Dance With Sunflowers

It's All About The Mashup

2010-05-03T14:31:00.004+08:00

It seems that people are still happening upon the old blog, and I want to invite all of you itinerant web surfers to come check out the new digs. Dance With Sunflowers is a steady contributor over at Entropy Squared.

May is Mashup Month at The Chaos Factory, and you'll find all manner of whacky combinations. And the fun is not limited to the main page, but the folks at A Story In 100 Words are getting in on the fun too. If you feel like trying your hand at a 100 word story, they will be happy to post it for you. Just send it along.

Some other new blogs you might be interested in. Dr. Friston Kuppernickel is documenting his attempts to take over the world at The Mad Scientist. And the Good Doctor has taken to blogging about his favorite college basketball team, at 62-60.

And if you just ended up here thanks to Google's image search, feel free to help yourself. That's what I did.

The Chaos Begins

2009-12-13T10:28:00.005+08:00

This will be the last post on Dance With Sunflowers. The move over to the new domain, at www.entropy2.com, has finally been completed. All future posts will be found there. Please adjust your bookmarks and rss feeds accordingly.

You can find the rss feed here. In addition, you can follow Dance With Sunflowers and The Chaos Factory on twitter. Or join The Chaos Factory Facebook page here.

The new website is going to be more than just Dance With Sunflowers. There are going to be a number of new web experiments, combining storytelling, photography, film and whatever else strikes my fancy. Be on the lookout for two new blogging experiments which will start in the next week or two. The first is called The Man Out Of Time, the incredibly true story of Urashima Tarō and his quest to return to his family in 17th century Japan. The second is A Story In 100 Words, presenting daily literature in short bursts. Look for these and more in the near future.

Now, what you really want to know about. The Great Dan Brown Experiment will take place this coming Saturday, December 19th. Over the course of 24 hours (I hope) I will be reading The Lost Symbol, and live blogging about the experience. For those of you in the Western Hemisphere, the fun begins your Friday night. Please join me in order to provide me the moral support I need to devote an entire 24 hours to Dan Brown. Remember, all of this takes place at entropy2.com.

Thanks to everyone who has been a part of Dance With Sunflowers. And I hope to see you all at the new website.

There Is Still Time For You To Celebrate International Mustache Month

2009-11-18T13:16:00.005+08:00

There Is Still Time For You To Celebrate International Mustache Month

The mustache was invented more than 2500 years ago, by Peisistratos of Athens. As chronicled in The Histories of Herodotus, the original tyrant of the Greek polis carved the first mustache because he thought it made him look more execrable, and helped him accrue power. He fashioned it using a bronze blade*.

The American President also has a long tradition of imposing facial hair. What follows are the eight greatest examples of manifest destiny the new world has ever produced:

	#8 Grover Cleveland Cleveland was the leader of the Bourbon Democrats. This mustache makes it obvious why. The city of Cleveland is in fact named after his bourbon ’stache.
	#7 Andrew Jackson Old Hickory reminds us that eye brows count as facial hair too. They look thick enough to erase chalk boards. Awesome.
	#6 Grover Cleveland After failing in his reelection campaign in 1888, Grover Cleveland returned to private life determined to grow an even more daunting mustache. His reelection in 1892 proved his mission was a success, and made him the only president to be counted twice.
	#5 Rutherford B. Hayes Remember Captain Caveman? I am fairly certain Hanna-Barbara got the character design from this portrait. Hayes actually retired in 1879, but his beard carried out the rest of his term.
	#4 William Taft Taft’s Mustache, measuring 8 inches across, was the last facial hair to hold presidential office. It was known to have beaten Teddy Roosevelt’s ’stache in a wrestling match.
	#3 Chester A. Arthur Much like Sisyphus, Arthur’s mustache and sideburns are forever striving to touch, but always falling just short.
	#2 Abraham Lincoln The only member of the Illinois Amish ever elected to federal office, Lincoln sacrificed his mustache in order to unite the country after the American Civil War.
	#1 Martin Van Buren Little known fact: Shortly before his death, Van Buren played the cowardly lion on Broadway.
	One can only hope that Obama realizes the majestic might of a properly grown mustache and return America to its rightful place as the most awesome nation of mustache growers this side of Russia.

*This is in fact patently untrue on a number of different levels.

Giant Cabbages From Outer Space

2009-11-08T00:56:00.003+08:00

There are two surefire signs that Autumn has officially arrived in Beijing.

First of all, you have the two week stretch of November that is invariably the coldest of the year, thanks to the Government’s central heating rules. In America, you might think of central heating as the thermostat control that lets you turn up your heat as high as your electricity bill will allow.

In China, however, central heating is the neighborhood controlled system that allows one boiler to provide warmth to an entire village. In Beijing, November 15th is something of an informal holiday every year, as that is the date when the city’s boilers switch on. But for those first two weeks of the month, you find yourself bundling up to go to the bathroom, and showers gain you entry into the polar bear club.

The second sure fire sign of Autumn in Beijing is the deluge of 白菜 that descends on the city like an alien invasion. Harking back to the 3 vegetable winters of decades past, every old woman in the capital stocks up on the hardy cabbages, buying enough to last a family all the way to spring.

Speaking of alien invasions, I finally watched District 9 this week. Definitely worthy of all the hype. I especially enjoyed the father and son prawns. The strongest characters in the movie.

The only drawback was the documentary style. The feel of it was nice, but I was constantly annoyed because too often the scenes were shot in places and circumstances that never would have allowed for cameras. Inside the alien hideout? Close-ups during a firefight? If you are going to use the faux documentary technique, go all the way. Otherwise, YOU, the filmmaker, have violated our tacit agreement by which I, the viewer, have agreed to willingly suspend my judgment concerning the implausibility of the narrative.

And I hate it when that happens.

Francis Bacon And The Sorceror's Stone

2009-10-31T11:46:00.006+08:00

One of the hottest pop culture trends is the mashup. You take two or more disparate ideas, creative works, images or DNA sequences, and you combine them into a cohesive whole capable of generating offspring.

My friend Ben is a big fan of Girl Talk. The musician takes hundreds of soundbytes from various songs and blends them into one track. Ben is a pretty popular guy, so I assume that his likes and dislikes are representative of all Westerners. Girl Talk must be awesome.

Another example are the novels Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters. These take the classic Jane Austen tales and complement them with scenes of monstrous mayhem.

Unfortunately, I have no musical talent, so song mashups are out. And even if half the novel is already written for you, it's not like I have the time to write half a novel. I am a busy guy, and time doesn't grow on trees.

So I am left with trying to figure out a way to mashup my blog. A blog mashup might look something like this:

Wizards of Waverly Place is an Emmy Award-winning live-action Disney Channel Original Series which stars Selena Gomez, David Henrie and Jake T. Austin, as three siblings with magical abilities.

The show centers on the Bacon family, which includes Alex, her older brother Justin, and their younger brother Max; Alex's best friend Harper is also part of the storyline. The three Russo siblings are wizards and live with their father Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban KC, an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and a former wizard.

Bacon served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Although his political career ended in disgrace, he remained extremely influential through his works, especially as philosophical advocate and practitioner of the scientific revolution. He is also a former wizard, who chose to give up his powers to marry his wife Theresa, a mortal, due to a rule forbidding wizards to marry mortals.

Bacon's works established and popularized an inductive methodology for scientific inquiry, often called the Baconian method or simply, the scientific method. His demand for a planned procedure of investigating all things natural marked a new turn in the rhetorical and theoretical framework for science, much of which still surrounds conceptions of proper methodology today. He is proud of his magical ancestry and teaches his children about the proper uses of magic in "Wizard Training Class."

The children are not allowed to use magic without supervision, and only one of the three will keep their magic abilities once they are adults; this will be determined by a magic competition. Alex often gets into trouble for using magic unsupervised. Justin always makes sure Alex does not get into any more trouble than she's already in. Along the way, all of the kids learn moral lessons relating to friends, family, and school.

The Bacon family owns a sub-sandwich shop on Waverly Place.

A Great Companion For Long Road Trips

2009-10-28T21:57:00.003+08:00

Science made a new announcement today. Apparently, cockroaches do not have to urinate in order to survive. They recycle all of their own waste and turn it back into usable materials. Roaches really are the pinnacle of evolution.

The ability to reuse their own waste originates from their symbiotic relationship with an unusual microbe known as Blattabacterium. According to Science, this microbe breaks down waste uric acid and turns it into ammonia and urea, which it then uses to construct amino acids and repair cell membranes.

Because it reuses the normally toxic uric acid rather than expelling it, cockroaches need far less water than most species. This microbe, therefore, is one of the keys to the cockroach's extreme durability.

Now that Science has discovered how cockroaches are such perfect little recycling machines, the path forward is clear: Voluntary Human Extinction. When faced with such an optimum example of life, we must do what Kasparov did against Deep Blue, and knock over our own king.

Long live the roaches.

The Great Dan Brown Experiment

2009-10-19T11:55:00.005+08:00

We interrupt our regular scheduled blogging for two important announcements.

First, Dance With Sunflowers will soon migrate to a new location, at entropy2.com. The process of starting up the new website and switching over will take another month or two, and in the meantime I will continue posting here. The new site will include several new blogs and other exciting endeavors I will tell you about later. Be on the look out.

Second, as part of the new website, I will be conducting my first live blogging event. I will be reading Dan Brown's new novel, The Lost Symbol, over the course of 24 hours, with a running journal of my reactions. Join me as I experience the best selling book (2 million copies sold in the first week) for the first time, with immediate feedback on what will surely go down as a modern classic.

Of course, being invested in the novel might influence my impartiality. So I am looking for someone who will lone it to me in the next few weeks. Please do not buy it with the specific intention of giving it to me, as that will defeat the purpose. But if you already have it, I will be happy to take it off your hands.

When I have a date for the Live Blogging session, as well as the debut of the new website, I will let everyone know.

To whet your appetite, here are some facts about Dan Brown's previous novel, The Da Vinci Code:

According to Wikipedia, it has sold more than 80 million copies to date.
80 MILLION! That equals The Catcher In The Rye, and easily surpasses Charlotte's Web, To Kill A Mockingbird, or Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary
That's right, more than the dictionary
In fact, the only novels to have sold more books in the history of humankind are: Le Petit Prince, She, Dream Of Red Chambers, The Hobbit, And Then There Were None, The Lord Of The Rings, and A Tale Of Two Cities. That's it. The entire list. The Da Vinci Code is already the 8th best selling novel of all time
It is almost entirely based on the Umberto Eco novel, Foucault's Pendulum, which predates it by more than a decade.

Monkey Economics, Or The Evolution Of A Patriot

2009-10-16T21:02:00.006+08:00

The newest trend in academics is trying to find evolutionary connections between humans and other species. It has been established with parrots. It has been done with dolphins. But the surest way to send creationists into a tizzy is to mention the behaviors we share with monkeys and apes.

That's what makes the concept of monkey economics so gratifying. Researchers around the world are finding that the ability to understand and practice commerce is not limited to the human species. Dr. Laurie Santos has conducted experiments that show capuchin monkeys can learn how to operate in a market environment.

The monkeys are taught that a token can be exchanged for food. When given the choice of whether to trade for apple slices or jello-cubes, they in general trade for each about 50% of the time. But when one of the sellers decides that he will sell jello-cubes two for one, they stop buying apple slices and spend most of their money on jello.

But when the experiment is shifted, the monkeys' behavior adapts in a significant way. The two sellers begin to both offer apple slices, but the first appears to offer one slice for one token, but upon receiving the payment, actually gives two. The second presents three apples, but takes one apple away after receiving the token. When presented with this scenario, the monkeys overwhelmingly buy apples from the first seller, even though statistically, they are getting the same deal, two slices for one token. This type of behavior is known as loss aversion.

Interestingly enough, when humans are subjected to similar experiments, the results are nearly identical to those with monkeys. Both monkeys and humans seem to care as much about a sense of fairness as they do with their own economic gain.

Keith Chen has taken the experiments even further. He has discovered that not only do the monkeys have a thorough understanding of the value of the money, they have taken to stealing it. One day, when a monkey was brought out of his living area into the adjacent testing area, as soon as the door was open, the subject charged at the tray of tokens and flung it behind him, sending the other monkeys into fever as they rushed to get the pilfered booty.

Even more remarkably, as Chen was trying to restore order and get the tokens back, he observed a male monkey take a token and offer it to one of the females in exchange for sex. After getting her payment, she promptly took the token and offered it to one of the scientists in return for a grape.

Yes, this is a true story!

I would like nothing more than to have Chen lock some capitalist monkeys in a room with a group of intelligent design supporters and see what transpires. It must be hard for religious right wingers to read about these results. On the one hand, here is further proof of the evolutionary link between humans and primates. But on the other hand, it is also provides evidence that these monkeys are proud supporters of capitalism.

The Life And Times Of Baron Manfred von Richthofen

2009-10-14T23:16:00.008+08:00

Contrary to popular belief, the Red Baron was not a Robber Baron. It is a common mistake, since they have the same surname. The Red Baron was a famous World War I fighter pilot. He was very successful at his job, but he did not have a monopoly on aircraft, nor did he become a millionaire. He did however go on to star in the comic strip, Peanuts.

The Red Baron's real name was Manfred von Richthofen. No wonder he changed his name to the Red Baron. His name looks German. Since he fought in the World War on the side of the Germans, we can safely conclude that he was indeed German himself.

The Robber Barons were not German. They were American entrepreneurs. They could not fly airplanes because airplanes had not been invented yet.

Some people surmise that the Red Baron was descended from the Robber Barons. This is stupid. Obviously, once it is realized that the Red Baron is German, and the Robber Barons were American, this does not make sense. If you read this on Wikipedia, you will regret not paying for a membership at Encyclopedia Britannica.

The German word for Baron is Freiherr. It means Free Lord. How ironic! If the Robber Barons had been Free Lords, they never would have become so rich. They made all of their money by selling the products they had monopolies on. This is how an economy works. Look it up with your new Encyclopedia Britannica membership.

They do share one thing in common. They are both wicked cool. The Red Baron shot down 80 planes during World War I. If he had been in Top Gun, he would have had one of the really good nicknames, like Ice Man, not something stupid like Goose. The Robber Barons, specifically Andrew Mellon (who according to Wikipedia had a fruit monopoly), created supply side economics.

Sometimes I wish the Red Baron were descended from the Robber Barons. My life would be much simpler then.

Lyric Of The Day:

Come on, come on let's have a song
the morning sun is soon to come
we don't have time to linger on

There comes a time, there comes a
time to make it right when I was wrong
and someday girl we'll get along.

Goodbye to all your plans
you can listen to me now
your head is bent out of shape
but your feet are on the ground
but all in all, the ceiling's coming down

I take my time to face the day
it's good to hear you talk this way
so we'll keep this up as friends
this time, nothing's wrong
I'll stand up as I'll shake your hand,
we'll be alright

Then I'll do it all again

"Bows + Arrows"
-The Walkmen

Don't Let All These Facts About Robber Barons Bore You. They Are True!

2009-10-10T18:09:00.010+08:00

You know the movie Citizen Kane? The one based on William Randolph Heast? Orson Welles plays Charles Foster Kane, the newspaper magnate and robber baron. He jealously guards his paper kingdom, hoarding all the nation's periodicals for his own personal profit while secretly pining for his long lost teddy bear, Rosebud.

These are facts.

The Robber Barons ruled the 1800's with their long names and pointed baron hats, robbing from the poor and filling their own coffers. They founded universities and built museums. They owned everything, including the government.

That all ended with the Clayton Anti-Trust Act in 1914. Congress broke up the monopolies and took away their baron hats.

Our list today does not celebrate the greatest captains of industry, but the monopolies themselves. The most famous of the Robber Barons did not necessarily have the best monopolies. Who wants to sit on a huge pile of oil? Or a giant heap of iron ore? These are the guys who, when they took you to check out their garage, really had something to brag about:

#6 James Lewis Kraft

Kraft invented the first processed cheese in 1912. By 1916, he had sold more than 6 million pounds of the very orange, but not very delicious, food like substance. His genius lay not only in the revolutionary industrial process, which allowed his cheese to be canned almost indefinitely, but in the fact that he convinced America that it was actually edible.

The purveyors of traditional cheese found themselves pushed out of the market by Kraft, whom they accused of fraud. They asked the government to regulate his products, and federal guidelines ultimately ruled that the fat and moisture content of pasteurized process cheese must match that of natural cheese. Since Kraft's invention, per capita cheese consumption in the United States has risen from 3 pounds a year to 30. And despite what your senses are telling you, the law says that it is actually cheese.

#5 Benjamin Franklin

When Franklin invented electricity, not only did he usher in a new era of science and technology, he also became insanely wealthy. Even cooler, he wielded his lightning rod like an Olympian God, using it to defeat the British and give birth to the United States of America.

His son, William, not realizing its value, eventually sold his electricity patent to Thomas Edison, allowing the inventor to finally find some value in such devices as the light bulb and the electric toaster.

#4 Cornelius Vanderbilt

Everyone loves the board game Monopoly right? Or at least the idea of the game, because it turns out that actually playing Monopoly is inordinately boring. Well, no robber baron quite captures the flavor of the old board game like Vanderbilt. I mean, he owned all the railroads. Wasn't that the best thing in the game? All four railroads?

Other awesome facts about Vanderbilt: Before he bought all the railroads, he had a monopoly on steam ships. This guy really knew how to get around. In today's dollars, Vanderbilt was the second wealthiest American in history.

To top it off, Vanderbilt's nickname was the Commodore. How cool is that? From now on, everyone has to call me the Commodore.

#3 Burgess Charles Montgomery

Before Mr. Burns became a fixture on American television, Montgomery was the quintessential corporate scoundrel. Because of the dangers inherent in nuclear technology, the US government initially allowed him a monopoly to insure the communists did not get the secret.

Montgomery for a short time had a monopoly on atoms themselves. Of course, the government soon wised up, and the monopoly was revoked. Montgomery secretly sold his atomic secrets to the Russians, for which he eventually went to jail. A very, very rich jail. A jail made of solid gold.

#2 Frederick August Otto Schwarz

Toys. One man owned all the toys in the world. He became rich, and therefore became jaded. He forgot what it meant to be a child. All joy passed from his life. His toys lost their appeal.

Until one day, an orphan boy showed up on the man's door step. The young rapscallion reminded Schwarz of his own childhood. Together they made toys that every boy and girl could love. And Schwarz became even more rich and powerful.

He still lives today, his brain mechanically fused to a toy steam engine, insuring him of eternal life. A life of endless circles and tiny pine trees.

#1 Milton Snavely Hershey

His parents gave him the middle name Snavely. Of course he went on to become a twisted, evil candy magnate. But who cares? He literally lived in the Land of Chocolate, with rivers of chocolate, and chocolate dogs you could eat out of your hands.

Yes, Milton S. Hershey was the greatest Robber Baron in history, wearing his little chocolate hat to steal the candy from babies.

Lyric Of The Day:

Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it in dew
Cover it in chocolate
and a miracle or two?

The candyman
The candyman can
The candyman can cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

Who can take a rainbow
Wrap it in a sigh
Soak it in the sun
and make a strawberry lemon pie?

The candyman?

The candyman
The candyman can
The candyman can cause he mixes it with love
and makes the world taste good

"The Candy Man Can"
-Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley

He Even Has A Monopoly On The Letter B

2009-10-07T18:29:00.022+08:00

It is that time again. The weekly mail blog. Let's see what our readers have to say this week:

Dear DWS,

I have to plan out my next three months of vacation days for work. Is there any way you can give us a sneak preview of what we can expect from Dance With Sunflowers during that time so I can make some decisions?

Appreciative,
Spencer Ross
State College, PA

Dear SR,

We at DWS like to think of ourselves as forward thinkers. Anyone can tell you what was cool yesterday (Fondue, Burt Reynolds, wood paneling on station wagons) and what is cool today (Vampires, zombies, tablet computers). But what our readers really want to know is what will be cool tomorrow.

A peak ahead at our upcoming blogs can inform us of exactly that. Rather than reacting to what is already out there in the blogosphere, we are highlighting the issues, themes and action figures that all the geeks will be obsessing about, and all the t-shirt companies will be designing for in the days ahead.

Here is what you can expect:

The Robber Barons
The Aeniad
Vitamins
The Letter B
The Wizards of Waverly Place
Non-Invasive Surgeries
The Speed Limit
Chuck Woolery
Really High Levels of Magnification

Thanks for the email SR, and I hope that this will help you plan your outfit for Halloween. This year AND next.
_________

When you begin to notice Henry Flick leaving the History Channel and popping up on MTV, and you hear American Idols singing about Andrew Carnegie, you won't be surprised. You will know that the mad splash of industrialists across our pop culture itinerary was inevitable. Welcome to Robber Baron Week!

Next Issue: Our Favorite Captains of Industry

Lyric Of The Day:

"We men are only lusty boys,
Though snowy be our locks,
So Skibo's master still enjoys
To sit and play with blocks."

-Origin Unknown

Up Next: The Phantom Menace On Broadway

2009-10-03T18:25:00.009+08:00

Aesop wrote:

A Wolf found great difficulty in getting at the sheep owing to the vigilance of the shepherd and his dogs. But one day it found the skin of a sheep that had been flayed and thrown aside, so it put it on over its own pelt and strolled down among the sheep. The Lamb that belonged to the sheep, whose skin the Wolf was wearing, began to follow the Wolf in the Sheep's clothing; so, leading the Lamb a little apart, he soon made a meal off her, and for some time he succeeded in deceiving the sheep, and enjoying hearty meals.

Appearances are deceptive.

I was reminded of that story during a recent viewing of Watchmen. Appearances are indeed deceptive.

On the surface, Watchmen was everything fanboys and comic geeks could have hoped for. After the triple disasters of previous Alan Moore related projects (V for Vendetta, From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), it was widely feared the movie version of Watchmen would bastardize the story. As it turns out however, Zack Snyder goes out of his way to faithfully reproduce the source material. Visually, they are virtually identical. Certainly, parts of the story had to be trimmed, even at three hours, but he still managed to keep nearly all the major story lines, maintain the same narration and pacing, and even exactly match many of the comic's scene compositions.

Yet, for all that, I was strangely disturbed as I watched. Something just felt wrong.

You remember watching The Phantom Menace for the first time? In pretty much every quantifiable way, it was a Star Wars movie. The opening music. The crawl. The swipes. The sound effects and John Williams score. Yet the further in you got, the more your heart sank.

It was a Star Wars movie, yes, but slowly there was the horrible realization that this movie just was not very good. In fact, the prequels are not really movies at all, but elaborate video games. What else to call them? The pod racing or R2-D2 and C-3PO on the assembly line are not really cinema. George Lucas grafted together some of his old characters and some potential new toy lines onto a two hour X-Box session.

And it is the same feeling I get watching the string of musical biopics that have appeared recently. Movies like Ray and Walk The Line feature fantastic performances and classic music, but they fail as movies. Rather than tell a great story, they get stuck trying to cram in all the important events in a person's life. Real life does not in general make a great movie. Contrast them with I'm Not There, a biography that uses a person's life as a starting point and crafts an interesting, groundbreaking movie.

Watchmen, for all its visual glory, has made the same mistake. The first hour of the movie lacks any real tension, because they are too busy using the comic book as a story board. Rather than try to make a trailblazing movie to match the original's legacy, the filmmakers just regurgitated the graphic novel. That story is meant to be read, it does not work as well as a movie without some serious refashioning.

It does not help that the performances are almost universally atrocious. But even if the casting director had done a better job, it would not have prevented Watchmen from being unmasked as a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The Planet Of Inexperience

2009-09-23T19:36:00.005+08:00

In The Art of the Novel, Milan Kundera writes:

We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from a previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children of their old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.

What a beautiful encapsulation of the human experience.

Like many I suspect, I sometimes dream of having the opportunity to live life over again, to revisit poorly thought out decisions, or adjust for factors unknown at the time. Alas, we are given no such second chances. Our only alternative is to make the best choices we can based on the information available to us. We can content ourselves that every other hapless soul finds itself in the same quandary.

Thomas Nuttall (1786-1859), a pioneer botanist in the American Northwest, can literally be said to have been one of those lost souls. Despite taking part in several expeditions on the American frontier, his fellow explorers knew him to be almost permanently astray. They lit watch fires every evening because it was the only way he could make it back to camp.

His woeful itinerancy culminated one evening when, despite the fires, he failed to return, and his companions were forced to go look for him. They called out his name, and made enough noise that Nuttall heard them through the trees.

But perhaps they were Indians. They might have heard the others use his name. So he went charging into the brush in the other direction. For three days, he led his party on a winding, meandering chase through the woods. Eventually, and by fortunate accident, he led them right back to the original camp.

History remembers Nuttall as one of history's greatest failures, but he did not allow his deficiencies to prevent him from also being one of America's most important early botanists. Like Nuttall, we all bumble and bluff our way, trying to convince ourselves their is some meaning in all the bluster, and doing our best to make something of the great practical joke of life. As Kundera points out, every one of us, no matter how accomplished, is a miracle of ignorance.

Lyric Of The Day:

Teachers keep on teachin'
Preachers keep on preachin'
World keep on turnin'
Cause it won't be too long

Lovers keep on lovin'
Believers keep on believin'
Sleepers just stop sleepin'
Cause it won't be too long

I'm so glad that he let me try it again
Cause my last time on earth I lived a whole world of sin
I'm so glad that I know more than I knew then
Gonna keep on tryin'
Till I reach my highest ground

"Higher Ground"
-Stevie Wonder

First There Was Nothing...Then There Was Calvin

2009-09-21T12:16:00.006+08:00

#1 Calvin and Hobbes

See Introduction | #9|#8| #7|#6|#5|#4|#3|#2

Not fair, you cry. It's not a webcomic. It was a newspaper comic strip, and its creator retired well before the rise of the Internet.

Perhaps, but thanks to UCLICK and Google Reader, I can still read it every day. And whether or not it truly belongs on a list of webcomics, its tremendous influence on the medium cannot be denied. An entire generation of Americans has been shaped by reading Calvin and Hobbes every morning.

As the folks at Progressive Boink expressed it:

I can confidently state that Calvin and Hobbes outclasses the rest of the comic strip world more than anything else has ever outclassed the rest of its medium. Sans this strip, the industry is characterized by guys sitting on rocks making stupid puns, a Family Circus kid misunderstanding the meaning of a word, or an overweight father playing golf while telling jokes such as I LIKE GOLF and GOLF IS HARD. It's a medium that doesn't really deserve something as good as Calvin and Hobbes, but it got it anyway, and the newspaper-reading world was made a better place by it.

Hyperbole, yes. But not by much. Calvin and Hobbes was much more than just entertaining. It made us think. Even as children, we recognized ourselves in the two protagonists, whether in their stringent refusal to yield to authority, their inability to escape their own nature, or the way in which they are so misunderstood by the adults around them. They are miniature philosophers, and we will forever owe Bill Watterson a debt for their creation.

Since his retirement, Watterson has become our generation's Salinger. The longer he resists any kind of compromise or comeback, the more the legend of Calvin and Hobbes grows. He is the Beatles, minus the solo careers, Abraham Lincoln, absent a bullet in the head.

It is incredible to realize that Calvin and Hobbes only ran for a single decade. It is as much a part of my mornings as the New York Times, breakfast cereal, or oxygen.
Be thankful we lived to see it, and feel sad for those who passed their lives in the interminable dark ages that proceeded its advent.

Milan Kundera writes:

Once upon a time I too thought that the future was the only competent judge of our works and actions. Later on I understood that chasing after the future is the worst conformism of all, a craven flattery of the mighty. For the future is always mightier than the present. It will pass judgement on us, of course. And without any competence.

Who can say how the future will judge Calvin and Hobbes. In two hundred years, will our sons and daughters will be reading it alongside Faulkner, Beckett, and Fitzgerald? I can only assert that they should be.

Lyric Of The Day:

He's a miniature philosopher
He takes notes on all he reads
But that doesn't satisfy his needs
He's a desk clerk at the bank and trust
There's so many contracts and paperwork to do
He gets so busy at the bank and trust
There is no time for Nietzsche or Camus

He's a miniature philosopher
He writes essays on Voltaire
But if he died no one would care

He doesn't know why his life turned out this way
No one ever reads his dissertations or allegoric plays
So he comforts himself while searching a rhyme
That the public rarely recognize a genius in their time
(poor little guy)
He's a miniature philosopher
Though he hasn't got a friend
He's sure he'll be famous in the end

"The Miniature Philosopher"
-Of Montreal

T-Rex De Le Mancha

2009-09-18T23:28:00.007+08:00

#2 Dinosaur Comics

See Introduction | #9|#8| #7|#6|#5|#4|#3

It would be natural to assume that one of the major appeals of the comic as an art form is the illustrations. Dinosaur Comics proves that you are wrong.

You see, in Dinosaur Comics, every strip has identical artwork. Panel 1, T-Rex in three quarters profile, tail extended behind him. Panel 2, close up on T-Rex, mouth agape in seeming excitement. Panel 3, the scene pulls out to reveal T-Rex stomping on a log cabin, with a car parked out front, and a female Dromiceiomimus glancing back at him. Panel 4, T-Rex about to step on a human, with restless Utahraptor standing behind him. Panel 5, T-Rex peering over his shoulder at Utahraptor. Finally, panel 6, T-Rex again alone, standing pigeon-toed.

With every strip visually identical, there is no story. Nothing happens. It is much akin to Calvin and Hobbes riding the sled down the hill. You know there will be a crash every time. The allure lays in the conversation.

And every day, T-Rex and his two friends have a new conversation. They muse on all manner of subject matter, including racism, epistemology, time travel, and space murder.

Over the years, we have learned that T-Rex is an everyman. He is also an overly enthusiastic man-child in love with himself. Most of all, he is a modern day Don Quixote, passionately committed to his vision of the world, and refusing to allow setbacks, society, God, or common sense prevent him from fully effectuating his own reality.

From reading this interview, I gather the author is much like his short-armed creation. Ryan North, I salute you. You have taken the art form of Internet comics to its pinnacle.

And by the way, to carry the comparison to Don Quixote to its logical conclusion: Utahraptor is Sancho Panza, Dromiceiomimus is Dulcinea, the log cabin is Rocinante, and the windmills are God.

Lyric Of The Day:

Dinosaurs lived a long time ago
They were terrible lizards don't you know
Some ate plants and some ate meat
Some ate fish and some ate beasts
One was called Diplodocus
One was bigger than your school bus
One was called a Triceratops
Three horns to stop anything that hops
Now can't you just see yourself walking along
Leading your pet Trachadon
Or feeding your Brontosaurus Rex
Or scratching your Diplodocus' neck
Or riding on a Stegosaurus' back
Or swimming in Brachiscaurus' track
Oh what a time and oh what a fun
Playing tag with your Ignanondon
And if we had Dinosaurus now
Could they get along with a horse and a cow
Well I wish they hadn't become extinct
Dinosaurus would be nice pets and friends
To have around to run outside
And play with every day don't you think

"Dinosaur Song"
-Johnny Cash

The Balloon Is A Metaphor, Which Represents A Balloon

2009-09-14T22:28:00.009+08:00

#3 Daisy Owl

See Introduction | #9|#8| #7|#6|#5|#4

Popular entertainment is littered with strange, dysfunctional, and variegated nuclear families. The Brady Bunch brought together a family of all boys with a family of all girls. The Munsters included a Frankenstein, a vampire and a werewolf. Different Strokes told the story of a rich, white widower, his Caucasian daughter, and two sassy black children.

But Daisy Owl may just feature the most unorthodox nuclear family ever conceived. Two human children, Daisy and Cooper, are raised by their adoptive father, an owl, and his best friend Steve. Steve is a polar bear.

What sets Daisy Owl apart, besides the absurdity, is the tenderness it displays. It lacks the cynicism that has come to suffuse our popular culture, while not drifting too far into the saccharine. It pays attention to the minutiae: small gestures, a lingering touch, an awkward silence. I will go so far as to say that Daisy Owl is the Charlie Chaplin of webcomics.

To quickly catch up to speed with Daisy Owl, check out Daisy comforting Cooper after a bad dream. Or the whole family playing basketball. Or when Cooper finds a monocle.
Or dinner at the Owl residence. Finally, the balloon.

Best of all, Daisy Owl has an entire sub-culture of dinosaurs. As when Cooper plays with his toy dinosaur. Or Cooper and his birthday cake.

It just makes me wish that I had been raised by an owl and lived in a tree house.

Lyric Of The Day:

When your mother sends back all your invitations
And your father to your sister he explains
That you're tired of yourself and all of your creations
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane ?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane ?

Now when all of the flower ladies want back what they have lent you
And the smell of their roses does not remain
And all of your children start to resent you
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane ?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane ?

Now when all the clowns that you have commissioned
Have died in battle or in vain
And you're sick of all this repetition
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane ?
Won't you come see me, Queen Jane ?

"Queen Jane Approximately"
-Bob Dylan

Sad Children Cannot Help But Be Awful

2009-09-11T23:33:00.008+08:00

#4 pictures for sad children

See Introduction | #9 |#8 | #7|#6|#5

Everyone hates sad children. Pictures for sad children promises to make them stop crying. By helpfully pointing out the meaningless nature of their existence, the tears magically dry up. Because, really, what's the point?

Pictures for sad children is funny in the same way a joke at a funeral is funny. It feels weird, perhaps even wrong, to be laughing, but it is the only legitimate response when coming face to face with your own mortality.

Paul who is a ghost and his coworker Gary, who is not a ghost, switch back and forth between maudlin and melancholic as they face a life--and a death--that has failed to meet their expectations. Their work life sucks and their home life sucks.

Other moments of bitter without sweet reality include when a boy gets stuck in a mattress. Or when Gary finds an ipod in the trash. Did I mention that Paul who is a ghost is asian?

This one is my favorite.

Pro Tip: Many webcomics use alt text, which shows up when you position your cursor over the image and wait a second. "Too Late."

Drop whatever you are doing, and read the entire archive now.

Lyric Of The Day:

Turn off your mind relax and float down-stream,
It is not dying, it is not dying,
Lay down all thought surrender to the void,
It is shining, it is shining.

That you may see the meaning of within,
It is being, it is being,
That love is all and love is everyone,
It is knowing, it is knowing.

That ignorance and haste may mourn the dead,
It is believing, it is believing,
But listen to the color of your dreams,
It is not living, it is not living.

Or play the game "existence" to the end.

"Tomorrow Never Knows"
-The Beatles

It Is Also Well Drawn

2009-09-08T10:22:00.010+08:00

#5 Dr. Mcninja

See Introduction | #9 |#8 | #7|#6

Do you remember when ninjas all of a sudden became really cool? It happened at about the same time robots became cool. And dinosaurs. And zombies.

Therein lies the beauty of Dr. McNinja: its mastery of our cultural zeitgeist. Dr. McNinja is not simply chasing after the latest iconography. It is creating it. The comic's love affair with the pop of our times goes way beyond the pirate killing ninja protagonist. It includes his gorilla receptionist, Judy, and his raptor-mounted, bandit child sidekick, Gordito. Yes, he has faced off against zombies and vampires, but he has also fought the clone of Ben Franklin, and an antagonist known simply as the Ghost Wizard.

My favorite is the appearance of gun wielding dolphins. As the t-shirt says, dolphins don't need thumbs...for revenge.

Dr. McNinja is unlike most comics you find on the Internet. It is not a single strip of panels, which always features a self-contained joke. It is also well drawn. Because it is instead modeled after a comic book, reading one panel will not mean much to you. It might just be a picture of the doctor driving with a wizard in his backseat. It might be a sketch of a giant lumberjack smashing the doctor's office. The only way to truly appreciate the adventures of Dr. McNinja is the way God intended, from the beginning.

Dr. McNinja is always bizarre, and always fun and interesting, and worth reading from cover to cover. Except there is no cover. It's a webcomic. And you can read it for free on the Internet. Awesome.

Lyric Of The Day:

If you were here
Would you calm me down
Or settle the score?
The feelings I fight (I'm a stranger in town)
Burn so bright (but if you were here)
The feelings I fight (would you ease my mind?)
(Come on!)

The sleep fled from my eyes
And I, I know that I need some
Give a thought to the one that you know

Or would you calm me down
When the breath gets shallow and fast?

"The Ghost Of You Lingers"
-Spoon

Humor In Two Dimensions

2009-09-05T22:57:00.006+08:00

#6 Order Of The Stick

See Introduction | #9 |#8 | #7

Anyone who has been paying attention knows that every webcomic falls into one of the following three categories: those that revolve around video games, those concerned with role playing games, and everything else (this third category is the smallest).

Having never been inclined to worship Satan, I have not been much into role playing games. But I am a fan of fantasy epics such as Lord of the Rings and the war in Iraq, so I know a fair bit about the genre. Enough to know that most of these comics suck.

Order of the Stick is the exception. Imagine Lord of the Rings, but with stick figures. In the early days, a large part of the humor was making fun of Dungeons & Dragons, but that joke could only stretch so far. The reason the comic is now consistently among the best is because of the humorous characters and long, convoluted story which meanders randomly without ever seeming to come to a conclusion. On second thought, it's just because of the characters.

However, I know my readers are not the type to invest many hours pouring over the archived strips in order to catch up on their back stories. Therefore, here are a few of my favorites: Belkar faces workplace harassment, Roy takes a sick day, and here's your supreme leader.

I sort of feel like I started telling a funny story, realized no one was laughing, and ended by saying, "I guess you had to be there."

Lyric Of The Day:

"There's a worm in my head and a fish in the bed," she said
Confused, you will be
He's got the car on the lawn and he's using the horn again
Annoyed, she will be
Cartoon boyfriend, when you gonna rub yourself out?
"There's a girl at my door and she's begging for more," he said
"Abused, you will be"
"If you touch a hair on my head then you'd be better off dead"
She said "Oh joking, you must be"
Cartoon boyfriend, when you gonna rub yourself out?

"Cartoon Boyfriend"
-The Wonder Stuff

We Love The Ordinals

2009-09-03T22:33:00.022+08:00

We are irate with Wired Magazine right now. Normally one of our favorite magazines, they have failed miserably when it comes to to their list of the greatest science fiction movies of all time.

They have a comprehensive list of movies, but its lack of ordinals means that we have no actual context.

Imagine you are sitting around with friends, and the following conversation occurs:

"I'm in the mood for some science fiction."

"Sounds good. What should we watch."

"Nothing too awesome. But it needs to be mildly fantastic."

"I agree. How about the 8th greatest science fiction movie of all time."

Simple right? Except how are you supposed to know what the 8th greatest science fiction movie of all time is if magazines like Wired fail to inform you.

I have been forced to interrupt my list of the best webcomics in order to quickly rectify the situation. What follows are the 14 Greatest Science Fiction Movies In The Known Multiverse:

#14 The Road Warrior

With The Road Warrior at #14, we don't have to wait to use the word dystopian.

#13 The Iron Giant

All of you who failed to see this in the theater, shame on you. It's because of poor choices like this that we end up with Transformers II and G-Force 3-D (Just wait).

#12 Back To The Future

Does for time traveling what The Time Traveler's Wife does for the spouses of time travelers.

#11 Aliens

Can anyone think of a better sequel in which a new director entered, transformed it according to his own personal vision, and then left the franchise to make the highest grossing movie of all time?

#10 2001: A Space Odyssey

The original was better, but Kubrick gets extra points for spawning the Macintosh commercial.

#9 Terminator

Featuring the first, and most certainly the best, of the Governator's one-liners.

#8 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

I especially appreciate that Spielburg took the time to explain the title, in the title.

#7 Terminator 2

Some people like the original better. They are wrong.

#6 Blade Runner

I always found the most frightening part of Blade Runner the giant advertisements overlooking the city like the corporate eyes of Sauron. How sad that it would also be the most prescient.

#5 Alien

A Hitchcock homage set in outer space.

#4 The Matrix

For about a 6 week period, Keanu Reeves was actually considered cool.

#3 Return Of The Jedi

Just because the prequels sucked doesn't mean the originals did too.

#2 Star Wars

It forever changed not only the genre of science fiction, but the entire movie industry. And like a true first love, we had our collective hearts broken in 1999.

#1 The Empire Strikes Back

Not just the greatest science fiction film, but the most fantabulous 124 minutes ever committed to celluloid.

Lyric Of The Day:

I look out of my window at night
I see the stars and I'm filled with fright
I got a feeling someone's looking
It ain't the aliens at the foot of my bed
It's more the ale inside my head
I got a feeling something's cooking

Science friction burns my fingers
Electricity still lingers
Hey put away that ray, how do you martians say
I love you

I read my comics from front to back
I'll be ready for any attack
I got a feeling someone's looking

"Science Friction"
-XTC

Marmaduke Would Look Quite Dapper In That Top Hat

2009-09-01T22:41:00.006+08:00

# 7 Wondermark

See Introduction | #9 |#8

The magic of webcomics stems from the freedom inherent in the medium. Unlike traditional comic strips, which are beset with strict guidelines for format and structure, as Bill Watterson famously struggled against, comics on the internet are free to evolve in any direction they wish. The variety of webcomics are stunning.

Take for example A Softer World, which takes a strip of three usually related photos and grafts a poem over them with seemingly unrelated text. Or how about Untitled Gif. I cannot even begin to explain what it is about, but I still enjoy reading it.

Imagine how great Marmaduke would be if Brad Anderson had been free to explore his full artistic vision. It might have turned out something like Wondermark.

In Wondermark, you have illustrations that look like artwork from turn of the century (the 20th, not the 21st) magazines or street fliers, with absurd story lines created. The style is stunning, and the immediate response upon first viewing it is to wonder how the artist does it. Does he painstakingly draw each one? Is their some kind of computer wizardry involved?

Apparently, the creator, David Malki ! (so astonishing, he has an exclamation point in his name) scans in the drawings from 19th century woodcuts and engravings. He then uses them as the basis for the strip. But to fully appreciate the time and labor involved, read his description of the process.

The final product is the seventh best webcomic in the universe. My favorites include In which Jody is burning some trash, In which it's Hot, and In which we went Too Far.

Wondermark is unique in that it excels in terms of both story and visuals. Not a combination you find very often in the world of webcomics. It makes me wonder why Malki with an exclamation point is not earning a real living as a graphic designer or advertiser. His parents must be very disappointed.

Lyric Of The Day:

Looking back on when i
Was a little nappy headed boy
Then my only worry
Was for christmas what would be my toy
Even though we sometimes
Would not get a thing
We were happy with the
Joy the day would bring

Sneaking out the back door
To hang out with those hoodlum friends of mine
Greeted at the back door
With boy thought I told you not to go outside,
Tryin your best to bring the
Water to your eyes
Thinkin it might stop her
From woopin your behind

I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
I wish those days could come back once more
Why did those days ev-er have to go
Cause I love them so

"I Wish"
-Stevie Wonder

Dinosaurs Are Notoriously Bad At Making Decisions

2009-08-28T18:27:00.007+08:00

#8 Cat And Girl

See Introduction | #9

It's been genetically proven that every new webcomic since 1995 is a direct descendent of Calvin and Hobbes. But not one is a more direct descendent than Cat and Girl.

You have a girl of undetermined age, accompanied by a cat of dubious reality. Together they muse on life, society and philosophy. The strip is even populated by the occasional dinosaur.

In the beginning (circa 1999), the strip tilted more towards Calvin's imaginary world view, fighting monsters that jump out of paintings, or facing off against invaders from outer space.

But over the years, Girl has become a speed bump in the fast lane of society, worried, alarmed or disgusted by what the masses would term progress. Nearly every strip now is a rumination on life and the human condition. Cat breezes through, seemingly unconcerned with the world at large, determined to enjoy his own personal kingdom. He does his best to bring Girl joy and solace.

Cat tries to entice Girl into having more fun. Cat tries to comfort Girl when she realizes they are not part of the elite. He helps her choose between creation and destruction. And he consoles her when she wants to give up.

Life for Cat and Girl is usually not easy. Cat takes it all in with aplomb, unfazed. Girl accepts it with a bittersweet resignation. Together, they suggest two extreme ways to go about living life. For the rest of us, we are somewhere in between.

Lyric Of The Day:

Hello cowgirl in the sand
Is this place
at your command
Can I stay here
for a while
Can I see your
sweet sweet smile
Old enough now
to change your name
When so many love you
is it the same?
It's the woman in you
that makes you want
to play this game.

"Cowgirl in the Sand"
-Neil Young

The World Needs More Laughter. Fewer Awkward Silences.

2009-08-25T23:18:00.015+08:00

#9 Goats

See the introduction here.

I am in love with webcomics. Using your favorite rss aggregator (Google Reader in my case), they get magically zapped to your computer in a 21st century version of the funny pages. If you are tired of the awkward silences after reading Marmaduke, do yourself a favor and join the world of digital webcomics.

I am no expert, but I believe when it comes to longevity, webcomics qualify after about 6 months. Goats began on April 1, 1997. That is twelve years ago, people!

Something of an Internet institution, Goats is scatterbrained and offensive, but with adorable animals characters. The bizarro plot bounces from the Chaos Pope, to the Good Hitler movie, to a dimension full of infinite monkeys working on infinite typewriters. Anything can happen. And it does.

The characters include Diablo: a satanic chicken hellbent on government overthrow; his maniacal offspring, Oliver: cute, obscene and destructive; and my favorite, Fish: the innocent goldfish who lives in a glass of beer.

Goats peaked around 2004. The comics from this time period are among my favorite. Like when Diablo fed Oliver some chocolate. Or when Phillip challenged Diablo to a villainry duel. Or when Fish goes to do battle with the Space Wizard s who have been inserting sadness into his brain.

Unfortunately, much like Harrison Ford, Goats 2009 lacks the vitality and genius of its younger days. The plot lines have spiraled out of control. The punch lines no longer sparkle. Even the artwork has declined. I keep reading, much as I went to see Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I expect a hollow reminder of how awesome they used to be, but hope to be pleasantly surprised.

So skip the new stuff, and go right for the classics. Goats used to be first rate. And it helped to popularize the genre, which ought to count for something. Like number 9 on the all time list of great webcomics.

Lyric of the Day:

I didn't die and I ain't complainin'.
I ain't blamin' you.
I didn't know that the words you said to me
Meant more to me than they ever could you.
I didn't lie and I ain't sayin'
I told the whole truth.
I didn't know that this game we were playin'
Even had a set of rules.

We named our children after towns
That we've never been to.
And it's true that the clouds just hung around
Like black Cadillacs outside a funeral.
And we were laughing at the stars
While our feet clung tight to the ground.
So pleased with ourselves
For using so many verbs and nouns.

"Black Cadillacs"
-Modest Mouse

All Sorts Of Blue

2009-08-20T12:19:00.010+08:00

Fifty years ago this week, the greatest jazz album of all time, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, was released. How do I know it was the greatest album of all time? Because everyone says it was. For an example, read this tribute from Slate, which should allay any nagging doubts.

As I celebrated in an earlier post, everything has been listified. What's the best movie of all time? Citizen Kane. The Best Album? Sgt. Pepper's. Who's the sexiest man alive? Hugh Jackman.

These lists are great. They avoid us having to wonder about our favorites. They demystify the seemingly unknowable. They categorize the infinite choices we are faced with everyday, and fit them into easily digested summaries. Even God agrees.

Unfortunately, not everything has been organized into a list for us. Dance With Sunflowers pledges to do its best to rectify that problem. In a continuing series of things we like, organized in the order we like them, here are the greatest webcomics on the web today.

(How do you know they are the best? Because we have read every single webcomic. That's how.)

Because of the awesomeness of these comics, to try and cram everything into one blog would fail to do them justice. So welcome to Webcomics Week at Dance With Sunflowers.

And happy anniversary Miles.

Conqueror Of The Old Northwest

2009-08-11T22:30:00.006+08:00

Well, it has finally happened. The email responses to Dance With Sunflowers have become so voluminous, I can no longer keep up. So I have decided to start a new feature of my blog where I answer reader questions.

Let's call it the Weekly Mail Blog.

Email #1

Dear Doc,

Where have you been? You use to post several times a week. But it's been months since your last post. What's going on?

Missing you,
Holly Graham
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Dear HG,

As much as I like blogging every day, there are other things I like just as much, like trips to the dentist or sentry duty. If I blog too often, I will be neglecting these other worthwhile pursuits, and I could end up as the next Wil Wheaton.

But rest assured that I will keep blogging as much as I can, when I am not busy doing other things I enjoy more.

The Good Doctor
_______

Email #2

Dear Doc,

I have been reading your blog, and I've been thinking, "Hey, it can't be that hard. I should start a blog of my own."

Any advice for a first time blogger? Is it even possible for a guy to start blogging without the backing of a huge corporation and unlimited resources?

Aggressively opinionated,
Roger Matthews
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Dear RM,

I'm sorry to say that most blogging sites require a master's degree in one of the hard sciences and three letters of reference from people that don't actually know you but will vouch for your forthrightness. As if that weren't enough, you must also show proof of certificate from one of three fully accredited etiquette and good manners training programs.

Fortunately, several of the top universities now feature major opportunities in microcommunications. Early figures indicate 27% of graduates are able to secure at least part time blogging employment within the first six months.

The Good Doctor
_______

Email #3

Dear Doc,

Who's your favorite historical figure?

Antiquated,
Jonas Abraham
Bucksport, Maine

Dear JA,

Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and printer, satirist, political theorist, politician, scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman, soldier, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and first fire department in Pennsylvania. He was an early proponent of colonial unity, and as a political writer and activist he supported the idea of an American nation. As a diplomat during the American Revolution he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence of the United States possible.

Franklin is credited as being foundational to the roots of American values and character, a marriage of the practical and democratic Puritan values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of Henry Steele Commager, "In Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin, "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."

Franklin became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy, writing and publishing Poor Richard's Almanack and The Pennsylvania Gazette. Franklin was interested in science and technology, and gained international renown for his famous experiments. He played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin & Marshall College and was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.

His colorful life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, has seen Franklin honored on coinage and money; warships; the names of many towns, counties, educational institutions, namesakes, and companies; and more than two centuries after his death, countless cultural references.

And to answer you question, my favorite historical figure is George Rogers Clark.

The Good Doctor

Lyric of the Day:

Everything alive must die
Every building built to the sky will fall
Don't try to tell me my
Everlasting love is a lie

Everlasting everything
Oh nothing could mean anything at all

Every wave that hits the shore
Every book that I adore
Gone like a circus, gone like a troubadour
Everlasting love for ever more

Oh I know this might sound sad
But everything goes both good and the bad
It all adds up and you should be glad
Everlasting love is all you have

Everlasting Everything
-Wilco

In The Sequel, They Have To Rescue Barbie

2009-08-09T12:54:00.008+08:00

Though it is possible it could have been even more magnificent with a bit of attention paid to the script and special effects, the new G.I. Joe movie definitely achieved an acceptable level of magnificence. Dennis Quaid's ham-fisted performance notwithstanding--I found myself googling "Dennis Quaid recent stroke victim" to find out what was wrong with him--the Joe movie far exceeded even my prodigal expectations.

You have Zartan, played by the Mummy. You have Destro. You have the Baroness, and Scarlett and Heavy Duty. Best of all, you have Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow, battling it out every time they lay eyes on one another, starting at age 10. Despite all the grumbling from critics (seriously, what were you expecting? The characters are based on a line of Hasbro action figures?) what you really have is a $170 million child's fantasy translated to the big screen. I mean, isn't this exactly what we were imagining when we were playing with our G.I. Joe's as kids.

In fact, the only real disappointment for me was the one part of the movie I expected to be infallible. Cobra Commander, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, should have been the highlight. Instead, from the big reveal on his mask at the end (how could you mess this up?) to his lackluster, under the top acting, the ultimate megalomaniac came off as little more than a petty thug. Dr. Horrible makes a better super villain.

Here's hoping in the sequel, they ramp up the awesome with Cobra Commander. Or better yet, how about a prequel with nothing but Snake Eyes vs. Storm Shadow. With a cameo from Shipwreck thrown in.

We All Share A Measure Of Wretchedness

2009-06-09T11:28:00.006+08:00

In school, I rarely enjoyed being forced to read long, boring novels from the distant past. Even worse was being told what to think about them. Thus, I never did well in English class.

One of my few favorites was The Iliad. The character who always stood out the most was Achilles. Of course, the other name for The Iliad is "The Wrath of Achilles," which summarizes nicely what drew me to the story. The world's greatest hero, feeling wronged, refuses to fight and would rather bring doom down on everyone around him than to succumb to injustice. It spoke directly to my anti-authoritarian sentiments. I would rather fail than let someone force me to read something that did not appeal to me. How dare they waste my genius?

Of course, in the end, Achilles realizes the price for fighting his fate is too high. His best friend is slaughtered by Hector, Achilles laments his pride and vows revenge, and he rejoins the war knowing that he will die soon after Hector.

I just finished rereading The Iliad. I picked it up again after reading "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" by Keats:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific--and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise--
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

I wanted to see what Keats saw. I wanted to be dazzled, because how often are we really dazzled by a work of literature.

As it turns out, the 400 year old translation is a hard read. It uses so many archaic words, and the constraints of writing in meter make for convoluted sentences. It took me more than six months to get through the 400 pages. I wished I had picked up a more modern prose translation instead.

But for all the difficulties, it was worth it in the end. The narrative is just as fascinating and powerful as an adult as it was as a teenager. But this time, the aspect of the story I was most drawn too was not Achilles and his anger, but instead the final book, when Priam comes to beg Achilles to release his son Hector's corpse for a proper burial.

With the help of the God Hermes, Priam sneaks into Achilles tent at night, and reminds the young warrior of his own father. He says:

Achilles, fear the gods,
Pity an old man, like thy sire, different in only this,
That I am wretcheder, and bear that weight of miseries
That never man did, my curs'd lips enforc'd to kiss that hand
That slew my children.

Achilles relents, as he realizes an important truth. All men are destined to suffer a mix of fortune and misfortune. Both Priam and Peleus, the father of Achilles, enjoyed long fruitful lives, only to see their sons stricken down in their youth. He learns that the enemies he has been fighting for ten long years are no different from himself. His anger assuaged, Achilles finds respect for the king of the Trojans, and grants him 12 days to proffer the funeral rites for Hector, before resuming the war.

I find a measure of comfort and affirmation about humanity to find that a lesson taught 2500 years ago can still be so applicable in today's world.

Voice Of The Small Town

2009-05-14T14:53:00.009+08:00

There's a culture war taking place in America. Obama's election exemplified the two sides. I am not talking about black versus white, or the majority against the various minorities and immigrants that populate our country. In the war I am talking about, you have on one side the liberal, the urbane, the well educated. On the other, you have the conservative, the religious and rural, the working class. If you are the former, and in your 20's or 30's, you probably listen to bands like Radiohead and Beck. You listen to Johnny Cash not because he was a great, prolific country star since the 60's, but because he did a chilling version of a Nine Inch Nails song. You do not listen to John Mellencamp, Cougar in his name or otherwise.

You should.

In an unfortunate, though predictable, apotheosis to his remarkably enduring career, Mellencamp will probably be best remembered as the guy singing in that Chevy commercial. A great piece of advertising for Chevy trucks, but an unflattering testimonial for someone that should be remembered not only as one of our generation's greatest songwriters, but also as a cultural pioneer. There is a lot more to John Mellancamp, both lyrically and politically, than "Little Pink Houses."

Mellencamp is most familiar for his heartland rock anthems, songs like "Jack and Diane," "Authority Song," and "Hurts So Good." His smalltown roots--he was born in Seymour, Indiana--and his celebration of lives lived on farms, next to churches, and outside the Tastee Freeze mark him as something of a hick. Many consider him a primary listening choice for white trash, perhaps at best a poor man's Bruce Springstein.

To argue differently, to point out that he is an accomplished singer songwriter in the tradition of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and Willie Nelson, to proffer the numerous examples of his later work that eschew commercial hits for a more personal and experimental sound, or to suggest the simple act of surviving the musical graveyard that was the 80's marks him as having at least some measure of worth may all be besides the point. Appreciating music is obviously a personal experience. We like what we like.

But whether or not you like his music, Mellencamp should be celebrated for more than just his songs. Because of the success of "Our Country", and his association with rural America, because of his celebration of the working class, and the rural farmer, it would be easy to dismiss Mellencamp in the same class as, say, Lynard Skynard or Def Leppard. There are some very significant reasons why he should not be.

First, his 1987 music video for Cherry Bomb, off the album "The Lonesome Jubilee," was the first music video to feature an interracial couple on screen together.* Since then, Mellencamp's videos have regularly been an interracial affair, and despite facing criticism from his record company and receiving hate mail and death threats, he has persevered in his commitment to addressing racial issues.

In another vein, ever since the 1985 album "Scarecrow," Mellencamp has been a vocal advocate for the family farmer. Along with Neil Young and Willie Nelson, Mellencamp is a founding member of the FarmAid series of concerts, an annual event to raise money and awareness for small family farms across the country. To date, the organization has raised over 33 million dollars for the cause.

Growing up in Indiana, albeit the somewhat metropolitan Indianapolis, I was predisposed to being a John Mellencamp fan. While attending a tiny college in the South of the state, I went to school with a number of classmates from small towns. My freshman year roommate was from Paris, Indiana, and a huge Mellencamp fan. One of my fraternity brothers was from Seymour, and would have fit perfectly in one of his songs, a fun loving drinker that was more liable to wind up in a bar fight than actually graduating. One of my best friends grew up on a pig farm in Newcastle.

It might seem like my college experience was unrefined, that it was overly colloquial, but I view it differently. It was one of my first opportunities to really experience a different reality, to be immersed in an environment with people from disparate backgrounds and world views. Its a perspective of which I think many urbanites have little practical understanding.

Listening to John Mellencamp reminds me that it is never wise to fall prey to stereotypes, that America, that our whole world in fact, brings together a myriad of viewpoints and experiences. We should celebrate life at its best and most beautiful, and at its worst. Life can be hard and cruel and unfair, but we soldier on the best we can because we are human.

And sometimes its okay to like a song even if it is in a car commercial.

*I am not one hundred percent that it was the first, but I have a strong recollection of that being the case when "Cherry Bomb" came out. I tried to find confirmation online, but could find no information either way

Lyric Of The Day:

Bobby Doll and Big Jim Picato
Call me up every single day
They don't work and they don't want to
Come on down to some damn cafe

Bobby Doll tells me
Live in the moment
Don't get too far ahead-
Don't live in the past
I blink my eyes
And the moment is over
I guess another day
Has passed

But it's just another day
It's just another day
Watching girls on the street
Well, that alright with me
But it's just another day

Bobby Doll and Big Jim Picato
Always there with their free advice
They've got pearl handled pistols
Under their vests
They want me to go out drinking
With them tonight

"Just Another Day"
-John Mellencamp

The First Ever YouTube Challenge. I Lost

2009-01-09T22:36:00.007+08:00

You can only play so many games of Scrabulous, right? I mean, I'm usually bored after the first five or six words. What our generation needs is a new era of board games that fit with our socially networked, web 2.0, hyper-connected selves.

I played such a game with a friend earlier today. We came up with the rules together. Let's call it the YouTube challenge. Here's how you play:

You want to play over gchat. One person picks a video they really like that they think the other person hasn't seen, and sends them the link.

If the other person has never seen it, then the sender gets a point. If they have seen it, then it's minus a point. If the receiver likes the video, then they put the link in their status message. If any friends comment positively on the video, then that's another point for the sender.

Next, the receiver picks out a response. It might be related to the video they just received, or it might be completely different.

The game then proceeds back and forth. So you score points every time you send a video that the other person hasn't seen, and more points every time that video elicits comments from the receiver's friends. Bonus points can be awarded if the video is so good you feel compelled to change your facebook message status.

An example is in order:

CC starts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0LtUX_6IXY

New video, 1 point
Comment from NM, "that's a great video", 1 point
Score: CC 2-Dr 0

Dr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwMj3PJDxuo

Previously viewed video, -1
Score: CC 2-Dr -1

CC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5MLNMgpywk

New Video, 1 point
Comment from NM, "you are way better at youtube than i am", 1 point
Score: CC 4-Dr -1

Dr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx1XIm6q4r4

New Video, 1 point
Score: CC 4-Dr 0

CC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0h-RhyopUmc

New Video, 1 point
Score CC 5-Dr 0

Dr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_RpbaUU7NI

New Video, 1 point
A change of Facebook status due to awesomeness, 1 Bonus point
Score: CC 5-Dr 2

CC: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpmvFK02jY8

New Video, 1 point
Score: CC 6-Dr 2

Dr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHF06w-6xPk

New Video, 1 point
Final Score: CC 6-Dr 3

And that's how you play the game. The best part is that you got to share your favorite YouTube videos with your friends. Every one is a winner. Now that's a game for the 21st century.

Lyric of the Day:

I'd rather dance with you than talk with you
So why don't we just move into the other room
There's space for us to shake, and hey, I like this tune

Even if I could hear what you said
I doubt my reply would be interesting for you to hear
Because I haven't read a single book in years
And the only film I saw, I didn't like it at all

The music's too loud and the noise from the crowd
Increases the chance of misinterpretation
So let your hips do the talking

"I'd Rather Dance With You"
-Kings Of Convenience

Time Waits For No Woman

2009-01-07T10:26:00.007+08:00

There are two schools of thought about the nature of time traveling. First, there is the Back to the Future school. Proponents of this type of time traveling believe that you must constantly guard against changing the present by meddling in the past. Of equal importance, under no circumstances must you ever allow your past and future selves to meet. The consequences will be dire.

The second school of thought is explored in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. In this form of time travel, events have already been played out. If you want to get out of jail, sometime in the future, you can time travel to the past, and steal your dad's keys and leave them in a convenient location so they will be accessible at the appropriate time and place. And since the keys are there when you need them, you need not worry about remembering to put them there in the future. You already know that you have put them there. And, of course, meeting your future self is all in good fun.

The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, definitively falls into the latter category. It tells the love story of Henry and Clare. He is a time traveler, but rather then having a time machine at his disposal, he has a genetic disorder beyond his control, and he pops in and out of time at random. She meets him when she is six, and she grows up falling in love with him during his numerous visits. The novel is a tightly woven patchwork of moments, as Henry passes into and out of Clare's life, and his own past and future. As he is constantly running into different versions of himself, Henry soon learns that his future has already been written, and there is nothing he can do to change it.

Fate is an important theme. Clare is likened to a sailor or soldier's wife, a modern day Penelope, always waiting for her husband and unable to control his comings and goings. She is an educated, talented, independent minded woman, but she is faced with the same predicament shared by women through out history, forced to watch passively as events are shaped by forces beyond her control. Except in this case, Henry is equally helpless. He has no control of his time traveling. It is difficult to know who has the harder time dealing with the unpredictability. Henry is forever scared of popping out at the wrong time, never knows where he will land, and is constantly forced to steal clothes and food and flee the police or whatever over testesteroned bully takes offense at a stark naked man running around the streets of Chicago.

What Clare most struggles with, and Harry as well, is the knowledge that their fate has already been determined. If they know their own future, and are helpless to change it, do they really have free will. I can imagine in many ways their experience is similar to what it is like for a women or minority in our society, where the circumstances of your birth limit your options from the start.

Eventually Clare embraces her fate. Her love for Henry outweighs her lack of free will:

Today is not much different from all the other days. I get up at dawn, put on slacks and a sweater, brush my hair, make toast, and tea, and sit looking at the lake, wondering if he will come today. It's not much different from the many other times he was gone, and I waited, except that this time I have instructions: this time I know Henry will come, eventually. I sometimes wonder if this readiness, the expectation, prevents the miracle from happening. But I have no choice. He is coming, and I am here.

I would not recommend reading The Time Traveler's Wife if you consider yourself a cynical person. I think Niffenegger is very sincere and earnest in her story telling. This is no straightforward story mind you. It is complexly woven, with a lot of frank and graphic situations like miscarriages and physical abuse, and does not have a traditionally happy ending. But these situations could verge on the edge of sentimentality for some. For me, it is real. This love is real love. It is imperfect love, it is love fraught with peril, with the fear of loss and the threat of being misunderstood. But it is deep and full and strong and Henry and Clare fight for each other and even if there is something of the melodramatic in their story, a heightened reality that verges on fantasy, I can relate to it. I am a sucker for sincerity every time, especially when it is combined with a compelling story.

Lyric of the Day:

Hear silver trumpets will trill
in the Arabic streets of Seville
Oranges roll in the gutter
And you pick them up
And pull back the skin
To the red fruit within

But the flavour is...Tart
And the flavour is...Tart

Is it something you crave
And you say that you
only feel bitterness
When you know it's a lie, lie, lie, lie, lie, lie

Tart
-Elvis Costello

Saigon Noel

2009-01-05T23:16:00.007+08:00

So Dance With Sunflowers has been on hiatus while I was traveling in Vietnam. In a follow up to my earlier post about Christmas in Beijing, I discovered that the Vietnamese are even crazier about celebrating the holidays. Decorations were everywhere.

Now that I'm back, I promise more regular postings, and my New Year's resolution is to make sure that every time I post I have something interesting to write about.

But in the meantime, if you want a glimpse of Vietnam, have a look at my photos from the trip.

Happy 2009!

Lyric of the Day:

Those evil-natured robots
they're programmed to destroy us
she's gotta be strong to fight them
so she's taking lots of vitamins

Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt 1
-The Flaming Lips

Santa On Saxamaphone

2008-12-23T10:44:00.007+08:00

Christmas and the surreal go hand in hand when living in Beijing. Yesterday I was greeted by the following scene in my office lobby: A Chinese Santa Claus, skinnier than Zhang Zi Yi after a three week therapeutic fast in Phuket, playing Christmas songs on his saxophone, accompanied by a circa 1983 boom box.

Christmas in China has become an industry of its own. When I moved to Beijing in 2000, Christmas was in fact a year round event, although perhaps unwittingly. It was not uncommon to see random holiday decorations plastering the walls of the kind of cheap, neighborhood eateries that I preferred to frequent. People did not necessarily realize what these Christmas angels and St. Nicks represented, they just liked the way they looked.

Fast forward a few years, and I began noticing that Christmas was becoming popular among Chinese youth, especially students and office workers. I asked a few people why Christmas was so popular and the most common answer was that Chinese people need an excuse to spend money.

The truth is, anything Western is increasing in popularity. I have never been really big on Christmas myself as an adult, finding it a little too commercial and hypocritical for my taste. But for some reason, seeing Christmas celebrated in China has always perturbed me. It seemed like some kind of violation of a sacrosanct Western tradition. At least in Korea, where they are even more Christmas crazy, a large percentage of the population is Christian.

The lowpoint for me came a couple years ago, while eating at my favorite Buddhist restaurant. The decorations were in full affect, including a Christmas tree and Santa hats. Severely annoyed, I asked why a Buddhist establishment would be celebrating a Christian holiday. The staff informed me they were not celebrating it as a Christian holiday, but as a secular one. This response miffed me even more, since then all you have left is a commercial holiday based around consumption and consumerism. Oh, the irony!

But I have come to accept Christmas in China. I have decided if it makes people happy, why should I complain. It really is no different than me celebrating Spring Festival or Cinco de Mayo. These are not my holidays, but I enjoy having an excuse to party. And any holiday that involves a Chinese Santa Claus on Sax can't be all bad. So Merry Christmas everyone!

Next stop Vietnam!

Lyric Of The Day:

Could I write a requiem for you when you're dead?
'She had the moves, she had the speed, it went to her head'
She never needed anyone to get her round the track
But when she's on her back
She had the knowledge
To get her into college
But when she's on her back
She had the knowledge
To get her what she wanted

'The Stars Of Track & Field'
-Belle And Sebastian

A Little Karma Goes A Long Way

2008-12-21T15:10:00.002+08:00

I am relatively new to the blogosphere, having just recently started writing Dance With Sunflowers. I have begun following some personal blogs and am showing a new interest in reading the blogs and comments on large sites such as the NYTimes and Treehugger. I have been struck by the amount of negativity and vitriol that is being spewed on these sites. Many people seem more interested in insults and arguments then participating in any kind of discussion. Even when some people are trying to be constructive or share thoughtful opinions, their voices are often drowned out under a deluge of epithets and unwarranted attacks.

Perhaps the most inexplicable situation I have come across was how on one environmental forum--I am unable to recollect which one--the discussion was dominated by one individual. He posted to every thread, almost always negatively, and was constantly denigrating people, shooting down any idea he disagreed with, and spouting off a list of scientific 'research' to back up his claims. It made it impossible to have any kind of reasoned discussion on a topic, because people were always getting into an argument with him and responding to his personal attacks. And this was from an ardent environmental supporter. I am sure you have all come across the spittle and venom coming from the sports and politics blogs. But it really seems there is no place on the internet you can find respite from such antipathy. I have even received a couple of anonymous insults on my blog, which hardly receives any visitors at all.

I just do not understand where all this hate is coming from.

Allow me to share a story with you. Back when I was in grad school in Washington, DC, I was walking onto campus when I saw someone struggling to push his stalled car off the main road into a parking lot. I was walking past, thinking to myself "Sucks to be him" when I had a sudden impulse that I should stop and help him. So I ran over, and helped him push the car around the corner to a spot where it would be out of the way. He offered me his thanks, I said "No problem," and headed off to class. It certainly was not a big deal, yet that moment stuck in my mind, and really got me thinking.

My stopping for two minutes to help this guy meant a hell of a lot more to him than it cost me. It probably helped, at least a little bit, to put him in a better mood. If he ever encounters someone who needs help, he will be more likely to help out himself. And from that experience, I have realized that all our actions are connected. When you are nice to someone, you create a good feeling. You help put that person into a better mood, meaning they are more likely to be nice to others, who will in turn be kinder as well. One good action thus will live forever. In the same way, the negative energy you create will reverberate and endure forever as well. Before this experience, I had never thought too much about the concept of Karma, but now I understand it. It is not about every good action being revisited upon you in an equivalent manner, but it is about the infinite life span of our actions. The more positive energy you create, the more likely it is to return to you in some form at some time.

I am not sharing this story to be mystical, and I am certainly not trying to applaud myself. I try myself to be a good person and to spread good will, but I am often thwarted by my own personality. I can be quick to respond with anger or resentment to someone who lashes out at me. It is not difficult to rope me into an argument. I often fail to be the kind of person I would like to be.

But this brings me back to the blogosphere. I always try to communicate constructively and politely in my comments. Especially to strangers and especially when I am being critical of someone's point of view. I find it much easier to restrain myself and behave civilly, because I have the time to consider my responses and can temper my remarks with a judicial waiting period before clicking post. And yet what I am finding is people are using the anonymity of online communication to vent their anger and resentment in a naked and unbridled way they would never consider acceptable in their personal interactions.

So I urge any of you reading this, think about what you say and how you say it before sharing your opinions. Insults, rants, and personal attacks will not sway anyone to your side. And life does not always need to be about winning an argument or proving you know more than someone else. When you attack someone, it will only serve to sour their mood, and make them more likely to behave negatively towards others. So every time you behave with hostility, you are making our world a little more negative, a little more unfriendly.

Think before you post! Let's all work together to make the blogosphere a little more congenial and inviting for everyone.

Lyric of the Day:

Instant karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you're gonna be dead
What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin' to do
It's up to you, yeah you

"Instant Karma"
-John Lennon

Vegan Time Traveling

2008-12-20T21:56:00.008+08:00

I was having a discussion with a friend of mine recently, and as discussions often do, the subject turned to time travel. The following ethical dilemma was posited: If you were to travel in time, as a vegan would you be prohibited from eating meat in your past time, prior to when you first became a vegan?

It is natural as a vegan to want to travel into the future, to a time when our more enlightened society has forever transitioned to a meat and dairy free existence.

But let's assume I use my time machine to travel to 1994. I was not a vegan then, not even a vegetarian. We used to mock a friend of ours who had become a vegetarian to lose weight and replaced meat in his diet with Doritos and Macaroni and Cheese. When I reenter 1994, will I be governed by my current world view, or my past world view?

Of course eating meat in the past will affect our present, in the same way our dietary choices today will affect our future. That is the whole reason I became a vegan after all. But which present will be affected, our current present, or an alternative reality present that is spawned by my voyage into the past? Am I ethically bound as a vegan to think about all these separate realities? At the same time, what is the point of time traveling at all if you are unable to eat bacon when you get there?

One of the rare examples of a question of physics and morality left unanswered by Bill And Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Norwegian Wood came up on random play as I was writing this, suggesting that either life is not random, or I spent a long time to finish this review

2008-12-19T13:39:00.012+08:00

I just finished reading Norwegian Wood, by Haruki Murakami. It is not an easy book to encapsulate, nor to recommend. It is at times depressing, and at other times quite graphic.

The story revolves around Toru Watanabe, whose best friend committed suicide while they were both 17 years old. A deathly pallor hangs over everything, and each character seems to confront reality in his or her own unique way. Just like Kundera's Immortality presents a group of characters struggling with their identity in the face of their own mortality, Norwegian Wood likewise delves into the meaning of self when faced with life in a meaningless void. The novel is gripping in the way it portrays these tortured individuals who are never entirely comfortable in their own realities, and is certainly thought provoking, but it is not an easy read.

Sanity is an issue for several of the characters. Two have been voluntarily admitted to a kind of psychiatric retreat, and they repeatedly say the only difference between the people inside and the people outside is that the people inside know that they are crazy. Indeed, Toru's friends on the outside are just as peculiar and maladjusted to society as his friends inside, maybe even more so. Toru himself feels isolated, and has few companions at his university, and struggles with the direction his life should take. He battles deep bouts of depression, and often retreats into complete solitude. He finds no comfort in the people around him, who are continually exposed as hypocrites. The one friend he regularly spends time with has overcome hypocrisy by living live as selfishly as he can, a kind of Nietzschean superman who feels nothing but contempt for most of the people around him, and in the end is revealed to have a pointless, empty life.

The ending offers little in the way of hope either. Life is lived until death, and their is no magical plan for happiness. The only sanctuary may be to find love, but love is fleeting and tortuous and convuluted and our own need to be wanted and understood too often gets in the way of our ability to return that love.

Gripping the reciever, I raised my head and turned to see what lay beyond the phone box. Where was I now? I had no idea. No idea at all. Where was this place? All that flashed into my eyes were the countless shapes of people walking by to nowhere. Again and again I called out for Midori from the dead centre of this place that was no place.

It is easy to get lost when we have no idea where we are or what direction we are headed, and when the road map presented to us directs us to keep moving forward but gives us no answer as to why we should go there or what to expect when we arrive. But for Toru, and all the characters in Norwegian Wood, that is the type of journey they are on. They can only hope they have a nice cold cucumber to enjoy along the way.

The Best Example You Will Ever Find Of The Phantom Menace Syndrome Apart From The Phantom Menace Itself

2008-12-17T15:52:00.012+08:00

I would like to use this space today to heartily recommend that you begin reading The Wheel Of Time series of books, by Robert Jordan. I would like to say that they are among the greatest books, of any genre, that I have ever read. I would like to tell you that if you enjoyed Harry Potter, than you will be even more enamored by this complex fantasy epic.

I came across the first book of the series, The Eye of the World, while I was in high school. I had always loved reading, loved stories, and more than once had tried my hand at writing a novel of my own. But it was after The Eye of the World that I first seriously entertained thoughts of becoming a writer.

So I would like nothing more than to urge you to toss whatever drivel you are reading right now, whether it be Shakespeare, Joyce, or Hemingway (or this blog), and grab a book that is truly compelling.

Unfortunately I cannot. The first four or five books in this series became a part of my life in the same way your favorite cousins from Pennsylvania who you only see twice a year are a part of your life, the same way your winter boots are a part of your life. You wish you could play with them everyday forever, but you always have to say goodbye and wait until next time. That is how it was with these books. I would savor each new volume. After plowing through the first few hundred pages in two nights, I would force myself to slow down, because I knew it would be at least another year before a new one came out. And once I finished, a long slow wait would begin. Each time, when the next volume was released, I would read through the whole series from the beginning so I was fully primed for the latest one.

But gradually, things began to fall apart. Book five was not quite as good as book four. Book six was undeniably sub-par. By book seven, I approached each new book with an increasing sense of hope mixed with dread. Would this book be better than the last, or would it be even worse? By books nine and ten, the experience of reading these stories had become almost tortuous, all the worse because I could not put them down, just like you could never turn away from a loved one suffering from a debilitating disease.

These characters had become a part of my life, and I had no choice but to see them all the way through no matter what the outcome. It was so maddening. What had gone wrong? What had happened to Robert Jordan, the best fantasy writer since Tolkien? What were his editor's thinking. The last two or three books were so bad, they reminded me of my own nascent attempts to write novels in high school and college. It was nonsense. It was preposterous that someone had thought to publish someone's first draft and package it as a finished novel.

As the years went by, the pace of their release slowed down. I read book eleven probably four years ago. That's right, book eleven! Jordan began releasing several prequels in the meantime, none of which I have read. I was only interested in finishing the main series, and hoped that through some miracle the story would be redeemed before the end. At one time, he had been a masterful writer. And I was not alone in this belief. Anyone I ever encountered who had read these books loved them just as enthusiastically. I had never heard a bad word. At least until book six.

I found out today that Robert Jordan died last year. I had been wondering when to expect the next book, and did a google search, and discovered the bad news. He had apparently been suffering from a terminal form of heart disease for some time.

My immediate response was to wonder if this disease could be part of the reason why the series had so tragically deteriorated. I have no answer, and I am not sure it matters. According to his publisher, another author has been commissioned to finish the series, using the notes and manuscript that Jordan left behind. Book twelve was always intended to be the final book.

I hope that the final book will approach the quality of the first several. But even if it does, it cannot repair the damage caused by the second half of the series. And if the final book is a triumph, it will always be bitter sweet for fans of the series, since the series's rejuvenation could only come about after Jordan's death.

So I would like to be able to recommend that you read The Eye of the World, but I cannot. Because once you start, you will not be able to stop. You will become deeply entranced with a whole new world, a rich epic of marvelous adventure and powerful characters. And then you will become disappointed and frustrated as the story declines, to the point that you will probably wish you never started in the first place.

What a tragedy.

Betrayal Is A Thorny Crown

2008-12-14T16:11:00.007+08:00

Prior evidence to the contrary, I have never really had a passion for poetry. I like the romantic poets, especially Keats, but even with them I am only attracted to a few of their most famous works. The bulk of their poems I find inaccessible. When I write my own poetry, it is more as an exercise in language than any deep attachment to the process.

What I do enjoy are epic poems by Homer and Dante and Milton, as well as the verse of Shakespeare's plays. Even when the language is dense and dated, if the writing is driven by character or story, that makes all the difference for me.

Maybe I have not been looking in the right place, but modern poetry has never drawn much interest from me. I am open to suggestions if anyone has some poetry they especially want to share with me. Until now, though, I have been entirely underwhelmed by even the most famous poets of the last century.

Except for songwriters. My favorite poetry all comes from music. Perhaps it is an unfair advantage, because being able to combine lyrics with music obviously provides for more of an emotional impact. Someone like Michael Stipe or Kurt Cobain can write nonsensical, even unintelligible, lyrics, but you marry it to the right tune, and you get magic. It will bore its way into your soul.

Yet somehow I believe that with the best songwriters--Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Liz Phair--their lyrics transcend the music and work just as well by themselves. All my favorite songs are based on the words much more than the music.

Just recently, I have become deeply entranced by the music of Jenny Lewis. She is the lead singer for Rilo Kiley, but she has also put out a couple solo albums. She's a supreme story teller, and able to capture an emotion with just a few lines. Her song Rabbit Furcoat feels like a four minute feature length movie.

From the song "Melt Your Heart":

When you're kissing someone who's too much like you
It's like kissing on a mirror
When you're sleeping with someone who doesn't get you
You're gonna hate yourself in the morning

It's bound to melt your heart
One way or another
It's bound to melt your heart
For good or for bad
It's like a valentine
From your mother
It's bound to melt your heart

From the song "The Absence Of God":

And you're not happy but you're funny and I'm tripping over my joy
But I just keep on getting up again
We could be daytime drunks if we wanted
We'd never get anything done that way baby
And we'd still be ruled by our dueling perspectives
And I'm not my perspective
Or the lies I'll tell you every time

From the song "You Are What You Love":

I'm fraudulent, a thief at best
A coward who paints a bullshit canvas
Things that will never happen to me
But at arms length, it's Tim who said
I'm good at it, I've mastered it
Avoiding, avoiding everything

And from what I am convinced is the happiest break up song of all time, "Breakin' Up":

It's not as if New York City
burnt down to the ground
once you drove away
It's not as if the sun won't shine
when clouds up above
wash the blues away

The truth is, I do not know that much about Rilo Kiley and Jenny Lewis, other than how fantastic their music is. I do know that other members of Rilo Kiley have their own side project called the Elected, so perhaps Jenny Lewis is not responsible for all the lyrics. But I am not going to take the time to look up all the liner notes myself. I will instead just recommend all of you to take a listen for yourselves. Just make sure you pay attention to the lyrics.

Lyric of the Day:

Betrayal is a thorny crown
you wear it well
just like a king
revenge is the saddest thing
honey, i'm afraid to say
you deserve everything

-Breakin' Up
Rilo Kiley

The Most Preposterous Pleasurable Pop

2008-12-12T23:25:00.005+08:00

You may have noticed that people, especially the media, love lists. I certainly have. So in a blatant attempt to drive more readers to my blog, I have come up with my own version of a Top 10 list.

What follow are the 8 greatest TV creations ever conceived. These shows are so deliciously bad, only a true connoisseur of entertainment can even begin to appreciate them.

#8 Boy Meets World:

I think one key to the kind of uber entertainment that cannot fail but become a cultural phenomenon is that there must be little or no sense of reality. The jokes are so bad, the acting so hackneyed, the story lines so shameless in their attempt to manipulate that no one would ever think to themselves "Yes, this is exactly what it's like to be a teenager." But at the same time, everything they do must be one hundred percent sincere. Everyone involved thinks they are making a relevant, touching, humorous work of art. Put all these ingredients together, and you end up with Boy Meets World. Best episode: Any one with Corey and Topenga

#7 Land of the Lost:

A show sophisticated enough that Will Ferrell himself is doing the remake, Land of the Lost realized that there was something that people would love even more than dinosaurs, aliens and cavemen. All three of them together. Thanks to a dimensional portal, Rick Marshall and his children stumble into the land of the Sleestak, where danger lurks around every corner and nothing can save you from the seventies fashion menace. Best Episode: The first one with Dopey the Dinosaur.

6. Sabrina The Teenage Witch:

A family of witches. A sarcastic cat. A 1960's television show transposed onto a teen sitcom. Is it any wonder this show ran for seven years? Mixing the fantasy of Harry Potter with the humor of TGIF, Sabrina showed that even for a witch, when you are a teenager, the most important thing is fitting in. Best episode: The one with Britney

#5 Saved By The Bell: The College Years:

No teen show has ever transitioned more smoothly into college. Zack and AC were growing up, but the show retained the same sensibility that made the original such a classic. Even with the new characters to breathe some freshness into the story lines, the heart of the show was as always the relationship between Zack and Kelly. Best Episode: Their marriage in the final TV movie brought closure to one of the best TV love affairs of all time.

#4 Charles In Charge:

The show went through several transformations. The Pembroke family only lasted one season, as did Charles' girlfriend, Gwendolyn Pierce. The second season brought the Powells and Charles' mom. But the most reliable change was that as we grew older, Buddy Lambeck kept growing dumber. And there can be no argument that 'Charles In Charge' is the best TV theme song of all time. Favorite episode: The one with Meg Ryan

#3 Small Wonder:

Stellar acting, gee whiz special effects, and cutting edge scripting combined in one definitive moment in the 80's, resulting in Small Wonder. Even today, you will watch Vicki the Robot and stare in disbelief as you contemplate how something so tremendous could ever have gotten made. Best Episode: The one with Vanessa, the evil robot version of Vicki

#2 Saved By The Bell:

The show started as Good Morning, Miss Bliss, was set in Indianapolis, and included Mr. Belding, Zack Morris, Screech Powers, and Lisa Turtle. Year two saw the whole school move to Bayside High School and witnessed AC Slater, Kelly Kapowski, and Jessie Spano join the cast. In that moment, television history was made. Best Episode: Zack Attack

#1: Days Of Our Lives:

Eternally frustrating, as almost nothing ever happens in any given episode, the greatest television show of all time provides viewers with the ultimate luxury. You can miss weeks, months or even years of episodes in a row, and yet pick up the action again after 15 minutes. Any one who doubts the magnificence of Days need be reminded of only one thing: Marlena was possessed by the devil, until John Black saved her by performing an exorcist. The best part, after 40 years, it is still on the air. Favorite Episodes: The year when Marlena was possessed by the devil.

Lyric of the Day:

It's my gradual descent
Into a life I never meant
It's the slow fade of love

"A Man-Me-Then Jim"
-Rilo Kiley

Alex The Talking Parrot

2008-12-09T14:45:00.005+08:00

I recently listened to a Fresh Air interview with Irene Pepperburg about her research with Alex, an African Grey Parrot. Over the course of 30 years, in similar fashion to Koko the gorilla, Pepperburg trained Alex to speak, the only difference being that parrots do not need to use sign language. By the time of his death in 2007, he had a vocabulary of 150 words, could identify colors and objects, and could use his vocabulary to respond to new concepts. You can watch some examples of his abilities on YouTube.

The story of Pepperburg and Alex reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago entitled, When Elephants Weep. It chronicles a great deal of research conducted over the years on animal behavior, looking specifically at instances that indicated that animals are capable of experiencing a wide variety of emotion. The chapters are divided according to emotion, beginning with those easiest to identify, such as fear and love. By the final chapter, the authors are providing much more controversial examples, such as bears taking the time to appreciate a sunset.

What struck me in both these stories was the resistance that these scientists have faced from the scientific community at large. Many scientists vehemently oppose this kind of research, even though it is based on scientific data and observation. Is it really any surprise that animals share the same kinds of emotional capacity has humans? Where do these scientists think human emotion evolved from? And how does the fact that animals are intelligent and capable of emotion somehow make me less human?

Of course, in light of this research, the efforts of activists to win government recognition for animal rights make even more sense.

Lyric of the Day

Our ideas held no water
But we used them like a dam

Missed The Boat
-Modest Mouse

If Only The Olympics Were Year Round

2008-12-07T17:05:00.007+08:00

The other day, I was going to my office and saw the elevator doors standing open. The arrow was pointed up, so I hurried to catch it. When I got in, I noticed two other men were also headed towards the elevator so before pushing the button for my floor I held open the door for them.

Upon getting in the elevator, one of them brushed past me so that he could hit the button for his floor, in the basement. This was no accident. He knew that if he hit the button first the elevator would go down instead of up, and so he pushed in front of me in order to do so. I could only shake my head and smile.

Anyone who lives in Beijing can attest to countless similar examples. What to Westerners are simple acts of courtesy--holding the elevator door, waiting in line, yielding to someone in front of you, waiting for someone to get off the bus before you push your way on--are rare events in the Chinese capital. If you cannot shrug off the many instances of public selfishness which you encounter on a daily basis, then your time in Beijing will be a long, slow countdown to bitterness that will only end with your grateful return to a civilized world.

But there is another aspect to China that is not as obvious to the visitor. Whereas in public, with perfect strangers, people may behave atrociously--it is a rare week I do not witness two strangers getting into a shouting match--among their friends, Chinese people are extremely generous and kind. A Chinese friend will consistently embarrass you with his or her generosity, and from our Western perspective it can actually be quite awkward. I cannot count how many kidneys I have had offered to me.

I once got run into by another biker while pedaling near Wang Fu Jing. Of course the woman saw a foreigner and tried to blame me. A crowd gathered and the police were called in, even though neither of us were hurt. I had to go to the local police station where no one spoke English. They called an off duty officer who could speak English, and he asked me several times if I had a friend that could speak Chinese that could come down to the station.

This was in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday. All my friends were at work. But he kept prodding me to call someone to come down to the station. Later, after observing the way Chinese people will drop everything to go and help a friend in need, I realized for this police officer, it was only natural that one of my friends would leave work to come help me translate with a traffic cop.

The lesson is you can never judge a foreign culture. Just acknowledge that it is different and try to understand it more deeply. It is no better or worse than your own culture. What seems normal to you, like taking a vacation on your own, may seem outrageous to a Chinese person. And what seems outrageous to us, like the left turn lane cutting off oncoming traffic as soon as the light turns green, may be an everyday occurrence in Beijing.

Genocide Porn

2008-12-06T15:50:00.006+08:00

I suspect that like me, many of you are regular readers of the New York Times. There op-ed columnists are among the most popular in the country. But amid all the partisanship and narcissism, the one writer that is consistently tackling serious world issues in an even-handed and illuminating manner is the one most likely to be ignored.

The National Geographic Adventure blog just ran a very interesting interview with Nicholas Kristof. One especially compelling exchange had to do with why perhaps Kristof slips by less noticed compared to his more bombastic peers like Friedman, Dowd, and Krugman:

NGA: Do you ever worry that you might overwhelm your readers or turn them off somehow? You know, maybe someone’s drinking his morning coffee, reading the paper, and he finally throws up his hands and says, Enough! I can’t handle Kristof this morning.

NK: Sometimes I worry about writing what might be called, frankly, "genocide porn." Darfur is so painful a topic, and so brutal, and so graphic that it becomes almost titillating. I worry about that when I pile on horrifying examples. But I don’t know any other way to get people to actually act—and maybe write a letter to the White House.

I always find his stories quite courageous. He consistently writes about issues that lack commercial appeal in a serious and informative manner, hoping to have an impact. He does not get involved in the red vs. blue back and forth that characterizes most of our public discourse, and which quite frankly is more likely to drive up readership and ratings. And he has not been afraid to insert himself into dangerous areas and complicated issues without having a preconceived notion of what kinds of answers he will find.

Go back and read about the way he dealt with the illicit sex trade in Cambodia and the young girls that have been exploited to gain an idea of what I am talking about. Here is his archive page on the New York Times.

The Fly

2008-12-06T11:57:00.003+08:00

Of all the things of I have ever written, this is what I am most proud of:

MY FLY AND I

Who am i
to kill a fly?
For though a fly
knows not it dies,
and to say goodbye
makes me sigh,
it would be a lie
for me to try
and separate that fly
from i.

Miming Doesn't Pay

2008-12-03T23:28:00.005+08:00

To show everyone what a brilliant teacher I am, here is an excerpt from an essay my student wrote. He is a Korean 8th grader. The assignment was to write a five paragraph essay on the best way to achieve success:

The last simple, but important element is that it is realistic. It should be something that the person has a chance of doing. Yes, that might sound brutal and discouraging, but a person from a farm has no or almost no chance of becoming a professor in Harvard University. Also, no one should ever dream of living a happy, rich and comfortable life being a street mime.

I take full credit for this display of genius. I hope everyone can learn from his sensible advice.

Waiting For The Raven King

2008-12-01T09:19:00.007+08:00

Susanna Clarke took over ten years to write her first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. So the five years I have been working on mine seem like a pittance.

It was time well spent. You can read any review and find the basic premise: England of the early nineteenth century watches as two magicians battle to revive the lost art of English magic. A cross between Jane Austen and The Lord of the Rings. A Harry Potter for adults.

It is much closer to Austen than to Tolkien. We open on the English countryside, at a meeting of the Yorkshire Society of Magicians. Except these are not practical magicians, but theoretical. The last English Magician who could actually do magic disappeared over 200 years ago. No, these magicians merely debate and squabble over what magic used to be like, back when the Raven King still ruled the north.

That is, until a gentleman from Hurtfew Abbey named Mr. Norrell, shocks all of England by proving himself capable of casting spells. He comes to London as the only practitioner of English magic, but soon gains a rival, the younger and more handsome Jonathan Strange. Together they alternately excite and horrify London society as they battle to return English magic to glory.

The comparisons to Austen are just. Two qualities especially stand out as exemplary. First, is the description. The houses, the clothes, the manners, the social hierarchy, all are explained in rich detail. A delight and a humor gives the entire affair a serious levity. The greatest effort is made to infuse a narrative history into everything. The absence of magic can only be fully appreciated when juxtaposed with all the memories of England's glorious past. An example:

Upon the instant, bells began to toll. Now these were nothing more than the bells of St. Michael-Le-Belfrey telling the half hour, but inside the Cathedral they had an odd, far-away sound like the bells of another country. It was not at all a cheerful sound. The gentleman of the York society knew very well how bells often went with magic and in particular with the magic of those unearthly beings, faeries; they knew how, in the old days, silvery bells would often sound just as some Englishman or Englishwoman of particular virtue or beauty was about to be stolen away by fairies to live in strange, ghostly lands for ever. Even the Raven King--who was not a fairy, but an Englishman--had a somewhat regrettable habit of abducting men and women and taking them to live with him in his castle in the Other Lands. Now, had you and I the power to seize by magic any human being that took our fancy and the power to keep that person by our side through all eternity, and had we all the world to chuse from, then I dare say our choice might fall on someone a little more captivating than a member of the Learned Society of York Magicians, but this comforting thought did not occur to the gentlemen inside York Cathedral and several of them began to wonder how angry Dr Foxcastle's letter had made Mr Norrell and they began to be seriously frightened.

Second, even more impressively, is the way she uses character to drive the story. These are characters in the fullest sense of the word, each with his or her own idiosyncrasies. The heroes are not trying to save the world. The villains are not out to do evil. An excessive pride afflicts every male character of a certain social standing, almost as an afterthought. Clarke wants us to know that to be a gentleman in the nineteenth century means being elevated to a place of privilege that has nothing to do with your character, and that elevated status makes it impossible to escape a heightened egotism. The main antagonist, the man with thistle down hair, is a fairy, and so his motivations and ideas about right and wrong are quite foreign to us, but nothing in his character is especially malicious. He cannot help his capriciousness any more than Mr. Norrell can help his infuriating pettiness or Strange his melancholy temper.

Casting his shadow over the whole affair is the Raven King, the long departed king of Northern England who was the greatest magician to ever live. Legends of his exploits abound. Clarke has created an entire mythos, a lattice of folk tales and memories and place names and even whole geographies that have been left behind by John Uskglass, and everyone lives in either fear or expectation of his return.

Like Don Quixote and other massive epics of their ilk, the story is filled with digressions, interludes and side stories, not to mention a copious amount of footnotes. Every character has a story to go with him or her, and every story is filled with character. She allows the story to meander over its first two thirds, as we become fully immersed in this world, and then drives it to a furious conclusion.

Every one of you should read this book.

She Walks In Beauty

2008-11-30T21:17:00.008+08:00

I am almost finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrel. At just over a thousand pages, it has provided a thoroughly enjoyable read over the last few months, interrupted by a Hong Kong adventure that left me stuck reading another book for a while. Look for a review in the next few days.

One of the characters in the book is Lord Byron, the famous poet, who in his time was as well known for his scandalous exploits as his writing. During his lifetime, he won fame throughout Europe for his charming good looks, his controversial writing (exemplified by his unfinished Don Juan), his political career and involvement in the Greek war for independence, and his many bisexual love affairs, including rumors that he seduced his half-sister. Truly, the Lindsay Lohan of his time.

In keeping with the poem theme of beauty, here is his most famous poem, 'She Walks In Beauty':

She walks in beauty—like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies,
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to the tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress
Or softly lightens o'er her face—
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.

And on that cheek and o'er that brow
So soft, so calm yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow
But tell of days in goodness spent
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent.

I will not try and provide any criticism. The poem speaks for itself more eloquently than anyone will ever be able to do so on its behalf.

But how cool is it to have a name like George Gordon, Lord Byron. Another poet with a similar name is Alfred, Lord Tennyson. I need to figure out how I can marry into a Lordship. It will definitely help my writing career.

Stealing Beauty

2008-11-28T13:47:00.005+08:00

Here is another poem I wrote a long time ago. It also was influenced by the All This Useless Beauty song. I really love the idea that beauty that has been stored in museums somehow has no use. Of course the title and original idea was also inspired by the Liv Tyler movie of the same name.

It is just one stanza, from an original five. The others are not very good (or should I say, much worse than this one). When I get the time I will work on them and maybe post the whole poem.

STEALING BEAUTY

A fire burns between his legs
spurring him on.
He’s prowling through the night
hidden in the light, the smoke, the heat of humanity
crowded around him with smiles and combative eyes.
His own eyes troll the depths--
of sleeky steel legs, slithering on the dance floor,
of bouncing ball breasts, wrapped to impress,
of whirlpooling hips and sweet-tasting lips--
fishing underneath.
And his sex clanks back and forth
between his legs
like the bell that signs midnight
hoping that by its last chime
it will be
Stealing Beauty.

停用一次筷

2008-11-26T13:37:00.006+08:00

I just recently found out from a coworker that Greenpeace has an office in Beijing. I had no idea. When I moved here in 2000, Greenpeace was only operating in Hong Kong because of issues of how to approach the Mainland. There traditional campaign model obviously would not work here.

Well it turns out that they have now opened up multiple offices in China and are working with the government to conduct campaigns and educate officials on how to become more environmentally sustainable.

One campaign they conducted recently was to educate people on the issue of disposable chopsticks. This is an issue near and dear to my own heart, and I always try to bring my reusable chopsticks with me where ever I go.

The numbers are staggering. Chinese factories churn out 63 billion pairs each year. By bringing your own chopsticks you can not only help conserve resources, but you also avoid worrying whether the chopsticks provided by the restaurant are clean or not.

Also heartening, another Greenpeace China campaign is being conducted by several young Chinese environmentalists. The fact that Chinese youth have begun become involved with environmental activism provides hope that the overwhelming issues that China faces will begin to be addressed before it is too late.

Magic & Loss

2008-11-24T13:50:00.003+08:00

One of my favorite songs, lyrically, is Lou Reed's Magic and Loss. I think it really encapsulates the human condition.

My favorite line is: "They say no one person can do it all/but you want to in your head/But you can't be Shakespeare/and you can't be Joyce/so what is left instead."

When I first heard this song, I was in University. The idea of conquering the world seemed possible then. This song deals with coming to terms with your own limitations.

But the song also deals with fire, and the passions of our life, and the drive we have to live.

I think this song can be inspiring to anyone. Everyone has a mixture of both magic and loss in their life, and the key to happiness is enjoying the magic as much as possible and not letting the loss hold us back.

Here is the entire song:

When you pass through the fire
you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self doubt
When you pass through humble
the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out
You pass through arrogance you pass through hurt
You pass through an ever present past
and it's best not to wait for luck to save you
Pass through the fire to the light

As you pass through the fire
your right hand waving
there are things you have to throw out
That caustic dread inside your head
will never help you out
You have to be very strong
'cause you'll start from zero
over and over again
And as the smoke clears
there's an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead

They say no one person can do it all
but you want to in your head
But you can't be Shakespeare
and you can't be Joyce
so what is left instead
You're stuck with yourself
and a rage that can hurt you
You have to start at the beginning again
And just this moment
This wonderful fire started up again

When you pass through humble
when you pass through sickly
When you pass through
I'm better than you all
When you pass through
anger and self deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there's a door up ahead not a wall

As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
try to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
you cannot remain the same
And if the building's burning
move towards that door
but don't put the flames out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out.

We All Got It Coming

2008-11-21T22:35:00.007+08:00

In a recent edition of Fresh Air, David Edelstein reviewed the new Clint Eastwood movie, Changeling. I have not seen the movie, so I will not comment on his negative review. But I do want to respond to his criticism of Eastwood in general, and in particular the dismissal of his Academy Award winning film Unforgiven.

What disgruntled me about Edelstein's review is that he did not seem to really understand the great depth of a film that went great lengths to eschew action and concentrate on its portrayal of morally ambivalent characters in a society that provides only arbitrary justice.

His chief denunciation of the film stems from the fact that most people have labeled it 'revisionist.' In a New York Times review of another Eastwood film, he writes, "After the town's fanatical and sadistic law-and-order sheriff (Gene Hackman) whips Munny's friend (Morgan Freeman) to death, the gunfighter returns to wreak a holy vengeance -- and this so-called anti-violence western ends with a predictable blood bath. True, it isn't a rousing climax, and Munny is presented as hellbound for having returned to his killing ways. But the greater challenge for the character would be walking away from retribution -- or vainly seeking justice via a higher authority."

A genre picture that breaks new ground subverting the traditional conventions of the genre should rightly be labeled revisionist. Any number of elements can be cited in Unforgiven which mark it as a groundbreaking western, including what I consider its unprecedented depiction of the prostitute characters. Edelstein himself refers to another break with canon:

The movie has many dense and beautifully shaped scenes, but its most harrowing is the one in which Mr. Eastwood's Will Munny, a once-notorious gunfighter lured away from farming and parenthood by a large bounty on two cowboys, finally confronts his prey. Munny's last shot hits the more innocent of the two men in the stomach, after which he must listen to his victim's cries (''They shot me, boys, they shot me!'') and pleas for water. Munny's head drops heavily in shame, and he is isolated in the frame: it is the first time that an Eastwood character has murdered a harmless man on screen, and the acknowledgement seems revolutionary.

Indeed, the movie does end in a spectacular shoot out, as Eastwood confronts a saloon full of deputies single-handedly and emerges unscathed. But William Munny's survival in itself represents a break from traditional action movies. As an audience, we have been conditioned to two types of climaxes in a movie with an outlaw protagonist. Either the hero atones for his past sins and finds redemption through love or some other new found virtue, or the hero dies in the end. Sometimes both.

But in Unforgiven, there is no redemption for Eastwood, nor any of the characters for that matter. Eastwood is not coming out of retirement in order to avenge a slighted woman, but to earn the much needed bounty. In fact, the entire movie revolves around an ambiguously defined moral dilemma, in which Eastwood and his partner are seeking a reward for murdering two cowboys who cut up a prostitute but were allowed to walk free for the price of seven horses. Little Bill, the antagonist, clashes with Eastwood because he does not tolerate gunslingers in his town, and is determined to protect the cowboys from vigilante justice. Who is in the right, and who is in the wrong? One of the beautiful aspects of the movie is that everyone follows somewhere in between, with both flaws and redeeming qualities on full display.

I have deliberated a great deal on why we chose to root for the Eastwood character. What endears him to the audience? He's old. He's a murderer of women and children. It might seem that because he has reformed for the love of his wife, we are attracted to his redemption. Except that as soon as he finds out his partner has been murdered, he takes to drinking again and murders anyone who is even tangentially connected to the event, including the saloon owner where the body is put on display.

I have concluded that the one quality every one of the antagonists shares, and which Eastwood definitively abstains from, is pride. Little Bill is exceedingly proud of himself, and pontificates at great length of his achievements to the journalist. He treats the town of Big Whiskey as something of a personal fiefdom. English Bob is smarmy with his British airs, and mocks the republic for assassinating its president, something that could never happen to a monarch. The Scofield Kid brags about his murder count and adorns himself with false bravado to cover his obvious callowness. All three get their comeuppance in different ways.

But Eastwood, an aging pig farmer, a widower with two kids to feed, does not look back on his outlaw days fondly, and finds nothing in his character or his past to brag about. Perhaps the most sophisticated element in this script dealing with multiple themes threaded neatly through a winding narrative is that what is perhaps the central theme to the movie is never actually acknowledged. I do not believe the words pride or arrogance are uttered even once. It is up to the viewers to discover for themselves.

To look at Unforgiven and see a violent movie that preaches against violence is too miss the point and to ignore the complexity of what I consider one of the all time great scripts. The movie is not trying to condemn violence. Instead, it is a portrayal of law, vengeance, and death in a society where no central authority exists. The only authority is violence or the threat of violence. We see different tribes--the deputies, the cowboys, the bounty hunters, the prostitutes--all trying to protect their own and secure justice when one of their members has been harmed.

Anyone who expects justice to be paid out to all those who deserve it has only to listen to William Munny himself. When Little Bill pleads that he does not deserve to be executed like this, Munny responds, "Deserve's got nothin' to do with it." And when the Scolfield Kid regrets his first actual shooting, lamenting that his victim had no idea it was coming while he was sitting in the outhouse, Eastwood concludes "We all got it coming, kid."

Death comes when it will, not when it is deserved, and eventually it will come for everyone. The irony is that the one major character that death has eluded so far is the character that seemingly appreciates it least.

Only Sixteen Percent, Part II

2008-11-19T14:27:00.005+08:00

As a follow up to my earlier point, I have been thinking a lot over the past 48 hours about the often unnoticed and largely unchallenged bias against women in our society. How is it so blatantly allowed to persist?

And to be clear, I am not talking about the overwhelming issues of poverty and oppression that women face throughout the developing world. Those issues can seem far away and distant and it is no wonder they largely get ignored. No, I am referring to our own modern, Western society, where men still make more for equal work, and where women of all ages and social backgrounds are constantly bombarded with demeaning and trivializing treatment from the men around them.

I come from a middle class family, am well educated, and run in a circle of friends that is generally ahead of the curve when it comes to progressive social issues. My peers are openly accepting of gays and lesbians, and are quick to pounce on any behavior that might be considered racist, especially towards blacks (although, as I live in Beijing, I do see a lot of largely unconscious racism among Western ex-pats directed towards Chinese.) It is not unusual for people to immediately denounce any kind of untoward comment or joke that crosses the line of political correctness when it comes to race, even in all white company.

But my male peers (and I include myself, in some cases) have no compunction about making derogatory comments, inappropriate jokes, or even exhibiting physically hostile behavior towards women, even in their presence. And no one says anything. It is tacitly accepted. I am CERTAIN that the level of awareness and self reflection regarding racial issues is far more advanced than gender issues.

Why?

I do not have an explanation. All I know is that we as a society need to better address the issues of gender. Now.

Only Sixteen Percent

2008-11-18T13:10:00.006+08:00

The election of Barack Obama was indeed historic, and means a lot to Americans and the World in terms equality of the races. But had Clinton been elected, having a female president-elect would have been just as historic, if not more so.

The NY Times just highlighted this editorial from 1992 about Hillary Clinton as the new first lady. The most striking aspect of the article to me is how little has changed in the past 16 years.

Some quick facts: Women hold 87, or 16.3%, of the 535 seats in the 110th US Congress — 16, or 16.0%, of the 100 seats in the Senate and 71, or 16.3%, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. This under representation of women in elected offices is shocking, especially considering how little attention is paid to the discrepancy by the media. In a fair and equal society, our elected officials would be fifty percent women.

Women did not gain the right to vote in the United States until 1920. African Americans gained the right to vote in 1870. Will we have to wait another fifty years before we have a female president of the United States?

A Panorama, Not A Profile

2008-11-14T23:14:00.010+08:00

It is possible that sometimes a book comes along and changes your life.

In the novel Immortality, by Milan Kundera, Agnes encounters a women in the sauna who vociferously proclaims her love of cold showers, and just as passionately makes it clear she detests modesty. This leads Agnes to reflect on the nature of identity.

Because our self-identity is such an insubstantial, undefinable, slippery and intangible concept, people are forced to carve out concrete signs of who they are and project them outward into the world. This passionate vocalization of ourselves not only allows those around us to categorize us, it just as importantly provides us with our own understanding of who we are.

We live in a dichotomous society, one that constantly divides us into us and them. We love lists, we go crazy for rankings. Think of the enthusiasm with which sports fanatics, political party members, religious followers, and fanboys devote themselves to the objects of their obsession. We tend to think that we join groups because of our desire for companionship and affirmation. But I think Kundera highlights an even more fundamental agent at work. We have a need to know who we are:

When we are thrust into the world just as we are, we first have to identify with that particular throw of the dice, with that accident organized by the divine computer: to get over our surprise that precisely this (what we see facing us in the mirror) is our self. Without the faith that our face expresses our self, without that basic illusion, that archillusion, we cannot live, or at least we cannot take life seriously. And it isn't enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way can we regard ourselves not merely as a variant of the human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence. That's the reason the newcomer needed not only to draw her self-portrait but also to make it clear to all that it embodied something unique and irreplaceable, something worth fighting or even dying for.

In order to feel secure in our identity, we must delineate ourselves clearly for all to see. Thus we become secure in ourselves. Upon reading the book, I immediately became self-aware of numerous examples of this behavior. I have ever since tried to cull these idiosyncrasies, to try and avoid branding myself. I now notice that other people pick up on certain life choices, my veganism for instance, and link them to my identity. But although veganism is an important part of my lifestyle, I do not define myself by my veganism, or try to project that as part of who I am.

We are not the groups and labels we choose for ourselves. So who are we? We are the way we treat people. We are the way we react to bad news. We are the amount of emotional empathy we give to those around us. We are our sense of humor, our sense of fair play, our sense of entitlement. We are our perceptions, tied to our memory. We are our full selves, impossible to contemplate in our total panorama, but only viewable in profile. And every time we force ourselves into the narrow categories provided us by society, we are losing parts of our full dimensionality.

Are Boots Really The Future Of Footwear?

2008-11-14T00:29:00.006+08:00

If you are a fan of science fiction, then you realize that we are headed towards a fully booted future.

Flash Gordon wore boots. Captain Kirk wore boots. Han Solo and Luke Skywalker both wore boots. Apparently, everyone is going to be wearing boots.

How is it that all these fashion prognosticators are so certain that future generations will decide that leather boots are the best fit for piloting star craft and fighting aliens?

I suppose because they are also the best fit for flying and fighting super villians.

The Exploding Plastic Inevitable

2008-11-12T17:46:00.004+08:00

I see that Mayor Bloomberg, trying to divert attention from his recent power grab, is proposing a new NYC law that will require shoppers to pay a 6 cent tax on every plastic bag.

This tax really works. The Chinese government passed their own version earlier this year. The first week after it went into effect, I was in line behind a man buying exactly three items. In the past, it would not have been unusual to see him walk out of the store with three separate bags. When asked if he wanted a bag, the man responded yes. When informed that he had to pay 2 mao per bag (the equivalent of 3 US cents), he decided he could manage all right without one after all.

Since the law was passed, this scenario has repeated itself in front of me a number of times. Cloth bags can be found everywhere. It is true that some people still want bags, and they ask for them as if to show that they are above such petty money concerns. But many more people are refusing to pay for bags, and bring their own with them to the grocery store.

My own shopping habits have changed as well. I used to be more likely to take plastic bags, which I would use as trash liners. Now I only take a bag if absolutely necessary (for something liquid that will leak in my backpack). Now I reuse food bags and containers to put trash in.

Every community should pass such a law. Place a higher price on something that is a problem for society and the environment, yet which does not cause any undue hardship when you remove it.

What a fantastic idea!

Sonic Clatter, Sonic Harmony

2008-11-09T22:21:00.007+08:00

Before I moved to Beijing, I spent three months in Shandong Province. Jinan is the most backwards village of 6 million people you can imagine. This was before the days of digital music players, so I had to make do with a few cd's and the mixed tapes I brought to play on my walkman.

My first foray into a music store uncovered more or less what I expected. Cantopop was everywhere. From the West, you could find lots of Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys. Britney Spears was popular. Yanni and Kenny G were played incessantly in every mall, on every bus, and from every cell phone. The biggest surprises were the Carpenters and John Denver. But they were little consolation for me in this musical wasteland.

Soon thereafter I learned that in addition to the pop drivel, there was a thriving underground rock scene in China. But before you get too excited for me, you have to understand that this consisted of the most hardcore thrash metal you can imagine. Almost every serious CD store had a section devoted to this kind of music, lined with names such as Rammstein, Sepultera, Testament, and Onslaught. I like a wide variety of music, but this was pushing beyond my limits.

There was one saving grace. Among all the Pop and Thrash, one of my all time favorites could be found. For some obscure reason, there seemed to be a huge following for Sonic Youth. And not just the most popular albums, like Dirty and Washing Machine. You could find their newest album, one I had not even realized had been realeased, as well as their earliest albums that were no longer available in the States.

I have no idea why Sonic Youth is so popular in China, except possibly because they are totally awesome. It is hard for me to explain even to my friends what appeals to me about them. With Sonic Youth you get the bare essentials of the most beautiful pop songs you can imagine, and they infuse and surround those three minutes of magic with 5 minutes of feedback and clatter.
For an example of how their songs gorgeously combine melody and noise, listen to them cover Superstar by the Carpenters.

I had the good fortune to see Sonic Youth play in Beijing last year. They were fantastic, and their latest album, Rather Ripped, is one of their best yet. I do not get to see many live shows here, and I miss having a thriving, vibrant, eclectic music scene. But the one concert I go to every year usually turns out to be worth the wait.

Pussy Galore

2008-11-08T23:50:00.007+08:00

I will forgive the earlier Bond movies their sexism. The first movies were before my time and from a different era. The Pierce Brosnan entries into the franchise verged on the cartoon, and are hard to take seriously. The utter ridiculousness of Denise Richards in The World Is Not Enough has the same comedic pedigree as the best Saved By The Bell episodes.

But the latest Bond incarnation, played by Daniel Craig, models itself after the new Batman and Jason Bourne franchises. They are grittier, more realistic action movies, that value story and character as much as glitz and gadgetry. And in some ways, the new version succeeds in that vein. It has done away with Q. Fight scenes look like they were directed by Paul Greengrass. This is a more human Bond, and the movies focus on his psyche and motivations, and how the mental and physical hardships take their toll.

So it is inexcusable the way they treat the female characters in this movie. We are in the 21st century, not the 1960's anymore. I have nothing against populating a genre film like this with beautiful actresses. But at least make an attempt to give them some kind of actual character. I have no idea what the main female protagonist's name was, because her role in the film was nothing more than to give Bond a beautiful sidekick to share in the action. Was she a good actor? I have no idea, because the only acting she had to do was deliver one liners, be frightened of a raging fire, and get angry when the would be dictator attempts to rape her.

Her function in the plot is to want revenge against the would be dictator, while Bond is after the would be oil magnate that is helping the would be dictator to carry out a coup. Nothing we have not seen in countless other Bond films. Why does she want revenge? If you guessed it was because the would be dictator murdered her father in cold blood while she was a child (by burning down their house of course, thus her fear of fire) then you have seen any one of the thousands of other movies that have recycled the exact same plot device.

So her character development is thin, bordering on non-existent. No different then any other Bond movie. At least the wonderful Judi Dench is there, stealing the movie every time she turns up on screen. Of course the weight of her performance, and the nuanced way it builds on her previous appearances in the franchise and adds tremendous depth to a role that really has only a marginal function in the story only draws more attention to the lack of any development in any of the other female characters. But none of this would be unexpected in a movie of this sort.

The real atrocity here, the unpardonable sin committed by this movie, is the climactic showdown between the female protagonist and the would be dictator. It is a brutal scene of sexualized Hollywood violence that happens way too often in movies. The violence is as demoralizing as it is unnecessary. This cardboard cut out of a human being that has done little more in the movie than to provide eye candy for the past hour and a half now must go through the ritualized attempted rape that continually thrusts itself into mainstream Hollywood movies that are generally marketed to young adults around the world. What does that say about the society we live in?

After a few days to reflect on the movie, I realized it was quite poor. Is this really the best they can do?

Your Cow Wallpaper And Floating Silver Balloons

2008-11-07T23:19:00.007+08:00

I was predisposed to like Andy Warhol from the beginning. I had of course heard his name, but I knew very little about him, and his death barely registered on my teenage sensibilities. But by the time I got my hands on the Songs For Drella album by Lou Reed and John Cale, I was already a huge fan of the Velvet Underground. That same year the documentary Nico Icon played at the Vogue in Louisville. I needed to find out as much as I could about Warhol after that, the avante-garde artist responsible for bringing the Velvets together.

A few months later, while on a road trip to New York City, I stopped in Pittsburgh, Andy's hometown, to visit the Warhol museum. The Campbell's soup can. The silk screens of Elvis, Marylin Monroe, Chairman Mao. That signature banana. But nothing stood out as much as the balloons and the cows.

One of his shows consisted exclusively of a room filled with silver balloons. The walls were covered with his by then patented silkscreens, this time of purple cows. I cannot think anything else of Andy except that he was totally having a laugh at every art critic's and investor's expense. And why shouldn't he?

I am by no means an expert on art history. But it seems to me that I am not too far wrong if I summarize the history of art thusly: In ancient and medieval times, artists were striving for perfection. They wanted to recreate nature as accurately as possible. Their collective striving culminated in the Renaissance, with Da Vinci and Michelangelo, and they finally achieved this perfection. But once perfection was achieved, artists started working in the other direction, going from the impressionists to the cubists and surrealists until we got to Jackson Pollack splattering paint on a canvas.

Andy Warhol was a 20th century graphic artist who was genius enough to realize that by taking the images that thrust their way into our popular culture, whether from the covers of celebrity magazines, or the advertisements inside them, he could copy them, color them, and sell them for lots of money. The lines between art and commerce, Hollywood and Fifth Avenue, were forever blurred.

Perhaps Lou Reed says it best in his song "Images":

I'm no urban idiot savant
spewing paint without any order
I'm no sphinx, no mystery enigma
what I paint is very ordinary

I don't think I'm old or modern
I don't think I think I'm thinking
It doesn't matter what I'm thinking
It's the images that are worth repeating

Obamania

2008-11-07T11:39:00.006+08:00

I am glad that Obama will be president. In terms of civil rights, and what it means for minorities not only in America, but throughout the world, his election provides a powerful signal we are moving closer to equality.

In terms of politics, there is only one issue which substantially stands out for me. Obama came out strongly against the invasion of Iraq from the very beginning. I respect that. But that stance alone would not have been enough for me to vote for him. One other policy proposal I have heard from him that appeals to me is his proposal to help provide scholarships for anyone who does public service, whether in the Peace Corps, the Military, etc.

Overall, although Obama is closer to what I stand for than McCain, I do not really think that he is any closer to representing me than Clinton was. I think he will continue the same types of economic policies that we had in the nineties. I think he will support giving more power to big business. I think more money will be funnelled to environmental and energy causes, but it will still be done by government subsidies that favor the powerful.

What I am really curious about is what all the fuss has been about. Why is everyone so crazy for Obama? Is it just because of race? That part I can certainly understand. But I think beyond the issue of race, the real factor here is not so much Obama, but just how terrible Bush was as a president. He alienated so many people that now everyone has latched onto Obama as someone who will really bring changes to Washington. In terms of Iraq, and our international standing, these changes will be obvious. But any Democrat would have brought the same kinds of change. So what other changes will Obama bring? He certainly has not made that clear yet, and people seem to be following him with a kind of blind hope that his election really will mean a new America.

I do not see it. I think people will find that a lot less change will occur than they were hoping for. Obama is a Democrat, and as long as America embraces this two party system, our government will be controlled by a cabal of big business and special interests, with a slight drift from right to left depending on which party is in power. The erosion of our individual rights will continue, and more power and wealth will congregate in fewer hands.

I really think the people who just voted for Obama should take a serious look at the Green party or another third party that might be more aligned with their personal outlook. This country needs more plurality in its political system. Badly.

Just a Quantum of Solace

2008-11-06T00:11:00.005+08:00

I watched the new James Bond movie tonight. It was, as expected, pretty good. Daniel Craig makes an excellent Bond. The best moments probably come during his scenes with M. It was not, however, outstanding. For all of its cool moments, the action was often obscured by the fast editing, and the plot was just as thin as the last one.

Absolutely nothing in the movie changed my opinion that the best James Bond movie of all time is The Thomas Crown Affair.

The Green Stone

2008-11-04T00:09:00.008+08:00

"One day in Berlin came a telegram: 'Found a wonderful green stone. Come immediately, Zorba."

This missive comes near the end of Zorba the Greek. The idea of that green stone, and Zorba's desire for his friend to drop everything and travel across Europe in order to see it, has informed my world view ever since.

To be most accurate, Zorba's ability to find the utmost pleasures in the simplest yet purest experiences has pointed me in the direction I would like my life to follow. I want to be a person that would drop everything to go see a green stone. I crave that spontaniety and passion for aesthetic. But only in my finest moments have I lived with such zest and disregard for 'common sense.' Most of the time it is just an ideal to be thought of fondly in moments of reflection, but discarded in the everyday pressures of daily life.

My own green stone has become the ancient gingko tree in Xiangshan park to the west of Beijing. A few years ago, in late October, early November, I found myself in a secluded corner of the park, no easy task under the crush of thousands of autumn leaf watchers. The tree struck me immediately, its leaves were a brilliant yellow, the branches twisted upward and outward in the most stereotypical majestic manner. I immediately was reminded of Zorba and I wanted to share that tree with someone. I thought, "This tree would be worth a trip around the world to see."

I have tried to go back and see that tree every Fall, and bring friends with me each time. But as time has passed, I realized something about that tree, and in conjunction, about Zorba and the stone. As amazed as I was by the leaves of that Gingko tree, no one else ever seemed as struck by its majesty. In truth, and this was hard to admit to myself, not even I could reconjure the same feeling the next time. As beautiful as the tree was, viewing it was no longer a transcendent experience.

I want to be the person to drop everything and go see the beautiful stone, but if I allowed myself to be beckoned in such a way, I would inevitably find disappointment in the stone itself. The green stone might have affected Zorba in a profound way, but anyone else would see it differently. We each have our own reactions to the stimuli around us, and are enamored in our own manner. My return to the Gingko tree proves that we cannot even rekindle our own experiences in a different time.

And I have realized that the point of the green stone is not a question of whether you want to go and see the stone or not. The question is whether you are willing to allow your friend to call you across time and space to share a experience that for her is profound. Zorba is enamored of the rock. Am I the kind of friend that will drop everything to be with him as he experiences it? Zorba's request is to see his friend and share a moment with him, a moment that may seem trivial to anyone else but to Zorba has great meaning.

I would love to be able to summon my friends to my side to share my most profound moments with me. But I believe I lack the empathy to be able to share my friends' moments. I am too self involved. And this is one of my greatest failings.

Picasso Girl

2008-11-02T19:33:00.007+08:00

Everyone wonders about my email address. I am not gay. It comes from a poem I wrote.

The poem is one of my favorites. The inspiration comes from an Elvis Costello song, All This Useless Beauty. The same song inspired another one of my poems as well, but in particular this one. The idea of the main character in the song walking through the museum and reflecting on all the beauty, and what a waste it was, immediately attracted me.

PICASSO GIRL

The museum
light floods me a shower
florescence
white light vacuums
the colors into the
air and bleeds them
together into the colorless
rainbow of every color
a white noise that blinds with its
omniscience i
watch a
thousand dreams live and
die through their windows of
time hanging forever a frozen
endeavor
their immortal
flirtations dissected by the
light and the eyes and the
cutting remarks
almost forgotten in that formaldehyde
starkness a
Picasso Girl
winks like a one
eyed queen staring
out through the darkness
between her teeth an
eviscerating brightness
in the moment
of that smile a history
of jagged lips and tongues melts
around the edges
of my jaded gazes
to puncture the paintings hung behind my eyes
body parts collide
a siamese monster in flame
joined to a wintery profile
by elbows and teeth and lips
kissing knees
a closer vivisection
of her jigsaw perspectives and
i prick myself on the corners until
her colors bleed into me
the black lines that surround our
anatomies skew themselves on
the chemicals that act as our
emotions until
i gently rake my fingers
across those marble romances
carving from her icy emerald glances
a time statuesque
until i see the
Picasso Girl
frames a truth
and until
i learn to forget the
blank canvas of her lies
to remember
time always blinds
and only monuments
can be left behind

The idea of the Picasso Girl, immortalized askew, a beautiful mishmash of perspectives, haunts me. The idea that the object of our desire is not viewed in a platonic manner in all its perfection has been reinforced in all my relationships. We distort our view of the people we love by the very act of loving them.

Conscientious Objector

2008-11-01T20:48:00.003+08:00

I have only voted once in my lifetime. When I turned 18 I could not wait to vote, and my enthusiasm led me to cast all my votes for the Republican ticket, except one. I do not remember who was running for mayor that year, but it was not William Hudnut, who had up until then been the only mayor I had known. His retirement did not stop me from writing him in.

In college, I remember reading Thoreau. He laid out quite reasonably why voting, contrary to popular belief, took away your right to object. Most people say that if you do not vote, you have no right to complain. Thoreau saw things differently. He said that by voting, you are acknowledging the right of this system of government to hold sway over you. By withholding your vote, you retain your right to object to the system.

I tried voting in '04, but I somehow failed in my registration. I wanted to vote for Nader. I felt like he had enough attention that my vote could matter, especially since so many people blame Nader for Bush being elected in the first place. I still regret (not too much, but a bit) I did not get to vote that year. I viewed it as something of a protest vote.

My biggest contention with the government in the United States is the two party system. It is totally whacked. If I ever move back to America, then I will definitely get involved with the Green party. But for now, no voting for me. I am definitely not represented in this system, and I have no desire to give up my right to object to it wholeheartedly. At least not yet.