I Believe You

On the subway this morning I spotted a fashionably dishevelled young man wearing a ball cap. On the front of the ball cap was written:

Rock and Roll Asshole

Okay...

05:42 No god But God

No god but God: The origins, evolution and future of Islam
Reza Aslan

Author Reza Aslan has always come across as one of the more reasonable, informed guests on shows like “Real Time with Bill Maher” and “The Daily Show.” I read “Imperial Life In The Emerald City” after seeing its author on “The Daily Show” so now I’m not only getting my news from Jon Stewart but also my reading list.

Aslan’s book is aimed at the Western non-Islamic reader so that s/he can understand the religion’s current conflicts and their historical origins. “What is taking place now in the Muslin world” writes Aslan “is an internal conflict between Muslims, not an external battle between Islam and the West. The West is merely a bystander – an unwary yet complicit casualty of a rivalry that is raging in Islam over who will write the next chapter in its story.” The conflict is basically between fundamentalists and progressives – a similar battle that rages across most religions and political systems. “Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. Counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherents. Kill its leaders, and they become martyrs. Respond with despotism, and it becomes the sole voice of opposition. Try to control it and it will turn against you. Try to appease it, and it will take control.”

No god But God begins in pre-Islamic Arabia, providing an overview of what Mohammed was reacting against (polytheism, mainly, but also city-state corruption) when he began reciting the word of God. It continues with an overview of Mohammed’s life and the development of the Quran, taking time to address standard complaints about Islam, notably its sexism and being a “religion of the sword.” Addressing these concerns, if Aslan sounds defensive it’s because, well, he is. He attempts to justify ideas one would think incongruous with a peaceful religion through three methods. One: “Everyone else does it, too” (ie Christianity’s history is as bloody as Islam’s). Two: “The Quran has a verse that says NOT to do that bad thing.” Which is fine as an excuse for the scripture, but doesn’t excuse what people do in its name and ignores scripture that contradicts it. The third and final excuse “you have to understand these things in historical context.” This is where my problem with Islam (and other organized religions) begins.

I can not accept any spiritual teaching that explicitly favors part of God’s creation over another, such as proscribing different laws for men and women or members of one tribe versus another. The Quran, the Torah and the Christian Bible all contain such passages. “Historical context” is usually the excuse, but a truly spiritual teaching, not to mention the Word of God, would transcend human history. What would be as true in 6000 BC would be as true in 33 AD and would still be true tomorrow morning. I accept that ideas need to be understood in context, but then I can not accept those ideas as the legitimate edicts of an all-powerful, all-benevolent, eternal God. This applies specifically to Islam, which is said to be the recitation of the Word of God by His prophet Mohammed. Without this claim as divinely inspired speech, the Quran is a nice (abeit inconsistent) book of teachings, no better than most others.

Azlan's book is a great overview of the history of the religion. Islam, like all major religions, is particularly conflicted in the face of science and rational thought. The Muslims are just as skilled as the Christians in tying themselves in theological knots when they attempt to "logically" explain the nature of God. Like all religions, it always falls back on "you just have to believe" with the hidden corollary "if you don't believe, then you have to live with the fact that I believe."

Everyone Gets Atrophy, part II

Yesterday I received the following email from my friend Andrea. The show she is referring to is an amateur art exhibition in Lancaster county, PA. I wrote about last year's edition here.

--------------------------------
Mon, 4 Jun 2007 11:42:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Andrea Collins
Subject: titles
To: John Hanlon

I thought I would send you my favorite titles from this year's "If you pay your entry fee your painting is in" show that we took you to last year.

"Untitled Little Boy" (Not exactly untitled then, is it?)
"Lady in Cage"
"Latte Conversation" (A painting of two ladies talking, because ladies love lattes almost as much as being in cages)
"Oscar Wilde Twice"
"Nurturing Earth Mother, She's All We've Got"
"Stacking the Lobsters"
"The Nose Licker!" (My favorite)
---------------------------------
Thank you, Andrea.

It's hard to pick a favorite, but this morning I'm leaning towards "Stacking the Lobsters."

04:42 The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell

I borrowed this book – what, three years ago? – from someone at work. Then I quit my job and had no desire to see the person from whom I borrowed the book, so I kept it, unintentionally stealing. Then, as fate would have it, I ended up being rehired at my old job as a temp (I didn’t make enough to be considered a “consultant”). Earlier this year when I decided I was going to quit my job for a second time, I was determined to read and return The Tipping Point before I left. I’m a big fan of closure, though obviously not a big fan of that job.

Why do some phenomena become ubiquitous in the culture, whereas others die a quick death? This is the guiding question in The Tipping Point but you get the sense that Gladwell’s answers could fit on a PowerPoint presentation: he classifies people who carry new ideas as Connectors, Mavens, or Salesman; outlines a “Stickiness Factor,” and the “Power of Context,” all of which explain (or are imposed on) such disparate phenomena as sneaker popularity, venereal disease epidemics, and teenage smoking.

I remember the article in The New Yorker in which Gladwell first articulated his ideas. He used the example of cars parked on a street in an unsafe neighborhood. A number of cars are parked on the same street, similar with respect to price, condition, and age. But if you noticeably damage one of them (for example, cracking the windshield), then that car alone would then be preyed on and further vandalized within a few days, sometimes even hours. All factors were equal save the broken windshield, “the tipping point,” the one extra nudge that would let people in the area know that this car could be damaged without repercussions. This theory, “little things mean a lot,” was behind Giuliani’s crackdown on crime in New York City in the 1990s. Remove the atmosphere that forgives minor crimes and you’ll remove the atmosphere that permits major crime. We may not be able to prevent crimes like murder, but we can stop the small noticeable crimes (graffiti, panhandling) that let people to think they live in a society that ignores all crimes.

Like many books written by journalists, The Tipping Point reads like a series of previously published articles re-written and edited to fit a theme. Gladwell does write well and is able to discuss scientific or sociological studies without wallowing in jargon. The proof offered for his theories ranges from “Sesame Street” to Paul Revere’s ride and seems chosen less for applicability than for the fact that he finds them interesting. As did I. The “Stickiness Factor” and the Connectors aren’t as engaging as the history of “Sesame Street.” For example, before the show aired, child psychiatrists insisted that the Muppets be kept separate from the scenes with live actors because children wouldn’t accept the interaction between fantasy and realistic figures. When they tested the show with children, the kids lost interest as soon as the Muppets were off screen. The producers decided to try an episode in which Muppets and humans mixed. This time, the children’s attention rated higher than it did for either the Muppets of the humans alone, and they never had any trouble with the mixing of fantasy and realism. Makes one wonder what else child psychiatrists have gotten so wrong.

What was most satisfying about The Tipping Point was that it supported two pet theories of mine:

1. The human mind is formed and formatted by narrative, not by language.
Child development experts, psychologists and neurologists have argued that language, initially spoken, then written, is the source of connections in the human mind. Learning language is what sparks growth in our brains as children and it is how our brains are thereafter conditioned. Other factors can be important (images, music) but language is primary.

Doesn’t ring true to me and never has.

I have long believed that it is narrative, little stories, cause and effect, that structures a child’s brain, and remains the underlying way in which they think as they get older. Yes, we use language to express and understand narrative, but narrative is what’s primary, not language. Before children can understand words, they experience life as a simple story, cause and effect: I was hungry, I cried, I got fed. A story with a happy ending. As we grow, the stories become more complex as our brains develop and our understanding of the world increases. Language develops in response to our brains’ growth and its ability to handle more complex narratives.

I’ve never done the requisite research to prove this – I wouldn’t even know where to begin – and I think I’ve only discussed this idea once or twice with others (while a little drunk, no doubt). However, on page 119, Gladwell writes:

The project centered on a two-year-old girl from New Haven called Emily, whose parents – both university professors – began to notice that before their daughter went to sleep at night she talked to herself. Curious, they put a small microcassette recorder in her crib and, several nights a week, for the next fifteen months, recorded both the conversations they had with Emily as they put her to bed and the conversations she had with herself before she fell asleep. The transcripts – 122 in all – were then analyzed by a group of linguists and psychologists led by Katherine Nelson of Harvard University. What they found was that Emily’s conversations with herself were more advanced than her conversations with her parents. In fact, they were significantly more advanced. One member of the team that met to discuss the Emily tapes, Carol Fleisher Feldman, later wrote:

“In general, her speech to herself is so much richer and more complex [than her speech to adults] that it has made all of us, as students of language development, begin to wonder whether the picture of language acquisition offered in the literature to date does not underrepresent the actual patterns of the linguistic knowledge of the young child. For once the lights are out and her parents leave the room, Emily reveals a stunning mastery of language forms we would never have suspected from her [everyday] speech.”

Feldman was referring to things like vocabulary and grammar and – most important – the structure of Emily’s monologues. She was making up stories, narratives, that explained and organized the things that happened to her.

Emily is making up stories to make sense of the world around her, and to entertain herself before she goes to sleep. The story is primary; language is merely the tool to express it. This reminds me of my own experience as a child. Language and words were not that important to me or any of the children I knew. But stories were. Not only as entertainment, but as a way of processing and passing on information and solving the mystery of the world into which we are born.

2. Individual psychology is overrated; group psychology is underrated.
For a while, I’ve been interested in what I think of as group dynamics: the way that people assume roles when in a group, modifying their personalities or behavior based on how best to fit in or what they think the group needs. Consequently, I see individual psychology as only significant when an individual is alone, and how often is that? Otherwise you have to take the group dynamics into account when discussing someone’s personality or actions. In other words, personality is not fixed and rigid, but depends on context.

This idea came from observing people act differently depending on who they are with. When I was younger I judged this as hypocrisy; now I accept it as human. I recall a few years after college seeing a group of friends and being annoyed at how they kept treating me as the person I was rather than who I thought I had become. The irony was that, under their influence, I began acting like that person again, reverting to my old self. At the time I thought “This isn’t who I am anymore. Why am I behaving this way?” My answer was to attribute it to the power of group dynamics. Gladwell would call it the power of context.

To demonstrate this, Gladwell writes about a study conducted by Hugh Hartshorne and M. A. May in the 1920s to measure the honesty of children using several kinds of SAT-type tests. I won’t go into the details of the study, but the results did show consistent patterns, though not as consistent as one might think. The researchers concluded that most children

Will deceive in certain situations and not in others. Lying, cheating, and stealing as measured by the test situations used in these studies are only very loosely related. Even cheating in the classroom is rather highly specific, for a child may cheat on an arithmetic test and not on a spelling test, etc. Whether a child will practice deceit in any given situation depends in part on his intelligence, age, home background, and the like and in part on the nature of the situation itself and his particular relation to it. (from Hartshorne and May)

Gladwell continues:

This, I realize, seems wildly counterintuitive…All of us, when it comes to personality, naturally think in terms of absolutes: that a person is a certain way or is not a certain way. But what…Hartshorne and May are suggesting is that this is a mistake, that when we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we’re deceiving ourselves about the real causes of human behavior…

Character, then, isn’t what we think it is, or rather, what we want it to be. It isn’t a stable, easily identifiable set of closely related traits, and it only seems that way because of a glitch in the way our brains are organized. Character is more like a bundle of habits and tendencies and interests, loosely bound together and dependent, at certain times, on circumstance and context. The reason that most of us seem to have a consistent character is that most of us are really good at controlling our environment.

So it’s not just group dynamics that determines an individual’s behavior, but everything about a situation. It was acutely painful for me when I believed in consistent individual psychology because that was not how I experienced the world. In Western psychology, I thought of my personality as “fragmented.” Not dysfunctional, but without a clearly defined core “self.” I was too aware at how I would change based on the immediate situation. It was a relief when I read that in Eastern religions, not clinging to a rigid sense of “self” and being able to go with “the way” are goals that one should work towards.

Bankland!

I took these pictures last year. It was the best use of vandalism I had seen in a long time.

A new building was being built on Broadway across from Lincoln Center. A fairly common sight, as was the re-routed sidewalk and the protecctive wooden barricade which lined it. Because there's little that's more offensive in New York than a blank surface that's not being used to sell something*, the entire wall, a block long, was covered with a billboard size advertisement for the bank that will eventually be on the site.


A lot of money was spent on this ad from conception to printing and hanging. Yet all it took to completely subvert its message and render the money and time spent wasted was a smartass with a Sharpie. How successful was this subversion? Well, I have no idea what bank this ad is for. All I remember is the commentary. Plus it was taken down shortly thereafter; I'm assuming ahead of schedule.



Once while visiting New York City as a teenager, I saw a subway ad that someone had taken a sharpie to, but instead the usual penis going into someone's mouth, blackening their teeth or giving them a Devil's beard, the vandal had done a clever semiotic analysis of the ad, transforming it from sponsored information into a lesson on images and how advertising works. Again, I have no idea what the initial ad was trying to sell (tourism, maybe?) but I still remember some of the ideas expressed by the graffiti.


Sadly, these photos don't do the experience justice or express how funny it was. Walking alongside the mural, the first speech balloon would catch your eye and you'd think "Okay..." But the combination of montonous repitition, its minor variations, and the notion that the only thing anyone could think about was a new bank, served as a parody of advertising's methods and goals. It's also a critique of the changes in New York City. Goodbye playhouse and the arts. Goodbye little shops, like your florist. Hello to a city now dominated by money and populated by those who can only conceive of things in financial terms.



Of course, we all know who ultimately wins in the battle between powerful financial interests and smartasses with magic markers. The proof of their victory is all around us, although I am happy that there are at least a few who fight as if its not over yet.



___________
*Don't even get me started on the ads placed above urinals in bars and restaurants. I hope there a special torment in Hell awaiting anyone responsible for, or who benefits from, this annoying piece (or piss) of marketing.

Endless Things

It's a good year for fans of John Crowley. Sadly, there aren't enough of us, but he is one of my favorite writers, one of the few whose work I connect with on a personal level beyond other "better" writers.

Mr. Crowley is not the most prolific of writers: he manages to publish a novel once every couple of years. But this year, there are three "new" books by him. One of these, Little, Big, is an old novel being re-published in a fancy pantsy illustrated slipcase limited edition. I have been thinking seriously of late of limiting the number of books I own; however, this is one that I will be happy to double-dip. Speaking of limited editions, In Other Words, a collection of essays and book reviews, also came out this year in a signed, numbered small press edition. I have number 580 out of 600 copies. Mr. Crowley's signature is beautiful and looks like script.

But for fans, the biggest news is the publication of Endless Things: A Part of Aegypt. This is the final book of a four-part series that began with AEgypt, published almost twenty years ago. I can remember seeing AEgypt's distinctive cover at the Walden Books where I worked after college. The second part Love and Sleep came out shortly after I moved to New York, and I can remember my excitement, the sense of triumph, when I discovered a copy at the Strand for half the cover price. Daemonomania was published while I worked at Urbanfetch.com, and I made a point of featuring it on the website. This time the elation came whenever we sold a copy. Now, with Endless Things, the cycle is complete.

One of the jokes of these novels concerns the main character, Pierce Moffet, who has esoteric theories about The Way Things Really Work, but can't quite put them into words. He's living off of a publisher's advance, having promised to write a book outlining his thoughts, but he's at a point where he feels his ideas more than he thinks them. Then, surprise, circumstances lead him to an old unpublished journal that spells out exactly what poor Pierce has been trying to say. This experience may be familiar for many who read (I'm going through it right now with The Nuture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris, which puts forth the most accurate description of child development and socialization I ever read. In a nutshell: socialization does not come from your parents, but from your peer group. I'll post more about it when I've finished the book), and it also echoes what it's like to read AEgypt. You've found a book that expresses a sense of life you've felt but never expressed, and then the main character finds a book that expresses a sense of life he's felt but never expressed.

As mentioned before, three books in one year by Crowley is a big deal. There were times when his work was hard to find and used copies were quite expensive. It was during one of these periods, after I had read AEgypt and decided I had to have it in hardcover (to go along with my hardcover copies of Love and Sleep and Daemonomania), that I convinced my friend Ben to steal it from the local library for me. Not exactly "steal." I had asked Ben to take their copy out, then report it as lost, pay for the book and I would reimburse him. Well, the library had a policy that you had to wait two months before a book could be classified as "lost." Then you would pay the cost of the book plus the two months late fees. It turned out to be about as much as buying it on ebay, but at least I got a nice copy of the book in hardcover.

Combined with the release late last year of Against The Day, the new novel by another one of my favorite writers, Thomas Pynchon, the last several months have been a good one regarding my little interests. In fact, it reminds me of ten years ago. I can distinctly remember one night in the early months of 1997 telling my friend Karl that I expected it was going to be a good year because my three favorite directors were each releasing a movie that year: David Cronenberg - Crash, Peter Greenaway - The Pillow Book, and David Lynch - Lost Highway. However, as much as I like these films, 1997 was not a good year. My father died in 1997, and I learned a very long and painful lesson about what is important and what constitutes a good year versus a bad one. When I think back to my naive self on the way to a bar, chirping about how good the year would be based on a couple of movies and having no idea what was coming my way...it just makes me sad.

It reminds me not to boast and to keep things in perspective. Yes, three books by someone you like is nice, but there are more important things. One of the things I gained from my father's death was a sense of perspective, but I would have traded this in, and would have traded anything I had, to have my father back. The choice was not mine.

Little, Big concerns, among other things, a family that consists of a father, mother, three daughters and a son. Father and son have something in common: they both sense that everyone else in the family is connected, and they are the odd man out. The son, Auberon, moves away from home to the big city where...he doesn't do much of anything, but eventually returns home for a visit.

Smoky looked up at his tall son. Through the whole of their lives together, it had been as though he and Auberon had been back to back, fixed that way and unable to turn. They had had to communicate by indirection, through others, or by craning their neck and talking out the sides of their mouths; they had had to guess at each other's faces and actions. Now and then one or the other would try a quick spin around to catch the other unawares, but it never worked, quite, the other was still behind and facing away, as in the old vaudeville act. And the effort of communication in that posture, the effort of making oneself clear, had often grown too much for them, and they'd given it up, mostly. But now -- maybe because of what had happened to him in the CIty, whatever that was, or maybe only increase of time wearing away the bond that had both held them and held them apart, Auberon had turned around. Slowly I turn. And all tht was left then was for Smoky himself to tun and face him.

That was my dad and I.

Red Light Green Light

Well, I didn't mean to give up posting on The Hanged Man for Lent. It just sort of turned out that way, a unconscious contrast to last year's daily Lenten musings. Oops.

Last week I re-encountered one of those mysterious artifacts from my childhood. When I was in first grade, our entire class, and if I remember correctly, the entire school, had to go to the gymnasium to watch a movie. The movie was meant to teach kids "don't talk to strangers," and to make the point as obvious as possible, a red traffic light would be superimposed over each creepy adult's face.

Seeing the movie again last week (it's called "Red Light Green Light" and is available on the dvd The Educational Archives: More Sex and Drugs) I was amazed by how much I misremembered. I recalled a stern narrator's voice accompanying each red traffic light with the warning "this is a red light person." Nope. The movie was also a lot looser than I thought: lots of scenes of the kids just playing, hanging out, having fun. The "beware of strangers" scenes actually make up very little of the movie's running time. It's actually kinda slow - I'm amazed I sat through it.

I do recall, however, when we were discussing the movie afterwards in Miss Lord's class (yes, my first grade teacher was named Grace Lord), Miss Lord saying "I don't know why they had the red light over the man who was trying to give the little boy an ice cream cone. He seemed nice - I think that was a mistake."

Music of the Subways

I had a series of nice New York moments this weekend, in addition to the fact that it is snowing right now and Brooklyn always looks beautiful in the snow.

I was on the subway last night and an older gentleman got on with a friend and his 12 string guitar. He looked like "Old Bluesman" straight out of central casting, but when he began playing guitar, it was anything but the standard blues (the music of complaint). It was beautiful, soulful, soft and hypnotic. He seemed to be playing for his friend rather than money. When he was finished, the two of them talked rather than getting up and passing the hat.

At the next stop, a group of four Mexicans got on the car with their instruments: guitar, accordian, stand up double bass, and hat. Yes, one member of the group was only there to pass the hat for donations. I'm assuming they were Mexicans because their first song was that "Aye-yi-yi-yi-I am a Frito Bandito" song, but they could have been from Honduras or El Salvador. I was half-expecting a battle of the bands between them and the Old Bluesman, but he just listened to them play while continuing to talk with his friend. Someone one the subway was eating an orange and its scent perfumed the entire car.

The best occured this afternoon while taking the subway to Manhattan. I was reading a book when suddenly I heard someone singing the "Ave Maria." I looked around the car expecting to see the standard robust opera singer (again, right out of central casting) and was surprised to see the incredible sound coming out of a rather slight, unassuming young lady. I guess I should count myself lucky that it wasn't a fat lady, cause that would mean that it was over. Regardless, the girl was able to sing the "Ave Maria" in a way that resonated throughout the subway car, her beautiful voice completely saturating and subduing everything else going on the the car.

It was absolutely beautiful, one of those unexpected moments in life that you treasure.

I gave her a dollar.

03.42 What If Our World Is Their Heaven?

What If Our World Is Their Heaven? The Final Conversations of Philip K. Dick
Edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter

Philip K. Dick is my favorite science fiction writer. Philip K. Dick is a lot of people’s favorite science fiction writer. I don’t know if it’s because he flatters the reader’s sense that no matter how lost they feel their lives serve a greater purpose or because his great theme was the way in which an individual’s sense of reality may not correspond with everyone else’s. Maybe it’s because he’s less concerned with those who invent shiny rocketships than with those who have to clean them. Regardless, he’s one of the few science fiction writers who is taken seriously by those who don’t read science fiction and with good reason.

What If Our World Is Their Heaven is a collection of interviews Dick conducted a few months before his death. Knowing that he died a few months later adds a special poignancy to the proceedings, whether he is enthusiastically discussing the first big budget film based on his writings (Blade Runner) or describing a fictional character who willingly gives up his life in exchange for spiritual revelation. Beyond that, the book is an interesting example of a mind at work, or, as Robyn Hitchcock once put it “the odd act of a mind trying to explain itself.” Dick describes a novel he would never live to write, working it out while talking about it -- it’s fascinating to witness a writer at work. The novel concerns an alien from a world in which they communicate through color / light frequencies rather than sound, so that when one of them arrives on Earth and confronts sound for the first time, he has no concept of it and is convinced that he is having a religious experience. (Hence, the title of this book). This alien mind invades that of a hack composer who experiences truly beautiful music for the first time, and is willing to give up his life for more.

Dick was adept at talking about epistemology and philosophy, about how we perceive light and sound or the history of ancient religions, all without losing his sense of humor or wonder. Hearing his voice directly, without the filter of his fiction, is a treat for his fans or anyone interested in the “oh, wow!” aspects of science.

Since You Asked...

In the comments section to the previous entry, Iva (aka my mother) asked:

"Can anyone tell me why we started this war (with any kind of logic at all?)"

Okay - my take on why:

They (not "we") decided that the U.S. needed a Western-friendly region in the Middle East. (When we say "Western-friendly" what we're mainly talking about is "friendly to Western business interests" but our political system is so entwined with our economic system that most in government can not picture one without the other). Basically, they wanted a US-friendly puppet government, similar to what the Soviets created in Eastern Europe during the cold war. In addition to access to Iraq's resources, the US would be able to establish the military bases necessary for gaining more control of the region.

Our other ally in the region, Israel, has never been stable enough for the US to use as a base of operations without creating a full-blown occupation. And Israel's problems are going to get worse, not better. I read an article a while ago that mentioned that Israel's population is declining and a number of younger Jews don't want to live in war-zone, whereas the Palesinian population has been increasing. Within a generation or so, the Israelites will be surrounded by even more people unsympathetic to their cause and in need of what few resources they have. The name "Custer" comes to mind.

So the Middle East was the Gordian Knot and invading Iraq became the answer to all of the US' problems. Want a Western-friendly region in the Middle East but want to avoid a conflict with Islamic clerics? Invade Iraq - a country with a secular leader unpopular with much of the Arab world. Need access to oil to put off the coming energy crisis as long as possible? Invade Iraq - second largest oil reserves in the world. Need a home for military bases from which we can, when the time comes, start moving into other countries? Invade Iraq. Need a country we know we can beat since we did it 15 years ago? Invade Iraq.

I'm sure there were other questions I don't even know about which "Invade Iraq" was the answer. Hussein was a US ally in the 80's - I'm sure he had some dirty laundry that the Bush administration preferred be burnt. It wouldn't surprise me if Saudi Arabia mentioned they'd like a US-friendly Iraq as a buffer between them and the rest of the Arab world.

This sort of theorizing ("We want to control this, how do we do it? If we do this, how will another country react?") is what conservative thinktanks do. It's what they're for: endless theoretical arguments are created, predictions made, schemes hatched. Most of those schemes come to nothing because there's no way to legally put them into practice. But with the carte blanche given to the Bush administration after 9/11, neo-conservatives seized on a rare opportunity and decided to invade another country on manufactured pretenses according to plans drawn up in right-wing thinktanks.

I'm sure the original plan was for a quick war and takeover of Iraq, then, after a year or two, boostered by support from the American public, begin the process again with another country. Syria: maybe. Iran, if feeling particularly ambitious. However, it didn't work. For all their funding and ideas, the conservative think tanks were wrong. No plans for post-invasion Iraq were made because (it sounds incredible) the planners of the war truly believed that the Iraqis would fall in line and create a mini-America once Hussein was gone.

In an interview with Salon.com, Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib, was asked what he thought the real purpose of the war was. Hersh replied:

"...But these guys, do you realize how much better off we would be if they really were cynical, and they really were lying about it, because, yes, behind the invasion would be something real, like support for Israel or oil. But it's not! It's not about oil. It's about utopia. I guess you could call it idealism. But it's idealism that's dead wrong. It's like one of the far-right Christian credos. It's a faith-based policy. Only it wasn't a religious faith. It was the faith that democracy would flourish.

"Q: So you don't think that this is some Machiavellian, cynical, manipulative ...

"I used to pray it was! We'd be in better shape. Is there anything worse than idealism that doesn't conform to reality? You have an unrealistic policy."

So that's my take on why we invaded Iraq: a grand experiment in imposing a "democracy" overseen by the US on an unstable region with a history of inter-tribal conflicts. Neo-conservatives and the Bush administration truly believed that they could transform the Arab world by converting it to a Western-style democracy. Other nations would see how well it worked in Iraq and change their governments and the region would become more stable. It's odd that Bush would be such a fan of democracy, considering how he had to circumvent it in order to become president. But, as I've written before, my cynicism and finding little ironies doesn't help the horror of a situation that has claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people.

02:42 Imperial Life In The Emerald City

Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran

It’s like something out of a novel by J. G. Ballard: a gated community filled with all the comforts of the western world located incongruously in the middle of a war-ravaged country. Or perhaps it owes more to Paul Bowles, with its tale of Americans, led predominantly by their own naiveté or arrogance, being completely undone by the Arabic world. But it’s hard to imagine a better depiction of why the U.S. occupation of Iraq is, and was always doomed to be, a colossal failure than Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s record of the year he spent inside Baghdad’s “green zone.”

The “green zone” is the heavily fortified base of the Coalition Provision Authority, located in and around Saddam Hussein’s former palace. Think “green” as in naïve or “green” as in money, and you have a summary of the U.S. occupation. After Baghdad fell, the Coalition Provisional Authority were in charge of stabilizing the rest of the country. But many people were hired for the CPA based not on their qualifications but on their loyalty to the Bush Administration or the Republican party. Even some of those interviewed seemed surprised that they were hired and sent to Iraq.

A pattern repeats throughout the book: someone who knows very little about Iraq is hired to help rebuild part of the country’s damaged infrastructure. They are usually well-meaning and have some good ideas, though often inappropriate or unworkable. Once in Iraq, they discover that they are literally starting from scratch: the widespread looting that began after the war, which the Pentagon was warned about and did little to prevent, has stripped much of the country of its basic infrastructure. (Looting is such a common theme that by the time I was on page 100, I checked to see if it was in the index, curious to see how often it was mentioned. Sadly, no entry for “looting.”) Faced with few resources and an almost impossible task, some sink into cynicism while others try as best they can, but achieve little before they return to the U.S.

There are many times in Imperial Life in which the culture clash is so obvious and funny that you don’t understand why those living through it don’t see it. A recent college grad, who knows nothing about finance, is hired to re-build Iraq’s stock exchange. Opportunists win a contact to guard Iraq’s major airport for millions of dollars even though they have never run a security operation before. A media consultant is hired to create a television news service in the country, but soon runs afoul of the military for not broadcasting enough “positive” news about US efforts.

But perhaps “funny” is the wrong attitude to take here. My bemusement at others’ foolishness is tempered by knowing the chaos that the Bush administration has unleashed on that country. It’s hard to laugh about cross-cultural ignorance when said ignorance has cost tens of thousands of people their lives (and that’s a conservative estimate – pun intended). Recently, after a night out, I had a drunken argument about Iraq with a friend of a friend, who quickly resorted to the “isn’t it good that we got rid of Saddam Hussein -- do you wish he was still in power?” “I don’t see much difference” I replied. “He killed thousands of people, and now we’ve killed thousands more. I’m sure the people who died in the war wished he was still in power. We’ve lost that moral argument.”

“Yeah, but things might get better now…” he answered.

Another green zone.

Quote of the Day

From over here, I couldn't tell if you were yelling or just complaining.

- Said to me by a co-worker, 2/7/07 1:28pm

01:42 Bottomfeeder

BottomFeeder
B.H.Fingerman

FULL DISCLOSURE: The author, B. H. Fingerman, is a friend of mine, though this doesn’t mean that I’ll automatically like his novel. This past year I read a novel by a woman I went to grad school with, and while I admired the craft with which she wrote her book, I didn’t care for the book itself. It’s very uncomfortable when you don’t like the work of friend or acquaintance. It becomes a void all of your conversations dance around.

But I liked Bottomfeeder. The main character, Phil Merman, is a vampire but is neither self-aggrandizing nor self-pitying. He’s just sort of getting on with it. Goes to his job (at night, of course) at a photo archives and occasionally, when hungry, feeds on a human being. Phil preys on those who will not be missed, society’s outcasts, and one gets the sense that this is as much out of a desire to spare a victim’s loved ones any undue pain as it is an attempt to keep his feeding habits private.

Without being obvious, the book poses a basic existential question: what exactly do you do with your life? The fact that the vampires in the book have eternal life only compounds the problem for them. There are those have enough trouble filling 70+ years. But perpetual existence? Some sink into decadence, some make attempts to help other vampires, and others (like Phil) just live their existence day to day, without too much consideration of where they are going and what it all means.

Bottomfeeder is also a good New York novel, one that actually has scenes in Queens and Brooklyn as well as Manhattan. It captures the “Let’s Make A Deal” feeling in New York that anything could be behind any door. It could be an orgy or it could be a group therapy session. As one who still walks around Chinatown thinking to himself “I just know there’s an opium den around here somewhere” this sense of New York’s chaotic yet stable mix felt true.

The above description doesn't hit at how funny the book is. Phil’s point of view is sardonic and bemused by the actions of both the living and the undead. The voice recalls a tough guy private eye, and this could be both an homage to pulp novels and a comment on how such genres have influenced how we think and talk. There’s a sense of characters wanting to play at what they are not. Whether it’s a vampire orgy that Phil senses is just trying too hard to be “bad,” or an annoying friend who speaks with a British accent even though he’s not British, everyone seems to be trying on a persona, and Phil is there to helpfully mock them.

New Graffiti Murals From My Neighborhood

Okay, the last one is actually not from my neighborhood but from the East Village. No, I don't know what it means, either.

0:42 Knew Your Resolution

I never intended two and a half months to lapse between posts. I've been kinda busy without doing anything special. The holidays took some time and my job has been fairly hectic, but the main reason I've been so mum is there just wasn't anything I wanted to write about.

I post here when I have something to share. I don't see this site as a private diary made public or as my daily speaker's corner to kvetch about the state of the world or what I saw on tv last night. That's why we have email, the phone and dinner with friends. It may not always be apparent, but I do put some effort into these entries, at least re-reading them before I post. Despite my grammatical blunders, I always (pretentiously?) thought of this online journal as the equivalent of an op-ed page rather than chatty gossip on the phone and there hasn't been much I've wanted to op-ed about.

Which brings up something else I've never been interested in: New Year's Resolutions, a concept that combines two of my least favorite things, self-discipline and the passing of time. However, I have made a resolution for 2007 and will be writing about it as the year progresses. My goal is to finish 42 books by December 31st. For those who know me, this may seem like no big deal, but it will actually take some work. I think I am more bibliophile than reader; in other words, I love books as objects as much (if not more) than I do the act of reading. I realized this while traveling in Europe and spending lots of time browsing in bookstores, examining volumes I couldn't possibly read. Read, schmead: I was fascinated just by the look of Italian paperbacks, Portuguese novels and French art books.

For over ten years, I've been writing one or two page reviews for each book I finish. This started because one year I couldn't remember much of what I had read. I knew I had read something and assumed I enjoyed it, but only by slowly looking over my bookshelves was I able to recall what I had read. I found that writing brief book reports made me pay more attention while reading and enriched the experience. It's from these book reports that I know that I usually finish around 20 books a year. Not a bad number, I guess, but it's not a lot. This average - less than two books a month - is due to how easily distracted I am by other media, mainly film or internet based.

Some rules: note that I said I would finish 42 books this year. This means including things I started last year but didn't finish. Everything I chose has to be new to me: no re-reading. Graphic novels don't count. (This is a shame, because I'm really enjoying Buddha by Osamu Tezuka.) Art books will be considered depending on how much text there is.

Why 42? It seems like a good goal. It's achievable (unlike trying to write a novel within a month) without being too easy. It's double what I can do without trying, plus a 10% gratuity.

It's also, according to Douglas Adams, the Ultimate Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything:

According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, researchers from a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings constructed the second greatest computer in all of time and space, Deep Thought, to calculate the Ultimate Answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. After seven and a half million years of pondering the question, Deep Thought provides the answer: "forty-two." The reaction:

"Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?"

"I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

--Courtesy of Wikipedia

The other reason I've chosen to read 42 books this year is that I will turn 42 in June. I've never really cared about the standard milestone birthdays, whether dictated by the decimal system or by society (16, 21, 35, "it was a very good year..."). I was more impressed when I was about to turn 34 because, as I put it, "I've outlived the Lord!" "Yes," my sister Julie replied "but look at all that He achieved by the time He was your age."

Ah well. So I will be posting about my progress throughout the year, this resolution has the side benefit of making me post to "The Hanged Man" more often. I will, of course, also be writing about my usual misadventures, such as thinking I know what Dutch babies are saying, buying artwork while drunk, and spilling things on myself.

Hope everyone has a good 2007.

I Knew Someone Who Knew Someone

On the first of this month, I received an email from my friend Kate. She was upset over the death of her friend Brad, an activist who had been murdered by a paramilitary group in Oaxaca, Mexico. Brad traveled around the world for Indymedia documenting political and social struggle in areas ignored by the mainstream media. He was on the lines of a teacher's strike in Oaxaca when the military opened fire, and was killed by a single shot to his abdomen.

Kate had included a picture of Brad with her email and after clicking on the file, I thought "My God, he looks familiar. I think I met him." I got my current apartment through Kate. There was a birthday party for her the last December she lived here...three years ago? Four? (At what point did time begin moving so quickly?) Anyway, it was at this party that I met Brad. I had a nice conversation with several people there but can't recall if he was one of them. It may just be that his presence was noticable whether you spoke with him or not. He was tall and lanky and cheerful.

The cover story of the Village Voice this week is about Brad's death. Appearantly he was well known enough and his work was respected enough within progressive circles that his death has been quite a shock to that community. I emailed Kate to warn her that she might want to avoid the Voice this week. Losing someone you cared about is difficult enough without having to be reminded of their death every time you pass a newstand. I also understand that grief, despite how it feels at the time, is not eternal and told her I would save a copy of the issue for her. It is something that she may want one day and this is a case where reading paper is more satisfying than reading online.

The cover of the issue is a painting of Brad but you don't have to be a lapsed Catholic to recognise it's also a Christ image. I put it on the pile of things "to be read" in my kitchen, but I find it too eerie and heartbreaking to have the paper facing up in the same room where Brad relaxed and laughed with friends just a few years ago. I turned the paper over and lit a candle.

Nature or Nurture?

I am definitely my mother's son. The email she sent me yesterday on election day concluded:

Please God, Rick Santorum will not only lose, but he will fall off a twenty story building tomorrow. I'll keep you informed.

Mom

I should point out that if Santorum had fallen off a twenty story building, I would have heard about it on the news, although it is nice that my mother planned to let me know. However, re-reading that passage, it sounds vaguely like she's ordered a hit on the man. If she had, well, I would be the proudest son in the world.

Ah yes. I drank in Santorum's defeat like a fine wine. Literally. When it was announced that he had lost I grabbed an open bottle of wine from the table and took a satisfying swig, too happy to wait to pour it in a glass. My friend Karl (Heitmueller, not Rove) had had a get-together to watch the election returns and finish off the booze and candy left over from Halloween. Heading over, I expected a glum night, convinced that Republicans were going to steal the election. I've never been so happy to be wrong. When I got home I flipped from channel to channel, staying up late to wallow in the Democrats' victory. Plus David Cross was on the Carson Daly show. He was funny.

When I went to vote yesterday I got bounced from polling place to polling place. This didn't seem the product of a sinister conspiracy so much as basic human incompetence. Riding the subway to work afterwards, I read the following passage and it seemed appropriate for election day and what some people think this country should be like:

Cargo cults have have sprung up again and again in the Pacific. During World War II, American forces arrived at the island of Tana to recruit a thousand men to help build an airfield and army base on neighboring Efate Island. When the workers returned with tales of white and black men who had possessions beyond the dreams of the people of Tana, the whole society was thrown into turmoil. The islanders, many of whom had earlier been converted to Christianity by British missionaries, stopped going to church and began to build landing strips, warehouses and radio masts out of bamboo, in the belief that if it worked on Efate for the Americans,it would work for them on Tana. Carved figurines of American warplanes, helmets and rifles were made from bamboo and used as religious icons. Islanders began to march in parades with USA painted, carved or tattooed on their chests and backs. John Frum emerged as the name of their Messiah, although there are no records of an American soldier with that name.

When the last American GI left at the end of the war, the islanders predicted John Frum's return. The movement continued to flourish and on 15 February 1957, an American flag was raised in Sulphur Bay to declare the religion of John Frum. It is on this date every year that John Frum Day is celebrated. They believe that John Frum is waiting in the volcano Yasur with his warriors to deliver his cargo to the people of Tana. During the festivities the elders march in an imitation army, a kind of military drill mixed with traditional dancing. Some carry imitation rifles made of bamboo and wear American army memorabilia such as caps, T-shirt and coats. They believe that their annual rituals will draw the god John Frum down from the volcano and deliver the cargo of prosperity to all of the islanders.

--from Breaking The Spell: Religion As A Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett

Whew!

So yesterday I stopped by the gallery to pick up the painting I bought while drunk. [As recounted in this entry]. It goes without saying that I was a little concerned. What if the painting was not quite as impressive as it had seemed on that night several weeks ago? I had thought of going to the gallery to look at it with clear eyes, but decided I would just leave well enough alone. If the painting sucked then I would deal with it when the day came. Well, that day was yesterday and...the painting is even better than I remembered. My first emotion was a sense of relief, which was rapidly followed by the sense of pleasure created just by looking at it. So...whew! Dodged that aesthetic bullet.

I know I don't post here that often. Unlike others with online journals, I don't think of these entries as a private diary made public so much as I think of them as pr or intentionally public dispatches. In other words, I never for a minute fool myself into thinking that what I write is private or personal no matter who reads this site. So when I post here, it is something that I want to share. "Don't mind sharing" might be the more accurate way to put it. This tends to limit the number of things I offer for public consumption, even if my public loves me.

However, it looks like I will be posting a little less this month, if that is possible. Most of my free time will be spent trying to write a novel. My friend Kate talked me into participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). It is a group that tries to inspire people to write a short novel of 50,000 words during the month of November. The idea is: just write. You have to get in the habit of producing (at least 1,666 words per day, but who gets a chance to write every day?) without worrying about whether it's as good as your favorite author or what people will think of it. Assume no-one will ever read it and just write.

As someone who doesn't do anything unless he has a deadline looming, it is ideal. Unfortunately, why the group picked November of all months, I'll never understand. In addition to having one less day than most other months, it also contains Thanksgiving, which eliminates several days for anyone who travels or has other obligations. But if you keep waiting for the perfect time to write, you may never actually write.

I need some sort of deadline to get most anything done. But paradoxically, whenever I have something I feel like I have to do, I'll avoid it as long as humanly possible. Hence, the length of this entry when I should be working on my novel. Hence, the fact that this weekend I cleaned the apartment, ironed my shirts and finally sealed the cracks along the floors and floorboards that were letting in cold air.

So even if I don't finish my novel by the end of this month, at least all my other chores will be completed. I should point out that my word count is currently at 4,277, whereas my 16 year old nephew TJ is at 6,540.

And no. No-one gets to read the novel when it is finished.

And Why Am I Doing This?

A pattern has emerged. Twice this week, in the early hours of the morning, during the weird state between sleep and wakefulness, I have found myself trying to create sentences that don't contain the letter e. I have no idea why this is happening. I'm not perturbed with any of the people I know whose names begin with the letter e (my sister Erin, my nephew Eric). It's such a truly odd event that it really makes me contemplate how our brains work and why they sometimes don't seem to, or seem to have a mind of their own. Really. Of all the things to do before begrudgingly getting out of bed and getting ready for work, why craft sentences that ban one letter? I should point out that I never get very far in these sentences before I hit a point where the only word that will suffice is one that contains the dreaded letter. Then I get frustrated and start again.

There was a writer, George Perec, who wrote an entire novel A Void that does not contain the letter e. Perec believed in art as a sort of game. He would create arbitrary and difficult rules for his work, thinking that the true creative act came from working within the confines of these rules. After completing A Void, Perec did the only thing a true smart ass could: he wrote an entire short story in which the only vowel used is e. That's right: a coherent (thought that word didn't appear) short story without the letters a, i, o, or u.

Is it difficult to do?

To fashion a thought that says what you want to say but not tripping up on your individual ban of an important, if not mandatory, bit of information -- this is not child's play. If it wasn't difficult, I would float through many additional hours in my own land of nod during past mornings. But no. A task that cuts through sloppy thoughts, its origin in play, soon slips into compulsion and the gifts of your night's forty winks quickly vanish as said compulsion is paramount. So I'll stop now, a happy solution that acquits your's truly of this limiting task and may spawn much calm...until my alarm clock rings.

Shopping While Under The Influence

Soooo...I bought a painting last week while drunk.

Not drunk, exactly, but I had a couple of beers with dinner. Because I don't imbibe much anymore, my tolerance is low (something friends have been saying about me for years). In any case, I woke up Saturday morning with a headache and then slowly remembered "Oh yeah. I bought a painting last night."

A friend of a friend used to order from amazon.com during his benders. A box of books would mysteriously arrive, usually during mid-week. "I don't remember ordering this" he'd think. "I want it, but I didn't order it." Then he would check his history at amazon and discover that an order was placed from his computer in the wee hours of a Saturday or Sunday morning, a time that he had no recollection of.

On my way home after dinner last week, I stopped in a neighborhood art gallery which was having an opening. This was probably a mistake. It wasn't an impulse buy: I recall taking time to decide between two paintings as to which one I liked better. I chatted with the gallery owner, who was carrying her newborn at the time. I asked her if I should negotiate the price with the baby. A dumb joke, but she laughed. She complimented my taste (cause that's what gallery owners do) and introduced me to the artist who I suspect was drunk, too.

Happily, the painting isn't expensive and I can afford it. To the best of my recollection, it's a good painting although I am a little nervous about picking it up the first week of November. I'm afraid my reaction might be "what did I see in this?"