I’ve been thinking about the Beatitudes.  When I think of the Beatitudes, I think of two things.  First, I think of Eddie Izzard, who has an amusing riff on the meek inheriting the Earth in his stand-up show Circle:

Second, I think of The Secret Life of Brian, a documentary on Monty Python’s Life of Brian.  It includes part of a televised debate in which John Cleese and Michael Palin defended the movie against Malcolm Muggeridge (a Christian broadcaster) and Mervyn Stockwood (a bishop).  Four minutes into the video Muggeridge claims that the movie ridicules the Sermon on the Mount, which he calls ”one of the most sublime utterances that any human being has ever spoken on this earth.”

The fact that I associate the Beatitudes with British comedians rather than theological theses tells you a lot about the lack of thought I’ve invested in this particular aspect of Christianity.  It is probably for that reason that I really struggle with the idea that the Beatitudes are even remotely sublime.

Sublime is not a very precise word.  Different schools of thought ascribe different meanings to it.  It would very instructive to explore those schools of thought and the difference nuances that accompany each school, but today is not Learn About The Sublime Day.  Today is Try to Make Sense of the Beatitudes Day, so let’s do just that.  Let’s see if the Beatitudes even make sense.

• Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
• Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
• Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
• Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
• Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain merciful.
• Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see god.
• Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of god.
• Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

I thought about exploring each blessing by itself, but that would take a ridiculous amount of time and space.  It would also frustrate me.  For example, “poor in spirit” is an incredibly imprecise phrase.  How can we understand its original meaning if we are not fluent in ancient Greek?  How can we be certain that the ancient Greek phrase is a properly rendered translation of the original Aramaic phrase?  How can we be sure that the original Aramaic phrase was accurately remembered by whomever told it to the gospel writers 30 years after it was uttered, since none of the gospel writers were actually eyewitnesses to the Sermon on the Mount?

The lack of accurate source material is one source of frustration.  (I get equally frustrated with lack of adequate source material in Shakespeare.  Does Hamlet say “too, too solid flesh” or “too, too sullied flesh?”  Is Hamlet feeling suicidal because his dad died and his dad’s brother married his mother and he hasn’t had a chance to say hi to his girlfriend because her idiot of a father is always hanging around and intoning inanities, or is Hamlet echoing the sentiments that his matter-despising, Plato-loving professors at Wittenburg pounded into his shapely head?  It’s a very important distinction, but we don’t know which word Shakespeare intended, because we’re stuck with texts compiled from prompters who just wanted to finish the play and go out for a pint of beer and few rounds of gossip about how much weight Richard Burbage had gained this week.)

Another source of frustration is theology itself.  For example, I did a quick yahoo search on interpretations of the first beatitude, and I came across someone who suggested that “poor in spirit” means “spiritual bankruptcy” and confessing one’s unworthiness and utter dependence on god.

That interpretation irks me for a number of reasons.  First, I do not believe that human beings are spiritually bankrupt because I do not believe that we are totally depraved.  I agree with Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s summary of humanity in Good Omens: “Just when you’d think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of.”

Actually, I’m pretty unimpressed with Hell’s malignancy and Heaven’s grace.  If you think about it, Hell is populated with creatures whose entire purpose is to cause pain.  But the pain caused by their intentional evil is nothing compared to the pain of humanity’s unintentional evil – for example, our apathy in the face of suffering.  Similarly, god’s most creative expression of love is 24 hours of suffering (if you give a liberal estimate of the time between Jesus’ arrest and death).  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard “suffering and suicide” in a list of marital vows that demonstrate faith and love, and I’ve never put “suffering and suicide” on my Christmas wish lists.  Why?  Because that’s not a reasonable, sane, or even useful way to demonstrate love.  Human beings manage much more creative expressions of love every hour.

So we’re not going to review each beatitude by itself.  I think we can generalize the beatitudes into one of two categories:

1. Blessed are those who suffer in this life, because they will be rewarded in the next.
2. Blessed are those who suffer, because as Mustapha Mond points out in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, “actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.”

Far better thinkers than I have critiqued Christianity on the grounds that it very much promotes the first generalization:  ”Oppressed masses!  You should not revolt against your tyrannical government.  We are only oppressing you so that you can grow spiritually.  Growing spiritually is much more important than being free.  After all, the Bible never condemns slavery – it even supports it!  And what could possibly be wrong with a book of moral instruction that condemns two men who love each other but supports one man enslaving another?  Such a scathingly brilliant combination of ethical principles cannot be anything but divinely inspired!”  Now that I’ve gotten my frustration with the first generalization out of the way,  I’m going to explore the second generalization.

If you haven’t read Brave New World yet, you need to do so.  I remember reading it in tenth grade and being electrified by two things: the use of Shakespeare’s maddeningly alive words, and the debate between The Savage and Mustapha Mond.  The Savage rails against the brave new world where everyone is happy and no one struggles.  The debate culminates in one of the most spine-tingling passages in literature:

“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness, I want sin.”

“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”

“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”

There was a long silence.

“I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.

Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. “You’re welcome,” he said.

The Savage and Mustapha Mond are both intelligent, erudite, eloquent men.  The Savage is passionate, but Mustapha Mond’s arguments are equally compelling.  Is it better to suffer and enjoy the over-compensations for this suffering, or to coast through life without struggling but without experiencing the relief of assuaged suffering?

I wrestled with that passage when I encountered it in tenth grade, and I still wrestle it.  As an existentialist, I believe that we need a struggle to define us, to give us purpose and meaning.  As an idealist, I like having causes to champion.  Could I be happy if I found myself in The Savage’s position, if I were introduced to a world in which there is no suffering to assuage and no ideals to actualize?

My answer came when I realized that I was in love with learning.  Solve all the world’s problems, and there is still the whole of history to explore.  There are still writers and philosophers to read, paintings to see, music to listen to, skills to develop, and an entire universe to explore.  There is more to learn than can be crammed in a single lifetime.

Is learning delightful enough to inspire more happiness than the over-compensations for misery?  I don’t know.  I suspect it depends on the person.  Some person seem to love learning; some people seem to regard it as dull task.  I think everyone is born curious, but I think that curiosity is hammered out of them in school.  I used to speak ill of teachers for that reason, but I have a lot more sympathy for them after teaching in a classroom.  Maintaining discipline in a room full of energetic kids is extremely difficult, and maintaining discipline while trying to teach specific ideas so that they can test well is even harder.

I like to think that if children maintained their natural curiosity and became adults with a passionate desire to learn, we would have fewer problems in the world.  But I’m a liberal who thinks that education is the cure for just about every problem in the world, so I’m biased.

Since I’ve  outed myself as a liberal (as if the content of this entire blog wasn’t an obvious indication), I might as well close by sharing two quotations that I think deserve the description sublime:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutality, tied in a single garment of destiny.  Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.  –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Rather than encouraging the oppressed to remain oppressed, it demonstrates kinship with them while promising to fight on their behalf – thereby transcending the human inclination to be selfish and to look out for ourselves while neglecting others.  My next quotation achieves the same:

While there is a lower class, I am in it.
While there is a criminal element, I am of it.
While there is a soul in prison, I am not free!  –Eugene Debs

If those are not sublime words to live by, I don’t know what are.

Habe gerade ohne vorwissen diesen Film gesehen. Ich bin froh, endlich einmal Zielgruppe zu sein.

In den meisten Statistiken wäre ich die “ignorierbare Schwankung”: Wenn Leute nach ihrer Meinung gefragt werden und ich meine sage, dann ist das völlig egal. Und das gilt in den allermeisten Bereichen. Aber dieser Film ist garantiert für Leute wie mich gemacht.

Free Rainer ist ein Medienthriller. Es geht darum, dass Rainer, einer der Redakteure eines Schweinesenders wie Pro 7, seine Meinung ändert. Er wird von einer Frau, deren Leben sein Programm zerstört hat, angefahren, und erlebt ein Nahtod-Ereignis, das ihn umkrempelt.

Und dann verlässt er den Sender und sammelt eine Untergrund-Gruppe an, die sich zum Ziel setzt, die Einschaltquoten zu riggen und zu beeinflussen – denn das ist schließlich das einzige, wovon sich das Fernsehen noch steuern lässt.

Sie haben Erfolg. In einer Kernszene sieht man Sarah Kuttner (die zu den guten gehört), wie sie Leute auf der Straße interviewen, die vom neu ausgerichteten Fernsehen begeistert sind. Ausserdem Zitat, 15-Jähriges Mädchen A: “Also ich finds scheisse weil ich guck jetzt kaum Fernsehen“, Mädchen B: “Ja ich auch, weil also gestern abend hab ich den Fernseher angeschaltet und da waren nur so behinderte Schwarzweissfilme“

Die folgenden Zeitungen, die im Film den Wandel darstellen, haben es mir ebenso besonders angetan.

Der Film weist natürlich keine Explosionen auf (alles was an Action vorkommt, ist im Trailer zu sehen, und ist auch ausschließlich zwecks Trailer im Film drin, behaupte ich mal). Aber: Jedes Mitglied der Rainer-Gruppe ist ein echter Charakter, mit richtiger Persönlichkeit. Die Leute werden dabei über ihre Schwächen definiert!

Es gibt ausserdem eine große Menge ähnlichkeiten mit “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei”, dem Vorgänger-Film von Hans Weingartner, welcher übrigens nach der Medienrevolution auch kurz im Fernsehen läuft – von der Minirevolutions-Gruppe, deren Pläne unerwartet ausarten, bis hin zum Höhepunkt, der garantiert an dystopische Romane angelehnt ist.

Einer der Nebenakteure ist nämlich Fan von “Brave New World”, in dem es, wie in jedem guten dystopischen Werk, ein Faceoff zwischen dem Vertreter des Schweinesystems und dem Revolutionär gibt. Und auch was der Vertreter tut, um die Revolution zu beenden – und, was die Revolutionäre daraufhin tun – ist sehr stark wie bei “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei”.

Ich weiß nicht, ob dieser Film jemals auf Pro 7 kommen wird. Wenn dem so ist, handelt es sich dabei um einen neuen Höhepunkt der Perversion. Sollte man den Film sehen? Unbedingt, besonders wegen der Aussage. Das hier ist kein “Großes Kino”, sondern einfach nur wichtig. Ey Benno, du musst das auf jeden gucken.

“Remake” and “original” are loaded words.

The Prisoner, AMC’s remake of the 1967 British series of the same name, is nothing like its predecessor.  Or at least that’s what I’m told—not having seen the first version, I watched the new miniseries with a mind wiped as clean of preconceptions as one of the brainwashed members of The Village.  And along with most of them, I liked what I saw—The Prisoner (2009) was a strong, character-driven, self-contained story: an original in its own right.

Brilliant, enigmatic, and utterly horrifying in the way all good dystopian science fiction is—the final scene alone was enough to bring up a wave of déjà vu from reading George Orwell’s Nineteen Eight-Four for the first time and naively imagining torture and death were the worst O’Brien could do to Winston (or in this case, Two to Six).

I was wrong.

Throughout the miniseries, Six’s single-minded dedication to escape—“I am not a number!” he cries on multiple occasions, “I’m a free man!”— is almost heartbreaking.  Mental conviction, Six (James Caviezel) insists during early episodes, is stronger than anything the manipulative leader of The Village, Two (Ian McKellan, in a terrifying departure from the grandfatherly Gandalf), can throw at him.

But the theme of The Prisoner seems to be that the mind is not as secure a vault as we might imagine.  Six, after all, can’t even remember the name he supposedly had in his supposed other life and its supposed other world.  Any evidence he or any other number in the village has is as fragile as the wisp of a dream left after waking up—literally.  “Dreamers,” who draw fragments of their other lives on scraps of paper (the Statue of Liberty, a stick figure with a bag over its head), are disruptive elements in a society that sees them as crazy.

Add self-doubt to the mix and getting out starts to look impossible for the increasingly irresolute Six.

From my own experience, I’d say viewers can relate—as Six attempts to piece together memory fragments of a creepy corporate life at a mysterious surveillance company called Summakor (and his own quitting, even though “Nobody resigns from Summakor”), we’re trying to straighten out the plot from a thoroughly disjointed, non-linear story structure.  Episode one, “Arrival,” I’ll warn you, is nearly incomprehensible.

It’s not easy for anyone to straighten out the mysteries of The Village—neither us nor its own denizens—but the nonlinear narrative is as masterfully done an example of television text painting as I’ve ever seen.  The series, after all, is all about manipulating the human mind.

And no one’s better at that than Two, whose “death-cold eyes” (as described by one terrified villager) and gelid calm are absolutely convincing—I’m pretty sure smiling benignly while playing catch with a grenade is something only an elder statesman of drama like Sir Ian McKellan could pull off.

The rest of the cast, as well, is stellar, successfully portraying incredible depths of characterization (careful! some spoilers below) —

Two’s son, 11-12 (Jamie Campbell-Bower) shifts chillingly between the frigid self-possession of his father and the tortured confusion he picked up from Six;

Ruth Wilson’s self-composure as 313 is flawless, until the total disassociation of her “real” self from the “real” world is revealed, and makes a jarring contrast;

And Caviezel’s disorientation and resolution to escape are through the early episodes are utterly believable—only makes his ultimate end even more horrifying (here’s a hint: remember Winston Smith?).

But The Prisoner recalls Aldous Huxley as much as George Orwell: Two’s seemingly sincere belief that he can “help” people, perfect humans against their will, makes The Village as brave a new world as Huxley imagined for London of the 26^th century.

“The great war is psychological.  It’s in here,” Two insists, tapping his head.  And he’s right—not just in terms of the control he exerts over the minds of Six, 313, and his son 11-12 (for a while, at least).

“Postmodern” nonlinear editing doesn’t mean that the themes aren’t relevant, or predictive rather than contemporary—The Prisoner’s emphasis on the difference (or lack thereof?) between what’s real and what’s a construct is a very modern moral dilemma in an age when scientific and technological advances blur the line between the “real” the synthetic.

(Is 313’s love natural, or manufactured?  And even if it is a product of Two’s nefarious gene therapy, does that make it less real now that she does feel it?  Does The Village exist in any physical space, or just the mind?  Does it make a difference?)

In any case—with a disjointed structure, an just-barely-comprehensible storyline, a nightmarish conclusion, and a concept disconcertingly contemporary, watching AMC’s The Prisoner was something like having a bad dream, only to wake up and shudder that it could be possible.

But if Nineteen Eighty-Four or Brave New World are any sort of examples (or Shakespeare’s tragedies, or Euripides’, or Sophocles’…), dystopia and tragedy have a long shelf life.

I’m definitely buying the DVD.

by Ellen Brandt, Ph.D.

In these troubled times, readers seem to appreciate humor, the more off-the-wall the better. But they also like stories about villains, corporate and otherwise. And bad times or good, chocolate and babies sell.

While our results with the Faux Tabloid Ten experiment are based on a fairly small sampling of readers, they don’t surprise me at all. And I believe a larger sampling would yield results that were very similar.

Let’s start with the least successful headlines in the group and why they might not have attracted as many clicks as the front-runners did.

At the bottom of the pack were “Pet Hamsters May Spread Swine Flu” and “Transvestite Running For Mayor” – and readers were quick to tell us why. Both headlines, they said, were too much like what you might see in any ole newspaper, any ole day.

That’s despite the fact that the two titles fit into different categories of tabloid headlines. “Pet Hamsters” is what I call a Plausible-But-Somehow-Off headline. It seems reasonable on first glance, but is based on a glaring logical flaw, in this case, the sound-association of “hamsters” and “ham.”

“Pet Hamster” was rejected, though, not because it was “off,” but because readers have been inundated with swine flu stories lately, to the extent that they will only click on a title that is way more shocking – or perhaps humorous – than this one is. In the county where I live, for instance, some high schools have been temporarily closed because of suspected swine flu cases, which means this topic is the hardest of hard news, immediate and local.

But Rene suggests a way the topic could be made sufficiently humorous to persuade her to click: “I’d rather see . . . College Son’s Laundry Source of Swine Flu,” says the New Jersey mom and editor.

Readers thought “Transvestite Running For Mayor” was just too ho-hum, too. It falls into the Big Statement category of tabloid headlines, those based on news that might be true but is shocking to a portion of the population.

In this case, maybe not all that shocking anymore. One reader, an insurance broker from California, wrote me privately that in the Golden State, there are possibly dozens of transvestite politicians. Although he may be exaggerating, there are probably at least a few. On the other hand, a revelation about an existing Mayor or Congressperson discovered to be something the voters didn’t think he/she was would probably be not only clickable, but the lead story at every media outlet in town! I could come up with examples – “Michael Is Michelle!” - but I don’t wish to be sued until the Blog-Off is over.

Scoring slightly better in our reader poll – with results somewhere in the middle range – were “Are You a Cheetah Or a Crocodile?,” “Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer,” “Women Want Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches,” and “7 Out of 10 Blog In the Nude.”

Interestingly enough, three of these titles have a behavioral – some would call it psycho-babble – slant, popular not only in the tabloids, but in many other kinds of consumer publications. So these are familiar kinds of headlines, with which most readers are comfortable.

“Are You a Cheetah or a Crocodile?” falls into the well-liked Idiotic Quiz subcategory, part of the greater What-the-Heck-Is-That-All-About? category. If you’re human, you probably love such quizzes and are happy to take them – and some of our readers did, imagining their own quiz to correspond to the headline. Michigan writer Rowena, for instance, told us that “It pains me to say so, but I think I’m a crocodile. I lurk . . . patient, tenacious . . . I might even be a bottom dweller.”

But Art, a healthcare executive from Tennessee, wondered if this one might be more than a mere quiz. “I think this is an adjunct to the reality show for bankers and lawyers,” he told us.

“Women Like Men Who Smell Like Fresh Peaches” and “7 Out of 10 Blog in the Nude” are not only both Big Statement titles, they both fit into the very popular Strange Research subcategory. Like Idiotic Quizzes, titles like these are familiar to anyone who has ever read a newspaper or magazine, not to mention the average scholarly journal, and our readers jumped right in.

Re the fruit: Scott, an architect from northern California, confessed, “If I had some fresh peaches and wanted a romantic night, I would definitely read this one.” Ann, a business coach from Missouri, said, “I like peaches, and I like men, but maybe not together.” While Jamie, a designer from Florida, remarked, perhaps too revealingly, that “I love that my husband smells like cinnamon after a shower!”

Re the naked people: One anonymous respondent said he’d “like to blog in the nude, but it might upset my co-workers.” Cheryl, a Texas entrepreneur, thinks someone should form a new Linked In or Twitter group called the Buff Bloggers, which might be well-received, particularly among fitness-oriented writers.

“Swimming Pool Features Underwater Computer,” which falls into the Plausible-But-Somehow-Off category, may have gotten only about 1/5 as many page views as the top-clicked title, but it got the second-highest number of comments of any of the ten headlines, about 1-in-10, a terrific ratio of interactive responses for an Internet-based page.

This is the classic “double-take” headline, which sounds fabulous until you think about it. One Californian said, tongue-in-cheek but bathing suit-clad, “I’m very interested in not only working from home but working from my pool, so an underwater computer is exactly what I’m looking for.” Lawyer Michael from Florida mused, “What’s so funny about that? Sometimes I’m in the Jacuzzi, connected to my office by two different computers, with an I-phone on one side, non-alcoholic beer on the other, HD-exterior TV mounted in front and a music system giving me good sounds.” Sounds like my kind of guy! But New York marketing guru Cindy, again meshing two of the titles, asked, “Will there also be crocodiles in the swimming pool? That could make focusing on the computer challenging.”

Murder, Sex, Sushi, and Bankers: The Top Four

Neck and neck for third and fourth place in our Clickability poll were the headlines “Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam” and “New Reality Show to Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers.” While only about half as popular as the Number Two headline, “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” these two had quite a few adherents, especially, for some reason, among Southerners and Ivy Leaguers, not to mention Southern Ivy Leaguers.

“Thailand Swallowed By Giant Clam” is the kind of Purely Ridiculous headline one of my former clients, the Weekly World News, used to specialize in, and commentators on both the blog and at the Linked In Groups got into the spirit of things. Alabamian Butch quipped that “I thought it was a lobster.” Several others had the same idea, saying they heard it wasn’t Thailand, but Laos or Malaysia or maybe Indonesia. But one of my sorority sisters believed it was Thailand, commented on her happy days working in that country, and commiserated with former friends and colleagues who had to relocate because of the Evil Mollusk.

Talk about Evil – or at least currently unloved – various readers said they can’t wait to see an actual contest between Wall Street Bankers and Wall Street Lawyers, which would move our “New Reality Show” headline from the Plausible-But-Off to the Big Statement category. Mr. Burnett, are you listening?

One said, “This is a reality show I might actually watch. Winner gets their job back, but has to pay 50% of salary and overpaid bonus to losers.” But Art said, “One group will be made up of timid souls laid-off because they were too conservative . . . They will never get out of the starting gate. The other team will be the group that was so aggressive, they either burst the bubble or got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. Good luck getting this group to form a team!”

Neither clams nor laid-off executives can compete with decadence and baby animals, of course. Such has it ever been, and such shall it ever be. “Kinky Sex, Chocolate Truffles, Adorable Puppies,” our number two-clicked headline, also succeeds because it falls into the What-the-Heck-is-That-All-About? category, which lures you in, because it could fit a wide range of possible topics. Dashing Breeder of Siberian Huskies absconds to Belgium with Ingenue Judge he met at the Westminster Kennel Club Show. Well – could be.

Kim, a physician from Florida, liked the headline trio, but thinks we should have added in a good champagne. Sherry, a publicist from Massachusetts, was OK on the kinky sex and candy, but Adorable Puppies “took the imagination, for me, down a slippery slope to a dark place.” Wow, Sherry! You should get in touch with Jeff, a sports producer from New York, who joked that he “prefer(s) barnyard animals, a midget, and a taser.”

Personally, I am a sucker for baby animals and am prone to click on any story that features them. When the German magazine Der Spiegel was running their never-ending daily series about Knut, the mega-adorable baby polar bear, I visited their on-line site nearly every day to Ooh and Ah over baby pics of the white, furry cutie-pie.

But even babies and chocolates couldn’t compete with Dire Foul Play – at least in our little survey. The number one Faux Headline by far was “Corpse Found in Internet Guru’s Gym Locker,” which received over ten times as many eager clicks as the lowest-ranking headline.

This is clearly an example of a Big Statement tabloid headline, based on material that is actual news, but shocking or intriguing to many viewers. Just as I understand the impulse to seek out stories about baby animals, I empathize totally with the impulse to click on stories about Love Triangles Turned Tragic, Postal Workers Going Berserk, Cowboys Fighting Indians, and Corpses Found in Gym Lockers. In other words, Blood, Gore, Fury, and Passion appeal to me – and to many, many other readers.

Jan, an executive trainer from Arizona, thinks “a corpse in a gym locker would get a click from just about anyone.” But the fact that an Internet Guru was a principal in this (faux) saga seemed to attract people even more – although some seemed to hope the Guru might be the Corpse, instead of a possible Murderer. As a viewer from one of the Linked In groups said, “Those Internet guys are so full of themselves, he probably got what he deserved.”

Others were intrigued by the locker side of the equation. “How does one get a locker big enough to hold a body?” asked Ann Lia, a healthcare executive from Washington, D.C., whose fitness club must be stingy with their space. But Bob, a marketing manager from Florida, took it one step further, into the realm of political favoritism. “Who in the Administration,” he complained, “did the Guru know to get a gym locker that big?”

As these responses show, the vast majority of readers found our Faux Tabloid Headline project both useful and amusing, encouraging them not only to click, but to get creative themselves with some delightful – or downright hilarious – comments.

There were a handful of dissenters – none on the site itself, but some who posted at Linked In groups. A couple of them were the garden-variety crazies you seem to find all over the Internet today, and whom I intend to write about in a future blog.

Others were thoughtful – although to my mind, dead wrong – dissenters. Their essential argument is that there’s Serious Journalism way over heeeeeeeeeeeeeeere and Tabloid Journalism way over theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere, and Never the Twain Shall Meet – a conclusion which the famous Twain – Mark – would have disagreed with vehemently. (Probably Shania, too.)

If this opinion were ever true – and I doubt it – it is certainly not true in the creative flux and cacophony of voices which mark the Brave New World of Internet Journalism right now.

The best-written, most thoroughly-researched and intelligently-reasoned article or blog may not get the audience it deserves just because it’s there. That audience often has to be brought to it, to find out it exists.

By Fair Means or Foul Play – like a Corpse in an Internet Guru’s Gym Locker – it is a legitimate exercise to seek out readers and bring them into your authorial fold.

Part Four of this series will suggest some topics for further discussion. Please comment. Your cacophonous voice is important, too!

For Part Four, New Reality Show to Feature Laid-Off Bankers, Lawyers, please click on: http://wp.me/pycK6-2o

To return to “Corpses, Mollusks, and Kinky Sex-How I Won the Blog-Off,” go to: http://wp.me/pycK6-2s

I am a Christian, but I’m not going to pretend like I don’t know what’s going on in this culture. I know the hip trends, the music, and the movies. I don’t have a television, but I do read the newspapers, I do have the internet, and am around people who engage with the various items that pop culture is trying to sell.

I don’t need to go into detail about what happened at this year’s AMA’s. It’s not appropriate to do so. I didn’t watch it. But based upon what I read, it was one of the raunchiest shows ever to go down on prime time television. What I was struck with was that parents who sat down in front of their television sets with their kids expected the program to be family friendly.

Really? Do you really think that all these music icons give a care in the world about being family friendly?

Read the lyrics to alot of their songs and you’ll find that being family friendly is not their mission statement. Even the youngest of stars isn’t concerned with being kosher (aka Miley Cyrus in an awards appearance earlier this year).

In light of some literature I’ve been reading, the culture’s shift into the vile debauchery of Adam Lambert and Miley Cyrus becomes all the more interesting to examine.  In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley’s masterpiece, the characters in the Conditioning Centre were sexualized from the time that they were kids. Hence, when I read that and when I read about the antics of Miley Cyrus, there’s a frightening connection. Either Huxley was possessed by the devil or he was absolutely brilliant in his foresight of society’s downward spiral.

I have yet to read Orwell’s masterpiece 1984, but I am somewhat familiar with the newspeak concept thanks to my father. I listened to Lady Gaga’s new single to check it out, to see what all the buzz is about. I didn’t do it because I enjoy Lady Gaga, but because I wanted to get a sample of what was happening. When I did, my ears were utterly irritated. I couldn’t help but think of the Orwellian newspeak. Nonsensical, repeated words. And that goes not only for her music but for alot of the music that’s played today. All intelligent thought is condensed or eliminated entirely.

Like I said earlier, I’m not going to pretend like I don’t know what’s going on in the realm of pop culture. I’m not going to endorse it, but I’m also not going to ignore it and I’m not going to get sucked into it. To me, it’s important to be aware of it because it’s an indicator of where society is headed. It, for sure, is one the most influential mediums that affects the other sectors of society. From what I can assess, we’re not in a good shape.

Meh, seems melodramatic, but its a line from an Iron Maiden song, and thus rules.

Right, after 5 hours on the road I am back in Southampton and straight into the library. Met Macina, Coates and The Man Who Would Be Will to plough through this sodding essay. Count so far? Almost 1100 words, need 2000. I think we’ll be here a while.

I think once this fucker is out of the way I shall be sleeping for 12 hours. Social Capital may be relevant and it may even be mildly interesting to those who are inclined to think that deeply about social structure, but I just don’t have the patience for it. Hell, I miss the little psychotic release that Modern Warfare 2 provides when needed. I think, after this session in the library, a session on the 360 will be necessary.

Rehearsal for ‘Ungry on Wednesday. Time to get serious with this stuff.

Lockdown still on the backburner, but I’m thinking that once I crack on with my second draft of Compartment 9 I’ll be back in the mood and ready to thrash some more of that out.

In an attempt to keep making gains with my reading, I figured I should keep updating my blog with the books I’m reading so that it ensures that I make time to keep reading!

Just wrapped up Brave New World. I liked it though I was more fascinated by the science in it with the concepts of Bokanovsky’s Process and how the society was created than some of the other concepts involved.  Good read and apparently ranked 5th on Modern Library’s 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century (Ulysses by James Joyce is #1, and The Great Gatsby is #2)

I have moved onto Donna Foote’s Relentless Pursuit. This baby is about a year with  TFA and so far I think it’s a pretty good book for anyone who wants to know what the TFA experience is like. I have found it to be incredibly similar to my own experience and have recommended it to my family so that when I’m talking about my experience they have an idea of what it is like.

I’m also recommending it to you. The raw emotions described in the book are real and I feel them everyday.

Check it out! (wasn’t that a line from Reading Rainbow…..?)

I hate, hate, hate people who look at movies–especially older movies–as just a step in the line to the movies we have today.  It’s a slap in the face to life, by extension, and I will explain why. (Foswi, this is primarily for you.)

I am a staunch historian, and I thoroughly believe in the value of studying history.  If you do not, you might as well stop reading this blog.  We’ll just never get along.  To that extent, is it useless to study ancient warfare in a modern context?  Are there no pracitical applicable lessons to be learned from tactics that defy era, technology, or weaponry?  I think you out there in someplacewhereyou’restaringatacomputerscreen should be thinking to yourself, “No, there is value in knowing that stuff…”  Because  you’re right.

Or, let’s think of this in terms of books.  Does it make sense to stop reading  Hamlet, To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, The Lord of the Rings, Black Boy, Brave New World, Romeo and Juliet, The Giver, etc. just because there are the Harry Potter series, the Twilight books, the Time Traveler’s Wife, and various James Patterson and Stephen King books topping the New York Times Bestseller list?  Should we leave the past behind and only allow only what is new and pretty and shiny to be let in?

I think not.

The problem is the genre of film allows this to easily happen.  And many people who watch movies (or passively read about movies) tend to think only the little that is said without thorough investigation into the actuality of history.

Point 1: Michael Bay is awesome…but not really.

The Island

Michael Bay, as many know, is the champion of all things pretty, and mind-numbingly explosive.  After all, you don’t make a name for yourself with blockbusters like Bad Boys, Bad Boys II, The Rock, Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, The Island, Transformers, and Transformers II (directed all by Bay) without some level of skill.  I mean, seriously.  That’s an impressive list of movies, with impressive DVD sales, and everything.

But let us be honest.  The movies star nice looking people, blow a lot of things up, include heart-racing, adrenaline pumping, action and car chases (or meteorite destroying drill malfunctions, what have you), and fun technological advances.  They’re like James Bond films…just without James Bond.

These movies have made millions.  They have loyal fans of adults, teenagers, and children alike.  They’re fun to watch, made millions in the movie theaters.  But they suck.  They have no deeper meaning, make me thoughtful in no way, and generally make me dumber, because I actually could have been learning something while I was wasting time watching pretty people run around.

Point 2: There is more to history than just history.

Citizen Kane

A friend of mine (after reading a former post of mine) responded thusly:

I’ll disregard the opinion of anyone who thinks Citizen Kane is great for anything more than its innovative transitions and camera angles.

While said tongue-in-cheek, there is, I know, a part of him that believes this to be true.  And this is why I am angry.  I love Citizen Kane, in the same way I love Schindler’s List.  Sure it’s a little on the long side, but the story is great, the acting is believable, the direction is flawless, and the overall impact: unforgettable.

The ease with which Americans, modern people, I’m not sure who this list should (or actually does) include, forget the past when it comes to movies is disturbing.  Yes, movies are more entertaining today.  Movie from yore are a little boring.

Except that’s not true.  I defy anyone to watch The Apartment and not be complete enraptured.  Peeping Tom is one of the creepiest movies I’ve ever seen.  (If you have a Netflix account, I believe it is streaming live.   You should go watch it now.  Better than Drag Me To Hell.  Creepier.  Stranger.  More interesting.)  And you know what, It Happened One Night is the quintessential romance that cannot be improved upon in a modern way.  There are just old movies that age well, and have stayed good for a reason.  Citizen Kane is one of them.  Beyond the transitions and camera angles. (We’ve all heard the “Oh my gosh, there’s a ceiling” reaction.)  But let’s talk about the role the dining room table plays in the movie.  Did you ever think about that? Or how about the scene where Welles types out the rest of a horrible review of his wife’s disastrous operatic debut?  The acting is top notch, better than Sean Penn in Milk.

I am struck by many things.  Here’s a short list:

• People today seem so averse to watching older, or just pain old, films.
• People tend to devalue the impact of older movies because modern counterparts tends to be more engaging, which they equate with “better.”
• People tend to devalue the fact that most older movies have a deeper theme than most modern movies, even modern movies based in classic stories.

This is why the market for older movies should be booming, not dying away.  This is why people should actually sit down and become their own movie reviewer.  If you take the time to watching a movie a week, you’ll watch AFI’s Top 100 movie list in less than two year.  Probably less than a year, considering you’ve seen a lot of them.

Why is it people are so ready to agree, or disagree with the statements of critics and film historians, but are so rarely willing to make their own original statements about the movies themselves.  People, you, staring at your own screen.  Say what’s on your mind.  Be willing to say Citizen Kane sucked, but don’t you dare say it’s boring without backing it up.  I’m not about opinion’s with no evidence.

Just have an opinion, and make it your own.

Sabe quem é a banda? Def Leppard.

Sabe quem me apresentou? Meu pai, há anos.

Sabe quem é o baterista? Rick Allen, e ele só tem um braço.

Sabe o que fiz hoje? Vi o filme “Hysteria” , que conta a história da banda e é o nome do álbum mais vendido deles. E com meu pai.

Sabe o que eu fiz depois? Saí do armário pra ele.

Sabe como foi? Ótimo.

Sabe o que me falta fazer agora? Música.

2009 tá no fim. Mas do jeito que tô vivendo esse ano, tem muita coisa pra oferecer ainda. =)

First, before I begin, I just want to say that, as I type this, I am listening to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance and loving it.

I haven’t decided yet if the images she crafts are parody and/or satire.  However, even if her visual marketing is a bit repulsive, her music is unexpectedly very good.

Second, I want to mention Sarah Palin.

Her mere mention in this blog boosts my traffic tremendously.  Palin is at the heart of many google searches that lead the hapless, and unsuspecting, Internet surfer to this page – second only to searches for smiley faces.

Don’t ask me why, but thousands upon thousands of you out there access this blog using terms like “smiley,” “smiley face,” “smily face,” “evil smiley” and “evil smiley face.” If you are reading this, then the odds are you got here looking for an evil smiley face.

As for you who out there who found my page using google searches centering on Sarah Palin – and there are more of you every day –  please take my word for it that you won’t find any nude pictures of Palin here.

Not "nude" per se.

Nor will you find any photos or discussions or any jokes even remotely related to any of the following apparently popular search terms:

Sarah Palin feet

Sarah Palin feets

Sarah Palin shoes

Sarah Palin Girl Scout

Sarah Palin Girl Scout Hat

Sarah Palin bullet bra

Sarah Palin donkey

Sarah Palin naughty nurse

Sarah Palin dog collar

Sarah Palin smoking

Sarah Palin smoking cigarettes

Sarah Palin cheerleader

Sarah Palin cheer leader

Sarah Palin dominatrix

Sarah Palin dominetrix

Sarah Palin dominutrix

Sarah Palin Navajo sweat lodge

Sarah Palin sweet lodge

Sarah Palin colonoscopy

Sarah Palin nasal passage

Sarah Palin sexy

Sarah Palin sexy cyborg

These are not all of the search terms related to Sarah Palin that have lead people to this blog, but they are some of the most troubling ones.

Who are you people? Do you live anywhere near me? Because if you do, I am moving the hell away.  ”Sarah Palin nasal passage?” “Sarah Palin sexy cyborg?”  What on earth is going on?  Are you out of your piggy little minds?

Look, let’s cut to the chase: if photos of anything even remotely related to any of those search terms existed, then I would have posted them. But there aren’t any – at least not yet.  I fully expect that, once her political star sinks, as it surely will, she will attempt to cash in on her name and reignite her celebrity by “accidentally” posting a sex tape or nude pics the way Carrie Prejean did.

Just jam-packed with irony, both actual and potential.

The lure of easy money is the greatest weakness from which white trash suffers.

Just oozing with greed and white trash hubris.

I am utterly convinced that the continuing revelations about Carrie Prejean’s multiple sex tapes (self-shot) and porno pics are part of a liberal conspiracy to discredit attractive but stupid right wing ultra Christian women who hate homosexuals.

But I digress.  I am really here to talk about Stargate Universe. I am a new participant on a blog hosted by the Brisbane Times and authored by John Birmingham, author of Without Warning and the Axis of Time series – all of which I enjoyed, have reread and highly recommend.

John’s blog is called The Geek and you can find it by going here. The Geek is devoted to issues designed to appeal to everyone’s inner nerd – i.e., questions centering on computers, technology and, lately, science fiction.  If you want to see what the Geek is all about, just sample the sparkling discussion by clicking here.

John Birmingham and premier tech geek and author, Orin Thomas.

Most recently in the Geek the Geek John has expressed his appreciation for Stargate Universe, a new series on the SyFi cable network.  Thus far I’ve based my criticism on the show’s lack of sexy space chicks.

Not appearing on Stargate Universe

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Also not appearing on Stargate Universe

But John’s recent opinion, the comments from some of his regular visitors, and the undeniable fact that the last SG-U episode was really very good, has forced me to get serious and explain why I am critical of the show.  What follows expands on the comment I left at the Geek.

To better explain why I haven’t liked SG-U until this last episode requires a short history of popular science fiction. In the beginning, science fiction was part of “high culture,” written by amazingly proficient writers like Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, Edwin Abbott Abbott and H.G. Wells (“the Early Masters”).

H.G. Wells. Wrote Sci Fi to meet women.

It wasn’t even called science fiction; it was, instead, referred to as  “scientific romance.” Then, in the late 1920’s in New York City, science fiction crept into pulp magazines and became popularized.  Lots of people read it, but, as literature, it was rubbish and even the best SF writers were, compared with the Early Masters, uneducated amateur hacks. But, like circus geeks who dream of playing Carnegie Hall, these pulp fiction hacks dreamed of critical recognition.

She considered herself an artist.

This desire for critical recognition for science fiction started a slow climb towards legitimacy – which required writers to display proficiency as well as imagination. Harlan Ellison was and still is part of this effort.

Harlan was a pensive young dude.

Unlike most science fiction writers of his time, Ellison began his career writing in the mainstream. In the 1950’s he wrote about youth gangs. In the 1960’s he wrote erotica.  In the 1960’s he began selling scripts for science fiction television programs like Star Trek and The Outer Limits.  These scripts were remarkably well written (Star Trek – The City on the Edge of Forever; The Outer Limits – Demon With the Glass Hand) and stood out as perhaps the best episodes of those series, garnering legitimate critical acclaim.

Ultra cool.

In the 1970’s Ellison became one of the leaders in the movement to legitimize science fiction. His own stories injected more mature themes into the genre – resulting in critical and commercial success.  His short story A Boy and His Dog – culminating with the hero and his pet eating the heroine – was produced as a movie.

Ellison’s efforts to improve science fiction were inventive.  Way before the rest of the world became aware how language colors perception, Ellison attempted to remove the stigma associated with science fiction by insisting I be referred to only as “speculative fiction.”

Ellison was part of a movement that raised the bar on what to expect from science fiction.  These efforts brought big benefits:  over the years that followed, Sci Fi writers slowly died out and have been replaced by writers who incidentally employ science fiction concepts and constructs.  This is not a trivial change.  Writers today – such as John Birmingham – are writers first, serious about the craft of writing. Science fiction concepts and constructs are devices used to help tell the story.

Before the reform movement described above, it used to be the other way around: science fiction concepts and constructs took precedent over story. For example, more often than not, any given science fiction story focused on space ships, ray guns and, yes, space chicks.

Adolescent geek wish fulfillment realized.

The story itself was incidental to these factors. So now we come to Stargate Universe.  This new program results from the desire to legitimize science fiction and focus on story and not on ray guns or space chicks.

That is SG-U’s strength, but it is also its weakness, because, in their efforts to inject real drama into science fiction, the SG-U writers and producers have forgotten who their audience is.

There is nothing wrong with well-written drama. What I saw last night on SG-U wasn’t melodramatic and wasn’t soap opera.  It was well written, well directed drama.  But those responsible for SG-U have forgotten that guys who grew up thrilled by space chicks and space battles make up SG-U’s audience.

Not a space chick, but she played one on TV.

Even the recent reinvention of Battlestar Galactica sprinkled amazing drama with the occasional amazing space battle – AND it included the occasional space chick.

That’s what kept us watching our television screens while really well written, well acted and well-directed drama took place.

Bertolt Brecht believed that literature and art should educate the viewer.  I believe that SG-U’s writers and producers are trying to educate the fan boys into appreciating drama. Or they have decided that BSG did the educating and now was the time to make the final transition from pop culture back to high culture. Either way, those responsible for SG-U were and are wrong.  The fan boys still want space battles and space chicks.  Drama is fine – especially if it is well written – but please remember who your audience is.  BSG succeeded because it emphasized story but never became dull.  You can do it, too.

Remember your audience.

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“Depois suspirou «Como isto seria divertido se não se fosse obrigado a pensar na felicidade!»”

Mustafá Mond in

“Admirável Mundo Novo”,

Aldous Huxley

Es handelt sich um eines meiner Lieblingsbücher. Hat aber keinen Zweck, es mir zu Weihnachten zu schenken, auch nicht zu Ostern. Natürlich habe ich das Buch schon. Wer es aber noch nicht hat und/oder es im Original lesen möchte, den verweise ich auf dieses im Internet frei verfügbare Exemplar: Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.

Manchmal finde ich das Internet rischtisch geil.

In an attempt to delay the inevitability of having to deal with my life, last weekend I stumbled into a Manhattan movie theatre and decided I would see whatever film was scheduled to start next. I looked at the board and saw that 2012 was beginning in five minutes. So without letting myself think too much about it I purchased a ticket, entered the theatre, went to the bathroom, nestled into a cushy seat and invited Roland Emmerich and John Cusack to help me forget my life.

People, we’ve got three years. Three years to get our shit together. Three years before Danny Glover/Barack Obama comes on T.V. and tells us we’re fucked. Three years before Oliver Platt/Dick Cheney abuses his power in a time of crisis (wait, that sounds familiar…). Three years before John Cusack/Jennifer Blevins is the one writer to survive the apocalypse and becomes the poet laureate of the world by default.

Because to quote another great poet, House of Pain: “But I ain’t going out like no punk bitch.”

Oh yeah….that’s right, bitches. Ya’ll go ahead and fall through cracks in the earth and be consumed by fireballs and dust clouds and tsunamis and the inherent greed of man. I’ll be the one hopping on airplanes in the nick of time, befriending crazy doomsday prophets who impart important information, and happening upon benevolent Buddhist monks on dirt roads in China. Because I ain’t going out like no punk bitch.

What a silly, fun, ridiculous movie. It was unapologetically itself, and as such I was able to forgive it. My expectations were simple: to watch shit get blown up in new and exciting ways. My expectations were met. Thank you, Roland Emmerich. Of course random attempts at giving the movie “meaning” and “significance” were thrown in there, and I guess I was supposed to walk away with renewed faith in humanity. Whatever.

Regardless of how you interpret the Mayan calendar, it can be both fun and terrifying to entertain the possibility that the world as we know it is about to end. I will be 34 years old on December 21, 2012. I work out almost every single day, eat well and try to take care of myself, so there’s a very good chance I will still be physically fit n’ healthy on doomsday. I have every intention of staying on my current spiritual/ emotional/ intellectual path these next three years. So, in essence, when the shit hits the fan on 12/21/12 I will most likely be in the prime of my life. Ergo my combination of intelligence, physical health and faith will probably make me a prime candidate for surviving the apocalypse.

While the movie did not succeed in reaching the thematic and symbolic depths it aimed to hit, 2012 did actually affect me emotionally. Because it captured one idea really well: when the world falls apart, the only thing that matters is love. Yes, an incredibly generic and cheesy theme….but very true.

As I watched the movie I started listing the people I love the most and calculating their chance of surviving some kind of global disaster. I assembled my family in my head and got very realistic. I tried to figure out a plan of how I could get from New York to North Carolina as the earth’s crust disintegrated beneath me. My eyes started tearing up as I thought about my parents; I know they would not be physically strong enough to survive, even if I could get there in time to help them. I thought about my brother and how he would be the single most important person to me the day the world fell apart. Not only is he my brother and one of the three people I love most in the world, but he’s also a cop/former Army man and one of the most resourceful individuals I know. If the two of us could reach each other, I think we’d be ok.

I started adding friends to this list in my head and noted which ones made it to the family side of the list; there are two in particular who already know they would be more than welcome to join Team Blevins on the day of the apocalypse. I started thinking about the randomness (or not-so-randomness) of fate and tried to imagine the strangers who would enter my life as we all worked together to survive.

I started thinking about my depression, which has always greatly influenced my relationship with myself. It’s so fascinating to me that I know I would fight for my life, even though there have been plenty of times when I have not wanted it. For some reason self-destruction has always been an alluring aspect of my depression, yet my survival instinct kicks in when threatened by external forces. I have no doubt that the moment California fell into the ocean I would launch into survival mode and begin a quest to try to save myself and as many people I love as possible.

Why is that?

It’s almost like a parent who harms their own child but gets angry when other people do it. Like my psyche is saying: “Look, no one can be threatening and harmful to me but me, and we are NOT going down in a ball of flames on 12/21/12.” When the threatening party is outside of yourself, the battle lines are clear and you can see your foe. We all have that survival instinct, but people with depression/bi-polar/etc. understand that things get really complicated when you can’t see what you’re fighting. When what you’re battling is inside yourself, it can be very comforting to sit in a movie theatre and watch a disaster/sci-fi flick and be given a tangible enemy to fight.

And in the case of 2012, we are presented with an interesting personification of this internal battle: our core becomes our enemy. We are being attacked from within. Actually, it’s kind of a nice way for people to see what it feels like to live with depression or bi-polar: some days all you can do is run like hell and try not to get sucked in.

I continued to develop my apocalypse survival plan as I exited the movie theatre and got on the subway to go home. I started thinking about how great it would feel to be one of those survivors. I think that maybe I would be a very good person to help start the New World.

Because I ain’t going out like no punk bitch, and I seem to have a flair for speaking the truth.

It’s hypnotic….

Hello

July 5th – not Independence Day, but nonetheless a day that will go down in history as the day when Roger Federer finally won 15 grand slam tennis titles – saw another historic milestone. Yes, that’s right: book club no.30! If only we’d realised this at the time we might have made more of an effort to celebrate it.

The text before us was “The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell” – two separate, short works of non-fiction prose (our first foray into this genre) by renowned English bohemian and all-round literary dabbler, Aldous Huxley.

The group was reduced to a core of four personages – Owain (host), Sophie (hostess and sous chef), Pete (watching the tennis) and Ed (late). Nonetheless – and despite a certain amount of trepidation about how to approach these tricky, ambiguous books – the session was immensely fruitful and thought-provoking.

Debate started by considering Huxley’s motivations for writing the book, a description of a mescalin trip he took in 1953 and its impact on his thinking about mystical or visionary experiences. Pete argued that Huxley in some sense through this book helped give birth to the Californian movement (which has been so important in the modern West) which focused on self-realisation and consciousness expansion, and that this book was particularly influential in giving credence to the drugs movement that became emerged during the 1960s. When considering why these books remain in print and are regarded so highly, we felt that Huxley’s status as an outsider – an English aristocrat arguing for drug legalisation – was significant.

We also discussed how Huxley’s attitudes to drugs in these books seem to differ from that in “Brave New World”, where his invented drug ’soma’ is used to keep the masses in a state of soporific acquiesence. And we considered the relationship of this book to previous book club authors, including JG Ballard (who wrote a cursory introduction to our edition of the text) and Thomas Pynchon, the former developing Huxley’s interest in how drugs began to permeate mainstream, ‘respectable’ society during the second half of the twentieth century, while the latter was clearly influenced by Huxley’s description of the paranoia that drug trips could bring on.

However, despite the interesting ideas raised by both books, the group found them on the whole rather disappointing. “The Doors of Perception” – with its greater narrative drive – was agreed to be the stronger of the two, but “Heaven and Hell” came in for particular criticism, especially from Ed who commented on Huxley’s pro-drugs stance and the distinct lack of a “hell” in his description of what drugs such as mescalin do to people’s minds and behaviour.

Owain (who chose the book) was particularly let down by it, finding the narrative description of Huxley’s trip – though its strongest part – still weak and unexciting, while he felt the other sections looking at the role of mysticism in art and religion were simply poorly argued, biased and subjective. We also agreed that the pieces of art shown or played to Huxley during his trip by his wife and friend – Cezanne, Mozart, Botticelli, Van Gogh – demonstrated a canonical bias of Huxley’s time and place without shedding too much valuable light on the impact of the drug trip itself.

All in all, there was much to discuss – including genre, the status of the book as ’scientific’ or otherwise, its Western bias and Orientalist attitudes, and its wider cultural impact – but our feeling was the book was not all it was cracked up to be.

The baton is passed over to Fleming (host of one of our favourite ever book clubs) even though he couldn’t be bothered to turn up this time.

Pete

Imagine a feral child in torn rags, eying you hungrily from the curb (no food stamps, not its fault, parents out of work) grunting inarticulately (no public schools) while gnawing on a senior citizens bones (no SSA and Medicare) while you look out for bandits (no public police) in the decaying ‘hood which used to be so nice (no public firefighters). Now get into your solar-electric  golf cart (you’re presumed to be one of the lucky at this point)one hand on the wheel and one on your gun and drive away on the pockmarked broken road (no public upkeep) looking out for potholes, bandits, dead bodies and feral kids (did I mention…). Now turn on your GPS (no one replacing the torn-down street signage) hoping the few remaining satellites (no NASA) are enough signal to get by this day. You get to work, where you eke out enough to eat and not much else (no minimum wage or monopolistic oversight to make sure Corporations don’t conspire to keep wages low). Now for the hunt for food, (groceries are much scarcer now due to lack of food stamp spending). Finally after zig-zagging across town you find a store, heavily-guarded by private security (an industry doing fairly well in this brave new world) and you enter after being rudely frisked and scanned. You look at the poor selection, sighing as you realize highwaymen have probably been at it again, robbing supply trucks (no public highway patrol). You pick up a poor excuse of a head of lettuce (shaking your head) and remind yourself to really clean it this time, with clean water (as if that would help with the public Agriculture and Environmental Protection Agencies gutted by conservatives), that last bout of salmonella nearly killed you (no health care insurance and the conservatives managed to close down the use of emergency rooms without insurance and proof of citizenship). You leave, parting with $50. (moneys dropped big time) for the lettuce and a pound of meat of dubious origin (no gov’t inspections). You’d like to find a better job, but where? There are far more people than jobs now. You think about picking up your mail and chide yourself for the Nth time for forgetting there is no public postal service anymore. You figure it’s just a matter of time before the Corporation replaces you with an alien (no public border guards). Oh well, tomorrow is another day ! You can always go into security, you’re responsible for your own future. No handouts for you, “Welfare,”, you spit out, as if tasting something bad, “for losers”. Hard to believe people use to use the word in sentences like, “looking out for the welfare of one another”. Left-wing propaganda!  Opportunities abound for a smart man you think as you drive into your fortified hovel, locking the doors behind you and turning the radio on to listen to President Becks nightly address.

In this blog, I hope to encourage discussion on the text ‘Brave New World’ – each of my Year 9 English students will be required to submit at least 5 responses to what will become a dynamic and organic forum. I will direct the initial questions and perhaps from time to time, redirect as appropriate.

To begin with, we will consider the opening descriptions of the world in which Bernard Marx, Lenina live in. How has Huxley developed a vision in which our own social constructions of ‘family’, society and identity is marginalised?