivia Newton John singing 'Lez Get Fictional.'"

Graber: "I didn't start [Lez Get Real] with my name because... I thought people wouldn't take it seriously, me being a straight man." You think?!

But best of all:

In the guise of Paula Brooks, Graber corresponded online with ["Amina" author] Tom MacMaster, thinking he was writing to Amina Arraf. Amina often flirted with Brooks, neither of the men realizing the other was pretending to be a lesbian.

Good times!
 

I think I'm on Plan G or H

The NYT has a link to a feature called 18-Year-Olds Predict Their Future. Huh, wonder what I would have "predicted" for my future when I was 18. (I turned 55 this year.)

I think I would have expected to be either a writer or an actor, although what I really wanted to be was a disc jockey on the radio. I didn't have the slightest idea how to go about achieving that dream, and by the time I got out of college I was a film critic. That lasted about a year, and then I devoted a lot of time to being a performance artist while working various dead-end jobs and then getting my teaching degree. That lasted a couple years. Anyway, 37 years after graduating from high school, I actually do earn my living as a writer -- a technical writer, that is.

What use it is "predicting" at age 18 what you're going to be, I don't know.

Today's fake: 'Gay Girl in Damascus' actually a straight American man

This won't be news to anybody -- it's been the focus of a fairly intense internet flap for several days -- and I'm just documenting it here in the interest of logging yet another hoax and making a comment or two. Briefly:

1. A blog entitled "Gay Girl in Damascus" attracted attention for some time ("for years," says the Washington Post) [permalink].
2. Several days ago, the pseudononymous author of the blog, one "Amina," was said to have been detained by security forces in Syria, where of course a rebellion is raging.
3. In attempting to verify the alleged arrest and support its victim, some bloggers began to have what Liz Henry* called "painful doubts" about the real existence of "Amina."
4. Investigation by Henry and by Ali Abunimah of the blog "The Electronic Intifada," as well as by mainstream reporters, revealed a number a clues suggesting that "Amina" was actually an American named Tom MacMaster.
5. Today MacMaster has admitted being the author of "Gay Girl in Damascus".

The Washington Post has the whole story [permalink] and a photo of the bearish MacMaster. Meanwhile, Henry has suggested that another blogger, Paula Brooks, who was interviewed by journalists regarding the case may also be a fake persona, perhaps concocted by the same man.

What the hell, everyone says.

First, everyone should read Henry's initial "painful doubts" post, because she raises several interesting issues about online identity and the degree to which what she calls fictional blogging can be a valid form in some cases. And then you should read a 2008 post of hers in which she uncovers an entire blog in which the blogger and most of the commenters are nothing but sockpuppets. That post is especially valuable if: 1) you want insight into how an online citizen journalist goes about investigating online identity, and 2) you want to understand why it matters.

Now that the facts are coming out, it's hard not to see l'affaire Amina as being very much like the J.T. LeRoy hoax, featuring the same attributes of gender crossing, impersonation of a genderqueer person, appropriation of an oppressed minority identity by someone more privileged, and readers' similar emotional feelings of investment and betrayal. (I've blogged several times about the JT LeRoy hoax and about fakes in general -- see below.)

To repeat what I've said before: words matter. Stories matter. I'm sure this MacMaster fellow is going to say he did this to draw attention to the plight of women and homosexuals in the Middle East, or for some other apparently good reason. But when you pretend to be one of an oppressed minority and make people feel sympathy for you, when the truth comes out those people are going to feel you've manipulated them, no matter how noble your motives were. And they're going to be angry.

Update: A comment from a real LGBT blogger in Syria:

To Mr. MacMaster, I say shame on you!!! There are bloggers in Syria who are trying as hard as they can to report news and stories from the country. We have to deal with too many difficulties than you can imagine. What you have done has harmed many, put us all in danger, and made us worry about our LGBT activism. Add to that, that it might have caused doubts about the authenticity of our blogs, stories, and us. Your apology is not accepted, since I have myself started to investigate Amina's arrest. I could have put myself in a grave danger inquiring about a fictitious figure. Really... Shame on you!!!

Previously:

On JT LeRoy:

People Continue To Take 'JT LeRoy' Writer Seriously
The Fake Patrol
Suckers Line Up to claim they were duped by LeRoy hoax
'Other Writers Latched Onto JT as Career Move'

Other hoaxes and fakes:

Is there a 'larger, better truth' than just the facts?
"Really though, at this point, who's to say what's real anymore?"
Author made up quotes, degree, many other false claims
Crazy people make up the best stories
GOP volunteer charged with making false report
Hoaxers as superheroes

* Disclosure: Liz Henry is a friend of mine.

"Patriot" preacher can't resist bragging about how smart he is

I've posted about Chuck Baldwin before -- he's the crypto-facist Christian preacher who was more or less kicked out of his Florida church and decided, with great fanfare, to move his family to a remote corner of Montana because it is "more free."

Today he posted another dilly. I'm going to quote just the really funny parts.

• Montana is the new land of the free because it has no large cities, which are "the bane of freedom," though he doesn't explain the reasoning behind that.
• Idaho is a "great freedom-loving state" now, but as many liberals are moving to Boise, it may soon be lost "and go the way of Oregon and Washington."
• The people in Montana come out for his rallies, unlike the people in Florida. (He doesn't realize it's because Montanans have almost nothing else to do than go to tea party rallies.)
• God loves mountainous areas more than flat ones.
• The cold weather in Montana "keeps out undesirables: people who are comfort-oriented and not liberty-oriented!"
• Montana is a very peaceful state because they allow people to carry guns openly.

Of course, this summary doesn't do justice to his weird syntax, love of exclamation points, and the strange way he develops a theme.

What the guy is really doing is laying the groundwork for a run at governor. I hope he doesn't take the disappointment too hard.

Who's even crazier? Randall Terry. He's running for President -- solely so he can collect funds to air an explicit anti-abortion advertisement -- which all the networks will probably reject.

A killer app for millionaires

A recent article in the New York Times documented how rich Chinese are buying and flying helicopters even though flights in most Chinese airspace are severely restricted. Rather than complying with regulations, some simply pay the fines and keep on flying.

Now comes the news that new jetpack technology allows up to a 30-minute flight. (The headline is about the lift speed, but I think what everyone wants is something to commute in, a need hinted at only toward the bottom of the story.) Although the machine includes "a ballistic parachute outfitted with tiny explosives that launch the canopy into the air regardless of how far the user has fallen" -- I love the statement which follows, "The parachute has been successfully tested, the company said" -- yes, you'd hope so, wouldn't you! -- I see death in the future for a bunch of millionaires who seize the chance to become, in the words of the story, "rocketeers." A form of natural selection, maybe.

More on copywriting

Last Wednesday I mocked an advertisement that promised big money in the copywriting game. But I didn't really know what it was talking about.

That same day the New York Observer ran this piece about the career of someone who made money in the way they may have been thinking of:

Bryne Hobart learned the vagaries of Google rankings while working at Blue Fountain Media, one of the biggest SEO shops in New York. The 24-year-old college dropout had hoped for a career finance, but the market implosion of 2008 nixed that idea. Instead, he scored an internship writing copy at Blue Fountain, eventually working his way up to managing director of marketing. ...

In March, Mr. Hobart and Mr. Pierce formed their own company on the side, Digital Due Diligence. His first post, on Demand Media, drew tens of thousands of readers and was passed around internally at the content farm. Mr. Hobart began monitoring other companies that were relying on some of the shadier SEO strategies, and posting these findings online. The idea behind the business was to help hedge funds and venture capital firms assess the risk of investing in companies that relied heavily on search traffic.

Not surprisingly, Mr. Hobart's double game -- practicing SEO by day, exposing it by night -- soon proved unsustainable.

Then fun was had all around. This all just makes me realize I don't really understand SEO (search engine optimization, one of the dark, or at best grey, arts of the internet) and should read up on it. Dang, though, it's getting harder and harder to keep up.

A note from a desk

What am I doing this fine holiday? Working on my novel. In my work on Saturday I went over the 95,000 word mark, and I noticed today that I'm over 16,000 words into Part 2 -- the part set down in the desert, where I went last fall to research the setting.

I pity the fool

I was dumbfounded when I saw this subject line in an email today:

Tired of Your Day Job? A Lucrative Writing Career Awaits You!

Oh really! What could it possibly be? Given that it was sent by a vendor of online writing workshops, I had the feeling it wasn't an ad for courses on how to be a technical writer, which is the only lucrative writing career I'm aware of being open to average shmoes.

I was right -- it's not. The opening of the email went like this:

You could be writing for a living!

Writers from around the world have learned how to turn their passion into paying work through Breaking into Copywriting, one of the most popular courses at (their outfit).

If you're not familiar with copywriting, then it's time for you to look into this skyrocketing industry that's the perfect gig for writers just like you. Whether you're an aspiring screenwriter, novelist or playwright, or even just an avid reader, you can turn your love for words into a lucrative career as a freelance copywriter.

Copywriting a "skyrocketing industry"? Really? Somehow I doubt it. There was a short period a few years ago when you could make a little money churning (and I mean churning) out content for SEO websites and things like about.com, but that's a thing of the past, I think.

I'd like to link to a blog post from a few months ago that someone wrote -- someone who really was an aspiring fiction writer -- about attempting to get into this game last year, only to find it frustrating and mind-numbing. I can't find it, but I'll revise this later if I do.

People, if you want to make a lot of money writing, become a tech writer. It's not for everyone, but it's for a heck of a lot more people than screenwriting is. A tech writer with five years experience makes 75-100K a year. An "aspiring screenwriter" who's been trying for five years may still have zero chance to ever make money on it.

On the other hand, if it's your dream to write novels and screenplays, do it. Just don't make it your retirement plan.

It's the end of the world but you don't know it

As everyone knows (but will, no doubt, very swiftly forget), a Bay Area preacher named Harold Camping predicted the rapture would happen on Saturday. When it didn't, he professed to be "flabbergasted," and took a few days to do some thinking. This afternoon he more or less squarely faced a press conference and told the press and his radio audience that something "mystical" had taken place on Saturday and never fear, the end of the world will happen on October 21 "just as we have been predicting."

In fact, he has been preaching that the original May 21 date would be only the beginning of a five-month period of terror and that the real end of the world would come as the earth is consumed by fire on Oct. 21. Now he's saying never mind the terror part -- God is merciful! -- but he was right about everything else.

Play-by-play of the event is here, courtesy of a live-blogging HuffPost writer, but I thought the most interesting and telling part of Camping's spiel was when he was asked about the people who had sold their possessions and quit their jobs to advertise the May 21 date. Even if Camping was right about the Oct. 21 date, what did he advise those followers to do in the meantime? After all, Camping had answered a previous question as to whether he would be giving up his worldly possessions by saying in a mystified voice "But I still have to have a place to live... I still have to have a car to drive. Why would I do that?"

So what advice did he have for his followers who were now bereft of possessions? "Look," he said, his voice hardening. "We just went through a great recession. People lost their jobs, they lost their homes, they had to move in with a cousin, perhaps, or cut back very much on spending. But they survived. People cope."

So, anybody who believed this old nutbag and did something stupid like stopped saving for their kids' college tuition or quit their job -- they're on their own for the next five months. Surely some of them will kick themselves, go out and get a new job, and work at not being bitter for the rest of their lives. But others will double down for the real EOTW in October. Those are the people we should be afraid of.

Today's fake: End of the world. So now what?

Okay, it's Saturday afternoon on the 21st, and since Asia is not yet in ruins I think we can assume that series of Christ-sponsored earthquakes, which was supposed to devastate the earth starting in New Zealand and traveling westward, is not happening. I was talking a couple of weeks ago with a friend about this whole EOTW thing, when publicity about it was just starting to bubble to the mainstream. (I had been aware of the May 21 prediction for a year, because I have a morbid fascination with cult figures and frauds, and I have listened on and off to the Bay Area radio station of the Harold Camping cult for years, if for no other reason than his amazingly weird delivery.) My friend said, "How liberating! Wouldn't it be awesome if you really knew the end of the world was coming on a certain day? You could do anything!"

Because she's a shrink, I'm sure she didn't mean that in the "You could finally go out and murder that person on your list" way. She probably meant it in the self-actualizing way. Or she could have meant it the sort of dark-side way, because she also rolls that way. You should read her fiction. (You really should. She's in my writing group. In fact, she is my writing group.)

Right, then, back to work. Rain fell all day the day Sirenita died, but the next morning it cleared up, and since then it's been gorgeous. This is a splendid springtime Saturday, sunny and windy and cool, just perfect. I haven't yet been able to make myself go to my other writing friend's basement and work on my book. I think I'll do it from this nice cafe for a while.

Elegy for Sirenita

On Sunday we brought Sirenita to the garden for the last time; she walked around and sat in the clover.

Sirenita -- Little Siren --
sometimes Squirrel or Little Miss --
born in Oakland, tamed from feral,
dies today. Receive our kiss,
shadow in a chair or corner,
nemesis of hummingbirds and fish,
queen of blooming springtime clover,
drinker deep from spring or dish,
acrobat whose avid leap
brought down ball and shining light.
Lend your black to deeper darkness,
under cover of the earth,
like a blanket you dove under
like your bed, a sleeping berth.
Loudest meower, softest purrer,
take your rest in garden deep,
speak your piece and go to sleep.
Give your substance to these flowers
planted in our garden green,
watered by today's May showers:
thus may death a phantom seem.

Sirenita to end struggle with diabetes; Milagrito faces cancer

Sirenita, 2009

For almost twelve years we've cared for two cats from the same litter, a brother and sister, which we named Milagrito and Sirenita. Born feral in Oakland, they were passed to us by Cris's sister, who was taking care of their mother. Cris tamed them and has largely raised them. They've had a good life in our house and garden, a hundred times better than the short, difficult lives they faced as ferals.

Cris chronicled their doings in dozens of blog entries which she authored in the voice of the male cat, Milagrito. High points: "Pets or Food?"; "The Eye of the Monster"; and perhaps her masterpiece "Sports Magic," in which Cris talked about the issue of performance-enhancing drugs in sports and the reputation of Barry Bonds through the allegory of Sirenita's ball-playing mania.

Last year we noticed that Sirenita was drinking copious amounts of water. The veterinarian diagnosed feline diabetes. Deciding against an expensive course of treatment that would necessitate frequent injections and much emotional upset for the critter, we vowed we would simply keep her comfortable and monitor her condition. That was in the fall, and all through the winter I dreaded the prospect of Sirenita suddenly declining and dying while Cris was laid up at home recovering from spinal surgery.

Thankfully, the cat held on through the winter, and a month ago even showed increased appetite and energy. But now, with Cris having largely recovered, Sirenita has taken a turn for the worse. She stopped eating about ten days ago, and has stopped drinking water almost completely. Though still responsive and not in obvious pain, she is now skin and bones, and I expect her to die today or tomorrow. We already have on speed-dial a vet who will come to the house to administer a lethal injection once Cris judges that Sirenita's quality of life is at an end.

Meanwhile, we were blindsided this week by another blow. Feeling a mass in Milagrito's abdomen, we brought him to the vet on Thursday. She said he has cancer, probably bone cancer. His condition is inoperable, and the decision not to treat the problem was even easier than with Sirenita. There's not much that can be done and he's not in pain. Depending on the speed and type of the tumor, he probably has only weeks or months left.

I'm much closer to Milagrito and found this news profoundly dismaying. The cats are sometimes demanding and often inconvenient -- I'm allergic to them, and we have a complicated protocol where the bedroom must remain fur-free, necessitating showers before getting into bed, which really cuts down on spontaneous naps or sex -- but they've been ornaments to the home and real emotional companions. Many's the time that Cris and I, after an argument with each other, have cradled one of the cats for emotional comfort. Not to mention their entertainment value; they've cracked us up more times than I could count. It'll be really different around here without them.

There's nothing else to say, except that it's sad when pets die, but their companionship is worthwhile, and I'm glad they accompanied us here.

They're just fucking with us now

Via BoingBoing: Blackwater, the infamous private security firm synonymous with US corporate exploitation of the Iraq war, has appointed Bush-era attorney general and former "Singing Senator" John Ashcroft to head a subcommittee in charge of "ethics and professionalism."

Manifold duels

They don't go out of their way to explain, but as I understand it, in August Melville House Publishing is putting out five books all with the title The Duel. Evidently Conrad, Checkov, Casanova, and two other European authors all wrote stories with that title. And I suspect all are in the public domain.

As soon as I saw it, I thought hey, what about the epic passage in The Savage Detectives in which an author challenges a literary critic to a duel with swords? Well, not in the public domain, I guess. (Although I did see a pile of TSD paperbacks on the sale table, not quite at the remainder price, in a bookstore a couple months ago.)

What happened in art also happens in life

At the end of Roberto Bolaño's Distant Star, an agent tracks down and assassinates the book's main character, a skywriting military pilot and secret member of a Chilean death squad.

Now the same thing has happened in real life: The body of 66-year-old Enrique Arancibia, who was convicted in 2004 for crimes committed during the regime of Augusto Pinochet, was found stabbed to death in his Buenos Aires apartment, where he had been living since his 2007 release from prison. This article from Chile's La Nación tells of how he was found "with his intestines in his hand" after being stabbed more than 15 times.

A head start on dying

A year or two ago I received an email invitation for an event having to do with some entity I'd never heard of, the "Jejune Institute." Cloaked in mysterious language, the invitation, and a website I found by searching for "Jejune Institute," only hinted at some sort of interesting experience that would result if one showed up at a certain address in downtown San Francisco. It was impossible for me to figure out from the invitation and the website what the organization (or cult or marketing experiment or whatever it was) represented and why I should devote any time to investigating. I think I replied to the email saying "Is this some kind of put on?" to which the mysterious sender replied "Certainly not." Then I forgot about it.

Now today in the Bay Citizen (and NYT) is an article revealing what it was all about. It turns out to have been an elaborate art project - cum - "immersive game," the subject of which I still can't discern from afar. The writer of the article talks about tableaux and events that sound like performance art and makes it all sound fun, but it's hard to understand just what was fun.

I have several wistful reactions to all this.

First, you may have read recently about the psychological phenomenon called "Fear of Missing Out," which is an anxious sense that somewhere within striking distance a fabulous event is taking place which you are missing, either because you don't have the time or money to attend, or have to work, or worst of all because you didn't hear about it in the first place. I never had this fear in relation to the "Jejune Institute" because I did have the opportunity to hear about it, and evaluated it as far as I could, rejected it as an activity, and never thought about it again until today. Instead of Fear of Missing Out (or FOMO, as people have waggishly begun to abbreviate it), I have only a terminal sense of having missed out.

And yet -- secondly -- I find it hard to kick myself for failing to catch on when I was offered the chance. Because the initial invitation and website looked so much, on the one hand, like an invite from some amateurish cult, and on the other hand like one of those would-be viral websites that are actually a front for a cable TV show -- of course I didn't bite. I'm not that stupid!

Thirdly, it turns out I am that stupid -- stupid enough to have been invited in the first place and not to have discerned what dozens or hundreds of other people were able to, that this was something worth checking out. What did I miss? Whose fault is it? Is it the fault of the creator of the... thing... for not making the mysterious invitation intriguing enough, or are my senses of curiosity and adventurousness merely so dulled, in my mid-50s, that I no longer cotton onto something I would have eagerly investigated 25 or 30 years ago?

Fourthly, no doubt many of the people who wound up participating in, or witnessing, the events that were part of the thing heard about it through word of mouth. Someone they knew told them about this cool thing that was happening. And because it was mysterious, and little-known, it was hip. To know about it became a badge of coolness. To have attended one of the events became something you could brag about to others. If you wanted to impress someone or get in good with them, you'd invite them to the next event. If you merely wanted to brag without extending the circle of people in the know -- for what cool cultural event remains cool if too many people hear about it? -- then you could simply hint that you were doing this cool thing, without telling too many details. So it became an exercise in in-crowd dynamics.

(For example, this random blog entry by someone I don't know: "Friday, my mom, Anna and I went to San Francisco to check out the Jejune Institute. Again, there's tons I could say about that, but this time, I'm just saving it for a full post that I'll put up after it's officially closed, so I won't spoil it for anyone who has a chance to go see it. But seriously: If you can get to San Francisco before April 10th, go to 580 California Street, take the elevator to the 16th floor, and ask for the Jejune Institute. You won't regret it. Unless you've got a deadly allergy to fun. [sic] It was an immensely cool experience, and I'm glad I got to experience part of it while it's still there.")

But the tragic thing is that I did not hear about it through word of mouth. After I received the initial invite, I completely forgot about it, and I never heard about it again. Clearly none of my friends are in the in crowd, or maybe they are but know I am not. So to "fear of missing out" and "the tragedy of having missed out," we can add the depressing realization that "no one thought to tell me about it."

Fifthly, even having read the article, it still doesn't sound like something I really would have enjoyed (this article in The Awl is much more informative and gives a feel of what it was all about) largely because I get nothing out of in-crowd dynamics. I don't like exclusivity, and I bridle against secrets. To the extent the whole "Jejune Institute" thing existed merely to maintain in-groups and out-groups, I'm glad I wasn't a part of it, because I think those are sick dynamics in modern society. Or perhaps I have, in the words of the anonymous blogger above, "a deadly allergy to fun" (her italics).

On the other hand -- sixthly (I wonder what you call words like "secondly, thirdly," etc. -- in any case they start sounding silly if taken too far) -- I wonder if this "Oh, I'm glad I didn't" attitude isn't really just an attempt to justify to myself my increasing isolation from popular culture. I've been noticing in myself, for the last several years, an increasing failure of curiosity, and while I have a strong suspicion it's a very disadvantageous trait for a writer to have, it's been hard for me to resist. Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm simply shutting down, getting a head start on dying. Perhaps that part of the brain that is curious about new things is, in me, failing. Perhaps it's a hormonal problem.

Finally, I got another invitation last week. It was an invitation to investigate a private 55-and-older condominium development. Because I am turning 55 next week, and somehow the real estate people know it. Of course, I quickly threw the invitation in the trash, but doing so did not delay, for one minute, my impending birthday.

Right-wing collapsitarians' racist beliefs

One of the core beliefs of the crypto-fascist collapsitarians, who think the western world is headed for an economic and social apocalypse, is that when "the end" comes, all cities will collapse into hellholes of violence, rioting, looting, pillaging, and so on. This is one of the main reasons they believe in "prepping" for the catastrophe -- which they refer to as The End of The World As We Know It, or TEOTWAWKI -- and "bugging out" to a well-stocked, heavily armed and fortified compound in, say, Montana. 

When this collapse of the cities is predicted, the example almost always cited is the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. According to this way of thinking, that aftermath was almost exclusively characterized by, on the one hand, looting and violence, and on the other, pathetic dependency on government to save the people. Cable TV coverage of the event stressed both these themes, because they made for dramatic images, and that is what right-wingers have in mind when they say the collapse of the cities will look like that.

They are, of course, ignoring all the incidents where people helped others, acted with compassion, shared their resources, and made peace. TV ignored these incidents too, for the most part, because they aren't conflict-y, and are therefore boring.

But the other reason the crypto-fascist collapsitarians talk about the collapse of the cities, and assume they will descend into a cauldron of violence, is that they're racist. Take a look at this post on a prominent collapsitarian blog. About the cities, the author says: 

Misconception number four: Roving criminal hordes will come from the urban environment to your rural home or Bug Out Location (BOL). Nope, these people do not play chess or even checkers; they do not plan ahead much at all. Criminals, with few exceptions are lazy. And many are on drugs. Yes, a few will flee at the very beginning if they have a specific refuge in mind, the uncle with the farm, but most will not leave their familiar comfortable environment. Even if they have an operational vehicle capable of the trip it is likely to be low on fuel, particularly these days. They will burn up what little fuel they have driving around their usual haunts, to the liquor and drug stores, then to the convenience or grocery store like they did before the event, until their tank is empty. Walking or biking to save fuel will never cross their mind. No gas means no travel for this group.

They are stupid, lazy, and many are on drugs! Really!

Refuting those ideas, which are based on such an idiotic image of city dwellers, would be a waste of time. The only thing I can say in response is that that paragraph actually represents a more moderate prediction than the usual one, where crazed and armed city dwellers, having used up and then burned all the resources in their city, then go out to attack the good Christians in their Montana bunkers. (See my previous entry, Grim Dystopians Hoping for Complete Collapse.) So never mind that -- they are simply too lazy to do so!

It would be laughable, if not for the utter gullibility and ignorance of these collapsitarians, many of whom are elderly people who fall victim to tax-dodging schemes rooted in weird, almost schizophrenic ideas (such as so-called "truth language"). There is lots of money to be made from all the paranoia being served out there.

Stephanie, gone 12 years

It's the 12th anniversary of Stephanie's death on the highway in Arizona.

I just searched again last night and found another artifact: Stephanie's zine Hey Stranger listed on the web. If a girl whose whole career was limited to a couple of little bitty zines and a few illustrations in others' zines could be said to have a masterpiece, this was hers.

Story idea: searching for disappeared journalists

From a story in the New York Times [permalink] about a foursome of NYT journalists who disappeared for a few days during the recent fighting in Libya:

[After two days of being taken from place to place by Libyan soldiers,] [t]hey landed on Thursday in Tripoli, where they were handed over to Libyan defense officials. They were transferred to a safe house, where they said they were treated well. They were each allowed a brief phone call. That was the first time since their capture two and a half days earlier that their whereabouts became known to their families and colleagues at The Times.

Their disappearance had kicked off an intensive search effort. The Times canvassed hospitals and morgues, beginning a grim process-of-elimination search. The paper also turned to a variety of people on the ground who might have heard or seen something -- local residents, security contractors for Western businesses, workers for nongovernmental organizations. It also notified American diplomats.

The State Department got word Thursday afternoon that the journalists were safe and unharmed, in a phone call to Jeffrey D. Feltman, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs ...

I'm interested in that middle paragraph -- the futile search. I wonder whose job that was, in the middle of a war, when they probably wanted all the stringers they could find to cover the fighting in various towns and cities, some people get a call that they're wanted, not for reporting, but to make the rounds of hospitals, jails and morgues, looking for a gaggle of American reporters. That would make a terrific premise for a surrealist novel, right down to the denouement in which, after a nightmarish journey across the war-torn landscape, the protagonist finds out that the journalists have been found safe, no thanks to him, in fact their whereabouts have been known for at least ten or twelve of the last harrowing hours that the protagonist has been risking his life to find news of them. Loads of irony along the way.

Boom microphone operator ruins 'The Adjustment Bureau'

I went on Saturday afternoon to see "The Adjustment Bureau," a romantic thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt. What's it about? Never mind. What I want to talk about is a technical point.

Do you know what a boom microphone is? Here, here's a behind-the-scenes picture from the production, showing the crew filming Matt Damon:

A man on the crew holds it at the end of a pole, just above the shot. At least it's supposed to be just outside the shot. Once in a great while, when watching a film or TV show, you'll see a little black blob in the frame just at the top, just for a half second. That's the boom mic.

Usually you see this on television, where production values are lower and shoots are faster. In Hollywood movies, almost never. When it does happen, someone is supposed to notice. If the cinematographer doesn't see it during the shot itself, someone will see it when they review the shots at the end of the day. And they surely must see it when the edit the freaking movie.

In "The Adjustment Bureau," there are three scenes in which you can see the boom mic. At least three scenes, because then I stopped counting. I stopped counting because I walked out, and I got a refund, because by that time I couldn't keep my eyes off the top of the frame.

For the record, you can see the mic:

• Several times during the washroom scene where the film's romantic leads meet. In fact you can see it in both stars' close-ups, which were of course done separately, so I think that means the boom mic operator was high all day.
• In the first scene in Union Square, where you see John Slattery, just as he sits down on the park bench with Anthony Mackie.
• In the scene in Central Park halfway through the movie, where Slattery and another actor have stepped outside the restaurant and are wondering what to do, there it is again.

WTF??!? Was this movie made by amateurs? Was anybody watching the dailies? Was anybody looking when they edited this film??

It's inexcusable.

Update: In the comments in this review of the movie, viewers from around the country complain about the boom mike. Some say you can see it ten times.

Crypto-fascist also has messianic complex

I've written previously about Chuck Baldwin, the former Baptist minister who moved his whole family from Florida to a rural Montana county filled with survivalist and Patriot Movement types. Of late he's been ranting about how churches that get federal 501(c)(3) tax exemption are somehow equivalent to Nazi collaborators. And today he emitted a real doozy, putting himself in the shoes of one of the "patriots" who fought and died at the Alamo in... what was it... 1836?

These were real men with real dreams and real desires. Real blood flowed through their veins. They loved their families and enjoyed life as much as any of us do. There was something different about them, however. They possessed a commitment to liberty that transcended personal safety and comfort. Liberty is an easy word to say, but it is a hard word to live up to. Freedom has little to do with financial gain or personal pleasure. Accompanying Freedom is her constant and unattractive companion, Responsibility. Neither is she an only child. Patriotism and Morality are her sisters. They are inseparable: destroy one and all will die.

It's like he doesn't even know what the famous battle of the Alamo even was. It was a bunch of shootists and bums who were hired by rich ranching and mining interests to pull territory away from Mexico. They weren't defending Liberty with a capital L. They were mercenaries.

But even if one accepts this Hollywood fantasy that the "defenders of the Alamo" were selfless patriots, saying "Patriotism and Morality and Liberty are inseparable: destroy one and all will die" sounds a little funny, since according to him those faithful patriots did not separate them, yet they all died.

Baldwin goes even farther:

Please try to remember the heroes of the Alamo as you watch our gutless political and religious leaders surrender to globalism, corporatism, and political correctness. Try to recall the time in this country when ordinary men and women had the courage of their convictions and were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence.

Okay... Just what is he asking "our political leaders" to do? Doubtless he wants them to go ahead and shut down the government and everything the most heated Tea Party first-term Congressman wants. Does he mean they should force that through, even if it means sacrificing their political careers to satisfy the far right's hatred of government? Is that the same thing as dying at the Alamo?

That's the thing about Baldwin. He spends so much time ranting about his political fantasies and tossing bombs at straw-man targets whom his readers couldn't possibly be interested in -- PETA, really? -- that he forgets to say what he wants, what he stands for. It's really kind of amazing.

Today, however, our national leaders are in the process of turning America over to the very forces that the Alamo defenders gave their lives resisting.

Who? Mexico? Ya really lost me.

Previously

To conspiracy theorists, it all fits together

Despite the fact that the messy pro-democracy upheaval in the Middle East will actually make the world safer by ridding the region of the dictators driving the hoi polloi into the arms of Al Qaeda, to right-wing conspiracy nuts It's All Part of the New World Order's Master (and they do mean master) Plan -- so says the latest post from the Shit Hits The Fan blog, Turning Off the Tap: Population Reduction Through Designed Economic Collapse.

According to their conspiracy theory, the rebellions in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt and other lands are all part of a plan by "banksters [sic], the oil cartel and ... Wall Street" to "(drive) up prices for essentials like food and energy to the breaking point, ... shaking every nation on earth to its core. The effect of such manipulation seems destined to lead toward a severe reduction in numbers of the human population, and a tightening of control over those who remain."

Yes, depopulation! That's all part of it! Of course, this prophecy depends on the vast majority of the population losing its mind and reducing itself through riots and unrest to a fragment. Or as they put it:

The oil and Wall Street powers seem satisfied to allow the civil unrest to spread in order to feed their greed for higher oil prices and resulting control. Surely they recognize that higher oil prices will suck the remaining wealth out of the poor and middle classes around the world. This scenario will obviously cause starvation, illness, and other life-shortening effects, as increasing numbers join the ranks of the poor... and the poor have no where [sic] else to go.

Obviously. Of course, there's no evidence that the events of the last couple of months are the result of outside influence from anyone other than democracy-minded people themselves. Secondly, it seems odd for a cabal of "banksters" and other members of a shadowy financial oligarchy -- of course "Wall Street" is simply modern crypto-fascist code for "the Jews" -- to launch a global takeover by means of increased democracy. Thirdly, if there are "Jews" behind countless democratic Arab movements, that would be very strange. And finally, there is no evidence that anyone is losing their minds as a result of the turmoil, except maybe Moammar Gadhafi. In fact, newly-freed zones seem to be taking up the challenge of self-governance with optimism and a reasonable amount of decorum.

But an essential part of the conspiracy theorist's practice is to ignore everything that doesn't fit the theory's template. For them, the conspiracy is constantly in the process of proving itself true.

Warren Buffett also a collapsitarian?

Financial guru Warren Buffett, who in this generation fills the same niche as Billy Graham did in the 1960s and 1970s, this week issued an annual letter to shareholders of his company in which he said:

The prophets of doom have overlooked the all-important factor that is certain: Human potential is far from exhausted, and the American system for unleashing that potential -- a system that has worked wonders for over two centuries despite frequent interruptions for recessions and even a Civil War -- remains alive and effective. Now, as in 1776, 1861, 1932 and 1941, America's best day's lie ahead."

Oh, great. It's like he thinks everyone wiped their forehead in 1865 at the end of the Civil Way and said, "All right -- the system worked!" People in 1932 -- "The Dust Bowl and 40% unemployment? Is that all you got!? Happy days are here again!"

(Indeed, the song Happy Days Are Here Again -- written in 1929 -- appeared in no fewer than 19 films from 1930 to 1932, and was the theme for FDR's first presidential campaign. No doubt Buffett remembers it from that -- oh, he was only 2 at the time. But it's interesting to think that this happy little song, which is associated with American optimism in the depths of the Depression, might summarize Buffett's thinking.)

Does this make you feel optimistic about investing in the stock market? The company you invest in might be burned to the ground. And it isn't that far from what the dystopian collapsitarians are saying. (See my post from November, 'End Is Near' warning just as timely as it was a year ago!)

Books I read: "Red Lights" by Georges Simenon; "Let the Great World Spin" by Column McCann

I spent the weekend reading one of Georges Simenon's American novels, Red Lights (Feux Rouges, 1953). The book is about a couple who quarrel on a road trip and are separated, each of them encountering, at different times, an escaped convict. As usual for Simenon's romans durs (or "hard" novels, a phrase he used to distinguish them from lighter genre fare, particularly his endless series of Maigret detective novels), the story is a tense psychological thriller, bearing down on the spirit of an ordinary man until he breaks.

Filled with mid-century period detail -- the casual practice (if not exactly acceptance) of drunken driving, the difficulty of interstate travel before the interstate highway system, the insanely manual nature of a long-distance telephone call, and the utterly strange mixture of casualness and strictness of the hospitals of the time -- the book is also a curiously off look at American culture. The Belgian author composed the book while living in the U.S. for several years between 1945 and 1955*, and he gets many things right, but there are also many other details which receive a weird emphasis or which are simply wrong. (Adding to the strangeness was the fact that the copy I procured was a British edition and contained an occasional British spelling, such as tyre.) But even though these missteps occasionally were jarring, I didn't really mind them because the pacing and plotting were so effective. A Simenon book is a universe unto itself, rendered in complete detail (and not a detail more than necessary); once inside, the reader surrenders all disbelief.

Just before this, I read another novel of American life by a foreigner, "Let the Great World Spin" by Column McCann, an Irish writer. While the book uses as its centerpiece the World Trade Center tightrope walk by Philippe Petit, none of the characters in the book, except for the judge in whose court he appears after the escapade, ever meets the acrobat. Instead they are people who watched it, or more often merely heard about it. Their lives, ranging from Bronx street hookers to a Park Avenue matron, are decidedly earthbound; the transcendence of Petit's feat is a major contrast.

Looked at from this perspective in 2011, these two books -- one set in the early 1950s, the other in the mid 1970s -- are both set in the long-ago past, and drew my attention to the amount of change that has occurred in the years since. Aside from McCann's excellent writing, which in its way is just as intense and insightful about the human spirit as the dark work of Simenon, I was very much struck by how much New York changed from 1974 -- during the depths of its gritty decay, pre-Saturday Night Live, pre-Times Square cleanup, pre-Yankees resurgence, pre-almost everything we associate with New York these days -- to today. Of course, the subtext is that it is also pre-Nine Eleven, but in drawing attention to the World Trade Center itself, not to mention hinting at the amount of planning and subterfuge that went into staging the tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, it foreshadows their identity as a backdrop for world historical events.

Finally, what struck me was the complete lack of reluctance of non-American authors to take on the American landscape. It makes me feel better about my portrait of Bangalore in my unpublished novel Mango Rain.

* This 1953 Paris Match article sets a profile of Simenon in the house where he lived when writing "Red Lights."

We infest the planet

Why exactly do all the aliens seem to come to Earth? Or, more specifically, superheroes of Earth or invasions of Earth? I'm not entirely sure about this but I think there are two reasons. One, we infest the planet. There are billions of us all over the planet and we keep reproducing. Very big harvest for aliens! Also, according to these comics, there is a ridiculously large amount of superpowered people here. Something that confuses me is why aliens would come to these people -- seeing as there are probably other people who could do the same sorts of tasks?

So saith a friend's child. Hell of a good question, really. Since aliens by definition can travel through space, and thus can choose to go anywhere, why do they all come here?

Not much remains

As my friends know, for a few years last decade I had the honor of being represented by a real literary agent. However, my novel Make Nice failed to sell; then my agent quit the agency and the business, leaving me high and dry without an agent -- a state in which I still find myself. (I recount the tale at greater length here.) A little while after that, the agency's most famous client, David Foster Wallace, killed himself.

Now comes the news that the founder of the agency, whom I recall having met very briefly in my one and only visit to the office, has died.

I was so dumb when I was a client of the agency that I didn't even know Wallace was a client. And I had to read the founder's obit today to know about other well-known clients. I'm not sure what to do with this fact -- that the agency was better known than I realized at the time. It didn't do me much good in the end, though my agent was successful in getting my book looked at by major publishing houses. Maybe they recognized the name of the agency, maybe that's the reason they looked at it. Anyway, realizing all this years later just makes me feel stupid.

All you need to know about the early 21st Century bourgeoisie

There's a piece on the Bay Citizen website this morning, Meet Your (Sustainable) Chocolate Farmers. The author, Tara Duggan, opens with this unappetizing lede:

When I hear that chocolate is produced in an unethical manner, I'd rather swallow knives than hear reasons why I shouldn't enjoy one of my favorite foods. But with Valentine's Day approaching, I thought it was time to face up to the labor issues around cocoa farming.

If I may unpack that:

1. She occasionally hears that one of her favorite foods, chocolate, is sometimes "produced in an unethical manner."
2. In order to keep from hearing this discouraging news, she'd "rather swallow knives."
   
   Actually it seems strange that to keep from hearing something one would swallow knives; it would be more logical to stick those knives into one's ears. But I guess that if one swallowed them, the discomfort might be so distracting that one couldn't pay attention to bad news about candy. Anyway:
    
   
3. Valentine's Day is approaching, and as a journalist, she's hard put to come up with a piece linked to the holiday.
4. What better time to face her fears about the conditions under which chocolate is produced?

Here we have the ingredients of the perfect Bay Area foodie post: transgressiveness (chocolate is bad for you), trendiness (chocolate is looked upon by foodies as a gourmet item, at least potentially), liberal guilt, and pop psychology (let's face our fears!). That the fears in question have not to do with facing the rubber truncheons of the Egyptian secret police, or the dank cells of Chinese prisons, or even the comparatively comfortable but difficult decision to, say, put your mother in a "care facility," doesn't make them easier to bear. They are fears nonetheless.

Right, then. How wonderful that the writer is able to assuage her consternation by discovering a free trade grower's cooperative in Ghana, owned and operated by colorfully dressed women (a close examination of the picture reveals they are wearing dresses imprinted with the logo of their co-op). And what's more, they are not wasting their profits on skin-lightening cream or anything Westerners might disapprove of; they are practicing democratic socialism at its finest:

Their fair trade agreement allows them extra money to create additional income generation projects for the villages, such as making soap.

Soap for the villages! It's a win-win for everyone.

As for the internal conflict of eating candy, that's taken care of by the fact that it's a holiday anyway. On Valentine's Day you may eat chocolate, while reading the inevitable newspaper and magazine features that assure you it's good for you in small quantities. And at the prices we pay for gourmet chocolate, small quantities are all we can afford anyway.

Now don't you feel bad about eating those M&Ms in the break room? For shame.