X-MASS

The seasonal TV specials we know and love — Charlie Brown, Rudolph and Frosty — are products of the 1960s, and most popular Christmas songs — Little Drummer Boy, White Christmas and Silver Bells — are only slightly older. And while Sufjan Stevens has produced excellent original Christmas music in the past few years — music that's even good enough to make us forget about the new, awful Christmas specials — two of my favorite carols — We Three Kings and I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day — are products of the 1860s. Prompted by my July 4th venture, I've decided to mash these up. (The links and dashing are done now.)

While writing this, I sang the verses to the tune of Heard the Bells and the chorus to We Three Kings, but I’m not sure how that sounds outside my head. Nevertheless, I like the image of a modern-day Zarathustra using the royal we to brainstorm gift ideas on his allegorical way to Bethlehem, even if he is really just slumped in a booth at the food court outside Panda Express, muddling tinny Christmas carols in his half-conscious mind. May your Christmas be a happy one.



We, A Sovereign, Heard the Bells

We heard the bells near Advent play
To hail the light of the twelfth day
Weight of glory
Finest story
Show us the Most Excellent Way

O star so wondrous, kingly bright
The bells resound, reflect thy light
We hear and pause, therein the cause
Guide us through the darkest night

We could buy gold, imperial worth
Proper for this Child’s birth
Though we are poor,
We’d want no more
But for the Most Excellent Way

Chorus

Smells go with bells, make common rare
More precious than a woman’s hair
To fully sense
All matters hence
Demands the Most Excellent Way

Chorus

Formaldehyde would work as well
Macabre but useful at death’s knell
The bells sound grim
The light is dim
Is this the Most Excellent Way?

Chorus

Our gifts are not quite things persay
Where would we buy them nowadays
Invisible
Invincible
We tread the Most Excellent Way.

Monster Mash, Dissected

I have listened to "Monster Mash" on a continuous loop every Halloween since 2009. You can mash 445 times in the 24 hours of October 31st. What follows is a fully-formed analysis of this "sad ballad" [Bader, 2011] now bursting forth from my Pickett-addled brain. I have seen the world of this song and, at the end of the day, it is good.

I was working in the lab late one night 
...because he has no friends or family to go home to. Or he did once and his workaholism and scientific obsession have driven them all away. His lab and the cold, lifeless tools and creatures therein are now his only friends.
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight 
This archaic phrasing shows that the scientist has lost all touch with regular people and the parlance of the times. He now hides in the ivory tower of his education, ne'er deigning to visit the plebs.
For my monster from his slab began to rise
His monster? So, he does have a living friend, kinda. This monster may be more fiend than friend, however. The ensuing interaction might turn lethal and finally, ironically end this scientist's now gutter-dwelling excuse for a life.
And suddenly to my surprise
This can't be good.

He did the mash 
He did the monster mash 
The monster mash
This repetition is deliberate. Clearly, the scientist is either hallucinating or in such shock that he has regressed to his nursery-rhyming youth, back when his parents were alive to love him.
It was a graveyard smash
This man's own creation takes joy in desecrating the memory of the dead. To what extent is he his master’s monster?
He did the mash 
It caught on in a flash 
Dancing mania. Now the scientist has lost bodily control and is rationalizing his fit as a growing trend in the vacant laboratory.
He did the mash 
He did the monster mash 
More repetition. More evidence of regression.

From my laboratory in the castle east 
He lives in a castle, then. He must have inherited the manor from his parents, much like Bruce Wayne. But unlike Mr. Wayne, the scientist has unleashed his monster to dishonor the graves of his parents. Also, this guy is too busy spazzing out to fight crime, as if he would even want to.
To the master bedroom where the vampires feast 
Evidently guests do come to the house, only to be bitten by a horde of vampires that lurk in the bureaus. The scientist has gone from ungrateful loner to second-degree murderer.
The ghouls all came from their humble abodes 
This castle overlooks a literal ghost town. The denizens, long dead, now linger on in shapeless decay, attracted to the rare and sullen goings-on of the decrepit castle like moths to a flame.
To get a jolt from my electrodes 
Perhaps electroshock therapy is the only way out of all this.

They did the mash 
They did the monster mash 
The monster mash 
It was a graveyard smash 
They did the mash 
It caught on in a flash 
They did the mash 
They did the monster mash 
This may be premature, but I think things are looking up. The congress of ghouls and vampires in the laboratory is an impromptu community. Though none of these dancers have souls, this is the most social contact the scientist has had in years. Robot chicken soup for his soul!

The zombies were having fun 
When zombies are the life of a party, you know something's off. I'm concerned that there isn't enough room in this laboratory for all these dancers. On the other hand, this castle has probably never been up to the fire code.
The party had just begun 
The guests included Wolf Man
The local werewolf feels the need to affirm his masculinity.
Dracula and his son
Ah yes, the first evidence of relationship in this tale, besides the subtextual references to the scientist's former family. Presumably, Drac was feasting with the other vampires in the master bedroom, instructing his son in the family business—an attempt to connect with him during weekend custody—when he decided they could do for some dancing. I haven't heard of too many father-son dances, but hey: different strokes for different undead folks.

The scene was rockin', all were digging the sounds 
Lingo like this tells me that the scientist is picking up on the language of the people of 1962. Perhaps there is hope for him!
Igor on chains, backed by his baying hounds 
So the scientist has had an assistant all along who has now stepped out of his master's shadow and is pursuing a solo career. Let's hope he's more successful than Garfunkel, and also that the agitated dogs don't jeopardize the safety of this party.
The coffin-bangers were about to arrive 
Necrophiles or more grave-desecrators?
With their vocal group, "The Crypt-Kicker Five"
Giving The Backstreet Boys a run for their money, no doubt.

They played the mash 
They played the monster mash 
The monster mash 
It was a graveyard smash 
They played the mash 
It caught on in a flash 
They played the mash 
They played the monster mash 
What started as one monster's sad shuffling is now a hit single being played by a live band. I take back what I said before. This is now a legitimate party.

Out from his coffin, Drac's voice did ring
Was he hiding from his son in there?
Seems he was troubled by just one thing
That he doesn't have full custody?
He opened the lid and shook his fist 
"When I was your age..."
And said, "Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?" 
Oh dear. He's remembering the one party he attended in college with the cool kids and the dance they did. It's 1962, Drac. The kids don't do the Transylvania Twist anymore. Also, Transylvania Twist would be a good name for a Halloween cocktail.

It's now the mash 
It's now the monster mash 
The monster mash 
And it's a graveyard smash 
It's now the mash 
It's caught on in a flash 
It's now the mash 
It's now the monster mash 
Okay, no need to rub it in. Drac is behind the times, but that's no reason to embarrass him in front of his son.

Now everything's cool, Drac's a part of the band 
That was fast.
And my monster mash is the hit of the land 
I don't know if the scientist's claim to ownership of his monster's song will hold up in court.
For you, the living, this mash was meant too 
I appreciate that!

When you get to my door, tell them Boris sent you 
Okay, let's not go too far here. No one is coming to your door. We've established that your castle is on the edge of a ghoul-infested village. Also, Boris? The only Borises I know are Nikhil Iyengar and Boris Yeltsin, and I don't think the first president of the Russian Federation is in the habit of hosting parties where the living can mingle with the dead. Then again, he did ensure the average Russian would forever live with the death of both communism and nascent capitalism.

Then you can mash
Then you can monster mash
The monster mash
And do my graveyard smash
He's really harping that this song is his.
Then you can mash
You'll catch on in a flash
Yes, thank you. I too have confidence in my ability to learn quickly a dance crafted by an oversized lab rat.
Then you can mash
Then you can monster mash
And that's what it's all about. Much like the hokey pokey, the monster mash has become a way for a man to turn himself around. Most of his new friends lack souls, but they're a good start. He is now eagerly awaiting living persons to knock on his door and enter.

The Doch-Ness, monster?

James Tanizaki praises shadows, and I do too. I realize that his aesthetic treatise is more about appreciating shadowy nuances in the face of glaring modernity than about dwelling in utter darkness, and that his given name wasn’t James. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed quite a bit of backlash from people to certain other people (read: Nathan) hanging out in the dark. “Men love darkness because their deeds are evil.” It’s a subtle, biblical backlash but a palpable one.
Logically, we probably should be concerned for those who spend a lot of time in the dark, but I don’t think that makes physical darkness necessarily bad. For just as stillness helps you to hear better, darkness can help you to see better.
I will not appeal to the Tao or the Force to justify spiritual darkness. Metaphysically, darkness is very real and very present and is not necessarily good. I’m more interested in justifying aesthetic and literal darkness, which I don’t think is necessarily bad.
If everything we do is metaphysically important in only the most immediately obvious way, turning on a light is a little act of creation. Why else would people so often accompany their light switch flipping with an affected James Earl Jones intonation of “Let there be light!” (Maybe that was just me, a few years ago before I was into darkness.) Or perhaps turning on a light is not just symbolic of creation but redemption. To transform a room that was once black and frightening into a warm and welcoming environment is surely good. The things in the room have not physically changed but have taken on new life. If these are reasons why you appreciate keeping the lights on, okay. But I’ve found that there is also something lost in the illumination.
At the end of Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey Two — SPOILER ALERT — criminals and lovers have to adjust their schedules to account for the second sun now parked where Jupiter used to orbit. This is supposed to be an inspiring, fresh start in our solar system, but it’s also a tad unnerving. No more darkness? 
Darkness, aesthetically, can represent melancholy and anguish. Those are not good, but they are real and should not be ignored. Yet aesthetic darkness is not necessarily a total downer either. While it can be peaceful and comforting when near and known, the distant darkness, because unknown, holds terrors, blessings and all else we put there. It’s exciting, the great if. The edge of any light is the beginning of a frontier, and maybe it’s the American in me but I need to keep that open. 

???

I swear I’m not an emo, but I like rainy days and long winter nights. Besides being a statement that probably wouldn’t go over too well in a personal ad, this might just be a little fad. Perhaps I’m just jazzed about experiencing a full winter for the first time in five years. On the other hand, I’ve thought for some time that I wouldn’t mind living in Iceland. Not only are the modern-day Vikings really happy and producing excellent music, they appreciate light more because they spend so much time in the dark.
Almost all of the universe is absolutely freezing and utterly black, and it’s short-sighted — pardon the pun? — to focus exclusively on the little lights in front of our faces.

Of Dice & Men: The Asinine, the Divine

I recently started rewatching Sherlock with my parents and realized my idea of how good the show is somewhat exceeds how good it really is. It’s still excellent, but I'm a tad disappointed. Why do media routinely not live up to the idea I have of them? And if my idea feels so secure, why does simply rewatching that show or re-reading that book bring it down? 

Both seasons are now on Netflix, and if you skip the second episode of each season you won't miss anything.

Sometimes, I am totally convinced of the merit of materialism: what you see is what you get. Other times, I side with the highly evolved juror robots in Futurama’s “A Clockwork Origin” who refuse to rule on Planet Express’s case: “We have evolved to a higher state of consciousness. In the grand scheme, all physical beings are but yokels. Now, settle your petty squabbles and get the hell out.”

In this episode they were actually on another planet, but I love their depiction of Earth Supreme Court.

Paradoxically, man is simultaneously animal and spiritual, so stuff visible and invisible matters to us totally at the same time. My evidence to explain this interaction is necessarily anecdotal, but then again my evidence here always is.

Sometimes ideas are so strong they end up manifesting themselves. I’m pretty sure British historian Niall Ferguson’s second wife is just a manifestation of his academic obsession. Ferguson writes extensively on the history of the West and how great he thinks it is, so when he met a Somali-born Dutch MP who loved the West as much as he did, he left his wife of 24 years and married her. The exotic is erotic and can be even more attractive when it affirms you, but listen to the very scholastic way Ferguson praises his wife Ayaan:

To see and hear how she understands western philosophy, how she understands the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, of the 19th-century liberal era, is a great privilege, because she sees it with a clarity and freshness of perspective that's really hard for us to match. So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. 

I don’t claim to understand their relationship, but that sounds to me like he may be more in love with the idea he has of Ayaan rather than who she really is. In a similar way, love for the idea of something can abide despite what it’s really like. Cubs fans, bless their hearts, root for their lovable losers even as they know many of their players will be unsatisfactory.

With two outs, too.

Other times, physical and chemical action can affects ideas. In the book I read on the history of opium, the author quoted an 1840 New York Times article that claimed alcohol encouraged the lower and more animal instincts in a man whereas opium heightened the higher and more spiritual feelings. I don’t have personal experience with both drugs to make this comparison, but if you do please let me know.

More simply, eating and drinking with anyone and generally just spending time with them brings you closer together. Ecumenical conferences are forever trying to get quarreling Christians—be they Catholics, Quakers or Koreans—to take communion together but can’t. On a lighter note, compromise arguably stopped happening in Washington when congressmen were able to fly back to their constituencies every weekend, not congregating with all their fellow congressman in Washington in restaurants or bars. It is, after all, much harder to filibuster the bill of someone you ate, drank and laughed with on Saturday night.

I’m no metaphysician, but I know that both the animal and spiritual matter a lot, and I would argue simultaneously so. Are V for Vendetta and Amadeus perfect movies? No, but the ideas I see the movies represent keep me rewatching them every November and December 5th. Am I the same person if I weigh 11 stone or 21? Persons are moving targets, but I think I am Nathan whether I’m emaciated or husky. Be that as it may, I know I feel better and think differently when I’m on the lower end of that spectrum. (I’ve read that voters find overweight politicians more trustworthy, but as I’m not running for office I think I could stand to lose a few pounds.)

We’re not dogs, and we’re not logic machines. We’re human, and our absolutely peculiar ability to exist both spiritually and physically should not be disheartening or vexing, but inspiring. Now I’m going to go grab a dirty chai so I can write trivia questions about modern African history.

No one harms, so no surprises

Bored, I found the sheet music to Radiohead's “No Surprises” to memorize the two-measure hook on my learner’s keyboard. It’s my favorite Radiohead song, and I sing what I know of it daily. Typically, I don’t listen to the original recording, with which Stewart Lee ends the second series of his Comedy Vehicle. No, I have consigned Radiohead (and the Beatles) to Bob Dylan status: I fully recognize their incredible musicality but only enjoy listening to covers of their songs. Thus, I listen to either the Radiodread version or Regina Spektor's cover. The latter is the second track of the mix CD in my car, right after “Jerusalem.”

While this song may be vaguely suicidal, I would prefer to liken it to Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb.” To blend lyrics from the two songs: “You look so tired, unhappy / Bring down the government / They don't, they don't speak for us / I'll take a quiet life / A handshake of carbon monoxide / And no alarms and no surprises / I... have become comfortably numb.”

All very upbeat, encouraging stuff! Ennui is not new to me as I’m sure it isn’t to any of you, but Roger Waters remembers a different MO in the last verse of his song: “When I was a child / I caught a fleeting glimpse / Out of the corner of my eye,” right before he stamps it out at song’s end. I’m interested in that fleeting glimpse.

I just finished The Last Unicorn and identified with King Haggard. Even as he was undone he simply laughed “as though he had expected it” because “very little ever surprised [him].” I keep my room at least as dark as Haggard kept his castle, my costs as low and my company as sparse; but, as I’m not interested in unicorn genocide, I don’t take our similarities lightly.

Haggard thought he knew everything there was to know, even though he didn’t. I don’t have delusions of omniscience, but I’m sure Haggard and I aren’t alone in finding everyday life boring. If I do essentially the same thing each day; and, as Mark Twain observed, current events really do rhyme with history, what can I reasonably expect to surprise me?

Roger Scruton’s Very Short Introduction to Beauty comes to the rescue once again. He deftly distinguishes between the energy of disinterest and the emptiness of no interest. He argues that pleasure in beauty is disinterested:

When I read a poem, my pleasure depends upon no interest other than my interest in this, the very object that is before my mind. Of course, other interest feed into my interest in the poem: my interest in military strategy draws me to the Iliad, my interest gardens to Paradise Lost. But the pleasure in a poem’s beauty is the result of an interest in it, for the very thing that it is.

But his next claim is, appropriately, more interesting:

The pleasure in beauty is curious: it aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds.

The italics are his, but I bolded value.

I've already written about finding beauty in everyday life, but I was more concerned with rationally assessing and recording quality aesthetics. I didn’t think to be curious for value! Now, I’m neither an Existentialist nor a Taoist, but I subscribe more to the latter philosophy regarding value. I think that while we have great imaginative powers to invent valuable things, we more often discover value that has already been created. The italicizing and bolding is over now, I swear.

Just read them

In short, I have been comfortably numb and have enjoyed no alarms and no surprises for some time. And I, probably mistakenly, believe I understand most things around me. But I know I haven’t cared to value what I find.

Living during an information glut, you grow to assume very little will hold value. If you stop there you will be bored at best and apathetic at worst. But not expecting much to hold value means finding value will be surprising, will be more than “just a little pin prick... to keep you going through the show.” You will not intone empty appraisals as the speaker in “No Surprises” does, but you will be able to genuinely and affectionately speak his words, “Such a pretty house, and such a pretty garden.” Understanding something is a fine step, but valuing what you find is, in Richard E. Kim’s words, “a small beginning.”

A History of the Engrish-Speaking Peoples

UC Irvine is a fine institution, and it’s predominately Asian. Take for instance the Ayala Science Library. Its art deco exterior screams “Murcah!” loudly enough for the nearby Ayn Rand Institute to hear, but inside sits a disturbingly stereotypical number of Asians doing what Americans believe they do best — studying. I’m well aware of the studious Asian stereotype, and I’m not interested in blindly perpetuating stereotypes. But I went to Ayala and it is, in fact, filled with Asians.

Very white — and not a smoker, cellist or online gamer — I definitely stuck out when I went to the library one Friday in June to play sudoku and listen to folk rock. But there is an art to blending in by sticking out, and I was able to use my whiteness as a cloak under which I could spy on some Asians.

Holed up in a carrel with my headphones in but my Zune on mute, feigning interest in a box that seemed to hold an irrational number, I spied three students playing a board game at the adjacent table. They had backpacks with them and a few textbooks open, but these sat undisturbed. Evidently, they still had to bring study materials to the library on a Friday night, even to play a board game.

What bode ill for my progress through my sudoku book became the night’s entertainment; I was familiar with the board game they were playing. It was Klaus Teuber’s The Settlers of Catan, a fine game that’s a blend of Risk and Monopoly. Players build settlements and cities on hexes of different resources and reap them according to the dice, connecting their properties with roads. Between the sheep, ore, wood, brick and wheat available on the board, Catan has a diverse political economy. Throw in the resource-stealing and production-blocking robber, special development cards — many of which are knights that can move the robber — and the straightforward objective to get to 10 points, and you have yourself a game.

Imagine this, but instead of two white boys in a kitchen think three Asians in a library.

I started watching their game at about 6 pm, which as an Anglophile I prefer to express as 1800, and got the sense they had all been there quite a while. One guy, who I heard the others call Peter, was dominating the table.

Peter, an average-sized man with glasses, had positioned himself brilliantly at the start of the game. That much was clear to me. He was settled on diverse resources and good odds. He reaped often and was able to negotiate the terms of his trades. Plus, he already had the Longest Road, which is worth two points. Things were not so good for the other two players.

The only woman at the table, Christiana, was living off the fat of Peter’s lands, and appeared happy to just be in the game. Or maybe she was just generally an optimistic person. I couldn’t tell.

The third player, a lanky guy with bleached hair called Michael, seemed to be trying to replicate Peter’s winning strategy. Nevertheless, he kept squandering all his resources on buying knights to protect from the robber. He definitely had the two points for having the Largest Army.

But the 1800th hour of that Friday passed quickly, and just after 6:30 the board looked shockingly different. Despite having been so well-positioned at the start, Peter had lost the lead to Michael. Both particle physicists and sociologists know that observing a phenomenon alters it, and I fear I may have affected the game by my longing gaze: I do love to settle Catan.

For, by this time, I was not the only other person watching these three settle. I noticed a surprising number of other Caucasians walking around Ayala, some even butting into the game. I didn’t realize the game was popular enough that these strangers would know how to play it, but they seemed very confident.

Michael listened to everything any passerby might say. One guy in a Rammstein shirt stopped for a moment and casually said, “You need more ore,” before walking off. Just like that Michael built a new settlement, quickly upgraded it to a city and began reaping even more ore.

Peter seemed genuinely troubled by the outside activity around the game, and I can’t admit I blamed him. Anyone could just walk right up to the game and speak their minds. One debonair but silent blond walked by the table, took a stack of Peter’s cards and left a box of cigarettes in its place. Peter, in that wide-eyed but stoically tight-lipped Asian expression of great discomfort, promptly lit one up. I was shocked to see someone smoking indoors, in a public building in southern California no less! Peter didn’t look like a smoker, but he now had more cigarettes than resources. What was he to do.

But this guy looks curious. Peter looked defeated.

Passing the seven o’clock hour, the game only grew more lopsided. Now Michael was really gouging Christiana on trades, and he occupied some of the ports on the coastline adjacent to Peter’s properties, encouraging him to continue smoking and causing him great distress besides. Each turn Peter pursued a new strategy to regain his lead, and each turn the dice dashed his plans to bits. Because Peter’s lead had been so great in the beginning, his stagnating position at this point was even more dramatic. Christiana had not yet led the game that I had seen.

And things got worse before they got better. Though Michael’s knights had gone by the wayside in the six o’clock hour, his interest in amassing them had not. Each turn, his knights would move the robber to one of Peter and Christiana’s most precious spaces and block it. He would then take the card owed him and continue progressing to that now very real possibility of game’s end.

It was about 7:30, and I couldn’t stand it anymore. Giving up all pretense of completing my puzzle and appreciating Beck’s early work, I removed my earbuds and walked over to the table. I immediately told Peter how I thought he could get back at Michael, and then I set to work on Michael. I know it was against the rules, but I quickly removed two of Michael’s cities. This set him back four whole points and seemed to crush the spirit that had driven his expansion since about 6:45.

The game now looked far less lopsided, but it wasn’t to my liking. Peter had stopped smoking, which was definitely good. But he had abandoned the brilliant strategy I had devised for him, allocating his resources in ways I would never. Pacifying Michael really boosted my confidence, so I decided to help out Christiana. (Really, I just didn’t want anyone else to get involved.) But as soon as my plans for her began to unfold, Peter struck back. He did not like the idea of me being there at all; and I, on Christiana’s behalf of course, played many knights back and forth with Peter. In the end I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and left Christiana and Peter, the former of which started buying many knights herself.

It was now 7:45ish, and the game looked new once again. Everything I had said in passing to Christiana and Peter was gospel to Michael. He began quizzing me on strategies I had used in the past, and even though he still bought knights when I had told him not to he was mainly focused on building up his side of the board. He wasn’t interested in building the longest road, but he definitely wanted the most extensive network of roads.

And even though I disagreed with how Peter was playing the game, we were at peace. Christiana’s settlements near Peter’s property were not reaping anything at all, but her more distant cities were doing nearly as well as Michael’s.

Just after eight o’clock, everyone had at least seven or eight points. Michael had not built anything in quite some time, and Christiana’s adjacent cities looked as prosperous as his now aging ones. But the other half of Christiana’s pieces, those by Peter’s, were still not reaping. And for reasons I still don’t quite understand, Peter’s strategy had put him back in the lead, edging out Michael. Christiana and Michael’s strategies made sense to me, maybe largely because they were so similar to my own. But I've never seen anyone settle Catan like Peter and do so well.

Having spent far too much time in the library doing far too little, I left. It was a Friday night after all. I had to get home to browse Wikipedia and listen to NPR. Those three are still settling so far as I know.

Coddle that song text!: The analogous as magnanimous

Analogies are the most direct communication, and this piece is a sacrifice fly. I realize by using direct explanation to argue the supremacy of indirect communication that I am weakening my own claim — hitting a long fly out. But, as I hope the net result is a better understanding of the indirect if not greater use of it (if only on my end), this is a sacrifice fly. And just to show even the most routine out can also be an RBI — Analogies are the most direct communication for three key reasons.

But I count five...

1. The novelty of an analogy hooks people, and an idea conveyed analogously is more likely to stick.

A Technical Tony is wont to bear down on any given situation with more and more details. In this way, there are no forests but only many trees with even more branches and innumerable leaves. And it's not really helpful to label a national park on a map as "542,600 trees; 3.7 million branches; 189 million leaves."

Just an ink drawing of my ally I scribbled. It took me, like, thirty seconds.

Straw men aside, Kierkegaard is on my side. He argued that as a mind is not an undisturbed evaluator assessing information from inside a vacuum, it's necessary to, borrowing language from V, use lies to tell the truth. Just as good sentences tell the truth by referencing the latter part of the previous sentence, and then introduce a new thought at the end, Kierkegaard argued communicating indirectly "does not begin directly with the matter one wants to communicate, but begins by accepting the other man's illusion as good money."

This almost works as a sort of open sandwich method whereby the listener is greeted where he already stands then turned around to view matters from a different angle. He listens to the welcome and then just might understand the second part more as he has to process it himself.

2. Analogies don't merely scale with degree, but morph.

Whereas details are Fatburgers, available in various sizes but compositionally identical, analogies are from Jack in the Box. I could order two tacos if I were a little hungry, a sourdough breakfast sandwich if I were a little hungrier, or a Jumbo Jack with Cheese if I were famished. Each level is unique even as they differ in magnitude.

Simple conceits tend to convey more than basic facts. English comic Stewart Lee is highly metaphorical, and he explained the current coalition government as a relationship between two dogs. Whereas David Cameron was bred for power as a bloodhound for hunting foxes, his having to ally with Nick Clegg to wield that power is as if that blood hound could only catch foxes with the help of a small chihuahua. And if British politics don't do it for you, singer-songwriter Cass McCombs is indeed a lionkiller, and I would maintain that Nicki Minaj is a successful reliever who has outgrown the bullpen but doesn't yet know how to pitch for six or seven innings.

Still better than 2010 Jenks. 

Unlike clichés, parables and fables might actually incite thought. Jesus taught in parables about sowing seeds and preparing for wedding feasts to much acclaim. On the fable side, Aesop’s tortoise and the hare have been codified in cliché: "Slow and steady wins the race." If the fable itself is too weathered to be useful, here's a fable update: At rush hour in West LA, it's faster to drive from Santa Monica to LAX on Lincoln than taking the 10 to the 405.

And, of course, there are allegories which can vivify seemingly dead weight. Whether it's spiritual works like The Pilgrim’s Progress or Flatland, a Cold War allegory like Dr. Seuss's Butter Battle Book, or the solid account of a Muslim’s relationship with America post-9/11 in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, allegories make the abstract much more perspicuous. I wonder if someone could explain modern East Asian history as a conversation between three students at a UC Irvine library....

Metaphors and conceits, parables and fables, and allegories should not be confused for each other. Just as you should not expect a breakfast sandwich to suffice for supper as a cheeseburger would, it’s not helpful to think Nicki Minaj chews tobacco or Nick Clegg is used in Taco Bell advertisements.

Actually, I think this works.

3. Analogies require more thought all around.

An analogy is harder to conceive than a simple fact because it requires sufficient understanding of at least two ideas rather than one or, more likely, half of one. The string theorist who can explain the theory as the music of the universe is, by my estimation, a better scientist than his colleague who can only write in obscure and technical language.

But analogies are not received at face value. If they were, they would be reductive at best and misrepresentative at worst. The third-grader who listens to a lecture on string theory will probably absorb nothing, but if he understood strings as playing the music that generates the universe, he would actually begin to think about string theory. This would probably get the young student discussing strings beyond the lecture, clearly a much better outcome than napping through a presentation.

That all having been said, you all need to read The Little Prince and watch Pink Floyd's The Wall if you haven't already.

Happy Indie Day

This post is a tribute to the nation that was into liberty before it was cool, and then gave up on it when it became too mainstream. First, a list.

My Top Ten Favourite Things About America

1.       Jack in the Box is open 24/7/365.

2.       Walmart’s annual total revenue is greater than Saudi Arabia’s GDP.

3.       “Coke” means the same thing in every language.

4.       You can openly carry a firearm in 42 states, and only 13 of these states require you to have a permit.

5.       As long as you remain under .08 BAC, you can drink and drive in Mississippi.

6.       The McGriddle

7.       Only India and China have more people, and only Russia and Canada have more land.

8.       The best serial killers, evangelists and athletes are all Americans.

9.       Conspiracy theorists and the senile are significant voting blocs.

10.   The stars and stripes are on the Moon.

And now, new words to classic patriotic songs. First one’s a throwback, next two are cheeky, but the last one tries to be thoughtful.

My County ‘Tis of Thee (c. 1999)

My country, ’tis of thee,

Home of the Burger King,

And Taco Bell;

Land where all foods come fried,

Where Tupac and Biggie died:

Did you hear Clinton lied

About Lewinsky?

My Country ‘Tis of Thee

My country, ‘tis of thee,

Where cold hard cash is king,

But WiFi’s free;

Facebook, Apple, Android,

The terrorists annoyed:

No, we’re not unemployed!

Transformers 3.

America the Beautiful

A big mouthful of Freedom Fries,

Morphine to dull the pain,

For the stock market’s lows and highs,

And Greg’ry House’s cane!

America! America!

We drink coffee not tea,

Our highways sprawl, our trees are tall,

A Celsius degree?

The Star-Spangled Banner

O, don’t throw away the great national blight,

Yes, we might well have failed to fulfill Founders’ dreaming,

But these ’types quite bizarre prove that the people just might,

Conquer foes yet unknown, land on new worlds yet teeming!

But however we fare, whatever fortune we share,

We’ll still wield the right to pray and to swear.

May we then conspire to salvage and to save

Whencever we have come — now, how to behave?

Reagan's official presidential photograph. Thanks to Erich Deicke.

A Haiku-storic Day

Besides being the birthday of Philip Davies MP's former Parliamentary researcher, Grainne Magee, 21 June is a rather historic day. Perhaps noteworthy events and hours of daylight are directly related, in which case Norwegian summers must rock. I posted twenty five haiku on this day last year and called it the Longest Day in Haiku-story. Here are five more.

1900
China fought the world
to protect its own borders.
Failed. Silly China.

1942
Japanese sub shelled
Oregon, the turning point
of the war for sure.

1957
Johannes Stark died,
lesser Nazi physicist.
Totes not Iron Man.

1997
Rebecca Black born
on her most favorite day—
Saturday, of course.

2009
Greenland rules itself.
Mercator Projection says
that really matters!


Happy solstice, everybody.

Swaddle that kahntekst!

Presentation matters, and every nuance of presentation affects tastes. (On the other hand, PowerPoint presentation don’t matter too much. Everyone uses Prezi now anyway.) On a basic level, we understand this all too well. At Chipotle, ordering a burrito bowl and ordering a burrito are two very different acts, and you’ll rarely see a man doing the former or a woman doing the latter. Sticking with suburban casual dining, a rosy or indigo filled Jamba cup is much more eye-catching than a brimming branny one. But a burrito bowl can contain identical ingredients to a burrito, and golden smoothies may taste like ambrosia. I wouldn’t know about the latter though. I’m still trying to achieve moksha into Strawberry Nirvana through constant ingestion.

My aversion to brown drank speaks to the often overwhelming power of presentation. When the internal and external conflict a dissonance arises that can lead to a dehumanizing utilitarianism. For example, Mother Theresa was a saint, but she was not a sex symbol. While she was inwardly beautiful but not externally pretty, externally pretty people can be inwardly hideous, and that’s just as confusing.

So if you can’t judge a book by its cover, why not disregard covers entirely? Why not just marry a saint with a catcher’s mitt for a face? In fact, why not distill all essences?: reject fermented beer, the other brown drank, and shoot a thimble of Everclear.

I say swaddle that kahntekst — context for the aphonetic. To me, the act of swaddling often seems irrational. Why should I shower, shave and put on pants if I’m not going to leave the apartment today? Full disclosure: I usually don’t do those things on days when I have nowhere to go and, for an unemployed college graduate, there are a lot of those days. But when I do prepare for the day, I’m reminded that looking presentable is a big confidence boost, even if my idea of presentable is a pimp coat and gym shorts.

But even if I pair a poncho with jeans, I have ‘made special’ my physical person. ‘Making’ anything ‘special’ is silly to me. What would be wrong with everyone agreeing to wear jumpsuits from now on, besides scaring the elderly into thinking they’ve time-traveled to the 1950s’ version of the future? Our clothes don’t determine our character.

They don’t, but there is value in even everyday beauty, and not just in fashion. Setting the dinner table can be an exercise in stagecraft, and even jumping up from the couch to cheer the T/thunder can be a dance. Object placement and basic movement needn’t be means only; they can be little works of art, manifesting a careful imagination.

“So… I should spend my days obsessing over how to open a door perfectly?” Well no, but when you go to open a door why not aim to do it well? This thought of swaddling contexts, really cherishing even simple things, is not some push to launder all toil into perfection. It’s an encouragement that even if you spend your days lounging around your apartment with a Golden Doodle, you can discover, create and do beautiful things.

So, in that spirit, here’s something beautiful I found on Wikipedia a few weeks ago. Even though it's a Mercator projection, it's a joy to look at.

Power is so metal

I’ve spent a lot of time this last year cheering what I perceive to be metal — the brutal, gruesome and overwhelming powerful. For a while, I hoped this habit was turning me into Edward Norton. American History X, Fight Club, The Incredible Hulk — the man always plays fearless characters. But then I feared that cheering the metal was turning me into a wannabe Edward Norton. And there’s nothing more pathetic than that pasty, acne-prone white guy who reads Ayn Rand and thinks himself the Übermensch.

It's like looking in a mirror.

But, despite some recent weight gain, I don’t believe cheering the metal has turned me into that nerd guy. Rather, I now better understand the relationship between fear and power.

Fearful followers can magnify an extant power. I fell asleep thinking about this and dreamt an interesting illustration of it. I pictured about twenty members of Earth, Wind & Fire performing for SNL, funking it up. For some reason, Elijah Wood came onstage dressed as an Orthodox Jew and complained that he lacked the necessary funk to perform a bar mitzvah he had coming up. Rafiki, Mufasa and Yoda gathered round him and agreed that he was short on chutzpah, and then directed him to observe the laughing, floating head of a cyborg Stalin, obviously the epitome of funky power.

Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (1878-1953)

All that’s to say that Stalin’s cult of personality was so powerful that it translates across a century and into the head of a half-robot. More seriously, Stalin was so powerful and feared that I read one quarter of Russians would vote for him were he running for office today. Russian leaders are usually strong men, and Stalin outdid many of them. Someone once asked Khrushchev why he didn’t do anything to stop Stalin’s brutality. Khrushchev snapped and shouted, “Who said that?!” The room went silent. Khrushchev then asked, “Nobody? Well, now you know why.” Stalin’s power was validated by the millions of people who feared him.

Which does not mean, however, that power only survives insofar as it’s feared. In Lewis’s Last Battle, an ape heretically claims that Tash is Aslan and Aslan is Tash. Excuse the length of this block quote, but it’s a really good example of how fearless opposition to power does not necessarily undo it:

Up till now the King and Jewel had said nothing: they were waiting until the Ape should bid them speak, for they thought it was no use interrupting. But now, as Tirian looked round on the miserable faces of the Narnians, and saw how they would all believe that Aslan and Tash were one and the same, he could bear it no longer.

“Ape,” he cried with a great voice, “you lie damnably. You lie like a Calormene. You lie like an Ape.” 

He meant to go on and ask how the terrible god Tash who fed on the blood of his people could possibly be the same as the good Lion by whose blood all Narnia was saved. If he had been allowed to speak, the rule of the Ape might have ended that day; the Beasts might have seen the truth and thrown the Ape down. But before he could say another word two Calormenes struck him in the mouth with all their force, and a third, from behind, kicked his feet from under him. And as he fell, the Ape squealed in rage and terror.

“Take him away. Take him away. Take him where he cannot hear us, nor we hear him. There tie him to a tree. I will - I mean, Aslan will - do justice on him later.”

King Tirian fearlessly opposed this newly powerful ape, and the ape captured, bound and killed him. I realize that power ultimately loses the Last Battle, but fearless opposition thereto resulted in immediate and real consequences. Similarly, hostage-takers are unimpressed with heroes and usually kill them.

On that hopeful note, I affirm that in other circumstances fearless opposition can undo power. But whether it’s V detonating Parliament and killing those fictional British despots or Éowyn declaring she is no man and slaying the Witch-king of Angmar, fearlessness tends to magnify whoever expresses it. V is made a relatable character and not a frightening Übermensch by his love for Natalie Portman and troubled past. The only reason we don’t fear Éowyn will install herself as a tyrannical Queen of Rohan is because she is so meek.

The best example of fearlessness undoing power and then undoing itself comes from Beowulf, namely, in the person of Beowulf. Though he sailed to foreign shores and slew Grendel and his mother, he ultimately trusted too much in his own power and was slain by a dragon in his own kingdom. He didn’t even slay the dragon himself; Wiglaf had to aid him.

Only Led Zeppelin would make a song about immigrants a song about Vikings.

So what am I saying? Fright can make might, might can crush fight, and proud fight can crush itself. And yes, it is pretty metal to live in a world of just fear and power, winning and losing by strength and confidence alone. But there are other, totally irrational ethics. I need a four-letter word that rhymes with shove.