Outis Niemand

About Outis Niemand

http://asundayofliberty.com

Ornamental hermit. Sciolist. Musician manqué. Poetaster. Armchair psychologist. Pseudo-philosopher. Founder of Panta Rheism™. The complete Rabelaisian man. Great eater, deep drinker, stout fighter, prodigious lover; clear thinker, creator of beauty, seeker of truth and prophet of heroic grandeurs. I coalesce the vapors of human experience into a viable and logical comprehension. (Contact: asundayofliberty at gmail)

Posts by Outis Niemand:

No Dark Sarcasm in the Classroom

By in media/propaganda, ohferfucksake, waiting for the barbarians

After seeing a couple mentions of this “dueling flags” thing in California, I’ve decided to offer my valuable perspective.
First, let’s take a moment to contemplate the wise words of Warrior Soul frontman Kory Clarke, who bellowed, “Don’t pledge allegiance to flags, I burn ’em!” Right on.
Secondly, anyone who wears American flag-themed clothing (which I thought was supposed to be disrespectful to the flag in the first place…?) makes me think of Kid Rock. Anyone who makes me think of that stupid, inbred, no-talent-having, slack-jawed yokel is automatically on my shitlist, especially when they’re only wearing the aforementioned apparel to be dicks in the first place, so fuck those kids. Like I said, burn all flags. But if that sounds unreasonable to you, well, living in this country provides you Homer Simpsons with endless opportunities to grab your foam finger and try to spell U-S-A at the top of your lungs, from pro wrestling events to watching the teevee and cheering about whoever we’re dropping bombs on this week. You can’t really blame other nationalities for wanting in on the fun.
Anyway:

Of course, we are talking about the public school system, which is not meant to educate or even indoctrinate, so much as housebreak, to encourage mindless conformity, whether through anodyne “cultural awareness” outlets throughout the school year, or some other expression of collective solidarity on this or that meaningless issue. As long as kids come out the other end as docile employees and consumers, lifelong receivers of baldfaced lies from their superiors, everything is jake. The second they pose an inconvenient question, or show any independent thought, instead of trying to talk with them, bureaucratic feathers get ruffled, and the warden drops the hammer.

Reflexive identification with brand symbols, whether national or corporate, and the ability to quickly form granfalloons and, if necessary, resort to violence, actual or implied, to defend them, are pretty much what life in this shopping mall of a nation is all about, so I don’t know what Heywood’s complaining about here — this is what passes for teaching them useful skills. The true independent thinkers have probably either dropped out or are sleeping in the back of the room with iPods in their ears.

I, Trendsetter

By in language, spiritual-not-religious

As you, my loyal myrmidons, are well aware, I have written quite a few times about my, shall we say, antipathy regarding the word “spirituality”. I’ve done it often enough, and probably will again, that I even created a tag for posts which mention it, “spiritual-not-religious”.

So what do I see over at Pharyngula today?

Rationale:

We need a new word is that freethinkers can use instead of having to use the word “Spirituality” to describe this enhanced experience. Some of us cringe when having to use the word “spirituality”, when describing our feelings when describing our connection to nature.

Carl Sagan wrote, when speaking of the relationship between science and spirituality: “In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. They very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos….Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

Mr. Sagan may have prefered to use a different word, if it existed. The current use of the word Spirituality implies “Spirits”, a ghost, an unquantifiable being, supposedly present everywhere that affects human bodies yet, that has never been detected and is unfalsifable. It is an unscientific word and we need a new word to replace it.

Scientility? I ask you, is there any poetry in that? And am I the only one whose brain immediately made the phonetic link to “senility”? Of course, PZ gets more views in five minutes than I get in a month, so now everyone will think I stole the idea. I will be a prophet without honor. But you, you know the truth! (Plus, if there’s any money to be had in here somewhere, I’ll split it with you if you back me up on this.)

Adding, 5/12: Feel the groundswell:

As regular readers know, I’m not a big fan of the word “spiritual.” But Farcet uses the word differently from most. He doesn’t talk about the spiritual as somehow higher and truer than the material aspect of reality. The Spiritual Enemy goes to great lengths to remind readers to think of their body as “the body that one has rather than the body that one is.” So “spiritual” in his use of the word refers to a point of view that questions society’s usual approach to things and aims at a clearer understanding of true reality, which is neither purely material nor purely spiritual.

That’s why I prefer words like reflective, contemplative, and philosophical. And from my vantage point, talking about “having” a body seems to imply a separate, non-material owner. But whatever, minor differences can wait. Point is, the movement is growing!

Come Bite the Apple

By in foolosophy, nietzsche, religion

While I’m quoting Stephen Prothero, this was a good column too:
What the world’s religions share is not so much a finish line as a starting point. And where they begin is with this simple observation: Something is wrong with the world. In the Hopi language, the word “Koyaanisqatsi” tells us that life is out of balance. Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” tells us that there is something rotten not only in the state of Denmark but also in the state of human existence. Hindus say we are living in the “kali yuga,” the most degenerate age in cosmic history. Buddhists say that human existence is pockmarked by suffering. Jewish, Christian, and Islamic stories tell us that this life is not Eden; Zion, heaven, and paradise lie out ahead.
So religious folk agree that something has gone awry. They part company, however, when it comes to stating just what has gone wrong, and they diverge even more sharply when they move from diagnosing the human problem to prescribing how to solve it.
Again, we see the belief in a lost Golden Age. This is one of the things I’m most grateful to Nietzsche for: all the time he spent elaborating on the theme that the only thing “wrong” with existence is that we are too limited by our selfish wants and fears to realize that you can’t have the good without the bad. We don’t all want the same things, and even when we do, we don’t want them at the same time or in the same degree. We don’t even agree on the same method for obtaining them. Conflict and challenge are inevitable. Suffering is inextricably woven into life’s tapestry.

The fundamental faith of the metaphysicians is the faith in opposite values. It has not even occurred to the most cautious among them that one might have a doubt right here at the threshold where it was most surely necessary – even if they vowed to themselves, “de omnibus dubitandum”. It might even be possible that what constitutes the value of these good and revered things is precisely that they are insidiously related, tied to, and involved with these wicked, seemingly opposite things – maybe even one with them in essence.

The tragedy of human existence is that we still have to live as if there is an essential difference, as if they can be separated.

No, Blake, No

By in foolosophy

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.

— William Blake

I am not a mystic. I am too enamored of words for that, and of the human body and the oceans of confusion in which it swims. I will confess, however, to wanting mystical things. Though I suspect I could not live with the consequences, I want a memory of a meeting with the Unknown that cannot be rewritten by doubt. But in those rare moments when what goes by God has knocked on my windows and doors, I have been too much in love with the sand dunes in front of me or the woman beside me (or both) to notice.

Apparently such faith as I have resides in visible rather than invisible things—in blackberry bushes and snowstorms and the turn of a hip. When I find myself with a woman I love, what I love is the woman. And when I find myself in a place like the Province Lands, what I love is the place—the sand shifting underfoot, the shooting stars overhead, and the endless rhythm of waves that announce their arrival on shore just before giving themselves up forever.

— Stephen Prothero

I’ve always felt that the mystical perspective is too often an attempt to flee the pain and suffering of life in this transient world of contingent, perishable things to find refuge in something more timeless, a larger, unchanging pattern that comforts with its stability and predictability. I’m not saying it’s not understandable, I’m just of the belief that it cheapens those perishable things to subordinate them to some mysterious purpose, to look past them as tiny pieces in a grand scheme. We can’t live on that plane; we can only visit it occasionally. There’s a beauty in such a vast perspective, to be sure, but I’ll always find it preferable to return to contemplating the individual people and particular experiences I love, even though none of them will last. Permanence would destroy the very vitality that makes them so desirable to begin with.

Summer Lightning

By in extraordinary popular delusions, foolosophy, santutthi

Art, and the summer lightning of individual happiness: these are the only real goods we have.

— Alexander Herzen

I would just add that we menfolk are just as subject to many of the exact same contradictory exhortations to find fulfillment – I’ve had plenty of well-meaning people tell me that a life without a romantic partner, children of my own, and a more professional, lucrative job is problematic – but otherwise, I agree with Rebecca Traister:

You know what I think? It’s all bullshit. Not just the trend stories and the self-help stuff, but the laser focus on happiness itself. I say this as someone who has grown steadily happier as I’ve aged, but I think I would have said it even more emphatically earlier in my life: I’m just not sure that “happiness” is supposed to be the stable human condition, and I think it’s punishing that we’re constantly being pushed to achieve it.

…But I would submit also that sometimes dissatisfied is just how life is. And that that’s all right.

…Here is what I have deduced so far both from my experiences and from the hissed warnings of those who propel me toward their idea of happiness and simultaneously warn me it will never really be attainable: There will be peaks — falling in love, seeing new places, enjoying whatever form a family takes, drinking a beer on a warm night, seeing a baseball team win a long coveted pennant. And there will be valleys — divorces and illnesses, joblessness and money trouble, watching those you love in pain, a ninth inning playoff loss. In those valleys, I’m not sure that it’s happiness we first strive for, but rather the power to not get stuck, to move toward just slightly higher ground. A spot within view of a peak will often do just as nicely as a seat atop it.

There is no formula for life satisfaction, no recipe that doesn’t produce lumps of discontent or frustration.

That is happiness by my definition, an acceptance of the necessity of discontent — not merely the inevitability of it, but the necessity. Disasters and heartbreaks aren’t merely temporary obstacles, tests of character, or plot devices to make your life’s story more interesting; they’re not just there to make it that much sweeter when you win at the end, because nobody “wins” and there is no “end”.

Also, “happy” isn’t the same thing as “giddy”. Almost every day, I alternately feel anger, anxiety, and weltschmerz, not to mention any of the other eighty-three problems, but it’s fine if I remember that they will eventually ebb without me really needing to do anything about it. I don’t know if this is a peculiarly American thing, this strange, ahistorical notion that happiness and success can be on a permanent upward trajectory, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

E Pluribus Amor

By in foolosophy, marriage, psychology, sex-you-all

So convinced is Erich of the virtues of polyamory that he feels it will, one day, become the norm. “Fifty years ago pre-marital chastity was unquestioned,” he says. “Now it seems little more than a peculiarity. One day monogamous relationships may be seen in a similar light.”

Yeah, um, I think we can file this away next to hippie communes as something that will only ever appeal to a select group. Personally, I don’t know why anyone familiar with the nuances and intricacies of an intimate relationship, and all that goes into making it work, would want to double or triple the drama, and all at the same time, no less! You crazy kids…
Of course, I don’t doubt there are people who could make it work. I also don’t doubt that most people will never be able to set aside feelings of possessiveness and jealousy over their romantic partners, nor will they be eager to give up the pleasure of controlling someone else’s sex life (even if no one wants to admit we enjoy doing that). As the persistence in the belief in a personal, loving god makes clear, and against all evidence, people want to feel special. Everyone wants to be a unique snowflake. Exclusive relationships may not be able to last for a lifetime, but at least for a while, they can make someone feel like they, and only they, are the most important person in the world for someone else, capable of providing something that no one else can. That’s no less of an addicting thrill than the urge to have sex with multiple partners. Speaking of which…
“Orgies do happen,” he admits. “But they really are not the point of what we do. The point of polyamory is to enable people to have loving relationships with more than one person.”
But why, I ask, for a final time, must a loving relationship include sex?
Erich looks at me. “But why,” he rejoins “Must it not?”
Look. Do it, or don’t do it. There is no “must”. But I think what she’s really asking you, dude, is: is this really about love, or is it just a rationalization for being unfaithful? I mean, let me reiterate, I’m all for whatever consenting adults want to do. But I have close female friends who are smart, attractive, funny, all that good stuff, and I don’t feel the relationships aren’t “loving” just because we aren’t sleeping together. On the contrary, I’m more than happy to enjoy those aspects while avoiding all the drama that comes along with a sexual relationship. The intellectual and/or emotional intimacy is fulfilling enough for me without adding physical intimacy to the equation. Granted, I’m strange like that, and I have a need for a lot more personal time and space than most, so that kind of distance works for me. But still, I think the problem with monogamy isn’t that it’s harsh to expect a person to remain sexually exclusive for the duration of a relationship, it’s that no one seems to want to acknowledge that, even if it turns into marriage, it’s not likely to last much more than a decade, let alone a lifetime. Keeping that perspective in mind from the start would seem to me to make for a happier time together and a less traumatic end.

Ode to Joy

By in augean stables, foolosophy, fresh hell, music

The problem not only with fundamentalist Christians but with Republicans in general is not that they act on blind faith, without thinking. The problem is that they are incorrigible doubters with an insatiable appetite for Evidence. What they get off on is not Believing, but in having their beliefs tested. That’s why their conversations and their media are so completely dominated by implacable bogeymen: marrying gays, liberals, the ACLU, Sean Penn, Europeans and so on. Their faith both in God and in their political convictions is too weak to survive without an unceasing string of real and imaginary confrontations with those people — and for those confrontations, they are constantly assembling evidence and facts to make their case.

But here’s the twist. They are not looking for facts with which to defeat opponents. They are looking for facts that ensure them an ever-expanding roster of opponents. They can be correct facts, incorrect facts, irrelevant facts, it doesn’t matter. The point is not to win the argument, the point is to make sure the argument never stops. Permanent war isn’t a policy imposed from above; it’s an emotional imperative that rises from the bottom. In a way, it actually helps if the fact is dubious or untrue (like the Swift-boat business), because that guarantees an argument. You’re arguing the particulars, where you’re right, while they’re arguing the underlying generalities, where they are.

Once you grasp this fact, you’re a long way to understanding what the Hannitys and Limbaughs figured out long ago: These people will swallow anything you feed them, so long as it leaves them with a demon to wrestle with in their dreams.

— Matt Taibbi

I thought of that passage while reading this. I’m not sure I agree with Taibbi that the personality type in question doesn’t want to be free from doubt; I suspect they may just be too stupid to realize that their own neuroses and lack of intellectual integrity are what prevent them from achieving a relaxed peace with insecurity and uncertainty. It’s not that radical of a concept to recognize: it’s much easier to blame the entire rest of the world for your unhappiness than to take a close look at yourself.

At any rate, Williamson’s screed is an impressively compact example of the genre, in terms of pounds of bullshit per square inch of blog post. We’ve got the nonexistent War on Christmas, the obligatory ACLU-takin’-away-mah-freedom trope, and the whinging about secular, cosmopolitan elitists from someone who would never dream of leaving the big city to practice what they preach and move to East Bumblefuck, Alabama, where they could marinate in Real Myrrhkinism all the live-long day.

As George Carlin famously said, the only good thing to come out of religion was the music. I love a lot of choral music myself, even though, to paraphrase Zarathustra, I want to meet the man more godless than I so that I may delight in his instruction. I have yet to encounter a fellow atheist who would bother to make a scene, especially at a party or as a guest at someone else’s house, over having to listen to Christmas carols or J.S. Bach, but I have indeed known people who base their Christmas shopping around which big-box stores greet you with “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays”, or who make sure to underline the “Christ” in the cards they send to you, knowing full well you don’t share their beliefs.

Obviously, it’s no shock that people who would turn a time of year devoted to good cheer in myriad forms into a partisan pissing match are miserable fucks all year-round. My wingnut relatives are the type of people to politicize absolutely everything, from food to sports to vehicles to lifestyle choices, even though the topic does nothing but provoke them into railing bitterly about enemies real and imagined. Sometimes I feel bad for people who don’t have the self-awareness to stop furiously obsessing over topics that only make them even more discontented, who simply don’t know what to do with themselves if they’re not picking a fight they can never win. Other times, though, life’s too short and there’s too many good things to enjoy.

Screwed-up people everywhere
But I ain’t got time to care!
I feel lovely
– Suicidal Tendencies

Aperçus

By in drugs, religion, waiting for the barbarians

If the gods listened to the prayers of men, all humankind would quickly perish since they constantly pray for many evils to befall one another.

– Wise words from Epicurus to keep in mind on this National Day of Prayer.
You’re as dumb as all those records you spin
And you’re as real as the Shroud of Turin
– For some reason, I was mightily amused by learning that the Shroud is kept behind bulletproof glass. I’m not sure if it was because of imagining someone actually taking the trouble to shoot at a piece of linen cloth, or imagining the worldwide freakout that would commence if someone did do it. Sometimes, it’s really amazing to consider how human irrationality hasn’t been the death of us all (yet).

Walter Sobchak: Nothing changes. Fucking Nazis.

– As half of the Internet has already said: smoking/possessing pot = child endangerment. SWAT goons storming a house in the middle of the night, killing a dog that was confined to a crate, and spraying bullets around with children present = making the world safe for something or other. Well done, America.

Snapshots

By in history, the madness of crowds, waiting for the barbarians

This culture is morally hopeless.

…Real Americans don little tri-corner hats and carry on about “freedom” and “the constitution” but all they know about either one is what they learned at Disneyland. They are paranoid about a non-existent invasion of killer immigrants and are freaking out about a non-existent plan to send gun owners to Fema camps. They threaten to kill census workers who ask them how many times they flush their toilets.

But torture? Not a problem. Whether it’s administered by the CIA or some minimum wage security guard, they seem to think electric shock, waterboarding or any other sick form of coercion worthy of the worst low rent dictator in the world is just ducky. But only if the subject is unarmed. If anyone tried this with a guy who was packing, the screams of horror at “the government” trying to disarm a law abiding citizen would be heard for miles around. I give up.

I share Digby’s anger and despair here, even if I find a slightly more conservative view helps put this sort of thing in perspective. I’ll get to that in a moment. First, let me offer this general advice: reading the comments to videos on YouTube will always end in tears. Any thinking, sensitive person will be brought to immense grief by contemplating the legions of subliterate troglodytes with computer access out there. Remember, back in the mid-nineties, the panegyrics to the technocornucopia of the Internet, and how it would raise the general intelligence of all humankind, allowing ordinary folks access to the wisdom of the ages and the latest scientific advances? Did you hear anybody gushing then about how it would make it easier for people to steal music, jerk off to free amateur porn, and giggle at videos of fat girls flying over the handlebars of their bikes? Hold that thought; it segues fairly neatly into the next part.

In science, progress is a fact, in ethics and politics it is a superstition…Post-modern thinkers may question scientific progress, but it is undoubtedly real. The illusion is in the belief that it can effect any fundamental alteration in the human condition. The gains that have been achieved in ethics and politics are not cumulative. What has been gained can also be lost, and over time surely will be.

History is not an ascending spiral of human advance, or even an inch-by-inch crawl to a better world. It is an unending cycle in which changing knowledge interacts with unchanging human needs. Freedom is recurrently won and lost in an alternation that includes long periods of anarchy and tyranny, and there is no reason to suppose that this cycle will ever end. In fact, with human power increasing as a result of growing scientific knowledge, it can only become more violent.

The core of the idea of progress is that human life becomes better with the growth of knowledge. The error is not in thinking that human life can improve. Rather, it is in imagining that improvement can ever be cumulative. Unlike science, ethics and politics are not activities in which what is learnt in one generation can be passed on to an indefinite number of future generations. Like the arts, they are practical skills and can be easily lost.

Many Enlightenment thinkers accepted that scientific advance might slow down or stop, as in previous periods of history; and in that case social progress would stall as well…What none of the thinkers of the Enlightenment envisaged, and their followers today have failed to perceive, is that human life can become more savage and irrational even as scientific knowledge advances.

— John Gray

So let me reiterate: yes, it’s abhorrent to see how casually people accept the idea that it’s okay for authority figures to jolt someone with thousands of volts of electricity, especially for the most trivial reasons. It’s lamentable that, more than two centuries after Benjamin Franklin stated that people who trade essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither, millions of Americans are just fine with other people being forced to show their papers on demand, because hey, it’ll never happen to them, fishbelly-white, patriotic, taxpaying, god-fearing citizens that they are.

And yet, and yet, when has it ever been otherwise? The majority of humankind has always been stupid, self-centered and unreflective. My former neighbor was ranting about illegal Mexicans ruining health care for all of us more than a decade ago, and I eventually started speaking to her less and less because I was tired of every conversation inevitably ending up on The Oracular Wisdom Of Lou Dobbs. Did I mention that she was an Irish Catholic, single mother, second-wave feminist? You’d think she’d have a little sympathy for scapegoats and ethnic minorities, but the urge to kick someone lower than you is a powerful one, and apparently very resistant to logic.

Humans have always understood the basic principles of ethics; the Golden Rule has appeared all over the world since time immemorial. The question has always been over who deserves the privilege of being treated with that consideration, and there has always been some out-group that doesn’t qualify. Right now, Mexicans – or brown-skinned people in general – are being demonized, but it won’t always be that way. Demographically, it can’t. And I might suggest that anger and hatred are always going to be louder, gaudier and more aggressive than love and kindness, but that doesn’t mean the latter aren’t still around. I’m sure there are just as many people out there who would be appalled at the spectacle of a teenager being tased to the cheers of onlookers; they’re just not the ones who hang around YouTube’s comments.

Deep breaths. There’s probably an asteroid out there that will render all this discussion moot one day, so until then, try not to take it all too seriously.

Pompous and Circumstantial

By in augean stables, ohferfucksake, religion

Yet the church leaders are right about one thing: there is often a liberal and secular snobbishness toward the church as a whole — and that is unfair.

It may be easy at a New York cocktail party to sniff derisively at a church whose apex is male chauvinist, homophobic and so out of touch that it bars the use of condoms even to curb AIDS. But what about Father Michael Barton, a Catholic priest from Indianapolis? I met Father Michael in the remote village of Nyamlell, 150 miles from any paved road here in southern Sudan. He runs four schools for children who would otherwise go without an education, and his graduates score at the top of statewide examinations.

…It’s because of brave souls like these that I honor the Catholic Church. I understand why many Americans disdain a church whose leaders are linked to cover-ups and antediluvian stances on women, gays and condoms — but the Catholic Church is far larger than the Vatican.

And unless we’re willing to endure beatings alongside Father Michael, unless we’re willing to stand up to warlords with Sister Cathy, we have no right to disparage them or their true church.

— Nick Kristof

Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope?
Do you think he’s a fool?

— Black Sabbath

Yes, and yes. How’s that for “sniffing derisively”? And I’ve never even been to New York or a cocktail party!

I wish I could work up the indignation to tell Kristof to go fuck himself, but if you look at religious belief with a critical eye for any substantial length of time, you can’t help but become familiar to the point of boredom with this gambit: define the religion by the individual believers you admire; ignoring, if necessary, the people with all the power and decision-making capabilities. Hey, I understand some Nazis were vegetarian animal-lovers, too…

Let’s make it simple. I can respect people who have done some intense introspection and decided that working in poor villages in Africa to marginally improve the lives of their inhabitants is what they really want to do with their lives. I have no problem with people who are moved to action by their perception of suffering and injustice. However. If their main inspiration for doing so is a book of Bronze Age mythology and a belief that a nonexistent god-man commands them to act this way; if they would, in fact, act much differently should they happen to lose their faith, well, then, I don’t respect them that much, gasp! If you need to lie to yourself in order to rise above narcissism, hedonism, fatalism, and whatever other -ism you want to name, then I don’t consider that to be noble. I respect individuals and direct actions, not labels, organizations and ideologies. Compassion and altruism are universal human values. Subordinating them to one particular cult or another, as if metaphysical rationalizations are the source from which spontaneous empathy flows, is completely ass-backwards. Some people see immense suffering and immediately look for a way to relieve it. Others wait to see if the voices in their heads tell them it’s justified to do so. I know which one I would trust.

If anything, I would ask the humanitarian priests and nuns why they aren’t appalled enough by the actions of their leadership to leave the church and follow the dictates of their own consciences. Why would they feel a need to bow to an obviously corrupt hierarchy when it comes to questions of morality? What could you possibly feel you have to learn from them?

Life Imitates Art

By in fresh hell, jests japes jokes jollies

The 50cm long Asian swamp eel was allegedly inserted into the unnamed man’s bottom, after he passed out drunk, by pals playing a prank on him.
Medics said the eel had devoured his bowels.
– The Sun
Eels up inside ya
Findin’ an entrance where they can
Eels up inside ya
Findin’ an entrance where they can
Boring through your mind, through your tummy, through your anus, eels!
I swear, I was just watching that video shortly before reading that story. How bizarre.

Mad, Bad and Dangerous to —? No.

By in herbivory, samesecks

Is Your Veggie Burger Killing You?

Despite the alarmist headline, the answer seems to be no. And I’m crestfallen, really. See, I would honestly prefer not to live to a ripe old age. But if you don’t count the massive ingestion of elephant tranquilizers, the unprotected sex with prostitutes, and the part-time job as a crash-test dummy, I’m really very boring and not much of a risk-taker. So when I saw this, I thought, finally — a way to tempt fate, to skirt the cliff’s edge of destruction, to make onlookers gasp at my heedless, pell-mell descent into romantic ruin, to stare Death in the face and match him grin-for-rictus-grin, and all without having to make any changes in my lifestyle.

Another dream dashed.

Once upon a time, I was promised soy would make me gay. Nope. I was told I must already be gay for being vegetarian in the first place. Nuh-uh. I was told it would give me. I don’t even need a training bra after eating soy for almost two decades! I was so looking forward to being “The Confuser“, but I had to resign myself to simply being confused.

I just don’t know how I can recover from this latest disappointment.

Know Your Role and Shut Your Mouth

By in language, the statusphere, writing

It’s a word that can stop any concept, or insight, or book, in its tracks: “That’s pretentious.” The declaration is usually accompanied by a disdainful turning of the head or waving of the hand. Pretentious. It’s pretentious—and by extension, so are you.

…Let’s define our terms here. Pretension is about, well, pretense, pretending to like something we don’t to create some sort of affectation.

So if I pretended I didn’t like Kundera or Fassbinder, and instead raved about the Twilight books and Michael Bay, I’d actually be pretending something I don’t feel in order to reach consensus with my peers. But I don’t like Twilight and I don’t get my kicks out of watching the earth blow up. Or seeing Owen and Luke Wilson embarrass themselves. So acting as though I did would in fact be pretending, or displaying pretense…or pretentious.

— John Grabowski

It depends on the particular example, I suppose, as to whether a writer is being too baroque, or a reader is being too obstinate in refusing to accept something different. It’s true, as I was just saying a few days ago, that academic literature is full of pompous twits who do their best to obfuscate rather than clarify. However, the authenticity police need a sharp poke in the eye as well, for their Holden Caulfield-like obsession with accusing people of phoniness if their writing aspires to be more than colloquial. I was thinking about that recently, after seeing someone called a pretentious poser for writing a word like “oeuvre”. Right, because anyone whose vocabulary has grown since high school is a fauxhemian snob who THINKS THEY’RE BETTER THAN YOU. I’d expect to hear that sort of embarrassingly insecure, anti-intellectual resentment from your average provincial Palinite, but it really seems to be a universal complaint. The barstool, the office chair, the season ticket-holder’s stadium cushion, and the living room recliner — any word that isn’t commonly heard within these boundaries of the everyman is apparently evidence of unforgivable conceit.

Does that have a ring, boys? Does it sound for you?
It sounds, the boys thought, oh, oh, it sounds…!

I love words. I love the way they ring and sound for me, and the best passages have to be read aloud to be fully appreciated. I love reading dictionaries. That doesn’t make me smart, or even someone who thinks he’s smart — it makes me someone who loves hearing new words. But I also curse like a motherfucking sailor, in everyday conversation as well as here for your reading pleasure, and yet I’ve never been on a boat, either! OH NOES I’M A SLUMMING BOURGEOIS TOO!

I’m focusing on writing here, because that’s the area where my sensibilities regarding artfulness and playfulness clash the hardest with this grim, almost Puritan hatred of anything flowery or extravagant. I enjoy writers who look like they’re having fun, who attempt to at least mildly blur the lines between poetry and prose (I even enjoy the irony that people who do delight in playing with language will invariably be accused of taking themselves too “seriously” by those who seem to walk around with a chip on their shoulder, looking for something to take offense to). If I want utterly unadorned, no-nonsense language, I’ll go read the owner’s manual for a lawnmower

Dang Ol’ Tell Yew What, Man

By in language, ohferfucksake, old dixie


I’ve lived in the northernmost part of the South my whole life, and I can say with authority that I find it easier to understand broken English with an occasional Spanish word thrown in than the Boomhauerian patois preferred by the majority of our “Speak Anglish or G’wan Git!” nativists. The few times I’ve had to travel to the actual Deep South were even more jarring. Motherfuckers, you might just want your slogans to more accurately reflect what this is all about and say, “Quit speaking Spanish!”, because whatever the fuck it is you Real Myrrhkins use to communicate, it isn’t “English”.

Let’s Put the “Fat” Back in “Fatherland”

By in fresh hell, germans supported their troops too, waiting for the barbarians

Daniel Engber righteously stands up for the right of the husky, the portly, the pear-shaped to serve in our military. Well, thank the gods. I can’t tell you how much sleep I’ve lost, worrying that we don’t make it easy enough for the maximum number of young people to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the corporate imperium.

When it comes to body fat, the regs declare that too much flab connotes, first of all, “a lack of personal discipline.” Another document suggests that it “detracts from soldierly appearance.” So excess weight isn’t just a health problem—it’s a personality flaw. Oh, and it makes you ugly.

I don’t want to suggest that the military discriminates against the thick-bodied alone. The high standards of appearance apply to skinny people, too. And short people. And tall people. (Forget Prussia’s army of giants: If you’re a man who’s over 6-foot6 or a woman over 6-foot, you can’t join the Marine Corps.) Those with severe, untreatable acne may also be excluded from military service, along with anyone with an insufficient number of teeth, extra fingers, or severe ingrown toenails. Some of these requirements seem to have more to do with keeping neat and trim than fighting off baddies in the desert. It doesn’t matter if you can do as many pushups as the next guy. Without the “self-discipline to maintain proper weight distribution and high standards of appearance,” you’re not welcome.

Well, it probably does help pacify the wogs more easily when they can clearly see that they’ve been invaded by a race of perfectly sculpted superbeings to whom resistance would be futile, but still. In addition to “insane, bloated, resource-consuming, world-straddling, hellspawned colossus death monster”, you can now add “lookist” to your denunciations of the U.S. military. Of course, if you’ve been reading the brilliant and entertaining Jennifer Michael Hecht (and you should be), this wouldn’t be too surprising:

Through studying history, I came to believe that gyms are occupying precisely the role they did in Ancient Sparta and in Fascist Germany. Being obsessed with bodies is actually a pretty rare thing in human history and we’re in lousy company.

…So what is the real story with gyms and gym bodies? What does the cult of exercise really mean?

Whenever it pops up in history it means the same thing. It always means: We are strong even though the peons do all the real work for us. We have special arenas marked as leisure where we get muscled at play.

…When we see this behavior in Ancient Sparta (where the population of Helot slaves outnumbered the Spartans) and in Fascist Germany, and we see the art of those two cultures focusing on the beauty of the toned but clean and uncallused body, we know what we are looking at. It’s more than shallow, it is military, it is deluded, it is oppressive, and a bit grotesque.

Well, that’s unnerving to consider, but never fear. Other experts aver that the majority of Americans remain too fat for fascism.

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