My son played his first April Fool’s Joke on us.
You should have seen our faces before he pulled out the real behavior report for the week. Usually the ladybugs are green…
Seen the new Google TiSP system, or Gmail Paper?
Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: It’s good to be silly at the right moment. – Horace (65 BC – 8 BC)
I haven’t done this in a while, but here are some things that caught my eye today while I was updating my blogroll. Loosely grouped by topic, here ya go…
The trouble with philosophical abstraction is that it tries to create a space separated from the world.
The metaphor of the slippery slope, for example, has become almost literal. That’s why it is often effective. Who wants to slide down a slippery slope? What is unstated but operative is that this metaphor encourages the reader/hearer to assume – without question – that there exists a place that is not slippery, where one cannot slide or fall.
In our complex world (and especially with regard to ethical and legal questions that affect people’s lives), we seem to have a craving to be able to state our understandings in a universally-applicable and absolute way, even about topics that are not absolute and cannot be absolute. That’s why “top-down” understandings must play against “bottom-up” ones, where a multitude of examples and perspectives of experience can realistically inform both theory and practice.
Why am I having these thoughts today? It’s all about the old question of whether the glass is half empty or half full.
I’ve heard a lot of answers to that question. Some will say it is both half empty and half full, or even that it is neither half full nor half empty. Your personal preference of interpretation can be used as a measure of optimism or pessimism. There are hundreds of jokes.
Last night I read the hands-down best answer to the question of whether the glass is half-full or half-empty. That answer illustrates a kind of blind spot for absolute abstraction and universalizing. It illustrates the importance of perspective and context in a completely different way. Just by the wayside, it made me laugh so hard that I felt compelled to share the joy. I think that only a woman could have come up with this answer. In this case, a grandmother.
I didn’t find it in a philosophy book, but in a chapter on grandparents in Cosbyology: Essays and Observations From the Doctor of Comedy
So I went home that night — and my grandmother was there — and she saw me concentrating and so she asked me what was the matter.
“I’m supposed to figure out if the glass is half full or half empty,” I told her.
Without a moment’s hesitation, in a split second, my grandmother shrugged and said:
“It depends on if you’re drinking or pouring.”
A study conducted by UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle. For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she tends to be more attracted to a man with duct tape over his mouth and a spear lodged in his chest while he is on fire. No further studies are expected.
Duct tape over the mouth is enough for me… No, really.
If there is no hope for foot massages, snuggling, long walks, and small amounts of chocolate, then silence is good…
(Thanks Troy)
Where are we, America?
March 20th will be the four-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion and subsequent occupation. We’ve succeeded in making a bad situation worse for the people of Iraq. We’ve killed and been killed. We’ve drained our financial resources for the foreseeable future, and handed out contracts to such ilk as Halliburton. The oil profits are still being debated, but does anyone believe that the Iraqi people will benefit? A majority of the soldiers themselves thought they should be out by the end of 2006. In a number of ways, our own government has shown how little they care for the lives of our military “volunteers,” or generally for any human lives – except for embryonic tissues, and that only to get votes. They have attempted to destroy the checks and balances of our system. They have illegally withheld information, they have deceived us, they have replaced our land of freedom with executive abuse of power, spying and surveillance systems, massive corruption, crony capitalism, and the cynical manipulation of religion for power. They have worked to legalize torture and undermine human rights, and have even passed legislation to provide themselves retroactive immunity for war crimes prosecution.
To the extent that the American people have allowed all this to happen, and even participated in it, we are also accountable (or in biblical terms, “blood-guilty“). Our extreme self-insulation, limitless self-adoration, self-congratulatory arrogance, over-worked fatigue and apathy, lack of access to or interest in relevant information and intelligence and so on all work against meaningful changes. We appear to lack understanding about even our own self-interest. Yes, we have a pseudo-religious fanaticism here, but even that pales in comparison to our own suicidal down-spiral.
Here is my nightmare: Most of us will not pay with our lives in any sort of splashy symbolic way (as do desperate terrorists), but we will pay instead by meaningless steps, by degrees, into our deaths (and the deaths of those we love) as the euthanasia of unnecessary lives takes hold. We’ll have workers with no rights or access to accountability or fairness; that’s why Bush wants the guest worker program and the union-busting. The profitable private prison systems will also be a source of labor. There will be no regard for real global systems such as the environment, but only for the big game of capital – a game for the few. You and I are hardly necessary except insofar as we can habitate our role as consumers. The profits will continue to go to the top; we will work more and more for less and less (remember the debate about the four-day work week? ha ha). Privatization, such as what occurred at Walter Reed hospital and elsewhere, will reward profitable incompetence. The medical crisis will get worse. As poverty increases and the gap between the rich and everyone else widens, the social safety net – such as it is – will be cut off, a result of “hard choices.” Safety standards of any kind – gone. The economy collapses. People lose their jobs and then their homes. As desperation and anger escalate violent crimes will exponentially increase. More and more people will simply entrench and cocoon – with the aid of killer drugs like meth, or by a withdrawal of engagement from reality. Neighbor will turn against neighbor. We will lose everything that so many have fought for. We will fail to thrive, we will be unable to thrive.
I fear that we are already past the tipping point. Perhaps the American experiment will end in spectacular (or simply dreary) failure. After the Cold War, can we really still say we “won”? It used to seem so, but there is a kind of return of the repressed here. The Orwellian bad points of the USSR seem to have been rebirthed in the USA, under corporate fascism and governmental abuse of power.
We have a policy of “preemptive war” now. Why isn’t that more shocking to the American people? Really. Have you understood nothing of history?
No matter what happens, we always seem to be able to get up the money for war. Other issues are for some reason not as sexy to the national psyche. Will we be able to count on medical insurance, retirement funds, education for our children and grandchildren? We don’t know. How much money are we printing? We don’t know; they don’t report that anymore. Was the stock market drop a warning from the nations who hold much of our national debt? We don’t know. What could be paid for if we could even just reduce the interest we have to pay on our debt? Have you looked? Will we be able to trust the food we eat, the air we breathe, the land upon which we walk?
Ironically, I see one possibility for a hopeful future coming from the very corporations whose greed extends the international slash-and-burn zone. Corporations who want to survive into the future (and not just cut and run from the country once they’re raped it) will be forced to offer ethics and fairness in order to continue to attract consumers and knowledgeable workers. They have to have consumers. And – they really have to have skilled workers. A massive skilled workforce shortage is on the way in this country as boomers retire or die. Long-range planning would dictate that they not kill off their number-one asset: their people.
Limiting education only to those of the upper financial classes will not be enough to keep the machine going. However, I think that education in America will tilt more and more into technical training rather than education, a kind of Spartan techno-culture. No history, no literature, no cultural understanding, no real analysis, no skill in debate or dialogue. All spin. Like Bush, “all hat, no cattle.”
I want to work through various events, such as the firings, and Halliburton going to Dubai, but at this point I feel as though I have at once too much information and not enough information. I’m slowing down a notch. I’m percolating. I need to steep. Or soak. Or wallow. Or consider. Or something like that. I’ll let you know.
Silly observation: Why is General Petraeus’s name pronounced everywhere as “Betray us”?
I’m not saying it means anything, but it’s kind of like the mouthpiece of the White House being named Tony Snow(job). Just one of those things it’s hard not to notice. I’ve been trying to hope that he knows what he’s doing, but every time I hear the news I can only hear “betray us.” It’s disconcerting.
On a more serious note, I’m disappointed in Speaker Pelosi. There were good ideas and plans on the table, like requiring targets rather than timetables. The Iraq Study group report (despite its ties to the oil industry) came up with some ideas that were summarily ignored by the White House. There have been additional plans, some of them with very good recommendations, which have also gone nowhere. The supplemental bill proposed by Speaker Pelosi will give Bush another $100 billion for the war in Iraq, with hardly any questions asked.
To get congressional votes, Nancy Pelosi seems to have become mired in compromises that would allow the war to drag into 2008. While I can understand the hard realities of her position, there is no excuse for removing the only amendment to the supplemental spending bill that would have forced Bush to get authorization from Congress before attacking Iran. It’s frightening to me. I can see that this White House would lose little sleep over another preemptive war, even if it included nuclear weapons. I would like to see a whole separate bill, requiring that they either call Iraq a “police action” or else be required to formally “declare war” so that they couldn’t avoid constitutional laws. Congress has to approve going to war. That’s the Constitution. The very fact that they feel they have to remind the President about that in the case of Iran is very ominous to me. After all, they know things we don’t know.
If things can still be changed, I doubt that the change will occur on the terrain of issues of war funding or authorizations for war. It seems as though that would be the leverage point, but I don’t think so. It seems as though we can only actually get moving on the less important issues. It is no surprise to me that the voters’ priorities are not really at issue. Hey, the illegal war in Iraq already abuses the terms of the authorization it got from Congress. No, it will have to be something else, something that goes deeper into the systems and networks that have built up to rob and control us.
I have to admit that I’m also disappointed in CodePink, a group of women for peace. I support them, along with the ACLU, the Feminist Majority, and a host of other groups who often work together. Still, this was kind of sad.
Here’s the song parody that CodePink members sang at Nancy Pelosi’s office (from the Beatles’ “Can’t Buy Me Love” – alternate lyrics by Rae Abileah).
Can’t buy me war, war
Can’t buy me warBush wants billions more for war to keep up the bloody fight
Bush wants billions more for war but we know that it’s not right!
‘Cause I voted for you Pelosi, Pelosi can’t buy me warOur schools are broke, our parks are bare, and we need insurance too,
Our hearts are broke, our soldiers killed, and we’re all counting on you
I voted for you Pelosi, Pelosi can’t buy me warCan’t buy me war, everybody knows it’s so
Can’t buy me war, no no no, noSay you aren’t going to fund the war and I’ll be satisfied
Tell me that you want diplomacy, which bombing just can’t buy
I voted for you Pelosi, Pelosi can’t buy me warCan’t buy me war, war
Can’t buy me war…no!
So that’s the endpoint, something specific, a real action: women singing a parody of a Beatles tune at the Speaker’s office, wearing pink statue-of-liberty hats and camping out in her home driveway. I guess we each do what we can, if we still care. Although I applaud the effort, the execution seems so dated and pathetic. I like what some women are doing in other countries a lot more. More on that on another occasion.
So, then, what?
Americans love images. That’s why camera-phones aren’t allowed in some areas. That’s why journalists can only be “embedded.” Let’s find more of the photographs and footage. Show it.
Let’s hear and tell the stories of all sides. Ethics requires that.
Let’s have the international debates. Real debates.
Let’s also have multi-pronged dialogue. Real dialogue.
There are possibilities. But I think that if anyone left of Attila the Hun wants to be elected President of the United States, s/he had better start doing more. Start with the actions now; those will speak far louder than your little platitudinous speeches and little sideways sniping. I’m so utterly sick of it.
If Rudy G is the best that the reichright-wing can come up with, there is a real chance here.
Let’s get some real investigations going. Journalists, academics, detectives, everyday people – whatever is needed. We have to have a better idea of what is really going on. I want to see money trails, forensic accounting, real oversight. I want to see governmental watchdog organizations headed up by people who are not inextricably tied to the industries they are supposed to be watching. That sort of thing. It’s not rocket science. The conflicts of interest are glaring. Just start looking, and you’ll see.
I want a national discussion and debate among the Presidential candidates. Not this fake thing they do, but an actual debate that goes into some depth on each issue. Each night, debate on one topic – the specifics. If people are too bored by that, then they don’t have to watch. Then I want mainstream network television coverage of the results of fact-checking by at least 2-3 reputable groups.
Ideally, we’d get rid of the two-party system that has served only to reinforce one another’s foibles and drive both sides further from the real issues and priorities of the people they claim to represent. I dream of a more representative (even parliamentary) democracy, where coalitions would need to be formed among several parties. Let’s have a dozen candidates and vote for the top three. The top two winners would be the President and VP.
America is just too diverse for the limited vision and power politics of the duo-party structure.
Well, I don’t expect to see that any time soon. But spring is coming, and I always seem to feel more hopeful when I can feel things – despite everything – still growing at the proper time.
Stay attuned.
I am a serious fan of Joe Frank. He is the radio noir guru of my soul. I have been listening to him since the eighties. He was the joy of my Friday nights, and did much to get me through a difficult graduate program in philosophical theology and ethics. From 1986 until 2002, Joe produced four Series: “Work in Progress,” “In the Dark,” “Somewhere Out There,” and “The Other Side.”
Late Friday night, “Work in Progress” (from KCRW Santa Monica) played on the local NPR station in Iowa City, and almost every Friday night, I was listening. It became something very like a religious ritual for me. Candles, comfortable surroundings… provocative thoughts, brilliant rants, hypnotic bits of music, and his voice. He’s witty and absurd and satirical and dark and deep and funny, and the rhythms of the rants get me every time.
Here’s a little example of the kind of thing he does:
When endowed with profound religious feeling, your skin becomes transparent and your blood begins to turn a thin watery hue until the light of the sun streaming in the window passes entirely through you. At last, having evolved into pure spiritual energy, nothing remains of your existence but a small pile of dirty underwear, damp socks, rumpled garments, a driver’s license, credit cards and perhaps a small nail clipper.
This is what happens when you achieve oneness with the air, with the sky, with the whole world and everything in it. No longer tormented by nagging questions such as the conundrum of imploding ethical systems as expressed in post-war German soup recipes, you feel a sense of ecstatic exhilaration. It is this condition of bliss that Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There will attempt to elicit in its listeners.
Ahh, but with Joe, it’s all in the delivery.
The trains of thought that his work set off for me were better intellectual stimulation than almost anything else I had encountered. There was a sensual, even vaguely erotic, aspect to whole thing as well, so that it was (for me) a perfect melding of mind, spirit, body. I’m not saying that I’m sexually attracted to Joe – I love this man’s soul. I *deeply* respond to his ideas, his delivery, his voice, but it’s in some other sort of space and place, almost otherworldly. I can’t fully express the sense of kinship and gratefulness that I have felt for this.
Back in 1989 or 90 or so, I wrote him a long fan letter, raving about one of the shows. In a wonderful bit of synchronicity, he called me on my birthday (and was surprised that I was so young! Evidently, my letter sounded like it was written by a women some ten or twenty years my senior). After that, I was actually in a short bit of “The Loved One,” from the In the Dark series – which I think I flubbed, pretty much (sigh).
John and I lived in Los Angeles for a summer (Ben was about 2 years old), and I finally got to meet Joe in person. At his house. However, as is my unfortunate tendency when I am socially anxious, I babbled – while he made himself some pea soup to comfort his ulcer, and looked somewhat askance at the aloe vera juice I had brought along as a gift. I couldn’t center myself. I admire him so much that I still feel kind of starstruck when I interact with him. I have no idea what I’m saying or why. It’s the opposite of how I am when I’m listening to his work – centered, serene, silent, clear, my mind dancing, my spirit wild and free.
Still, he hasn’t written me off completely (grin). I think he’s probably used to that kind of thing. We talked recently about a range of things, and while I was still disappointed in myself, it was a very fun conversation nonetheless. Mostly I was just pleased that he was doing better. (Joe – if you ever read this – know that you have only seen the aspect of me that I like the least, the “I don’t know what I’m saying, I just want to be here” where I’m actually standing outside myself, a reflexive ghost just watching and shaking my head morosely, wondering what inauthentic flotsam of self is operating the mouth. I would like to get to a more engaging level of conversational exchange with you someday. Thank you for your kindness toward this awkward flailing confusionbot as we create the terrain between.)
Anyway…. ahhhhh… I am extremely pleased that Joe is still with us. He had a kidney transplant last year, and his recovery seems to be going very well.
It’s been one of my frustrations with living in Georgia that this NPR station could not be convinced to carry any of his work. Sheesh. What is wrong with this place?
Anyway, new things are brewing!
You can listen to some choice bits of Joe’s work on his MySpace “music” page. JoeFrank.com has whole shows. You can listen to a couple of them for free, and there is a paid membership option for more.
There are podcasts available! Now playing: Pilgrim.
Here’s the feed for your podcast software.
If you’re on a PC, download Juice “for fresh content”.
You can also hear him on Sonic Theater, XM radio channel 163 (if I understand it correctly).
If you go to the MySpace page, be sure to check out “Ode to War,” which is in my short list of favorites. See if it doesn’t make you think.
Now there is even a brand-spankin’ new forum for us Frankophiles (.com!).
At MySpace, join the Frankolyte group.
If you’re on MyTribe, join the JoeFrankophiles group.
If I am ever in a position to do so, I would love to buy the whole library of his work. He gave me copies of “Rent-a-Family” and “The Dictator” – both are special multi-part shows. Even all these years later, when I’ve gotten rid of almost all my cassette-tapes, I have held onto the shows I recorded off the radio. I still listen to them, despite the rotten sound quality.
There are no medals to peace, no honors, no marching bands, no great monuments to peace, no hymns sung, no great odes, no martial melodies, no parades to peace. There are no gigantic fireworks displays, no champagne corks popped to peace, no last cigarette smoked in its honor. There is no night before peace, no declaration of peace. The very absurdity of a nation declaring peace on another shocks the imagination. And who among us can say that he has heard of the spoils of peace? Is there such a thing as a peace hero? Who among us have gathered with his old cronies late at night, hoisted a glass and told peace stories? What valiant young man has been welcomed back from peace? What young boy has gazed longingly at his father, saying that he would willingly go to peace to save his country?
My near-worshipfulness is not really objectively critical, but at least I’m not alone:
“Joe Frank is by far the most brilliant comic in America… [He] has created a series of dead-pan radio monologues so sharp and intelligent that during the quiet bits you can almost hear God taking notes.” — The Guardian (UK)
“[Joe Frank] travels in the emotional landscape of Bergman and Fellini; there’s a tension and sense of mystery halfway between Kafka and Chandler, plot twists worthy of Rod Serling, and a satiric edge worthy of Firesign Theatre and Woody Allen.” — The Washington Post
“The world of Joe Frank is a wildly entertaining surrealistic universe…hilarious, unsettling, zany, powerful, moving and perhaps the most unique, inventive and effective use of radio since Orson Welles convinced much of America that there was a “War of the Worlds.” — The L.A. Weekly
“[Joe Frank is] the most imaginative, literate monologist in radio today… If a microphone could capture the nether recesses of the modern psyche, it would sound like Frank’s absurd comical excursions: Radio Vertigo.” –The Village Voice
“A combination monologist-philosopher-black comic-shrink, Frank strips away radio’s genteel veneer of good vibes and exposes the private fears that plague us all.” — The Los Angeles Times
“RADIO’S PRINCE OF DARKNESS RULES THE FREEWAYS” [Frank is] alternately dark, bizarre and very funny – but always hard to turn off.” — The Wall Street Journal
“…Joe Frank is an invaluable warrior who stands in defense of our fears, our vanities and our forever-eroding sense of ourselves. He transforms the everyday banality of the human comedy into an inspired weirdness that feeds on pathos and irony, and feels a lot like revelation. Sartre would have called it nausea; Frank makes it art.”
– Spin Magazine“I came upon Joe Frank’s work by accident a number of years ago while driving to my home in the Napa Valley late at night. I couldn’t believe the originality and sheer brilliance of what I was hearing. From that moment on I became a dedicated Joe Frank fan.” — Francis Ford Coppola
“Joe Frank is a singular voice in radio. What he has done that is so amazing and impressive to me is to take this singular voice out of my radio and put it inside my head. As I listen, Frank’s show invades me and becomes my own thought process. It’s hypnotic, psychotic, neurotic, sad, terrifying, and some of the funniest stuff I have ever heard anywhere. I can’t think of another radio performer who has come close to achieving this kind of alchemy.” — Charlie Kaufman
“Joe Frank is an original whose work has helped form some of the most eccentric, dark and interesting parts of public radio’s personality.” —Terry Gross
“He’s one of the great, original radio performers. He’s created a sound and style for himself – a complete aesthetic that’s entirely his own. I first heard him when I was 19 and it changed everything for me. His work demonstrated the intensity and emotion that the medium is capable of; ingenious…fantastic.” — Ira Glass
“To me, he’s what radio is really for … his show makes me think he’s getting to some great truth … so completely captivating and just unlike anything else.” — David Sedaris
