It’s far easier to end things than to figure out things past the end.

Upshot: I’m having difficulty with the dystopias.

I did manage to put together a chart, but it’s pretty spongy. I’d put in ‘violent’ here or ‘charismatic’ there, then take it out, move it around.

I don’t have it—I’m missing something; no flow, here.

So let’s just call this Dystopia-Beta

• I. Cause
  • A. Collapse
    • i. catastrophic (SEE Apocalypse)
    • ii. gradual breakdown
  • B. Evolution
    • i. of species
      • a. human
      • b. non-human
    • ii. of society
• II. Type
  • A. Chaotic
    • i. non-violent
      • a. few people
      • b. hostile environment
    • ii. episodically violent
      • a. individual predation
      • b. criminal gangs
      • c. militias
    • iii. war
      • a. criminal gangs
      • b. militias
      • c. organized armies
  • B. Corporate
    • i. workers controlled
    • ii. consumers controlled
  • C. Party government
    • i. everything-is-good
      • a. dissenters marginalized
      • b. dissenters jailed/killed
      • c. dissenters re-educated
    • ii. everything-is-grim
      • a. populace atomized
      • b. populace enslaved
      • c. ongoing genocide
    • iii. behind-the-scenes
      • a. omnipresent/tracks behavior
      • b. omniscient/tracks affect & intellect
  • D. Military government
    • i. military in sync with society
    • ii. military opposed to society
    • iii. entire society militarized
  • E. Theocracy
    • i. elite/exclusive
      • a. exploits populace
      • b. suppresses populace
      • c. forcibly converts populace
    • ii. populist/inclusive
      • a. cultic/centered on charismatic leader
      • b. pietistic/communitarian
      • c. dogmatic/authoritarian
  • III. Stage
    • A. Immediate post-
      • i. no control
      • ii. begin control
    • B. Semi-stable
      • i. partial control [against chaos]
      • ii. organized fight for control
    • C. Stable
      • i. evolving
      • ii. eternal

(I have to say, this was a total pain in the ass to put together—all those damned ‘li’ and ‘backslash ul’—but I did it. Still, I am lazy enough that if flow charts require anything near the persnickety-ness of a nested chart, fuggedaboudit. )

Not so great, I know, but it’s a start.

Suggestions welcome.

Hooray, another new show (on AMC)! Granted, there have been six episodes already but I have only just discovered it.

The Prisoner is an awesome new show (if you like dystopian stories, which I LOVE!) about a man who wakes up in the middle of nowhere by a place called “the Village” and is told that his name is Six and that there is nowhere else. The Village is a little utopian town where all is well, all people have numbers rather than names (so on tv soap operas, 2597 dates 5620 to spite 284 who is secretly in love with 86…) and everyone seems happy. Seems being the key word. The master villain, known as Two, is Ian McKellan, who runs the place (but begs the question, who is One?). Six is convinced that he “is not a number” and has vague memories of his past, living in NYC. (Oddly though, we never hear what he thinks his real name is.) The further he searches for answers, the more he gets pulled back in.

It’s a little hard to explain it all since it’s a made up world, but it’s pretty awesome. Sort of like the Giver. But without the actual Giver part.

If you’re looking for a new show, and even if you’re not, I highly recommend this one. And I hope that Ian McKellan gets an award for his role.

Main Title_Kurozuka
Official Title_黒塚
Type_TV Series, 12 episodes
Year_07.10.2008 till 23.12.2008
Categories_Action, Dark Fantasy, Dystopia, Fantasy, Genetic Modification, Gunfights, Horror, Human Enhancement, Martial Arts, Ninjas, Post-apocalyptic, Samurai, Seinen, Super Power, Swordplay, Thriller, Violence
Main creators_Yumemakura Baku, Araki Tetsurou, Shino Masanori, Yoshida Kiyoshi, Madhouse
Resources_Official page, ANN, AnimeNFO, Allcinema, AniDB

Download_
[Brazilian Subs]
+ 1The Plain of Adachi-ga-hara
+ 2 The Tomb of Karma
+ 3 Asuka
+ 4 Haniwa Man
+ 5 Saniwa
+ 6 Miitsu
+ 7 Kagura Village
+ 8 The Screeching Ivy
+ 9 Fire Whirlwind
+ 10 The Phantom Castle
+ 11 Endless Struggle
+ 12 The Black Tomb

[English Subs]

http://hotfile.com/dl/18551952/89af2…9E30B.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552113/1383d…ACAC9.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552187/7a400…883E7.mkv.html
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http://hotfile.com/dl/18552012/c8da9…F62F5.mkv.html
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http://hotfile.com/dl/18552213/1ac9b…594F6.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552216/2fd5e…B5207.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552048/26c44…79EBB.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552192/8972c…7153C.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552233/06503…C99E7.mkv.html
http://hotfile.com/dl/18552235/91499…972A9.mkv.html

I do many different so called genres of photography, but there’s a special place in my heart for night photography, for that time when most photographers put away their cameras. The night removes many veils that our society uses to obscure its less “safe” aspects. Without the presence of people, our buildings are revealed for the ridiculous edifice they are. People who society and (especially) police generally see as less desirable or attractive come out of hiding, allowed to be present in the anonymity of darkness. The night provides space for the less typical to exhale.

At first, night photography appealed to me because of its novelty, the prospect of revealing that which the naked eye alone is incapable of seeing. As time has gone on, I learned the above, of the ability of such work to de and recontextualize what we all encounter in everyday experience. The buildings and streets we walk among and on, the people (human and non-human alike) that we do or do not see or notice, the spaces, occupied or not that normally exist beyond our rushed daytime perception.

A formerly unconscious strand of such work of mine has been the need to see solitude in these busy and inhuman (and inhumane, and inanimal for that matter) environments. There is a certain apocalyptic outlook to be seen through my eyes. A place with less human presence, where the collective monolith of our society, out civilization has gone to seed. But there is also a hopeful aspect here, as this new absence creates a void waiting to be filled with the possibility of a new kind of existence that draws from the very, very old, from a time in which humans did not destroy through poisoned relations with the rest of the world.

So these pictures portray not only the dystopia in which we live that is revealed beneath the veneer of rushed daily existence, but also the utopian possibilites that lurk beneath such seemingly unlikely places. I’m not content simply to take pictures, I have an urge to use this capturing of perception to open up a dialogue that prepares us for an uncertain future, while also helping us see the beauty and the ugliness that exists just beneath the mundane surface of the everyday.

Sometimes I wonder if photography is the most effective medium with which to do this. Certainly a precedent has been set in both writing and music for such work that as described above. But photography (or at least my own) must work with what exists and with the narrow scope of narrative available to it compared with those forms. To attempt a dialogue about an uncertain future, and the past that led us to this present, in a medium that can describe only the present is perhaps setting myself up for disappointment. But maybe having to use the reality I see now to portray any of a number of realities I or others can envision for the future will make that portrayal all the more poignant.

My my, isn’t Pat Kenny pedaling a very Dystopian view of the future of Ireland, under flood?

He must be reading “The Road” at the moment.

A taxonomy of terror?

Yes, again with the apocalyptic and/or dystopic pics and books. Blame a conversation with my friend, S.

So, to categorize:

Apocalypse
I. Caused by:
A. Collapse
i. slow-motion
ii. sudden
B. Violence
i. natural
a. arising from natural forces
b. arising from altered nature
ii. inflicted
a. by humans
b. by non-humans
c. by supernatural forces

II. Threatened:
A. Avoidable
i. due to intervention by many
ii. due to intervention by few [n.b. S. doesn’t think this should count]
iii. due to supernatural intervention
iv. due to luck
B. Unavoidable
i. due to luck
ii. predestined

III. Post-apocalypse (SEE ALSO: Dystopia]
A. Immediately post-
i. happy-to-have-survived
ii. continued survival uncertain
B. Intermediate post-
i. reconstruction begun
ii. further collapse
C. Long-term post-
i. reconstruction complete
a. society similar to pre-apocalypse
b. society better than pre-
c. society worse than pre-
d. society different from pre-
ii. reconstruction amidst chaos
iii. chaos
iv. no life

(Crap. I’ve GOT to learn html so I can space all this stuff correctly. But you get the idea.)

Tomorrow (or, you know, whenever): Dystopia

“Do you love me?”

There was an awkward silence for a moment. Then Father gave a little chuckle. “Jonas. You, of all people. Precision of language, please!”

“What do you mean?” Jonas asked. Amusement was not at all what he had anticipated.

“Your father means that you used a very generalized word, so meaningless that it’s become almost obsolete,” his mother explained carefully.

Jonas stared at them. Meaningless? He had never before felt anything as meaningful as the memory.

“And of course our community can’t function smoothly if people don’t use precise language. You could ask, ‘Do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes,’” his mother said.

“Or,” his father suggested, “‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes.’”

“Do you understand why it’s inappropriate to use a word like ‘love’?” Mother asked.

Jonas nodded. “Yes, thank you, I do,” he replied slowly.

It was the first lie to his parents.

* * *

This excerpt from The Giver by Lois Lowry comes just after Jonas receives a memory of Christmas and family. It’s the first time he’s ever experienced real love, and it transforms him. This passage gives me chills–to think that such a society could exist with the absence of love.

In case you’ve been living under a rock and have never heard of this book, I’ll give you a brief summary. This novel takes place in a dystopian society in which every citizen conforms to the same concept of Sameness. As each child approaches the Ceremony of Twelve, he or she is given an assignment–a career choice, if you will, although a committee decides for each child based on his or her aptitude and interests. Jonas is chosen as the Receiver of Memories. He alone will receive the collective memory of society (collective unconscious, anyone?). He must carry the burden of all the emotions–happiness, love, pain, fear. He experiences poverty, war, hunger, sunshine, snow, Christmas, family, joy. No one else in the community ever knows that such extremes existed.

This is a world with color. Without art. Without music.

Without love.

It’s chilling in its portrayal. The novel beautifully explores notions of freedom. It made me realize that freedom of choice–in what I’ll wear, in where I’ll go to school, in whom I’ll marry–is something I often take for granted. What if that choice were taken away from me? Would I miss choice if I’d grown up without it?

I re-read this book this week because I was working on a paper for adolescent literature on how to use literature to teach social justice to secondary students. I chose this book and The Knife of Never Letting Go as examples of dystopian literature that can be used in the classroom. Dystopian literature is so intriguing and thought-provoking because it shows the extremes to which society could go if preventative action isn’t taken. Will we fight against those who remove choice? Will we fight for the oppressed? Can we make a change and avoid a bleak future?

Something to think about.

I just read an excerpt on CNN of an interview given by Eastwood which is slated to be published in GQ Magazine in which he gives vent to his feelings of frustration with what’s happening right now in America.

Basically, the guy’s really pissed off. “[The U.S. is] becoming more juvenile as a nation. The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits {…} everybody’s so screwed up. It seems like our country’s in kind of a morbid mood, because of the recession or whatever.”

He’s absolutely right, although I don’t agree with the “teenage twits” thing. After all, that seems a bit dumb seeing as teenagers are not the only people he’s talking about. He’s talking about all of America.

And that’s even worse. In fact it’s horrifying.

I would go much farther than Eastwood did because, although he broached the subject in “gentle rant” mode, the mood of America deserves some serious and non-partisan study. Also, it isn’t just America that’s concerned by the phenomena, it’s most of the Western World.

The healthcare debate has shown just how screwed up and morbid America has become. The political right has exulted in the use of words like “Fascism, Communism, (yeah, both of them, go figure), Hitler, Extermination, Death Tribunals” and a hundred others. Effigies of a Hitler/Obama were burned in the streets and people were worried about the possibility of severe social unrest after anti supporters began carrying guns that hadn’t been seen on them for years and muttering dark threats of taking back the country for the people.

And it isn’t only the right. As we all know, the left is has been a hysterical and pompous political pain in the butt to debate with for the last 15 years. Disagreeing with anything someone on the left says gets you tagged as a “Fascist, Dictator, Reactionary, Oppressor, Sexist, Racist, Redneck” or any combination of them. For the left, waterboarding is the most abominable of war crimes imaginable, the French left calls Sarkozy a feodal capitalist lapdog and sending jobless and illegal immigrants home is, apparently, a crime against humanity.

Both sides agree however that we are over-controlled by the state, which is becoming more and more authoritarian in its methods and is showing an increasing disregard for the people and their rights. They also agree that we are apparently headed for a world in which all is bad, all is wrong.

It gets worse when you look at the Internet. I used to write for Citizen Journalist sites until I found out just how many extremists there are out there. I stopped writing for those sites in order to stay in the world of real.

Any article on issues such as Israel/Gaza, Obama, H1N1, Afghanistan and many others almost invariably leads to hordes of screaming-banshee comments of an extremely violent nature on both sides of the opinional fence.  I mean, you could write an article about the love life of mosquitoes in the 15th Century and still get shot down as a sexist pig because you said something not politically correct vis-a-vis females. The commenters have names like Doomsday, Nofuture, The Pessimist, and Revengewillcome.

But that’s adults. What about the teenagers that Eastwood mentioned? Go to any YouTube 9/11 conspiracy theory video comment board or discussion site and you will see that they have caught the bug too.

In fact there’s a real name for this phenomena. And no, it isn’t paranoia or freaky people or screwballs or fruit loops etc.)

It is Dystopia.

Dystopia is the word used to describe an extremely pessimistic vision of a society and its future. It is the opposite of Utopia. Dystopian thought is often characterised by a vision of a world in which we are controlled by “them” and in which human rights are systematically crushed. We become alienated numbers in an existence over which we have no control and in which any symbol of authority and power is seen as being bad, or evil. We are manipulated and exploited by the Powers That Be.

This phenomena has given birth to what is known as Dystopian literature, books, comics and even music. Examples include Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Bradbury’s Farenheit 451, Huxley’s Brave new World, and the film Soylent Green.

Those works contain common themes which the reader is surely aware of, and the genre has always sold very well, both intellectually and financially. I myself have read and enjoyed them, as well as many others, my favourite being Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (excerpt here.)

The problem is though that Dystopia is beginning to creep into our real lives, and that is not a good thing. Not at all. There are Dystopians everywhere, from the Internet to Congress to the People to the Press. And we are getting accustomed to it.

If you compare political and social debate in our various national parliaments, congresses and senates these days to what it was forty years ago you will see that it has become much more bitter, aggressive, negative and based on populist buzzwords.

The same can be said of Western populations in general. Both sides of any issue are becoming polarised into radical rhetoric and pessimism for the future. Press articles are becoming more and more inflammatory and people are becoming more and more virulent in their criticisms of the way things are going. Mutual suspicion and distrust are rampant.

If we believe those people, we are destined for a Dystopian future reality and, whichever it turns out to be, it will be bad

The Western World is fast becoming a hysterical place in which people are feeling more and more gloomy and doubtful about the future.

In other words, the West is becoming paranoid, and that is extremely disturbing.

Oh. I forgot to mention another of my favourite Dystopian works of fiction. It’s Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange. In that novel, there is no government influence and the people take control.

With chaotic and disastrous results.

If I was a doctor and Western society was my patient, I’d tell it to go see a psychiatrist in order to get treated for paranoia.

Or is that a Dystopian thing to say…..

I tripped over this again just now, it originally appeared in the NY Times a long 18 months ago, a good place to start…

---

April 20, 2008

Essay

Recipes for Disaster

By PAUL GREENBERG

Bear Stearns had just imploded when I found myself chatting with a surprisingly merry investment banker. While his clients panicked over their “risk exposure” in this time of $100 oil, evaporating credit markets and melting ice caps, he thought much could be gained. In fact, all the real titans he knew were doubling down. His clients faced a choice. Did they want to be dinosaurs or cockroaches? Did they want to do nothing while the world crumbled, or did they want to scuttle and flit, gobbling up the morsels of growth that bubble up even in bad times?

For a certain brand of writer, a third possibility is eminently more appealing, one in which the ecological devastation of American-style capitalism sets off The Crisis that will at last devour titans, dinosaurs and cockroaches alike. While our immediate crises always have a way of looking like The Crisis, they have until now petered out. In light of the present crisis (as of now, still small “c”), however, two eco-millenarian novels — an old one called “Ecotopia,” by Ernest Callenbach, and a new one, WORLD MADE BY HAND (Atlantic Monthly, $24), by James Howard Kunstler — are worth a look, particularly if you are considering doubling down once more before the end times.

Literary utopias tend to emerge when an appropriate niche opens up. The niche that suited “Ecotopia” in the early 1970s and the one that now accommodates “World Made by Hand” have certain similarities. Shortages and unrest in the Middle East foreshadow the end of oil. A brewing recession gives rise to doubts about our economic fundamentals. An unpopular president wages an unpopular war. And across the country, a growing eco-consciousness raises hope that a different system might replace classic, marauding American economic progress.

“Ecotopia,” like “World Made by Hand,” is set in a not-too-distant decade where, as Callenbach puts it in a kind of wonky, Harper’s-of-the-future prose, “the burden of outlays for an enormous arms establishment caused a profound long-term decline in the world competitiveness of American civilian industry,” and where energy crises have “bred economic disruption and price gouging.” But the novel is redolent with the optimism of the baby-boom generation in full swinger mode. A Pennsylvania-born writer who became an editor at the University of California Press and part of Berkeley’s eco-futurist scene, Callenbach combined the change-or-die message of science fiction films like “Soylent Green” with the free-love attitudes of the Haight to produce a tale of paradise regained. Self-published in 1975 and reprinted in 1977 by Bantam, “Ecotopia” went on to sell nearly a million copies.

The novel opens with William Weston, a journalist for The New York Times-Post, receiving an unprecedented assignment: to visit the nation of Ecotopia 20 years after “independence.” Comprising what was once Oregon, Washington and Northern California, Ecotopia seceded after defeating the economically doomed United States in a Vietnam-style “helicopter war.” Secessionist movements are also afoot in the Great Lakes region and the Southeast, yet Ecotopians look at the likely end of the United States as an opportunity. As Weston writes in his increasingly sympathetic dispatches, Ecotopians realized just in time that “economic disaster was not identical with survival disaster for persons — and that, in particular, a financial panic could be turned to advantage if the new nation could be organized to devote its real resources of energy, knowledge, skills and materials to the basic necessities of survival.”

And devote they do. After a few hard years of transition, life in Ecotopia is pretty awesome. Cutting-edge comforts like plastic hairbrushes and drip-dry polyester shirts are missing, but the workweek is only 20 hours. Labor is rewarding and communal, and involves things like replanting forests, studying the language of whales, creating modular homes and, if you happen to be black, making and exporting music from the hub neighborhood of “Soul City.” A normally depressing thing like a hospital stay is livened up by a massage (with a happy ending). And if you are lucky enough to connect with an Ecotopian woman (though not much luck is required), you might find yourself doing it in the hollowed-out burl of a giant redwood. But don’t get the wrong impression: Ecotopian couples are “generally monogamous,” Weston reports, “except for four holidays each year, at the solstices and equinoxes, when sexual promiscuity is widespread.”

In short, it is a lot of fun to live in Ecotopia — much more fun than dwelling in the mournful Hudson Valley town of Union Grove, the setting of “World Made by Hand.” While “Ecotopia” is a 1970s West Coast idea lab where a square can learn to “get it,” Union Grove (a ringer for its creator’s hometown, Saratoga Springs) is a contemporary East Coaster’s torture chamber designed to sock it to shortsighted, petroleum-guzzling Americans. Indeed, despite a stint at Rolling Stone in the early ’70s, Kunstler has remained steadfastly un-Californian throughout a career that has produced scathing critiques of modern suburbia like “The Geography of Nowhere” and his popular blueprint for surviving the end of oil, “The Long Emergency.” In 1999, Kunstler went long on Y2K, predicting “loss of comfort and modern convenience,” possibly escalating into disease and chaos. But that bad bet hasn’t dampened his bearish enthusiasm. On his blog, he greeted 2008 by asking, “Has there ever been a society so exquisitely rigged for implosion?” Unlike Callenbach, who imagined a society actively choosing a sustainable alternative in the face of crisis, Kunstler seems to believe change will come only after The Crisis rams it down our collective throats.

“World Made by Hand” follows the life of a very depressed former software executive named Robert Earle during a single globally warmed summer. Union Grove is a beachhead of civilization after things have fallen apart. Terrorist bombs have taken out Washington and Los Angeles, oil is long gone from the town, and a powerless federal government may or may not be bunkered in Minnesota. The only thing that comes over the radio during rare bursts of electricity is the raving of preachers relishing in the punishment of a wrathful god. The loss of oil has robbed people of ancillary technologies like antibiotics and rubber, as well as certain pieces of vocabulary. Women, who have reverted to “Little House on the Prairie” mode, are once again referred to as “handsome,” and any enterprise of note tends to be called an “outfit.”

Some people hang themselves in basements in despair. Others turn hobbies into trades, as Robert does with carpentry and violin playing. And Robert is among the lucky ones. Union Grovers with no source of power do nothing but work. “A plain majority of the townspeople were laborers now,” Kunstler writes. “Nobody called them peasants, but in effect that’s what they’d become.”

Kunstler is not immune to faith in social transformation, as Robert’s conversion from isolated tradesman to community-minded leader of men and handsome women attests. But he thinks it must be forced on us. In a telling (and well-imagined) motif, Robert often finds himself dreaming of speeding surreally over the landscape. When he wakes up, he realizes he wasn’t dreaming of flying but of driving. Message: Our selfish, oil-assisted present will have to fade into a dream before sustainable communal life becomes a reality.

I would prefer to live in Ecotopia, but the verisimilitude of Kunstler’s world leads me to think the future is Union Grove. Thirty years from now, it will be interesting to see if that little town seems excessively sad, richly luxurious or spot on. But for now, I’m hedging my bets. Where I live, one block east of ground zero, I’ve started keeping a compost bin and am thinking about adding a micro wind generator. Two blocks south, the damaged former Deutsche Bank building comes down floor by floor. To the north, the Freedom Tower has just emerged aboveground and may one day be full of investment bankers. Recently, though, I’ve started looking at that plot through Kunstler’s eyes. It gets good sunlight, and it occurs to me it would make a hell of a bean field.

Paul Greenberg is a W. K. Kellogg Foundation food and society policy fellow. He is writing a book on the future of fish.

Could you tell my post last night was dashed off?

I was thinking Oh, man, I gotta post something. What? What? Then I did the dishes, which apparently put me in mind of the apocalypse.

As I told C. in the comments (who corrected an author error in the post: Clarke, not Huxley, wrote Childhood’s End), I was so lazy I couldn’t be bothered to tab over and look up various movie titles on IMDB.

Pitiful.

Thus, an elaboration on yesterday’s post, as well as an important qualifier.

The elaboration

C. astutely noted that I included dystopias with my apocalypses. So true. I guess  I tend to think that any dystopia worth its salt was preceded by some kind of apocalypse, but they really ought to be separated.

Had I been engaging anything other than minimal brain power last night, I would have figured this out in my (minor) deliberations over whether to include Brave New World. I did not, because, as I noted in the comments, the shift into Fordism seemed a kind of progression, rather than break, with what came before.

My list was also quite sloppy: I Am Legend popped into my head, then popped right back out. (I saw the Charleton Heston version, and parts of the Will Smith. In either case, definitely apocalyptic.) And I couldn’t remember the name of that damned book with the conch and boys and Piggy, and so left it off. (Golding’s Lord of the Flies. I thought there was mention of an a-bomb at the end, but it’s at the beginning.)

There’s another book, too, listed at the back of the paperback edition of The Gone-Away World: Kevin Brockmeier’s The Brief History of the Dead. It veers between an occasional (and thoroughly enjoyable) nasty humor and genuine pathos. More light than heavy.

I’d count Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, too, if only because of the threat. But I didn’t include Max Barry’s Jennifer Government because, if I remember correctly, that society arose more like Huxley’s Fordist scheme than through anything apocalyptic.

And I missed the whole field of Christian apocalypse, a.k.a. the Rapture. Now, there is a very good movie called The Rapture (David Duchovny, Mimi Rogers), but that’s a Hollywood film, as opposed to a Soon-To-Be-Coming-To-An-Earth-Near-You True Believer flick. I used to be a regular imbiber of TBN and CBN (wacky evangelistic fare), and they’d regularly show rapture films. Don’t know the name of a single one.

I do know, however, The Omega Code (produced by TBN and starring Kirk Cameron), which is  basic Bible-code Armageddon. And, of course, Jenkins & LaHaye’s Left Behind series. I tried to read it, but couldn’t get through even book one. I have a high tolerance for this stuff, so you know it’s bad. (But if they make a movie of it—have they made a movie of it?—I am so there.)

There are likely many, many more of this subgenre that I’m missing.

I also overlooked the Mad Max movies. I liked the second one, Road Warrior, best, but the first and third aren’t bad. And I have the sense that those crazy Danes probably have a bunch of apocalypses hidden in their Danish libraries. (Don’t know why I have this sense; just do.)

Well, I’m counting on C. to come up with a proper doom list.

Now, the qualifier.

None of these books or movies are based on historical events. Some of these may speculate on a future which could become history (got that?), but in no case are these movies or books based on anything which has actually happened.

No Holocaust. No Hiroshima or Nagasaki. No Native American genocide. No historical genocides, period. No plague, flu, smallpox, etc. No Mt. St. Helen’s or Vesuvius or Tambora or any actual natural disaster. No Chernobyl.

No event in which actual human beings experienced their own version of the apocalypse.

I don’t put these events off-limits, not by any means. A good book or movie is a good book or movie, and I think all of the stuff of our lives and deaths is there for the taking.

But I don’t include these in my apocalypse list.

There is a glee in thinking of how the world might end, how humans might respond—wondering how I would respond—to total disaster, precisely because it is so speculative. Look at all the possibilities of our end!

Possibilities. Not certainties.

In historical ends, there is a certainty, the most significant of which is the certainty of actual human suffering and death.

Again, a worthy topic of fiction. But not of glee.

Memory #146: Someone has made art involving conkers. They have collected one conker short of a million and each one is encased in a small glass cabinet and is named: It makes me feel like it is impossible to ever collect enough conkers.

Memory #147: There is also a display of old pictures of the clouds from down below. They look so innocent. Remembering looking up at them and also travelling through them makes me feel very …

Memory #148:

Memory #149:

Memory #150:

Memory #151: Vixen McGogh is only one artist still working at this end of the spaceship and she looks after the galleries too. Her medium is smells.

Memory #152: I think my brain may still be tangled from my journey but McGogh’s smell pieces are truly amazing. She shows me seemingly endless rooms, each of which features one of her works. She blends different smells together which combine to create a picture in your head. It is truly remarkable. The smells seem to hang in the air indefinitely.

Memory #153: My favourite piece of smell art is one which somehow manages to conjour up an image of a young farmer boy staring up into a vibrant blue sky and watching his red balloon drift off as though it is the only thing he has in the world. Do not ask me how it works for I do not know, I will just tell you that I think it is beautiful.

Memory #154: I go back to the crash site and sit with Rusty. It really is a remarkable collection of crashed buses. It seems like practically everything here is art. Three days after I arrive another bus comes hurtling down and mangles itself into the landscape.

Memory #155: I am glad I brought food with me as there seems to be nothing to eat here. Engine parts have never been my favourite.

Memory #156: It is a long walk back. Even though I know that there will be no traffic for three days I still prefer to walk on the pavement. There seems little point in having pavement on this road but then it also has hedges and street lamps.

Memory #157: The long walk has eroded the soles of my shoes away so that there are big gaping holes in them. They used to have a map of the world on them but that too has gone. It was always easy to see a picture of home with them around.

Memory #158: Now they are a constant reminder that home has gone.

Memory #159: I put them in the bin and consign them to an eternity floating around the space ocean. I will have to go barefoot from now on. This place could really do with a shoeshop.

Memory #160: Instead of a shoeshop a new restaurant has opened whilst I was away. It is called Cashew’s. I am not sure who owns it but it certainly has a lot of cashews.

Memory #161: The Edward Woodward clan are gathered around a table eating thirty-one different varieties of cashew nuts from thirty-one bowls in the middle of the table.

Memory #162: From the four hundred-strong menu the clan have chosen the following types of cashew nuts: garlic, honey, rosbif, capuccino, toothpaste, earth, beer, orange, richter scale, lime, pepper, fruit pastilles, cajun, seaweed, cajun seaweed, conker, paper, cumin, thyme, peanut, pineapple, hip-hop, ink, dew, tomato, cobweb, revenge, dystopia, onion, dandelion and chocolate.

Memory #163: Thirty one? Yes, there had been a new addition to the clan – Ebjarb Joobjarb, the bouncing baby son of Ebwarb Woobwarb, father, and Ejwarj Woojwarj, mother. I congratulated them and contemplated the stitched-together name.

Memory #164: I envisage generations and generations of oddly named children until the name Edward Woodward is completely lost, the years carrying it further and further away until it is all but burnt in a huge wicker effigy.

Memory #165: Back in the here and now they all seem to be enjoying their cashew nuts so I glance quickly at the menu which also includes: mango chutney, pesto, plastic, story, vanilla essence, sweat, asparagus, old rope and absinthe but, deciding I am not in the mood for cashew nuts I leave it for another day.

Memory #166: The opening of Cashew’s has affected the trade of the the space-ship-shop-shippitity-shop-ship-shop-open-non-stop (to give it its full name) and so I go there to show my support and buy some whisky and another toblerone. Chocolate, like cheese, just seems better in triangles.

Memory #167: It is nice to see out of the window into space again. The fish peer in at me as if we had a casual relationship like perhaps we meet at bus stops and since they had not seen me for a while they had wondered where I was. They had no idea where to start enquiring about me. Of course we do not know each other but we exist on the fringes of our respective memories.

Memory #168: I curl up on my rounded plastic seat and enjoy falling asleep in it. Soon though I slide off the seat again. I think it has been polished whilst I was away.

Memory #169: Now seems like as good a time as any to try out Cashew’s. My stomach seems to be revolting at just being fed endless toblerones.

Memory #170: The food at Cashew’s is quite expensive and so I must go to a cash machine on the way. I take my bank cassette out of its plastic case and insert it into the hole. The machine fluuurrps it in. The cassette is a modern space invention which stores information on miles of magnetic tape. This space age invention is not without its problems – the tape often becomes tangled and can completely confuse your important finance details.

Memory #171: Today it is happy to give me money and so I take some out and at Cashew’s I order the autumn leaves flavoured cashews for my stomach and a portion of chewing gum flavoured cashews for me.

Memory #172: I like to think whilst I eat. I think about floating in space. Have I always been floating in space? I can’t remember. I can’t remember not floating in space and I can’t remember getting on the spaceship. But then, I have a memory of a home. Once. A long long woolly way away. Away from where I am floating in space. I must have always been floating in space.

I am crossposting this from my blog

Original link here: http://scandalousthoughts.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/new-media-and-new-technology/

Coming up next will be on pataphysics

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From the discussions that had taken place in the new media classes I’ve been taking (and there also seems to be a conflation between digital humanities and new media), I can’t help wondering if the direction of their practices seem in some instances to be papering over existing superstructures rather than enact any transformative effect. In fact, there is a possible fear that technology is used to turn a particularly traumatic and emotionally explosive event into a spectacle that may undermine, deride, and render it more traumatic.  Cyber forums, chatrooms, blog comments sections (though that can now be policed through the painstaking moderation by the blog administrator) and all form of digital public spaces have become the new site of offensive remarks and obnoxious ‘graffiti’, and their very accessibility, in that you need not go to that particular physical space to witness it, make them a more vexing problem for ethicists and those concern with codes of behavior on the Internet (I am sure some of you have read the now very old piece “Rape in Cyberspace” by Julian Dibbell).

But at this juncture, I am more concern as to the very meaning of ‘new’ media and how revolutionary is it; how has it changed our civilizational mental models from their destructive, repressive and oppresive tendencies. Though I am aware of the transformative conditions of new media in its ability to connect people, I am also move to wonder if it may also further reify, codify and even allow the possibility for people to remain firmly entrenched in their own comfort zones, as they are able to select and connect with people who meet their standards of criterion. Moreover, they have the tool to do this pre-selection of whom they want to include or exclude, and this is more easily done. Of course, this includes beastly side of new media such as propagation of horrific forms of pornography and greater seamlessness for the perpetuation of evil. Also, would greater convenience thus bring out in fullforce the hidden variable of sociopathy in us? We begin to use the tools to keep track of and try to control (another explosive term) others within our circle; our family members, partners, exes, friends, enemies, rivals, competitors, friends of friends. The moment of the panopticon takes a devious turn when all of Lacan’s categories of the schizophrenic, obssessive, psychotic and neurotic individuals come out in this playground of legitimized sociopathy. I am reminded by a very effective and interesting performance of the sociopathic engine at the SLSA by a professor at Duke, <a href=”http://caseyalt.com/”>Casey Alt</a>.

However, at the same time, the tools in digital media (I use this interchangeably with new media) also allows those curious to search for information inaccessible to them and to open the ways they see the world by chanced encounters. But then, how much of what you do in new media is chanced and how much is already predetermined by the way you think, the way you are enfolded into the world and the investments you’ve already made in something. After all, it seems that the argument for technological advancement in new media is about convenience and ease. In writing in a new language or confronting a different narrative (contentious noun here) or sets of events, one is never set at ease nor is convenience ever the keyword. In fact, if technology is about making it ‘easier’ and more ‘convenient’ and more ’seamless’ for us to do everything, how can we then choose to effect a new paradigm that requires a certain level of discomfort to be effected? Hence, how new is new media if it does not revolutionize our mindsets, change the way we do our pollitics (in a transformative sense) and also when we are held hostage by the technologies we personally possess (do you have a Mac, a PC, a Geforce, a supercomputer; what’s your bandwidth like?) and can access. If totalitarian goverments refuse to regulate new media, it’s merely for the reason of opportunism and capitalist greed that does not necessarily benefit its citizens in large. In fact, governments can still make internet viable to businesses coming to their countries but inaccessible to its ordinary citizens by outlawing its access. Myanmar (Burma) is a case in point. It is interesting for me, as a netizen and global citizen straddling both worlds, being located at the site of privileged now after having navigated between access and disadvantaged (all determined by the different economic circumstances I have had the ‘privilege’ to encounter through my years growing up and as a young adult), I find it ironic that developed countries are thinking of how to make technology more modularly(?) and functionally integrated (more intuitive?) to its users, the very users who reside in the site of privileged (and this I come more and more to believe as I navigate through my classes) while poorer citizens of poorer countries are struggling to even get their share of bandwidth and the most basic of computers, a desktop. I do not know how I can unhypocritically wrestle with the wow factor of technological advancements and utopian possibilities that enable me to do the kind of research and inquiry I could now do from my site of privilege that I could never have done without a lot of struggle from the site in which i was formerly located, where material and immaterial access are never easily obtainable, and pirating of available intellectual materials have become an artform as this becomes the only viable mode of dissemination and empowerment for the relatively impoverised though by no means starving populace. However, I am open to the interjection that piracy is also another site of capitalistic opportunism and blackmarket-fuelled greed.

Quality of production in digital humanities, as in any other scholarly endeavour, is fuelled firstly by the quality of work. And for quality to be achieved, the numbers involved must be sufficient for the stochastic to compute; which is that with more than an n-amount of contribution from n-x number of people, it is possible to have a big enough sampling size to measure the efficacy of producing effective, transformative and revolutionary (or more modestly, just decently excellent work) through the methodology that draws the boundaries of digital humanities. But as Jonathan Harris, himself a new media artist, argues, which I have highlighted before and am iterating here, one then has to try to think of a powerful concept and then look around to see what are the best tools to realize that rather than be too enamoured with the possibilities of the tools. But if ,as one of the classes I’ve been in have discussed, the worry of obsolescence is very real and this is even more real for media artists/writers in developing worlds who try to operate outside the budgets of the commercial world. But for digital humanities not to become another fad nor to become a thin genre with a flat and impoverished intellectual history, it is necessary that those who set the standardmakers in the industry actually is serious about democratizing the tools to the world at large. Otherwise, those who utilize these tools, the creative practitioners of the digital field, will have to find a way to operate outside the standard OS or run the risk of having their independence and desire to share their ideas with the world be curtailed by proprietary standards. Such curtailment have the effect of turning the users of these tools into propagators of particular hegemonies (be they Windows or Mac Os, and the proprietary softwares used to create the work will soon turn the work into a product with its own set of proprietary rules), whereby their fans, readers or audiences would have to subscribe to particular technology just to be able to see their work (which therefore makes the medium more limiting than that of the book or painting, for instance). What can we do so that the revolution that made books and prints (and photography) accessible to the general public in the previous centuries (though this is questionable as economic inequities also made these very same public medium expensive to certain segments of societies in certain parts of the world) can also be considered for today’s ‘new medium’?

Also, there is talk that new media makes more external that which had for a long time remained in the precinct of the interior. This is made manifest in a film I managed to catch yesterday, Sleep Dealer by Alex Riviera, when the two characters in the film, Luz and Memo, connect to each other through the nodal implants in their bodies, and were able to ’see the inside’ of the other literally during their love-making. The visual of the film seem to presuppose a notion of a solid, tangible visuality which I may find a little problematic. However, it redeems itself through its resistance to adhere to particular modes of narrative structure in its visual re-enactment of memoryscapes and of the fragments of the self being performed. However,to return to the question of externalizing the interior, could there be a possible over-confidence in that claim since it presupposes an ability for control of the effect/outcome as well as a reductive notion of interiority.

My final observation is to do with the role of affect in new media, and its relationship to politics. I am still in the process of reading more on this, as I believe it would have important use-value (and also ludic/even-value) to my work, but in talking about the politics of alienation and defamiliarization that is sometimes needed for the transformative effect to be enacted in any particular medium, by making tht which we are familiar alienating in order for us to complicate the pre-existing order of things, how would affect than navigate and negotiate through such a situation? Or do we have to do away with affect in this case? I leave this for someone more knowledgeable than myself to comment.

Hence, the sum up this winding, discursive and dialectical move which I have made here, I can point to my wish to find a way of empowering the individual and the society at large through the kinds of transformation that can be enacted through new media and finding the most fruitful way to engage this medium that is neither new nor old. I am sure I will hare more thoughts as I read, think and observe the various ideas in this domain.

Whose leg do you gotta hump to get some warp-speed, power violence-influenced, Locust-style grind these days? 

Combatwoundedveteran — members of which formed Holy Mountain – were one of the best in their day, dispensing with all filler/fodder, zooming in on the heart of technical metal/hardcore/punk and playing at a withering, mach-70-level pace.

C-W-Veteran came along at a great time. An Albatross‘ We Are the Lazer Viking, the self-titled Get Fucked record on Level Plane and The Locust’s Plague Soundscapes had all just come out; the world was aflutter, riding the coattails of insane tempos, archetypal hardcore shout-screaming and cavernous speed-metal guitars.

I Know a Girl Who Develops Crime Scene Photos is one of the best examples of the post-power violence movement for many reasons:

• The drummer absolutely RAPES and SKULL-FUCKS (sorry for the grotesque image) his kick drum; 
• If you’re searching for distortion that rivals Dystopia and any black-metal outfit you can scrape from a Norway slum, look no further than, as their fans call them, Combat!;
• The vocals … There are only a few screamers with better rage presence than Ponch and Norris (both served as vocalists at different times);
• At no point does IKAGWDCSP let up; we’re talking a dozen-plus songs on each side of vinyl, every one of them needling you like you were a damn pincushion;
• And, finally, I’m a stickler for production, and I Know a Girl has one of the fullest knob-jobs I’ve ever heard, deep and rumbling like The Melvins‘ Houdini and crackly like old Heroin/Racebannon/Assfactor 4/Usurp Synapse, (three of my all-time favorites) …

All of the above qualities on their own would be worthy of attention; combined, they are absolutely devastating. That I Know a Girl is served up on luscious mild-yellow/mild-swirl-marble vinyl only seals the deal (lock up a $10 copy HERE; don’t worry, I won’t make anything off it) …

Mac awoke to the sounds of Sunny, clearly angry, cursing in several languages. She opened her eyes to find the girl pacing around, while Jase sat on his sleeping bag, watching her, bemused.

“How did you let this happen?” Sunny turned on Mac the moment she realized the older girl was awake. She didn’t stop her pacing.

“What makes you think I had any say in it?”

The girl threw her hands in the air, making an exasperated sound.

“Sunny, relax,” Jase tried, but she whirled on him with such a look that whatever else he was about to say, died down on his tongue. They packed up the small camp around the pacing Sunny, mostly ignoring her rants. Once, Jase tried to say something, but she silenced him once more. When they got out on the road, she walked in front of them, in a quick, angry stride. She kept on walking even when it started raining, stopping only to put on her raincoat. Mac and Jase followed reluctantly a few steps behind. Mac wanted to get to the next town as soon as possible, but she would’ve preferred to wait out the rain in the woods, they weren’t actually in a hurry. They carried on in the same way for a few hours, until suddenly Sunny made an unexpected turn. It wasn’t until Mac came closer that she realized why – train tracks. She found tracks, and now she was following them. She could see the girl ahead, walking on one track, her hands lifted up to the sides for balance. She could feel the change in the mood all the way back, from being so sudden and strong.

“Where are we going?” Jase asked when he saw they were going off the main road.

“Following the tracks.”

“Why?”

“To see the gypsies.”

It wasn’t until the evening of the following day that they reached what used to be a small train station, and now was the home of the train-gypsies. People who lived at the stations, living off the train as other people lived off the land. This group lived in a train of four transportation wagons, and operated a small, two-wagon train that stood by the platform. Around the train, she could see the tents of the future passengers, waiting until the day of the month where this train would head to its destination. Meanwhile, they lingered with the train gypsies, some helped, some saw the fees they paid for the ride enough, they just waited. Mac could see that it wasn’t a group they’ve met before, but Sunny was already among them, as if they were the group that raised her until she met Mac, as if she’d never left. This was her home, something the girl sought out as much as Mac looked for her musician.

After changing into dry clothes, they joined the large fire that was started away from the camped passengers. The rain was down to a light drizzle, the fire cracking, warming them up, and spirits were high. Hot soup was passed around in un-matching bowls, some wood, some ceramics, some plastic, some deeper than the others, some with elaborate decorations, other plain. Mac accepted her bowl gratefully, holding onto it with both hands for extra warmth. It was easy to tell the gypsies apart from the strangers. They all wore the same bright colors Sunny was attracted to. Their clothes were simple, old jeans, pants and shirts, most of them of faded, dark colors. But all were decorated, patched, embroidered with colorful threads. There was a distinct look to them that set them apart from the others. Mac realized that Sunny had lost most of that look over time, but some things stayed. A few of the waiting passengers joined the fire as well, a young pair that arrived earlier that day, a small group that’s been around for a couple of weeks already. The young pair was telling stories of the happenings and news they picked up on the way. Mac was listening as intently as everyone else.

When there was no more soup in their bowls, two men from the gypsies produced guitars, and one of the girls in the group of passengers brought another one, a girl about Sunny’s age had a small drum with her, and she gave one to Sunny, as well. A woman held a flute, and an old man a violin. They started with the guitars, playing some old songs most of them knew, everyone singing along, some clapping hands to the rhythm. They sang other songs, songs Mac had never heard before, songs in different languages. Some songs sounded familiar, and she thought she’d heard them before, when they met other train-gypsies. Sunny’s singing along confirmed her suspicion. Absentmindedly, while softly tapping the rhythm of the current song on her thigh, Mac observed the men playing. None seemed familiar in any way, and she was fairly certain the only one who had any tattoos, except for the traditional gypsy marks, was the passenger girl playing the guitar.

As the time passed, the mood changed, and the songs turned more somber, more melancholic. The guitars were put away and the woman played her flute, then the old man his violin. The loud, happy singing, turned into a quiet hum that brought a lump to Mac’s throat. She stared at the fire, watching the flames dance, and blinked away the tears.

They were all offered a corner in one of the wagons, with the gypsies, but while Sunny and Jase gladly accepted, Mac declined. Sunny nodded her understanding as they said goodnight, and Mac set out to find a sheltered corner – she was certain the rain was going to pick up soon – away from people. She found it in sole wagon that was set on a broken track, within site of the camp, but further enough to allow her sleep. She could tell it was used for storage, but there was a space there for her sleeping bag, and walls and a roof, she didn’t need much more.

On the second day in the camp, Mac mostly sat, leaning on a huge wheel, reading a book. Sunny was away for most of the day, running between the gypsies and passengers, or just walking around with Jase. She came back only when the rain, which stopped in the late morning, started again, and sat near Mac with her own book. Jase walked around the two camps, and came back after a few hours, carrying money and gifts. He collapsed on the floor next to Sunny, leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, breathing hard. He was pale, sweating and positively exhausted.

“I have enough for a train ride,” He said after a while, when he caught his breath. Sunny was looking at him in concern, but smiled when he said that.

“Can we go?” She asked, looking at Mac.

Mac shrugged, “Sure.”

It was another week before the train was ready to go and all the waiting passengers finally got to board it. Mac watched the gypsies hauling fuel containers, stocking up food, connecting all the different wagons to one another. Two passenger wagons were in the front, and to the back they connected the four wagons they lived in and two supply wagons. The day before they were going to set forth was a hectic day, full of activity. Very little was left behind, mostly things that were too difficult to carry, or wouldn’t fit in the supply wagons. Most of them were things the next gypsy group could use. They made Mac, per Sunny’s request, and not without giving her odd looks, a small space at the back of the last supply wagon. Mac suspected no such exceptions would’ve been made if it weren’t for Sunny. The space they left was just large enough to unroll her sleeping bag, but Mac needed nothing more. To her surprise, they even gave her a large, thick candle in a make-shift holder. She wasn’t a big fan of trains, especially of making her way between the wagons while the train was moving. This was the downside of her arrangement – the train wouldn’t stop until it reached the next station, four days away. This was her price to pay for a night’s sleep, the journey to her corner of the back wagon and back. Her only consolation was that the train wasn’t going too fast.

The steady rhythm of the rolling metal wheels was maddening at times, relaxing enough to put her to sleep at others. On the first night, she laid rolled in the sleeping bag, staring at the dark sky through the slit in the wall that was her window. It seemed to be constantly raining since they started moving, and there was not a star in the sky to light the darkness. Mac stared, and thought of Sunny’s reaction when Mac asked the girl whether she’d like to share the wagon with her. She asked it half-joking, knowing the girl would rather spend her time with Jase, and was surprised by Sunny’s reaction. It was such a violent objection to the idea, that Mac could do nothing but stare for a moment, dumbfound.

“It’s just like those wagons,” The girl explained, looking at the old, metal-walled wagon, with two slits for air on each side – neither bigger than Mac’s hand in width and just barely longer than her forearm – and a huge sliding door. “From that big war, where they took the people to be burned,” Sunny visibly shuddered, and Mac caught a feel of the girl’s distress. “I read about them. They’d put hundreds of people into one of these… lock them inside for days… half would be dead by the time they got to the camps. I’m not getting in there. I couldn’t sleep there.” She walked away, leaving Mac to stare at the wagon, speechless.

With Sunny’s descriptions running through her mind, Mac was having trouble falling asleep. She got up, made sure the metal door wasn’t locked, then stood – the slit in the wall just low enough to be able to look through without going on her tip toes – and stared outside, breathing the fresh air, occasional raindrops landing on her face. Eventually, putting the girl’s voice out of her mind, drowning it out with the sounds of music from her player, she managed to relax enough to sleep. The following nights were easier, although Mac wished Sunny had spared her the descriptions.

On the last evening before the upcoming stop, while making her way to her wagon, she heard laughter from somewhere above her. Confused, she climbed the ladder she was holding on to, about to make the short jump to the other ladder, and saw the source of the laughter. It was Sunny and Jase and another young couple, sitting on the roof of the first supply wagon, holding on to dear life, the wind blowing their hair, laughing.

“What the hell are you doing?” She had to yell in order to be heard over the sound of the wind and the train.

They all turned to look at her. “It’s fun!” The guy sitting across from Sunny said. The red-headed girl sitting next to him stifled a scream as the train took a turn. Mac cursed, gripping the ladder until her knuckles were white.

“You could get killed!” She yelled.

“That’s the point!”

She sighed, cursed again and climbed all the way, crawling on all fours, hands gripping the metal bits and handles on the wagon, afraid to let go even one hand for fear of falling to her death.

“You’re insane,” She said when she was seated between Sunny and the other girl. Sitting this close to them she didn’t need to yell anymore, but she still needed to be loud to be heard.

“Just relax,” Sunny said, at that moment the train shook, and the other girl screamed in earnest, a short, high-pitched scream. Even sunny couldn’t prevent the short scream that escaped her lips, but then she immediately started laughing, everyone else joining her.

“Yeah… relax,” Mac muttered.

“Close your eyes,” The guy said. He was holding on with only one hand, his other resting on the red-head’s thigh, so casually one would mistake them sitting in a field of grass, not on the top of a moving train.

“Do it,” Sunny said at her side, “It’s brilliant.”

Mac took a deep breath, tightened her hold on the roof – she thought her fingers would be sore by the next morning – and closed her eyes. At first, nothing happened. “Don’t open,” She heard the guy’s voice. Then as she slowly started to relax, not enough to loosen her grip, just a little bit, she could feel it, what they were all there for. The wind blowing in her face, the loud noise of movement, drowning out all other sounds now that the youths around her were quiet, it was a sensation like no other. Excitement and danger and freedom and movement. She didn’t even realize that she was laughing until her own voice reached her ears, disturbing the whoosh of the wind.

“See?” Sunny said.

They stayed on the roof through the light drizzle, laughing and yelling and talking loudly to be heard over the wind. Mac loosened her grip on the roof only slightly, but was enjoying herself nevertheless. When the drizzle turned, within no more than a minute, into a full-blown storm, they hurried off the roof and back into the safety of the wagons. Not one of them was even remotely dry by the time they made it inside. Sunny waited inside the first supply wagon until Mac went into the one she slept in, and to the soft, dancing light of the candle, undressed and changed into a dry set of clothes. Sunny, still wet, made the jump to the small door at the back of Mac’s wagon, grabbed the wet clothes and immediately jumped back. She would dry them with everyone else’s clothes, in the kitchen by the stove, where wet clothes were hung to dry in such weather.

Mac brushed the knots out of her wet hair, braided it into two short braids – it was still too short to fit into a proper single one – and sat, leaning against a large supply box, looking up through the small slit, the music playing in her ears. Every once in a while a brilliant lightning would shoot through the sky, gone after a second. Mac found them beautiful, and did not go to sleep until the lightning was gone from the sky and nothing remained but the steady fall of rain.

]]> http://mariser.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thirty-movies-hath-november-brazil-1985/ Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:50:11 +0000 mariser http://mariser.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/thirty-movies-hath-november-brazil-1985/

ah, Brazil
a movie whose tagline should have been (but wasn’t):   Mistakes? We don’t make mistakes

yet we do. we do make mistakes, as in all bureaucracies, and someone will be found to blame.

Brazil poster

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trailer

Brazil is Terry Gilliam’s dystopian vision of a not-too-far-future from a present that took an odd turn around the 1930’s. there are many anachronisms and technical hybrids like old typewriters hooked up to tv screens and rotary telephones with amplifiers. the scenery and architecture are similarly affected: the public buildings pay hommage to 1930’s German expressionism (think Metropolis), while apartments and other living spaces are oddly futuristic, with large numbers of exposed ducts everywhere.

the story references George Orwell’s 1984 and Franz Kafka’s The Trial.  the unnamed government bureaucracy has made a mistake by eliminating a Mr. Buttle rather than Mr. Tuttle, who’s believed to be a terrorist of some kind. a low-level employee of the Ministry of Information, Sam Lowry, is assigned to investigate.  in this process, Lowry meets a neighbor of the widow Buttle, who is the same woman Lowry has been seeing in dreams.  Lowry meets the renegade Tuttle…

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Harry Tuttle…at your service!

…and things get complicated.

the world of Brazil, while different from ours, is not that different.  consider a day at work in the Ministry of Information

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a day at work

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Funnyman composer nerdy mathematician Tom Lehrer had it about right — when it came to things going south.
“Hello Mom

I’m off to drop the bomb

So send me a salami

And try to smile somehow

I’ll see you soon when the war is over

About an hour and a half from nowwwwww.!”

(OK. That’s from memory, quotes used as a “more or less” accurate. But that’s the gist.)
We love to ‘imagine distaster,’ as Susan Sontag  observed in a famous essay written in the good old days of US-Soviet Mutually Assured Destruction. We in the multipolar, asymmetric, post-9-11, jihadi war on terror world are rather nostalgic for the era of bomb shelters and civil defense siren warnings and hiding under our school desks during A-bomb drills (and making sure to face away from the windows, lest the nukes send shards of glass to slice up our homework assignments).

We love to get off on getting off. In the first couple of centuries after Jesus, literalists headed into the desert, ready for the end of days. The gospel of John is quite colorful about all the bad stuff that will go down  — you know, sooner or later.

Marxist history has its own end-of-days (for capitalism).  Freud theorized that we’ve got a death wish, before he trashed that theory. Ernest Becker, dying of cancer, talked about the “denial of death.” More recently, Sam Huntington coined the “clash of civilizations,” which is no day in the park.

(There will be a test on all this name dropping. Please read Norman O. Brown, Love’s Body and Life Against Death for next week.)

In these battles — us versus cancer, Christians versus Muslims, the Pleasure Principle versus the Reality Principles, the fat cats versus the proletariat — there are winners and losers. For the winners, the prize is life everlasting, God in the clouds, a World Series ring, utopian socialism, cancer-free remission. For the losers, it’s the booby prize. Upside down in a bucket of shit (where Dante dumps the corrupt popes), or a one-way ticket to palookaville.

Back in the Sixties, when culture went on an extended acid trip, Bob Dylan sang about folks wanting to get you down in the hole where they are. There’s nothing so tonic for the blues than learning that an giant asteroid is cruising Earthward at the speed of extinction.

Hollywood loves that plotline, and has given us “The Day the Earth Caught Fire,” and a long stream of end-of-the-world flicks. Opening soon, it’ll be “2012″ and “The Road.”  A few years ago I took my son to “The Day After Tomorrow,”  a climate-change spectacular, with hurricanes the size of Jupiter that scoop up waves that wash over New York City, followed by the dawn on an Ice Age.

It’s the kind of story Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert cook up when they’re in the apocalyptic zone.

So we’ve got competing cultural-political narratives: The  Jesus Is Coming With a Sword millennarianism of Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, and The Polar Bears are Drowning With You and Me meteorological fantasies of McKibben & Co.

Neither story — from the firebrand right or the rogue-wave left — has a happy ending, as they frame the old war between religion and science.

For Carville-Clinton in the Nineties, it was The Economy, Stupid.

These days: It’s the Apocalypse, Stupid!

This week, the local rape trial that I wrote about here and here reached its end. The defendant was found not guilty. Though I wasn’t in the courtroom, the media reports on the trial make me seriously wonder if justice was served. The defense relied heavily on rape myths. Apparently the jury was convinced. For me, those rape myths raise a host of red flags. (They can also be triggering; a survivor I know felt retraumatized, seeing this case in the paper every day for two weeks.)

Rape myth #1: Consent, given once, is valid until the end of time. The defendant and accuser had had a friends-with-benefits relationship before the night in question. This relationship was dragged through the media prior to trial and then rehashed in the courtroom. Somehow the defense attorney, Robert Toy, managed to introduce their sexual history despite rape shield laws. This started in the pre-trial filings:

After meeting in Fall Quarter 2007, the pair’s friendship “culminated in a sexual relationship” in March 2008. The sexual relationship continued through the summer while the woman took classes and stayed with family near Kulchar’s home, Toy wrote.

Though prosecutors intend to show the sex was violent, Toy has said he will use the woman’s sexual history with Kulchar to prove the encounter was an intimate, consensual part of their relationship.

After meeting in Fall Quarter 2007, the pair’s friendship “culminated in a sexual relationship” in March 2008. The sexual relationship continued through the summer while the woman took classes and stayed with family near Kulchar’s home, Toy wrote.

“Biting and scratching were part of the numerous sexual acts,” Toy wrote.

(Source: The Post)

Attorney Toy continued to harp on their prior relationship in his oral arguments:

The two had a prior sexual relationship that included rough sex, he said, adding that Kulchar couldn’t have overpowered the woman because she outweighs him by 30 pounds.

(Source: The Post)

The presumption here is that once you’ve said yes, you’ve consented in perpetuity. Under this view, consent can never be revoked. This was, of course, the basis for marital rape remaining legal until feminists began to challenge the marital rape exemption in the 1970s. It was also the reasoning behind a Maryland court case in which the defendant was originally acquitted because his accuser said no only after intercourse had begun; upon appeal, Maryland’s highest court ruled that a woman could say no at any point during sex, and if her partner refused to stop, he was guilty of rape. So courts have affirmed the right to revoke consent at any time (though to my knowledge, the Supreme Court has never ruled on this, so different jurisdictions may rule differently.) In any case, there’s still a gap between the law and the beliefs of jurors, some of whom may understand consent to be irrevocable – even if it was given months ago.

Rape myth #2: You can’t rape a slut, because a slut is always panting for it. This is related to the idea that sex workers are unrapeable; a slut is basically regarded as a prostitute who’s happy to give it away for free. The defense made a point of portraying the accuser as sexually voracious:

Testimony will show, Toy told the jury, that the woman pursued Kulchar sexually, and that on a prior occasion in March 2008, the two had engaged in sex that involved scratching and biting – which left Kulchar with deep scratch marks down his back, and prompted a friend to ask him if he had been “mauled by a cougar.”

“This was rough sex that she initiated, and that she enjoyed,” Toy claimed.

(Source: The Athens News)

Here, the defense isn’t just establishing a prior sexual relationship. It’s also mobilizing cultural tropes from porn and other media. Though the accuser isn’t old enough to fit the popular definition of a “cougar” as a middle-aged woman preying on young man, the comparison to an actual feline cougar still evokes a desperate, predatory woman. And while some women actually do enjoy rough sex, porn has promoted the idea that any woman who likes sex is a slut, and that a slut loves rough sex, even or especially when she says no. Twenty years ago, before this constant messaging from porn, a defense lawyer would have a hard time making a “rough sex” argument. I worry that the ubiquity of rough sex in porn will make it increasingly hard to prosecute sexual assault cases if the defense can argue “she wanted it, and she wanted it rough,” and expect juries to find this plausible.

Rape myth #3: If the accuser knows the defendant, she’s probably just out for revenge. The defense really loved this theme:

Kulchar apologized to the woman several times on the phone because she sounded upset, he said. He had left that morning without giving the woman a hug or kiss goodbye, or inviting her to dinner with his family for his birthday, he said.

Kulchar said he wanted to set up a time to talk to her in person and he kept apologizing so he could get off the phone to study for a chemistry exam.

(Source: The Post)

And again:

Though Toy said he does not know why the woman concocted the tale, he added that it could be because Kulchar didn’t invite her to a family party later that day even though they were close friends.

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” he said.

(Source: The Post)

So there you have it. The accuser was pissed at being left out of the defendant’s birthday party, so she retaliated by bringing rape charges. Exactly! Women do this all the time! Why, I started flinging around rape charges in third grade, when I was constantly the last kid picked for the softball team! Crying rape is such a nifty, easy way to teach guys a lesson!

Isn’t it amazing how clichés and stereotypes – the “woman scorned” – can win over a jury when you don’t have an actual argument?

Rape myth #4: Acquaintance rape is really “gray rape,” which in turn is just an expression of a woman’s next-day regrets.

Kulchar’s attorney, Robert Toy, told the jury that the woman had conjured the whole story because Kulchar didn’t treat her with respect and left her alone after their night of consensual sex.

(Source: The Post)

Here the defense is playing off the idea that women only pursue sex as a way to extract emotional commitment and intimacy. This idea resonates with widely held stereotypes of women’s sexuality: that we don’t want sex for its own sake; that we use sex only as a means to an end, be it jewelry, a baby, or love. These stereotypes merge neatly with “gray rape,” the insinuations that a woman is likely to regret casual sex the morning after – and cry rape. As a term, gray rape is relatively new, but the idea goes back to Katie Roiphe’s The Morning After (1993).

Never mind that there’s a gaping hole in the gray-rape narrative: the social and emotional costs of bringing rape charges are immense. Never mind that in countless conversations with students (many of them one-on-one) the stories I hear aren’t of casual sex regretted. They are accounts of being physically beaten by an ex-boyfriend, overpowered by a trusted friend who promised to walk her home, given a drink that was drugged, or saying no and not being heard or respected.

Rape myth #5: Acquaintance rape is unprovable because it always comes down to he-said, she-said. The defense tried to boil the case down to two conflicting accounts.

He [Toy] added that the jurors have been asked to rule on a “he-said, she-said” case, where the state relied heavily on the woman’s story, which he called inconsistent and lacking corroboration.

(Source: The Post)

In fact, the case wasn’t a he-said, she-said scenario. There was the phone call (mentioned under point 3) in which the defendant repeatedly apologized to the accuser for hurting her. That call was recorded by the police with permission from the accuser.

And there was physical evidence in the form of bruises and a tear. The woman reported the assault promptly and underwent an examination by a SANE nurse, who testified that her injuries were consistent with an assault. The defense tried to undermine the significance of her injuries.

Karen Robinson, the nurse who performed the sexual assault examination, said the one-centimeter-long tear in the woman’s vaginal wall is indicative of nonconsensual sex. A tear like the woman’s is four times more common in nonconsensual sex than consensual sex, Robinson said.

But an expert for the defense, Jane Broecker, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Ohio University’s College of Osteopathic Medicine, said that similar tears are found on women who have consensual sex at about the same frequency as in women who have had nonconsensual sex. Bruises and abrasions are more common in nonconsensual sex, she said.

Broecker cited a 2006 study from the Journal of Forensic Nursing that compared women who had engaged in consensual and nonconsensual sex.

“This study debunks the theory that has been used,” Broecker said, adding the study was the best example she had found on genital trauma during nonconsensual sex.

Robert Driscoll, chief assistant county prosecutor, asked Broecker if she had read a 1997 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, which showed that it was much more common for women to have vaginal injuries after non-consensual sex than consensual sex. Broecker responded that she had requested the study from Alden Library’s annex, but had not yet received it.

Robinson said she noted discoloration on the women’s neck and right breast, but found nothing on her arms or legs.

The medical report and photos did not indicate that the discolorations were bite marks, and the discolorations could have been from a hickey,” Broecker said.

(Source: The Post)

Quick aside: I am perplexed and appalled by Dr. Broecker’s role in this case. She’s one of the partners in my gynecologists’ practice, and though I’ve never seen her, she has a reputation as a good doctor. However, as far as I know, she doesn’t have the experience in examining assault victims that a SANE nurse would have, and I cannot fathom why she’d agree to testify for the defense.

Anyway, I looked up the two studies mentioned, and while I could only access the abstract for the second one, it is clearly better powered than the one Dr. Broecker cited. The study cited by the prosecution examined 311 rape victims and 75 women who’d had consensual intercourse, while the one cited by the defense looked at only 56 and 46 in each group. (The linked abstract for the defense’s study provides almost no information; I drew these numbers from the full article, which isn’t freely available on the Web.) There may still be scientific reasons for preferring the study Dr. Broeker cited, but since she couldn’t compare the two, it’s hard to escape the impression that her testimony was slanted.

In short, Dr. Broeker’s testimony was on shaky grounds. Clinically, only the SANE nurse had examined the accuser; Dr. Broeker played no role in the exam. Scientifically, there are real disputes about how to interpret injuries. However, the gist of the literature – including the literature review in the study Dr. Broeker cited – is that while not every injury is the result of nonconsensual sex, vaginal injury plus bruising correlates quite strongly with sexual assault. In this particular case, the physical evidence appears pretty solid. The science – not so much. No wonder the defense sought to explain away the physical evidence by dredging up the accuser’s sexual history and alleging a pattern of consensual rough sex.

Rape myth #6: If a gal drinks or drugs, she had it coming to her. The defense made sure to mention that both parties smoked dope earlier in the evening before the assault.

The woman told police that she knew Kulchar when she filed the report. Toy wrote that she smoked marijuana with Kulchar before they had sex, and they “voluntarily slept together for a number of hours, quietly, in her dorm room” afterward.

(Source: The Post)

Why would the defense even bring this up, unless they were sure that it would hurt her more than him? After all, they both smoked. The defense must have been confident that only her credibility would be harmed.

Here’s how the woman told her story. Unlike the defense, it’s remarkably free of myths and stereotypes.

The woman said she invited Kulchar to her room to celebrate his birthday, adding that she agreed to kiss him at first. The woman said she asked Kulchar to leave when he made further sexual advances.

But Kulchar ignored her pleas and the two began to struggle. At one point, the woman crawled under her roommate’s desk to get away, but Kulchar overpowered her and pulled her from beneath the desk by her ankles, she said.

“I said ‘Matt, I know that you are very drunk and I know that we have slept together in the past, but I am saying ‘no’ right now,’” the woman said. “I was just trying to be the voice of reason and say, ‘It’s not too far yet … I know that I’m crying, but you haven’t done anything yet.’”

(Source: The Post)

Now, I can’t say I know enough to pronounce the verdict wrong, although the victim’s story rings true to me, especially the part where she tries to talk sense into him. It contrasts with the defense strategy, which cobbled together standard, almost boilerplate victim-blaming narratives and rape myths. This was abundantly clear in closing arguments:

Pressure from her friends, family and prosecutors compelled her to keep up the case, Toy said.

“Does that make a lot more sense than a rape and kidnapping? That things got out of hand, that maybe we as a society make women victims too often when sometimes responsibility should be had by all people?” Toy said.

Driscoll responded during his second closing that the woman’s stories did not match because she did not need to recite every single detail in different interviews with police.

He added that his job is to “do justice” and that the jury should find Kulchar guilty.

“If no doesn’t mean no, (Kulchar) gets away with whatever he wants,” Driscoll said. “If no doesn’t mean no, we live in a lawless society.”

(Source: The Post)

I’ll leave it for you to judge, dear reader. Do we, indeed, live in a lawless society?

(More coverage on the defense’s allegations is here. Further testimony from the victim is here.)

Christopher Largen’s Junk is a confectionery treat, tracing the lives of disparate yet interconnected individuals in the government’s “War on Junk Food.” Officer Justin Bailey, enforcer of laws against those criminal consumers of sugar, salt, red meat, and other contraband food products, witnesses unfathomable acts of desperation. Similarly employed to aid dietary offenders, Reverend/rehab counselor Moe Goodman preaches for faith-based lives absolved of gangs like the Praline Posse and musicians the Feastie Boys. On the other side of the war, ousted baker Billy Sweet, accompanied by his sweet-toothed canine Sugar, produces delicious concoctions for the Candy Man’s black market. At first glance the three protagonists appear loyal to their individual causes, but as the horrors of the War on Junk escalate, all three battle conflicts of conscience.

Strong parallels to the War on Drugs ground this fictional War on Junk and cook up one uproarious sociopolitical satire. Largen sprinkles “mockuments” – witty letters from jailed dietary offenders, press articles, fliers for junk urine testing, and interview transcriptions – as well as food-themed quotes throughout the novel. But the icing on the cake lies in the juxtaposition of illustrations portraying happy eaters – instant deadpan humor.

With a well-written novel marinated in humor, hilarious vignettes abound. Enjoy the Burning Gingerbread Man Festival and a reading of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” as religious allegory alongside the more serious-minded issues of diabetics’ right to insulin, religious fasting, and personal freedoms. Recommended for foodies and anyone craving some sugary satire.

The Cortras brothers accidentally kill the nephew of the crime lord Judah Bathierre. They flee the city of Gomorrah in fear of their lives. The brothers believe they’ll slip Bathierre’s reach if they get into the walled city called Capital. As the Cortras brothers cross the desert they encounter a man wandering the waste alone. The brothers believe him to be the heathen terrorist, Ilu Drystani, and hope to collect the reward for the man’s arrest. The stranger joins the Cortras brothers. He doesn’t tell them about the voice that’s been following him.

Visit the Pazuzu Trilogy web page here.

Purchase Pazuzu Trilogy books here.

Das seit über 10 Jahren existierende Projekt C-Drone-Defect ist zu DEM Geheimtip der deutschen Electroszene avanciert. Waren schon die ersten beiden Alben, „Neural Dysorder Syndrome“ (SPV) und „Nemesis“ (NoiTekk) ausgesprochen erfolgreich, so erscheinen diese im Vergleich zu „Dystopia“ wie Rohdiamanten.

So schiebt „Dystopia“ gerade im Bereich Sounds und Songwriting die Meßlatte im Electro-Sektor derartig nach oben, dass die Luft schon dünn wird. War schon die kostenlose Net-EP “Letters from Dystopia” eine Verheißung, erfüllt der eigentliche Longplayer „Dystopia“ exakt diese Erwartungen.

Treibende Rhythmen, fesselnde Keyboardflächen und eine perfekt passende Stimme, das ganze gepaart mit dem entsprechenden Ideenreichtum und fertig ist eine der größten Electro-Scheiben des Jahres 2010!

Bedrohlich, düster, hymnisch! That’s it! Test it!

Die limitierte Erstauflage von 1000 Stück enthält eine exklusive Bonus-CD!

Bandmitglieder:
Marc Horstmeier

Gründungsjahr:
2000

Diskographie:
2001: THE FEW MCD (SPV/Synthetic Symphony)
2001: NEURAL DYSORDER (SYNDROME – SPV/Synthetic Symphony)
2004: NEMESIS (NoiTekk)
2009: LETTERS FROM DYSTOPIA (download EP) (NoiTekk)
2009: DYSTOPIA (NoiTekk)

Genre:
Electro / Industrial

Trackliste:

01. Rebellis
02. Morituri te salutant
03. Mente videbor
04. Aegri somnia
05. Orpheus
06. Post tenebras lux
07. Mundus vult decipi
08. Tempus fugit
09. Lex talionis
10. Ratio misericordiae

- Bonus-CD:
01. Rebellis (Xentrifuge Remix)
02. Morituri te salutant (Ave! Mix by Autoclav 1.1)
03. Mente videbor (XP8 Mix)
04. Aegri somnia (ageless Mix by ESA)
05. Orpheus (Life Cried Remix)
06. Post tenebras lux (Endif RMX)
07. Mundus vult decipi (Rechnomancer RMX)
08. Tempus fugit (Moment of Creation Mix by Sandika Zero)
09. Lex talionis DYMs Revenge Remix)
10. Ratio misericordiae (Ashbury Heights

Erscheinungsdatum:
27.11.2009

Bestell-LInk

http://www.poponaut.de

C-DRONE-DEFECT @ MySpace

http://www.myspace.com/cdronedefect

C-DRONE-DEFECT @ www

http://www.cdronedefect.de

Label:

www.noitekk.de

This is the story of an artist named Sheraton.
I just wrote this circa ten minutes ago. So excuse grammatical errors and such.
I’ll fix them as i find them.
This is the first time i’ve done something on this type of subject.
Let me know what you think.

Sheraton, The Creative Artist

“Hey casino, come look at my newest illustration!” said Sheraton on a fair afternoon in the year 2037.
“It looks like our neighborhood back in Ohio”, said Casino.
“It’s the view from the top of Washington hill.”
“Do you remember things back then?”
“Barely, we were so little.”
“That was before the government introduced the new grid system and documentation laws.”
“Everything now is so categorize, what did you say they called it?
“The Sequencing Initiative: to categorize and record every event for the purpose of proving existence scientifically.”
“I don’t understand why that’s so important, but what of my painting?”
“Ah yes, it is very good. It reminds me of the old days when we would sit on that hill, look into the autumn leaves, and bask in the last few sunny days before winter.”
“I’m glad I could provoke that emotion.”
“But where are your destination identity coordinates?”
“Do I really need those for something that simple, can’t I just try to make people think without having to identify everything?”
“You know human memory, it forgets things. The reason the coordinates is so important is because it makes people think things are relevant and not fantasy.”
“I just don’t understand the need for proof when I can remember it so obviously clear in my head.”
“It’s just something to follow blindly, Why fight it?”
“You’re right.”
Sheraton begins to walk out of the studio and notices the city around her.
“How can people need proof for beauty like this?”

++++++

(20.45 Hours later)

Sheraton is stopping by her friend Daisy’s studio. Daisy is there painting a portrait of a French woman with black hair and fair skin. Sheraton is sure she has seen the painting before.
“Where did you get this idea? Sheraton asks.
“My head, I just wanted to paint a French woman. I used template #100000594, a painting called the “Mona Lisa”.”
“I see, is this your submission at the show?”
“Yes, I think it will be given awards for creativity.”
“Creative? Your copying an original piece!”
“But my subject matter is worthy of an Art and History prize.”
“I don’t understand, I must go.”
“What’s wrong Sheraton, wait!”

++++++

(Later that night)

Sheraton is alone in her studio trying to decide which piece to submit to the show the following day. She continues to forge out works with vivid uses of color and composition. She works until the brink of exhaustion.
Finally, She collapses onto the sofa.
Minutes later, Casino arrives.
“Sheraton, are you in here?
“Yes.”
“Have you decided which piece to submit?”
“No, I do not have any coordinates for my work.”
“Sheraton, why must you torture yourself?”
“I do not see why my works aren’t creative.”
“You must identify them.”
“But what if they are the first of their kind?”
“Then they mustn’t be creative. How can you expect to produce anything innovative if you do not produce coordinated work?”
“I am so distraught.”
“Listen to me Sheraton, Get past this phase of yours. You must see templates collect your thoughts and it is the only way the professionals will accept your work.”
“I will just have to remain uncreative.”
“Sheraton!”
“Fine, I will search for something.”
“Thank you, best of luck.”
Casino exits and Sheraton ponders. She opens a template index, finds an old painting called Starry Night, and begins to work.

++++++

(The Show)

Casino, Daisy, and a myriad of other artists, intellectuals, and other community members show up for the showing of people’s art.
The hall where this takes place is wonderfully lit and extremely rustic. The food and drinks served are wonderful.
Sheraton arrives just in time for the show to start. She sets up her piece as a speaker begins to talk about the importance of coordinates and the sequencing initiative.
Shortly thereafter, people begin to mingle amongst the artists and talk to them about their work. A growing group is collecting around Daisy’s portrait and the consensus seems to be it is ingenious.
But the real shocker arrives when Sheraton unveils her final piece, the newly dubbed The Starry Night’s Flight. People unanimously agree that Sheraton’s work has improved tremendously now that she has started using the coordinate system. To her amazement, the professionals find her work creative and original in its use of the template. After the professionals make their assessment, the crowd seems to shift this way also. People begin to offer Sheraton money for the painting, which she refuses to accept.
When approached by Casino, Sheraton asks if Casino “Is proud of what she has accomplished?”
Casino replies, “of course, your work is extremely brilliant and creative.”
“But what of the template and the work done before mine?”
“It must have been wonderful for the professionals to have given your update such a good review.”
“I guess you are right Casino.” Sighs Sheraton.
“I see you haven’t lost your vision Sheraton.”
“It seems not.”
“Let’s go get something to drink and celebrate.”
“Let me grab my coat.”
As Sheraton walks to get her coat, she looks out at the starry sky and then back at the room full of people happily leaving. She thinks to her-self, “It must be so that creativity stems from something already accomplished, how could all of these people be blinded by the professionals? It seems more likely that the defect is in me. Yes! The defect must be in me and the templates must be used to guide my weary mind in the right direction. I see it now. How could I have been so silly?”
She scurries back to meet Casino and no longer confused,
Sheraton lived happily ever after.