Osakatomebaby

After a busy day of catch-up for me, Melbotis came to the rescue with this Kenneth Burns spoof which is coincidentally a Microsoft demo by Al Franken. The world is wierd, but I do not seek to understand. Enjoy.

My dream last night involved several eggmen. Some of the eggmen were good. Some of the eggmen were bad. One of the eggmen was my friend, but he got a little cracked.

My mom's not going to like this, but since it seems to me the penguins are willing participants, and since I don't think there's a legitimate connection between computer violence and real violence (for *normal* people), here's my high score on this game. I disagree with Jim, I think I could get 593 if I could just get a good solid one on the shoulder and just enough spin.

Suddenly fighting compelling urge to kick pigeons...strange...

I was still too sick yesterday to even concentrate on a book for very long. Today I'm much better and have started into Tolstoy's Confessions. I think I am going to devour it.

But yesterday, having slept all day I wasn't good for much so I listened to a recent episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge. The host is a stuffy, pretentious guy, but they try to liven the show up with a little electronica or other semi-hip music, but it's no This American Life (all episodes of which I've already heard, so I had to find something else).

They do have interesting topics and interesting guests though. A lot of academics, but next to the host they sound pretty cool. Academics can be fun too ya know.

The show was about "kid culture" and how "being a kid has never been cooler" which sounds really silly coming out of this droll hyper-NPR voice. Almost a self-parody really. Anyway, it seems some dope somewhere caught on to what marketers have known for years--that people don't want to grow up--and wrote a book about it. Jim Fleming, the host, seems to have a particular aversion to care bears...it's almost creepy. I mean, yeah, they're cheesy and gimmicky but I thought that when I was a kid too.

He's also rather nonplussed by adults watching the cartoon network. Um, why is animation only for kids? I'm living in a whole country where this certainly is not the case. Of course I'm also living in a country that defines what they refer to as "rejuvenilism" (oh what a hideous coinage! god willing it will never make the dictionary). Cutesy images abound on everything from the endless phone charms (which I don't understand) to construction signs to giant frog-shaped trash bins.

Still, why the hard line between "kids'" and "adults'" entertainment? The best "kids'" entertainment is the stuff adults can stand to watch too--like sesame street. I still like the show. And muppets was for adults but kids liked it too. Too bad there aren't more shows that cross those boundaries.

(Okay, I feel a little bad that I was so hard on Fleming, since I do listen to his show sometimes and enjoy it. He's a good interviewer, he just needs to lighten up a little and stop sounding so bleedin' important.) (again pot::kettle)

More than anything, though, the problem I was seeing wasn't that adults may still like t-shirts or underwear with Grover (Cleveland--sorry) on them, but that these folks see this clear delineation between childhood and adulthood that's just much too strict. Kids are usually capable of a lot more maturity and intelligence than they are given credit for.

That's one rather controversial point that Marcel Danesi of the University of Toronto makes later in the show by noting the unnatural idea of "adolescence" in our society (wacky Canadians). According to him once kids are 13 or so they should be treated as legal adults, as they were in the past. He goes on a bit about how they ought to be able to join the military and so on, which is rather extreme. I guess I'd worry less about the kid who decided to do that than the guy at the other end of the gun. There's also the whole education issue he failed to address. It's one area where I suppose I do favor more paternalism. School's good for you, even though I could more or less have done without that agonizing senior year. But I don't see anything wrong with letting teens vote. And don't even get me started about parental consent and birth control issues. Fortunately my own mother trusted me enough to let me decide about such things on my own. You ROCK mom.

The middle segment of the show made about no sense. It's about adults liking kids music. Again, why so baffling? The more baffling question, I think, is why are so many kids programs so stupid? Why did Barney bastardize perfectly good folk songs into sickly sweet humorless earworms? I know what I'm talking about here, my sister was a tot at the time this stuff was big.

The real problem isn't kids not growing up fast enough. It's people thinking childhood is some idyllic time. It's not. It's just more black and white. The younger you are the more you're either in uncontrollable fits of glee or in utter world-shattering despair.

The last guest was brilliant. Maurice Sendak who recently illustrated the book Brundibar which is an adaptation of a Czech opera, and which was performed 55 times by children in Terezin, a Nazi model concentration camp. That's 55 different troupes of children performing for foreign guests to demonstrate how happy they were in camp and that these weren't "bad" places at all. 55 troupes who were then sent on to Auschwitz and the like. And the story is about kids confronting evil. Very creepy. Knowing that I think it would be a lot scarier for the parent reading the story (about kids competing with the tyrannical Brundibar in order to save their dying mother) than the kid hearing just the story.

Sendak also talks about being a Jewish kid in the 1920's and how "everyone knew" what was going on--how friends and relatives were disappearing. How his dad kept records of which villages had been hit. He describes how he grew up in this atmosphere of grief. But he doesn't see it as limited to himself or that time and place. He remembers feeling smaller and weaker than others as a child. I know as a kindergartener I thought 5th graders were pretty scary (my sister on the other hand, said "I've never seen a 5th grader"--it sounded like "I don't think they exist"--she's very matter-of-fact). And he tells the story of a little girl who witnessed 9/11 and softened the story intentionally for her parents. I've seen kids do that too--be very stoic because it's what the adults needed.

I do think kids are a lot tougher than adults. Partly because their capacity for abstract thought isn't totally developed yet, I suppose. But for whatever reason, they're not the fragile, delicate beings we build lots of protective walls around and they certainly don't need to be buried in beanie babies to fend off the shock and horror of adulthood.

No, kids aren't just little adults, but they're not aliens either. Just because they're entranced by crummy entertainment, doesn't mean it's good "kid entertainment". Nor do adults need to be stuffy humbugs who run in fear of stuffed animals.

Care bears: CARE!

Boo.

When I'm looking to kill some time and since my DVD player is kaput (thanks a lot HP--I bought this machine in July and to fix it they want me to send it back to the states which would mean a minimum of two months before I get it back, yeah right) I sometimes go to this website where they've posted films that I guess the studios have released the copyright on. Mostly stuff from the 1930's or so and which, for one reason or another, will never be shown on tv.

It's quite interesting simply because I think there's a lot of history there. Not that they're particularly good movies, but a major reason I can see for letting the copyrights lapse is that a number of the films are patently racist and offensive. No I guess this stuff shouldn't be on TV except maybe as clips in a documentary or something. But the thing that fascinates me about it is that these were considered "mainstream" a mere 70 years ago. In a sense I think they should be preserved, which I guess they are partially online.

So yesterday I decided to see what qualified as a documentary in the 30's and watched Africa Speaks which claims to be a document of the first trans-African trek by motor vehicle. A dubious claim but it does contain quite a lot of interesting footage of Africa in the 20's actually. To create continuity the studio shot a number of filler scenes in a studio showing the "explorer" Paul Hoefler and his cameraman ostensibly in Africa filming and commenting on the action which, even in the 30's had to look wired...who's filming the cameraman? Of course the narration is predictably bad. They make fun of Pygmies, including one off-hand comment that was just wired about the king's wives, "They're shy...when the king's around." ?!?!?

But the part that really disturbed me is that at the climax. They visit a Masai tribe and the king offers to have his son help them look for lions to film. Then, according to the film, the boy gets eaten by a lion. It's obvious that this part is re-enacted (assuming it happened at all, which is a stretch), but they do, in the reenactment, actually shoot a lion to death. You can see it curl up and then slowly extend it's limbs as the life goes out of it. And their only comment, perhaps meant in stoic fashion but it doesn't come off as such, "It's going to be hard to tell the old king about Keiga."

In retaliation the tribesmen gather and hunt down a lion, but the fact that they kill the lion and don't rejoice seems to baffle the Americans. They chalk it up to the fact that the men respect the lion. Um, just an idea here but maybe they're a little upset about Keiga? Then the Americans start to get nervous that maybe they're going to get it next. About the only intelligent reaction they had.

I have the diablucous. That's my mom's word for any vague yucky illness. And I've got it. It's days like this when I just want to be at my folks house curled up under a pile of afghans waiting for mum to bring me some chamomile tea with honey or dad or sis to come give me a backrub. Or Drew to walk by and tell a joke to cheer me up.

And every time I get sick I remember one night back in my old co-op days when I had a hideous diablucous and it seemed incomprehensible to step outside to get some medicine at the convenience store across the street. Cristin and Taletha went even though it was the middle of the night, and a cold one. They were my heroes.

Today my boss is my hero just because she didn't make me justify my being sick like tell my temperature or anything. I just called her up, "How are you doing?", "Not well," "Why don't you take the day off?" It was like a dream. I had even looked up the celcius (38.8) since my thermometer is in farenehit (102). I don't think it's discrimination because foreign teachers are at the mercy of the corporation as so many burned-out teachers would have you believe. I'm "drinking the kool-aid" I suppose, but the staff and Japanese teachers often come in when they're not well. Today, I just couldn't.

It's a real problem for the school if teachers get sick because they don't have subs and they have to cancel classes. I haven't worked out the economics of it, but I often wonder if it wouldn't do to have a couple more emergency teachers or at least some part-timers on call. Of course I don't want to walk out the door into the cold, but I also doubt my students want to be trapped in a small room with me infecting everyone. Yet there doesn't seem to be an alternative.

So I slept till 6pm and I'm going back to bed now. I've been drinking orange juice like it's going out of style, and I finally forced myself to eat some Ramen. Still, I'll have to go in tomorrow evening and Saturday. Just no way around it. Hopefully sleeping in till tomorrow afternoon will help.

Funny. One of my students is moving to Chicago for his company for five years and he's quite worried. His English is quite good for someone who hasn't lived abroad, but he'll have a lot to learn. He's a salesguy. Pretty cool overall, but I had to laugh when I heard his biggest concern was that if he gets sick in the States there won't be anyone to take care of him. It's so sweet to think this otherwise quite daring fellow is worried about being taken care of.

I mean, I can understand. You get used to it, but there's always the idea of that chamomile and honey. ~sigh~

I'm inclined to agree with the Socialists even though I haven't seen Lost in Translation yet (due here in May) or a quarter of the films up for Academy of Awards.

"Aside from [a couple of nominees]...the films nominated remain resolute in their commitment to uncovering nothing important about modern life--under conditions of unprecedented social crisis and global volatility."

It seems that changes to the Academy's policies this year benefit studios at the expense of indies. Basically, there's a shorter time period in which judges can make their selections and the Academy published (and then reneged) on the policy that, "to avoid piracy concerns", judges could not view films at home on video or DVD. Meaning indies got squeezed out from competing and as a result fewer will be shown in theaters this year.

Not that I have to give up watching the Oscars. The only time I did, Julia Roberts sobbed like an idiot and I vowed never to waste my time on it again. Nevertheless...

Shame on you Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! SHAME!

I am an island.

As 25% of my loyal readership just pointed out. No links. I know. This is blogging for it's own sake. I will probably add some links to blogs I read soon, but frankly if my only readers are people who know me, that's fine. I'm not an egomaniac and one of my first navel-gazing tenets was no link-mongering.

My newest reader, another friend, said this of the blog today:

I very much enjoyed what I read, and will definitely come back. You're entirely too sensible though -- if you posted something good and inflammatory, I'd comment on it.

Mind you this is the guy who told me about the longstanding animosity between Michael Moore and Slate. All links to which seem to have disappeared in this election year. Spooky. He and I probably don't have a lot to argue about anyway other than the tastiness of avocados.

Me: Yum!
He: No.

Very well. I have a cold, so I'll make it short. Regarding this weblog:

It is demonstrable that things cannot be otherwise than as they are; for as all things have been created for some end, they must necessarily be created for the best end.

No? Okay, a question:

I would be glad to know which is worst, to be ravished a hundred times by*...pirates, to have one buttock cut off, to run the gauntlet among the Bulgarians, to be whipped and hanged at an auto-da-fe, to be dissected, to be chained to an oar in a galley; and, in short, to experience all the miseries through which every one of us hath passed, or to remain here doing nothing?

Edited for political correctness on account of my younger readers. Not that they read this far down...but they might. No doubt the word "buttock" will catch one small eye.

Thanks Jim! Here's where I've been (in red). Mostly One good drive up the east coast could take care of a lot of the rest, but I'll probably make it to Hawaii or Alaska first.



create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

Now what would be really cool is an international map where I could check my progress on my life goal at age 16 which was to have a lover in every country.

I did something besides study today.



Nothing like the original. Oh well.

Why does Blogger spell-check try to replace "y'all" with "Yale"? I cannot possibly be the only person writing in the Southern vernacular.

*High falutin' -- Steamboats developed high, fluted stacks to spew the hot cinders and smoke away from the paying passengers. People rich enough to travel by steamboat were high falutin' folks.

I don't understand why everyone is so thrilled with their camera phones. When I got mine I asked about getting one that could take a decent picture--I could have gotten the free one, but I wanted to be able to use it as an actual camera. Plus I knew that once you get a phone it's a massive pain to change to a new device and keep the same number.

The sales rep showed me two upgrade options, one with a removable memory card I'd have to get a reader for, and another without. The cameras were the same. I figured go with the cheaper one. "I can just email the pictures, right?" "Sure."

Lies. Lies. Lies.

It took some doing to realize that, while I can take a decent picture, and even video clips, there is a limit on the email size so I can't get the damn things out of the phone. If I take a slightly lower quality image, I can email it in four pieces and reassemble it in Photoshop. When I realized this, I thought, "that can't be right".

The phone has a 20 chapter manual--19 in Japanese and 1 in English. Seeing as how this is a Japanese-speaking country I think that's more than reasonable. And most of what I need to know to operate the thing is there anyway, but not this, so I called up the English support line (also an appreciated convenience).

After explaining my problem emailing pictures I got the long "hmmmmmm" response which means "we are not going to be able to help you". Just to confirm in my most differential voice I asked, "so it's not possible to email the full pictures from this phone?" The operator seemed very relieved to have been saved the embarassment of stating the obvious and agreed that that was the case. Which begs the question, why offer the higher resolution in the first place?

I'm writing this, and I know I'm missing something, but when I think about it I know that I'm not. All the unnecessary bells and whistles on this thing make me certain it's just another feature for it's own sake. Zen engineering? Who knows, probably even if I shelled out the ¥3,000 more for the stupid memory card and bought a reader, I would have had some other gripe. Just means I have to lug around my big old digital camera (which was small when I bought it in 1999) if I want to show y'all what I'm talking about.

This stuff doesn't normally get to me. You gotta roll with the punches when you don't speak the language and aren't a native of the culture, and I promise not to rant more than once a season about my cultural cluelessness since it's there are enough blogs doing that already. But I do think this story is instructive for anyone thinking about which phone to get.

All or nothing. Don't settle for mediocre!

Part 1: HoustonChronicle.com was the first new outlet to break the story of the media frenzy on Moveon.org's recent publicity. According to the publication, news outlets have given Moveon.org significantly more coverage than playing their actual ad would have, had it passed CBS's stringent screeners.

Aside from that absurdity, there was a quote that irked me:

"We see it as a free speech issue," said Eli Pariser, campaign director for Moveon.

Why am I somehow more offended by this now becoming the issue than I was by the rejection? (Besides the fact that it distracts from the message of the ad in question, which I agreed with?)

I think I just answered my own question.

I respect what these folks are working for, but they have a problem staying on topic (pot::kettle). Hello, org. If you really think the ad was the best message, best conveyed out of 1500+, and I liked it, why are you suddenly changing the subject from budget deficit to public ownership of the airwaves gall darn it. Don't get distracted by the media's self-referential nature. Use it for what it's worth. You are just playing into their hands.

This is why liberals are known as "whiny".

He goes on to try and do some unnecessary and unsuccessful damage control:

"We're not against the White House running an ad,"...in reference to an anti-drug message from the White House that will air during the game.

People noting it in blogs and articles isn't you saying it. And they're just pointing out an irony--don't protest so much, lady.

Part II: I used to love Michael Moore. Well, I still like his movies, but I can't stand his grandstanding and egoism (except when I'm in an especially absurdist frame of mind). The first time I ever saw him was at a UT screening of "The Big One". I think he got the best of whoosit at Nike, but I was young and I don't actually remember.

I went to a lot of speeches at that time.

The best was by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's in 1994. Jerry spoke first. It was a well-timed, well organized event (with very very good free ice cream). I didn't know who they were either. Frankly, being from Tulsa I hadn't even heard of them. Tulsa was a Hagen Daaz town.

The spiel was basically this: Jerry was the set-up man. The opening act. He warmed up the crowd by telling how, in the early days, they started this business from scratch, played a lot of hippie games and so on. He kept emphasizing that Ben was a total nut and a lot of fun. Then he talked a bit about the cool things they were doing like employing ex-convicts in brownie production. Stuff like that.

Then Ben was up: tie-died Grateful Dead shirt and shorts, big Walt Whitman beard. He harangued the audience of mostly undergrad liberal arts majors for a full...I don't know, hour?...about the national defense budget and how it was all our fault for being liberal arts majors and we ought to go get our butts into business school because if we really cared enough to come here him talk about a successful alternative business then we really ought to go undercover in corporations and take over from the inside. Like I said, I had no idea what I was in for. It was well done. (I graduated in Asian studies anyway).

I also marched with the 300 or so protesters who sat in at the UT School of Law after Jesse Jackson spoke to a crowd of 5,000. I had been notably uncomfortable during the public prayer--I could handle that stuff at Catholic school, even went voluntarily, but in front of the tower it was...weird.

The protest itself was over the Hopwood decision--or no, actually over Graglia. Despite being the biggest protest at UT in the 1990's, it was a joke (well...come to think of it, there may not be any irony here after all). The organizers didn't have any repore with the crowd. Much less charisma. Besides that they were a pretty uptight bunch. When some protesters tried to start a non-sanctioned spontaneous protest chant they got shushed. Meanwhile the leaders were rather pathetically begging everyone to stay because pizza was on the way.

I'd like to apologize to Susan Napier for missing her much more interesting class that day. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

In truth, I wasn't really particularly supporting these folks--I have always had issues with how affirmative action actually works. Instead I was there for totally selfish reasons, I just wanted to see what happened first hand. When I realized it wasn't going anywhere and that my job at the women's co-op was probably more important I left. Well, right after I had a piece of pizza anyway.

Then two years ago there was a big tent liberal rally called Rolling Thunder. Of course I went. It was organized by Jim Hightower and, I don't know, a lot of people and there were all manner of interesting organizations in little booths. They were supposed to be "coming together" to discuss a unified liberal agenda of sorts (based on the idea that conservatives are more organized and liberals too scrappy).

Of course that wasn't what was happening at all, they were all competing for support and $$$ as usual. I did come across some interesting orgs but I didn't end up getting involved with any of them. The best one, I think, was called the Inside Books Project which collects used books to donate to prisons.

The agenda was tight--there was a new speaker every half hour alternated with rock bands on two ends of a rodeo arena. Unions, ex-Enron employees, Molly Ivins. As you might guess, Michael Moore was on the roster. He had just published Stupid White Men and I had my yet-unread copy in my bag right next to Abbie Hoffman's Revolution for the Hell of It...just in case.

Ben Cohen had the last slot. I talked to a lot of people, and asked "Are you staying to hear Ben?". "Who's that?". "One of the founders of Ben and Jerry's, the guy who paid for the big inflatable pie chart of the national budget and giant nuclear weapon." "Oh. No, but I can't wait to hear Michael Moore."

And at 3:00 he was on. He was supposed to talk for half an hour. Everyone crowded into the arena--booths were abandoned. He didn't even say anything for about the first five or ten minutes. Literally. He was standing there giggling like a kid with a fit. When he finally started to speak he didn't say anything either, but a lot of people cheered anyway. He totally ignored the agenda and went on for an hour. Honestly if I could remember anything he said or even the topic I would tell you. And no, I was not on drugs. I think everyone else was.

So having screwed up the schedule and leaving the organizers in the lurch he proceeded to his book signing in an adjacent building. The crowd followed. I thought, well I'm here, might as well get the autograph at least. But when I walked out at my leisurely pace I saw a line a good mile long. What the hell? Everyone wanted their dumb autograph and nothing was happening in the tent anymore.

Life is too precious y'all, and I don't stand in lines. So I left, thinking, I'll come back at six to hear Ben, but of course I didn't, I was too irritated. I went and hung out with my hippie architect friend and we drank wine and I was much happier.

Later I tried to read Stupid White Men to see if maybe I was just missing something, and Moore had really given an inspirational, resounding speech which I was just too dense to understand the subtleties of. I gave up after the first chapter. I knew his data was dubious, but he is a funny guy and I don't mind people going a little overboard to make a point. And he obviously moves people into action--at least the action of standing in line to bask in his presence.

What I hadn't realized when I bought the book was that it would read like it was written by a irritated 5th grader and lacking the humor that makes him palatable (and effective). I gave it away as quickly as I could--and not to Inside Books. That would amount to cruel and unusual punishment for some unlucky inmate.

Michael Moore is an embarrassment. I forgave MoveOn for having him as the main presenter because he does have cache. And Margaret Cho was dumb too, but funny. But like I said, it was a in-group thing and it was supposed to be entertainment around a larger cause, which was the issue.

Now I'm not so sure. I really thought this ad (which is, after all, showing on CNN this week) would signify some folks coming together behind a cause, but it looks like just more disorganized and undirected liberal angst. Why do I keep giving people the benefit of the doubt?

Coincidentally in writing this I thought of the fellow who had introduced me to Ben Cohen and found him here. I mentioned him to Jim and found out they had once had a bit of a scrap. Jim won (Jim always wins). Austin is a small world.

*I hereby vow to stop blogging on MoveOn.org. I'll be the first to formally end the free publicity (to my staggering readership, anyway). Besides that, you probably didn't read this post all the way to the end anyway.*