Will some massive piece of cosmic refuse smash us into stardust on December 21st, 2012? Well, if I'm looking at victorious Romney/Gingrich ticket in November of 2012, I sure as hell hope so.
2012 - this is the year it's all supposed to end. Of course, being a fan of shorwave, I'm a little leary of predictions, given that freak Harold Camping's spectacular End of Times fail in 2011. Boy that was fun to watch. If you're looking for a great read, Tom Perrotta's The Leftovers is an amusing take on The Rapture. In his scenario, the Rapture takes a randomly chosen and relatively small group of people, leaving non-believers of the town of Mapleton befuddled and its hard-core believers enraged. I'm almost done with Leftovers and am still trying to figure out what the Rapture, (which is secularized as 'The Sudden Departure') means in Perrotta's novel. Are the varying reactions of the citizens of Mapleton somehow indicative of our national reactions and obsessions with 9/11, its 10 year anniversary or the conspiratorial hysteria that plagues it?
I've got a lot I'm going to accomplish this year - good small resolutions: drink less / exercise more / floss / blah / blah / blah... But the only resolutions I ever really stick to are my reading lists.
So here's how 2012 shapes up for me:
Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson - - I really am angry that Hunter S. Thompson killed himself. I appreciate that the good doctor lived his life his own way and it was a life that extended further than he ever imagined it would. I appreciate and respect anyone who lives their life entirely by their own terms. But dammit, we need him right now. I know I'm being selfish here, but one need just take a peek at the GOP contenders and the ineffectual Editor of the Harvard Law Review who lives in the White House - and realize that the Fear and Loathing of the 2012 Campaign will eclipse anything that preceded it.
Fear of Dreaming - Jim Carroll - - I read Nick Hornby make this claim, but I'll make it myself as well - I am one of maybe eight people on planet earth who goes to a bookstore and buys poetry.
Anthony Powell - A Question of Upbringing
Marcel Proust - Place Names - The Place
All for now. Happy New Year.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Troubling Events at 75 Meters
I listen to shortwave radio. I realize this is an odd anachronistic hobby for a 39 year-old suburbanite who should be empowering himself with yoga, reality television and crap purchased from the Apple Store. But long ago I had a shortwave radio in high school, a time before the interwebs were capable of delivering live streaming of any radio station you could fathom. Perhaps I listen to shortwave radio now to re-experience the wonderment that I felt then, alone in my room, pulling in signals that seemed to arrive from anywhere and everywhere, as though through some magical cypher.
I have a Grundig G3. It is an amazing little machine, and well worth the $129 it costs. It is able to pull in many international broadcasts as well as aeronautical communications and amateur broadcasts. I must confess to being most intrigued by what I might find discussed by Ham Radio operators. As I got back into shorwave, it was easy to presuppose that amateur broadcasts were ocean of anti-government Obama-haters, writhing in the seats of their remote Ham Shacks, imploring any and all who might be listening to prepare for the End of Times.
I spend most of my time on shortwave listening to Hams. I track their call signs and document everything I hear. I do this mostly out of curiosity - it's interesting to see the vast distances from which I can pull in a signal on such an unsophisticated receiver. And to my surprise, most Hams are enormously likable and listenable men (I've only heard one female amateur operator). Rather than spewing venomous political crap, they mostly are looking to make connections with other Hams to discuss the shortwave conditions in the ionosphere and the effectiveness of their antennae. And once these connections are made, Hams generally just converse about their lives - what they're doing that day, how the weather is, what they're planning to do next summer.
I've been listening and documenting religiously for almost a year now. But now, due perhaps to the oncoming shift and uncertainty popular culture believes Planet Earth will endure in 2012, the Ham universe has taken a decidedly darker direction.
On December 11th, I was listening at 3827 kHz on the lower side band. A Ham operator was delivering a long religious speech, which at times seemed mildly anti-Semitic. Other Hams were trying to break into his broadcast, either by speaking or by sending out Morse code. Still, other Hams began attacking those Hams who were looking to disrupt this broadcast. A consistent voice trying to counter the religious broadcast was met with another countering voice decrying his attempts by repeating: "That's an ARRL Member jamming a legal QSO" (meaning 'hey - that's a licenced operator trying to disrupt a legal broadcast').
It was all very unsettling. Since then, I've encountered other hotbeds for political diatribes, most infamous being 14313 kHz during the daytime. These exchanges are nothing more than verbal versions of any anonymous internet comment board. But there's something scary and sinister here. Hearing the actual voices of their adversaries doesn't seem to deter the anger these men feel. One would assume that the anger a man might feel for another man who does not share his viewpoint might be assuaged if the two men, rather than conversing through the blindness of an internet chat room, could actually hear one another's real voices. This is not the case, unfortunately.
I have a Grundig G3. It is an amazing little machine, and well worth the $129 it costs. It is able to pull in many international broadcasts as well as aeronautical communications and amateur broadcasts. I must confess to being most intrigued by what I might find discussed by Ham Radio operators. As I got back into shorwave, it was easy to presuppose that amateur broadcasts were ocean of anti-government Obama-haters, writhing in the seats of their remote Ham Shacks, imploring any and all who might be listening to prepare for the End of Times.
I spend most of my time on shortwave listening to Hams. I track their call signs and document everything I hear. I do this mostly out of curiosity - it's interesting to see the vast distances from which I can pull in a signal on such an unsophisticated receiver. And to my surprise, most Hams are enormously likable and listenable men (I've only heard one female amateur operator). Rather than spewing venomous political crap, they mostly are looking to make connections with other Hams to discuss the shortwave conditions in the ionosphere and the effectiveness of their antennae. And once these connections are made, Hams generally just converse about their lives - what they're doing that day, how the weather is, what they're planning to do next summer.
I've been listening and documenting religiously for almost a year now. But now, due perhaps to the oncoming shift and uncertainty popular culture believes Planet Earth will endure in 2012, the Ham universe has taken a decidedly darker direction.
On December 11th, I was listening at 3827 kHz on the lower side band. A Ham operator was delivering a long religious speech, which at times seemed mildly anti-Semitic. Other Hams were trying to break into his broadcast, either by speaking or by sending out Morse code. Still, other Hams began attacking those Hams who were looking to disrupt this broadcast. A consistent voice trying to counter the religious broadcast was met with another countering voice decrying his attempts by repeating: "That's an ARRL Member jamming a legal QSO" (meaning 'hey - that's a licenced operator trying to disrupt a legal broadcast').
It was all very unsettling. Since then, I've encountered other hotbeds for political diatribes, most infamous being 14313 kHz during the daytime. These exchanges are nothing more than verbal versions of any anonymous internet comment board. But there's something scary and sinister here. Hearing the actual voices of their adversaries doesn't seem to deter the anger these men feel. One would assume that the anger a man might feel for another man who does not share his viewpoint might be assuaged if the two men, rather than conversing through the blindness of an internet chat room, could actually hear one another's real voices. This is not the case, unfortunately.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Best Reads of 2011
It's been a little over three years since I started Slimbo's Shelf. I never really gave any thought to how long it would last when I started this blog. This, of course, was a time when blogs were relevant. Now, amid the constant flurry of ever-changing interweb social media, blogs seem to have gone the way of the cassette tape or fax machine.
Yet I carry on. The only alternative to writing on this blog is to continually write in my notebooks. I have a stack of these spiral notebooks in my closet. One might mistaken them for artifacts of my old school days, but oh no, sir. These are the ramblings of a contemporary suburban madman. I don't remember what's been written in half of them, but they are densely packed with my words. Occasionally, I'll mine out an idea from these dusty tomes, perhaps to transpose into an idea I'll work through here, on this blog where it goes unread amid the ocean of unread blogs that now populate our fair planet.
Ah, fuck it. Let's talk about what Slimbo read in 2011.
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart. Written between 2006-2009, this story portrays a New York riddled with materialistic protagonists obsessed with their hand held devices trying to understand love amid a New York severed by income inequality protests while the US Government defaults on its debt. This work is oddly prophetic of our current lives, as we pretend to be amused by Occupy's theatrics, all the while commandeered by whatever devices Apple tells us we must possess on cue.
At Madame Swann's - Marcel Proust. As noted before, I am continuing my lifelong quest to read all of Proust's work. In this installment, young Marcel finds love with Gilberte, loses his love for Gilbert and eventually transitions into his love of Albertine. In the midst of all this, he spends WAY too much time obsessing on dresses and flowers. Just sayin', sports fans. Sometimes, I read Proust believing I'm ingesting the greatest writing ever executed in any language. Sometimes I want to smack him. I'd like to think you, my imaginary readership, feel the same about me.
The Bishop - Anton Chekhov. Free on Kindle - download it now! This story chronicles the last thoughts of a bishop marooned in a country parish as he lives out his final days. Death comes to him suddenly. Palm Sunday, he is fine but by Easter he will be dead. His terrible and beautiful musings are juxtapositioned against the rituals and mystical comforts of Holy Week. The Bishop is one of the most moving stories I've ever read. It is a simple, albeit heavily Russian, exploration of life's meaning written as Chekhov himself was dying.
Yondering - Louis L'Amour. I picked this up in Utah and it seemed fitting to read rugged old school man-fiction while I was out there absorbing the mysterious power of those towering Rockies and windswept plains. For an East Coast guy, being there was exhilarating (Wow, I think I grew a few hairs on my chest just writing that - call it Slimbo reaching out to Red State readers). I've got a soft spot for L'Amour. He toiled in the WPA Writers Project with Jim Thompson, whom I hold in enormously high regard. I over-idealize men like these two. I'm too ready to romanticize about the obstacles they faced as they were maligned as Reds by the years that followed WW2 as the Red Scare choked off the oxygen to the gray matter of our national intelligence. In reality, these were just two guys looking to make a buck, any which way they could. Thompson never made the bucks he should have, but L'Amour tapped into the post-war machismo volcano that yearned for his Westerns - validations of American manliness, once the M-1 rifles went silent in 1945.
Yondering is not typical L'Amour, though. These are short stories of varying settings, but all adventures pitting strong hard men against indomitable odds, scoffing at death. Each story is a homage to Hemingway and/or Jack London. Each story avoids the need to explain the existential meaningless of violence and each story veers ever so gently to some formulaic articulation of American exceptionalism and red/white/blue righteousness. Ah shit, who am I to judge? Reading this made me want to go back in time and be 19 again. These stories made me want to piss away all the plastic conventions and scour planet Earth inch by every nasty inch.
Conquest of the Useless - Werner Herzog. This is a painstakingly detailed account of the filming of Fitzcaraldo, as gleaned from the journals of German director Werner Herzog. The Shelf offered a slice of Conquest's offerings in this post. To complete Herzog's unbelievable vision for Fitzcaraldo, wherein he executed the impossible feat of towing a ship over a mountain, Herzog had to navigate the "obscenity of the jungle" while also manage the departure of his initial leading man, Jason Robards for the blessed, yet cursed presence of Robard's replacement, the ever insane Klaus Kinski.
Yet I carry on. The only alternative to writing on this blog is to continually write in my notebooks. I have a stack of these spiral notebooks in my closet. One might mistaken them for artifacts of my old school days, but oh no, sir. These are the ramblings of a contemporary suburban madman. I don't remember what's been written in half of them, but they are densely packed with my words. Occasionally, I'll mine out an idea from these dusty tomes, perhaps to transpose into an idea I'll work through here, on this blog where it goes unread amid the ocean of unread blogs that now populate our fair planet.
Ah, fuck it. Let's talk about what Slimbo read in 2011.
Super Sad True Love Story - Gary Shteyngart. Written between 2006-2009, this story portrays a New York riddled with materialistic protagonists obsessed with their hand held devices trying to understand love amid a New York severed by income inequality protests while the US Government defaults on its debt. This work is oddly prophetic of our current lives, as we pretend to be amused by Occupy's theatrics, all the while commandeered by whatever devices Apple tells us we must possess on cue.
At Madame Swann's - Marcel Proust. As noted before, I am continuing my lifelong quest to read all of Proust's work. In this installment, young Marcel finds love with Gilberte, loses his love for Gilbert and eventually transitions into his love of Albertine. In the midst of all this, he spends WAY too much time obsessing on dresses and flowers. Just sayin', sports fans. Sometimes, I read Proust believing I'm ingesting the greatest writing ever executed in any language. Sometimes I want to smack him. I'd like to think you, my imaginary readership, feel the same about me.
The Bishop - Anton Chekhov. Free on Kindle - download it now! This story chronicles the last thoughts of a bishop marooned in a country parish as he lives out his final days. Death comes to him suddenly. Palm Sunday, he is fine but by Easter he will be dead. His terrible and beautiful musings are juxtapositioned against the rituals and mystical comforts of Holy Week. The Bishop is one of the most moving stories I've ever read. It is a simple, albeit heavily Russian, exploration of life's meaning written as Chekhov himself was dying.
Yondering - Louis L'Amour. I picked this up in Utah and it seemed fitting to read rugged old school man-fiction while I was out there absorbing the mysterious power of those towering Rockies and windswept plains. For an East Coast guy, being there was exhilarating (Wow, I think I grew a few hairs on my chest just writing that - call it Slimbo reaching out to Red State readers). I've got a soft spot for L'Amour. He toiled in the WPA Writers Project with Jim Thompson, whom I hold in enormously high regard. I over-idealize men like these two. I'm too ready to romanticize about the obstacles they faced as they were maligned as Reds by the years that followed WW2 as the Red Scare choked off the oxygen to the gray matter of our national intelligence. In reality, these were just two guys looking to make a buck, any which way they could. Thompson never made the bucks he should have, but L'Amour tapped into the post-war machismo volcano that yearned for his Westerns - validations of American manliness, once the M-1 rifles went silent in 1945.
Yondering is not typical L'Amour, though. These are short stories of varying settings, but all adventures pitting strong hard men against indomitable odds, scoffing at death. Each story is a homage to Hemingway and/or Jack London. Each story avoids the need to explain the existential meaningless of violence and each story veers ever so gently to some formulaic articulation of American exceptionalism and red/white/blue righteousness. Ah shit, who am I to judge? Reading this made me want to go back in time and be 19 again. These stories made me want to piss away all the plastic conventions and scour planet Earth inch by every nasty inch.
Conquest of the Useless - Werner Herzog. This is a painstakingly detailed account of the filming of Fitzcaraldo, as gleaned from the journals of German director Werner Herzog. The Shelf offered a slice of Conquest's offerings in this post. To complete Herzog's unbelievable vision for Fitzcaraldo, wherein he executed the impossible feat of towing a ship over a mountain, Herzog had to navigate the "obscenity of the jungle" while also manage the departure of his initial leading man, Jason Robards for the blessed, yet cursed presence of Robard's replacement, the ever insane Klaus Kinski.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Hey Look, it's the World's 7th Largest Army
Mattathias Schwartz reported something astonishing in a recent article in The New Yorker. He reported that just as Mayor Bloomberg was sending in the world's 7th largest army to break up the Occupy encampment at Zuccoti Park, the Occupy Movement's leaders were themselves preparing to break down camp for the winter and call it a victorious 2011.But now, thanks to the heavy-handed tactics endured, the circus must continue for Occupy to save face. All in all, I've been following Occupy with the same detached bemusement I hold while watching my New York Mets play the Yankees. I know it's all going to end bad for the good guys, so why bother getting excited about anything.
Still, I think Occupy can claim victory right now. Just this week, the President (finally!) gave an impassioned speech addressing the vast polarization of wealth and power in this nation that is likely going to bring the end of our democracy if something drastic is not done. Did the enduring presence of Occupy finally enable Obama to find his spinal structure? We don't know.
On a more local level, some jackbooted brainwashed freak is going around my town and posting up signs that say, "Don't Believe the Liberal Media". I find the rhetoric delivered by these signs ironically parallels Mao's playbook from the Cultural Revolution. This horseshit really annoys me. It's one thing to make the conscious decision to turn on Fox News and allow a plutocratic fascist like Roger Ailes to fill your brains with hourly inputs of batshit. But to bring the narrative onto the telephone poles in my town is an affront to my pursuit of happiness (it's also a violation of section 110.3 of the town code). Tag sales and lost kittens - that's what telephone pole postings are for, and if that freakshow Michael Moore ever tried to post something here, I'd be ranting the same rant.
Now it seems, some ambitious countering bastard is going to each one of these signs and spray painting over it. Or at least he (or she) is spray painting over the words 'Liberal Media'. So the signs just say, "Don't Believe". Rather a dour outlook on the human condition isn't it?
And everything does look dour. 2012 is almost here and good God what a hell of a year it's going to be. We're going to have to watch as all of America must choose between giving the editor of the Harvard Law Review another four years to do whatever the hell it is he does; or do we hand the nation over some morally bankrupt enabler of the aristocratic corporate class?
I'm beginning to hope those Mayans were right and that 2012 holds nothing more for us than to be blasted into stardust by some roving rouge asteroid. But I am still undone by this unanswerable question: if the Mayans were so great at predicting the end of our world, how come the sucked so bad at foreseeing the end of their world?
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Insane Propagation
I don't know what's going on but I'm finding I'm getting VHF/UHF reception I've never gotten before. On just my little Radio Shackl Pro-404 scanner, I was able to pick up a repeater from Southern Florida on 420.692 MHz. Hams from California, Tucson and the Carolina's could be heard clearly. On top of that, I heard this while listening to the scanner in my car - I didn't even have a mobile antenna hooked onto the scanner, just a ducky (albeit, a 800 MHz antenna, slight upgrade from the ducky that came with the unit). Anybody who has any idea what's going on, let me know.
12/29 Footnote - what I was picking up was repeater network. Radio geeks can read about it here.
12/29 Footnote - what I was picking up was repeater network. Radio geeks can read about it here.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Why No One Is Hiring
This article is old, but it's worth another look. To summarize, John Allison, chairman of BB&T loves Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I mean he LOVES IT!!! So much so that he makes his executives read it. And BB&T donates millions to the 'Ayn Rand Institute', whatever the hell that is.
Now, I don't own any stock in BB&T, but if I did, I'd sell it immediately. Christopher Hitchens perhaps put it best about Ayn Rand - Americans don't need further instruction on being selfish. It's in our DNA. But I would not want anything to do with any organization, especially a corporation, that operates on the premise that the individual takes priority over the collective.
Allison seems to think that if he breeds a culture of self-righteous government-haters, he's going to yield optimum results. That may make for some cute Carolina water-cooler banter with lively comparisons of our president to Mao levied some lovely starched shirt corporate scratch-golfing Glenn Beck jackboots. But if I were to commit the grave sin of imagining myself as a business owner, I'd be a little bit concerned if all my best employees were nihilistic self-servers.
We have a major problem. No one is hiring. A company that had 20 employees in 2007 fired five of them. Now the remaining 15 do the work of 20. And corporate profits are strong, incredibly strong throughout America. Shareholders snicker and feed bullshit to the executive boards of the corporations that serve as their personal ATM machines. Don't hire anyone back - claim it's still a crisis. All bullshit. The economy has returned but the 1% who own a quarter of America are itching to claim a full half of it.
It looks as though President Barack Obama has given up fighting. And it may very well be that our nation's next leader might be yet another Texas governor who conveys his worth by way of his inarticulation and intellectual disinterest. 1% of our nation commands 25% of its wealth. Corporate profits have enjoyed six straight quarters of double-digit growth, yet our population has been brainwashed to believe we need yet another Texan of sub-par intelligence to deliver us from an evil president who spends his days plotting to persecute America's precious yacht owners.
Conservatives love to lament an alleged cultural relativism that existed briefly in the 1960's. But now we're reaping the ill effects of an enduring moral relativism that infests our nation's boardrooms that masks itself as free-market righteousness.
Obama has given up. The dream is dead. We're doomed.
Now, I don't own any stock in BB&T, but if I did, I'd sell it immediately. Christopher Hitchens perhaps put it best about Ayn Rand - Americans don't need further instruction on being selfish. It's in our DNA. But I would not want anything to do with any organization, especially a corporation, that operates on the premise that the individual takes priority over the collective.
Allison seems to think that if he breeds a culture of self-righteous government-haters, he's going to yield optimum results. That may make for some cute Carolina water-cooler banter with lively comparisons of our president to Mao levied some lovely starched shirt corporate scratch-golfing Glenn Beck jackboots. But if I were to commit the grave sin of imagining myself as a business owner, I'd be a little bit concerned if all my best employees were nihilistic self-servers.
We have a major problem. No one is hiring. A company that had 20 employees in 2007 fired five of them. Now the remaining 15 do the work of 20. And corporate profits are strong, incredibly strong throughout America. Shareholders snicker and feed bullshit to the executive boards of the corporations that serve as their personal ATM machines. Don't hire anyone back - claim it's still a crisis. All bullshit. The economy has returned but the 1% who own a quarter of America are itching to claim a full half of it.
It looks as though President Barack Obama has given up fighting. And it may very well be that our nation's next leader might be yet another Texas governor who conveys his worth by way of his inarticulation and intellectual disinterest. 1% of our nation commands 25% of its wealth. Corporate profits have enjoyed six straight quarters of double-digit growth, yet our population has been brainwashed to believe we need yet another Texan of sub-par intelligence to deliver us from an evil president who spends his days plotting to persecute America's precious yacht owners.
Conservatives love to lament an alleged cultural relativism that existed briefly in the 1960's. But now we're reaping the ill effects of an enduring moral relativism that infests our nation's boardrooms that masks itself as free-market righteousness.
Obama has given up. The dream is dead. We're doomed.
Friday, September 9, 2011
New York Films - 9/11/11
THE NIGHT BEFORE
On the night of September 10th, 2001, I was making my way across lower Manhattan to a small theatre where a short film was premiering which my cousin had edited. My office was in the World Financial Center (across the street from 1 World Trade Center), and I figured I'd walk the journey to the East Village because back then, no logical transportation route (symbolically enough) connected the financial district of Manhattan to it's (then) most raw artistic center.
This proved to be a mistake. The skies opened up in a torrential downpour. I sprinted from awning to awning, all the way my feet slogged through six inches of water. Having lived in Manhattan (thank you God) for six years, I can honestly put forth that Mother Nature never levied an onslaught onto Manhattan as she did the evening of September 10th, 2001.
By the time I got to the premier, the film was over. My uncle (my cousin-editor's dad) approached me cautiously. He took one look at me and seemed unsettled by my soggy appearance. And with a voice loaded with concern, and perhaps something else, something possibly foreboding, he held the back of my neck and asked, "Are you okay?"
THE DAY OF
I watch clips on YouTube. Just as it has become the informal repository of a wide reaching tapestry of our culture, it has also become a peripheral chronicler of history. There are hundreds of clips uploaded about The Day. And most, unfortunately, are compilations of the systematic hysteria of America's lust for conspiracy: the tragic 'inside job' pornography. I had to sit through endless misfires of these abominations but then I finally found what I was looking for. There is only one film clip I've ever encountered that does it - that captures the sound that the planes made. It is a deafening sound that I can only describe as a manhole cover being dropped on your head.
We talk about the life before and the life after. When everything changed. And so I cling onto films - not films of The Day, but films that captured New York before The Day. There is a brief blessed time when something is yours, before your big boom and film helps us to soak in the artifacts that unleash memory. There was a time when New York was mine, and I was the king of the universe and we all, all of ignorant sleeping America, felt we could walk through the raindrops.
SOME TIME EARLIER
In the past few weeks, thanks to my insomnia, I've lucked upon a number of my favorite New York films on late night cable: Hannah and Her Sisters, Mo'Better Blues, Moonstruck, Bright Lights Big City. These capture a New York a little over a decade before September 11th, when the city was just emerging from the abyss of the 1970's and the Guilianification of the 1990's was a long ways off. I remember seeing these films when I was marooned in Memphis, incongruously forging a new identify as a Southern teenager. These films brought be back to my roots and planted seeds for where I wanted my future to be.
There is a precious time capsule in the backdrops of these films. Films set in cities do this for us. When Michael J. Fox is standing outside a Fifth Avenue department store window gazing up at the mannequin molded after the wife who has left him, I now just look at the cars going by in the background and am fascinated at the flowing river of the automotive past. It's incredibly refreshing to see a New York where stores and restaurants were not overrun by national chains (there's not a Starbucks in sight and characters are (gasp!) forced to patronize local delis and eateries). Furthermore it's most refreshing to watch New Yorkers working at desks without computers and sustaining existence without handheld electronic devices.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A Severed Head
Iris Murdoch's A Severed Head is the third of her books I've read (the other two being The Black Prince and The Sea, The Sea). Severed Head is essentially a heady, intellectual, painfully English version of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Murdoch presents, as she always does, inordinately interesting and intelligent characters so above you and I in all matters with the exception of their inability NOT to be driven insane by love.
Martin has both a mistress and a wife he loves. Much to Martin's surprise, his wife tells him that she is leaving him for her therapist. Martin is devastated. But why? Should he not just build a new life with his mistress? Of course not. Because love is not about the other, but about the elevation of the self. And romantic happiness, in Murdoch's world, is entirely rooted in the self. Happiness comes not from what two people can give to one another, but from something far more pessimistic. It's a blunt but not unrealistic view of the reality of relationships.
Love is a complex and semi-diabolical landscape in Murdoch's work. The blunt mechanics of sex are almost entirely absent in her stories - even the suggestion of it is hard to extract. But the all encompassing obsessiveness which love unwittingly inflicts on humanity pervades her stories and nearly derails the lives of her characters. The reader, at least this one, is always left with a tremendous sense of unease. I love her work - being an unabashed anglophile helps.
From Frederick
"You missed a very dull TV show about Auschwitz. More gruesome film clips. And more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification at the systematic murder of millions. The reason why they can never answer the question How could this happen? is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, they question is Why doesn't it happen more often? Of course, it does - it subtler forms.
"It's been ages since I sat in front of the TV, just changing channels to find something. You see the whole culture: Nazis, deodorant salesmen, wrestlers, beauty contests, the talk shows...eh, can you imagine the level of a mind that watches wrestling?
"But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers - third rate con men convincing the poor suckers that watch them that they speak for Gee-sus. And to please send money - money, money, money, money.
"If Jesus came back today and saw what was going on in his name...he would never stop throwing up."
Monday, September 5, 2011
Slimbo's Sports Update
Summer is over. The New York Mets are, as they so often in the month of August and September, entirely out of the contention for post-season action. Furthermore, thanks to the Wilpon's dealings with Bernie Madoff, the franchise continues to be financially adrift, most likely to be sold to the first poor bastard who thinks this $1 billion nightmare is a good bet.
So what else is there for Slimbo to cogitate upon? What else is there to distract him from the mountains of rejection letters, and stacks of paintings which have all congealed into one sticky stack amid the summertime storeroom heat?
Well, hockey has presented an interesting conundrum. Due to the geography of my birth I have long declared my allegiances to the New York Islanders. Now, rightfully so, the citizens of Long Island have declared that they do not want to refurbish my team's god-awful arena with taxpayer dollars. And so, logic would dictate that we should not expect the Isles to stay with us, considering the deserving citizens of Quebec who lustily wish to give the Islanders a new home. Ca va, I suppose. [By the way - I'd appreciate if all 2.5 of you Slimbo's Shelf readers could take a moment and see the poll on the right. Help me pick my new National Hockey League club. (Who the hell am I kidding? No one reads this fucking blog, except for graduate students looking to pilfer my genius as they complete their paper on Heinrich Boll) Okay, Rolf, pick a team then!!]
It doesn't matter. I don't even think I like hockey. Hell, I just think I started rooting for the Islanders when I began my lost years on Wall Street, laboring for the overlords, all of whom where NY Rangers fans. I was clearly turning my back and stomping on the graves of the proletariat working-class sensibilities that had brought me and my family forth from centuries of impoverished oblivion. Whether toting golf clubs or building databases, I have done nothing with my professional life but betray every ennobling tenet of Christianity and democracy that has made Western Civilization tenable. All I ever seem to do is whore myself out to the bad guys. I guess rooting for the NY Islanders gave me me some slight wedge upon which I can maybe, just maybe feel as though I was siding with the good guys for a change.
But what about the New York Football Giants? Hell, I don't know. And I don't think I care, really. All of New York is abuzz for the New York Jets right now. This makes sense. The Jets have a formidable team, an outsized identity and that elusive muse: momentum, the most important key to success in the NFL. The Giants are sputtering, hoping for the best, while praying to elude the tapestry of injuries that has become the franchise's annual Waterloo.
When I was a kid growing up, my father and older brother were passionate Jets fans. Unfortunately, my choosing the Giants lacks any noble source other than the need to differentiate myself from the two older males in the house. Still, I am glad I chose the Giants. Sometimes people (very reasonably) point out the contradictory identity of being both a Mets and Giants fan. That's fair. I wish the ubiquitous Jets-Yankees hybrids with whom I share Westchester County were subject to an equal scrutiny but I shouldn't be bitter.
I will say this - to equate the New York Giants with the New York Yankees bears no logic whatsoever. Aligning the two might have made sense in the 1950's, however in the past few decades, there could be no two dissimilar entities. In their present incarnation, the New York Yankees are the black hole of parity in the Majors. The Giants, on the other hand, helped to usher in the modern day profit sharing structure of the NFL, owing much to the vision of late owner Wellington Mara. The Yankees are all that is worth hating about New York: hubris, greed and entitlement. The New York Football Giants on the other hand, are a throwback to a more gentlemanly atmosphere, sometimes to detriment of their own success.
But the most important sport on the immediate horizon is my son's soccer team, for which I am an assistant coach. Last year they went undefeated in the fall season and then never won again once they'd been bumped up into the upper division in the Spring. No task is worse than facing eleven nine year-olds after a loss and regurgitating the worst of lies: 'it doesn't matter who wins' and 'it's just as important how you play as if you win'. I wish like hell that those things were true but they're not and my kids see right through me as kids always do. They already seem to know that the bully who kicked their shins and knocked them over to score the game winner that beat them will most likely succeed in life without recompense. They know it all already and see I'm full of shit. I just hope they believe me when I tell them I love them. And that I'm proud of them.
So what else is there for Slimbo to cogitate upon? What else is there to distract him from the mountains of rejection letters, and stacks of paintings which have all congealed into one sticky stack amid the summertime storeroom heat?
Well, hockey has presented an interesting conundrum. Due to the geography of my birth I have long declared my allegiances to the New York Islanders. Now, rightfully so, the citizens of Long Island have declared that they do not want to refurbish my team's god-awful arena with taxpayer dollars. And so, logic would dictate that we should not expect the Isles to stay with us, considering the deserving citizens of Quebec who lustily wish to give the Islanders a new home. Ca va, I suppose. [By the way - I'd appreciate if all 2.5 of you Slimbo's Shelf readers could take a moment and see the poll on the right. Help me pick my new National Hockey League club. (Who the hell am I kidding? No one reads this fucking blog, except for graduate students looking to pilfer my genius as they complete their paper on Heinrich Boll) Okay, Rolf, pick a team then!!]
It doesn't matter. I don't even think I like hockey. Hell, I just think I started rooting for the Islanders when I began my lost years on Wall Street, laboring for the overlords, all of whom where NY Rangers fans. I was clearly turning my back and stomping on the graves of the proletariat working-class sensibilities that had brought me and my family forth from centuries of impoverished oblivion. Whether toting golf clubs or building databases, I have done nothing with my professional life but betray every ennobling tenet of Christianity and democracy that has made Western Civilization tenable. All I ever seem to do is whore myself out to the bad guys. I guess rooting for the NY Islanders gave me me some slight wedge upon which I can maybe, just maybe feel as though I was siding with the good guys for a change.
But what about the New York Football Giants? Hell, I don't know. And I don't think I care, really. All of New York is abuzz for the New York Jets right now. This makes sense. The Jets have a formidable team, an outsized identity and that elusive muse: momentum, the most important key to success in the NFL. The Giants are sputtering, hoping for the best, while praying to elude the tapestry of injuries that has become the franchise's annual Waterloo.
When I was a kid growing up, my father and older brother were passionate Jets fans. Unfortunately, my choosing the Giants lacks any noble source other than the need to differentiate myself from the two older males in the house. Still, I am glad I chose the Giants. Sometimes people (very reasonably) point out the contradictory identity of being both a Mets and Giants fan. That's fair. I wish the ubiquitous Jets-Yankees hybrids with whom I share Westchester County were subject to an equal scrutiny but I shouldn't be bitter.
I will say this - to equate the New York Giants with the New York Yankees bears no logic whatsoever. Aligning the two might have made sense in the 1950's, however in the past few decades, there could be no two dissimilar entities. In their present incarnation, the New York Yankees are the black hole of parity in the Majors. The Giants, on the other hand, helped to usher in the modern day profit sharing structure of the NFL, owing much to the vision of late owner Wellington Mara. The Yankees are all that is worth hating about New York: hubris, greed and entitlement. The New York Football Giants on the other hand, are a throwback to a more gentlemanly atmosphere, sometimes to detriment of their own success.
But the most important sport on the immediate horizon is my son's soccer team, for which I am an assistant coach. Last year they went undefeated in the fall season and then never won again once they'd been bumped up into the upper division in the Spring. No task is worse than facing eleven nine year-olds after a loss and regurgitating the worst of lies: 'it doesn't matter who wins' and 'it's just as important how you play as if you win'. I wish like hell that those things were true but they're not and my kids see right through me as kids always do. They already seem to know that the bully who kicked their shins and knocked them over to score the game winner that beat them will most likely succeed in life without recompense. They know it all already and see I'm full of shit. I just hope they believe me when I tell them I love them. And that I'm proud of them.
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