Open Source McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy has an unconventional and disarmingly casual view of punctutation and the craft of writing as a whole, as revealed in discussions with Oprah captured here, here and here.

He does not seem to expend a lot of effort tracing out the ultimate sources and meanings of his own writings. A channeler of internal resources he doesn't claim to direct, he is a mystery to himself as much as he can be to his readers, so his stories are stubbornly open.

The trailer to the film adaptation of The Road suggests the shortcomings to this open-endedness. The film presented here, compelling though it may be, bears but a slight resemblance to the book as I remember it:



I'll certainly watch, but final conclusions about what it all means may be forever elusive. That's not such a bad thing.

(via Normblog and Obscene Desserts)

Lady Also Quits

Also, Sarah Palin is planning to resign as governor of Alaska for stated reasons that are almost certain to prove false. Also Sprach Palin:

Once I decided not to run for re-election, I also felt that to embrace the conventional 'Lame Duck' status in this particular climate would just be another dose of 'politics as usual,' something I campaigned against and will always oppose. It is my duty to always protect our great state. With that in mind, my family and I determined that it is best to make a difference this summer, and I am willing to change things ...

And so it goes from there, in mind-numbingly platitudinous fashion.

I'd be inclined to congratulate the people of Alaska for this development if I had the slightest suspicion that large numbers of them consider it a good thing. But I don't have that slight suspicion.

God Almighty to J the P: "Like, No"

Have you been wondering what ever became of Joe the Achingly Stupid Plumber since his 15 minutes of fame as a spokesmodel for Salt-of-the-Earth Chiselers, Right Wing Populist Yankee Exceptionalist Short-Bussers, Dumbass Liars, and people who were kicked in the head by a donkey? Me neither.

Something of the answer is available anyway, and sadly, it almost certainly means he'll be running for public office since he now claims otherwise:

[I]n a new interview with WorldNetDaily, Wurzelbacher said that he now isn’t planning to run because God doesn’t want him to:

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, “I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that and he was like, ‘No.’”

He continued, “I believe he’s gotten me on this grassroots movement. If I can encourage leaders to step up, that’s what I would like to do. That’s a heavy role. That’s something I don’t know if I am prepared to do yet.”

But Wurzelbacher said he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.

Doubtless this "like, no" spoken from god to Joe the Plumber, and the larger interaction of which it was a part, embodies what Karen Armstrong was trying to expatiate when she said:

Religion is about transformation; by ritual and ethical practice we become fundamentally different. Religion is not about preparing for the beatific vision in Heaven; it is also about living a fully human life in this world. By becoming one with these paradigmatic figures, losing our flawed, everyday selves in their perfection, we too can become perfect and inhabit an eternal dimension even in this world of pain and death.

Yes, that's definitely what Joe the Plumber meant. No, it's vice-versa. Maybe it depends.

If Joe the Achingly Stupid Plumber has successfully 'become one with' one of these paradigmatic figures or whatever, then I have even less use for these paradigmatic figures than I previously believed, because I already know how not to read anything and blame all my problems on taxes.

Maybe both Armstrong and Mr. The Plumber are pulling empty, baseless claims out of their rear ends. Maybe -- just maybe -- there's only so much to be learned from comparing what people pull out of their rear ends.

Invocations of Wide Stances Past

Via Left Take, here's a caption contest. My entry:

Grr! Why do I keep getting the shit-stall next to Craig?

cf. Wide Stance

The Branding Reproach of Communism

A spectre is haunting us, one at least as terrifying as anything sketched in the pages of The Communist Manifesto -- the spectre of workable, cost-effective public policy:

Democrats on a key Senate Committee outlined a revised and far less costly health care plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.

The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The AP obtained a copy.

Upon these forbidding findings, the scramble to lie, obfuscate, and generate fresh excuses for opposing better policy at lower cost takes on renewed vigor and urgency.

The hearths are firing up; let no smithy or forge stand idle.

The Fierce Urgency of Waiting Around for 100% Consensus

Thomas Friedman is not displeased with the Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade legislation that just passed the House of Representatives, but he notes it faces forbidding political obstacles:

We need Republicans who believe in fiscal conservatism and conservation joining this legislation in the Senate. We want a bill that transforms the whole country not one that just threads a political needle. I also hope we will hear more from President Obama. Something feels very calculating in how he has approached this bill ... He is going to have to mobilize the whole country to pressure the Senate — by educating Americans, with speech after speech, about the opportunities and necessities of a serious climate/energy bill. If he is not ready to risk failure by going all out, failure will be the most likely result.

Sure. Definitely. We need Republicans who acknowledge and attempt to respond to reality, but what we have is overgrown toddlers who worship money, throw poo-flinging snits over the sexual morality of others, and walk around with an invisible countdown timer ticking down the hours until they're discovered with someone else's wife, a prostitute, a Very Special Airport Stall Buddy, or worse.

And yes, we need a President Obama willing to be more forceful in response to climate change, but what we have is someone who has probably already scheduled a White House press event with polar bears, people from barely-above-sea-level places, and other stakeholders (i.e., human beings who want a foreseeably habitable planet) in which he'll explain he's really, totally, fearlessly on their side but might alienate lying cranks or inconvenience the petrochemical industries if he does anything that a complete chickenshit wouldn't do.

"Audacity" is one word for it, I suppose.

Pandora (WTF?)

Uh ... yea. This didn't quite show as I expected it to, or not on at least some of the leading browsers. Whatever.

I still [heart] Pandora, but their embeddable widgets could use some work.

It's Time to Criminalize Extroversion

Another day, another sunrise, another blowhard declaring introversion a pathology:

The researchers also ... found that the women who contribute to the online encyclopedia exhibit unusually high levels of introversion. Women in particular, they suggest, "seem to use the Internet as a compensative tool" that allows them to "express themselves" in a way "they find difficult in the offline world."

Oh dear gawd! Someone start charging the electroshock apparatus and readying the strongest possible doses of SSRI pharmaceuticals! Somewhere in the world, a person, quite likely a woman, is on the verge of expressing herself on the internets in a way that she finds difficult to do in real life! This must be stopped!

Along with Nicholas Carr, I pine for a return to the good old days when such abominations were not made visible to tender old people and innocent children; when, instead, the world's wretched, socially-retarded, maladjusted psychopaths either remained in absolute silence or wrote out their filthy excretions on little scraps of paper and hid them around the house -- out of view of decent people, such that extroverts of the day would not be disturbed by them as they blabbered on about nothing, swaddled in the adoration of their own precious speaking voices. Carr continues:

The study is consistent with other research into the motivations underlying online social production. Last year, researchers at HP Labs undertook an extensive study of why people upload videos to YouTube. They found that contributors are primarily driven by a craving for attention. If the videos they upload aren't clicked on, they tend to quickly exit the "community." YouTubers view their contributions not as pieces of "a digital commons" but as "private goods" that are "paid for by attention." .... the findings do lend a darker tint to the rose-colored rhetoric that surrounds online communities. A wag might suggest that "social production" would be more accurately termed "antisocial production." [emphasis mine]

I share Nicholas Carr's bottomless contempt for cretins who "crave attention." Is there anything more despicable or pitiable in the realm of human social interaction than someone who not only desires attention, but takes action to garner it? Sweet Michael Jackson's pederastic Ghost (too soon?), can't we all just stay silently to ourselves and stop looking for others to notice us, talk to us, respond to us, and otherwise validate our petty interests, trivial preoccupations, idiotic priorities, and brittle self-constructions?

Oh dear. Now I'm not sure if I'm for or against extroversion. Or introversion. I will need someone very, very talkative to help me through this. Goodness knows I shouldn't be looking to the web for any guidance -- the sort of people who post things to the internets are fucking crazy.

Sarcasm aside*, if I've learned anything from watching countless hours of televised sports, it's that the best defense is a good offense, and that defense wins championships, so fellow introverts, if we're going to win this thing, it's time we go on the offensive and begin a movement to criminalize extroversion. People who love the sound of their own voices? Hard time. People who "just stop by to catch up"? Life without parole. People who gin up conversations with perfect strangers? Meet all your new best friends on the chain-gang. People who live for being the life of the party? There's a party in The Big House. People who can't manage to shut the fuck up for any five-minute stretch of time while other human beings are present? Unleash the heart-stabbing sting rays.

Shame on you if you have read this far, for by doing so, you have enabled my contemptible craving for attention. Damn you!


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* Not really - more like switching to another level of sarcasm. My pathologies run deep. I mean, you are reading this on the internets, aren't you? Q.E.D.

Spiking the Lukewarm

Andrew Sullivan posted this video of Ross Douthat posing a long-winded question to a liberal theologian, Robert Wright.

To spare you the five minutes of Douthat's prolixity, it comes to this: doesn't liberal theology fail as a substitute for the more definite, specific, and concrete claims of literalist / traditionalist / fundamentalist / pick-your-term theology? Don't people who take the step of believing in a god almost universally choose to take the follow-on step of believing that god cares about them, responds to their prayers, smites their enemies, rewards the righteous, etc?

Wright's brief answer -- "probably" -- says all we need to know about liberal theology. The video:

Proclamations, Oklahoma Style

Once again, a far-flung correspondent, DP, has confirmed the truth behind a development I had vainly hoped was an extended typographical error: Oklahoma politician Sally Kern has cranked out a "morality proclamation," claiming, in part, that

we believe our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis; and

WHEREAS, this nation has become a world leader in promoting abortion, pornography, same sex marriage, sex trafficking, divorce, illegitimate births, child abuse, and many other forms of debauchery; and

WHEREAS, alarmed that the Government of the United States of America is forsaking
the rich Christian heritage upon which this nation was built ...

And so it goes, on and on, filling its deficits of accurate history and sane policy with surpluses of audacious bombast and unhinged nostrums, each outrageously stupid claim piling on the last like so many mass-buried charred heretics.

But not to worry. DP kindly reassures us that

not all Oklahomans believe like this. It's only the voting majority that do.

Neat!

I Don't Need No Stinkin' Autopsy

An important off-blog conversation* about griffin sightings was the occasion for an appearance of the word coloration, to wit (quoting myself):

As I've thought about it, yes, it was definitely a griffin. The confusion stems from the fact that I didn't get an ideal view, and it was also a female judging from the drab coloration. When you look for griffins, you tend to look for the characteristic blue and gold streaks, and the orange dots, but of course, those are only present on the males.

Coloration: I can't encounter that word without thinking of TV's Steve Irwin, who spoke so frequently and so excitedly of the coloration of the dangerous animals he was bothering, and thereupon to the threat posed by heart-stabbing sting rays. I am never far removed from thoughts of heart-stabbing sting rays.

All of which serves as introductory material to the substance of this important blog post: namely, my confident prediction that Michael Jackson's autopsy will reveal that he was stabbed through the heart by a sting ray. I further predict that once again, the mainstream media will label this an "accident," the act of an innocent animal provoked in the wrong way at the wrong place and the wrong time.

But you and I, gentle reader, will know better: finally! Something successfully killed that child-buggering, self-deifying freak!**



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* As if!
** Too soon?

Finding New Music

Zennalathas has made some valid points in reply to my post about Billy Bob Thornton's declarations about the quality of Rock Music since 1980.

It occurs to me that Thornton is speaking from an understandable lack of awareness -- understandable, not to say excusable -- and that this can be an opportunity to explore the ever-expanding ways that people can find new-to-them music. I've found Pandora and the aggregated new release ratings at metacritic to be excellent resources for this.

Other suggestions? What else works?

The Sun, the Heat, the Fretting

Clipped from weather dot com, this is not the forecast I want to see for July 4 -- too much sun, too much heat. I'll be out exerting myself for interestingly long stretches of that day, and were it up to me, the day would feature Portland's famed overcast skies and light rain.

Oh well. Weather forecasts are almost never accurate around here, right?

Saturday Musical Mood Swing Blogging - "Mote" & Prelude 23-5

Whatever it might suggest -- I'm honestly not sure -- Sonic Youth's "Mote" captures my mood today better than anything else I've encountered:



Here is a high-quality live performance of the song from 2007 -- though I suspect those who listen for lyrics might quibble with the "high-quality" characterization. Then again, those who listen for lyrics likely have limited interest in Sonic Youth in the first place.

Related or not, here's a moody performance of a Rachmaninoff's moody Prelude Opus 23 #5.

Billy Bob Thornton - Profiles in Boomers Run Amok

In answer to Billy Bob Thornton, who appeared on this evening's Bill Maher show and issued a variation of the shopworn claim that "music died in [some year of personal significance to the party issuing the claim]," here are some musicians who came to fame after 1980 and who will be remembered, or will prove to be artistically influential, for decades to come -- and this list is hopelessly incomplete and completely unordered:

• Stereolab
  
• Ben Gibbard
• The Decemberists
  
• Pearl Jam
  
• Nirvana
• Soundgarden
• Metallica
  
• Liz Phair
  
• Beck
• Damnnear everything labeled hip-hop. Thornton is aware of hip-hop, right?
• Neko Case
• Sarah McLachlan
• Natalie Merchant
• Sonic Youth
  
• The Pixies / Frank Black
• The White Stripes / Jack White
  
• Radiohead / Thom Yorke
• Pavement / Stephen Malkmus
• U2 (Thornton acknowledged this one)
  
• R.E.M. (Thornton acknowledged this one)
• Wilco / Jeff Tweedy
  
• David Lowery
• Cat Power
• Bjork
• PJ Harvey
• The Smiths / Morrissey
  
• The Cure
• The Violent Femmes
• Massive Attack
• Portishead
• Yo La Tengo
• Lucinda Williams
• Cowboy Junkies
  

Could I go on? Yes! Does my list overlap significantly with my own musical tastes? Yes! Would every human being my age agree with my list? No! Does my list subtract anything from the undeniable musical greatness that originated in other generations? No! In ten years' time, or possibly ten minutes' time, will I myself come to regret some of the items on my list? Yes!

These emphatic yes's and no's illustrate why these "music died after [year]" are so goddamned idiotic. So let's not, OK?

Sweet Michael Jackson's child-buggering ghost (too soon?), Billy Bob! Pull your Baby-Boomer head out of your Baby-Boomer ass! I admire your work -- really, I do -- but people named "Billy Bob" should take special precautions against sounding provincial.

We'll always have Monster's Ball and Sling-Blade; nothing can take those away, with the possible exception of overly vigorous, pushily intrusive defenses of intellectual property rights. And having just added Billy Bob Thornton's music to my Pandora profile, and not having rejected any of it after a good hour, no serious harm has been done.

Doubt - Er, the Mental State, Not the Movie

Here's Anonymous, the most frequent commenter to this precious, precious blog:

Sometimes religious folks have passing doubts about their faith that come and go. Do atheists ever have doubts about their doubt?

For purposes of this blog post, I speak for every atheist -- living or dead, past and future, near and far -- when I respond to this question as follows: sure, why not?

Sure, I have doubts now and then. Most often these take the form of hopes that I'll be reunited with lost loved ones, something that's only possible if there's an afterlife. It would be nice to catch up with my mom, and to count the minutes until I'm tired of her again. (If you're a betting sort, the smart money places the over/under on that at 120.)

Another kind of hope -- less pressing, to be sure -- is that I'll have the chance to meet all the interesting people who have died. Who wouldn't want to meet William Shakespeare? Who wouldn't want ten or eleven minutes with a tire iron and the 9/11 attackers, Adolph Hitler, Michael Jackson (too soon?), and each member of our respective inner circle of long-departed betes-noires?

Other times it's fear-based: a scary movie or disturbing news report has been known to put me in a "gosh, I'd sure hate to go to hell since it's probably something like that or worse" state of mind.

Note the pattern: wish-fulfillment of different kinds fomenting doubts. Suffice to say the power of wishes, undeniable as it is, has a terrible track record for producing sturdy truth claims.

Most of the time, the real answer is no: I don't spend much time wondering if there really is a god (or group of gods*) watching over me and making entries on some naughty-nice list. There are countless situations where the question has no discernible impact and no association: for example, when one of my cats yowled for no reason at 4am this morning, and I threw a bundled pair of socks in the general direction of the yowl, no thoughts of eternity crept into the calculus or increased the subjective melodrama. The same is true of the moments spent not long after dressing for the day, and so on.

Interestingly enough, I think the same is true of believers. I suspect even the most devoted of believers are functionally atheistic most of the time: except for brief snatches of time here and there, whatever god(s) they follow is entirely irrelevant to what they're doing and thinking.

Maybe the more fruitful answer is to turn the question around and ask believers how often and under what circumstances they entertain the possibility that their religious beliefs are wrong, and whether all those committed believers of other faiths are right. Do devout Muslims worry that the Christians might be on to something? Vice-versa? Do both worry that the Hindu gods might be the universe's actual custodians? Do all three wonder if the Jews have it right?

It has often been said, so here's one more: an atheist is someone who rejects all the gods you reject plus one more.


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* What is the proper group name for deities? bundle? satchel? pile? congeries? majesty? sum? herd? procession? index? tribe? murder?

The Story of Your Disbelief

The Doubtcasters want to hear your story:

We're looking for your stories and your reasons for joining the ranks of the godless. When did you lose your faith? Why did you lose your faith? Did you ever have faith? What are the arguments you ran into that started you down your path to disbelief? What books did you read, what friends did you make, or what events did you go through that helped you embrace the natural over the supernatural?

If you'd like to share with us your "Gospel of Doubt," send us an essay of 200 words or less that addresses some of the issues above to doubtcast@gmail.com.

They are also interested in hearing your story in recorded form, and it sounds as though they'll be incorporating some of these recordings into a forthcoming Reasonable Doubts podcast. You could be famous!

Presumably, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and other believers have their disbelief stories too. Maybe the doubtcasters would be interested in hearing how they came to reject all the other sects and all the other religions?

A Zenith: "Billy Jean"

On the occasion of his passing, this is as nice as I'm ever likely to be about Michael Jackson - Thriller was an amazing and groundbreaking album, something I confirmed by tuning out the tediously breathless news media saturation and forcing myself to take in the video for "Billy Jean. It began as a weird tribute but became a confirmation that I know what I hate, and I can't bring myself to hate this. That's the best R.I.P. I can offer this strange, creepy, and tortured figure.

It Turns Out Gov. Sanford Wanted Stimulus After All

Evidently only getting started burnishing his reputation as a phony and a chiseler by trying to pretend to decline federal stimulus funds, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford also supplements his moral crusading with adultery.

For all I know, Jesus still loves this passionate-advocate-of-family-values-for-others -- it's hard to say anything definitive about the loves, hates, likes, and dislikes of fictional characters -- but non-fictional observers will temper their reception of him by noting that he's a complete hypocrite:

“The issue of lying is probably the biggest harm, if you will, to the system of Democratic government, representatives government, because it undermines trust. And if you undermine trust in our system, you undermine everything.” [Sanford on Clinton, CNN, 2/16/99]

Sanford has also been an opponent of same-sex marriage, saying in 2004, “As Jenny and I are the parents of four little boys, we’ve always taught our kids that marriage was something between a man and a woman.” [The Post and Courier, 2/11/04]

Add more pages to the annals of political biography that reads like bad fiction.

"Mooting" Abortion Rights?

Since I wrote this, it follows I am implicated in this criticism leveled by Secular Right's David Hume:

the outrage that some liberals feel when one moots the idea of aborting a fetus if they are of a particular racial combination or sex shows that the “rights” and “liberty” based reasoning of the pro-choice movement is often relatively shallow. Abortion is meant to empower women in a positive sense of freedom, a consequentialist rationale, not to reinforce prejudice, discrimination and oppression. Making abortion a right is in fact a form of legislating morality and inculcating values about how women relate to their bodies and society. Interestingly Nixon’s qualms about abortion were consequentialist. Rather than the sanctity of life he seemed to be elucidating a view that abortion was another instance where the sexual revolution rolled back individual responsibility in favor of license. Instead of murder, it seemed a problem of moral hazard.

For starters, I'm unsure of how strong a version of "mooting" Hume has in mind for reasons of sexual or racial selection; if he's claiming that liberals on abortion would re-criminalize abortion for these reasons, I believe he's wrong -- but it is, after all, an empirical question: do polls show pro-choice people taking this position?

Speaking for my pro-choice self, when I say I want people to retain autonomy and authority over their own reproductive fortunes, it comes with a strong measure of resistance to inquiring into people's motivations for either bearing children or deciding not to. To be pro-choice is to assume that people have their own reasons, priorities, and values; and therefore that their reasons, priorities, and values may not be mine given similar circumstances. The legitimacy of the right does not turn on the quality of the reasons behind the exercise of the right. At the same time, the existence of the right does not obligate other people to approve of any given exercise of the right.

In much the same way, the pro-free-speech position would imply a strong reluctance for the state to ask "why do you want to read that book?" or "why do you want to write a blog?" or "why did you think it was a good idea to say that?" And at the same time, a right to free expression is not a right to be agreed with.

Then there's this, requoted from above:

[m]aking abortion a right is in fact a form of legislating morality and inculcating values about how women relate to their bodies and society.

Nonsense. No, legalizing abortion is a way -- the only way, as far as I can tell -- to create the space for free people to enact and inculcate varying values about, among other things, how women relate to their bodies and society. Likewise, making choosing against abortion a right -- which it is under the pro-choice position -- creates space for various values to flourish and spread.