Cross-Referencing

Hey guys, check this out!

My buddy @GrecianDelight_ is one of the smartest chefs I know. He's very--in the moment, I guess you could say. Despite his sometimes-terrible spelling, he's a pretty sharp guy.

And now he's opened a blog over at olivefoods.blogspot.com, where apparently he'll be passing on little schniblets of knowledge about baking, cooking, basting, sauteeing, and occasionally animal husbandry. (I made one of those up.) (Yep, you caught me, he doesn't know jack about basting.)

So I'd encourage all of you to check out his inaugural post, available here. Some interesting factoids, and I actually chuckled a few times.

Long live circles! (Not the Google+ kind, just...normal...eh, I've gone and ruined the effect of my sign-off once again.)

LONG LIVE CIRCLES.

I Really Admire My Brother

He's 17. I think...yeah. Turning 17 this year.

And he's a really smart kid.

Now, I'm a bit older, and I know it's kind of--not done for the older brother to say stuff like this, but I really do admire my younger brother.

He and I exchanged emails this week. He mentioned Lionsgate Studios negatively, and I asked why. Here's his response:

Ahh, well, technically there isn’t anything wrong with Lionsgate, they make some really good movies...but their logo is really annoying. None of the gears match up to the other gears they are supposed to be turning!


He's referring to this:

Now, I don't think he's entirely correct: I think I see at least two sets of gears that actually do turn other gears. But examining it closely, I do see the source of his frustration: it's a facade.

Perhaps I'm tetched in the head, overwhelmed by positive familial bias, but what kind of 17-year-old notices something like that? I certainly didn't. He's a smart kid. Should be an engineer or something.

Long live family ties.

Stop South American Desserts

You know all of those annoying Facebook "chain status" updates? Like this:

Every 5 seconds a poor sad tiny baby turtle dies because a 

tern eats it. Repost this status if you hate terns and think they're

big old idiots.

Or this:

Rabies kills nearly 39 billion people per year. 99.991% 

of my friends don't give a [expletive deleted] about rabies.

If your part of the .001% that actually hates rabies and

wants rabies to die, repost this! Lets see if we can stomp

out rabies one's and for all!

The problem with these sorts of delightful little attempts at social consciousness is that their purpose is ambiguous. Those who go ahead and repost (let's call them the .001%)--do they believe that merely changing their status will actually contribute to research on a cure for rabies? Do they believe that there's a kindly, grandfatherly billionaire who gives a dollar to medical research every time his minions find another status update?

"What's that, Mortimer? You found another one? Well then, another dollar for rabies research!"

More likely, I believe, is that the .001% think they're contributing to awareness of the horrible thing they're chain-statusing about, whether it be turtlecidal terns or a rabies pandemic. Unfortunately, most chain-statuses don't induce sympathy and compassion in the reader. Rather, they induce feelings of "bah, another chain status, keep on scrolling down".

Either way, those chain-statuses fail because nobody really understands what's going on. Is it a sop for lazy consciences, a magic money fund, a flashlight shined into the dark corners of human suffering...?

The point of all this is that the furor over the Internet Laws, or as I prefer to call them, the South American Dessert Laws, is working. It's working because it's focused. And it's working because people are working together, because they care about the issue.

I just checked Facebook. Out of the first 25 posts in my news feed, 14 were related to the SOPA/PIPA controversy. Nearly 60% of the posts that Facebook deems "most important" were related to this battle. Even more telling, not all of those posts were unique: many of them were multiple postings by different people of the same links.

And the result? Well, sponsors of the bills are already backing down.

See, this is chain-posting actually working. The goals of posting about SOPA/PIPA are:

1. to raise awareness about the issues, and
2. to inspire people to act by providing them a solution.

And most of those posts on Facebook do just that. Bully for us. This is going very well.

So let me leave you, dear readers, with a status update.

██ █████ love █████ ███████ ███ the government! █████ ██ they █ ██████ want █████ █████ what's ███████best ███ █████ for ██ █ us ███! ███ █████ █████ really! ███████ ███ █████ ██ █ ███!

{Parts of this comment have been found in violation of H.R. 3261, S.O.P.A and has been censored for your protection.

Freedom! Forever!

The Futility of Argument?

Perhaps the new year has awakened my pugilistic instincts, but I've been arguing more recently. Why, just this past week, I involved myself in a political discussion that became a whirlwind of ad hominem before my very eyes. And so, once again, I find myself vowing to eschew argument as much as possible.

It's happened before. My habits seem to cycle: first I find myself paying more attention to debate. Then, in my mind, I begin to participate in discussion. Then I open my mouth, and I involve myself. And that's it. I decide afresh that argument is an exercise in futility.

That's just my opinion, of course. And I don't refer to argument as an educational tool: debate, discourse, rhetoric, dialectics, for the purpose of sharpening the mind. I refer to the arguments of people who care deeply about their position, people who want to share the good news of OWS or the "I Hate Religion/I Love Jesus" video.

Here's the nub of this cogitation: what good does arguing (as defined above) do?

When have you, O my ecstatic and adoring readers, used argument to convince someone to change their beliefs?

I don't think it's ever happened to me. Perhaps it's because I'm terrible at arguing. I've never argued with someone about an important topic and had them say, "You know what? You're right. I was mistaken--I was wrong. You've convinced me." Thing is, people tend to be pretty prideful, and being told they're wrong will (usually) just entrench them further in their position.

As I type that, I realize that yes, it's probably happened. At some point in the past, some impeccably humble souls have most likely mustered the courage to say those words.. Perhaps even to some of you reading this blog. I've never heard those words because I'm bad at debate.

If you've had this experience--if you have convinced someone that their views are wrong--leave a comment, please. If you share my frustration, if you seem to find argument futile, leave a comment, please.

This isn't so much my uninformed opinion as an appeal to those few who read this.

Long live equivocation!

UNSPOOLING: YellowBrickRoad

The other night I watched a film I've been interested in for a while: YellowBrickRoad. I'd seen the trailers and read some about the filming. Independent, low-budget, off-the-wall, perhaps...it all seemed to be right up my alley.

So when I saw it was available for streaming on Netflix, I was mildly overjoyed. I watched it. It wasn't what I was expecting--and I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

See, I expected some sort of payoff: some sort of explanation. I'm an American consumer. As much as I try to shake the cultural strictures with which I have been saddled, I remain a product of my environment. When I experience narrative that develops a mystery, I want to have that mystery solved. It's a conflict, and conflicts are made to be resolved.

Now, I don't want the answer spoon-fed to me. But I do want to have the feeling that I can be confident in my interpretation. YellowBrickRoad, unfortunately, gives me no such sense of confidence. The confusing resolution to the film, if it can indeed be called such, is a significant letdown.

I must say, though, that I am partial to experiential communication. That's my term for any form of communication that shows instead of tells. Poems that immerse the reader, photography that communicates emotion rather than image, films that force the viewer into the narrative. YellowBrickRoad, in my uninformed opinion, is an experiential film. If indeed it is a tale of mass psychosis, it almost forces the viewer to become a character in the film. The path of the narrative, and the way it's communicated, makes the viewer feel a sense of disorientation, confusion, and irrational annoyance.

Much has been made of the ending of YellowBrickRoad; most of that much has been negative. I won't address that issue, because I am still lost in the woods of understanding this film. I haven't gotten to the end of my thinking yet. I will say this: this movie ends with the devil you don't know. Philosophically speaking, then, the horror climaxes at the end; my confusion, my lack of understanding, is worse than any imaginable explanation.

I give YellowBrickRoad 3 Reels on Ian's Totally Subjective Film Rating System.

Long live division!

Oh Heck, I'm Going To Be Political Again

I don't do this very much.


No, seriously, I don't. Look back at my archives. I mean, there was this one about voting...but before that? Not a lot. And for good reason: I don't want this to be a political blog, because I am lazy intellectually. I don't want to have to think hard about politics. It's too much effort.


But tonight--


The topic du jour is the New York Times' questions to Republican candidates about their views on the limits of presidential power. I think this is a great idea: it forces the candidates to publicly define their conception of the limits of the office they aspire to hold.


My uninformed opinion of the candidates responses are below. Keep in mind that this is MY opinion, and that it's my OPINION. I'm not trying to make absolute statements about the candidates. If you, adoring masses, disagree with me, that's fine. Comment and let me know your thoughts.

• Newt Gingrich speaks in sound bites. Does he think in sound bites? Or is the brevity of his answers calculated, to pander to the short attention spans of readers?
• Jon Huntsman loves to talk precedent.
• Mitt Romney repeatedly references the past.
• Rick Perry does the cookie-cutter thing: he used the following sentence to begin his answers almost 50% of the time. "The Constitution clearly vests in the President full executive authority, and an absolute duty, to protect the nation when vital American security interests are at stake. "
• Ron Paul continues to cement his legacy as one of the most consistent presidential candidates in a long while.
• Paul's answer to the "Interrogation and Surveillance" question cracks me up.

I still don't know which of these candidates will receive my vote--if any of them do. Paul's answers are perhaps the most reassuring, however: he seems to have a firm conception of the boundaries of the office of President.

So...yeah.

Long live impulse!

Out of the Canyon: An Essay

The following is an essay I wrote in the fall of 2010. I recently unearthed it, and it expresses so fully some of what's been on my mind recently regarding the West and creativity and all that--I just decided to post it. It's a bit of a long read, but I'd appreciate feedback.

Out of the Canyon

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, July 8, 2010

The Coleman lantern perches on the the bench of the picnic table beside me. The mantles, tiny suns the size of quarters, fling their incendiary glare into the darkest corners of the primitive mountain campsite in which I sit. I hold my book angled to catch the pale yellow rays. On an adjacent mountainpeak, a coyote sings the blues. I lift my head at the hollow howl, then return to my book.

--my book! It is a deep ocean of narrative. Currents of plot seize me, overpower me, enthrall me. Characters surface, as mysterious and foreign as the shark from Jaws, grip me, carry me away with them. And booming like the bass song of the surf, attacking then receding, are the waves of what I call the Glory. The Glory--everything in a book that touches me. Perhaps they are splashes of theme, or swirls of literary device. Symbolism. Parallelism. Point of view. Every stylistic brushstroke, every intoxicating emotion, all the elements that catch hold of my heart and will not let go. I have been dragged far, far below the surface of my novel. Not even the contemplative passage of a raccoon through the campsite can bring me to the surface. The raccoon continues on its amiable way towards the dumpsters, and I swim deeper into the ocean that is The Big Sleep.

The blunted roar of flammable gas from the Coleman--it catches, hesitates, and then resumes. Then it falters again, and apologetically expires. The not-darkness of a full-moon night dissolves onto me. I pull myself, dripping, out of the murky depths. I shake my mind's fist at Raymond Chandler, Creator of those depths, author of their intoxicating allure. I stretch, I yawn, I look around me.

and then

OUT OF NOWHERE

I feel the open-handed slap of that otherworldly something I cannot even begin to describe. Sometimes I feel the slap when I see the snow skirling into its drifts down by Lake Michigan. Sometimes I feel the slap when I sit in class and watch the world lurch on its axis--out of sheer boredom. Sometimes I feel the slap when I stand at the top of one of the dozens of old fire towers that dot Wisconsin's natural forests, and I see Autumn's chuckling match set to the green summery leaves, and they ignite.

When I feel the slap--when I see the world lurch and rearrange itself subtly--something happens to me. Perhaps I make a resolution to change my ways and be a better man. Perhaps I write a poem which I will never revise. Perhaps I only plan to write a poem...or a short story...or a novel...or a cycle of novels...

If I plan, though, and I do not do--if I only plan, I never do.

I feel that slap now, on the mountaintop in Colorado. I pull my cell phone from my pocket, grimace at the cracked screen, and peer at the display. No signal. It's shortly after midnight. I am here alone. The Big Sleep bends forgotten on my chair. I look out over the short scrub around the campsite, and suddenly I see my America, stretched out beneath me. The country, the whole country, in four dimensions, its history as real as its height, its width, its depth.

Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled detective (and why do we call Philip Marlowe hard-boiled? is he an egg? No, he is a piece of jerky, lean and tough and salty and unprepossessing and somehow very endearing) is my brother. He drives through torrential rains outside Los Angeles to right wrongs, a fedoraed white knight riding a mechanical steed. And I sit in the back seat of his car, 71 years later, breathless as his dramatic life continues to unfold so unassumingly and honestly.

Was Philip Marlowe a real man? Well, technically speaking, no. But speaking technically is speaking unimaginatively--and speaking emotionlessly. "So did Philip Marlowe exist?" I ask my conscience. And my conscience grudgingly admits, "Yes. For the last two hours he existed. For the last two hours you looked over his very real shoulder as he found the tacks in the road, uncovered psychosis and perversion, crossed and double-crossed and triple-crossed. You saw him win--you saw him lose. You shared his secret thoughts. You know him. You are his brother."

As I lean back, still stretching, and stare at the Jackson Pollock sky, I realize what the slap is telling me. The universe that Philip Marlowe inhabits: it is mine as well. I have partaken of his story, just for this evening, and we now share this plane of existence. The cast of characters in my universe grows with every book I read: Samwise Gamgee, Holden Caulfield, Ishmael and Queequeg, Sherlock Holmes, Anne Shirley, Randall Flagg, Jack Reacher, Laura Ingalls Wilder, David Webb (but everyone knows him as Jason Bourne), Sam Spade, Nicholas Nickleby, Jack Ryan, Hercule Poirot, Lady Macbeth, Lennie Small, Lord Peter Wimsey, the poor hapless Baudelaires: all of them wander somewhere in my universe.

I am what I read.

--and, like a puff of wind, my muse flees.

The sage palisading the campsite smells like untamed lavender.

That's it. What did you think?

Long live dredging!