Hilarious Onion article

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/god_help_him_but_area_man_loves?utm_source=onion_rss_daily

Best sentence I've read today

"Synecdoche is a stunning directorial debut and reflects a level of ambition largely absent from American film directors. Through all the gross out, quirkiness, despair and confusion the film revels in it always maintains a whimsical sense of humor and a steady sense of itself. Directors who have plumed far less emotional depths aren't able to maintain a rudder through their own eccentricity (paging: Wes Anderson) with this sort of perverse clarity. "
-Steady Diet of Film Blog

Synecdoche, NY is the best film of the year.

The Highs and Lows of Professional Sports

I've really enjoyed watching the Dodgers this year. Joe Torre is a consummate professional and has been a fantastic manager. My dad has questioned if Joe is worth the money, but I asked in return, "How much are those 15-20 games you are winning because he subs pitchers the right way and is smart with his line-ups worth? He's a huge upgrade over Grady Little or Jim Tracy, trust me.

I had tickets for game 4 of the Cubs series, I've never been happier to miss a game. For the NLCS, I was fortunate enough to get tickets to games 3 and 4, which were essentially must wins after dropping the first two in Philly. I've never been to a playoff game outside of NCAA basketball (when I trailed UCLA to the Final Four, which was incredible) and Dodgers games have an electric atmosphere already. Game 3 didn't disappoint, it was one of the best live experiences I've had a long time.

It had everything. Brush-backs, beanings, retalliations, and a near-brawl. The Dodgers offense was impressive and it's pitching was clutch. The first three innings were incredible, and then the Dodgers sailed comfortably to the win as the crowd relaxed. I left the game with a huge smile on my face.

Game 4, unfortunately, went the other direction. Both teams pitched impressive games until the 6th, when the Dodgers took control. Alas, it was the story of botched opportunties- a double play with bases loaded and one out, a failed stolen base-and untimely mistakes. Although the Dodgers charged ahead at one point, 2 2 run HR from mediocre Phillies in the 8th buried us and the oxygen rushed from the crowd. It was really over at that point, although the Dodgers still had 6 outs left.

Although it looks like the series is over, going to two games in the NLCS was pretty epic. The Dodgers haven't been this good since I was a kid. The last time they were in the NLCS I was 4. You have to go to these games, you just have to. Sometimes they are amazing, memorable experiences like game 3 and sometimes you pay for the privilege of getting your heart broken. But the great memories, the memories of watching championships with your dad are the ones you will talk about in 30 years and they are important to have. You have to take a chance, and sometimes it doesn't pan out. Oh well. Good times.

"Body of Lies" and "Quarantine"

I've been to the movies twice this weekend, something hasn't happened to me in a long time. As I was purchasing my ticket to "Body of Lies," it struck me that there were a host of movies I'd had varying interest in seeing: "Nick and Norah", "Rachel at the Wedding", "Religulous", "Rock'n'rolla", and "Appaloosa." Hell, I'd probably see "Ghost Town." At any rate, these are by no means summer blockbusters and there are finally well-made movies worth seeing that don't insult my intelligence in theatres (I'm looking at you Shia Le Beouf for making two of the dumbest of the dumb, Indiana Jones AND Eagle Eye). Spielberg is determined to screw up his credibility I guess.

Quarantine
As a horror fan and a zombie connoisseur in particular, I loved this movie. I was so anxious in the theatre and was pumping my fists as the zombies began to take over the situation. "Quarantine is a shot-by-shot remake of "[Rec]", which I've been dying to see. These represent another hand-held camera entry in the horror genre, joining "Blair Witch", "Cloverfield", and "Diary of the Dead." We are led to believe that no one knows what has happened in the building that has been quarantined but this footage has been found. As a brief side note, I was super irritated that the ad campaign was showing the last scene of the movie all over the place. I guessed the ending about 15 minutes into the film. I mean obviously we know everyone dies, but I'd rather not know exactly how it all ends. Spoilers start here.

The film was really interesting and had a few great takes on the genre. The cameraman even uses the camera as a weapon at times in the film, which I thought was awesome. The "zombies" have been infected with an extremely fast-moving form of rabies spread by rats, a kind of plausible and awful black plague. Victims start crying, foaming at the mouth, and then attacking. I don't want to give too much away, but the filmmakers cleverly use the constrained space to create a claustrophobic nightmare where we are forced to acknowledge the necessity of the quarantine, but also feel for the victims who are casualties to prevent the spread of the zombie menace throughout the rest of society. The film crew is obviously way too nosy for its own good and the authority figures, a fireman and a policeman, are in way over their heads, completely unable to control the situation. However, it is not until the CDC arrogantly intervenes that all hell breaks loose. The movie builds up for a long time and quite effectivley so when the hits start coming, even when I knew what was about to happen I was shaking and cringing. That said, there wasn't a lot of zombie attacks and there were mostly littered throughout the film. When the zombies did attack, it was off-putting, reminiscient of "28 Days Later." The hand-held camera was an extremely effective conduit for this film.

Grade: A-


Body of Lies
I know this movie got pretty mixed reviews and maybe low expectations played a role for me, but I really liked this film. Too often Ridley Scott is content to make an okay movie rather than make a great one, but I felt he played to his strengths and made a great thriller. Leonardo Di Caprio is excellent as Russell Crowe's right-hand man on the ground coordinating anti-terror efforts in Iraq. In particular, they are looking for a man named Al Saline, who is the force behind a number of very public attacks on the West in Amsterdam and Manchester.

Crowe, Di Caprio, and the supporting cast are excellent and the script is taut here. Roger Ebert mused that "Body of Lies" is a James Bond plot with modern headlines, but I tend to disagree. Perhaps this is how a CIA Bond would behave in Iraq, but the fake terrorist cell in particular is contrary to the methods of Bond, who prefers to run in shooting. I never felt that my willing suspension of disbelief was violated or that the script was insulting my intelligence with the liberties it was taking. Yes, it was probably too slick to be real and had some limitations, but they were well-hidden and much less egregious violations of the audience's trust than we're used to seeing in previous years.

I know that the critical reaction is partly a reaction to having been forced to endure years of mediocre Middle East thrillers, but I truly believe that this is among the best of them. "Syriana," which even garnered notice from the Academy, was very inferior to "Body of Lies." Where "Syriana" attempts to be comprehensive and represent all the totality of perspectives, "Body of Lies" is focused and still manages to get the point across effectively. "Syriana" was a bloated, nearly 3 hour film that suffered from a lack of focus and represents the worst of the "Pulp Fiction" derivatives. It tries to say so much that the stories hardly blend together at all and the connections are limp at best. "Syriana" has a total lack of continuity that even "Babel" was able to deliver, as flawed as that film was as well. In the face of these decadent and over-arching films, I was refreshed to see a taut, well-written move slickly navigate the landscape. I still believe that "Body of Lies" forcefully establishes the errors of the American MO as represented by Russell Crowe and shows precisely how America can be blamed for the conversion of new terrorists everyday, but it also knew what kind of movie it wanted to be. "Body of Lies" is an unapologetic thriller, but who's to say that doesn't mean it can't simultaneously an intelligent one?

Grade: A-/B+

David Foster Wallace Speech

via Wall Street Journal

I thought I'd post the whole speech David Foster Wallace gave at Kenyon's graduation in 2005. His speech is more than just a reflection on work, it's a reflection on thought and attitude and the choices individuals have in life. His ideas are reminiscent of Viktor Frankl in an odd way. Read the whole thing, it's worth it.

-------------------------------------------------------

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, "Morning, boys, how's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, "What the hell is water?"

If at this moment, you're worried that I plan to present myself here as the wise old fish explaining what water is to you younger fish, please don't be. I am not the wise old fish. The immediate point of the fish story is that the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are the hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude -- but the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense.

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here's one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you've had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real -- you get the idea. But please don't worry that I'm getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called "virtues." This is not a matter of virtue -- it's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

People who can adjust their natural default-setting this way are often described as being "well adjusted," which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphal academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default-setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about college education, at least in my own case, is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract arguments inside my head instead of simply paying attention to what's going on right in front of me. Paying attention to what's going on inside me. As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head. Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal-arts cliché about "teaching you how to think" is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: "Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master." This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in the head. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in, day out" really means. There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about.

By way of example, let's say it's an average day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out, and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for a couple of hours and then hit the rack early because you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there's no food at home -- you haven't had time to shop this week, because of your challenging job -- and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It's the end of the workday, and the traffic's very bad, so getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it's the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping, and the store's hideously, fluorescently lit, and infused with soul-killing Muzak or corporate pop, and it's pretty much the last place you want to be, but you can't just get in and quickly out: You have to wander all over the huge, overlit store's crowded aisles to find the stuff you want, and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts, and of course there are also the glacially slow old people and the spacey people and the ADHD kids who all block the aisle and you have to grit your teeth and try to be polite as you ask them to let you by, and eventually, finally, you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren't enough checkout lanes open even though it's the end-of-the-day-rush, so the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating, but you can't take your fury out on the frantic lady working the register.

Anyway, you finally get to the checkout line's front, and pay for your food, and wait to get your check or card authenticated by a machine, and then get told to "Have a nice day" in a voice that is the absolute voice of death, and then you have to take your creepy flimsy plastic bags of groceries in your cart through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and try to load the bags in your car in such a way that everything doesn't fall out of the bags and roll around in the trunk on the way home, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive rush-hour traffic, etcetera, etcetera.

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home, and it's going to seem, for all the world, like everybody else is just in my way, and who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem here in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line, and look at how deeply unfair this is: I've worked really hard all day and I'm starved and tired and I can't even get home to eat and unwind because of all these stupid g-d- people.

Or, of course, if I'm in a more socially conscious form of my default-setting, I can spend time in the end-of-the-day traffic jam being angry and disgusted at all the huge, stupid, lane-blocking SUV's and Hummers and V-12 pickup trucks burning their wasteful, selfish, forty-gallon tanks of gas, and I can dwell on the fact that the patriotic or religious bumper stickers always seem to be on the biggest, most disgustingly selfish vehicles driven by the ugliest, most inconsiderate and aggressive drivers, who are usually talking on cell phones as they cut people off in order to get just twenty stupid feet ahead in a traffic jam, and I can think about how our children's children will despise us for wasting all the future's fuel and probably screwing up the climate, and how spoiled and stupid and disgusting we all are, and how it all just sucks, and so on and so forth...

Look, if I choose to think this way, fine, lots of us do -- except that thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic it doesn't have to be a choice. Thinking this way is my natural default-setting. It's the automatic, unconscious way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I'm operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the center of the world and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world's priorities. The thing is that there are obviously different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stuck and idling in my way: It's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past and now find driving so traumatic that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive; or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to rush to the hospital, and he's in a way bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am -- it is actually I who am in his way. Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have much harder, more tedious or painful lives than I do, overall.

Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you're "supposed to" think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it, because it's hard, it takes will and mental effort, and if you're like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat-out won't want to. But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-lady who just screamed at her little child in the checkout line -- maybe she's not usually like this; maybe she's been up three straight nights holding the hand of her husband who's dying of bone cancer, or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the Motor Vehicles Dept. who just yesterday helped your spouse resolve a nightmarish red-tape problem through some small act of bureaucratic kindness. Of course, none of this is likely, but it's also not impossible -- it just depends on what you want to consider. If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important -- if you want to operate on your default-setting -- then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying. But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, loud, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars -- compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things. Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship...

Because here's something else that's true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things -- if they are where you tap real meaning in life -- then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already -- it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power -- you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart -- you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious. They are default-settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing. And the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default-setting, the "rat race" -- the constant gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.

I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational. What it is, so far as I can see, is the truth with a whole lot of rhetorical bullshit pared away. Obviously, you can think of it whatever you wish. But please don't dismiss it as some finger-wagging Dr. Laura sermon. None of this is about morality, or religion, or dogma, or big fancy questions of life after death. The capital-T Truth is about life before death. It is about making it to 30, or maybe 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head. It is about simple awareness -- awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over: "This is water, this is water."

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

Recruiting and Reflection

Recruiting is really an interesting process. It sucks a lot of time out of my life, but it helps me a lot as well. First of all, I need to sell, spin the job, and be positive to the recruits so I'm always thinking about the great stuff at work. I'm thinking about the World Cup, international transfers, and the culture, the good stuff. You don't describe 80 hour weeks in epic detail to the recruits. At the same time, I'm remembering where I was at that time, how excited I was to get an interview and then the job offer, and what brought me back there in the first place. It's a time to remember what I'm thankful for about the job and reminds me that at this time a lot of people don't have jobs.

Simultaneously, you're forced to really reflect. I've been asked about my ten year plan, how long I'm going to stay, and what keeps me at my current job. I'm asked about how many hours per week I'm doing, detail about my case experiences, and to synthesize my experience in larger terms than I'm used to. The usual pattern is to get lost in the details and survive week to week, but being forced to reflect in broader strokes is always an invaluable exercise. If nothing else, recruiting compels one to do so while speaking to enthusiastic soon-to-be-grads who've yet to spoil their idealism with real world, perpetual work. It's entirely different when it's not a for a finite period of time, uncomprehendingly so.

David Foster Wallace said it with amazing grace in a graduation speech he gave at Kenyon College:

"The truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger. And I submit that this is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.

That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. So let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what 'day in, day out' really means. There happen to be whole large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I'm talking about."

It's hard not to be at least a little bit cynical after joining the working world-you simultaneously undergo the incredible change of working, a change most people never recover from and find soul/dream crushing, and adjusting to a whole new system (of acronyms, of customs, etc.) and corporate culture, which is hard enough on it's own. It's a far bigger change than going to college. I'd argue the biggest change in a young person's life is the post-student adjustment. Our parents become more sympathetic and heroic as we understand their plight. I understood what commuting 2 hours a day did to my dad and what a toxic corporate culture can do to the enjoyment of one's job. Youth is wasted on the young they say, and it couldn't be more appropriate. You don't realize the value of your free time and the luxury of being a student until you don't have it anymore. That's why you go BACK to school.

Turn and Face the Strange

We live in turbulent times. Turbulent times indeed. Normally I would use this time to rail against the bail-out, but I feel like my anger about bailing out inefficient giants, loose credit policies, and Bernanke-led Fed policies have been well established since I started writing this blog. I'd rather not relive those memories and accept that a horrendous, nearly trillion dollar burden accompanied by riders and special interest garbage has been added to the backs of future taxpayers without any concern for the future.

It is our consistentI've been promoting the idea with our boy James here for months that the Fed has been fighting this recessionary period of devaluation and it has really hurt our economy in the long-term.

Last night, I framed this debate with a friend by saying that the bailout was consistent with our exclusively short-term thinking. CEO's live quarter by quarter, investor's call by investor's call and don't ponder the long-term like they should. I have a job because CEO's are only good at thinking short term. But years and years of short term thought means that the long term is ignored and people eventually ran out of gimmicks to gussy up their 10-K and had to take HUGE risks to please the investors. The moral hazard here is the bizarro disincentive that as a result of the current buyout climate you SHOULD take those risks. If you win, your stockholders win big, if you lose your firm will be swollen enough with acquisitions to warrant a taxpayer bailout because of your importance to the economy. It's bullshit. Take the big risk, no big deal if you lose, you get a $10 MILLION dollar golden parachute.

Anyways, this bailout is also short-term thinking. And its passage has really done little to save the Dow Jones hasn't it? I think it's actually been dropping, just like it did before...

But here's my beef. I think that we are going to have our next top President (elected by text message) succeed in the following two fronts (ironically in the same two fronts our current president failed to succeed in) to be considered great:

1) Stabilize our foreign policy and world standing. Bush found a way to ruin the seemingly bottomless political capital that he had after 9/11 and blundered his way into Iraq in the name of the War on Terror. Our next president will have to figure out how to gracefully withdraw from Iraq while fighting extremism and finding a way to keep from breeding new terrorists to replace the ones we are killing.
-Neither candidate overwhelms me here. Obama has come up with at least 2 (we're winning the war and can pull out, we're losing the war so badly we have to leave) reasons to leave after 16 months so far this campaign. I protested the war in Iraq and was adamantly opposed to it, but we need to be sensible about how we leave - Iraq will not reassimilate and stabilize like Vietnam and will most likely result in genocides if properly handled. That said, McCain's position is the other extreme and I fear he wants to invade Iran. While I acknowledge that Obama will buy us good will with the world, I think this issue is a wash.

2) In the face of a downward trend/bubble burst, find a way to guide America's economy in the right direction by thinking LONG TERM and investing in infrastructure, green technology, and other areas that will create growth for years to come rather than succumb to quarter by quarter thinking. In addition, this will require balancing our governments fiscal spending and paying down the national debt.
-Watching the debates, Obama looked awful and this is what really worries me about him. We had an ideological president with a host of pet programs (nation-building, war, defense) who spent us into the hole and it looks like we'll have one whose programs lie in the opposite direction. Instead we're spending billions in programs that yes, are important, but need to come at the expense of cutting fat elsewhere. This is what worries me about the Obama tax increase - I would wholeheartedly support it if its only role were to pay off the national debt, but I don't want to increase spending. When asked, repeatedly, he refused to pick where he would cut spending at all. He used the brilliant rhetorical devices: "I want to use a scalpel, not a hatchet" and "I'll go through the budget, line by line, and cut unncessary problems," but does anyone believe him here? I don't. Not for a minute.
McCain has became something of a one issue man here, but it's not an issue I mind him having. He constantly talks of earmarks (only $18B, true, but an important ideological starting point) and corrupt Washington politics. When pressed, he actually advocated a SPENDING FREEZE of all programs (with a few exceptions like veteran affairs) and has talked repeatedly about how entitlement programs HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO be cut and future generations cannot enjoy nearly the benefits of the present retirees. These are unpopular and quite frankly amazing political issues I've never heard brought up before. If there is ONE THING I can be confident John McCain will do as president, it is cut spending. This may be my number one voting issue, way more important than taxes. Palin is also a fiscal hawk, the only quality I truly like about her, and I know she fights the same fight.

In the end, on these two issues in isolation - I'm voting for McCain. Here's the issue: McCain has changed considerably on his public positions on social policy. The same man who called Falwell evil has buddied up to him and he has even given lip service to gay marriage and abortion bans. I refuse to believe this is more than a blatant copy of Reagan's electoral policy: court the radical right with rhetoric and refuse to act on it while President. McCain will be fighting bigger issues. This is where Palin bothers me because she has the bandwidth to fuck with this stuff, but I'm still not convinced his administration will be acting on these issues. I don't think we need Obama's social change right now. Although important, we can't expand government the way he wants to in the name of equality and I'd rather have someone cut the shit out of the government to finance these programs in the future. Even better, have them actually spend education effectively, since I think we are throwing plenty at the problem. Take a look at LAUSD, by far the highest per pupil average in the state, it's all just wasted on bureaucracy. We need to work on how we spend our money currently, not expand the government budget with new programs. This takes dedication.

More importantly is his Supreme Court appointments, which will be decisive. This is the best argument against McCain. I'm not sure how to argue against that, but ultimately I'll argue that controlling government spending is more important I guess.

I guess I'm voting for McCain, but I could always vote from the libertarian candidate. My vote doesn't matter in Cali anyway.

First in a flurry: "Choke" Review

I don't know if I could pinpoint exactly where I knew that "Choke" was going to be great, but it's safe to say that it was pretty early on in the film. I'm a huge Chuck Palahnuik fan and I really love his way of making even the most abstract and absurd situation seem entirely familiar and related to the universal themes of the human condition. I never thought I could relate to a transvestite stealing prescription drugs from the elderly or a man struggling to become a hegemonic televangelist until I got carried away in the magic of his books. His characters seemed flawed in a way that I could not only associate myself with, but learned profound truths about identity and what makes us human. Perhaps most importantly, his books were quirky, unique, and really fun to read.

"Choke" was an immensely difficult film to write and script. Palahnuik's books tend to be in the first person, centered around an eccentric protagonist whose life spins out of control around him and "Choke" is no exception. Our hero is a sex addict going through his 12 step program and working at as a historical tour guide in a 17th century recreation. He funds his mother's expensive nursing home stay by choking at fine restaurants and endearing himself to those who save his life so he can hit them up for money. His best friend is constantly in the town stocks and trying to get into a relationship with a stripper. This material is not the easiest source matter with which to create a movie that normal people find believable or create a coherent plot around. However, Clark Gregg does a masterful job adapting the book and the movie really works.

Sam Rockwell is pitch-perfect as Victor Mancini, the lead, and the rest of the cast is also game, which creates an atmosphere that can sustain the material - which was no easy task. Similar to "Fight Club," "Choke" was either going to be the Hindenburg or work beautifully and I'm glad to say that it lived up to my expectations. I couldn't figured out how Gregg was going to tie it all together because the book itself unravelled and struggled to tie together the loose ends. In the end, he managed to make Rockwell something of a sympathetic hero who's transformation and love changed the world around him in a touching way. I think it's important to acknowledge that the world that we live in is changed by deeply flawed individuals the same way it's changed by the archetypal heroes of our mainstream Hollywood films.

While "Choke" is not perfect and the narrative can sometimes seem a bit choppy as it cuts back and forth from Victor's past and present, it works surprisingly well and has a much bigger heart than I thought it might. I really enjoyed this film and would highly recommend it.

Grade: A-

Great writing

From "Europeans Write: Are You Americans Crazy?"

The rationale for the federal bailout plan is that these companies are too huge, too intertwined in so many areas of the economy, to risk them going under. It's like the Italian government saying that the Mafia is too big and thus too important to the Italian economy (read: jobs, contribution$) to let them fail, so we'll just prop them up, look the other way while the looting and violence takes place, and roll along on our merry way.

Yes, of course, these corporations are huge, sprawling, multi-headed behemoths, but the politicians never want to examine how they got to the point of untouchability. How many times have we seen how deregulating industry has resulted in economic and/or social disaster? Anybody remember Enron? The S&L collapse of the '80s (in which a compromised McCain was right in the middle, by the way)? And now Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae? And Lehman Brothers? And AIG? And Morgan Stanley? Et al.

The ghost of the 1930s Great Depression is hovering over the present crisis. Indeed, so fast is the house of cards tumbling down, with more major corporations expected to follow, that the politicians, regardless of party, are falling all over themselves to create an institutional feather cushion to catch these failing enterprises as they crash toward insolvency. These are socialism-like measures, as was true in FDR's New Deal days as well, designed to forestall another Great Depression and maybe even revolution. Except these socialist-seeming solutions are not designed to aid the bulk of the population, the middle-class and poor, but to provide aid and sustenance to the wealthy titans of industry. The rest of us will be expected to pay the bill, probably more than a trillion dollars when all is said and done, since the plan also may include bailing out troubled foreign banks who dived into the giant profit-making machine in the U.S. (This massive federal bailout is being considered at the same time when the cost for America's current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is approaching the trillion-dollar mark.)

...Great writing.

Great writing tied into human experience

This is the opening to an Onion AV Club article that is just fantastic:

"During a recent vacation, I became strangely addicted to the slow-motion train wreck that is A&E's The Two Coreys. In my favorite episode, Corey Feldman, concerned that his tragicomic bud Corey Haim has become a hopeless pill-popper, convinces Todd Bridges and Pauly Shore to confront the lesser Corey about his substance abuse. As Bridges and Shore contemplate the task at hand, they're overcome with a profound sense of life's ridiculousness. How on Earth did they get there? What unspeakable crime did they commit in a past life to merit this karmic mind-fuck? I'm pretty sure at least one of them was Hitler, or at least a high-level Nazi. Even Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman found the prospect of a semi-intervention featuring Pauly Shore, Todd Bridges, and Corey Feldman mind-boggingly insane. You know your life has spun out of control when Pauly fucking Shore is lecturing you about responsibility.

I know the feeling. There are times in everyone's life when the randomness of fate smacks you dead in the face. Don DeLillo, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace are/were masters at chronicling the often ugly, sometimes sublime preposterousness of the way we live. They allow readers to take a step back and see the things we all take for granted in a new, disorientingly foreign light, to see the bizarre in the familiar and the familiar in the bizarre."

To me, this is a truly interesting point and a connection that I find absolutely fabulous. Truly great writers (DeLillo, Vonnegut, and Palahnuik, who was not mentioned here but without a doubt belongs) can make the bizarre seem familiar and the familiar seem bizarre.

However, he goes about reaching this conclusion by watching a very unfamiliar scene unfold (albeit on TV). It's really really interesting to think about how people with such different interests and experiences live a totally different reality than us and it can be jarring to be a guest to view human experience from a totally different lense.

Two examples really pop up in my mind where this exact thought has popped in my head:

1) Way back in high school, at a Five Iron Frenzy (very very talented and amazing but ultra-Christian ska band) show, the opener got in a really terrible car accident on the way over. They had a fill-in opener and the show went on smoothly, but when Five Iron Frenzy got on, they asked the audience to pray and take a moment of silence for the band and their families. I'm far from religious, but the power in that room was intense and felt palpable. Essentially the black sheep in a room full of white lambs, it was really amazing to watch people engage their God and to charge the room with emotion and hope. I understood why religion has played such a formidable role in history and could see why it was such a vital part in people's lives.

2) Concert last weekend. I went to see Counting Crows (who rocked the house) open for Maroon 5 (who inexplicably closed). Counting Crows were fantastic but the crowd was not into at all, they didn't know the songs, and they were rudely talking over the quiet songs. I don't know how many times I heard Adam Durlitz called Sideshow Bob (from the Simpsons). That's all fine and well, but the thing that rocked me was when Counting Crows were over and I was forced to stay a few Maroon 5 songs to see how bad they could really be live. Well the answer is that bad, but that's not what I' m writing about. The audience, which was 95% young girls and couples, really really loved Maroon 5 and knew every word to every song. Not just the big ones. It was amazing to behold. I was struck by how different (See: had bad taste) these people were from the people I encountered on a daily basis and chose to associate with. It wasn't as profound or jarring, but I was struck by the self-selection and asburdity of the situation. I felt like an outsider, like I didn't belong there...

Anyways, that's all I got. Interesting stuff.

Shit has come to light

It's a fantastical day in California right now.
-Cali uses more oil than any country (other than the US).

-The 110 has been shut down because a "large pothole" has turned into a giant sinkhole. AWESOME.

-Such a great video. These guys free a lion from Harrod's, raise it until it's too big, rewild it, and then go find it a year later. The lion remembers them! It hangs out with them and introduces them to his wife. Such a heartwarming video.

Humanism + Absurdism

A few random thoughts:

-People who live in Nashville should be called Nashvillains. With that spelling.

-GTA is coming out for Nintendo DS. I may buy one now. Dammit.

-Monkeys and money. Fascinating.

-I just watched Larry Clark's "Kids" and I have to admit I'm very very conflicted on it. I thought there were a number of things it did very well, but I think it was a nihilist film to its core. It tried to show exactly how brutal things could be by dramatizing the hell out of it-I have no doubt that most of those things have happened before, but for all of them to happen to a bunch of 14 year olds in one day is too much. It certainly wasn't realistic and it was unnecessarily dark if you ask me. All the underage sex was actually kind of creepy. That said, it was still pretty well done, an epic morality tale of sorts by showing you exactly what being that fucked up gets you. The only adult in the whole film really was a cabbie who talked about how to be happy. That doesn't really help with an AIDS test. I bought it for like $4 at Best Buy and now feel kind of ripped. Even though I liked the movie (probably), I wanted its brutality to be over quickly and was counting down the minutes until it was over. I'll never watch this movie again. It will probably haunt me anyway.

-Humanism and absurdism- are they compatible? I bring this up because I definitely considered myself both and I just finished reading "Nausea" by Sartre and the conflict came up. Roquentin, the books narrator, struggles with an absurd universe devoid of meaning. He struggles with the idea that there is no divine source of meaning in human life and that life is just a gift that is given without reason that one must accept and choose to enjoy. Similar to Camus, he comes to the conclusion through his narrator that one must enjoy our fate, as meaningless as it may be. In "The Myth of Sisyphus," Camus likens our struggle to that of Sisyphus and says the ultimate question we face is why not commit suicide? Ultimately, even though our lives are meaningless, futile, and take the form of Sisyphus, we must embrace them for what they are. Camus asserts that we must imagine Sisyphus happy. I don't have a problem with any of this, I really do think that I am an absurdist at this point (although I refuse to commit to anything forever).

Here's where it gets tricky: I am also a strong humanist and moralist and believe in right and wrong. Is that incompatible with an absurd universe? I don't necessarily believe it is. In "Nausea," Roquentin's most laughable foil is the Autodidact, a ridiculous humanist who's reading the library alphabetically and molests children. There's no doubt that Roquentin believes that the absurd precludes an embrace of humanism. But let's think about it for a second, what are the implications that would contradict one another? From a positive liberty standpoint, there's no doubt that the absurd is freeing for humans to create, to excel, and to expand without limits. For a thinker like Nietzsche, it would free his ubermensch to become free spirits, create their own values, and exercise their will to power. In his eyes, the church is the ascetic ideal that drags all men down to the herd, restricts what men naturally want to do, etc. So getting rid of that artificial obligation would free men to live up to their potential.

On the other side, where does morality come in? What is the source of negative liberty? The protections that men enjoy today, especially in the West, come at great debt to Christianity. Although the herd mentality represses us, it is a significant part of the doctrine that all men are created equal and the church has been a major player in the human rights movement, directly and indirectly. Rick brought up a great point that law can be effective without such a basis, citing Roman law or British common law. And that's fine, from a legalistic or lawyerly perspective, but I want to get philosophical on it. Pragmatically, he's certainly right. The United States might as well be entirely secular in the way the Supreme Court interprets things, but that's not a philosophical response. Philosophically, to believe in a universe that is devoid of meaning and human life without an inherent one, you must believe that there are commonalities to human experience that can establish universals within humanity that serve as right or wrong. For instance, genocide is wrong, torture is wrong, murder is wrong, theft is wrong, etc. These are simple ideas and on the extreme end of that thought, but certainly comprise the most compelling examples of commonalities that I can think of. You could buy Levinas's argument about the face of the other in "Ethics and Infinity" or subscribe to cosmopolitanism and that might lead you there. But, in the end, you have to think that we can draw a line between nihilism and metaphysics that isn't completely arbitrary. You have to believe that as we better understand our universe and learn from our collective experience as human beings, we can reasonably divine what that line may be. By rising above our subjectivity (although we never can do so completely), we can see the common ground and a more objective reality than the one peddled to us by our cultural biases. I'm not saying there's a definitive objectivity or a final line that can be drawn in the sand, but I think that the philosophical leap of faith that one has to take is that there is that common ground somewhere. Otherwise one must resign oneself to relativism, which is essentially a cleaner name for nihilism. If you are a relativist, you don't really have the right to intercede or impose a morality.


I don't think they are incompatible, but it's certainly a tough question to definitively answer.

Travelin' Man

-I'm a travelin' man these days. At the client site in Nashville (although hopefully only for a week). I must admit, it's kind of lonely checking into a hotel with no itinerary other than work in the morning, hanging up your dress shirts, and killing time until you go to bed. I found myself texting, calling, and thinking about my friends/family. I then turned on the TV just to have some noise in the room. I'm sure it will normalize this week, but it's still a weird experience.

-Fantastic essay on Fight Club as a misunderstood film. I didn't realize it was panned by critics like that.

-So excited for Dark Knight.

-Lebron's new shoe is ugly.

-I went surfing this weekend. We went for a lesson with some of the interns and it was amazing. I've been twice before (a long long time ago) and each time I've really loved it and wanted to pursue, but never have. I'm going to this time. I'm buying a board, a rash-guard, and a wet-suit. It's happening. And I'm really stoked on it. It's going to happen.

-I've started reading "Confessions of an Economic Hitman." It's a really interesting idea and a really interesting book, but I can tell that I will tire of the writing a little bit. He has led such an interesting life and has a lot to say, but his pointed approach of showing the failings of "corporatocracy" capitalism-capitalism by force, imperialist capitalism, cronie capitalism, whatever the hell you want to call it-tends to err on the side of a blanket critique of capitalism. I'm all for the idea that saddling third world countries with debt, ensuring that all infrastructure upgrades help foreign businesses first, and using any means necessary to serve those interests is wrong. I know that Shell helped arrange the killing of Nigerian protesters. There's no doubt Western capitalism has done a lot of damage globally by using these means. I'm there. But I don't think it is a problem endemic to capitalism as much as it is to imperialism and empire. Perkins fails to make this distinction and his broken record narrative, which fits commentary at every possible opportunity, has already started to wear thin on me. It's fascinating but a bit grating. I don't want to defend capitalism anymore, but in some of my previous posts I've talked a lot about incentives, human nature, and realism in the face of economic challenges. Macroeconomics are not completely fucked, but anything can be used for good or evil.

-I'm well overdue to write some thoughts on humanism vs absurdism - it's been my latest philosophical debate and I've bounced some thoughts of the finest minds I know. It's coming.

Inertia

-Inertia is the enemy of change, whether it be through routine, golden handcuffs, or laziness. It must be fought.

-Fourth of July is an awesome holiday. I thought I'd be unhappy to be in Montana on account of the astronomical flight costs for this holiday, but it's turned out to be pretty great. The Fourth consisted of beer, grilling, croquet, badminton, fireworks, family time, and a great show. We bought some amazing fireworks, including one doozy called "Shock and Awe" that boasted 500 g of gunpowder. That shit went crazy. After the elder family members went to sleep, Eric and I drove into town and saw The Dodos, who are a sick indie band by the way, live in a bar that maybe held 75 people. It was amazing. My first legal drink with my newly anointed 21 year old brother and a great, intimate show in the same evening. The band led a drunken rendition of the national anthem (Happy birthday, America) that involved the whole bar and much more. Overall though, I'm glad to just be in Montana. It's beautiful, it's peaceful, and it's so much different than California. Not necessarily better, but different. Sometimes it takes a change like this to spur an internal one.

-Millers Crossing - Pretty good little gangster flick. I watched it with my brother this evening and although it's not one of the Cohen brothers' finest films, it's very good. I love the gangster spin in a small town and I really enjoyed a lot of the dynamics in this film. Very much a Cohen production, but very worth seeing. It drove me crazy the whole time trying to figure out who Marcia Gay Harden is and what I remembered her from until I was able to IMDB her after the flick. I remember her as the religious nut in "The Mist", the movie with perhaps one of the top 5 darkest endings ever. Which I always respect.

Compelled to write

-I'll be the first to admit that I'm disappointed in my blog output after a strong start, a lot of good writing exercises, and probably more links pages than I really needed to create. I guess airports are my muse then, because yet again I find myself blogging in the Salt Like City airport. Much has changed and life is vibrant, booming, but I feel a bit of stagnation that is now going to be shaking things up to a large degree. This post will be long but will probably border on aphorisms.

-I think that Bruce Springsteen's "The Rising" is the definitive artistic statement about 9/11. The more I think about it, the more I listen to it, the more I think it to be true. Although I'm certainly not qualified to make any kind of final decision in this arena clearly, I'd like to elaborate my thoughts. Listening to it in the airport, watching the people, I think that "The Rising" perfectly captures a post-9/11 America. Its pride is wounded and America somehow feels different, hollow. People are incapable of pretending it never happened and struggling to grasp the magnitude and the ramifications of such a history-changing event. Even in the most normal of everyday interactions, something has changed. It feels a bit like innocence lost when one is struck so catastrophically on their own soil. Illusions are quickly shattered. Although there are some good works on this, they don't capture the full spectrum of the effect on the American life. Bruce's album goes through the pain of the event, the sudden void in the New York skyline, and faces the challenges of trying to heal through such adversity. What it's like to get up the next day, to throw a party, to be happy and joyous again, etc. He tackles what its like to return to normal life again, something that I feel has scarcely been addressed.

However, there's one emotional note that is glaringly absent: anger. Nowhere does Bruce use this momentous occasion for a political soapbox, nowhere does he say it's time to "kick Osama bin Laden's ass", nowhere does he talk about the inevitable invasions. His album is one of healing and of the human cost, not the political ones. I like that, a lot. "Reign O'er Me," a decent, flawed movie with a great heart that resorts to melodrama and extreme post-traumatic stress syndrome in one man to show the effect of 9/11 in the families of those who died in the towers. The movie never really clicked with me, not at all despite having Don Cheadle who is consistently excellent. Although I haven't seen "World Trade Center", I have seen "United 93", which focused entirely on the facts of the attackers, the defense network, and those aboard United 93, which crashed to the ground in Pennsylvania. "United 93" was a movie with no frills, no elaborate soundtrack, and no special effects. It was humanity at its finest and its worst. It struggled to explain why people who had never met each other were willing to die and kill many around them for something as intangible as a difference in ideas. It perfectly portrayed the senselessness of the violence, both of the hijackers and the men who stood up to them and crashed the aircraft to save others. The last thirty minutes of that movie made me sob my eyes out as I watched the senseless violence, people make their last calls to their family ("Honey I need you to know the code to the safe. This is where our will is...", teary-eyed "I love you's", and so much more.) I've never lost it in a movie like that. But its an incomplete picture of the event and it stops with the crash.

-"The Hulk" - 2008 version with Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Tim Roth, William Hurt - Huge disappointment. The word for this movie was stiff. It was so far the antithesis of its predecessor that it made overdeveloped relationships into trite and insincere ones. William Hurt was wildly underutilized, as was the rest of this talented cast. It was an action movie that Marvel lacked confidence in so it blew its load in the trailers by showing the Iron Man bit at the end, all of the good fight scenes (essentially all of them period) in the trailers, and featured a character that no one really believes worked that much better than the previous incarnation. However, it was safe to a t and marvel really didn't want a mega-failure, so it made a mediocre movie with an all-star cast. Still, that irked me.

-I'm staffed in Nashville for the foreseeable future. I'm really torn on this. There are a number of pros. I'm getting a lot of great PD, insane amounts of client contact, and a completely new case experience out of this. In addition, there's a great team of people I genuinely like, I'm going to rack up frequent flyer points and Starwood points like nobody's business. But, that said, I'm trading the Southern California sun for Southern humidity. The greatest summer in the states for Tennessee. I mean I know it won't be all bad and I'll be in California Thursday-Sunday, but man that's a lot of traveling to be doing. Not so stoked on that.

-In general, existentially, things are going really well. I'm hitting my stride nicely (it helps to not have worked much the last month or so - hooray for beach time) in a number of ways. I'm using the trip to Montana to get back into reading (I'm going to have read a book a month by the end of the year, or else. Next year, let's double it). I'm also going to the gym much more regularly and starting to cutting down on the shit I eat. Nashville won't be THAT conducive and I'll be working hard, but that's a great test. Will I have the resolve to do mini work-outs and control what I eat? Let's see. But in general it's for me to behave more like the man I want to be and less like a college student. I need to develop a healthy routine and do it now. Otherwise I'll end up stubborn and immobile like my Grandfather. I'm really fearing seeing him tomorrow morning as a shadow of his former self. As far as my shit, I'm working on it. I'm going to hit my New Years Resolutions (1 down already: good first performance review-perhaps the most important) even if it means only really working towards most of them in the second half of the year.

-Sacrilege abounds, but I'm thinking of getting cheap Clippers season tickets to watch Baron next year.

-I can just as easily see the Lakers becoming the Buffalo Bills the next few years by being perennially close without winning as I can see them becoming a dynasty. I really really hope they don't mess up their core and win it all next year. I think we're poised to. It all really hinges on the knees of one man-child: Andrew Bynum. I said I'd do a season wrap-up, but man I don't want to.

-...does it make sense to get Clippers season tickets when, honestly, I already have UCLA football and basketball tickets. Do I have time for that with work? Leaning towards no.

-On my flight to Montana tonight, I almost relived the horror that was my last trip. They canceled a shitload of flights to Salt Lake (mine survived) and then they oversold the flight to Bozeman and were calling people randomly to cut them out. Insane! I had flashbacks to my last disaster but I was lucky enough to avoid the random cut. They were sending people to Billings (2+ hours away) but at 930 TOMORROW night. I would have said fuck that, you send me back to LA tomorrow morning, reimburse me for my flights and give me a voucher. I don't want to lose 36 hours of a 72 hour trip again.

-I really want to see this Gonzo movie, badly. I'm going if I have to go myself. Love me the good Doctor.

-My dad always told me, "There's friends and there's money." It's always uncomfortable to mix the two when there's that added relationship.

-Still not sold on anyone in this election. Obama is trying to lose my vote it seems and McCain isn't doing much to win it. I may not vote.

-NBA free agency has been CRAZY. Seriously.

-One of the most upsetting tidbits about traveling for work was the toll it'd take on my GTA IV progress.

-I wonder...

-I seriously hope that people stop buying Budweiser. I hate all their beers and what they did to Rolling Rock anyway. It'd be great revenge.

-The next "X" years of your life always looking frightening and crazy in tunnel vision. Every time I'm faced with the prospect of years into the future, it freaks me out. Thinking about all the change necessary. But change is incremental and natural and one needs to embrace it. Seriously though, who wants to embrace age? It's a fundamentally scary prospect.

A coupla things

-I'll have my Lakers end of season wrap-up as soon as I quit sobbing... Just kidding. Kind of.

-Barack Obama has the Declaration of Independence tattooed on his stomach so he can read it doing push-ups... and more viral Obama

-AFI's Top 10 of 10 Genres. Pretty great lists. I'll say that I've NEVER seen Annie Hall below that piece of crap When Harry Met Sally... ever. And that's the way it should be.

New Nietzschean Diet

Nietzschean Diet lets you eat whatever you fear most...

Smoking Gun contract riders from 220 acts.

Foo Fighters rider. HILARIOUS.

How much land does a man need?

How much land does a man need? A short story by Tolstoy.

More on the Zombie Threat

ZOMBIE THREAT!

Top 50 Greatest Comedy Sketches

http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/nerveeditors/50greatestcomedysketches/01/

NBA related humor

-Steve Kerr pulls a GOB about the Shaq Trade and admits he's made a huge mistake.

-Jay-Z, Soulja Boy, DeShawn Stevenson, LeBron... as much as I love Jay-Z, I like the Wizards better here. DeShawn is having a beard contest with Drew Gooden...

Some links

-My little brother's stand-up comedy!

-Kobe jumps over a car...

-...but Kenny Smith fails

-Top 10 dunks of the 2007 NBA season

-Top 5 Red Wings/Avalanche moments in rivalry history.

-Anti-drug Cartoon all-stars with action cartoons, the Smurfs, Garfield, etc. Wow this is awesome.

-The Office that's what she said mashup!

-New Kids in the Hall skit!

-Huge mash-up of Coen brothers' films.

Sorry about the delay

I know all I've provided recently are extremely random links, but hopefully after this next push at work I'll have more time to write about the things that I've been wanting to... my UCLA Bruins, the MVP race in the NBA, a little something about free will and omniscience, etc.

But more importantly, I really think that this article is important to read. It may have caused a paradigm shift about how I ideologically view poverty. Amazing.

The Sting of Poverty.

Random

-Hilarious video mocking the A&M whiners.

-"Debracketed" trailer (spoofing Departed).

-The boxing kangaroo is a badass.

Hilarious Obama Stuff and More...

-Here's the text to Obama's truly great speech. It was great. I loved it. I'm still waiting for platforms before he gets my vote or even casual endorsement.

-Here's the Onion's AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING mockery of it. Read both of them, seriously.

-Agreed. The Fed is too easy on Wall Street. Let them flounder for at least a bit. This goes back to my earlier rantings about "taxpayer interests" in these massive companies which allows them to exploit exploit exploit in the good times and get massive government bailouts at the end. If there is the golden parachute after every failure, what is the incentive to not take stupid risks? We must let these companies fail so they have STRONG INCENTIVES to run their ship correctly. We won't be regulated in the upswings, but we'd love your help if we fail...

-Flattered, but not sure UCLA wants the Sports Guy on its bandwagon. It's getting mighty heavy already.

-Even Volcker agrees. Shocker there. But he's right.

-Hilarious.

-Great little article on where true health care spending in this country comes from.

-Think about how your money is spent before patting yourself on the back for donating to charity. It can do MORE harm than good.

-Cheap labor in China is reducing burgalaries in the US? Interesting.

-What kind of Duke hater are you?

-The NIT is still looking for teams.

Random Stuff

-First off, my Bruins have the number one seed in the west and a fast-track (read: fairly easy bracket) to the Final Four. Yesssss. So satisfying. But I must admit, beating Cal, SC, and Stanford (no refs this time) was probably more satisfying for the sake of the wins than the seeding. Also, after the game, I was at Yang Chow (amazing Chinese restaurant) and the whole team showed up. Amazing. Josh Shipp signed my jersey. Great great great day.

-Second, the Lakers lost to the Rockets with Rafer Alston's career night. Ugh. Shutting down T-Mac should be enough to beat that team, with or without Pau.

-Bruce Bowen = Jesus. In his own words. So ridiculous. He hacks more than a slasher movie and deserves any condemnation he gets.

-Someone put a 2 dollar bill on Bear Sterns' front door. Amazing.

Weekend Links

-I'm not sure how I feel about this move to cut off access to anything polluting more than conventional oil. It effectively cuts off our largest potential oil reserve and forces moves into cleaner energies, but are those energies ready?

-This makes me like McCain a little bit more. Fight big pharma my boy.

-Do economists take the term rule of law for granted?

-I'm conflicted. It does encourage safe behavior and is money we might have given anyway, but should we pay people to make self-interested decisions? What if it could reduce overall cost of health care by incentivizing health?

-Do parents have the right to choose which defects their children have? In Britain, parents cannot pick faulty genes (of which deafness is an example).

-GDP per head > GDP as an indicator for growth?

-An article explaining the marriage behavior of black women. Really really worth a read. Markets in everything.

Tim Floyd wants the IU job

FLOYDGATE!

Tim Floyd calling Indiana's Athletic Director in the middle of the Pac-10 Tournament.

A little word association:

perfect

amazing

karmic

love it

trojans

hahahahahahahahaha

Will this year's meltdown for Tim Floyd happen even before the tournament?

Links 3/14/08

Short links today

-The King is overrated? I have to say I really really am starting to like DeShawn Stevenson. Guy's got some serious cajones.

-A hotel dedicated to philosophy in Amsterdam. I'm staying there eventually. Maybe in the Kant room? What would the Nietzsche room look like?

-My favorite Kobe article from Kobe Bean Bryant Blog Day.

-Client #9's prostitute is already doing photo shoots. Hustler is next. There's a sick voyeurism and curiosity of putting a face and a family to a girl that brought down a governor.

-How to pitch anything in two minutes.

The End of History

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western as the final form of human government." (quoted from "The End of History?", 1989)

I had a discussion with Rick while I was in New York about Fukuyama's "The End of History" and it has stuck with me for a surprisingly long time. Fukuyama, a Hegelian, believes that the advent of Liberal democracy signals the end of history, the last ideological innovation and the final form of government. Hegel himself believed that although his dialectic (thesis + antithesis = synthesis) would constantly move up the ladder of reason as good ideas were filtered out, but Hegel (as well as most Hegelians: Marx, Fukuyama, etc.) believed in the end of history as well. At some point humanity would reach such a high level of comprehension and reason that innovation would not only stagnate in that area, it would eventually stop. Now debating this literal interpretation may be a little harsh, but it certainly represents the substance of all three of these Hegelians' arguments.

In my philosophy courses, I argued vehemently against this sticking point for Hegel. I completely agree with the motion of history and the dialectic; the 20th century is a great example of this principle in motion. Liberal democracy vs. fascism. Liberal democracy refines itself as it emerges victories. Liberal democracy vs. communism. Same deal. Now liberal democracy is in a war of wills vs. Islamic theocracies. Who knows how this will turn out? I think that liberal democracy (and the accompanying capitalism) has a superior understanding of the human soul and the way that humanity works, but to declare an all-out victory this early would be nuts or to presume that the rational side always wins (barbarians anyone?). What if America goes the way of the Roman Empire, is this really a stretch? How much is this "victory" of reason contingent upon our superpower? What if China and India can't make it work? If we have less one billion (all of Western Europe + America) living under this triumphant system, does it really count as a win when most people live under tyranny or inequality?

Furthermore, the whole idea of the end of innovation here is insane. My whole point then (and now) was that we cannot stop developing reason because the human ingenuity constantly creates new problems to be solved. For instance, even if we reached the end of reason with the advent of modern democracy and the writing of the Federalist Papers/Wealth of Nations in the 18th century, not only will it take countless generations for this to fully play out (really, I don't ever think people will lose their fascination with anarchy, utopianism, or new ideas to try out and shake up the system), but we are inventing new conundrums by the day practically. Stem cell research, cloning, interstellar travel, meeting other forms of life eventually, etc. all will require reason and advances in thinking/philosophy to fully comprehend their implications and impact. In a universe of unlimited possibilities, how could we be so arrogant to decide that we will simply figure it all out, get it, and close the book.

Those of you (all three of you) who read this blog know that I am indeed a large fan of the liberal democracy and accompanying market economy. I think that it best fits our current conception of human nature, self-interest, and the spirit which guides men. It has been vastly improved over time and the way that we have structured our governments has become as close to perfect as we've ever had, but there's the rub. AS CLOSE TO PERFECT. Our electoral system still fucks up, still elects people without the popular vote, still does a bad (even horrible) job at protecting citizens from the whims of lobbyist money and their influence, still makes terrible foreign policy decisions despite over 100 years (going back the war with the Philippines in 1899) of experience watching them blow back right into our face. We are not perfect, period. And the idea that we ever will be in the way we govern ourselves is not only a joke, but its borderline dangerously arrogant. The idea that human ingenuity and markets can solve everything, from government to global warming to the ongoing trash/pollution problems, is haughty and extremely risky. And so far I'd hesitate to say that things are set up so well that they automatically fluctuate to the right spots and society allocates its resources perfectly.

I know that these are hard expectations to fill, but when one proclaims that we have reached the end of history, such a big claim must be vigorously defended. I guess the core of my arguments stems from my argument against the concept of utopia. Perfection is unattainable without controlling humanity to a frightening degree, which would not be perfection at all. Right now, yes, I don't see something challenging liberal democracy/market economy in the forseeable future, but to declare that nothing will is another story altogether. There is serious danger in getting comfortable, ceasing innovation, and stopping the search for new knowledge or better ideas. I don't think that the universe will ever stop changing or our understanding of it will ever be perfect, there's just too much to compute. I'm clearly in favor of dynamism and as great as the triumph over communism was, it's a joke to think of it as liberal democracy's last ideological enemy.

"To An Athlete Dying Young"

A beautiful poem...

A. E. Housman. 1859–

To An Athlete Dying Young

THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

UCLA and the media

I'm not sure when UCLA became the favorite punching bag for the media or the scapegoat for all that is wrong with college basketball, but I must say that I was unimpressed by the media reaction to what certainly (when viewed in isolation) were some bad calls.

Yes, Collison probably didn't get fouled, he admitted as much. Josh Shipp, well who knows if that went over the backboard, but it's at least a debate. However, the reactions were completely unfair. I heard talk of "homecourt advantage" being the deciding factor (bullshit) or that UCLA doesn't deserve a number one seed as a result (more hogwash).

First of all, the Stanford game was not a case of homecourt advantage gone bad. The calls were so bad in the first half, and throughout the second up until that point, that people were booing the refs with a viciousness and ferocity I'd never, ever seen in all my years at Pauley. Stanford also blew a 12 point lead with under five minutes and then put in an all-time stinker in OT. Honestly, every game probably has a foul that questionable and the bad calls against UCLA all game helped. The better team won in OT.

Second of all, the Cal game was more of the same. UCLA's shot was not conclusively over the backboard, it's still being debated. The refs made a call. Period. Maybe it was wrong, but the foul call that preceded it should not be that controversial. At the end of games, sometimes players can get a little more physical. So what?

Finally, it's not like UCLA (lucky or not) has all the calls here. Remember Georgetown winning two big games on a questionable foul 80 feet from the basket and a goaltend? Remember Duke winning against UNC without sending Psycho T to the line once? How about the Washington State game where they were whistled for 7 fouls in a row to open, only to see their opponent whistled for the next 9? Honestly, this should not be that big of a deal and does NOT reflect upon UCLA as a team. Fuck the haters.

Inaugural Visit to New York, New York

New York, New York.

Such a loaded phrase. I recall watching "Silence of the Lambs" for the first time and having so many preconceptions, knowing so many plot details from endless pop culture references ("It puts the lotion on the skin," "Hello Clarisse"), and hearing it was one of the greatest movies ever so many times that it was nearly impossible for it to live up to the hype. I still loved the movie, but I felt a bit cheated and wished I'd been able to experience it all freshly. Now this analogy doesn't perfectly carry over to New York, but there was a certain deja vu about the whole visit from the familiar movies, TV shows, etc. that made my visit surreally impossible consider I'd never been there before.

First of all, flying Virgin America was the right call. Cheapest, great in-flight entertainment options, ability to order drinks through the monitor, and very attentive flight-attendants. I got in to NY on Friday night and it was super rainy, leaving me without the ability to check out the city as I rode in. Friday night was spent playing beer pong at Colombia, which was a lot of fun, followed by an inebriated taxi ride back to Brooklyn.

On Saturday, it was still rainy, so I spent the day going to the museums. I saw the Met, which I absolutely loved. The collection of Cezanne, Rembrandt, Matisse, Seurat, Monet, etc. was exactly what I wanted to see. Relative to the Louvre or the Museo Del Prado, which were impressive but too esoteric for me to really say I loved (I liked Musee de Orsay and Museo Reina Sofia much much more), the Met was a truly great experience. Also checked out the Jack Kerouac exhibit at the public library, which was also incredible. Saturday night, I went out New York style. We had a delicious dinner (although NY restaurants are way more cramped than LA) at Crispo (sitting next to Molly Shannon weirdly) and then went out to a bar and eventually Club 205. I really liked the scene in New York, although I think everything in New York is more expensive than LA (except cabs). The food throughout the weekend was incredible. New York pizza, Chinese, Italian, everything I ate was delicious.

Sunday was my day to walk around and enjoy the sun. It was finally beautiful weather (although 28 degrees in temperature) and I saw Times Square, Central Park, Ground Zero, the Statue of Liberty, Soho, and got to walk around a lot. I loved it. Sunday night was more laid back, spending the night in Columbia playing too much Smash Brothers (but in a good way). Although due to some questionable travel advice on the subway, I had to walk through Spanish Harlem with my luggage, which scared the bejeezus out of me. It wasn't as bad as it could have been or as my imaginary fears, but it was a stupid position to put myself into. On Monday, I went into our New York office (in the middle of Times Square right in front of where the bombing was last week) and saw a bunch of people I'd missed throughout the weekend.

Overall impressions: New York, despite being eerily familiar with the types of buildings and layout of the city from pop culture, must be experienced to be known. I certainly could not have anticipated just how sprawling, how large, or how intimidating the city really can be. There is so much to do and so much to see, I almost immediately understood how different it was from LA but how those two were the singular rivals for the greatest city in the union. It is literally teeming with culture and diversity, it was pretty incredible to behold. And, relative to LA, is much, much more concentrated. An apartment like mine would be completely unaffordable to almost anyone in NY. It was a great experience to not only see a bunch of my friends but to get to know a new city, which has become one of my favorite past times.

That said, I failed to own New York. I know how cocky that sounds, but on my travels through Europe my friend Jenna never even picked up a map or had a watch. I figured out the subways, I figured out how to get where we were going, and I had figured out every city we stayed in pretty well by the time we left. It's tough to do that in New York in 3 1/2 days, but it should have/could have been done. As a result of being passed from place to place and person to person in my weekend of couch-hopping, I never had to navigate the city myself (except that unfortunate experience in Harlem, but that gave me more confidence if anything) or move outside of my comfort zone. Things are a lot easier when you have a veteran of the city in your pocket all the time. But I really regret never gaining this independence (and packing too much) and these are things I would change big time the next time I go to New York. One bag, period, and much more self-reliance.

Would I want to live in New York? Tricky question. The answer is yes, but not indefinitely. While I did really enjoy myself, I really missed the open space of Los Angeles, having a car, the weather (God does NY weather suck), the beach, proximity to the family, etc. So I would love to live in NY for 6 months, go to school there for a few years, but not indefinitely. I couldn't settle down in NY. LA is my type of city.

Duplicity, Eternal Recurrence, and the Sunshine Test

At my job, we have a thing called the sunshine test that we are supposed to use to determine how we should be performing our tasks. If you were to complete the work in front of your grandmother (assuming she understood it all), how would you feel? The intended conclusion here is that you don't take shortcuts or perform unethically in your daily duties if you feel that all of your actions are transparent to one who's opinion of you really matters. It's a great ideal and a measuring stick I think back to during the drudgery of more menial tasks where cutting a corner would be easy, but would ultimately not be in the best interest of the client. It's hard to keep those incentives in-line in client-centered work, which is frustrating at times and dictated by demands of people who may or may not be completely unreasonable.

I have a dilemma with this whole approach because (until the forthcoming technocracy makes everything transparent) the sunshine relies on other peoples' consciences and not your own. I understand the point, but the hardcore existentialist in me resents an effort to shape action aside from internal values and ideals. Personally, I like Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, which is essentially a spin on reincarnation where, instead of living your next life based on the karma from your current one, you must live the same life over and over and over again, in perpetuity. If you are to fulfill eternal recurrence, you will move forward and embrace the reliving of your current life because you lived without regret. It would not be painful to relive this life, because you'd live it the same way again anyway.

For the most part, I feel that I have lived my life the right way, but it's always challenging and impossible to say you have no regrets. Most of my regrets have not been in the way of major life decisions (i.e. I think I chose the right college, have applied my efforts in the right areas, and have no real regrets about taking my current job), but have been in my interpersonal life. Yeah, sure, everyone realizes they could have dated so and so, or made this move, etc., yet the real regrets in my life have been about words and interpersonal relationships rather than actions. I think everyone talks and everyone talks shit at one time or another, but it's something I've been straining hard against. That transparency, the aforementioned sunshine test, has been in the back of my mind when people ask me about people I know as human beings, job prospects, or in any capacity.

The precise actions which I have taken in the past that have been most troublesome, most hurtful, and most regrettable have not been romantic entanglements but small comments, slips, or information that I should not have divulged. Even if it was intended as a joke or never intended to get back to the person. I've relived some of those moments more times than I'd like to remember, pinpointing precisely where I should have shut up. That doesn't change what you said or what you should have said. I've started to attempt to reform this universal foible and have focused on being much kinder, especially when I don't have nice things to say. Why say anything at all? Goes back to the great philosopher Thumper from "Bambi." If I know someone who has embezzled or physically abused their girlfriend or something, I'd bring that up and let my friend now before advising or declining to advising their hiring, but mostly I'd say the right approach is live and let live. The new sunshine test - pretend whoever you are talking about is right their in the room with you, so if you have to say something mean, at least ensure that you can back it up or it is important enough to be justified/mentioned. Bringing up trivial skeletons in someone's close is unkind and unnecessary 99.999999% of the time.

I've been frustrated with this in other people recently, the duplicity of it all. I know we are all different people based on our circumstances, but I think that removing the two-faced nature of our personalities will lead to a lot less conflict, a lot less internal guilt and harm, and just generally a better relationship with other people. I don't want to be known (and I'm not for the record, but that's not enough) as a preacher's wife or a gossip and it'd be hypocritical for me to condemn others for character flaws I'm yet to master (maybe that guilt over my own failings has something to do with this), but I'm working towards that ideal. Life would be simpler if you knew where you stood with people, not where they stand with you and a big question mark when you are no longer around. Part of my journey will be to figure out how to walk this line, but I feel that keeping the sunshine talking shit test in mind will help me moving forward. At the same time, I must accept that human drama is inevitable and the source of much meaning as well as pain in our lives. It's a transaction cost for having relationships that mean something. While there may not be a shangri-la, a perfect place where all exist in harmony, I think that tweaking the way we speak, or at least thinking before we speak, about other people could improve a lot of people's lives, including my own.

Sunshine, indeed.

Super-sized links 3/11/08

This is a lot of links (I used nary a computer all weekend and loved it) and I still need to write a post about NY. But there's some good ones here. Wild weekend for my Bruins as well...

-It's Kobe Bryant blog day. This guy has a seriously creepy man crush on him, but this is a really thorough article on Bryant's greatness.

-Sinbad vs. Hilary Clinton. Yes, that Sinbad. And he's right.

-I will now think about why I have traffic every time I'm stuck on the 101 and curse this article. One person is all it takes people to create a huge traffic jam.

-Freakanomics has declared it a recession, but the Fed keeps trying to jumpstart the economy. This is going to be interesting to see how it plays out.

-UCLA, dominating the Pac-10 honors.

-Free is the future of business. Eh, I'm kind of in disagreement on this one.

-This is badass. A bar owner has built an anti-drug dealer robot. So hilarious.

-Visiting the 22 countries "happier" than the US. According to surveys of course.

-This answers most of my problems with aid donations. I'm definitely that guy who asks where the money is going when people ask me to donate to Africa. But, bottom line, running a charity like a business is better for everybody, especially recipients.

-More Kobe love. He's half-man, half-amazing.

-The connection between arts + smarts. It's real.

-A Darwinian case for altruism.

-Implications for ubiquitous surveillance. Interesting bit about the level of power relative to information equality.

-Microcredit is not enough according to Suroweicki. Small loans need to be supplemented by real businesses causing real growth.

Links 3/5/08

-Creating and entrapping terrorists to cause fear? Interesting. Sure, dismiss it because it's Rolling Stone, but when Schneier is also down, it's unfortunately legit.

-Dear Zogby, you stink. Amazing.

-Macbeth and the moral universe. I'm always down for Shakespeare.

-Benny the Bull on Jerry Springer. Very funny.

-4 UCLA freshmen (the entire recruiting class) next year on the USA Junior Select Team, which is a 10 man roster. 40%! Damn I'm stoked for next season and this season is still amazing...