The Masked Philosopher

If you want

2011-11-14T22:39:00.001-05:00

you can follow my depressed musings that are likely leading to my untimely demise over at roofofhell.blogspot.com

?

2011-11-01T12:00:00.002-04:00

I happened to opine on Twitter the other day that I thought Slavoj Zizek to be full of shit. In particular, I find that the pieces of his work that I have read (and I have tried several) are pointless because they don't mean anything. It's like he is a human random text generator.

I know, based on some speeches, that he does claim to hold some vaguely Marxist/Stalinist positions that, again, aren't particularly well defined or argued for outside of being very worshipful towards state power. I suppose if I had to pick a figure in the history of western philosophy who he resembles, I'd go with either Heidegger or Hegel, both odious for different reasons.

I mean if you like Zizek and find meaning in his work, that's great. I don't. I think we are all ok with that.

well, well, well

2011-07-11T13:46:00.002-04:00

Been taking some time to think about things. Written sporadically for another blog, some FB and twitter. Not sure anyone is reading, but that wasn't the point. I guess I quit because it was becoming the point. Or something. We'll see....I've been shut down for a long time and I don't know if I can get going again. Maybe I can just sit and type, like at the beginning, and then see what's what.

It's

2011-03-18T12:52:00.001-04:00

not.

54 weeks to the day

2011-02-22T10:41:00.002-05:00

Maybe it's time to get this going again. Maybe it's not. Let's see what happens, shall we?

Goodbye, farewell, amen

2010-02-08T12:08:00.002-05:00

This blog has run its course. If I start blogging again, I'll post a link to it here. I think I'm done, though. Thanks for reading.

Super?

2010-02-07T01:57:00.000-05:00

I like football, for the most part. I wonder if enough is done to protect the health of the players, sometimes, but if the players are willing to take the risks involved for the compensation offered--more power to them. That said, I can't get excited about the Super Bowl. It almost always sucks as a game, and the hype is just, well....two weeks of nothing. At least Brett Favre isn't in the game. Hayseed.

I don't really have much new here. Still down, but so what. I fucked up pretty royal the other day and now someone really important is pretty mad at me because someone else can't leave well enough alone. Well, that's not fair to the second party--someone important is mad because of something I did that I shouldn't have done. And I can't undo it and it is quite frankly killing me. I've caused a lot of pain for no real reason other than I was trying to keep things peaceful--it all goes back to impulse and shitty judgment, like so many of life's problems. And the ramifications of this are bad, as bad as they can be. If you want to keep a secret, the maximum number of people you can tell is zero.

But whatever. I'm just zombieing through my classes right now anyway. I almost hope that I don't get tenure--it would be a crushing disappointment in some senses, but in others it would be a huge relief. Maybe the budget cuts will get me. Maybe I'll get hit by a truck. There's nothing worth living for anyway. I suck, so there's no living for myself. Other people suck, sucking you into their lives then abandoning you....so fuck them. I suppose what keeps me going is my son. He loves me and I think it would harm him if I weren't around.

I lie to my students every day...I lie to them when I act like I care about them and their problems. Everybody has problems. Shut the fuck up. I lie to them when I tell them they should just try a bit harder and things will work out--for most of them it won't, either in my class or in their miserable existences. But we have to lie to get through the day, to ourselves, to each other. We have to pretend that good triumphs, and that you can always tell the noble and true from the evil and depraved, that we can make sense of the world, that we have something useful to say to one another, or to accomplish with our stupid, pointless lives, that it will all be OK in the end. Life is unbearable otherwise. Well, guess what? It is unbearable. It won't be OK in the end. It won't be anything in the end except cold, lonely, desolate---the illusions and lies I think get stripped away, we see the nothingness of our lives and then we become that nothingness. Tonight I embrace that eventuality, nay I crave it. I am so tired of it all.

I lie to myself, too. Everyone lies to everyone else all the time....their are no motives but ulterior ones. Life is as Hobbes said: solitary, nasty, brutish and short, but not enough....well, enough honesty. I'm going to try and get some sleep so I can get back to the lie tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow won't come. Tonight I wish it wouldn't. Fuck me, fuck you, fuck everybody. Amen.

once you're gone, you can't come back

2010-02-05T09:55:00.000-05:00

Tolstoy

2010-02-01T19:04:00.000-05:00

once asked:"Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?"

He found something once he appealed to faith. It's much easier to avoid the mental gymnastics of trying to weave meaning into this shitty world of ours and just say "no". And in this case, what is easy also seems, to me, correct.

Saje said this the other day in the comments:
And yet the vast majority of us pass through it all to get to the other side.

This is where we disagree. I don't believe there is another side to pass to--life is an unending series of painful events, of disappointments, of shortcoming, of betrayal and dissatisfaction. Some pleasure, to be sure, but that only serves to accentuate the pain (the pleasure of love serves to make the pain of loss that much more keen, for example--and it always ends in loss, always, for someone). People, o gentle readers, will fuck you in more ways than one and often in as many ways as they can. Now I suppose if you live in some Shaker community somewhere this might not happen, but of course there is a reason there aren't any more Shakers.

I do agree with Saje that life, if one is to bother with it at all, is a matter of putting one foot in front of another and going about living. Unlike Saje, I don't think there is any point to it or anything that we are heading towards other than oblivion. Life isn't what you make of it--it is what you are able to salvage when the world is through with you. If you don't see this now, it's ok. One day, when someone you love dies after a long struggle with cancer--or when they are killed in an accident, or through the indifference of someone who knows better or just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time...you will see.

Whenever I meet an optimist, I want to shake them and say don't you see the world--and I am sure they want to do the exact same thing to me.

Really, when I meet an optimist, I smile and nod and think, "just wait you fucker....just wait."

I understand the religious impulse...anything to escape that which can't be escaped.

A friend of mine posted on Facebook the other day something to the effect that he (he is a minister in a large [1000+] church) that he didn't understand why people believed that Jesus could save their soul but not change the world. I wanted to comment "Why? Because they have paid attention to the last 2000 years of human history..." But I said nothing because, quite frankly, if that answer hadn't occurred to him there was nothing I could say. And if it had occurred to him, he didn't think it through enough (granted that facebook isn't a great forum for theological speculation).....

Better to say nothing than to build some facade from a wispy cloud of faith and metaphorical language taken literally.

Most people don't really want to talk about anything--they want you to listen and nod your assent. I call it 'teaching philosophy in the middle of nowhere'.

mmmk?

2010-01-30T01:49:00.000-05:00

As far as the title goes, it's not a word, but a sound. Think of the guidance counselor in South Park.

I'm glad some people are still reading this piece of mental effluvia (maybe not the best word but it is late and I don't care) that passes as a blog. Thanks to Saje and Cloudberry for their comments.
Cloudberry once asked me a question along the lines of why I started to talk about Sartre on this blog and then shifted to Camus.

I identify a bit with Camus. He wasn't the most brilliant thinker, but he wrote with a certain passion and feeling that is largely absent from Sartre's work. Sartre is technical and, apart from Existentialism is a Humanism, dense. I'm too old and too tired to pick my way through that stuff anymore, especially when I can read Foucault, Camus, Cioran, Schopenhauer, Bataille, Conrad, Hemingway, Dostoevsky....

I suppose the real fact of the matter is that, for all my accomplishments (modest though they are), I'm too lazy to trouble with things that don't interest me. Sartre is, to me, a relic in terms of his philosophical work. I don't think that future generations (assuming that there will be future generations who care about such things) will value his philosophical work. His literary output will stand a bit taller, especially Nausea and No Exit. I'm writing this using the Opera browser and it doesn't seem to want to play nice with blogger. I'm going to stop for the moment...but I do want to talk about some things Saje said in the comments to the last post. Writing this has been sort of fun--maybe I'll start being a bit more regular in posting (famous last words).

alright

2010-01-27T21:10:00.000-05:00

Can't really think of a snazzy title for this post. It's been a while since I have posted and, quite frankly, I haven't really had much to say (not that that ever stopped me before). I'm not burning with righteous indignation, or hate or anything at all, really. I am just....abiding. Then, of course, there is all the stuff that fills our lives...family, job, friends and on and on and on.

I saw that a blogger I respect very much (even though we don't agree on much) is going on hiatus. That is more or less what I have been doing since October. I don't know why, but things really seemed to click into place for me then--I had one really horrible depressive episode early in the month and it must have been like lancing a boil because since then I have been in a mellow space.

For me, I think it had to do with reading Hemingway's short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place". It is sparse, with little or no action. An old man sits at a table late at night, drinking. He has tried to kill himself. Two waiters are watching him--one is in a hurry to go home, the other not so much. The man leaves when he can no longer get service, the waiters close up and the unhurried one winds up in another place, drinking. You can find it online via google (I even posted it here once long ago). The simplicity of the tale belies its meaning--which I interpret as being extremely nihilistic. I think Hemingway is saying that we spend the bulk of our lives alone. Most relationships we have are financial in nature ('Work" friends, the waitress who is nice to you). Even family frustrates, fails to understand one another (the old man who tried to kill himself was saved by a family member--and saved to what end? To drink alone in a cafe, apparently).

It seems, then, that our attempts to find meaning in a world such as this are doomed to fail. Even the existentialist mission of accepting the transitory nature of life and living in the 'now' ceases to be anything of use. Even an attempt to find one's own meaning in one's own life is pointless--because we will all end up alone and disappointed; because we are all at the whim of the meanness and chaos surrounding us, depending upon others even when we don't know this (you are depending on the driver approaching you on the highway to be paying attention, that some disgruntled employee won't pick the moment you are somewhere to start shooting). And if one of these eventualities comes true, as it will for many of us, then all the planning, all of the art, all of the love, faith, logic....none of it will save you. Or me.

So Hemingway swallowed a shotgun. I don't want to posit a cause-and-effect relationship between art and life, but it is certainly suggestive. I'm not headed that way--well, like all of us I am hurtling towards death--but I see no need to hasten it beyond the slothfulness and lack of care that typify my being.

So that's that. Hmm, that was much more whimper than bang. But I guess it almost always is.

More later.....why not?

ok, then

2010-01-06T08:23:00.000-05:00

Ahh, you may think, the depressed masked Philosopher is back. Far from it. I am actually still in a fairly good place mentally, mainly, I think, because I have ceased to care about my job. I have embraced the shallowness, the emptiness, the uselessness of it and am at peace with it. That doesn't mean I am going to start listening to the Jonas Brothers or posting on the virtues of Avatar. Rather, I think that I have come to terms with what was bothering me so much. If one accepts that what one does is useless, then the striving for usefulness comes to an end. One way to end a struggle is to stop struggling, and for the most part that is what I have done.

Again, I'm not sitting home staring vacantly into space or anything like that. Actually, my level of engagement with my fellow travelers hasn't been higher in quite a long time.The vacuous nature of 99% of those relations doesn't bother me--I take what comfort there is in the 1%. I've gained a friend from blogging (insofar as one can be friends with someone one has never actually met) who is part of that 1% despite the fact that we disagree on many different things. My wife and kids are there, Bashful Radical (another blogging friend), a couple of co-workers, a couple of former professors--a small circle of meaning, localized at a point in time--which is, after all, all there is.

I may be much less sanguine than this in a few weeks. I may be in some pit of despair. But today I am ok and I will deal with then....then.

New Year's Quiz

2009-12-28T22:10:00.000-05:00

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?

This is actually kind of difficult to answer. It wasn't a memorable year by any means. I stopped going to therapy. Also, I apparently became very terse.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

New year's resolutions are bullshit. I am quite capable of disappointing myself and others without codifying it. There's no real point in resolving anything since you are largely at the mercy of things beyond your control. And even if you do change, it will just introduce a whole new set of problems. So unless I resolve to tell the world to go fuck itself (instead of just making it clear), then no to both parts.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

No.

5. What countries did you visit?

Just the good old USA, which isn't really visiting since I live here. Though it is becoming more and more a foreign country to me, what with the ObamaCare and the general erosion of liberty.

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

Money, I guess. It isn't the solution to all life's problems, but it does make them a bit more tolerable.

7. What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

Again, it wasn't a memorable year in any particular way. There were some ups, some downs. Maybe December 15, as that was the day grades were due and I could finally put the worst semester of my life to rest.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Several small things at the college--being a club adviser is fun and I like the clubs I work with.

9. What was your biggest failure?

How am I supposed to pick just one? I guess my utter failure to communicate clearly with others, which has led to problems among problems.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Yes. I was sick pretty much from September until just recently with some sort of URI. I'm still not 100%. I also had arm surgery in the early summer. I have ongoing issues with blood sugar.

11. What was the best thing you bought?

A newish car, though it seems less good when the payments are due. I also got a new robe, which is nice and comfy.

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?

Ron Paul continued making life difficult for the powers that be. Jeff Flake is also admirable. I'm sure there were a lot of small victories won worth celebrating, but I just don't give a fuck, really.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?

Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, the management of Goldman-Sachs,

14. Where did most of your money go?

Bills of various sorts, medicine, those things that seem to come up when you have kids.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

That I am a year closer to dying.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?

Several of my students are enamored of a singer named Lady Gaga. I heard one of her 'songs', the title of which escapes me at the moment, and found it to be a triumph of form and production over substance. I think that fits 2009 perfectly, as well as 2008, 2007, .....

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:-i. happier or sadder?

I'll give a typical philosopher's answer--less unhappy. A bit thinner and about the same money-wise.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Reading philosophy. I am reading all sorts of other stuff, especially fiction, but not spending nearly enough time with Foucault, in particular.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

worrying about shit I can't control.

20. Did you fall in love in 2009?

Still in love with my wife.

21. How many one-night stands?

0

22. What was your favourite TV program?

Currently in production: Psych
Hadn't seen before but love: Black Books

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

Not really--my level of hate is remarkably consistent. And I don't really hate too many people anyway--probably just one or two at most.

24. What was the best book you read?

The Wrestler's Cruel Study, which is also one of the oddest books I've read.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?

I came to appreciate the vocal stylings of the late Robert Goulet. Minus the Bear continues to astound.

26. What did you want and get?

A car, several books and DVDs....

27. What did you want and not get?

No Comment

28. What were your favourite films of this year?

Most of what I saw this year was kid-related. Up was really good, as was Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

taught 3 sections of philosophy 1000.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

everything falling apart.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?

The best Target has to offer.

32. What kept you sane?

That is a relative term....I suppose an exercise of my iron will.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Amy Adams.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?

The ever-reaching, ever quickening, extension of the state.

35. Whom did you miss?

My birthmom quit talking to me this year. I miss her.

36. Who was the best new person you met?

I met some nice new faculty and some students in relation to the clubs I advise.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009:

You can depend on the worst always happening.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

Minus the Bear: Let's Play Guitar in a Five-Guitar Band

That was the last time I ever saw her-
through a shop window, sleeves to her elbows.
I walked past and kept on walking
and lit a smoke with my hands shaking.

She was something else

A few summers ago
we spent weeks in her room
just having sex and listening to jazz
and that was the life.

But I didn't know at the time

Blinds drawn at twelve noon
with daylight pouring through
projecting lines on her body

Move on, move on, move on
Smoke your smoke and move on

I should go back
see if she's still there
standing like a statue

On and on and on

2009-12-28T15:29:00.000-05:00

Q: What's the difference between life and a skit on Saturday Night Live?
A: Life ends.

And end it does, as all things do. I visited my hometown for Xmas, spent a little time with my mom, stepdad, useless fucking sister and her goddamned spawn. I despise my sister--indeed, as I have pointed out several times, we are both adopted so my consolation is that I did not spew forth from whatever diseased genetic pool she did. It was a pretty good Xmas other than dealing with my sister and her goddamned spawn. My mom is not doing really well, though she puts a brave face on things. I really believe she thinks this might be her last Xmas. The Parkinson's is taking more and more of a toll on her. It's sad on a bunch of different levels. I think she may not be in quite as dire straits as she believes, but she knows how she feels much better than I do. I've probably said that before. I seem to be repeating myself a lot. Not in an Alzheimer's sense or anything like that--I just am dealing with the same things and suppose I have run out of insight (or ran out some time ago).

So this is Xmas

2009-12-20T02:35:00.000-05:00

I am not in the Xmas spirit. I'm not a sloppy sentimentalist about holidays, but growing up I always enjoyed Christmas. Now this isn't going to turn into one of those "back in my day" stories--I'm not that old--but for me Xmas has turned into something to be endured as opposed to something to be enjoyed.

I don't buy in to the mythology of Xmas. I find the idea of a fat man from the north pole delivering presents via reindeer-propelled sleigh to be nearly as plausible as the idea of a virgin birth which allowed the omnipotent, omniscient, etc., etc. creator if the universe to assume human form.

So why am I disappointed? It's sort of hard to articulate. Maybe this will make it clearer, for me as well as for you, gentle reader: When I was younger, I had a great-uncle who fought in World War I. He was still mentally sound and one Christmas he and I sat together and he told me stories of the war and his experiences therein. Oddly, I can remember him talking to me about this, but I cannot really remember what he said. He's been dead a long time now--25 years or so--and I suppose I realize that the opportunity I had to connect with him is lost. Pretty much all of my relations are dead...the holiday dinners which used to be a time of family gathering and harmony, at least for the moment, are gone. I try to put together a nice Xmas for MP jr., Mrs. MP and the increasingly wayward MP spawn-who-is-fucking-around-in-college-and-wasting-everybody's-time, but it seems hollow. Mrs. MP's mom, who the MP was very close to, was killed in a car accident about two weeks before Xmas some years ago, and that has understandably left a pall on the holiday season as well.

Maybe also Xmas seems so forced these days--shop, buy, show people who you can't stand that you care about them enough to buy a 5-dollar gift bath set at Wal-Mart....or show those you love how much you love them by spending $$ on them. A lack of presents, a lack of spending=a lack of love. And yet it is so fucking phony. I was in a Wal-Mart the other day here where I live and observed the desperation of lost souls wandering through the plastic aisles under the hum of florescence. This molded piece of plastic shows my love for my child, they seemed to be thinking. This gift card shows my affection for my friend, this garland and tinsel shows just how festive I feel.. By wrapping themselves in the simulacra of Xmas, they hope to invoke the essence of Xmas. But there is no essence of Xmas (or of anything, but that is another subject for another day). As Baudrillard put it "The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none." By buying in to these notions of Santa, of Jesus, of Thomas Kinkade-esque snow-covered towns hosting Xmases that never were, a truth is woven that allows some escape from a deeper reality--that no amount of plastic molded into the shape of action figures or gift cards, artificial Xmas trees, love (or its pecuniary substitute) will forestall the disappointment, the emptiness, the meaninglessness of our existence for a second. We will die, most likely because someone we thought we loved, someone who wrapped something in colorful paper for us once or twice, stabs or shoots or beats us until we are no more.

thank goodness

2009-12-16T11:46:00.001-05:00

that classes are over and now my students can quit pretending to like me or care about what I have to say (and vice versa). It's actually liberating not to have to deal with all the artifice that goes along with teaching--both from the students and from my fellow workers. Most of us, being academics, would have nothing to do with one another in the real world, but tossed together by the vagaries of chance we struggle to find some sort of connection. That's probably why academics drink so much--it's the only way we can stand our students, each other and ourselves. Because there is certainly artifice on my part. I have to be very careful not to anger the little darlings as I have them think about God and evil and the meaning of life. I have to artfully pretend that their largely insipid comments are profound and thought-provoking. If by some stroke of chance I happen to get a student who is thoughtful and willing to talk, the others complain that this student is 'dominating the class' and making it impossible for them to 'learn'--which mainly consists of an increasingly vain attempt to copy down every single word I say in class.

I'm not in the pit of despair over all this, though. I might have been last year and I might be next year, but now I think I am approaching all this from a place of equanimity (which is a very fine line away from enmity, but anyway...) What I do here doesn't matter all that much, and not at all in the fullness of time. So even though I am perhaps a bit irritated on some levels by the shit up with which I must put, on a deeper level I don't feel much of anything except maybe pity. It is a short, hard life we lead--some, most much shorter and much harder than mine. And for what?

There are a few students I do like. They aren't all bad, which I must keep in mind as I go on, and on, and on.

Why am I here?

2009-12-09T21:59:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a while for a variety of reasons. The semester is winding to a close with a rush of grading. I am recovering from a semester-long illness, or at least not feeling as bad--which isn't necessarily the same. Also, I've been going through some changes of late. The main change is that I finished therapy--at least in the sense that I accomplished what I hope to accomplish. I suppose in some sense one never finishes therapy, but my goals at the outset were met, or met to my satisfaction. And to my therapist's, I think.

The genesis of this blog lies in therapy. My therapist suggested I start journaling and I was just fucking narcissistic enough to blog instead. But now that I have moved away from the therapeutic relationship and have come to terms with at least some of the demons who haunt me--why am I still here? Why keep doing this? I certainly have no illusions about popularity or influence, though I suppose on some level I wouldn't have minded either or both.

Maybe I was doing this for me and now I don't need it as much. Maybe blogging itself is on the way out thanks to Facebook and Twitter. Maybe I am looking for an excuse to quit--or looking for an excuse to continue.

I don't know. I don't know why I am here in this corner of cyberspace or in this corner of the US (not that I am literally in a corner of a state, of course) or even in this existence. Probably that is all connected. But for all that, my heart is relatively light (or I am having a stroke). The evil of each day is sufficient thereof--no need to dwell overmuch upon the pointless slog ending in oblivion that those days constitute. Of course, that is what philosophers (some of us, at any rate) do....

I'm rambling a bit. Trying to avoid something? Trying to avoid making a decision about something of no consequence whatsoever....life in microcosm.

Talk about self-aggrandizement....jeez. I'll be back, and soon. I'm not quite ready to stop whatever the fuck this is or is becoming.

It's all the rage

2009-11-24T21:41:00.000-05:00

http://themaskedphilosopher.wordpress.com/

Nothing different there...just wanted to fiddle around with wordpress a bit.

One of these days

2009-11-23T16:10:00.000-05:00

I'm in a bit of a wistful mood today, gentle readers, as it is a cool, grey November day here wherever I am. I'm not wistful about anything in particular, but that word seems to fit my mood better than any other. I suppose in some ways a day like today reminds me of some childhood winter days, but I don't have particularly fond memories of those times--I certainly don't want to experience them again.

I like the period of time when autumn turns in to winter. Many of the trees have fired off their final bursts of color and are now fading into different shades of brown. I'm no fan of death, especially in light of some recent health issues, but there is something about the slow fade into finality that this time of year represents that I do find intriguing. Is that contradictory? I don't know--I suppose what I am trying to say is that I take no joy in the death of others nor do I look forward to my own. I suppose it is the process, the inevitability of it that grabs me. Many people spend a good portion of their lives looking for certainty while at the same time trying to avoid thinking about the one thing that is certain--that their lives will end. If I were on an exciting roller coaster and knew that at the end of the ride was death, could I still enjoy the ride? Even if it lasted 60 or 70 years? I don't know. Still, if the ride is all that I get--well....

A friend of mine asked me to write some comments on an essay that he had written about a poet who has some philosophical tones in his writing. I did so, and haven't heard from him in about a year. He is a devout Christian and someone for whom I have a great deal of intellectual respect (and there aren't too many members at the intersection of those two sets). Yet at the same time, he responds very negatively towards criticism of his views, insofar as he takes criticism to be ridicule. Maybe part of the problem is that I express myself with a certain lack of tact/artfulness. But philosophy is supposed to be a frank (albeit polite) discussion of the weightiest matters we humans can contemplate. Maybe I am too brusque. Some philosophers are incredibly dismissive of points of view with which they do not agree. I don't see myself in that way, but it could be the case that it is true. We don't always see ourselves as we are, if we 'are' any way at all. Perception is such a problem. Things would be much easier if people would drop pretense and simply express themselves openly. Although that may not be as 'simple' as it seems, nor as desirable.

God is the logical conclusion of humanity's self-aggrandizement.

I'll leave you with that for the moment.

I like this song

2009-11-18T22:54:00.000-05:00

Expectations and Disappointments

2009-11-18T22:46:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure where this one is going, gentle readers, if anywhere at all.

I disappoint people all the time. I don't mean to do it, but I guess that since I am quiet by nature people think there is something good, or noble, or deep within me....and so they have expectations. And I invariably let them down. I don't think I take any pleasure, perverse or otherwise, out of it. Life is painful enough without my adding to the sum total of hurt in the world (though I suppose there is no real way to avoid that so long as one is alive). I guess in some way I wish that I could go back to some of those those I hurt and apologize. Then again, that might be more for my benefit than theirs, which would render it a self-servingly futile exercise. Probably many of them don't remember me at all. And what good would an apology do anyway?

The holidays are coming up sooner than it seems they should--though that happens even more quickly as I begin to get older. I'm already older than my birth father was when he died (murdered). In a few years, I'll be as old as my adopted father when he died (cancer). My health hasn't been that great lately. I've had a case of bronchitis for about 2 months now--though I won't belabor that point. From a very early age, I have been conscious of my own mortality, not in the least because as a child I was sick unto death on a couple of occasions. I suppose in some sense I've tried to lower my expectations for myself, for life, for others so as to avoid disappointment. I suppose it has worked to some extent...though simply getting through the day often contains disappointment enough. Maybe it is that I think that eventually everyone will leave me (thanks, adoption), disappoint me, let me down--so I try to live life and craft my interactions with others as a series of preemptive strikes. In other words, I fuck things up because I know they will eventually be fucked up anyway. Or maybe that is just an excuse.

I hope this doesn't come across as a wallow in self-pity, because I certainly don't intend it as such. I guess I just want to closely examine who I am, or at least who I appear to be. I do regret the hurt I've caused, the disappointment I have brought about in others. And yet I'll do it again, and again and again.....

The sad truth of the dirty (s)lowdown

2009-11-17T09:35:00.000-05:00

I cribbed a lyric from Boz Scaggs for the title. I am aware that most of you who are younger than I am (which is most likely all of you) have no idea who that is. More's the pity.

So the truth? I've been sick all semester and it's not getting better. I don't think anything is seriously wrong, in a life-threatening sense, but it is frustrating to keep a case of bronchitis for a couple of months. I've been tired, as well. I have commented on a few posts from Dasein 36, but haven't really felt like writing much on my own. A good bit of what motivated me at the beginning of this blog was anger. I don't fell that much anger anymore. perhaps the combination of therapy, chemicals and being sick has dulled my edge. I was also motivated by anxiety over teaching, which I don't feel any more (much--there is always an element of anxiety standing before 35 people [x 5 classes] and talking about whether God exists or not). I was also motivated by despair--which I still feel. It doesn't rally motivate me anymore. I realize that I don't get out of this alive, and that is sad, I suppose, but what are you going to do?

Bashful Radical had an interesting comment on a previous post of mine about whether we can be happy (not to denigrate the other comments). I've been thinking about what she had to say a bit...I don't know if I can do justice to her erudition (of course I don't do that with Dasein 36 either), but here goes:
my thoughts on the matter cannot be so much attributed to reason as to faith.

Which is fine. I don't really have much faith in anything (except the worst always happening), but I respect at least some people who do have faith--faith that they have thought about and wrestled with--not so much the faith that is simply adopted because some parent or minister said so. I wrestled with my faith and lost (or won, depending on how you look at it). It's not that I think reason is perfect or unassailable, but I just can't let myself go into belief based on hope. For me, hope=frustration. But I could be wrong.

i believe that we can be profoundly happy. this doesn't mean that i think this is easier than being unhappy, or that i equate ignorance or mere content with true happiness. my underlying assumption in life is that the purpose is some mix of goodness and happiness.

I agree with part of this--being happy isn't a matter of ignorance or ease (well, I suppose it could be...but profound happiness, as BR seems to be using the term, strikes me as neither). I don't absolutely disagree with the latter part of the statement, though I do have some qualms about life having a purpose. Things are so random in our lives, so tenuous, that I find it difficult to accept the notion that there is some larger purpose to it all (well, larger good purpose). And if it is we ourselves who give our lives purpose be aiming towards some sort of goal (goodness and happiness), then once again it strikes me that such an endeavor will fail either because we never reach our goal or we find that, once reached, it is either unsatisfactory or, worse, dissatisfying. At best we may attempt to give our lives purpose. Maybe that is enough--the happiness is found in the journey rather than the destination.

And yet that seems trite. So many people in the world have awful journeys (as BR has pointed out in her posts about her research on rape), journeys that are one indignity, one suffering after another--and to what end? Heaven? Abolition of the self? Liberation from the cycle of birth and death? All worthy ends, I suppose, yet I am always struck by Ivan's comments in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov:
And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price....

"Rebellion? I am sorry you call it that," said Ivan earnestly. "One can hardly live in rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me yourself, I challenge your answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

These excerpts hardly do justice to the power of the linked passage...the overall point (though I don't think this is Dostoevsky's ultimate position) is that no end, no matter how great, is worth the suffering of the sort seen in this world of ours. The solution, I suppose, would be faith---and I just don't have any of the sort needed to see anything of lasting good in this world. Happiness and ephemerality don't go well together, if they go at all. And since all we get is ephemerality.....

Is it already the 7th?

2009-11-07T01:47:00.000-05:00

Time flies and not in a good way. I think that is part of the reason that I haven't been posting as much of late. Several of the blogs I follow are pretty much dormant. It could well be that Twitter/Facebook have replaced the blogs to some degree. I myself have a facebook page (under my real name) so that I could keep in contact with a couple of student clubs that I advise. Of course, some of my co-workers are on there, some folks I went to grad school with and so on--it's become more than I intended it to be.

Another reason I haven't been here much is that I used this blog as a vent just as much as a sounding board for my ideas. I haven't needed to vent lately, not in the way I've needed to over the last year and a half. I'm in a pretty good place, mentally speaking, at the moment. I'm still not a happy camper, of course. I'm sad that 53% of the good people of Maine decided to sanction bigotry. For the record, I think that (in terms of the state) marriage is a consensual contractual arrangement. The state has no business telling two competent adults that they cannot enter into a consensual contractual arrangement. If a church does not wish to sanction a same-sex union, then the state should not force them to do so. I would disagree with that church's decision, of course, but I am not a particularly religious person (in terms of belief...I am reasonably well informed on Protestant Christian theology and less reasonably informed about the various strands of Buddhism).

If two people love each other and want to be married, their sex should make no bigger difference in the eyes of the state than their race (which is to say, none at all).

There is more I want to say, especially in regard to a well-reasoned series of posts from Dasein 36, but I think I need to get the intellectual "throat-clearing" this posts represents out of the way first. So bear with me, gentle reader.

Happy Halloween

2009-10-31T12:51:00.000-04:00

Not ignoring, just thinking

2009-10-22T12:30:00.000-04:00

'My suspicion is that there is no such nature, no ultimate reality or deeper meaning.'
my question is, where does this idea lead us? in my experience, the place it takes us is one of inaction (in its extreme, suicide). specifically, if there is no deeper meaning to human life, then what is the meaning of living at all? from a practical standpoint i suspect that this idea won't help us lead happy lives..or lives at all. again, this has been my experience with that idea, as i have toyed with it before. your thoughts?

What I originally said is bold above, Bashful Radical's comment is in italics.

This query really gets at the heart of my concerns for the last few years. On the one hand, I see BR's point. On the other, I don't think that what she describes is necessarily the case (not that she implied it was, of course). I suppose if one has had it drilled into their head from an early age that the world is a magical place full of wonder and inherent meaning, the reaction to the sort of claim I made above could involve a certain degree of lassitude. Yet, it seems to me (today at least) that living with the knowledge that there is no deeper meaning to anything can be liberating.

I don't mean liberating in a "let's go transgress every rule we can as quickly as we can" sense, but rather in a sense of appreciating the ephemerality of the present moment and consequently finding satisfaction in that moment. Whether it is feeling the wind on one's face, enjoying the taste or smell of one's lover, or just sitting in front of a computer and typing.....In other words, the meaning of living is, well, living. Experiencing (or not) all the sorts of bodies and pleasures and pains that life brings your way.

Some people have unimaginably shitty lives. One way of dealing with that is to suppose that the shit one goes through means something, else it wouldn't be happening. Again, the idea that it doesn't mean anything need not lead to suicide (indeed, allowing someone to [metaphorically] shit on you day in and day out is a type of suicide). Though, that said, if a situation is bad enough, suicide might be the only way out. Life doesn't provide the Hollywood Ending, where Bruce Willis comes in through the door at the last second, kills the bad guy and everything is made right. Life is full of jagged edges, people torn out of our lives with no rhyme or reason, choices made that didn't seem significant at the time but which are now swollen with import. The idea that all of this means something more than what it is at any moment makes life seem all the more terrible to me.

I don't know that we can lead a happy life (outside of willful ignorance or chemical oblivion). We can, perhaps, strive to be 'not as unhappy' in life through appreciating the transitory nature of the present moment and, again perhaps, have a happy death.

I don't know for sure

2009-10-12T23:42:00.000-04:00

Some days it is easier to come up with a title than with content. As I sit here, it seems like this may be one of those days. I suppose that I could talk about Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, but Bashful Radical already did a great job with that--and it's been picked over pretty cleanly by those less gifted than her. Suffice it to say that I believe he got the prize more for who he isn't more than for any other reason. But whatever...it's like all of society has become a high school popularity contest, albeit one with much higher stakes.

Class continues on and on and on....I have some good classes, but too many where folks are just filling a space. Their disinterest is palpable. I suppose if I were a better professor I would meet with them, discern what interests them and plan my lectures accordingly. However, I am taking a slightly different approach. Allow me to state it as clearly as I can:
Step 1: Fuck 'em

That's about as far as I've gotten.

I do have some good students scattered across my classes and I am really teaching to them and for them. I suppose it is the libertarian in me, but I don't feel compelled to motivate the unmotivated. If talking about God and evil can't motivate your interest, then I don't know what will. I doubt it would be the Gettier problem or Foucault on governmentality. I would like for everyone to get something out of my classes, but I know that won't happen. Given the sort of school I am at and the sorts of students we get, it is a sad truth....but at the same time, I think many of them will go on to lead reasonably happy lives without the least tincture of philosophy. I don't want to appear as though I consider myself significant in any way, because I am not. And this is not me speaking from the deep, dark pit of depression (and I have been there and do not make light of it)--this is me just being honest about where I stand in the order of things.

I still want to move, still looking for something elsewhere. There seems to be a bit more hiring this year than last, but I still feel sorry for those folks coming out onto the job market. Things are tough everywhere and a lot of people have it incredibly badly, suffering in ways I cannot begin to comprehend. It doesn't make my suffering any less real, but it does allow for some perspective--something that I have sorely lacked over the last few whiles.

For me, the rational belief in the existence of a perfect God founders on the Problem of Evil. Of course, maybe belief in God isn't supposed to be rational...or maybe God isn't perfect. I am most comfortable with agnosticism--I don't know what the ultimate nature of reality might or might not be. My suspicion is that there is no such nature, no ultimate reality or deeper meaning. There is just us, here and now, then one day there won't even be that. Figuring out how to live in the here and now is task enough, though it does seem that at least part of that involves reflecting upon these seemingly insolvable questions. I'm rambling--pardon the lack of cogency. I'll give it another go later--for now, bed and indifference.

Polanski III

2009-10-07T15:52:00.000-04:00

One of my newer readers, B.L. Goss, left this in the comments for my first Polanski post:
But I was confused by your decision not to use the word "rape" to describe the crime Polanski committed. Rape is non-consensual sex as an act of violence, which is what Polanski did. To a child. I just think we need to call it what it was.

This is a good point. I do believe that Polanski raped the girl in question. I avoided using that word because I was trying to write the post in such a way as to give Polanski's defenders, whoever they might be, no opportunity to parse words, i.e. "He never pled guilty to rape, but rather to sex with a minor". That does seem to be a strategy that at least some who appear to take Polanski's side wish to pursue. I find that in this case such a claim is a distinction without a difference--in other words, Polanski's admitting to sex with a minor does not eliminate the possibility that the sex was rape (which seems to be the point his defenders are trying to make--that since he did not lead to rape, he did not commit a rape. The fallacious reasoning is obvious--so obvious that I wonder if I have misconstrued his defenders' point). In this case, I believe the sex was rape and should be called such. I regret not making it clearer in the post that I regarded Polanski's conduct as rape.

I'm still thinking about this David Letterman situation. I know that the world is not waiting with bated breath to read my thoughts, but given that I have dedicated three posts to Polanski, I ought to at least consider whether my thoughts on Polanski have any bearing on the Letterman situation. There are some clear differences in the situation. My qualm is that if someone in a position of power makes sexual advances towards an underling (assuming that the underling is an adult), it strikes me that whatever consent the underling might give could be reasonably construed as being given under duress--"If you don't have sex with me, you will suffer negative consequences in your job".

Of course, if the underling (again, as an adult) initiated the sexual advances (and I am not saying that happened in this case), then it may well become a matter of consenting adults engaging in sexual activity. This may not be a good idea in terms of the cohesiveness of the workplace, but I am not sure that it is wrong in and of itself (of course it could be wrong for other reasons).

I worry, though, that my judgment here may be affected by the fact that I have been a fan of Letterman for a long time (a casual fan, to be sure) while I am not a fan of Polanski. It may also be the case that as a white male, I am not fully aware of the various permutations of power that seem to blossom once sex enters into relations between individuals. So I am torn and need to think about this a bit more.

Polanski II

2009-10-03T01:14:00.000-04:00

Dasein36 posted some comments to my Polanski piece and I wanted to take a minute and respond.

1) What is better for the world--if Roman Polanski were let to live in Europe and continue directing films, or if he were incarcerated? I've not seen any Polanski films, but let's say he's on the level of Stanley Kubrick, whom I do know. I think it would be better for the world if Stanley Kubrick could continue making films rather than sitting in a prison. (I'm also pretty sure Stanley Kubrick would never drug and rape an underage girl.)

It is hard to determine what is better for the world. I suppose if one wants to be utilitarian about it, one must try and calculate the expected aesthetic pleasure of viewing a Polanski film against the suffering caused by allowing him to flout the law. All this points to the problem with act utilitarianism-calculating the hedonic value of actions. Rule utilitarianism might be more useful, and is a position to which I am not unsympathetic, as it might be easier to make a distinction between a rule concerning how the aesthetic value of film is conferred on the film-maker and a rule about not drugging and sodomizing 13-year-olds. I'll also repeat the quote I made from George Orwell "If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear."

2) Yes, that's a utilitarian argument. But your basic premiss is moral reprehensibility. Who defines moral reprehensibility? It's kind of like Achilles and the tortoise. You say it's morally reprehensible, but if Bob says "I don't find that morally reprehensible", how can you convince him to feel that it is?

On the one hand, I suppose I could appeal to a moral intuitionism--the claim that one should just "see" that drugging and sodomizing 13-year-olds is reprehensibly wrong. This doesn't answer the objection above--what about Bob, who does not share my intuitions? Well, there are intuitions and there are intuitions--there may be room for debate about competing intuitions regarding certain moral issues--abortion, perhaps. I could allow that Bob and I would disagree and we would have to seek to settle our dispute at the ballot box or on the protest lines. However, if Bob cannot understand my intuition that raping 13-year olds is wrong, well, so much the worse for Bob. I will keep my eye on him and endeavor to keep him away from 13-year-olds.

On the other hand, I could make a utilitarian argument against raping 13-year-olds that would hopefully convince Bob, were he rational. I could also define "moral reprehensibility" in a utilitarian way, "Any rule that, when followed, will create an excessive amount of suffering for many against a minimum of pleasure for a few or one, is morally reprehensible".

If you make morality a matter of feeling, then you make it subjective rather than objective--which solves some problems but creates even more, IMHO.

3) Does punishment serve to deter, or does it serve to punish? If it serves to deter, it makes logical sense to punish. Apparently, Polanski's forced (and luxurious) exile from the United States did not quite deter him from continuing to indulge his Humbertian proclivities. However, you seem to also want to punish for the sake of punishing, and I honestly don't see the point of this. To really want to do this, you must 1) posit an objective moral code, and 2) posit that you have knowledge of this code, and knowledge that this code is the absolute and correct code.

Part of the point is that Polanski fled to avoid punishment. I do not know how much he has suffered internally because of what he did, though external evidence suggests that he has been able to soldier on somehow.

Kant would disagree with punishing on utilitarian grounds--the following passage summarizes it better than I can at this time of night: Legal punishment must always be a response to guilt. If the core motive in punishing someone is to deter others, or to protect society, or to set an example, then the person punished is wronged; their humanity has not been respected. So punishment must always be in response to guilt, but Kant in effect goes further: the suggestion that seems to come through this reading is not only that guilt is a necessary condition for punishment, but that the guilty must be punished or else justice and equality, the only proper foundations for the law, will not have been served. Equality is the principle that must be used in selecting a punishment. Kant uses a metaphor. He refers to the principle of equality as the one by which the pointer of the scale of justice is made to incline no more to one side than to the other.

Kant goes on at some length about this in The Science of Right. There is more to think about here and I I thank Dasein36 for his insightful commentary.

Roman Polanski

2009-09-29T11:13:00.001-04:00

So there's this famous director, Roman Polanski. Years ago, 1977 to be exact, he (44 at the time) gave a 13-year-old girl some quaaludes and then had non-consensual anal sex with her. He also had sex with Natassja Kinski when she was quite young (15/16). He pled guilty to having sex with an underage girl and was going to get a 90-day sentence (?!) at least part of which would consist in psychiatric evaluation. About 42 days in, he skipped out and fled to France, where he has continued to direct and live in the lap of luxury.

Now the victim says that she forgives Polanski and wants this all over and done with. The majority of the film community seems to be (publicly, at least) rallying behind Polanski as well. Even one of my favorite Hollywood writers, Jeff Wells, who is usually quite level-headed seems to be taking an "over and done with, no harm/no foul" attitude. The reasoning seems to be something like the following:
1. Polanski is a gifted artist.
2. The girl in question, while 13 at the time, was not innocent--and was at this party solely because her mother had brought her there out of a desire to move in the higher realms of Hollywood.
3. A lot of other people were there who could have stopped it but didn't--and none of them were charged with complicity.
4. The victim forgives Polanski and doesn't want the case pursued.
5. The Swiss arrested Polanski as a way of getting the US off their backs due to the UBS scandal.
6. It's been 30 years and justice has been done, as Polanski has had to live with the knowledge of his crime (and his inability to travel to parts of the world that have extradition agreements with the US).
7. There was judicial misconduct--Polanski feared the judge was going to throw out the plea agreement and sentence him to a prison term to make a political point.
8. Those who want to see Polanski punished are projecting their own past sufferings onto him, or are Puritan/hanging judge personality types who care more about punishment than justice.

Therefore, it is all water under the bridge and Polanski should be set free.

Hmm. Allow me to rebut:

1. Irrelevant to the conclusion.
2. Irrelevant to the conclusion
3. Irrelevant to the conclusion
4. Irrelevant to the way in which the US judicial system works (and I am speaking here as someone who is not a fan of said system). If there is ample evidence (and sometimes if there isn't) the state can charge someone with a crime whether the victim wants it to happen or not (as in domestic violence cases).
5. Irrelevant to the conclusion. There was, and has been for over 30 years, an outstanding warrant for Polanski's arrest due to his flight.
6. Polanski has, by several accounts, continued his activities with at least one other young girl, the aformentioned Kinski. It is very common, though not universally true, that those who find sexual solace with young girls continue to do so over time if not prevented. He has homes in various parts of Europe and has directed numerous films over the last 30 years.
7. A fair point--but judges have the authority to do this if they choose--and abuse of judicial power is one of the reasons we have an appeals process. Remember, the judge was not setting aside a jury's verdict of "not guilty"--he was considering reneging on a plea deal. Polanski had already admitted guilt and had admitted that he knew the girl was 13.
8. The first part of this assumes a knowledge of the personal lives of the critics of Polanski that the person making the assertion cannot have. Perhaps some people who want to see Polanski punished are of this sort, but assuredly not all are. And if by some stroke of horrid fate, all the critics were as this person asserts, it would be irrelevant to the conclusion because these people are not punishing him, the state is.
The second part is simply an ad hominem and necessitates no serious thought.

The hagiography of Polanski continued in a recent documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. I have not seen this film, but have read both positive (easily found) and negative (look at salon.com, among other place) critiques of it.

Here's my take: Polanski is a disgusting human being who deserves moral censure as well as incarceration.
My reasoning:
1. Polanski drugged and had non-consensual sex with a 13 year-old-girl.
2. It is legally impermissible to drug and have non-consensual sex with 13 year old girls.
3. It is morally reprehensible to drug and have non-consensual sex with anyone.
4. Polanski pled guilty to drugging and having non-consensual sex with a 13 year-old-girl.
5. If one pleads guilty to a crime, one does so in the knowledge that the plea agreement might not be honored (even if one has the expectation that it will be).

So Polanski deserves incarceration for his original crime as well as for his flight. Further, Polanski deserves moral censure (whatever that may be) for his (allegedly continued) conduct.

I have seen a few Polanski films and own one (Chinatown). Whatever his gifts as a director may or may not be, they are absolutely irrelevant to the issue at hand. One should not expect to be exempt from moral or legal judgment because of one's fame or artistic status (of course I know that people are often exempt from moral or legal judgment because of fame, artistic status, money, gender, etc--I consider this to be a poor practice which points out the underlying problem with having a state apparatus responsible for the administration of 'justice').

I am disappointed and somewhat angered by those who think this is no big deal. I do not think these folks seriously want to set a precedent that if one commits a crime and escapes punishment for a certain period of time, then one becomes exempt from punishment. The consequences of such a course of action would be far-reaching and almost universally unpleasant. I think, subtly, what these folks are saying is that they have no problem if some people (i.e., the "right" people) are treated this way, but not others. This establishes an immense boundary problem that has no clear solution. And, personally, there is no reasonable manner in which one could include Polanski in the set of 'right' people given the nature of his deeds. I have no problem with consensual sex, nor do I have a problem with consensual anal sex. I do not think a 13-year-old can give consent (but can withhold consent) and, even if one wishes to debate this claim, in this case such a point is moot anyway because the girl was (1) drugged and (2) clearly withholding consent.

I try to understand the points of view of those with whom I disagree. If I have left out a point in Polanski's favor, please let me know. I have a hard time seeing how any point could mitigate the fact that he drugged and fucked a 13 year-old-girl. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned.....

It's not my problem

2009-09-28T19:54:00.000-04:00

I can't help what other people do and don't do. I don't want to be involved, quite frankly, with their sordid lives, their endless pursuits that will come to pain, then nothingness. I have plenty to keep me occupied as I try to navigate through the seemingly endless days that will, I'm sure, seem far too short when I am looking back on them from the end.

It's been a while since I've written. Partly because I've been sick, partly because I've been busy and partly because I didn't really feel like I had anything to say. None of those conditions have markedly improved, yet here I am again, sitting in a moderately uncomfortable chair, trying to pull some words out of the maelstrom that churns in my head.

I've been reading some economics blogs lately. There is a great deal of debate going on in some quarters of the US regarding the Federal Reserve. One of the few honorable (notice I did not say 'perfect') politicians in the US, Rep. Ron Paul is pushing a bill to audit the Fed. Several traditional Keynesian economists are aghast at this. They seem to take the 'wizard' approach to economics--Ben Bernanke is the great and powerful OZ, come to save us from an avalanche of debt by taking on more debt. For God's sake, pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain. Rep. Paul follows the Austrian school of thought--an opposition to fiat money and central banking, along with a very compelling theory of the business cycle. In brief, they claim that when the Fed holds interest rates artificially low, it interferes with basic supply and demand--in particular, it convinces suppliers of goods that there is a demand for those goods that does not (necessarily) exist. Producers will make long-term investments as a consequence--investments that are ultimately unsustainable. Thus, there will be a glut of goods and what seemed to be a boom will turn into a bust of immense proportions. Welcome to today's world.

Reason magazine has an interesting article about this matter in its latest issue. Some of the above was inspired by that article.

All right, things to do, miles to go before I sleep and all that. I'll get back on the stick here and be a bit more regular in my postings, if not in content or attitude.

Bubbles in my Beer

2009-09-25T13:30:00.001-04:00

Words and music by T. Duncan, B. Walker and C. Mills

Tonight in a bar alone I'm sittin'
Apart from the laughter and cheer
The scenes from the past rise before me
While watchin the bubbles in my beer

A vision of someone who loved me
Brings a lone silent tear to me eye
I know that my life's been a failure
Just watchin' the bubbles in my beer.

I'm seeing the road that I've traveled
A road paved with heartaches and tears
I'm seeing the past that I've wasted
While watching the bubbles in my beer.

I think of the hearts that I've broken
And of the golden chances that have passed me by
The dreams I once made now are empty
As empty as the bubbles in my beer.

Spectacular Nothing

2009-09-19T22:32:00.000-04:00

It's been a while between posts for no real reason. I haven't felt like I really have anything to say, not even some mindless "Twitter" drivel. Classes are what they are, some good, some not as good but nothing horribly bad. I've been really tired all week, too, which I think has affected my minimal abilities quite negatively.

One thing I have noticed about this group of students is that a lot of them are excuse machines. "I missed the quiz because I forgot about it. Can I make it up?" "I will miss the test because I have to go out of state to a wedding. Can I make it up?" It gets annoying. A lot of it seemingly boils down to students saying they have more important things than school. For some, they do--working for a living and taking a class or two in an attempt to improve their chances at a promotion or a better job. A good few just seem not to care very much.

But then I don't care very much either, though more lately than in a while. I've been on a bit of an upswing of late. I know that a downswing will inevitably follow--but that's just how it goes. I suppose I'll relish the upswing for the moment. A moment is all we get anyway.

I'm swinging back towards a bit more political involvement. Not because I think libertarian ideas will carry the day any time soon or because I have some pressing need to be part of a group. At the moment, I feel like being involved. I may not later, or I may. I don't have a passion for politics, but every so often I get an urge to spread a little libertarian thought through my little sphere. I am under no illusions about the efficacy of my efforts (not just in the political realm, either).

I remember once when I was a kid someone from my church called and asked if I wanted to go camping with some of the other youth. I was excited about this turn of developments, as I didn't get asked to participate very often. So my dad got on the other phone and I explained (with the person from the youth group still on the line) what was going on and asked if I could go. My dad said 'no' and I was disappointed so I said something like 'come on'...my dad ran to the back and beat me while the guy from the youth group was on the phone, still listening. My dad was a big guy, former football player at a major college--after he got done with the beating, he made me get back on the phone, crying, and tell this person from the youth group I couldn't go. My dad died of cancer a few years later. It seemed to hurt a lot. I didn't cry at his funeral or if I did it wasn't for him.

Lots of people had it a lot worse than I did growing up. The above wasn't intended as whining. It happened. It is what it is. We were all beaten by someone, maybe by someone we loved. We were all bullied by someone, physically or emotionally. We were all disappointed when we didn't get what we wanted and then more so when we did. We all carry stuff around with us. My pain is mine, but that doesn't make it special. It is all part of this swirling cacophony of suffering that we all live in until we don't. It is a spectacular nothing both in whole and in part. It's too bad that all of that hurt and murder and rape and shit and cancer and hate and all the foul things that we do to and with one another all come to the same nothing as whatever fleeting pleasure comes our way. It's all just shit and piss. Oh well.

9/12

2009-09-14T23:39:00.000-04:00

So here in the US there was a fairly large (nobody is sure how large) protest in Washington D.C. on 9/12 which really seemed to bring together a lot of the disparate groups in American who are opposed to President Obama and his policies. I've heard estimates of 70,000 to 2 million--so somebody isn't telling the truth. Just from looking at different sites and different photographs (and the estimation work done by others), I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood on 250,000 people showed up.

I don't dislike the President (as some seem to do for various reasons), but I do not like his economic plans and I think his healthcare reform plan (insofar as I understand it "plan" is a polite term for what he has in mind--or what the lobbyists who wrote the bill have in mind) is horrid. And no, I don't believe in 'Death Squads" and such. What I believe is that the plan represents a massive amount of government interference in an area where it has no expertise and, more importantly, no business. I do tend to believe that free markets solve a lot of pricing and supply/demand problems by simply functioning. The problem, of course, is that there is no free market in health care (nor in many other areas of our 'market-based' economy). I don't place absolute faith in markets, but given a choice between market forces and central planning, I'll go with the market every time. I know that is a false dichotomy, of course, and that what happens in most systems is a blend of the two to some degree. I am deeply skeptical of economic central planning because, quite frankly, I'm not convinced that most economists (outside of the Austrians) know what they are doing. Of course I could be wrong.

I'm not one of those people who believes in conspiracies. I think that people are, by and large, far too stupid to keep some major conspiracy quiet. I understand why people want to believe in them--gives them a sense of importance and power when, in the real world, they likely have little of either. That said, I am unable to watch the news of late. All of these stories about the recession being over and the recovery beginning strike me as so much bullshit, but also indicative of the way humans react to good news and bad news. there seems to be this implicit belief that if we just believe that everything is ok strongly enough, it will be ok. And that, dear reader, is absolute bullshit. Since most of the US economy is driven by consumer spending and given that unemployment is quite high, credit cards are maxed out and the housing bust has left many people with depleted nest eggs (which is what happens when you treat your house like an ATM, but I digress)--I don't see any engine to drive this recovery beyond government largesse. And that can't last. I know the Fed can always print more money, but I think the Fed vastly overestimates their ability to reign in inflation down the road. A lot of the money printed by the Fed has gone into the coffers of banks and not made its way into circulation. When it does.....

Even though I don't agree with many of the positions taken by the anti-Obama protesters (I am generally pro-choice, pro gay-marriage, I think Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck are both functionally retarded at best, I don't think the President was born in Kenya, I think that displaying the Confederate flag is insensitive and pointless for any reason other than racism), I am still glad to see people protesting against the state. The state is no one's friend in any form--the function of the state, no matter high-minded its founding principles, ultimately becomes the perpetuation of the state.

Enough for now.

Nothing at all

2009-09-11T18:26:00.001-04:00

Vitamin C is an antioxidant that has many
functions such as the promotion of healthy
skin and gums and the ability to increase
iron absorption from non-meat iron sources
(iron-rich grains and other plant foods
such as whole-grain cereals) when
ingested at the same time as the iron.
--A note from my pharmacy bag

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fool
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Wiliam Shakespeare--Macbeth

It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too.
Ernest Hemingway--"A Clean, Well-Lighted Place"

Put it off

2009-09-07T19:43:00.000-04:00

I've become quite the procrastinator of late. Not with everything, of course, but when it comes to class preparation it seems like I just let it slide until the last minute. Same thing with some of my other responsibilities to the school--I just can't seem to get it started, much less done. Note well that I'm not blaming anyone or anything for this state of affairs. It is my fault, and my fault alone.

My division chair brought up that Jimmy Buffet song again, though this time in a private conversation. If he had simply done that in the first place, it wouldn't have bothered me nearly as much. It seemed that he handled it unprofessionally. Of course, if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have met that charming anonymous fellow who posted such clever comments that reflected a deep awareness of academic propriety on the blog. So I guess every cloud has a silver lining.

I finished series 3 of Black Books earlier today. A great show--pity there are only 18 episodes. Still, I guess I'd rather have 18 excellent episodes than have a show hang around too long and become a shadow of itself (I'm looking at you, X-Files). A happy medium would be best, of course. Still, I enjoyed the 18 immensely and found that they stand up to repeated viewings. I suppose I saw a bit of myself in the main character (if I were smarter and better written), a drunken, sullen Irishman who is quite fed up with humanity; perfectly comfortable existing in a second-hand bookshop with a small circle of friends/drinking partners/objects of abuse.

I had a study abroad proposal be accepted for next summer to Europe. It will probably get cancelled, though, as times are quite bad in this areas of the US and the trip will be expensive. I've never been to Europe (save a plane landing in Amsterdam) and I particularly want to see London. The way the tour is set up, there will be one free day in London--so I can go to Baker Street and see the Sherlock Homes memorabilia. I'd love to go to Stratford-upon-Avon as well, but I doubt I will be able to fit both in--and if I stay in London I can see and do more than if I journey outwards. I don't want to get too excited about it, though, as I have serious doubts enough students will enroll to pay for the trip.

I suppose I should go and act like I am getting ready for tomorrow, so that tomorrow I can act like I am prepared. Ahh, the act we act....

Mistakes, I've made a few

2009-09-05T02:08:00.000-04:00

Who hasn't? I'm not going to review my transgressions in lines of turgid prose (though I reserve the right to use turgid prose for other reasons). It's hard for me to stop beating myself up over things and/or accept when I've done something right. All this is apropos of nothing, really...just some random thoughts floating around very late on a Friday night (or early on a Saturday morning).

There is no escape. There is postponing the inevitable, there is accepting the inevitable and saying 'fuck it', there is even ignoring the inevitable (or trying to do so by means chemical or otherwise)--but there is no escape. It doesn't work that way.

I've read Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning before and found it interesting. His narrative concerning the concentration camps is harrowing. That said his discussion of logotherapy is, to me, much less interesting. It is almost as though his book should have been titled Man's Search for Confirmation as opposed to the actual title. A lot of people have found it helpful, though, and I am a notorious pessimist and asshole (I guess I will beat myself up a little), so my criticisms may not be worth the paper they aren't printed on. That said, Frankl seems to be focusing on finding a meaning that fits in with one's metaphysical assumptions rather than creating a meaning for oneself (as the existentialists might put it it) or searching for a meaning that might call into question said assumptions . Put a slightly different way, Frankl is writing more about finding meaning than searching for it. Maybe that isn't really a criticism--I just personally didn't find Frankl very helpful. As always, your mileage may vary.

I was rereading a biography of Foucault today and I found something I had missed before--he was deeply indifferent to Sartre and actively disliked de Beauvior. For some reason, that makes me like him even more. I know that he crossed paths with Camus at least once or twice (i.e., being present where Camus was giving a speech--though I don't know if Foucault actually attended) and I've always wondered what Foucault made of Camus' thought. His silence may speak volumes, of course and I do know in at least one interview (can't remember which one at the moment, but I know that I read it at some point in the haze that constituted my dissertation research) he really lambasted the sentimental humanism that characterizes at least some of Camus' work. I like Camus, up to a point. I think the whole 'absurd hero' bit in The Myth of Sisyphus is a bit overdone and I don't think his solution to the absurd in The Rebel is as useful as he thinks....but you can find value in a work without agreeing with every single word--a fact that never fails to elicit astonishment from my younger students, who are all used to viewing things as absolutely true or absolutely false. That's a bit of an overstatement. There is still a disturbing tendency among them to demonize those with whom they disagree. Of course, that may just be society writ small. I'm sure I am guilty of similar conduct on some level, perhaps an even more base (though less obvious) one as well.

What comes around goes around. Cliched, but true. You cannot very well get mad with someone for doing to you what you did to them. So it goes.

I never did believe you much, anyway

2009-09-02T21:27:00.000-04:00

Talking to myself in the title there, mostly. I think the problem with my teaching is that I don't believe what I am saying anymore. I've certainly lost my rigor in class--very few notes, just lecturing and answering questions. I suppose that's what I should be doing, but it is all by rote and, sadly, I'm not able to answer the few good questions I get in any effective sort of way.

Also, and this is really weird and has never happened before, I have taken to yawning in class. I stifle it, of course, but there have been several times when it has been difficult to lecture because I can't stop yawning. This sets a marvelous example for the students, of course--"Even he's bored with this stuff...why should I bother?"...

It's not philosophy I am bored with...it's teaching. I had a student miss a question on a quiz--she e-mailed me and said that since she had been paying attention in class, she didn't 'deserve' to miss the question and, therefore, she did 'deserve' credit for it. So what do you do with that? Many of the students I deal with have no sense of nuance, so unless something is phrased at about a third-grade level it confuses them mightily. Not all, of course, and I doubt my students are worse than other students at similar institutions....none of which makes my life any easier. Not that it is supposed to be easy, of course, but I wouldn't mind it being a bit easier.

So why fight the tide of mediocrity anymore? Why bother exposing the shallow profundities of students who think 5 minutes' reflection is enough to show that Descartes was obviously mistaken in the Meditations? Why bother challenging students by giving them quizzes and tests? Let's just make the grade depend on attendance--which is what most of them think anyway. Come to every class--even if you are just a seat-filler--and you get an 'A'. Miss 5 classes? Well, that's 'B' work. Nothing below a 'B', of course, as it would be a fucking shame to screw up your financial aid, thereby preventing you from going to medical school and consequently depriving the world of your medical expertise. In certain ways I am glad I am a bit overweight and on the cusp of some health problems. My goal? A mild stroke, followed by retirement on 3/4 disability pay. It wouldn't be a lot, but would be enough to get by. I am half-serious here. Why not? It wouldn't make a difference anyway. It is mere vanity to think otherwise.

Again, it's not like I have an idea of anything better, of anything I want to do. It's all too much and, oddly, never enough. It's all just one big absurd ball of shit. Well, I know I'm ready for another day of the same old same old now.....

Nothing new or exciting

2009-09-01T23:16:00.000-04:00

I've held off posting for a few days to avoid the creeping Twitter-fication that seems to be overtaking me in all that I do. My lectures have been crap the last couple of days (whether the students notice or not). I don't know why--or maybe I do. I'm not putting in an appropriate amount of preparation. Why I don't know is why I'm not....though, maybe I do know that as well.

I've been thinking about suicide a good bit lately. Not actively considering it, mind you, just reflecting on it, what meanings it might have. There is probably no one meaning--some people commit suicide because they are tired, others because they can't face some perceived shame, others for medical reasons. At least sometimes, though, it seems to me that suicide is a final 'fuck you' to everyone, a final expression of control, telling someone 'you never knew me at all'....

But that may be reading too much into it--I certainly don't intend to glamorize something that is sad, even if sometimes justified. "Reading too much into it" is what we as humans are wont to do, though. There has to be an answer, mystery not allowed. I get that attitude from my students all the time--"Yes, this discussion is very nice, but what is going to be on the test?"...the test, the test, the test. It's pretty much all I ever hear here.

I blame the testing mania that consumes the K-12 system here in the US. It's always been bad, but it is gotten ever so much worse since the No Child Left Behind Act was made into law. My son is in first grade and they are already prepping him for a couple of upcoming standardized tests. Learning becomes incidental (coincidental?) to (with?) passing the test.

Not all students are like this, thank goodness. The few who aren't are what keeps me going professionally (well, that and my rent, my car payment, my student loans, etc. etc.). That said, I'm two weeks in and ready for it to be over. And, like Helios, my evaluations have never been higher. There's a fall coming, though I don't know if it will be this Fall.

Leonard Cohen is a wonder.

August is a cruel month

2009-08-31T21:48:00.000-04:00

Leonard Cohen "Dress Rehearsal Rag" from Songs of Love and Hate

Four o'clock in the afternoon
and I didn't feel like very much.
I said to myself, Where are you golden boy,
where is your famous golden touch?
I thought you knew where
all of the elephants lie down,
I thought you were the crown prince
of all the wheels in Ivory Town.
Just take a look at your body now -
there's nothing much to save
and a bitter voice in the mirror cries,
"Hey, Prince, you need a shave."
Now if you can manage to get
your trembling fingers to behave,
why don't you try unwrapping
a stainless steel razor blade?
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

There's no hot water
and the cold is running thin.
Well, what do you expect from
the kind of places you've been living in?
Don't drink from that cup,
it's all caked and cracked along the rim.
That's not the electric light, my friend,
that is your vision growing dim.
Cover up your face with soap, there,
now you're Santa Claus.
And you've got a gift for anyone
who will give you his applause.
I thought you were a racing man,
ah, but you couldn't take the pace.
That's a funeral in the mirror
and it's stopping at your face.
That's right, it's come to this,
yes it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
ah wasn't it a strange way down?

Once there was a path
and a girl with chestnut hair,
and you passed the summers
picking all of the berries that grew there;
there were times she was a woman,
oh, there were times she was just a child,
and you held her in the shadows
where the raspberries grow wild.
And you climbed the twilight mountains
and you sang about the view,
and everywhere that you wandered
love seemed to go along with you.
That's a hard one to remember,
yes it makes you clench your fist.
And then the veins stand out like highways,
all along your wrist.
And yes it's come to this,
it's come to this,
and wasn't it a long way down,
wasn't it a strange way down?

You can still find a job,
go out and talk to a friend.
On the back of every magazine
there are those coupons you can send.
Why don't you join the Rosicrucians,
they can give you back your hope,
you can find your love with diagrams
on a plain brown envelope.
But you've used up all your coupons
except the one that seems
to be written on your wrist
along with several thousand dreams.
Now Santa Claus comes forward,
that's a razor in his mit;
and he puts on his dark glasses
and he shows you where to hit;
and then the cameras pan,
the stand in stunt man,
dress rehearsal rag,
it's just the dress rehearsal rag,
you know this dress rehearsal rag,
it's just a dress rehearsal rag.

Sure, why not?

2009-08-29T04:02:00.002-04:00

Eternal Recurrence, I suppose

2009-08-27T21:02:00.000-04:00

Sadly, this won't be a post about Nietzsche. My son is finally feeling better and, like always, he has generously given me whatever he had. I am an achy, mildly feverish mess. It is ever thus. Part of the joy of parenthood, I suppose.

I will see my therapist tomorrow. I am seriously considering ending things with her. It's nice to have someone to talk to and she does provide some insight, so maybe I won't end things. I'm not as depressed as I have been, which is good, I suppose. Yet depression is always there, waiting in the wings to spring back into my consciousness. It gets ever harder to bounce back from these bouts of melancholia.

Classes are moving along ok, I suppose. I haven't wanted to punch anyone in the face yet, which is a huge plus about a week and a half into the semester. Several of the people I work with who annoy the hell out of me are not in my orbit this semester. It is so refreshing not to have to deal with them.

Time to put my son to bed. I hope I feel better in the next couple of days so that I can write something that is worth your time, as opposed to the extended Twitter-style updates that have comprised my output of late.

Madam, I swear I use no art at all

2009-08-25T01:05:00.000-04:00

Really struggled in class today. It didn't depress me and I don't think I did a horrible job, for a change, but it was a chore to get through the class. What is amusing is that I haven't taught in this particular classroom before except once--several years ago when I was doing my teaching demo as part of the interview process when I was a job candidate. I guess I passed the audition.

There is a Tai Chi group starting not too far from where I live. That appeals to me more so than yoga. I'm not knocking yoga--if it works for you, then great. Any port in a storm, I guess. I just believe that it isn't for me. That doesn't mean I think it is silly or stupid. And even if I did, so what?

My son is sick again. He had a pretty awful asthma attack a week or so ago that seems to have been triggered by a cold. Since his resistance is low, he picked up an ear infection, along with a nice 102 degree fever. Still, I took him to the doctor, she prescribed an antibiotic and all should be well in a few days (until the swine flu hits). I was sick all the time as a child and he reminds me so much of myself back then. Poor kid.

I've been rereading some Foucault lately. Now that I am removed from my dissertation, I can enjoy his work again. I wish I was more insightful, though, because I think he says some pretty profound things and I simply don't have the wherewithal to grasp them as I would like. It is maddening to be just smart enough to realize that you aren't very smart at all. That's been the story of a lot of my life--if I was entered into a competition that awarded prizes for first and second place, I would invariably finish third. I'm not seeking pity or playing the 'poor, poor me' card...it is what it is. Still, I understand enough of what he is saying to be stimulated...so I guess that is something.

It's just Monday and I am ready for the weekend. I don't have big plans (or small plans). I have a couple of seasons of a British sitcom called Black Books coming from Netflix. I own all three seasons of Deadwood, so I may just sit and watch that as well. There's nothing that is stopping me from doing that during the week, but it is nice to be in a position where I don't have to think about class the next day. No anxiety or anything like that, I just feel done, like I'm just playing out the string in terms of my professional life here. It may be a really long string, though.

Polonius, my old friend

2009-08-22T00:52:00.001-04:00

That's all I'm giving myself for this post. No real reason for it, but I feel myself slipping a bit into the habit of not writing. Not that that would be a huge loss, of course, but since this whole blogging thing is ostensibly about me and not you, dear reader, I should at least try...even if what I wind up with is the verbal equivalent of clearing my throat (harrumph, harrumph, harrumph).

Met with all my classes this week. Four of them seem ok, one seems like a bunch of assholes. That's usually what happens.

Brevity is the soul of wit

2009-08-19T23:47:00.000-04:00

   I've mentioned before that I like a TV show called Psych. I used to visit a website called Television Without Pity, which is kind of a message board where fans of various shows can gather and 'talk'. I don't go there much anymore, mainly because I noticed two phenomena that I simply could not get past.
   First, there was a pattern to how people talked about each episode as it aired--either everybody began by praising it, then there would be a backlash with people condemning it, then the praisers returned or the opposite would occur--negative, then positive, then negative. I suppose that is the way that conversations go, but it seemed as though people were waiting to see what others were thinking before they chimed in themselves. In other words, people were not so much interested in discussing the merits or demerits of the show as they were with being agreeable or disagreeable.
   Next, there were a certain group of people who were never satisfied with the new episodes, always wanting to refer back to some previous season when the show was 'better'. Again, there was no interest in discourse, but rather a dismissal of the new simply because it was new. And that got old really quickly. Psych is what it is--a fun, entertaining show that isn't trying to make a deep point (though it occasionally does). Not all of the episodes are great, but there really aren't any that are bad (in the sense of lacking entertainment value). There is an old saying to the effect that people tend to get much more inflamed about trivial things than they do important ones--I suppose one need only look at the news to see how true that is.
   Classes began today. Didn't do much--just went over the syllabus, did my usual 'here's what to look for when you are reading a philosophical text' speech, answered what few questions were asked and then dismissed them. Two of the classes I met with today seemed like they will be good, one not so much. Early days yet. I have two more classes tomorrow at a different campus--hopefully that will go well. Honestly, though, I don't really care that much one way or another. I've included some new things on the syllabus and I am more interested in thinking about those readings and how to discuss them than how the students will react. I still hate being here, but I am going to approach my teaching this year as being for me, not for the students. That may make it more tolerable. Or it may not--who knows?

That he's mad, 'tis true, 'tis true 'tis pity, And pity 'tis 'tis true

2009-08-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

I was recently watching a television show called Harper's Island. 13 episodes were produced and, so far as I know, that was what its creators intended--a short story arc with a clear beginning and definite end (so, not something like The X-Files or Lost). It is a horror/mystery sort of show--Ten Little Indians meets Scream, if you will. It was not a hit here in the US--started off with decent ratings, then cratered pretty quickly. The problem was that it started a bit slowly and by the time it gathered steam, a good few folks had given up on it. For about 10 or 11 episodes it is a finely written, tightly plotted and generally well-crafted story that does a lot of things that American television usually doesn't do--kill off sympathetic characters, not make it clear within two scenes who the guilty person is, and so forth. But then it goes off the rails and turns into a typical *SPOILER WARNING* "crazy adoptee gets revenge on a world he/she perceives as having wronged him/her" sort of story (indeed, a lot like Scream turned out to be).

As someone who was given up for adoption, I am mildly irritated by these sorts of stories. One reason is because the 'crazy, vengeful adoptee' device has become a soap-opera level method of concluding a story. Beyond that it is simply stereotyping; assuming that a person's shortcomings can be fully and comfortably explained by identifying some aspect of her character and saying "AHA!". Which is oftentimes bullshit. I've just finished a book called The Suicide Index wherein a woman tries to make sense of her father's suicide (it is a memoir). What she finds is that there is no real reason that can adequately explain why her father killed himself--there are some possibilities, but at the end of it there is really nothing but mystery. The book changes, IMHO, from trying to solve a mystery to dealing with the fact that the mystery will never be solved. There is nothing that can adequately explain why a middle-aged man, reasonably successful, in reasonably good health, would get up one morning, dress for work, bring in the paper, then go sit in his study, place a gun in his mouth and pull the trigger. Indeed, whatever might be able to explain that series of events could be worse than the mystery itself. It's a good book, well worth reading.

The point, I suppose, is that a great many of the things we want to understand about ourselves are inscrutable. The rest, I'd wager, turn out to be more or less useless in the project of becoming ourselves, of deciphering our subjectivity. In an odd way, the idea that we are simply multi-hued, ambulatory bags of water, shit and bone turns out to be some comfort. There can be no mystery when there can be no explanation.

If only

2009-08-16T22:46:00.000-04:00

I rescheduled an appointment with my therapist the other day. She was cool about it, but in her e-mail response to me she asked "everything OK?". Nothing wrong with that--an expression of concern is always appreciated. I didn't really know how to answer her. If only there was some way for her to keep up with how I'm doing independently of our infrequent e-mail conversations, some sort of publicly available journal or record of my thoughts that she could peruse......

Still haven't gone to the yoga class. I doubt I will. Little too high on the smug quotient (notice that could refer to me just as easily as anyone else).

Haven't been drinking lately. I just go through periods where I need a G & T.

My birthday is soon. Hooray. "Shorter of breath and one day closer to death" is how Pink Floyd put it, I believe.

School starts this week. Hooray. Found out we get a pay cut this semester, though they have a pleasant euphemism for it, which makes it worse. I'm reworking my syllabus, dropping several readings and adding several more that might be a bit more accessible to the sort of student who typically populates my class. They just don't like to read, for the most part. Or they don't care to read things that are of greater length than a twitter post (again, for the most part). Many of them have gotten through life without having to do a great deal of complicated reading--but that's why they call it "college". Too many of them think that the fact they had some high school success guarantees that they can do well at every subject they attempt. Oh well, the implausibility of that attitude will set in soon enough for them, whether it is my class or someone else's.

Several things yet to do before the semester starts. I've put off a lot of it, though I still have a few days yet.

I think the idea that being the offspring of an interracial relationship leads to health problems could easily be an example of post hoc reasoning. For one thing, no one is racially pure (whatever that means in the first place). If there is one thing people like to do, it is fuck. People have been fucking other people of different places of origin for generations upon generations. My hypothesis, to put a more grandiose name on it than it deserves, is that we are all (for all practical purposes) multi-racial to some degree. Thus picking out bi-racial origin as a causal factor in illness seems wrong. Of course not everyone says this and I certainly don't mean to place an argument where it wasn't intended. Now in the case of the woman who needed bone marrow pointed out in this story the problem is finding a donor who matches--the underlying medical condition itself (so far as I can tell) has nothing to do with being bi-racial. Finding a donor would be easier if more people engaged in inter-racial relationships--so the real problem is not that inter-racial relationships exist, but rather that not enough of them exist. I still hold my belief that race is a meaningless way of categorizing individuals (and I am definitely aware that not everyone agrees with me and that I could be wrong), but since it seems so deeply ingrained in language I don't feel inappropriate in using it to make a point.

A lot of talk on Alway's Already's blog regarding vegetarianism, humanism and Hitler. When I was an undergraduate, I had a professor who was pretty famous for advocating vegetarianism on moral grounds (he was a utilitarian and thus believed that animal pain matters in one's moral calculations, among other things). I flirted with being a vegetarian from time to time and I still limit my consumption of red meat--but I have to say that I don't see any overwhelming moral imperative demanding vegetarianism. There might be some pragmatic reasons to be vegetarian and I certainly wouldn't criticize someone for pursuing that lifestyle. but most days I am pretty much overwhelmed by the amount of human pain in the world, pain that in general strikes me as qualitatively worse than animal pain. Most days, I can barely stand to care about human suffering outside my little garrison, and thus much less so whether Bossy the cow suffers.

Apparently

2009-08-13T01:37:00.000-04:00

Well, apparently one can criticize George W. Bush, President Obama, and pretty much every philosopher who ever lived with wild abandon...but not Jimmy Buffett. Whatever. Like JB, don't like JB, like me, don't like me...I don't care. I'm moving on from this 'issue' and, thus, won't be feeding the trolls any longer.

Still, this has been a useful interlude insofar as it really shows what passes for discourse these days--relatively well-reasoned thought vs. name calling and tired cliches. One sees it on a number of issues. Sadly, many of them are of far more consequence than this tempest in a teapot.

Not much else going on at the moment. Always Already continues with his interesting series of posts with a four-part excursion into fascist theory. I disagree with him on several points, but he continues to represent a wonderful example of thoughtful, civilized discourse (no sarcasm or snark intended here).

Oh, and AA, your comments on Wolin are spot on, IMHO. I think the following is an excellent diagnosis:
Yes, the postmodernists and the counterrevolutionaries agree that the basic presuppositions of the Enlightenment are flawed. Man cannot make his own history, the Enlightenment is not liberating, morality is an expression of someone's will to power, etc. But the counterrevolutionaries (of which I consider myself one) then find a new absolute: a Platonic one, rooted in transcendence of the phenomenal sphere. The postmodernists would reject this, and with it, would reject all authoritarians. The former leads to non-Enlightenment authoritarianism, the latter to anarchism, it seems to me.

I'm not sure that the rejection of the idea that one can transcend the phenomenal sphere necessarily leads to anarchism (I could see, for example, a social contract theorist justifying the state in purely pragmatic, temporal terms--like Hobbes did). I myself am pretty comfortable with anarchism and now I think I have a clearer understanding of why.

I think adrift may have moved on--hope to see you blog again soon.

Ok, with this link I'm really done with the JB thing. :)

Jimmy Buffett is the crap in the asshair of music

2009-08-11T18:51:00.002-04:00

I have some international readers, so you may be fortunate enough not to be familiar with the odious Jimmy Buffett. He is an American singer/songwriter who was once mildly agreeable ("Come Monday" is a good song), but who long ago slipped into a pattern of releasing albums that pandered to the mid-life crises of suburban men who were beginning to realize that their best days were behind them and that their future showed absolutely no promise beyond getting up and doing the same thing day after day after day until their heart gave out or their colon became cancerous or a blood vessel in their brain burst. Buffett seems to personify the 'beach bum' lifestyle--which would be great except that he is a millionaire many times over. I don't knock his hustle, as I am most assuredly not a millionaire, but what he has done is take a simulacrum of life, a fictive representation of a reality that never was or will be, and substitute it for the real thing. 'A Pirate Looks At Forty' is one of his less bearable songs, expressing regret that he was born a pirate but "200 years too late".

Now I enjoy the beach, sitting on the sand and listening to the waves and gulls--I have no problem with that at all. But it is not a lifestyle (except for perhaps a few of the very rich or the very burned out) at all. Go about 2 miles inland from the beaches of Florida and you will find some of the most depressing places in the world inhabited by people who are just beginning to have a sneaking suspicion that life is a cosmic joke of which they are the punchline--though often that suspicion can be drowned with alcohol, drugs, fighting, or religion (or some combination of the above). Somebody always suffers for the simulation of utopia.

What really wound me up about this is that my department chair singled me out at a faculty meeting this morning and played a JB song while announcing to all the members of my division that it was a song he wanted me to hear. He is generally a nice guy and I don't think he was being mean or hurtful intentionally, but the song was about not trying to figure out the point of everything but just existing so that you don't go crazy. Now I have been open with my department chair about my major depressive disorder and I think I have a reputation as someone who is definitely dysthymic/dyspeptic in outlook (though I try to be polite/cordial to my co-workers)...but if he wanted me to hear this song, he could have simply played it in his office or directed me to the video on youtube or suggested I buy the mp3 on Amazon. But no...he had to play it in front of everyone while announcing that he wanted me, especially, to hear it.

And it is sad that he, an intelligent person, takes Buffett's pointless meanderings as having merit and depth. Now I don't think he is going to start a course in Jimmy Buffett studies and I'm sure he was being tongue-in-cheek when he played the song on my behalf....but Jimmy Buffett? Jimmy Buffet long ago ceased to be anything but 'Jimmy Buffett', a product (he has restautarants, concert merchandising, owns a brand of beer, I think, 'writes'"books"--which technically I guess they are because they are words on pages, bound together and published) an artifice pushing a way of living for people who are long since as good as dead. Fuck him.

I've got to get out of here, out of this job at this school in this godforsaken place. Shame on me for staying.

I'm just saying, is all

2009-08-09T19:02:00.001-04:00

If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
You think you know people, and then it turns out you couldn't have been more wrong (or, alternatively, that your deepest fears, or qualms, or misgivings have been justified).
Father Ted and Lovejoy are my favorite television shows.
Deadwood and Psych are close behind.
The guy who created Deadwood wanted Ed O' Neill for the role of Al Swearengen instead of Ian McShane. He even said in an interview after season 3 finished that Deadwood would have been better with O'Neill in the role. No disrespect to Ed O' Neill (best known as Al Bundy in the long-running but now nearly forgotten sitcom Married with Children), but McShane's performance in Deadwood may be the greatest in the history of television (admittedly in part because the cast around him was so strong). There's no way O'Neill could have done anything close with the role that McShane did. Of course, the guy who created Deadwood stopped making it in favor of John from Cincinnati--which could be the laziest, most self-indulgent, masturbatory piece of dreck ever produced.
About a week and a half before fall semester starts. Meh.
Didn't mean to vex you by bringing up a sensitive topic, AA.
Even though there is a week and a half before fall term starts, I have to do something school-related that requires me to be on campus four out of the next six days. Poor baby, I know.
Fuck
Not sure why I'm using bullet points today. Perhaps it's a tribute to one of the great professional wrestlers of my youth, "Bullet" Bob Armstrong. Or maybe it's just something different. Doesn't matter.
Number of times I will do a post like this: 1

Is this racist?

2009-08-06T23:18:00.000-04:00

Because there is absolutely nothing else going on in the world, the above poster has gone viral and has ignited a bit of a firestorm in some parts of the US. The claim is made that the above picture is racist. Essentially, you have a photo of the president manipulated so that he resembles Heath Ledger's version of The Joker in the recent Batman film.

As I was looking for this image on the web I googled 'Obama Joker' and came across quite a few things that are quite obviously racist, ignorant or both (such as pictures of a monkey--implying pretty clearly the tired old racist bit about people of African descent being 'subhuman'). I don't know that the above is that sort of thing. The reasoning that I read in the Washington Post about the above being racist tried to connect the use of this Joker (as opposed to Jack Nicholson's or, I suppose, Cesar Romero's) as code for inner city crime, which then, of course, leads to an association of Obama with stereotypes about urban instability.

I think the bigger issue is whether Obama is leading the United States towards socialism. That term is bandied about often by people who have no clear idea what it means--and I do wonder about what the creator of the poster had in mind. The point I take from it is that, according to the creator of the poster, Obama is not what he appears to be--that underneath the relatively placid exterior lies someone who is an agent for change of the most radical sort (though clearly not an out and out nihilist like the Joker). I see Obama leading us towards kleptocracy, the rule of Goldman-Sachs.

It is odd to think that criticizing someone's policies makes you a racist if that someone happens to be of a darker skin tone. Now if one wanted to claim that the person's policies were criticizable solely because of skin tone, that would be racist. And there are some people who do have that lurking about in their views. But not every criticism of Obama is racially motivated any more than every criticism of Israeli policies is anti-Semitic.

I've said this before and I know some people vehemently disagree with me, but I find race to be a useless concept. I read a blog not too long ago where someone, a person for whom I have great intellectual respect, said that he hoped he was "thinking like an Aryan" or words to that effect. That gave me pause because I have absolutely no idea as to what that could mean. Skin tone, geographical origin--those sorts of things strike me as irrelevant to how someone thinks. Now it is true that culture and geography play a role in what someone thinks about or the framework in which they think--but these are entirely different matters. If I, a paunchy, middle-aged white guy, really like hip-hop (I don't, as a general rule) does that mean that I am thinking 'like" a member of a certain race? I think not....ascribing a pattern of thinking on the basis of an arbitrary classification such as race (or on the basis of stereotypes associated with race) seems to me to be a hasty generalization, no matter who is doing it. It also ignores a commonality that exists in the thinking of people across all sorts of cultural, religious, geographic, sexual etc. etc. lines--the banality, the overwhelming banality, of human thought.

Now I am far from some utopian liberal dreamer. I don't consider myself some sort of 'post-racial' enlightened thinker. I would just claim that there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to like, or dislike, people independently of the specious category of 'race'.

First Grade

2009-08-06T01:15:00.000-04:00

My son starts first grade tomorrow. He is such a gentle, sweet boy (taking into account how biased I might be). It is really hard for him to relate to other kids (just like me when I was his age). He just marches to the beat of his own drummer. I remember him entering the world and in two months he will be seven years old. I love him so much. I think about the times I have told him to 'wait a minute' because I was busy doing something that, quite frankly, could have waited. Of course, if you give in to a child every time, you wind up with a monster. I guess that is the hardest part of being a parent--hardly ever knowing whether you are doing the right thing or not. That and when the kids are sick. I think sickness magnifies the sentiment above.

Nothing new on the job front. I still don't like it here where I am but I am rapidly coming to terms with the fact that this may well be where I will be. Of course if the state tax receipts don't pick up soon, then I may have to come to terms with a different sort of fact. My car gave up the ghost a couple of weeks back and I bought another. I think I over-spent a bit and I know that the monthly payments are going to be rough--but there is something about a new car. I drive a lot between campuses, and my new car is more comfortable than my old one--so I guess it was a present to myself as I enter my dotage.

I can't believe he is going into the first grade. He and I have really bonded this summer, which has been nice. My daughter, who is 19, is growing ever more distant. They do that at that age, I suppose. She's making some pretty miserable life choices, though, and I am afraid that they will catch up with her in a big way. At the same time, she is 19 so what she does is her responsibility. I just hate to see her dig herself into a hole--one that she may spend a good many years trying to escape. I worry about my son, worry that he will get labeled the way that I did as a child, that he will struggle the way I did, that he will be marginalized, shuffled to the side simply because of a label attached to him by a very mediocre school psychologist.

I worry about myself, too. I am revamping my syllabus for the first time in several years, but I am feeling spectacularly uninspired--I don't like giving my old lectures, but I know them by heart and it is safer, easier, to go with the tried-and-true. And many students like my way of teaching--so why change? I'm in a rut. Maybe by changing the syllabus, by trying some new things I can rekindle whatever it was that brought me to this point. Or maybe I will crash and burn. All I know is that the way I feel about my job, the area where I live, myself is untenable.

Random rules

2009-08-01T15:38:00.000-04:00

My sleep schedule is so off right now. Can't get to sleep, sleeping all day, it seems, when I do. August 1 today--my birthday is this month. I turn 40. It's not really bothering me, or at least I don't think it is. I don't feel like it is consciously bothering me--I'm not having any sort of crisis over and above the existential one that has been plaguing me for the last couple of years. 40 is just a number, though I suppose that the roundness of it has some effect on the psyche--after all, there is a reason that things are priced $19.99 in stores rather than $20. Still, to me it is just a number, just another day. I don't feel that different than when I was 20 (well--other than being fatter, slower, and more tired--but I still feel like me).

Wow, that was really pointless. I suppose that I am just easing into the blog today. Always Already posted on his blog the other day that he was uncomfortable using people's names when he talks to them. I am as well. I usually just go up to people (who I know not strangers) and begin conversing. Now, of course, if it is the college president or the VPAA I will grovel and use titles as often as I can. The use of a name brings with it a certain intimacy that I don't really want with most people. It's different online, a different sort of intimacy that doesn't bother me as much. I tend to work better with people when I don't have to deal with them face to face. So college teaching is obviously the best possible profession for me. :) I just fell into this profession, quite frankly, though I of course deliberately acted and chose to bring about this state of affairs. What I mean to say is that when i first started studying philosophy, it was something I was good at and I didn't have much in the way of other prospects, job-wise. So grad school, some temporary gigs here and there and now here I am, ready to apply for tenure. Always nice when you can summarizes 15 years of your life in three sentences. Of course, many people's lives can legitimately be summed up in 3 sentences when they are over. And we are all destined to be forgotten, for good or ill.

I'm not a huge meat eater (paging Dr. Freud), but I was really craving a steak last night. Not sure why--it's not something I eat that often nor does it have any special significance for me. I don't have that same craving today...maybe I'll go get some strip mall Chinese. If there were an Indian place nearby, or someplace with good falafel, that would be ideal. Sadly, most of what we have here in wherever it is I live is the traditional IHOP/Chili's/Red Lobster fare. The local places are almost all "home cooking" sorts of places--BBQ and so forth. There are quite a few places that serve Latino food, thanks to the huge influx of Mexican and Central American immigrants into the area over the last few years.

Immigration doesn't really bother me. Like with nearly every group, most of the immigrants I've encountered have been decent, quiet, extremely hard-working individuals. Also like every group, there are a few who are just bums, or criminals, or both. So I don't think things like criminality or 'laziness' are inherent in particular groups of people--indeed, I don't think anything is inherent in anyone (speaking of personality/character traits, not genetics). We are, then we choose what we will be. There is no inherent legitimacy in a particular form of government..indeed, I'm not even sure the term 'legitimate' even applies. I like the following saying attributed to Victor Yarros (though Yarros himself eventually turned into a Wilsonian statist, of all things) : The abolition of the external State must be preceded by the decay of the notions which breathe life and vigour into that clumsy monster: in other words, it is only when the people learn to value liberty, and to understand the truths of the anarchistic philosophy, that the question of practically abolishing the State looms up and acquires significance.

Of course, one might wonder why 'liberty' has such high value (and just what the hell it is)...both legitimate questions. As a first pass, I'd say that liberty has high value because it is only through its exercise that we can be what we will be. Of course, I could be who I am by allowing others to choose for me, or by not choosing at all. Those states of affairs seem 'lesser' to me (Sartre would doubtless say 'inauthentic', but I don't want to get caught in that thicket at the moment). But I can't really say why until I define 'liberty' itself--or at least provide some criteria as to how I would identify it. Most likely the latter, as 'liberty' strikes me as inherently vague.

Why are the roads all colored black?

2009-07-31T23:16:00.000-04:00

It's because people leave and no highway brings them back. A somber lyric from one of my favorite bands, Silver Jews.

I drank a good bit more tonight than I usually do, but it didn't really do anything for me. I wasn't really drinking for any particular reason--I've been down today and I find myself doing less and less and just lying in bed more and more. I gave finals and haven't even gotten them out of the trunk of my car. I'll probably grade 'at' them tomorrow just to get them out of the way; to try to wash the stench of the summer term out of my being.

Nothing much else doing. Maybe tomorrow will bring inspiration, or at least less lassitude.

You know the best thing about living in Sodom? The sodomy!

2009-07-30T22:50:00.000-04:00

I heard the above in a trailer for a movie and it struck me as ridiculously funny. As with all humor, though, your mileage may vary.

I didn't make it to the yoga class tonight. I intended to do so, but then the time came to leave and I just didn't want to go. I have to do enough things in my life that I'd rather not--without voluntarily adding another. Maybe I'll go to a class this weekend, maybe I won't go at all. I don't know that the yoga won't work for me (whatever 'work' means), but I don't have it in me to make much of an effort. I've got final exams to grade and prep work for next semester, plus advising, plus faculty meetings, plus everything else. I could still make time for it if I really wanted to do so, I suppose.

August begins soon and it seems like just the other day May began. Time is relentless. The older I get, the more conscious of it I become. I can't do anything about it, really, except to endure what happens, safe in the knowledge that something equally bad, or worse, awaits tomorrow and the next day, and the next day and so on and so on and so it goes. And even if nothing particularly bad happens, there is still ennui, the knowledge that whatever pleasant experience might be occurring will end soon, the memory of it destined to serve as fresh torment; the torment that arises from a past out of reach, a past that can never be repeated in its vivacity, a present that is a series of ever-paler and less-inviting copies of experience, and a future that is nothing more than a set of expectations that will either be frustrated or found lacking if they happen to be met.

I am crushed, ground to a nub, forlorn. Sometimes I wish it would end already. Of course, then I'd find out I was wrong about everything and would be well and truly fucked--though, paradoxically, that would mean that I was right about everything. The world is a terrible place and any improvement is ephemeral at best, more apparent than real, more hope than actuality.

RDRR

2009-07-30T01:26:00.001-04:00

I'm not nearly as well-read and well-informed as I need to be. I know that I'll never know everything, thank goodness, but there is just so much I don't know. I was reading Perez-Reverte's The Club Dumas this evening and...wow. I think I've read maybe 2 or 3 of Dumas' works in my life and I don't really remember them that well. Same goes for Proust, Joyce, Sartre (except for Nausea and Existentialism is a Humanism) and other giants of thought in cultures running across the world.

I'm not beating myself up, not trying to at any rate. And I can always read more and learn more. I suppose, though, I'll never be who I think I should be. Which may be for the best because, like with everything else in life, once you attain what you think you want you find that you don't really want it--that you are still the same old nothing no matter how long the string of letters after your name, or the awards you've received....

My therapist wants me to go to a yoga class. I told her I would. I'm trying to have a good attitude about it, but in my (admittedly limited) experience with yoga and its practitioners I've always detected an attitude of smugness, a condescenscion that seems to permeate their personalities. Of course I know that the past is no guarantee of the future and what I perceived may be nothing more than what I've projected onto these folks..but it still seems real enough to me when I try to remove as many preconceived notions as I can. Also, it turns out that the passive-aggressive asshole faculty member I was talking about attends (or attended) this yoga studio in the past--and he is the sort of guy who thinks that his farts improve the ambiance of a room. Also, this studio has a full line of yoga "supplies" that they will be happy to sell you, in addition to the charges for the classes....everybody has to make a living, though, and even if it is a racket in this particular case, I can't knock the hustle. Maybe it helps some people as well--who am I to say otherwise? Millions, if not billions, of people around the world practice some form of yoga or another and it would be incredibly presumptuous of me to dismiss all the different traditions with a Western sneer. Are some of them complete and utter bullshit? Probably so. Most of them? Probably so. But most of everything, philosophy included, is bullshit--something to make one's daily crust, to keep the wolf from the door for a time. Noble goals, of course, but the nobility of the goal does not grant value to the means of pursuit. Most of what I say is bullshit, even my awareness that it is bullshit is largely bullshit. It's bullshit all the way down, I suppose.

I'm not feeling as dark as I have been feeling. Both my psychiatrist and therapist have diagnosed me with I dysthymia. In other words, pessimism and melancholy are to be categorized and treated as part of an illness, a symptomology of depression. That's a bit unfair, of course, but I'm not sure that seeing the dark side of things--and that most things are primarily dark sides--is in and of itself a sign of mental illness. 'Depression' could just be a term coined for people who see things as they are, for people who don't close thier eyes to the pain and suffering that permeate existence. My therapist once told me she hadn't watched the news in years...I wanted to tell her that the world does not go away because you close your eyes. It's still there, malignant in its indifference towards those who populate it.

As an aside to Always Already, the purpose of the state is two-fold--to stop people in a particular area from screwing each other over and allowing those people to screw over those people who aren't in their area. It's a worldful of that, and not much more.

Blanchot quote

2009-07-28T09:55:00.001-04:00

More about this later, but I wanted to at least quote now from Maurice Blanchot's The Writing of the Disaster, p. 64:
"To write one's autobiography, in order either to confess or to engage in self-analysis, or in order to expose oneself, like a work of art, to the gaze of all, is perhaps to seek to survive, but through a perpetual suicide--a death which is total inasmuch as it is fragmentary.
To write of oneself is to cease to be, in order to confide in a guest--the other, the reader--entrusting yourself to him who will henceforth have as an obligation, and indeed as a life, nothing but your inexistence."

This is both a bit convoluted in style and inexplicit in meaning, but I think he is saying something quite profound nonetheless.

Chaos

2009-07-28T02:38:00.000-04:00

I haven't written much of late because, quite frankly, I haven't been in any shape to do so. I didn't veg this past weekend like I planned--I actually straightened up the apartment a little bit with Mrs. MP. I did some DVD watching, catching up on Season 3 of Psych and re-watching Watchmen (albeit the Director's Cut). I also watched Salo (The 120 Days of Sodom) and Gaspar Noe's I Stand Alone. I also watched a film called Martyrs, whose reach really exceeded its grasp. Netflix also sent along a couple of disks from season 4 of Lovejoy, which is always entertaining (all the seasons I've seen thus far are entertaining--Ian McShane is a hell of an actor, see Deadwood for additional proof of that). Now that I've written all that out, I guess I did veg a bit more than I thought.

Mentally I've been down. I've tried to read some Foucault and it's been really hard to concentrate. It's been hard to concentrate on reading anyway--I'm just restless and my mind is racing in a thousand different directions all the time. On the plus side, tomorrow is the last day of the summer term. I had quite a few students in the class that ended tonight tell me that they really enjoyed the course--part of that is smoke-blowing I am sure, but I had a fair number of transient students who I won't ever see again say that as well--so who knows? Maybe they did get something out of it. I guess in the midst of my intellectual flailings and crippling depression I was able to occasionally say something of value.

One thing I have been wondering about lately is whether people who have radically different world-views can ever communicate anything substantive to one another. Could I, as an agnostic/atheist (depending on which day it is) really communicate with a fundamentalist Muslim or Christian (assuming we speak the same formal language, of course)? I wonder...I don't know that I could (or that anyone could). I can, of course, say that understand a fundamentalist view, but that may just be a matter of syntax--that the fundamentalist has put together a statement of his or her views according to language rules we both accept. And yet we may be worlds apart semantically--so that I don't really understand what (leaving aside the "why" question) the fundamentalist says when he or she utters "God (or Allah, or whatever) exists" or "God commands me to do this or that". I haven't been able to think about it deeply because I haven't been able to think about anything deeply for the last couple of weeks.

I'm having to curtail the gin drinking I like to do so much, because lately when I drink I sweat profusely. I do all my drinking (such as it is) at home, so it isn't horribly embarrassing as such, but it is abnormal for me. It might be an interaction with some of the medicine I take to control my blood sugar. I'd hate to have to leave gin behind.

I'm glad I wrote this, trivial though it is. I don't need to get out of the habit of writing.

Out of Touch

2009-07-23T02:05:00.000-04:00

I don't know who Lady Gaga is. I don't want to know. I still hate the fact that I know who Stacy Q is--that's brain space that could have been used for something else.

I'm still up and down. I haven't really felt like writing much of late. My summer class is almost over, thank goodness. I don't know when I've done a worse job connecting with students. It's not all my fault, of course, but I am willing to shoulder a good part of the blame. I checked out a couple of weeks ago.

Nothing new on the job front, but the academic hiring season is pretty much over. Next year isn't looking so good, either. Whatever....

I've been having some pretty dark thoughts of late, unusually dark even for me. It's disturbing, quite frankly. But I'm not the first and won't be the last. I don't have any flow in my thought or writing tonight.

I bought a book by Diamanda Galas entitled The Shit of God. There are a couple of short essays, but it is mostly song lyrics/poetry. She intrigues me to a high degree--she is vocally unique, a talented poet/performance artist (in the best sense of the latter term) but is certainly not for everyone. I posted a couple of videos by her a few blogs ago--you can youtube her if you are interested. Part of me thinks that she would be interesting to speak with, though part of me realizes that if I ever did speak to her, I would simply stammer and stutter until she turned away in disgust. I've met a couple of semi-famous people before and handled it ok, but I didn't really like either of them so there wasn't any pressure, if that makes sense. It's not so much that I would want to impress her, but that I would be so conscious of not trying to be an idiot that I would end up being an idiot.

That's really convoluted. She has a song called "Panoptikon" which suggests a bit of familiarity with Foucault's work. She comes across in interviews and in her music as someone who is incredibly intelligent and who doesn't suffer fools well. Sometimes in some of her pictures she seems to be trying a little too hard to bring about a particular effect, but above all she seems confident in herself and comfortable with who she is.

I bought some DVDs on Tuesday, Season 3 of Psych, Season 2 of Pushing Daisies, the Director's cut of Watchmen and the new Spongebob. I am going to just veg out in front of the TV this weekend. It's all I really want to do anyway, just retreat into my own little world, fuck everything else. I know that the larger world doesn't care about me or my attitude and will lay waste to all I hold dear just as easily as not....so fuck it anyway

I don't know why I can't get my thoughts organized. I read other blogs and I am so impressed with their thought and expression...it seems about the most I can do is give variations on the theme of 'fuck it'. Maybe that is all there is to do....maybe life is nothing more than variations on that theme. I don't know. I wish I had something more to say..or maybe I don't. I don't know.

I've narrowed it down

2009-07-21T17:25:00.000-04:00

Minot, North Dakota
Sault St. Marie, Michigan
Belfast, Maine

Sadly, there isn't much for a philosopher to do in these places. There is Minot State University in ND, but I've never seen them be in the market for a philosophy professor--though they do offer courses. Sault St. Marie has Lake Superior State University, but they don't hire in philosophy very often, and Michigan is in such dire financial straits that there may not be much opportunity there. Still, I keep an eye out on both schools--though with my background a two-year college is going to be more interested than a 4-year university.

Maybe the fact that if I went to one of these places I would have to do something else is intriguing to me. I've done other things before--restaurant, retail...so I know what the score is. I'm looking at employment in these places outside of academia--so don't think I'm just sitting here and bellyaching about things.

So maybe Escanaba, MI where Bay de Noc CC is located. There are a few other CC's in the UP, so maybe that will bear investigation. I've been keeping track of the ND and ME CC situations--no institutions in either state seem to have much interest in hiring a philosophy professor. But at least the whole 'getting somewhere else' thing matters to me--not that I'm going to get my hopes up--because what would be the point in hoping?

I do know that I want to get out of here. No offense to anyone intended, but this is not where I want to spend what remains of my time on this rock hurtling through space.

Three places I'd like to live

2009-07-19T22:43:00.000-04:00

Maine
North Dakota
The upper peninsula of Michigan

I guess it's because I am a people person.

Up and down

2009-07-16T23:54:00.000-04:00

Lots of wild mood swings today, which is a bit unusual for me. I'm usually more long-wave in my mood changes--slow and gradual with highs and lows. I've just been all over the place today. I'm taking advantage of a bit of up time to post here and comment in some other places.

I thought that I was going to go on a bit of a vacation at the end of the month, but of course my car has decided to crap out. I'm going to look for a newer one tomorrow--hopefully I can get some financing. But, no vacation now--not the end of the world, of course, just another thing that happened. Maybe we can do something a little closer to home.

My therapist wants me to go to a yoga class. I told her I would and I will, though I must say that I'm not exactly looking forward to it. I'm not really a joiner, but yoga is a pretty individualistic pursuit (so far as I understand it, which isn't really that far) so maybe it would be ok. It might help my elbow, which is better than it was (and the numbness is almost entirely gone from my fingers now) but still stiff when fully extended or contracted.

Class pretty much sucked today, but I knew it would. I've pretty much given up trying to stimulate thought and am just lecturing now, just marking time until the end. I'm still communicating information, going through the motions, but I don't know if they are getting much out of it. Who knows? I just want the summer term to be over whether or not I get to go on vacation or not. This has been an excruciating two months for me.

I work with this guy, a professor in another discipline, who seems quite nice but is actually a passive/aggressive asshole. He is forever suggesting all sorts of programs and presentations, then leaving it to other people to handle all the work. If it goes well, he is right there to take credit--if not, then he is nowhere to be found. Add to that his smarmy Christian 'sincerity' and you get someone who drives me right up the fucking wall. I hate this place. Thanks goodness the academic job market is so great right now....oh, wait.....

Oh, good...down again. I was waiting on that.

Here we go again

2009-07-15T21:04:00.001-04:00

Another bad day today. Tomorrow should be a fresh slice of hell. It's not getting better, I guess, though I'm not even sure what 'better' is. I don't want anything other than just to lie down somewhere. I want/need a drink. My therapist says this is a bad coping skill...I didn't have the heart to tell her that it's one of the few I have left.

Camus said that one must accept the absurdity of life, to use it as a starting point in the project of creating meaning. I think that he got it wrong, at least a bit. One must accept the absurdity of life, to be sure, so long as one lives. That seems to me to be the ending point, though...in an absurd world, an absurd life there is no meaning nor any opportunity to create meaning. There is simply existence, an existence governed by chance, at the mercy of forces that have no mercy, no sense, no meaning.... just faceless impersonality.

So why worry? Why be depressed? Maybe it's the realization itself, maybe the nagging thought I could be wrong, or perhaps that I would simply like for all those things I was told as a young lad to be true.

Well, it's gin o'clock--time for me to go.

I was born a rambling man

2009-07-14T23:48:00.000-04:00

You should really read this. I think the Obama administration is floating this as a trial balloon, but it is so egregiously stupid that it will probably catch people's fancy and it, or something close, may be enacted. I'm a renter, but I suppose I should have bought a house during the real estate bubble, then not made my payments and depended on the government to bail me out. Of course, the government is doing this for the benefit of the banks (and, actually, for the benefit of Goldman-Sachs--that seems to be the point of US financial policy of late). A lot of good people who have played by the rules and tried to live up to their responsibilities are becoming very pissed off by the Obama administration. If the Republicans can get their collective head out of their ass and quit treating Sarah Palin as though she had any redeeming qualities, they might be able to regain their momentum. I don't think this is a good thing, but I think the country is better off when the two main parties control different branches of government--when government is gridlocked, it can do less harm.

What is really funny is that 90% of my students could give less than a shit about any of this. Most of them have absolutely no idea about what is going on and don't care to know. Most don't want to think critically about anything--they just want good grades. So I just don't know what to do anymore. I guess I'll become like the most beloved teachers on campus, those who share stories in class and let people get in touch with their 'feelings' about the material. No intellectual rigor whatsoever, just a lot of bullshit about snowflakes and starfish--empowering the little darlings to believe that their own opinion, no matter how ill-thought-out is just as worthwhile as that of someone who has taken the time to think deeply about matters.

I'm a little frustrated, too, because I think my car is approaching the end of its useful life. It's about 10 years old and has 113K miles on it, but since it is an American car which was built not to last, it has depreciated to a huge degree--so much so that fixing the suspension, the transmission, the A/C and so forth would cost more than the car is worth. I'm not complaining--it has been a pretty good car for most of the 10 years. It's just frustrating that this is happening now, in the late summer where my financial wherewithal is at an ebb.

I've also been thinking a bit about what constitutes harm to others, in the sense of the claim "People should be free to do what they like so long as no one else is harmed". The general context is a discussion of gay marriage over at Always Already's blog but there is a larger philosophical question there, to say the least. maybe 'harm to others' means 'intentionally caused mental or physical distress'--which sort of clarifies things, but at the same time just pushes back what needs explicating a step--in other words, instead of wondering "what is harm?" we now wonder "what constitutes mental or physical distress?" and "what counts as 'intentionally' causing said distress?" and the underlying ethical question "what is the relevance of mental and physical distress to a value judgment?".....More questions than answers, but such is life.

My thought is this--so long as an individual is a consenting adult and the other parties involved in a sexual relationship are consenting adults, then it is not the state's concern who fucks who, in which orifice the fucking occurs, or with what the fucking is accomplished. Those are choices that the participants make, and in making said choices it is assumed that the reasonable consequences of those choices is accepted by the participants as well.

Independently of coitus itself, if two consenting adults of the same sex wish to enter into a contractual commitment that the state calls marriage, then the state has no legitimate interest in preventing said arrangement--think of it in terms of the state's lack of legitimate interest in preventing two consenting adults from entering into a rental contract or sales contract.

I don't see any non-trivial use of 'harm to others' that applies to gay marriage--whether 'others' are taken as 'individuals' or 'society', whatever the latter means (my suspicion is that it means nothing, just a convenient label for ideologues and demagogues alike).

Mid-July blah

2009-07-13T22:38:00.000-04:00

It's hot here now, and has been for a while, and has also reached the point where we get those wonderful afternoon thunderstorms that last long enough to get things really wet, but then dissipate early enough that the sun still has 2-3 hours to come out and make everything uncomfortably steamy.

Really bad performance in class today. I got sidetracked with my comedy shtick that I do from time to time to lighten the mood and by the time I got it pulled together it was too late. It's not a bad class, but I have really lost it.

I signed my contract for next year, but am looking around for other opportunities, preferably far away from here. Mrs. MP and MP Jr. are down with moving, I guess, so that wouldn't be a deal-breaker. The main thing is not having a job and being so dialed-in to academia that I probably wouldn't be that interesting to the business community. Also, I'm starting to get older (40 soon) and that isn't as attractive to an employer. Add to that that I've been here for several years, and any prospective employer might well wonder why I am leaving. I don't suppose I can give them the real answer--that my job has become a soul-sucking exercise in futility that, often as not, makes me long for the cold embrace of death.

But for all my talk, I'll probably end up here, get tenure, stay around for 25 years, get a small retirement party, then come back and teach part-time in a vain attempt to make ends meet, as I'm sure my 401k will be gutted by then and the notion that Social Security will still be around is an absolute joke. Of course, by that time, there will probably be a hybrid brand of cat food that will be nutritious for humans, so I've got that going for me. Or some sort of elder-hating dystopia will exist and I will be summarily executed at 65, then turned into Soylent Green.

I don't know how I will make it through the fall semester. I have an 8 AM class, which is just death when it comes to participation. Plus I will be doing 3 in a row two days a week, which is pretty exhausting. Add to that both of the above are at a campus where the students are noted for being indolent dolts...well, it is a recipe for some marvelous blogging and even more marvelous drinking. I've never taught class drunk before, but I am considering it. I just can't handle it, quite frankly. Teaching, that is--I handle liquor quite well, hardly ever spilling a drop.

The sad thing is that I can't imagine anything, other than an obscene amount of money and the ability to pick my students, that would make it tolerable again. I'm starting to beat a dead horse here, so I won't go further.

I'm still thinking about my book. I'm tossing around some ideas but haven't committed anything to paper beyond a vague outline--which is something, but not much. That will be my epitaph, I suppose.

Those were the days

2009-07-11T12:39:00.000-04:00

I need a theme song.....

Retraction

2009-07-10T20:24:00.000-04:00

I should make it clear that Mrs. MP and I were fighting the other day not about the death of Michael Jackson, but the fact that I was being an ass about the death of Michael Jackson. I hereby publicly apologize for the misrepresentation.

Not much else to say. Lot of anxiety, not so much about my job, but about money, life, everything and nothing. I'm not feeling well, so I think I will leave this short.

I did it

2009-07-09T00:30:00.000-04:00

It won't come to anything, but I put my resume out there with a state employment agency in a state where I would like to live. It's not close to here, which is enough to recommend it to me. We'll see what happens. Doing that was kind of a relief--just taking a step towards getting out of here (even if, as I said, it doesn't lead anywhere) was psychologically refreshing.

Now I'm still a miserable person and I know full well that even if I got a job in this state I would still be me in a new place. I am at heart a wanderer, though, so maybe I just need a new place every few years. I don't have any romantic notions about 'the road', no dog-eared copy of Kerouac leading me on....I know that some places are prettier than others, but underneath it all it's the same shit in a different package. I'm just really tired of the package around here...hard-ass people who mostly look like they have wandered out of the 'after' side of an ad about the horrors of methamphetamine. There is no art here, only artifice...it's like living in the world's longest strip mall, an endless procession of Chinese restaurants, Gamestops, and Dollar Trees. So it goes.

Hurm

2009-07-07T21:21:00.000-04:00

So I had a student get a little bit upset in class today. We are discussing the Problem of Evil. Right now, we are looking at it from the perspective of a philosopher who believes the PoE is too serious a problem for theism (and by this he means Xian theism). One way he demonstrates this is by performing reductio ad absurdums on various theistic explanations of why an all-good God allows terrible evils that could be easily prevented. His point is that if you want to accept a theistic explanation, you have to be willing to accept what it implies.

The student said something to the effect that "These are my beliefs...I can believe what I want and reject the implications of those beliefs...I can even believe contradictory things if I want...." Of course, he wasn't doing this from some sort of sophisticated (or even sophistic) postmodern position, but rather from the entitled attitude of someone who thinks that he doesn't have to justify his beliefs. Of course, if he really believed that, then he wouldn't get upset. Philosophy is not for everybody and I am beginning to wonder if it is for anybody---reasoned discussion is being replaced more and more by polemic and harangue. I may just go to a straight lecture class format because for every meaningful comment I get, I have to field about 10 that show no familiarity with the reading and no thought about the topic at hand.

So I don't know what to do except go on. I've been having classes for shorter periods of time--I just don't have it in me to do much more than that.

Also, Mrs. MP and I are fighting, over Michael Jackson of all things. She thinks that I'm not being properly respectful of the man and his accomplishments because I quite frankly don't give a shit about the memorial service and the consequent hagiography of this faded shell of an entertainer. My mistake was in voicing this view, I suppose. As I said when he died, I take no pleasure in his death and I understand that there are those who loved him and will miss him. At the same time, with all the things going on in the world, ethnic strife, financial collapse and so forth, it is unconscionable for all the major news networks to devote hours of programming to his memorial service/sideshow. I was sad when Warren Zevon died a few years back, but not too many people seemed to care and that didn't upset me. But Mrs. MP and I are different people, and different people react to the same thing in different ways (ahh, cliches...will there ever be a time when you won't fill up space with pseudo-profundity? I hope not!)

I've been in a bad mood of late anyway, just really pissed off a good bit of the time. I actively loathe my job but feel more trapped than ever. Given the economy, I suppose that I should just grin and bear it since I can't do anything about it--sort of like being sodomized by a rhinoceros. But that doesn't mean I have to enjoy it.

Today is one of those days when I look forward to the end. It's bullshit all the way down.

Diamanda Galas

2009-07-07T14:55:00.001-04:00

is absolutely fucking awesome. I am not. So, here she is:

Three things to read on a fine Sunday

2009-07-05T14:38:00.000-04:00

As my mood yo-yo's up and down, I'll take advantage of the upswing to post links to three articles worth reading regarding the current financial crisis:

Brokered accounts are going to be the death of small banks

Economics and the American Revolution

Why doing nothing is the best thing

Muddling along is going to work until it doesn't. The various stimuli are just further muddling, kicking the can down the road a bit more and a bit more. I don't see any way out of this mess we are in--commercial real estate is about to have big problems which in turn will effect local banks and governments, there are going to be two huge waves of foreclosures in the next 3-4 years, job losses continue to increase with not much end in sight--there's no way to have a service economy if there is no one who can afford to be served.

All this reminds me of H.L. Mencken's quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Flinching my way through the day

2009-07-04T21:38:00.000-04:00

I haven't really felt compelled to write anything or do anything lately. I've just been lying around, watching videos, helping MP Jr. with some PS2 games (as much as I can--I pretty much suck at those). I've got a test I should grade, but I don't want to do so. I will, of course, but I will wait until the last minute. I seemed to have hurt my elbow again, banged it on the car as I was getting in--and of course I hit it exactly on the scar, and exactly on the point that has been hurting me since the surgery, so now it is nice and swollen.

I feel blank, down and depressed to be sure, but mostly just blank. I don't have any real passion for anything at the moment. Everything, or nearly everything, seems like a chore that I just don't have the energy to attempt, much less complete. This too shall pass, I guess.

It's all just so much crap. I don't know how I am going to handle my classes this fall. I got my contract for next year in the mail a few days ago and I haven't signed it yet. I suppose I will, given the economy, but I really am struggling with the thoughts of spending yet another year doing what I do where I do it. Again, it's not that I can think of anything I'd rather do (which means not that I view my current occupation as great, but rather that all things seem equally distasteful).....Even things that I used to like to do don't interest me. How this has affected my blogging should be obvious to any poor soul who has made it this far.

I'm going to cut this short. I don't have anything to say and my elbow is really starting to smart. Plus I am overcome with another wave of sadness, depression, angst, ennui...whatever you want to label it....This really sucks.

OK, so now I feel depressed

2009-06-30T21:47:00.000-04:00

It hit me today like the proverbial ton of bricks. An overwhelming sadness washed over me as I drove from one campus to another in the merciless summer sun. This time is a little different than some of the others--both because I exhibited the symptoms without really feeling it for awhile and because some attitudes that I thought I had put behind me (being irritable towards everyone being the main one) are rearing their ugly heads. There is something else as well, but I'm hesitant to address it in this forum (though why I should be hesitant I don't know, as I've been a pretty open fucking book thus far).

Don't get me wrong...I don't feel like anyone owes me anything (or that 'life'--whatever that means--owes me anything, either). I'm not intending to whine. I hate my job. I'm going to keep doing it because I've got bills to pay, but I think I really hate teaching. And most of the students, too. Not all--there are some really good ones and they keep me from going totally out of my head. But the bad ones--oh dear Zeus the bad ones.....

I don't really know how to help them (or myself, for that matter). And by 'help' I mean 'meaningfully teach'. I'm not an old fart by any means but I am so disconnected with these students. I cannot understand their attitudes towards learning, towards the profound sorts of questions that philosophy asks...it's all about the grade, the test, the quiz. Granted, those things are important, but for many students they are merely a means to an end of getting a piece of paper that has their name on it, along with a degree of some sort. Again, I'm not knocking the importance of that at all....but there is more to it than that. I mean everything is ultimately pointless, but if you are going to spend a portion of what little time you do have in school, then you should at least give a fuck about it. Of course, you say, 'philosopher, heed your own words!'--you obviously don't give a fuck about teaching yet you do it....that's different, because I have bills to pay and mouths to feed. Add to that the fact that there isn't really anything I can see myself doing other than teaching philosophy. Oh well.

There is no zest left. I'm just going to go to my office tomorrow around 4, sit there for an hour, go to class and try to keep my own attention for a couple of hours, come home, get up and do it again. I get about 20-30 more years of that (if I'm lucky) and then I die. in the words of the great Leonard Cohen, "I've seen the future, baby, and it's murder..."

Scooby-Doo

2009-06-29T23:42:00.000-04:00

So in a break from the navel-gazing depression that characterizes most of my output, I want to talk about my love for all things Scooby-Doo. Actually, I don't have a love for all things Scooby-Doo--I have a pretty big tolerance for Scooby and the gang, but I refuse to watch anything with Scrappy-Doo in it (and if you've seen even one Scrappy-Doo episode you will understand why: He was Poochie before Poochie--in fact I don't want to soil the internet by typing his name--from now on I shall refer to him as The Abomination). I also don't care for the early to mid 80's episodes where they jettisoned Fred and Velma, leaving Scooby, Shaggy, Daphne and The Abomination in short 10-minute 'adventures' that sucked mightily. The short-run 13 Ghosts of Scooby Doo series isn't tolerable either. And the less said about the new series Scooby and Shaggy get a Clue! the better. The 80's movies (Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School, Scooby-Doo and the Reluctant Werewolf, Scooby-Doo and the Boo Brothers) are awful as well.   So what does that leave?

Well, there is the original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? ('69-'70 and '70-'71)--which was pretty cheaply produced but did have the virtue of some reasonably interesting plots and being pretty unique for its time. Also, it had the virtue of teaching rationalism (except for the sentient dog, of course). My point is that it taught that the supernatural was a bunch of guys (or ladies) in suits trying to scam someone out of money or property. It also had a pretty mixed group of characters--Shaggy the stoner, Velma the bookish lesbian, Daphne the shallow princess and Fred the needlessly overconfident jock (for a very postmodern take on the Scoobies, check out The Venture Brothers Season 2, episode 24, entitled 'Viva los Muertos!"--while you are at it, just watch The Venture Brothers--it may be the most consistently brilliant show ever, IMHO). Velma, Fred and Daphne have developed a bit over the years, but Shaggy and Scooby stay blissfully the same.  25 episodes here.

Then there are the New Scooby-Doo Movies featuring Scooby and the gang interacting with all manner of early-70's stars like Dick van Dyke, Sonny and Cher, The Three Stooges, The Addams Family, The Harlem Globetrotters and Phyllis Diller (of all people). 15 episodes are available on DVD, though 24 were produced. Apparently there were some rights issues that couldn't be worked out for various reasons (my assumption is that they all involve money).

After that, there are episodes that aired in 1976 in conjunction with another series called Dynomutt in The Scooby-Doo/Dynamutt Show.  Sadly, the DVD set includes the Dynamutt material which is abysmal. The Scooby episodes aren't bad, for the most part, and it's worth buying the set (used, preferably) for the 16 of them.

There were some episodes in 1977 as part of Scooby's Laugh-A-Lympics or something like that. There are only eight of these and I haven't seen them in years--not on DVD but I understand can be purchased on iTunes--perhaps found on youtube or the various torrents, if you are into that sort of thing.

A set of 16 1978 episodes have been release on DVD as Scooby-Doo, Where Are You Season 3. These are all ok as well, though like a lot of Hanna-Barbera stuff at the time it was produced on the cheap.

After this, The Abomination came on the scene, then Fred and Velma were moved off the show--so we shall not speak of this period from 1979 through 1988. Then came a re-imagining of the series entitled A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. I'm pretty indifferent to this series, though it has its adherents. Basically, it presents the Scooby gang as children, where they are juvenile parodies of their adult selves.

Jump ahead to 2002's What's New Scooby Doo? which is a generally excellent reboot of the series, if a bit too much focused on snowboarding and skating. The stories are top-notch and there is some real production value present. All 3 seasons are well worth buying--it's only 42 episodes all-together and most stores like Wal-Mart and Target sell each season for around $5.

If you can find it, there is a 2001 Cartoon Network-produced parody called Night of the Living Doo which is pretty good--also around this time there was an episode of the CN series Johnny Bravo that featured the Scoobies and was quite hilarious.

There have also been several direct to DVD movies, most of which have been pretty good--Scooby Doo on Zombie Island and Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost being a couple of favorites. The live-action movies are ok for what they are. Apparently Cartoon Network will start airing a new Scooby series in the US in November 09 which looks interesting based on the Wikipedia synopsis.

Now I realize that this was more a list of Scooby stuff I find worth watching more than an explanation of why I like it. I guess in some sense, it reminds me of being young when things were simpler (or at least seemed simpler). Also, my son enjoys Scooby (along with SpongeBob) and it is nice to rediscover the show with him. Beyond that, the show has, for me, a hard-to-define charm in most of its incarnations. I suppose part of it is the element of freedom the show represents--4 young adults and a dog, driving around the world and solving mysteries...never really going home (though a few episodes seem to take place in their hometown, though it is never referred to as such), just wandering. I am a bit of a wanderer at heart, though I don't do it much anymore. An ideal life for me would be just meandering around, working enough to get me to the next place. It's part of that longstanding feeling that I don't really belong anywhere, a feeling common to adoptees. I've just never really felt comfortable anywhere--I suppose the closest I came was graduate school in the midwestern US, though that was a quick 5 years that seemed over before it really began. And even that wasn't great--all the relationships were tempered with the awareness that you would be competing with these folks on the ever-shrinking philosophy job market (though I must say I am glad I'm not coming out of grad school right now or for the next few years....it's just abysmal for the rank-and-file sorts like myself).

So maybe I am back to navel-gazing. A lot of things that one finds meaningful are for boring, personal reasons, though--who knows the mysteries of the human heart? as Jim Broadbent said in The Crying Game.

I don't feel depressed

2009-06-28T18:22:00.001-04:00

...but I guess I am. I've been feeling at least less bad if not good lately and I still don't have the dreary feeling that comes over me when I am depressed. Yet I've had a headache for a couple of days, a lot of tension in my neck, been feeling like doing nothing but staying in bed and watching movies or old episodes of Perry Mason. I've been off in my sleep as well and I don't seem to be taking care of myself as well as I might of late. All of these are classic symptoms of depression for me. It's just odd.

Are you depressed if you don't feel down?

Why is it that when you ask people for evidence or argument for their beliefs, they tend to get upset? I would say it could be the way one asks, but I do my best not to be dismissive or disdainful. If you believe in God, or think that abortion is wrong, I'd like to know why. I guess some people just don't like talking about such things--or maybe they recognize when asked that they don't have an argument to offer. Which is fine by me, so long as they know why they don't have an argument (maybe they think that God's existence is based purely on faith or that expression of moral judgments are really just expression of sentiments--then we can talk about that.)

We've been talking about God in my Intro class this summer and so many students are taking criticisms of Anselm as personal challenges to their belief, and so feel that they need to add a defense of Xianity to the class, no matter how inane it might be. Focus is an issue--everything is about them, the darling little snowflakes, all special in their own way.

I had one student who had never heard of materialism (briefly put, the metaphysical view that the physical universe and all in it is all that exists). She was seriously freaking out in class over the idea that someone might not believe that people have souls, that we humans are purely physical entities. The glory of being 18 and having all the answers, I suppose. I was there once, and it is probably good to remind myself that what might seem non-controversial to me might be something that a student is hearing expressed for the first time in her or his life. I'm not saying that I am a materialist, mind you, but I can at least conceive that such a view might be the case.

And now a word from the masked philosopher, Jr.: i'm not interested in something.

MP here--I think Jr. is off to a good start in philosophy.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for some asshole you don't know

2009-06-26T15:33:00.000-04:00

I was 8 years old when Elvis died. I don't really remember a lot of my childhood (more because it was stunningly unremarkable than particularly horrible), but I do remember that day when my dad came to pick me up from playing mini-golf. I got in the car and he told me "Elvis is dead". I think my dad admired Elvis, though not to the point that some fetishized him. I think in some ways he believed he could relate to Elvis' story--both from small towns in the South, both with a skill (dad's was football) that made them the center of attention (again, though, my dad on much more of a local level--he wouldn't be anyone you ever heard of for reasons I'll get to in a minute), both who left their promise unfulfilled (Elvis because he was a weak man surrounded by enablers, dad because he got hurt playing at the major college level and because he couldn't overcome his homesickness for the shitty part of South Alabama--I give the location because that part of the state is all so shitty that it doesn't betray what anonimity I have left) and both who died young (Elvis at 42 due to drugs, dad at 44 due to cancer).

So what does this have to do with anything? As I observe the furor surrounding Micheal Jackson's death, I can't halp but think about how much like Elvis he seemed to be. They both lived in a simulcra of ordinary life--they lived in the world but could not interact with it because their fans had turned them into something they weren't. The seemed to live an existence where they could observe the ordinary world (think of Elvis' TV room at Graceland) but never be a part of it in any meaningful way. And they both seemed to be surrounded by leeches, enablers, yes-men who wanted to keep the simulcra going because it made their own existence possible. Of course there are some differences as well, the differences between Mississippi/Memphis in the 40's and Gary, Indiana in the 60's, the fact that Elvis tended not to have to pay young men millions of dollars in order that they be silent, and others as well.

So Michael Jackson is dead and I don't get why it is supposed to serve as some source of reflection or grief. I didn't know him, you didn't know him (most likely--I have no idea who reads this blog so if you are McCauley Culkin or Corey Feldman consider yourselves excepted) and at best he, like Elvis, represented what we wanted them to be rather than what they were. I suppose that if you grew up with MJ's music, his death might make you grieve for your lost youth, for times that seemed simpler or better (though that were pretty much like they are now, but with worse technology). But that isn't grief so much as feeling sorry for oneself.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not glad MJ died. I never really cared for his music and he hasn't even been relevant in that field in 15 years. I'm not mocking anyone who feels sad about this so much as wondering why they do. You live, you die--so does everyone else. It seems disingenuous to attach any importance to the death of another who you did not and would not have known. It's your own job to think about how you live and die, about your own mortality. To do so vicariously is useless.

3 A.M.

2009-06-24T03:05:00.000-04:00

is far too early to be up and just a bit too late to go to bed. Oh well. I don't think I have anything of consequence to say, so I will just go lie in bed and stare at the ceiling fan. Maybe I'll make myself a gimlet (equal parts gin and rose's lime juice). I'm not having a dark night of the soul or anything like that--I just can't get to sleep.

Well, then

2009-06-23T01:02:00.000-04:00

Another surprisingly good class this evening. I'm not going soft, but I have to give credit where credit is due--and I am relatively impressed with this one summer class...the other not so much, but even they aren't as bad as I had feared, though they tend to run very hot and cold.

Other than that, I don't have much going on. I've been reading a lot of 'meta-fiction' lately, Jasper Fforde in particular. He has two series, Thursday Next (the main character's name) and Nursery Crime Division (featuring Inspector Jack Spratt) that play rather fast and loose with a lot of literary conventions but are the more enjoyable for it. I also read Jedediah Berry's 'The Manual of Detection', which started out really well but ended in a very obtuse manner...I think I will have to go back and read it again to make sure that the problem was with the book and not with me. I am a sucker for detective fiction....I suppose that is one reason that I got into philosophy. For me, the essence of philosophy is skepticism..but the Greek word skepticos doesn't mean "doubter" so much as "investigator". I don't know if I am a good investigator nor do I have a clear idea of what it is that I am investigating, but it is nice to think of myself in those terms. Sherlock Holmes, Philip Marlowe, Lew Archer and me--3 great fictional detectives and one work of fiction.

I suppose that one attraction of detective fiction is that, most of the time at least, there is a clear problem to work out and an answer that is pretty clearly correct. This seems to be so the opposite of what I experience as I work my way through philosophy (and life) that it is refreshing to see someone who can work things out.

I'm amazed at how quickly June is sliding by. It doesn't really bother me as much as it might have in the past, but it is still remarkable. I'm sure that as I age, time will seem to move faster and faster.

I don't get people who believe that vaccinations cause autism. I think what these folks are doing is ensuring that a bunch of diseases that were nearly eradicated are going to come back with a vengeance (hello whooping cough and measles!). Autism is overdiagnosed anyway--it seems to be the disorder du jour in the never-ending attempt of doctors and educators (and parents) to classify and micro-manage children and their development. Just because a child is idiosyncratic doesn't mean he or she has Asperger's or some other form of autism. I think that idiots like Jenny McCarthy (well-intentioned idiots, perhaps, but idiots, and dangerous idiots at that) should investigate a fallacy known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this)...it deals with the all-too-common confusion of correlation with causation. Life is fundamentally a pointless mystery--trying to classify the shit out of everything won't change that, and it won't make you feel better.

Lessons

2009-06-19T23:13:00.000-04:00

I did the group work thing with the class the other day and it went pretty well. They seem to know a bit more than I gave them credit for...at least the best of them do. My elbow is killing me, so this will be short. I took a couple of hydrocodone and I probably shouldn't even be writing.

I don't know that I can teach anymore. It's not so much the students, though that is part of it. It's me. I just don't have it anymore. Whatever it is. Maybe I never did. Maybe I got where I am out of chance, by staggering down the path of least resistance.

I see myself in Polonius's speech from Hamlet, I identify with Polonius, just a guy who plays with words:
Madam, I swear I use no art at all.
That he is mad, 'tis true: 'tis true 'tis pity;
And pity 'tis 'tis true. A foolish figure!
But farewell it, for I will use no art.
Mad let us grant him then. And now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect-
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause.
Thus it remains, and the remainder thus.
Perpend.

Mofongo

2009-06-19T01:48:00.000-04:00

So I did something tonight that I don't normally do--went and hung out with one of my fellow professors. We went to a great Cuban/Latino restaurant where I had a nice plate of Mofongo with steak and a couple of ice-cold Tecates (Tecate is a great, great beer from Mexico). Mofongo is a Puerto Rican dish--it is essentially plantains mashed with a lot of garlic, then topped with sauteed onions, peppers and marinated skirt steak. It was phenomenal. I ate about 6 hours ago and I still feel full, in a good way.

We then went back to his house where we shot the shit and worked on killing a bottle of pinot noir. Before I left, he gave me a really large bottle of Tanqueray--those of you who have been with me a while know that this is my favorite alcoholic beverage. I love a Tanqueray and tonic with a twist of lime. To be honest, if I had things just the way I want them, I would have a constant supply of Bombay Sapphire---as long as it is a good gin, I'm ok with it.

I suppose now I will enter the 'charming drunk' phase of my life, followed by 'lonely drunk', 'unemployed drunk' and then 'drunken bum'. Now to sleep, perchance to dream....

oh the little darlings

2009-06-17T00:55:00.000-04:00

And now for a few words about my students. There is one particular branch campus where the students are noted for their horrid attitudes and general shiftlessness. And guess who is teaching there this summer? Of course I am.

After a less than scintillating class today, I asked the little darlings what I could do to get them more involved. The three most common answers were: 1) Group work; 2) show more videos; 3) ask us what we think about the topics under discussion.

However: 1) group work becomes social hour all too quickly; 2) there aren't any videos about the ontological argument and 3) I don't give a fuck about what you think.

I told them on day 1 that the class wasn't about them--that it was to inform them about what some leading philosophers thought about some of the great questions humankind can ask. Why I would want to know what some barely literate suburbanite thinks? What sort of cognitive value could there be in their half-formed grunts and puzzled expressions. It's like the beginning of 2001--philosophy is the monolith and they are just a bunch of screaming apes, dancing around with a bone in one hand and a fistful of feces in the other. These folks don't have the patience to get through 2-3 pages of readings.......they have no subtlety of mind, though subtlety and nuance are not things widely praised or encouraged in the USA of today--be loud, be crude, and above all wrap everything up in 140 characters or less. It's no surprise that it is called "twitter"--only a twit could find value in it.

Maybe I just will show movies the rest of the summer. They would probably get about as much out of that as anything else. Maybe philosophy is dead. Maybe I've lost my touch. Maybe I'm a clown. Maybe I'm back to waiting around to die.

A carefully reasoned youtube video about economics

2009-06-15T12:59:00.000-04:00

This is quite odd, alternately hilarious and sobering.

What would impress me

2009-06-13T13:42:00.000-04:00

In a comment to my last post, Medusa asked a good question: What would a president have to do to leave a positive impression on me? I've been thinking about this a bit; turning over various criteria in my mind. What it boils down to is this: Respect the Constitution. Now I don't think the Constitution is a perfect document by any means, but it has served fairly well for 200+ years.

But my answer isn't really an answer, because it brings the following question: What does it mean to respect the Constitution? First, I would say that a president who respected the Constitution would eschew signing statements. Essentially, these are comments made by the President when he signs a bill into law. Historically, these comments were somewhat inocuous, generally praising a bill. In recent years, stating especially with Ronald Reagan and continuing with the contemptible Bill Clinton abd the odious George W Bush, the signing statements have been used to indicate portions of the bill that the President finds objectionable that he will either ignore or apply in ways that he (and his crack, ideologically driven staff of lawyers) finds constitutional. Let's see what the Constitution has to say about that:
From Article 1, Section 7:
Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law.

It seems apparent that the President has two choices--sign the law if he agrees with it, veto it if he does not. To go beyond that abrogates the function of the legislative branch.

From Article 2, section 3:
...he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,
Now this is more ambiguous--what does 'faithfully executed' mean? Is the purpose of the President to execute the bills he signs into law regardless of whether or not he finds them personally to be constitutional or does the President/Executive Branch have the Constitutional authority to interpret the constitutionality of the law? I hope I haven't asked the question in a loaded way or made a false dilemma. I worry the way I phrased the latter part of the disjunct could be a straw man--phrased in such a way as to be a misrepresentation of the positio of the executive branch. Though, to be fair, the justification that the executive branch has given, or at least that Dick Cheney gave through GWB, was that the President took the constitutional provisions that established his authority to supervise the unitary executive branch to supercede particular provisions of bills he signed into law. Again, though, there is an ambiguity in what it means to 'supervise'....

Those concerns aside, it strikes me that, in,light of section 1 Aricle 7, that the power of the Executive Branch does not include the power to interpret the constitutionality of the provisions of a law. That clearly is a judicial function. Of course, it could be argued that when the President issues a signing statement, he is determining whether or not the provisions of the laws in question are constitutional or not, but rather whether they conflict with his Constitutional duties. That seems to me to be a distinction without a difference. An interpretative question like that seems judicial in nature.

So, then, the point of all this is to say that I would be impressed with a President who used his veto power rather than the rather more weaselly signing statement.

I would also be impressed with a President who did not seem to hold that there was a quasi-messianic function to his office. I do not think this nation needs an executive cheerleader or therapist or spiritual figure or anything of that sort. This was covered quite well in Reason magazine's June 2008 issue, in Gene Healy's article "The Cult of the Presidency", which is in turn adapted from his book of the same name. I would say the ideal president was George Washington. I'm also fond of Calvin Coolidge (though, again, that does not mean I endorse everything he did) and, to a certain extent, both Dwight Eisenhower and Andrew Jackson. The worst Presidents would be Woodrow Wilson, James Buchanan, and FDR.

Anyway, this isn't that complete--I find it to be quite sketchy, honestly. But it is a start, and it is interesting to write something that isn't about how pointless everything is (well, it still is, but as I said last time, one has to live).

Day after day after day, ad nauseam

2009-06-12T12:36:00.001-04:00

So I thought about a band last night that I was really into about 20 years ago but had pretty much forgotten. Thanks to the magic of youtube, I found some of their work. I can't embed the video thanks to the good folks at Sony/BMG (who one would think would not mind someone promoting one of their back catalog artists....), but click the link below. it won't disappoint (and no, it's not a Rickroll):
Birth, School, Work, Death

Now I am going to have to find a copy of the CD/MP3.....Flying Spaghetti Monster, what a great band--way before their time--I can see that with the benefit of 20 years' hindsight. I did a bit of checking on the interwebs and it turns out that they are still around (albeit with a hiatus or two over the years). I would love to see them. It's not pining for my rapidly receding youth--good music is good music. I don't look back with fondness on Journey or REO Speedwagon or high school (except the parts where I got to hang out with Mrs. MP--yes, we've been together that long).

But other than the brief joy occasioned by rediscovering a great band, today is pretty much like every other day of late. I get up, take MP jr. to summer day camp, come back and hang out with Mrs. MP, fart around on the internet a bit, maybe read a bit, go pick up MP jr. dinner, tv, sleep. Rinse. Repeat. I guess I'm not intending to complain so much as just make an observation. I know full well that I could change the pattern but, as I've observed here on more than one occasion, there is no real change. One series of events is pretty much like any other (though some might be preferable to others, at least from the standpoint of the participant). I could be doing this in London, Mumbai, Bangkok, Sydney, Nairobi or Fargo and it would be the same. Sure, there are different things to do in each city (just ask David Carradine), but in the end it boils down to eating, sleeping, pissing, shitting and fucking (and I mean the last three both literally and figuratively). We are powerless in the face of life and death. So now what? Ephemera and triviality--that's what (this is a blog on the internet, after all)!

My arm is much better. Still a fair bit of numbness in my little finger, but all in all a vast improvement over my pre-surgery condition. Stitches (all 14 of them) come out Monday.

The angst I was feeling the other day has mutated a bit--I hesitate to say 'abated', even though I'm done with class for the week. It's still there, just not manifesting itself as an intense repulsion of a particular activity.

Some of you have perhaps heard of the tempest in the teapot that is the dissension between Sarah Palin, erstwhile Governor of Seward's Folly, and David Letterman, beloved but irrelevant American late-night talk-show host. He made a couple of jokes about her while she was visiting New York and she decided to radically misinterpret what he said to stimulate conservative outrage. So, in the spirit of all that, allow me to share a Sarah Palin joke I heard the other day: You know the difference between Sarah Palin's mouth and her vagina? Only one retarded thing has come out of her vagina. There, maybe she'll complain about me now. Letterman was clearly making jokes about Eliot Spitzer and Alex Rodriguez--Palin and her camp are simply using this to stir up some mock outrage for political purposes. let me make myself very clear: Sarah Palin is the sort of person who deserves an Angry Pirate every day of her worthless life. Since she wants to be president, perhaps we could finish things off with an Abe Lincoln. There are no images at the links above, though the definitions are pretty clearly detailed.

I know, I know, that's all really juvenile and not becoming a philosophy professor. Yeah, well....self-righteous, thoughtless, statist right-wingers bring out the worst in my libertarian heart. Some people are so vile, so absent of any redeeming qualities that they don't deserve serious treatment or discussion. The fact that this nutjob is Governor of Alaska is about the most sweeping indictment of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of (a) the people of Alaska, (b) the right wing of the Republican party, (c) the American political scene, (d) American journalism and (e) well, the whole fucking human race (though, of course, her governorship is only one bit of an overwhelming pile of evidence for the last of these).

And the 'retarded' reference in the (admittedly mean-spirited) joke above, while it refers within the context of the joke itself to a mentally disabled child Palin bore, is clearly not an attack on that child or on mentally disabled people in general. It is a comment on the vacuous nature of every single thing that comes out of Palin's mouth. So maybe that is more serious treatment and discussion than Palin deserves--it just befuddles (note, I said "befuddles" not "surprises") me that people react without thinking about what is actually being said and the context within which the saying occurs.

It's still okay to mock the absurdity of life, even though you can't do anything about it. One lives anyway.

Anxiety, you win

2009-06-10T15:25:00.000-04:00

I have to go to class and I seem to be really nervous today for some reason. 'Nervous' probably isn't the best word. I'm not sure what is. 'Dread' maybe? But words like that imply that I care about my job or my students. I suppose that whatever it is that I'm feeling is based in the fact that I don't want to be teaching this summer at all--much less today.

Maybe analyzing it in this format is an attempt to control it, or at least to face it--whatever it is. I suppose that angst might capture it. I understand angst through Sartre and Kierkegaard (though I must confess that the latter's Concept of Dread is a really hard book for me to understand or even read much at a sitting.) I think the general notion of angst is one of anxiety, but anxiety in the face of nothingness. It's the realization that I am in control of my voluntary actions, that I am solely responsible for my voluntary actions but at the same time that those actions are performed in a universe devoid of meaning, even self-created meaning. I suppose that I am joining the existentialist notion of angst with a burgeoning nihilism. I think I would agree with Camus about the absurdity (or Absurdity) of the world--where we disagree is in our reaction to it. I think that Camus, romantic that he was, held on to some idea that enduring absurdity, being unbowed by or before it, has value. I don't see that as being the case. I agree that absurdity can be endured, but there is no value created or lesson learned--far from it. Life is an endurance of absurdity--when life ends, absurdity ends (so far as I know, which isn't very far...I suppose I wouldn't be too shocked at some sort of future state much like this one, only amplified. My conservative Baptist upbringing, I guess, with heaven and hell pounded into me at a young age, leaving an obvious impression).

I need a drink.

Summer, summer, summer

2009-06-09T18:20:00.000-04:00

Summer term has started. I have met with both of my classes, though my left arm is still bandaged and somewhat painful--it itches sometimes, sometimes stings, very rarely just out and out hurts. It always feels better in the morning. As I go through the day, it gets weaker/number/more problematic/more swollen. Still, overall it is better than before the surgery and seems to be improving.

I don't like summer. A lot of kids have great memories of summer, growing up, playing with other kids, having fun. My summers weren't like that. In the first place, I grew up in a very rural area where there really weren't a lot of other kids around (or really anything much to do). I spent most of my summers working--either in the garden at my home (and it was a big garden--a couple of acres of squash, beans, peas, tomatoes and so on) or, when I got older at a succession of menial jobs outside the home. Every so often we would take a trip to the beach--sometimes we would all sleep in a beat-up van my dad had, or one of the succession of second-hand campers ('caravans' for my Brit readers) that he tinkered with and discarded. And even there I didn't really know anybody and my social skills weren't conducive to making friends quickly (or at all).

My classes seem ok, I guess. Lots of nurses, as my college makes Intro to Philosophy a 'strong recommendation' for students who want to enter the nursing program (or want to bridge from an LPN degree to the more advanced RN). I'm not really looking forward to it. Nurses tend to be a pretty dry and humorless lot, a "just the facts, please' sort of group. Many of them never quite get the relationship between Nursing and philosophy--though I suppose that is at least in part due to the fact that I haven't made it so clear. I am, quite frankly, just marking time at this point. I don't know for what purpose--I'm just fulfilling the requirements of my position and nothing more. I don't care if they learn anything, I don't care if they view the class as an eye-opening experience, I don't care if they are bored shitless--it just doesn't matter. If they really gave a shit, they wouldn't be taking the class in the fucking summer term anyway. I just want to get through with it--not because I'm looking forward to anything else, but because I can't stand what I'm doing and I don't have any hope of finding something better or even different.

Summer is just heat and sweat and stink and stinging bugs. Summer is congested highways and people forcing themselves to have 'fun'--whatever that means. Summer is the rape of reason, the forced set-aside of the reflection brought on by autumn and winter in return for a promise of a future that is a bright, shining lie. Summer is a false optimism (pardon the redundancy) wrapped in a razor smile. I don't like summer.

Change, no change

2009-06-07T11:09:00.000-04:00

Arm is still sore. Mrs. MP changed my bandage today and it is a long, ugly incision. Apparently the doctor had to do a bit more than he planned as I had some sort of rare 'extra muscle' in my arm that was interfering with the ulnar nerve. It can never be anything simple with me...I can't get a cold, I have to get pneumonia (I'm not talking about being a hypochondriac either--I legitimately cannot seem to have a simple illness), I can't get mono, I have to have a liver infection along with it....and on and on and on.

Glad you made it back from Vermont, AA, I've always wanted to go there and I enjoyed the pictures. It's too bad I'm not a better philosopher so that I might have a shot at a North-eastern liberal arts school. Oh well.

back to life

2009-06-06T12:57:00.000-04:00

Things are better now, as I am typing two-handed, albeit gingerly. I don't want to proclaim the operation an immediate success, but overall I feel better. Mrs. MP has been great, taking care of me (she always does, but has been even greater these last few days). I think the real issue is not overdoing it--trying to do too much too quickly. Even writing these few lines has made my arm hurt a bit, so I won't go on much longer here. I will take the surgery bandages off tomorrow and replace it with a bandage over the incision site (My arm is wrapped in a rather bulky fashion now).

I'm going to watch a movie--just pick something off netflix at random and watch it.

it's all good

2009-06-04T03:18:00.000-04:00

short post because I am typing one-handed, but I wanted to let you all know that I came through the sugery ok and, other than being a bit sore, seem to be fine. I'll post more later.

So then

2009-06-02T22:02:00.000-04:00

Surgery in the morning (6 AM!). It's just an outpatient thing, as I've mentioned, but they are going to put me under. That's probably for the best--for something like that (left anterior ulnar nerve transposition) I'd rather be unconscious. The numbness and discomfort has taken a turn for the worse of late, so I suppose that this is the best course of action.

The May mini-term is over except for the final. A colleague will proctor it for me. It's a scantron final--I don't usually do that, but lately I wonder why not? At this point, I just want to get things done as quickly as possible. I will have all of five days to recuperate, then things take a turn for the summer term. I'm teaching two classes, one in town, one at a branch campus site about 30 miles away. I'm not looking forward to it, but the fact that I having given these lectures several times means my prep can be nil.

I'm pretty tired and my hand/arm is aching, so I will make this a bit briefer than I normally do.

Abortion and Murder

2009-05-31T18:12:00.000-04:00

I wasn't going to blog today because I have a shitload of things to do, but I had to take a minute and write about the murder of late-term abortion Provider Dr. George Tiller today as he was serving as an usher in his church.

I would say this--much of the anti-abortion rhetoric that one hears is quite inflammatory. Some anti-abortion advocates are, quite frankly, mentally unbalanced (and I am not saying that being anti-abortion means that someone is mentally unbalanced--indeed, I would assert that nearly all of these folks were mentally unbalanced before becoming attached to the violent anti-abortion fringe and that they would be mentally unbalanced regardless of the movement to which they became attached. That said, I don't recall the last time I read about a pro-choice advocate killing an anti-abortionist). When you add needlessly inflammatory speech to a mentally unbalanced person who thinks they are doing what God tells them to do....you get murdered abortion providers. And of course the killer must not have been too convinced of his rectitude, as he fled the scene. If you are really convinced that killing someone is the right thing to do, the least you can do is not be a fucking coward about it.

So where do I stand on abortion? I've been thinking about that a good bit over the years. On the one hand, as a male I will most likely never have to face the decision to abort (there is some slim chance that I might have to make such a decision if my wife were pregnant, incapacitated, needed an abortion to prevent her death and had not made her wishes known to me ahead of time). Even taking that into account, it doesn't seem that the fact I am male disqualifies me from having a moral position on this topic.

I suppose that I am moderately pro-choice. I do not see anything morally problematic with the use of contraception that works to prevent fertilization or devices that allow fertilization but not implantation because in both cases I do not believe a subject exists that can be harmed by preventing or terminating its existence. For that same reason, I have no moral qualms about first trimester abortion--I do not believe that a being in its first trimester of development has an appreciable degree of moral standing. It seems to me to be necessary, but not sufficient, that to have moral standing (and believe me, I am aware that what I am about to say is very much oversimplified), a being must be in a position to be able to survive (even if in need of indirect assistance) independently of a direct physical connection to another.

There is more to say, but some of the things I've got to do really, really require my attention--so I will come back to this before too long.

Lie to me

2009-05-29T22:37:00.003-04:00

I was sitting here looking at the CD's I've accumulated over the years--an accumulation that has stopped--I don't buy much music any more and when I do I buy mp3's. For some reason I have Cheap Trick's Greatest Hits. Where did this come from? When did I get it? When was the last time I listened to it, if ever?

I haven't thought about Cheap Trick in 15 years--yet here their CD sits. I look at the track listing and it, by and large, sucks.

I've accumulated so much stuff over the years that means nothing, yet I hold on to it out of...inertia? I don't know. It's just odd.

I had my long-awaited meeting with my therapist today and we cleared the air a bit. I think I was transferring some of my own difficulties onto her, then interpreting what she said in light of that transference. So we meet again in three weeks. We do a lot of talk therapy and it seems to help, though exactly how is difficult for me to articulate. It has helped me in some ways and opened my eyes to some things I was doing that had become so ingrained that I didn't even realize I was doing them. There comes a point at which you go through certain motions for so long that those motions become who you are. I suppose that is just about as good as anything else, and it is certainly a lot less work than trying to constantly re-invent yourself--or than taking responsibility for who you are.

I went to graduate school in the Midwest, typical college town. I miss it sometimes. I had friends then, as grad students there was, for a time, a certain sense of togetherness, of unanimity of purpose. Then, towards the end, we realized that we would be competing with each other on the job market and a certain distance evolved. Then there was the distance between those who found jobs and those who did not. I stay in intermittent contact with one person from those days. I'm not complaining, or not intending to complain....communication is a two-way street and I am really bad about letting relationships die out of benign neglect. But people move on and the things that might have united you at one point become nothing more than distant memories. It's just what happens. You can fight it, but you won't win.

I've been undergoing this process with my birthmom. I had noticed the last few times she came to visit that she was spending time talking to my wife, my daughter, my son and not much with me. We don't have much in common and I don't excel at small talk (and, quite frankly, talk). And so we went about 4 months without speaking, we talked for about 10 minutes on Mother's Day, she told me we should stay in touch, and I haven't heard from her in two weeks. I know, I know, it's a two-way street. But for the longest time, it seems like I've been the one making the effort to maintain communication. I suppose that the reason I looked for her is because I wanted something from her, even if I wasn't exactly sure what that was. I still don't know what it is in anything more than a nebulous way, really, but I am beginning to suspect that I won't find it. Maybe I wanted her to be my mother in more than just a biological sense; that she would have the wisdom and willingness to sooth the hurts that I have experienced (and, perhaps even to absolve me of the hurts that I have caused, insofar as someone can do that). Maybe I just wanted her to hold me and tell me that everything was going to be ok, that things would work out for the best, that there would be some happy ending out there for us. I guess I just wanted her to lie to me.

Feh

2009-05-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

The May mini-term is almost over. I have a lot of transient students and they are making the class more bearable than usual. Indeed, given that the class takes place in 2.5 weeks, most of the students in the class are good, motivated students. I've probably said all this before.

I'm supposed to have elbow surgery next Wednesday. I was feeling better yesterday and wasn't sure I was going to go through with it. Today is another story. I'm afraid that they are going to get in there and not find anything amiss. But I do have symptoms and it's not all in my head.

It was hot here today. I don't like summer, never have. Growing up summer just meant working in the garden, cutting grass, maybe the occasional trip to the beach. It was just another season, except filled with heat and bugs. I'm not trying to evoke sympathy here--I probably had as good a childhood as most. But I lived on in the middle of nowhere, didn't have any friends that lived close by and my parents weren't inclined to drive me to someone's house to go and play. The one time I had some guys over to spend the night for my birthday, my dad made us go to bed by 9 PM and then yelled at us for talking. None of them ever came back over and most of them didn't want to hang out with me after that. People will invariably hurt you and disappoint you and when you think that you've been hurt and disappointed all you can be, someone will come along and open up whole new vistas of hurt. I guess it would be worth it if there was some life lesson to be taught or some growth that was possible, but, alas, there isn't.

I've forgotten so much. I don't think that there is some trauma that I am blocking out. I just forget a lot. Not the bad things, though. They are my constant fucking companions.

Let me explain why I hate my sister (actually we are both adopted, so she is my sister only by state fiat--I would hardly be able to stand it if we actually had some blood relationship. One of the few benefits of being adopted is that no matter how bad things get, you can always remember that you aren't really related to any of these fuckers and that one day you'll never talk to any of them again). I remember once--and I may have told this story before--we were out with the youth group from the church we attended. I was probably 13, the person who isn't really my sister would have been 6. I had been having a pretty good night....I didn't have much in common with the hayseeds that constituted the bulk of the youth group, but every now and then we tolerated each other. I noticed that the genetic abomination who is not really my sister was standing in the middle of the youth group and, suddenly, they burst into laughter. Apparently, she had told them something deeply personal about me, something that no 13 year old would want told no matter how close he is, or is not, to the youth group.....she was laughing too....when I went to my parents, they laughed, acted like it was no big deal. They always let her stupid ass off easily....she fucking got away with everything. Anyway, I decided then and there that I would never forgive her and that I would be as distant from her as I can possibly be. Once my adoptive mom passes away, and her I will miss, I could easily see never talking to the lump of flesh masquerading as a sister ever again. And that would still not be long enough.

I'm sure I wrote about that before. I don't really go back and read what I've written very much. It's too depressing to see how I started off by actually doing some philosophy and have devolved into masturbatory navel-gazing.

I see my therapist tomorrow. I may end our sessions. I still feel hurt over what transpired last time. I think she thinks I'm an asshole. She's probably right, though not for the reasons she thinks. I may not end them--I don't know. I feel like she thinks I'm wasting her time, though she would never tell me that. I'm oblivious, but I'm not stupid.

Yeah, that's about enough. Had graduation last weekend, quite boring except for one brief moment near the end--I would say too brief, but all pleasurable moments are too brief by their very nature. Pleasure exists only to end, to be replaced with regret--perhaps regret that it didn't continue, or regret that it wasn't what you thought it would be, or regret that you didn't make more of it when you had the chance. There's no real point to regret, because what's done is done and can't be undone...but I think that is what makes it so powerful. It is a microcosm of our existence, something we endure though there is no point to it.

So what is there? I'm reminded of a line from Blue Velvet, "Let's fuck! I'll fuck anything that moves!" Seems as meaningful as anything else.

Goodbye Newcastle United, Hello Exeter City

2009-05-25T09:46:00.001-04:00

In a break from the normal morbid navel-gazing that typifies my output of late, let me take a minute to express my disppointment of Newcastle United's relegation from the English Premier League to The Championship League. I am not a huge soccer fan, but I do enjoy the EPL. I decided a few years ago to adopt an EPL team as my own (I've never been to England) and I picked Newcastle united. Why? Not sure, really. Newcastle is pretty far away from everything, or so it seems looking on a map, and it is a depressed northern industrial town. Plus they have the snazzy black and white uniforms and a rabid fan-base, and a reputation for never winning anything of consequence despite having several advantages in terms of money.

What I didn't realize is how thoroughly mis-manged the team has been. They have thrown money at over-rated players, been through a series of barely competent managers (hopefully they will keep Alan Shearer) and are owned by a complete tool. The result? Relegation. Basically there are a variety of levels of soccer in England--the Premier League, the Championship league, League One, League Two and then the English Conference, and so on (which extends all the way down to local club teams--think "a bunch of guys getting together and playing on a Saturday" type of thing). There is potential for movement between the leagues (though at a certain point it becomes difficult to move from the lower conferences--essentially amateur leagues, to the mid-level professional leagues). In the EPL, the bottom three teams each season are sent down to the Championship league and the top two teams from the Championship league (plus the winner of a playoff from teams 3-6) are moved up to the EPL. Most teams that move tend to alternate between the EPL and the Championship league (Crystal Palace, Wolverhampton, Bormingham--the latter two are moving up this year, along with the winner of a playoff between Burnley and Sheffield united--another one-season EPL wonder from a few years ago). Of course, it is possible to go from the EPL one season to the championship league and then to league one the next year--a feat accomplished this year by Norwich City, Southampton and Charlton Athletic. Going from one league down to another means losing money--the EPL is big time, big money, the Champions league not so big, not so much money and so on. Of course, with the loss in money comes the loss of big money players (no big deal in Newcastle's case, as they had a ton of money invested in players who weren't worth it).

I guess an analogous way to think about it (not a perfect analogy because of the way Major League baseball is set up, where Major League teams own AAA, AA and single A teams) would be where the worst 3 MLB teams were sent to AAA and replaced by the top AAA teams; the worst AAA sent to AA and so on.

I don't want to be a front-runner, abandoning a team just because they aren't successful. Maybe, though, it would be permissible to abandon a team for squandering their potential--to give up on them because of their cluelessness and lack of passion. All Newcastle had to do to stay up was to win or tie against Aston Villa. They lost 1-0 on an own goal--a perfect metaphor for the way they have been the last few years. Worse still, the own goal occurred in the 38th minute, which means that they had an entire half to score one goal. Granted, a lot of EPL games end 1-0. but with relegation staring them in the face, you'd think you'd see a bit of effort.

Given that, I've decided to put my support for the 'Toon on the back-burner for a bit. For no real reason, and picking at random, I think I will support Exeter City for the forseeable future. They play in St. James park (same name as Newcastle United's park), though geographically they are on the opposite side of England in the south-west, Devon, to be exact). They have had a rough go of it as a club over the years--especially lately with some financial mismanagement-- and seem to be succeeding with less resources...moving from the Conference in 07-08 to League Two in 08-09 and now for the upcoming season to League One. Add to that their team nickname is 'The Grecians'--what better team for a philosopher to support?!

Up, Down, what's the difference?

2009-05-23T17:51:00.001-04:00

I guess I'm just exhausted, mentally speaking. I've been down so long that, in a very perverse way, I don't notice it so much lately. Well, that and an increase in my dose of Wellbutrin. Mostly the former, though--once you've been continually disappointed and horrified and saddened by your experiences, you grow numb. Maybe it is some self-preservation kicking in--the brain saying, "OK buddy, time to sit out a few plays" or some such.

So I started the above 3 days ago and am just now coming back to it. It's not that I am bored with blogging...or that I am busy....I guess it is just ennui (and pain in my fingers). I went to a specialist about the numbness in my fingers and he told me what I suspected--cubital tunnel syndrome (like carpal tunnel, but in the elbow). I'm due to have outpatient surgery on 6/3 to alleviate some of the pressure on the ulnar nerve, at which point it can begin healing and my fingers and palm will quit alternating between numb and tingly. I'm not afraid of surgery, though I've been fortunate enough in my life not to have gone under the knife except once (tonsils back in 1975). So we'll see what happens. Hopefully it will help--the doctor seemed to think that it would and that I would recover full functionality of my hand (it has gotten very weak of late).

I still think that our lives alternate between boredom and horror. We deceive ourselves (either willfully or, all too often, through a profound lack of reflection) into thinking that we are amused, having a good time, are happy--all of these are just species of boredom that seem different only in relief against the horrors that plague us. Indeed, we may seek boredom so that we do not have to reflect on the horror of our condition. There's more to it than this...but between my numb fingers and my numb mind, I can only handle about a paragraph at a time.

Wittgenstein's Wisdom

2009-05-19T19:11:00.000-04:00

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Truer words have hardly ever been spoken and I have been taking them to heart of late. My days go by whether I post here or not, the world spins merrily on regardless of what I do or don't do.....

I have also damaged my ulnar nerve in my left arm. I am going to have a nerve conduction test and EMG tomorrow. From what I can tell, they both hurt. So it goes.

I am teaching in a mini-mester right now--2 1/2 weeks and then I get a week off before two classes in an 8 week summer term. The students in my mini-mester class are pretty good, with a couple of exceptions. I have a lot of transient students, which is an interesting break for me. I hardly know how to act among students who do the reading I assign and want to discuss philosophical matters intelligently. Fortunately, it's only 2 1/2 weeks, so by the time I get used to it, it will be over (kind of like life, I think).

I have decided to break it off with my therapist when I meet with her at the end of the month. I'm still hurt, a bit, by what went down at our last meeting, but if she thinks she's done all she can do to help me, then I guess it is what it is. I do know that she has zero interest in actually finding out more about me, getting in my head, figuring out what makes me tick. I let her borrow a book that I found very insightful--she hasn't read it and won't. I didn't expect her to find it insightful, but I thought it might help her understand me a bit better. Maybe at one point she did care, but I'm just a $25 co-pay now. She's not a bad therapist--she may just be somewhat intimidated by me. I get that a lot. Not physical intimidation, because I'm of average height and a bit overweight, but sort of a mental intimidation. Not saying that she's stupid or that I am smarter than her, because I don't think either is true. I suppose I come across as erudite and that can be intimidating, if not irritating, in times like these.

Or maybe its just that I bore her--that my problems are at base just as typical as those of the druggies and convicts she sees on a regular basis--it's all just one big existential crisis--I just have bigger words (like 'existential crisis') with which to describe my misery...words I can use rather than snort meth and fuck everything that moves (and some things that don't). I suppose I can't blame her for being bored. People bore the fuck out of me on a regular basis (and I them)....so it goes. There's really nothing interesting anyway--life alternates between the boring and horrifying, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly....

I have perhaps quoted this passage from Schopenhauer before, but I think it bears repeating, and forms a nice dyad with the Wittgenstein above:
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer’s booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone.

The beat goes on

2009-05-11T17:27:00.001-04:00

So now my doctor doesn't think that I have carpal tunnel anymore. It seems instead that I have somehow damaged my ulnar nerve. It has led to some weakness in my ring finger and little finger. Typing is no longer a joy--not that it ever was. He was supposed to refer me to a nerve specialist in another town, but he never called me back today. He probably forgot.

He gave me a steroid to take for a few days, which has done wonders for my mood. I'm really tired, still. I'm in a pretty bad mental space.

In which my earlier thesis is supported by anecdotal evidence

2009-05-10T16:44:00.000-04:00

I'm adopted. I may have mentioned that before. I've always known that I was adopted--my adoptive parents were very clear about it from a very early age (I don't mean that in a negative or snide way--they never said, "we're so glad you aren't really ours" or anything like that). I found my birth mother a few years back and we have had a tolerably good relationship until just recently. She doesn't live that far away from me and I used to see her quite regularly. That changed a few months ago when her sometime boyfriend moved back in with her. I last talked to her at Xmas, then talked again today (Mother's Day here in the US). She was polite, cordial even, but there was some real distance there. And I found that I didn't have much to say to her, either. One of the central mysteries of my life solved and it doesn't change anything or mean anything.

What did I expect? I don't know. She wanted to meet me, pursue a relationship with me, become involved in my kids' lives, gets along great with my wife. She just doesn't seem to like me very much. Without the biological tie between us...and even with it...there's just nothing there.

And I may have done something to precipitate this division. Maybe she wanted something from me and I didn't see what it was, or couldn't give it. It could be that after the rush of getting to know her, our relationship would have been trampled by the blind rider that is time, as all relationships eventually are. It didn't seem like that was going to happen so soon, though.

I don't know what I want from her anyway. She is a damaged person and probably took my not calling as badly as I took hers, leading to a vicious cycle of ever-more-hurt feelings. I suppose it goes to show that the best thin to do is not to become involved. You will hurt someone or the other will hurt you.
A while back my therapist said, "You know, to talk to you, you seem like the sort of guy who would like to just wander from town to town, to exist without becoming involved, to just fade away while you are still here." I guess maybe she understood me after all.

I am a failure.

Maybe she's right

2009-05-09T14:14:00.000-04:00

Maybe I am so stuck in my own way of looking at things that I have reached the end of what she can do to help me. I didn't think I was that way, but maybe I am. I suppose nobody who is close-minded believes that they are so. On the other hand, just because she says something doesn't make it so.

Maybe I should limit my interactions (beyond teaching) with others to the following: "How ya doing?, Nice day we're having!, and 'Be seein' ya!". That's about all anyone really wants to hear, not to mention about the amount of effort that I want to give.

Carpal tunnel really acting up today. I don't have much to say and I can't really think because my son is singing really loudly in my ear for no reason other than to be a distraction. He's a good kid, but he doesn't quite get that he isn't the center of the universe. Most people have trouble with that.

If I had a heart, it would be breaking

2009-05-06T19:53:00.001-04:00

So my therapist pretty much told me that we were done at our last session. She is allowing me the courtesy of calling it quits, which I suppose I will do at our next meeting. She is convinced that I am never going to change my views no matter what. I've tried to make it clear that I am always happy to change my views in the face of good evidence/argument. She emphasizes feeling and experience. She said that she hadn't been to this blog in a long time (not that I expect her to make daily visits), but still....it really hurts, it being the whole thing about feeling rejected, about being seen as stubborn and unable to change.

I guess this means that I have driven someone else away. I keep doing that, have done it all my life--or if I am not doing it, I have encountered a long stream of people who have had 'leaving' as part of their being. Most likely, it is the former. I guess I usually try to do it before I get hurt. Not so this time. It goes to confirm what I have long suspected--I am fundamentally unlovable and worthless. I am interesting for a time, I guess, on a surface level. But get to know me, and, well....when a professional therapist rejects you, that is really some accomplishment. I haven't written about this, or talked to anyone about it, because I have really been too upset to deal with it, because I am so hurt that I can only present my pain to a few people I'll never know. I suppose that therapy has helped somewhat--I have a much better sense of my issues and I am no longer crippled by anxiety. I suppose my existential crisis will have no resolution, though. How I wish I could believe in a world of sunshine, flowers, and unicorns who crap Skittles. How I wish I could accept the idea that there is some sort of divinity within that can be accessed by meditation and yoga. But I can't. I believe in pain, heartache, disappointment, loss, rejection, suffering, the inhumanity of humankind, the utter helplessness of humans in the face of an indifferent universe ruled by both law and chance. I believe in irrationality, sadness, decay and deception. I believe that if there is a God, he, she or it is either malevolent or insane. I believe that there is nothing within, that humans are simply a collection of accidents, surfaces without interiors. I believe in shitting, fucking, striving, failing and dying.

Fuck everybody, me included. Amen and amen, world without end.

Stagger homeward to your precious one

2009-05-05T02:01:00.001-04:00

It's all over but the finals. I had two VERY uninspiring classes today. It was raining, for one thing, and several people came in late, others left early. Of course, I was just trying to get through the lecture myself. It was all so perfunctory. Kind of sad, really, and unfair to the philosopher we were studying, but so it goes. By the end of the semester everyone is just so ready for things to be over that it all just fades away rather quickly. I still have a lot to do--gotta get the final together, do some administrative stuff that I've let slide for a bit.

Of course, a good bit of my life has seemed perfunctory of late. I'm just marking time, it seems, watching day fade into day into day. It seems like all I can do is mark the fact, that I can't change it. Why bother? Nothing ever changes, really. Life is repetition, pattern, until it isn't--but this change is nothing more than the establishment of a new pattern, a new monotony, a change in particulars, in appearance alone. It's all the same whether you are a female wrestler in India or a jaded philosophy professor in the US. Or anyone doing anything anywhere else. We become so attached to these patterns that we (well, you, maybe) are willing to fight and die for them, treating the ultimate abstractions (God, country, democracy, or whatever--any one will do as well as any other so long as you've got someone to manipulate others on its behalf AND a group of people willing to be manipulated) as concrete motivating sources. There's nothing worth dying for or worth living for. There's just living and dying and our futile attempts to imbue both with meaning in the face of an indifferent universe.

I'm going to see my therapist later today. We had gone about a month between appointments but she seems concerned about me and brought me back in just two weeks. I don't think she thinks I am going to kill myself (I'm not), but she sees I'm in a bad place, or in a place that seems bad to her in terms of her best professional judgment. As far as I'm concerned, I'm just in a place. Later, I'll be in a different place, but it will all still be the same.

Movie recommendation: Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. I suggest showing it at the next family gathering, especially if you have relatives that suffer from epilepsy or vertigo. It's pretty much what Memento could have been if it had the courage to follow through on its nihilistic implications. It begins at the end (actually it begins with a brief coda featuring a character from Noe's previous film I Stand Alone) and shows how a shocking act of violence came to pass. You won't forget it once you've seen it.