| Colorado post #4.5
Nebraska Soldiers bring Christmas to Iraqi Children Way to make this look less like a religious war, guys. I bet nobody in the Arabic world will see giving gifts to Muslim children on Christmas as prosthelytizing. cranked out at 4:05 PM | |
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Colorado Post #4, Maryland tomorrow
I went to see Paycheck yesterday, and I have a few problems. First - the physics and such of the movie. At some point, they explain a machine which can see into the future, and they do it by quoting Einstein as saying that if you had a powerful enough lens to see around the "curvature of the universe" with some sort of laser, you would come back to yourself, and you could see your own future. A few problems: Yes, in fact, if you send a beam of light a very long distance and it curves back to you, and then somehow reflects back along that same path, you would be seeing yourself in the future. The catch is that the amount of time it takes for the light to do that would mean that, if it reached your future self in 15 years, it would take a total time of 30 to get back. You would see the future from when you sent the beam, but it would be in the past by the time it actually got there. Unless light starts travelling faster than... well... light, this doesn't really work. This is even assuming that Einstein was correct about this. Here's the thing about Einstein, though - he was right about relativity, and not much else. He spent the last thirty someodd years of his life at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies trying to work out a unified theory which excluded quantum mechanics. He denied large segments of science which are pretty well established by this point - so when it comes to questions like this, Einstein is not the authority you go to. There's a good century of sceince (in the movie) between the two. There are also a few other errors - for example, when you form a new memory, there isn't a new cell created in the brain - but it's all part of a larger problem. Why, given a science fiction movie, would you even go so far as to try to explain it at all? Just tell me - he built a machine which sees the future. Done. That's all you needed to say. Don't go into the theory behind it, becuase the theory behind it is wrong and generally ludicrous. I hate when people try to use science and invoke terminology which is just patently false in order to sound more intelligent. The only people you're wowing are the ones who would believe you if you just said "Okay, see that over there? That motherboard is the magical fairy motherboard. It grants wishes. We wished for the future. Shazam!" The focus of the movie shouldn't be intellectual pretension. It's a movie which starts off with a porn-movie acting job ("You really won't remember this? Sweet! Let's screw!"). You don't need to try to go into the Lorentz transformations. It's like taking Heather Graham and giving her glasses and pulling her hair into a bun and pretending that makes her intelligent. We can all see beyond the shallow, vapid exterior. The best part of the whole movie was the previews, however. One of them is for a movie called, "The Perfect Score" about a bunch of kids who are bad at the SAT, and need higher scores. One of the kids gets an 1140 and flips out becuase it's too low. Please note that an 1140 puts you above a majority of the people taking the test, but beyond that, the entire premise of the movie is stupid. Did ANYONE get so stressed out about the SAT that they felt like their life was ending if they didn't get a good enough score? Nobody takes that test this seriously, and if they do, they're really, really dumb. The kids then conspire to steal the answers to the test. The preview didn't give me an idea of whether they steal it or not, but I'm guessing they either steal it and then don't use the stolen answers, or otherwise find that the test isn't meaningful. It'd be nice if they just started off with that and saved us from having to sit through the movie. (Oh, and as a slight tangent - for everyone out there who says they have some excuse for not doing as well on the SAT as they could have because they were drunk/tired/hung over/etc...? If you're too dumb to understand that 8 AM is early, then you deserve the one question I'm sure you missed because of your poor excuse.) The other preview is Jerry Bruckheimer does King Arthur. Just a few things: Remember when they decided women needed a less gender-stereotyped role in movies, and so they made Guinevere a fucking Amazon? Right. Let's just go ahead and aff-ac the 4th century. It goes on about the "true story" aspect of the whole Arthur myth, but at the same time radically alters history in order to be seen as progressive. The problem is, it's Keira Knightley, so I'll still see the movie. And I'll leave you with this: "Literature... describes a descent. First, gods. Then demigods. Then epic became tragedy: failed kings, failed heroes. Then the gentry. Then the middle class and its mercantile dreams. Then it was about you: social realism. Then it was about them: lowlife. Villains. The ironic age. And he was saying... Now what? Literature, for a while, can be about us: writers. But that won't last long. How do we burst clear of all this? And he asked them: Whither the novel? cranked out at 3:39 PM | |
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Colorado Post #3, 2 days until Maryland
Verbosity, unplugged The ideas I have are mostly plagerism. Most ideas are. Filtered out from the background noise which composes society and culture and the collective unconscious we are all a flittering part of. But in this there's a misunderstanding, one which many people - respectable people - seem to take pretty much for granted, in this. It's just assumed that "society" is something out there, and that individuals are set, from birth to death, in some relation to it - adverserial or otherwise. It's seen as an imposing force just beyond the field of vision but which weilds tremendous subversive power, shaping our minds and our outlooks to the exclusion of all else - a virtual myopia we can't even begin to be aware of. This view of the framework within which we think - the context so needed for our thoughts, and the hinges upon which they rely - is one which seems problematic to me. Correlation doesn't imply causation, and all that. Seeing the general as the absolute, as a sweeping river of assumed fact with only the transient eddies of countercultures to stem its inevitable force is one which only lends a flattering, though typically deceitful, light to the real source of all of this. It seems to derive from a longing for social fact to be objective. It seems to come from an assumption of certainty about those things upon which we cannot intelligently comment. Take for granted, just for a moment, that these social forces exist external to chance. Outside of the simple fact that most people in a given situation just happen to believe them to be right. That there is some set of behaviors and thoughts which, by some significant group, is considered normal or necessary - a pathos imbued unto a people from upon high, these things inherited from their fathers and fathers before them. Where does this lead? Simply to statements about how there is a way to live within a situation - within a framework, or a snapshot of a people - and the implicit enforcement thereof. What difference, then, is there with the collusion withheld? The implicit acceptance of these social forces as constrictive assumes a few things. Primarily, a value judgement and the inkling that the mob could be wrong. If it's society shaping society, after all, according to some script handed down from the ether - sexism, racism, capitalism and so on as a result of the society - accepts immediately that there's a counter-standard, and some way to say, 'Look; there's a better way." In order to argue against the idea of social coercion as unacceptable, one first has to offer a worldview in which an alternate form of social coercion is okay. There's always the implication of a better way of life wrapped in the objections to the current hegemony. There's a catch, though. In so taking that fork in the road, there's an acceptance that individuals are incapable of working outside the frame of reference, something which is clearly not true. Moreover, it undermines the detrimental effect of these ills within society. If it's society making people racist - and not individuals being racist within society, or perhaps influenced by a mentality of group action - it undermines to a large extent the guilt associated with these things. It allows the tragedy to be universal rather than specific, and it amounts to interposing mitigating circumstances where none are present. If people are a function of social circumstance, or their behaviors are simply a reaction therein, then most of our behaviors become capricious. At the end of the day, society isn't some huge force out there to blugeon people into line with some arbitrary set of parameters - it just happens to be a baseline for life. There are glitches in the methodology, a slowness of evolution, but overall a system which isn't malicious. People would like to believe that all ills are social, and that people aren't really that bad. They are. This set of ideas out there is just something each individual ends up as a piece of, a single star in a greater constellation. But the constellation does not determine the arrangement of the stars, and society does not command its shape from those minds and thoughts from which it is forged. cranked out at 10:01 PM | |
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Colorado Post #2, 4 days until Maryland
Went snowboarding with the family. Wasn't the greatest experience - the snow was pretty bad and the board parks were closed. But still nice to get up to the mountains for a few days. I got through one of the books I got for Christmas (12 more to go). Luckily, 7 of the 12 are by female authors, meaning that for the month of January I'll actually be stocked up on authors of the fairer sex. I've been considering (read: rationalizing) the lack of chick lit in my current library, and realized that it's possible there's a reason other than outright chauvenism that this is the case. I mean, until recently (in literary time) most of the women who were going to be authors were forced down one of two paths: try and stylistically imitate male authors, or make their feminism (the characteristic, not the philosophy) the focal point of whatever it was they were writing. It seems rare that a book written pre-20th century by a female author doesn't follow one of these two paths. On top of this there's the simple fact that... well.. most people just can't write. So it's not terribly unpredictable that, with women relegated by social norms out of authorship in a lot of polite society, the decreased volume simply means that fewer good books by women exist. I mean, the voluminous history of failed male authors isn't something to be neglected. I'm really looking forward to having a month pretty much completely off, to do just whatever. I actually wrote the first half of a short story (yes, I really am that bored) which I'm sure will appear here if it ever actually gets finished. Which is to say, you can look forward to more of my nonfictional ramblings in the new year. cranked out at 5:19 PM | |
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Colorado Post #1, countdown to Maryland: 7 days
Coming home always instills me with a vague sense of dread. I'm not sure exactly what it is about the place, but I always feel incredibly trapped once I'm here, as though I've been snared and only have time to act as buffer between myself and the inevitable disaster a returning hunter offers. Yet it never actually comes. I'm not sure exactly what has changed since I started coming home from college, but somehow I can relax a lot more recently. Maybe I never had to be tense about the whole experience and I was needlessly making myself so. Who knows. There's a kind of an angst I always feel when I'm back here. I have so many bad memories of growing up here, and so little to balance it against. Once I escaped the state, it was as if a curse was lifted and I was finally free of whatever problems or ruts I had grown accustomed to. Returning I always feel the vague shadows of those memories tugging at my mind, though never in a really threatening manner. It's just one of those random things which forces a melancholy recollection. In some ways, it puts how much happier I am in Maryland in sharp contrast. In a mildly less gothic vein, I've finally gotten around to figuring out my new years resolutions. I don't know why I keep up the superstition of setting goals for myself on some arbitrary date. It's just one of those things I do, knowing that it won't alter anything at all, but which I put an inordinate amount of thought in to. For that matter, I think I do it just for the sake of countering the retrospective nature of New Years as a holiday. I really hate the whole "look back" type of thing in celebration. There really are two types of them - those where you are looking forward or just celebrating, and those where you're supposed to be reflective. The former are good holidays since, first, they generally entail presents, and second, they generally permit lots of senseless revalry. I can't stress enough the importance of presents and revalry to a good day. The latter is where you look back at what a disappointment your year has been. If your year hasn't been disappointing, you're either lucky or don't have a strong enough imagination. Either way, why have a holiday which focuses on that? But whatever. Happy Christ-in-a-heystack day. If you celebrate something else, you're probably going to hash it out in hell for all eternity, so you should probably enjoy the season as well. It's pretty much all you've got before the cold, stale breath of the reaper starts creeping down your spine to deliver you to eternal torment. <3 cranked out at 6:41 PM | |
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Gone
Countdown until back in Maryland: 10 days. Until then, I can be contacted at assyrian_e@yahoo.com or on my cell. God help me. cranked out at 5:54 PM | |
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Exam RUCKUS
Brought the ruckus to my constitutional history exam. I got to write about Roe v. Wade and managed to write a reasonably compelling argument as to why abortion is unique in being protected, as opposed to other medical procedures and other forms of enforcing public morality. Then i got to write about how the court abused its power in extending the interstate commerce clause to include people. At the end of the day, I managed to protect women's right to have an abortion, but not to go to college. Huh. In the mean time:  ...I'm just sayin'. cranked out at 10:33 AM | |
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THIS Is Science? It's been said that focusing our minds on the thoughts of the giants of intellectualism is a kind of cathartic freedom. I'm not exactly sure who said it, but whoever it was needs to spend a little more time recognizing what it takes to be a giant in the field today. So much of human thought in the hard sciences has been covered that people are turning to the social sciences to make advances. In things like physics, the extension of our knowledge has now become cleaning up the edges in terms of the pragmatic models of our world. The theoretical is, barring another major revolution (which is inevitable... but not yet), sort of done. The flurry of activity which came as a consequence of quantum electrodynamics and the like is winding down. You can tell this becuase now everyone is riding the superstring bandwagon (ie: False hope: The theory). As few as thirty years ago, the social sciences were considered interesting, but not exactly respectable scientific fields in the way chemistry or physics were, and rightly so. Anthropology was the only vaguely scientific discipline of any of them, and then, the focus was more on coopting the success of evolutionary theory (as genetics hadn't really become a big deal yet) in the realm of social dynamics. Generally, sociology and psychology were not viewed in such high regard, except in the latter's capacity to medicate highly volatile cases. They were largely either descriptive or therapeutic, but not theoretic. But all of that began to change as people realized something very important: nobody knows shit about the fields. So the experts of the day decided they'd do something crafty: they decided to take the success of the hard sciences and try to gain validity by pretending they'd accomplished an equal feat. Jacques Lacan is a paragon example. For anyone unaware (blissfully unaware), Lacan is a French psychiatrist. He worked with psychotic patients for a lengthy period of time and began developing a version of psychoanalysis and really a whole conception of the human mind which continues in the vein of Freud. Basically, the premise he starts from is this idea that the conscious mind (the ego, in Freudean terms) is an illusion propagated by the unconscious. First: Consider the idea that consciousness is an "illusion." What does that even mean? I mean, right off the bat, what is the actual difference in the use of the concept if it is an 'illusion'? It's possible that consciousness is a consequence of some subconscious processes (in fact, unless you believe in consciousness creating itself, this is even a compelling model), and as such I assumed on first reading that this is what he had actually said. But no, he is an actual proponent of the idea that the unconscious and the processes therein actually control someone, and somehow there is a self-identity which is independent of this (the perceptive mind, which he somehow divorces from the control centers) which believes (which in and of itself suggests something - if a self-identifying mind can believe things, it's not 100% perceptive, but whatever) that it is in control. Contrived enough for you? Lacan would of course have to answer these objections. He does it, in classic style, by completely obfuscating the issue and failing, on any level, to make a sensible argument. He simply starts ripping off a graduate text in topology and pretends as if he's done something. For example: "This diagram [The Mobius strip] can be considered the basis of a sort of essential inscription at the origin, in the know which constitutes the subject. This goes much further than you may think at first, becuase you can search for the sort of surface able to receive such inscriptions. You can perhaps see that the sphere, that old symbol for totality, is unsuitable. The torus, a Klein bottle, a cross-cut surface, are able to receive such a cut. And this diversity is the very important as it explains many things about the structure of mental disease. If one can symbolize the subject by this fundamental cut, in the same way one can show that a cut on a torus corresponds to the neurotic subject, and on a cross-cut surface to another sort of mental disease.I submit that this entire paragraph (which I am not taking out of context - if you're curious, it's from an article he wrote in 1970. Translated from French, but not altered) is completely meaningless. Lacan just throws out a bunch of random topological terms (knot, Klein bottles, Mobius strips, cross-cut[sic]) which, with the exception of the knot, are just toplogical surfaces and don't have any actual translation into modeling anything he refers to. Other examples of Lacan being a total douche vis a vis using mathematical terms in a way that clearly shows how little he knows about them are abundant. In a paragraph on identifying one's self with a given gender, he uses "It is false that there exists x." The negation can only be applied to complete logical statements... yet he decides that it is expedient to apply negation to stand-alone quantifiers, as well as functions. It's possible there are just notational difficulties, but he also says things which, even correcting and giving him the benefit of the doubt on his ability to write simple first order logic statements, he's still an ass. One of the specific statements he uses (from a 1973 paper) is (~Ex~Ox)^(~AxOx). There isn't an x such that there is the negation of Ox, but there exists the negation of x such that Ox? (note: Ox isn't an animal here, but more a function with an unspecified mapping [actually a phi in his paper, but I can't do phis here without more difficulty than it's worth]) For that to be true, the set of x you have to use is one where the negation of any element is not in the set. In other words, neither x nor the opposite is true. In first order logic, he's referring to a vacuous function. It's also possible that what he meant to say (correcting for some of his sloppy notation) that the set of all people who consider themselves women, they don't consider themselves not women. Which is tautological. So either he's using a meaningless bit of logic or he's saying something which is self-evidently true. Either way, he's just an obfuscating son of a bitch. Why do social scientists feel the need to include this sort of crap in their theories? Is it just because they realize, on some level, that what they're saying is completely meaningless, devoid of any substance? Is it that they just want to appear to be more valid and scientific than they are? Or is it really just that they believe that they're somehow saying something? The more I consider it, the more it seems like the people writing these sorts of things just get so caught up in their own little world of "proving" something about human consciousness or whatnot, that they never actually sit back and consider the types of things they're saying in relation to the actual world. It's like philosophers who get caught up in theories like neotropism, or anything Nietzsche ever said in his entire life. They get so caught up in the intellectual gymnastics that they never get around to considering whether what they're doing even begins to hold meaning. There are entire philosophical journals devoted to the question of what one means by "I." Identity is one of those concepts which people want to explicate in a compelling and original way, and by way of doing so, they manage to go about writing serious journal articles which go on for pages and pages about whether or not "I" can refer to one's self if one is asleep or otherwise unconscious. These are interesting exercizes for potheads to entertain while in a state of altered consciousness (right up there with: "What if we're a hamburger and God is just waiting to take a bite?"), but is this really an exercise a serious person should take up? Is there a single person out there who is unclear on what is meant when you refer to yourself? If someone punches you in the stomach, do you sit and ponder if he really punched "you"? If you decide you like a sundae, is it an ambiguous desire becuase you're not sure of the source of this liking? Of course not. No individual, even those who write this sort of thing, actually believe this. So if the theory can't possibly help in our understanding of something, why on earth would you continue to do it? It seems very much like people are waiting for the next major revolution in thought, the way people were waiting for the next great revolution in physics. They are unsatisfied with this postmodern, morally insipid ethos polite society is degenerating into, and really, really want someone to come along and tell them that this bleak outlook isn't the truth. That somehow, there's more to it. It doesn't seem a coincidence to me that the decline of religion and the overthrow of God in society correlates pretty strongly with the rise in this sort of interest in an explanation other than the obvious. It's as if people were unsatisfied with the way the world appears to be, so created a personification of God to tell us that we are not, in fact, alone in the meandering path we take through our brief consciousness - but found this eventually to be an unsatisfying interpretation as the dogma of the various religions became confused with what "God' really was. The result is a creation of new gods, equally irrational and meaningless, as we trick ourselves into believing that we really are explaining the universe. For some reason, we as people seem to be unable to just accept that maybe things are what they seem to be. That there isn't some great unity to it all, and that we aren't superheroes. We use language to create a sense of identity larger than ourselves - Lacan tells us that it's the subconscious, which is so much more powerful - but we always work towards it. We've created new gods, and it will be a while until these ones get old, like some broken toy from a Christmas passed. Then we'll come up with new ones and so on until, in the end, it is all regarded as silly superstition. When people understood God to be out there, they didn't believe they were creating some opiate for the masses or related bit of fiction. They actually thought they were describing both metaphysical, metaethical and pragmatic truth. We do the same thing with our Chomskyan and Kantian and Lacanian myths. We tell ourselves that it's not all incomprehensible. We tell ourselves that - if we just have enough faith - we can explain consciousness, we can explain why we act how we do. Eventually. It's all about faith in an unseen god. It's just the terminology which has changed. cranked out at 3:17 PM | |
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No Alarms
This is one of those days. I read six pages of a nonEuclidean geometry textbook while daydreaming about a snowstorm I was in last year, and thinking ahead to the last semester which is going to resemble normal life for me. I consider rearranging my room. I realize that I haven't remembered a single word from the past ten precious minutes, now gone to oblivion. I refocus myself, reminding myself that I am a paltry few classes from finishing a major which I will never use, and no longer find interesting. I force the theorem in front of me to congeal into something sensible, and then realize that it's taken me fifteen minutes to make this series of P's and P-prime's tell me its arcane secret: I need to reflect the points and connect the dots. This depresses me further. I spend five minutes flipping through channels, and stop on ESPN2... it's the NCAA Women's volleyball semifinals. Wisconson: 25, USC: 25. I watch this for a while. I think I know one of the girls playing for USC, but when they show her name and age, I realize that it can't be the same person. Unless the individual in question entered the witness protection program. I vaguely entertian the possibility of starting a private witness protection program. I realize that this is almost certianly in violation of roughly ten federal laws, and hence abandon the project. Back to studying: I go over the third exam (the one I was exempted from) and feel vaguely queezy about having been exempted from it. I would, on some level, have liked to take it, since it appears to be super easy. I download the newest version of AIM, and see that you can now link screen names, making it so you can be signed on an infinite number of times from the same computer at the same time. I create five new screen names to test this theory. I carry on a thirty-second conversation with myself. I feel strangely schizophrenic, yet at the same time, empowered. I recognize the irony of having one of the names I create including solipsy. I spin in my chair. It's 12:30 AM, and I have a final in too few hours. I give up on the idea of getting a full night's sleep, and just resolve to study until I have everything down. Sleep be damned. Five minutes later, the moral indignation comes. I feel an existential angst at having to learn senseless information which, by all accounts, is really just an intellectual curiosity rather than being true in the sense of epistemic validity. I consider writing this instead of the honor pledge on the exam. I resolve to do this, and start considering a decent wording. "Fuck this" is too crude, and the above is too pretentious. I settle on "I couldn't have cheated on this exam, since that would imply facts which preexist the theorems herein." I couldn't care less that this will: a) Get the grader immediately against me, b) help nothing. I am offended. I start considering what other moral stances I can take. Finally, it's 12:50 and I need to go to bed. I give up on studying, and hope that I just magically know all the answers. I recognize that magical wishes are probably not likely to come through, and come post here becuase the alternative is yelling obscenities, and my housemates have dealt with enough of my pointless belligerence over the past week. I simply can't wait until I am back from Colorado with a month ahead of me to read chick-lit* and do things I actually enjoy. *= The phrase "chick-lit" is in no way to denote a derrogatory stance towards women or any member of the human race who may, in some unforseen ambiguity, also be considered female. The use of "chick", in this context, is highly ironical as I have the utmost respect for both the chromosomal basis they represent as well as the works they have tirelessly concocted. If anyone is offended by this, I apologize. ~MGNT cranked out at 12:45 AM | |
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McCain: Real American... hero?
McCain says torture is 'beneath America', and recieves praise for it. Have to love when espousing not using torture makes you a good person. Also sort of scary that this even needs to be said. cranked out at 10:41 AM | |
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Return of the King: Suck
I did something I am not entirely proud of last night. I went to a 12:01 showing of Return of the King with a few people. Why would I regret this, you ask? Well, for one, the movie is a thousand hours long. In the first couple movies, they were a thousand hours long, but you never really notice - you're too busy enjoying it. But there are only so many minutes of shaky, darkened, rain-blurred battle scenes one can take. So during these stretches of Blair Witch 3: Return of the King, I compiled a mental list of things which bothered me. There are "spoilers" here, but given that the book is based on an opera which is based on an epic poem which is based on a 3,000 year old religion, I don't so much care. - I realize this is a movie with magic and flying dragons and life after death and all that, but could someone at least consult... I don't know... an oven, before doing the physics here? Sitting four feet from molton rock! Good thing there's no convection, or their eyes would boil and explode, their lungs would collapse, and that's if they managed not to just be flat out vaporized! Lighting massive fires at altitudes where you'd have trouble lighting a cigarette, with complete ease! Wheee! - Aragorn spends his life in seclusion with all kinds of fear and doubt about whether he can be king, and whether he's a strong enough individual to lead. In the first movie, there's the gut-check moment with the magical sword. The second movie, he doesn't stand up to Theodin becuase he likewise is unaccepting of his lineage. In the third? Agent Elrond Hubbard does an overly dramatic display with a sword, and tells him his girlfriend is sick and suddenly he's fucking Charlemagne. "Humanity being overrun and the world plunged in to darkness? My vagina hurts. I can't possibly be king... unless some trollop is going to die otherwise. Sure, why not." - Now... I'm just saying... if I have an immortal army which can, in the course of about seven minutes, completely dismantle the forces which were previously beating the militarily strongest nation around at their own fortified castle... I probably wouldn't waste time using them in an ambush. In fact... I also wouldn't jump ahead of them in the ambush. This isn't cowardice, it's just that... well... they're literally unkillable, so it seems fair to let them go first. Also... after they beat the expeditionary force of my enemy, I wouldn't dismiss them, and then take my small and battered group, and go to march on the main force of my enemy on his turf. - Does Sauron have a really bad memory? He sees Frodo has the ring in the first movie... since he's wearing it. He then sees Frodo in this movie with the ring, and then completely neglects to send anyone to get him Then he sees Frodo going up the side of Mt. Doom to destroy the ring... and ignores it. If the source of my power is the ring, and someone is going to destroy it, that strikes me as a little more relevant than a few humans at my gate, which I have no REAL reason to open, anyway. And why go march your entire army out there, anyway? I mean, can't Sauron afford... like... a guard to protect the opening to Mt. Doom? Why not have, at the very least, a padlock or a chain link fence or something? - Just so we're clear: Three seven foot tall orcs get slashed by Sam, and die instantly. Gollum gets slashed by Sam after getting beat in the skull with many, many rocks, and doesn't even slow down. It strikes me that Sauron should make his next army out of something other than butter. - The witch jesus of the wraiths is supposed to be this warrior who cannot be stopped. He has a bitchin' flail which just smashes the girl's shield. He has been set on fire and stabbed previously without lasting negative consequences. He has a sword which steals your soul. He can shreik in a way which makes people mildly uncomfortable. How does he die? Someone figures out, through the use of some arcane knowledge which trancends understanding, his one, Archillean weakness: being stabbed. Apparently, throughout the ages, the "stab him" method was never tried. It strikes me that, the reason "no man" could ever beat him was that all men are retarded. - Speaking of men, homoeroticism much? There was seriously about ninety minutes of just overt Mary & Pippin; Sam & Frodo; Elf & Dwarf, and so on, about to kiss. Then there's the scene where Frodo is in bed, and it plays like the gas station scene from Zoolander. They're all smiling and laughing, and the music is just really, really fluffy. I swear that broke into a Middle Earth Man-Boy Love Association orgy about six seconds after it cut out. Which is okay, since Orlando Bloom would have been a part of it. - Note to Theodin: cavalry charges against massive, sixteen story tall elephants with spiked tusks, who are trained for war DO NOT WORK. Let's say you're small but highly mobile and trying to take on an enemy like that. Maybe... I don't know... flank him? Scatter, and hamstring him? Something that doesn't cluster you together and just let him rape you? - On that note, just in general: The military strategy in the movie was bad enough that I started to notice it. Apparently, nobody in Middle Earth has considered the idea of fortifying a plain. The head of Gondor doesn't get that, if you have cavalry and your enemy does not, fighting in a close, urban environment is probably not good for you. The tactical genius that is a shield wall doesn't occur to the people seiging a city. - Also, and I realize this is Tolkein's fault in all likelihood, but less deus ex machina please? Every single situation was solved with a punch-out ending. Stranded on Mt. Doom? That's okay, we have random eagles to come fly you away. City being overrun? That's fine, we have a magical undead army of destiny. Or didn't you know? The best is when they have the plot contrivance of Rohan showing up and routing the orcs, followed by the plot contrivance of the huge elephant people showing up, followed by the plot contrivance of the immortal undead army showing up. It's just a battle of who has the most powerful random, overpowered magical backup. There was not a single thing in the entire movie/book or whatever which was at all a clever or thinking solution to a problem. cranked out at 2:18 PM | |
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Shopping, the third attempt
When I woke up this morning, my initial impression was that I was in one of those horrible third world countries, and was having my liver stolen by organ thieves. After realizing that my liver hurt becuase of the previous night's activities, and not becuase of dirty, rotton theieves, I immediately came to the present question of why the fuck I was awake at nine. I ascertained the source of the awakening as my alarm, driving me to reel off obscenities at a reasonably high volume for a good seven minutes. After coming to grips with the fact that the alarm was both: a) inanimate, and hence not good at listening and b) set by me, I got around to the business at hand: waking the fuck up to go shopping with Sean. For the third time. I picked him up late, and after a detour, we ended up right back where we had been before: Columbia mall. For those of you not familiar with said mall, it is hell. It's the most poorly laid out, angular piece of mall trash in the universe. On top of this, the type of people who frequent the establishment are typically those who I would love to hit, really hard, with a bat. If I were violent. Or angsty. Which I am not. The first thing we did (after stopping by a Starbucks) was to pick out a random "fragrance" for some random girl. I know it's called a fragrance becuase the sales lady, who helped us after a loooooong time said it eleven times a minute. She refused to use synonyms, and is, I swear to god, the most bitter person I've ever met. I think she has a PhD in physics or something, yet is forced by fate to work in a department store, and hence bitterly despises everyone. We went about finding one by systematically spraying and smelling every single one along the sample line in the department store. This amounts to something like fifty different bottles. Just as we were about to start on a second set, we were turned on to an amazing invention called "paper strips," which they use so people can smell the perfumes without spraying them into the air, and quickly moving through them like morons. This is good, becuase by now I had inhaled about a gallon of the stuff, and I was constantly having to rub my nose and sniffle. I felt like a goddamn coke head. Also, can I just say that whoever designs these bottles is criminally insane? They are the most contrived things I think I've ever seen. Christ, it's just there to hold and spray. If cleaning supply people ever got this messed up, you'd see Windex in a bottle shaped like a Koala bear eating a snake or something. It's possible that they spend too much time smelling their own product :/ How is it that this creative power isn't going to something more useful? Like little paper testing strips? We left the department store and did exactly what you'd expect: went to look at candles. For those of you having trouble picturing this scene, two males walking around a mall, smelling heavily of a mixture of women's perfumes, and candle shopping together. I don't think I can ever really complain again about the vague questions regarding my sexuality again. I then proceeded to get a new outfit (Last time, I bought a blue shirt with white stripes. This time I bought the exact same style of shirt, but white with blue stripes. I think it's fair to say I'm close to being cut.), we stopped in a few various places, then went to eat, where, for whatever reason, we ended up with free pizza. Just so we're clear: I've now spent about a billion hours shopping, and bought exactly one person a present. Well, I mean, two if you count the presents I buy myself, but I file those under "necessities." I think it's just about time I stop kidding everyone and admit what we've known all along: I'm an agent of God. cranked out at 6:16 PM | |
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Bush & Saddam & et al.
I know I said I wouldn't talk about politics becuase I know fuck all about it (not that it stops Fox news, mind you), but just one thing: does it bother anyone that Saddam's capture and the sanctions (ie: declaration of war) on Syria happened at the same time? Or that now we're going to have a year-long show trial for Saddam which retroactively seeks to justify the invasion of Iraq? Is it really too much to ask that we have a president who, you know, pays attention to his own country? I feel like one of those wives whose husband is at work all day. I'm all neglected :/ cranked out at 10:44 AM | |
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Final: Ethical Theory
I woke up this morning at seven. You know what? That seems surreal, and it will never happen again, so let me type it again, just because it's that unique: I intentionally (as in: not to throw up, die, etc...) woke up this morning at seven o'clock. To go take an exam I had spent a cumulative total of eighteen minutes studying for. Very much thanks go to Mike who allowed me to do this by pointing me in the right direction on the three pages I had to read of Rawls. As a historical note, those three consecutive pages of Rawls constitute the largest amount I read this whole semester for this class. I drove into campus (despite it being something like six degrees.) and parked very illegally to cut the walk down. Plus, I had no intention of actually passing my exam, so if it turned out that I didn't know anything, I figured it would be easier to write "Essay one: Fuck it." and go home and go back to bed if my car was nearby. I got into the room, and realized something. Something which normally I only expect in a math exam. I realized that, sure, I didn't know anything, but... well... look at the competition, eh? Nobody knew anything. I just had to hope that the exam isn't graded on the "repeat shit she said in class" standard, which with her seems perfectly reasonable, since she grades based on some ethereal criteria. I think it involves chicken bones or something. In any case, eight o'clock rolls around and we're told what the essays we have to do are. We have a choice between doing one essay or two. The two prompts are pretty straightforward (ie: dumb). The first is a question about Rawls and his three phases in the development of justice, and why Rawls isn't a utilitarian (he is.) The second question is: "Hume makes some arguemnts which are anti-rationalist. Choose one, and dispute it. Refer specifically to the role he delegates to reason." In other words: The test was offering me a dangerous choice. I could go with the first essay, and walk to a very easy A talking about the development from emotional to ideological justice and how Hume and Mill (and, incidentally, Frued and Piaget) fit into all of it. Or I could go with my insane, irrational hatred of all things Hume. I don't think I have to tell you which one I went with. This was a paper asking me to talk shit about Hume and his propensity to trivialize certainty. I didn't actually remember specifically which arguments she was referring to. I remembered one talked about a tree, so I went with that. I started with a page saying what she would expect: "Here's the argument Hume gives about how, if reason were the grounds for ethics, it has to be universalized, even to will-less and inanimate objects." Then I just steered the entire paper to where I could pointlessly attack Hume for the following: 1. Limiting reason to a descriptive capacity. This took the front and back of the sheets of an entire exam booklet, less one page which I had to do identifications on. While the professor may not appreciate the amount of malice I seem to have against Hume, I think I actually wrote an essay which she won't be able to justify giving less than an A. Unfortunately for me, she doesn't have to justify it, which is going to ultimately hurt me, since she generally doesn't appreciate any open attack on an argument, by a student. Now I just have to finish my thoroughly mediocre paper on the applications of internal based v. externally based modes of moral thinking, and I will be done with this class for the semester... and I never once had to read or discuss Aristotle. I think, all in all, everything's coming up Greg. cranked out at 10:12 AM | |
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Back for Finals
- Back just in time to study for my final exam in ethical theory tomorrow (Total time spent studying: 18 minutes. Total time spent reading ESPN reports on the Heisman ceremony: 18 minutes. This is not a coincidence, and actually represents my priorities at the moment). - I spent the entire train ride up to New York arguing with a Dartmouth French Lit professor. I know she was a Dartmouth French Lit professor, and that she graduated from Yale ('91) and got her PhD from the same ('95) becuase she mentioned each an average of 8 times during the course of casual conversation. The argument basically came when I decided to alleviate my nerves by picking a fight, in an incidental fashion. On a whim, I decided to assert that Voltaire was the greatest writer ever to emerge from Europe. I then made a bunch of vague arguments about description and the like. I can't imagine it didn't just flat-out piss off everyone in the adjacent seats. - I spent the ride on the way back, from Philadelphia to Baltimore, involuntarily carrying on a conversation with the guy in the seat next to me. He turned to me after about five minutes and showed me the book he was reading. The topic? Kaballah. I immediately made about five snap-judgements, none of them flattering. It turns out he travels back and forth between Philadelphia and Baltimore becuase he took a new job with the FDA and didn't want to to move his kids. He left a better paying job at a pharmacutical company becuase he didn't like what they were doing. I felt immediately bad for assuming so much about him from his questionable choice of literature. - Listening to Belle and Sebastian and reading Martin Amis makes me feel like I should be a) more angsty, b) more gay, c) more British, in descending order of importance. I realize that (c) is just (b) with an accent, but I felt it important to include both, since I have trouble with accents which are not faux-German or Russian. - I feel weird saying this but... Me: 1, My immune system: 0. - I realized today that, for the past 5-6 years, I've always asked for books for Christmas, but nobody has ever gotten me one which I liked unless I told them, at the very least, the authors I like. It's really odd to me that this should be the case. I think I would fellate to death the person who managed to find me something I enjoyed as a present. - Given the choice between Don Quixote and a turkey sandwich on rye, I'd take Don Quixote. Figure THAT out, bitch. cranked out at 10:56 PM | |
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Self-love, and all that jazz
Everyone talks about the problems of trusting others as if it is the be all, end all of risks an individual can take. The familiar maxims about putting your heart, your mind, your whatever in the hands of another and the ultimate act of trust this entails render the situation rather translucent. I can't help but think, however, that this may not be the case. When you trust another person, all that is at stake, ultimately, is the direct consequence of whatever trust you put in them. Trust another person with your heart, and the worst that can happen is they break it. Trust them at work, and you may be fired. Trust them in school, and you may fail a course. The worst case scenario is always something which renders pain or discomfort, but leaves the core of a person intact. At the end of the day, the blame is always assigned elsewhere - the fault is not with the individual trusting, but the curator of that trust. The one who failed to appreciate the gravity of the charge they were rendered, or even in full understanding, did not live up to it. The final score on the count of things that matter comes up on the side of trust. It's when a person is forced to have faith in themself that there is really the potential for damage. When someone, without information or planning, has to accept that they are good enough and can rely on their own attributes to pull something through. Or, in the worst case, when they have to rely on themself to be good enough to pass the judgement of another person. The harm when one enters a relationship of some sort isn't that they have to trust the other person not to hurt them, the harm is that they have to have faith in their own worth to where they are deserving of the other. That's the hard thing - accepting not only ones limitations, but also their strengths. This symmetry is really what gives faith or trust or whatever its power. That everyone ends up at stake, and the real potential for loss is never on the person giving faith. Trusting other people is easy. Trusting yourself seems to be what's hard. cranked out at 11:27 AM | |
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I'll be in NYC this weekend, and then have finals next week. Soonest to expect an update will be monday, though hopefully it will be a pretty substantial one. cranked out at 10:05 AM | |
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One of those boring posts...
Today has been one of huge ups and downs. On the one hand, I managed to become really, really sick after about six straight days of not sleeping or anything. It turns out that when you have an immune system disorder, not sleeping at all hurts you. This has resulted in many, many bad things, especially given what this weekend is. This, in turn, led to my sleeping all afternoon, and waking up only when it was dark. On the other hand, I called my geometry professor and asked if I could skip the exam tomorrow, and take the average on my first two exams. He asked why, and I basicically just said that I had too much other stuff to get to. He said it was okay. I found out later (he sent me an e-mail to confirm the excused absence) this is largely because I've gotten A+'s on both (with a perfect score on one), and so taking this exam would be superfluous anyway. Now I just need to not screw up the final, and I'll be okay. I also have many books. I finally picked up The Bell Jar, and am planning on reading it as soon as I get throug about five other things. I'll probably have many, many rants about it. Stay tuned. cranked out at 5:32 PM | |
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Stream of... something, something
There was a child, once, who was playing across the street from a restaurant his family was eating at. He is outside because his parents are paying the bill and having so-called “adult conversation,” which is an activity that bores him senseless. In the clearing where he explores, there is an old railroad track which is rusted to the point where it is indistinguishable from the worm-eaten wood which had once passed for the slats between the two rails. The only contrast in the steely dusk is the gray rocks the track was lain through, which used to shudder as the trains thundered past. He stands up on one of the rails and walks along with his arms straight out, like the wings of an airplane. He gets so lost in the crimson of his newfound balance beam that he doesn’t hear at first when his parents emerge from the belly of the restaurant and begin calling for him to come back. It is only when concern creeps into his father’s voice, and then concern gives way to anger that the child snaps out of his personal game and goes rushing back to his parents. Sprinting across the yard, he pays little regard to anything but the movement of his legs and getting back to his parents; avoiding punishment at all cost becomes his goal. All he notices is a personal dawn as the headlights approach. After many months in the hospital, he gets back to school, though with physical therapy replacing after-school soccer practices and a new caution to temper the enthusiasm he once displayed. He grows up to a comfortable career, and a comfortable marriage. He takes care of himself. He jogs in the mornings. He doesn’t drink coffee or smoke. He passes away quietly at the age of eighty-three, never having taken an undue risk or having made a decision which wasn’t carefully weighed. Many people attend his funeral. This is the sort of life many of us can expect. Not exactly the same, but something similar to it. We grow up with a trust that the world is a place which won’t hurt us, and which is safe within a certain confines. Usually it does not happen in such dramatic fashion, but eventually this façade is broken down and one by one our illusions about our parents, ourselves, and our world rot away. They never really disappear; they just fail to completely support the weight they once did. If you lean too hard on them, they’ll give way; you just learn not to question these simple myths we weave for ourselves. We call it accepting reality. We call it “growing up.” We call it any number of things in any number of ways, but the message is always the same: you get a certain number of mulligans, but eventually, gambling your comfort for some ethereal benefit is considered crass. Avoiding pain becomes the focus of life. Getting pleasure or happiness is secondary to the avoidance of hurt. We try to tell ourselves that we’re living, but really we sit crouched in the dark corners of the world, jumping at any loud noise. There’s nothing people hate more than surprises. We never achieve depth because we’re too busy protecting ourselves from feeling anything that would provide it. We won’t let ourselves go in the depth of human experience without a filter through which it can pass. We accept a grayscale version of things, and grope blindly for meaning in all of it, where there meaning has left with the context of it all. We read Ernest Hemingway to learn about war and Langston Hughes to learn about love, and leave it at that. Nobody earns their depth, they just mimic what they see as depth in others, leading to a pantomime of life where life stops impersonating art, and life starts impersonating life. It’s all very depressing. cranked out at 8:30 PM | |
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In keeping with my recent tradition of posting about things of little to no interest to anyone who reads this, I've decided to talk about the BCS controversy surrounding OU and LSU playing in the title game. For those of you living in a closet, figuratively or otherwise, the University of Southern California is currently ranked first in the polls (basically: asking a bunch of sports journalists to rank people) after Oklahoma lost its conference championship to Kansas State. Oklahoma dropped to third. So according to the polls, OU and LSU are the second and third place teams, and are playing for the national championship anyway. People find this to be an incontrovertable damnation of the BCS system as a method for finding the national champion.
A few issues. First, it is a travesty that the team who is first in the polls is not playing in the championship game - but not becuase of the reasons they're saying. USC is not that great a team. They are 11-1 (OU and LSU are both 12-1), their loss coming to Cal, who ended the season 7-6. The best team USC has beaten all season has been Wazzou, who later lost to Washington, a team who gets routinely trounced, despite residency in what is unequivocally the worst of the BCS conferences. Even the ACC is stronger. The polls reflect, more than anything, the bandwagon effect. A constant rant of mine about ESPN, who is even a little better about it than other people, is that they just randomly sensationalize everything. The Bengals' quarterback, Jon Kitna, wins a few games, and they start writing up a storm about how he should be the league MVP. Nevermind that he's just generally an okay quarterback with an above-average completion percentage and breaking even on wins. It's the same general trend in the polls. There are huge swings in voting which don't make any sense. OU destroys everyone all season, and then has an understandably uninspired game which doesn't matter a bit since they're guaranteed a national championship slot, and they lose one to a legitimately good team, and ESPN (along with many sports writers) jump the bandwagon like nothing. People talk about how a playoff system would somehow remedy this. It wouldn't. Then, a team like any of the ones currently under consideration for the championship could lose in the first round of the playoffs. If USC can lose to Cal, they can certainly lose to FSU or Tennessee. Hopefully they get trounced by a superior Michigan in the Rose bowl, so everyone can finally shut the hell up. cranked out at 10:07 PM | |
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GW tournament
This weekend was the GW tournament. James and I went, and we finished in second place (losing to Chris and Robbie in finals). I was top speaker at the tournament, with Sean second and James third. There are a couple things of note from the whole thing: - I gave what I really believe to be the best speech I've ever given in quarterfinals. The case run was that an individual ought to choose a long and boring life over a short and heroic one. I got to defend essentially the idea that idealism is what makes us human, and that resigning yourself to a long and dull life was essentially a living death. It was honestly the most satisfying five minutes of my debate career. - I also had one of my few favorite rounds ever against Nita and Bateman from Hopkins, opposing "You're the army - don't save Pvt. Ryan." It was just a genuinely nice round, with good arguments and lots of emotion on both sides. I always like hitting those two, though I feel bad when I am alternately hung over or still drunk during. - I did the bitchiest, meanest thing I've ever done in a round. I started off my opposition speech second round (against two Rutgers novices) with the following: "Mr. Speaker, I want to start off by telling a story. A couple centuries ago, in the course of discovering the new world, various Europeans travelled all over the various oceans and such. One such group came upon an island, and on that island was a bird. The bird had a blue beak and was really, really stupid. It hadn't evolved survival instincts, and would walk up to people and they could snap its neck, and it wouldn't even flinch. Mr. Speaker, on hearing the points presented by side opposite, I know exactly how those explorers felt." The ballot (by a very respectable judge) said, "Your opening, while extremely humorous, was unnecessary and vicious. I didn't knock down your points, but you could not take the 1 after it." - I noticed tonight on the drive back to my house that there are moments like the above, and I want to share them sometimes, but I can't. There's this fundamental block: I can tell people about each of them, but never really let people know what it was like. Nobody will ever understand how psyched I am to finally have gotten a top 5 speaker award, let alone top. People wonder why debators like being friends with other debators so much - it's becuase we do this activity where there is so much of your person put into it, and the only people who will ever even start to appreciate it are people who have done it. cranked out at 9:55 PM | |
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The American Dream
Today, I finally had a masterstroke of inspiration which I believe could revolutionize religion in the United States, and create a better world. I concieved of an idea so breathtaking, so breakthrough in its sheer sythesis of the modern world and the old faith, that it clearly belonged in the annals of invention among the ninety-five thesis, and the nails which held Jesus to the chross. Get this: Sugar coated and chocolate covered communion wafers. I realize this is such a logical step in the evolution of the church that someone must have considered it, and patented it already. According to the US Patent Office, this is not the case. So I did what anyone who wrote the below post would do. I went to file and patent it myself. I filled out many (one) of the forms, before I found something disturbing: Sec. 1.16 National application filing fees. This is unacceptable. This is an outrage. I would simply not stand for this. Chanelling, I believe, one or more of the great religious leaders of our past, I went forth on a crusade. A crusade for the people. A crusade for the children, to save morality in our country. I got ordained, and wrote to the Secretary of Commerce, asking for a religious exception. Just in case, I also wrote letters to both the Republican National Convention and Jerry Falwell asking for funding to file my patent. I only pray that these gentle souls give in to my request. In fact, I should hope that all three do, so I can have a free patent and $770 to buy liquor and nutmeg, like Malcom X got high on in prison. cranked out at 11:19 PM | |
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Feedback? Since when do I get feedback?
A number of people who have been reading this journal, in its various forms, for any length of time appear to have noticed the shift of my focus from politics and the like, to less... serious... subject matter. I know this becuase I've heard about it from a bunch of people, who seem to be taking it with various degrees of enthusiasm. Someone even managed to call me a sell-out, something I find highly unlikely, given that I never had any ethical stances I could sell out. Trust me, if I ever get to the point where I'm considered an intellectual or anything of the like, and I figure out a way to turn a profit, I will sell out so fucking fast it will make your head spin. I don't see that as the worst thing in the world, to be honest. I don't see it as an individual's obligation to remain in a state of discomfort (or relative discomfort) on the grounds that society as it exists does not recognize his ideological convictions as worthy of reward. If, for example, you happen to be a Godless socialist who can make gobs of money writing trashy pro-labor books, I say go for it. I mean, don't consider yourself a serious intellectual or pillar of integrity, but do it anyway. To answer the implicit question many of you have posed, however, the reason for the shift is largely becuase... I don't know anything. I don't say that in the Socratic "I'm a cocky son of a bitch" sort of way (man, I wish I could punch that guy in his pug nose), but in the literal "I actually don't have any real information" sort of way. The only situation in which I can make arguments of any sort is when things are very, very abstract, and don't require you to know things like "Turkey is not in Western Europe." Since reading the news on a daily basis just makes me depressed, and since the depression doesn't yield any sort of positive result or greater understanding, I'd rather keep trying to eke out short stories and random essays. I think they're more fun, and it helps me get my thoughts in order. Politics is stupid, has little impact on the day-to-day lives of a majority of individuals, and to the extent that it is worth paying attention to, it's generally not national, anyway. I'm sick of being pointlessly angry and frustrated about things, so I'm not going to take up my time really caring. I'd rather read a book, or play video games. One person doesn't make a difference to anyone but themself. cranked out at 4:22 PM | |
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Not random, good sir...
"A shaft of light pierced the cocoon of his dreamless sleep. Lifting a hand towards the window which acted as the source for this unwelcome invasion of visibility, it took the breadth of a heartbeat before the familiar throb of a headache greeted Isaac to the waiting day. He sighed and freed himself from his sheets, which had ensnared his left ankle sometime during the course of the night, and, sitting up, saw through the attendant haze of morning that it was barely even lunch time. A pity, he thought, that he should be conscious before his mother left for her afternoon errands.. This would certainly require conversation of some sort." Huh. cranked out at 4:20 PM | |
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Nice Guys Finish Last
Scott sat in the restaurant, folding the paper from his straw into all manner of design, waiting for Juliana to show up. She had called, her voice cracking and edgy from the tears she could not conceal, and asked him to meet her in the small faux-1940's diner across the street from the Barnes and Noble where she worked. Scott had been in the middle of writing a paper for his Medieval History class, but would never miss an opportunity to help Juliana. He was a perfectly forgettable and average student at the high school they both attended. He had played junior-varsity football, and was a member of the National Honor Society, but was otherwise indistinguishable from most of the guys in the senior class. He was considered bright, but not brilliant, and generally got along with most people. His few close friends chided him for his innocent zeal when it came to Juliana, someone he saw as needing to be saved from herself, as well as her 'asshole' boyfriend. His chosen form of rescue was, quite naturally, to date her himself. Juliana Fletcher was a popular girl in school - she had avoided the role of the clichéd cheerleader, but was active in a number of organizations. She had gained a small measure of local fame by selling a few pictures of the homeless to a national newspaper for a human interest story after a local vagrant was killed by an influential family's rottweiler. The mutt hadn't been put down, or even muzzled, and the paper had wanted to make big deal about the corruption of the local government for their failure to do so. The whole thing sort of went away after, embarrassingly, it was found that the homeless man had been trying to kidnap the dog at the time of the attack, but Juliana's pictures were published in the initial story nonetheless. It was more fame than most small-town Iowans can usually expect. Scott was just about to get up to call his home answering machine in the desperate hope that she had called with an explanation, when he saw Juliana push through the front doors. Every time he saw her, he felt as if the bottom had dropped out of his heart. There was always a slight pause where the sounds around him seemed to mute out, and his awareness was fully consumed by her; the same feeling one gets immediately preceding blunt trauma. Her eyes registered recognition when she saw him somewhere between sitting and standing, paused almost in midair as if he had a bad stomach cramp – which, in truth, he’d been feeling as his stomach tied itself in knots when she had earlier called, though it wasn’t the reason he was in that position. She was wearing a collared black shirt with striped pants and a diamond teardrop necklace on a silver chain. She sat down and, after the pleasantries and apologies, she immediately started into the conversation they’d had so many times before. The script was morbidly familiar to Scott, who had been through the motions once a month since their sophomore year. “He did it again, you know,” Juliana said. “This time it was some community college waif. He said they were ‘practicing’ for their theater class. That fucking asshole.” This, Scott knew, was where he should break out the accepted bromides about how undeserving her boyfriend was, and how anyone would be lucky to have her. She’d say how sweet he was, and how she deserved ‘a guy like you’ and how she was going to break it off, ‘just as soon as Valentine’s day is over.’ She never would, of course. With a deep, silent sigh he couldn’t help but ask himself why nice guys like him always finished last, but complete dicks like Juliana’s boyfriend always got the girl… It’s hard not to find it strange that the above scenario, or one like it, is something which so many guys find themselves in during the course of their maturation. It seems to be a rite of passage, like the first wet dream, which everyone just goes through, to their soul-wretching displeasure. Yet at the same time, it’s such a confusing phenomenon. It’s something which doesn’t seem to make any sense – here’s this girl who you like so much, who you could be so much better to, but who wouldn’t give you the time of day except when she needs an emotional crutch. Yet the bastard who she’s with treats her like shit, he abuses her, he cheats on her, and he totally disrespects her. Why would she do this to you? WHY GOD WHY? Ladder Theory seems to suggest to us that the reason lies in the relative difficulty of acquisition as well as the novelty and physical attractiveness of the “asshole.” But I think it’s more subtle than that, on a lot of levels. First, I think it’s important to note that the girl almost certainly isn’t as great as you think. Someone who uses you as an occasional ego boost, but who really has no interest in you other than that is clearly not the greatest human being to begin with. If she were really so great, she probably would have traded up long ago. Being nice isn’t the only criteria on which people date other people (it’s probably about a distant sixth), which brings me to the next part: you probably aren’t as great as you think you are. There’s a great adage which goes like, “For every supermodel out there, there’s a guy who’s sick of [copulating with] her.” This holds true in a lot of situations. There are an incredible number of people out there who are prima facie attractive, but whose novelty simply wears off. While it’s easy to start off a relationship saying that you would be so great and never cheat and would worship this person for the rest of your life, the fact that we are human needs to play into things. If someone really is as great as all that, then it is possible everything will work out: but we imagine qualities in those we desire. The fact that women go after guys who are inaccessible isn’t unique – men are notorious for doing the same thing. The synthesis of these perceptual issues isn’t trivial. In many young women, there tends to be an unrealistic feeling of inadequacy. Low self-esteem and bad personal image are virtually ubiquitous in high schools and, to a lesser extent, colleges. What this unfortunately seems to do is make it so that women are unwilling to believe in the compliments and professions of love that are showered upon them by ‘nice guys.’ They appreciate them (hence the keeping said nice guys around for the sake of the occasional ego boost), but cannot accept them as completely genuine. On some level, they are expecting the perceived fraud to be revealed. In consequence, they go with the guys who are just openly bastards because it meets the degraded image they have. The converse is, of course, that guys tend to have an inflated self-image. Many men have a genuine belief in their deserving people who clearly they are not. The ability to rationalize action in many cases is a significant ancillary or contributory factor, but the belief in their own deservedness is the primary one. Guys who are bastards, in many cases, don’t even really think they’ve done anything wrong. Everyone thinks they’re a sweet and caring person. Everyone also thinks they have a sense of humor. This doesn’t always carry as the case. Of course, all of this even presupposes that some sort of ranking system is even possible within the realm of dating. The very concept of “deserving” another person is something which is kind of hard to rationalize into any coherent meaning. The only real standard is the idea of equality within a relationship, and then the equality of personal utility garnered from it. Sadly, there are cases where the personal utility a person with poor self-image sees themselves as getting from someone who is emotionally abusive is greater than that they think they would draw from a healthy relationship. Maybe nice guys do finish last, but far more likely is that those who finish last see themselves as nice guys – just as a result of all guys seeing themselves this way. It’s easy to be nice to a girl who doesn’t exist, and not to make mistakes when you haven’t done anything at all. cranked out at 7:16 PM | |
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It's frightening that I actually have "works in progress." cranked out at 7:04 PM | |
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