Our Modern Diet: Heavy On the Plastics, Please

It just so happens that I grew up in the self-proclaimed Pioneer Plastics City, Leominster, Massachusetts (and birthplace of Johnny Appleseed...yeah, he was real). Home to the National Plastics Center & Museum, the plastic pink flamingo, dozens of little injection molding plants and similar factories, we grew up surrounded by plastics. Leominster even has streets named for various types of the stuff. The downside to all this being the toxic wastes scattered in who-knows-how-many sites around town. Apparently we're also infamous for high rates of autism amongst kids who grew up in the shadow of the long-gone Foster Grant sunglass factory (the site is a strip mall now, yay America). My dad and his siblings used to play down in those swamps and eat the blueberries. To make a long story short, my younger brother got off pretty easy and just had some minor learning dysfunctions (and in a grand irony, is now an elementary school teacher). I am just chronically underemployed and a-motivated, though the cause is as-yet undetermined. Oh, and my stories never have a point.

Anyway, I figure this is as good a way as any to bring up some new findings on plastic containers that I just saw over at Scientific American. Around the time I entered college carrying around your own Nalgene was a bit of a fad amongst the crunchies and activist kids. I still notice folks carrying them around, attached to their belt-loops or backpacks. Not long after the trend got popular a rumour had begun that they leached chemicals into the water, though most kids passed it off not thinking much of it. Well, turns out that rumour's been proven true about eight years later. Scientists are conflicted as to how much damage the chemical (known as Bisphenol A or BPA) actually does, but it's generally agreed that continuous consumption of this is moreso bad than good. Go read the article to find out more about the studies involved as I'm not motivated enough to rehash it all here.

I personally have unverified hypotheses about the nature of our particular strain of American stupidity and our amazing levels of toxin consumption. Let's just say I've had experience with chemically-affected (not altogether negative, either) people most of my life, so I can speak with marginal authority (as I'm only a trained social scientist).

Hey, China, here's to your children's future! <<makes plastic-y fake 'clink' noise>>

You Need a Bun to Bite, Benny Lava?

This is easily in the top-8 funniest things I've ever seen. Completely and totally makes up for what feels like a semi-lost day.



Absolutely Hilarious Indian Music Video - Watch more free videos

I'm really hoping my friend Justin is prancing around on some Indian hillside singing a song just like this as I type. That would really make my day.

Rootless Rooted To This Router

I'm currently sitting in my room listening to self-selectable internet radio, reading a fantastic discussion on humanity and placelessness, and ruminating on critiques of postmodernism that I've been reading at work. In the past seven years I've lived in nine different apartments and I'll be moving again at the end of March (most likely and hopefully), hardly ever getting the chance to settle in before having to up and out all over again. Regardless of where I live, though it seems, I can tune in to knowledge and information distributed across vast times and spaces. At any time I can (and often choose to) disconnect from my surroundings and envelop myself in a world that I seemingly make for myself. Of course I'm not going to get into the real pros and cons of such a situation.
But what I really wonder at this moment is how I'm not supposed to feel separate and disoriented, without narrative and only the most tenuous grip on what could be considered "true" or "real." As much as these attributes seem to define the postmodern condition I can hardly help but heap barrels of disdain upon what amounts to little more than intellectual criminality and cultural hogwash.
None of us should really be posting inane diary entries for anyone around the world to read, but after spending most of our lives (at least those of us under 30 or so) being dictated to by every conceivable form of media, we'd love for somebody to listen to us for just a minute, please! If everyone else's bullshit opinion is valid and credible, surely my "educated" opinion is worthwhile, too, right?
Well, probably not generally speaking. But until we have the intellectual courage to move and think beyond tired, lazy, paralyzing postmodern theoretical drivel I'm afraid we as a technologically-connected segment of our species are confined to remain captives of this spectacle. In the meantime I've been trying to muddle my way through critiques of this state and try to make sense of a diffuse body of purposefully obfuscating, jargonistic theory that will probably only be really understood when we're dead.
So far I've found these two books really enlightening and helpful:

Christopher Butler - A Very Short Introduction to Postmodernism
Terry Eagleton - The Illusions of Postmodernism

Both explain the pros, cons, ambivalences and context of all this mental buggery. If you can relate to anything I just wrote and need help clearing your mind, I think these books are a great place to start.

It's the 19th Century All Over Again...Again

I'm really on a latter-1800s kick at the moment: I finished Huysmans' The Damned last week, Zola's Germinal yesterday and just today began Turgenev's Fathers & Sons. Another way of putting it is that I'm catching up on some classics, but really, it's just this period that's having a huge effect on me. One of the major themes of the period (and these three novels do a great job of covering the disparate attitudes) is the struggle between the dawning age of science, mechanization and industry and the fading world of religion, metaphysics and romanticism.

It almost seemed for a while...well, let's face it, for most of the 20th century, that the scientific age of modernism had definitively triumphed. The world wars, communism, the rise of the technological era: for a large part of the world that romantic, metaphysical age had long since passed into history. Now I don't know if this is just a curiously American thing, but in reading these novels (as well as other bits of research) and following current events you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that we have thoroughly sloughed off the skin of the pre-industrial era. Sure, we're technologically advanced, but we're also ridiculously religious and too many people have failed to accept the non-divine revelations even of Darwin.

There is the other possibility that we've completed a circle and the scientific, progressive attitudes and successes they have brought have been turned upside-down by those who fear the soulless-ness of our modern (some might say post-modern, i don't know) age. There's a deep yearning for some return to metaphysics, some sort of spiritualism that pervades this place and I fail to be able to determine the source(s) of it. In the meantime I find myself running aghast towards other ages to find analogues, examples of this happening in the past to understand the cycles, why this is all repeating itself. For the most part things always repeat themselves and all the early religious systems recognized this (particularly the Hindu/Vedic systems), but twas all destroyed by the linearity of Christianity...

Before I ramble off into the moonlight, the original intent of this post was to write about Germinal, but I don't think any succinct reply is possible with regard to such a dense, overpowering masterpiece. The truths it contains remain relevant in our age, which says as much about Zola's awareness and ability to convey his time as it says about the failings of the industrial systems that have uplifted some segments of the world's population. Maybe the truth behind these novels lay in the dystopia of the present, the possibility of the future and the romance of an idealized past (made possible by our selective memories and amazing ability to forget). Our myths retain their power because our lives cycle, maybe spiraling ever so slightly outward, but always treading close enough to the old, worn paths that it's impossible to lose them. We try desperately to create anew without the ability to truly move away and that's why we, as a people, as a civilization, remain perpetually torn at this event horizon.

JayJay, What Am I Doing?

Alright, in order to marginally level out the excessive testosterone of Super Bowl Sunday (GO PATS!), I'm gonna post about art this afternoon. However, first I have to put in a mention for the best Tom Hanks movie ever, Mazes & Monsters. The plot of this 1982 masterpiece revolves around four college friends whose love for the game Mazes & Monsters gets a little out of hand. We watched this last night after finishing our own D&D campaign and, man, it really capped off the night perfectly.

Okay, now for the art. On Wednesday I made a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art mainly to check out the Indian Art. (My friend Laurence is designing a new tattoo for me based on the bronze Nataraja sculptures of the Chola period.) Of course, my luck being my luck, the Indian and South Asian rooms were closed for Wednesday only. So to make a day of it I wandered through the European rooms to find old medieval stuff about satanism and whatnot (see my previous post on The Damned) and then traipse through the modern art wing. I took a bunch of notes on the stuff I thought was cool, so here's a sample of some things I think are awesome...

This is really the only awesome medieval/satanist thing I found, but it's super rad. That piece of paper at the bottom reads, "The Devil doesn't jest. No, the Devil [does not play games]" How fucking sick is that?! And those claws! And that skull is upside-down and there's smoke coming out of it. Conjur that, impressionists!

Pieter van Laer (Il Bamboccio), Magic Scene with Self-Portrait


Pretty much everything Joan Miró has ever done is awesome. There's some great stuff of his at MoMA, but The Met has got some winners, too...

Constellation: Toward the Rainbow (1941)

This one is older and less "out there", but is still quite striking and you can see glimpses of what his future holds...

Vines & Olive Trees, Tarragona (1919)

Now this guy, Yves Tanguy, apparently was self-taught. I guess Jimi Hendrix was, too, but Tanguy's paintings demolish any song that Hendrix ever wrote. I'll fight you if you disagree. (He's also got more at MoMA, of course, but this one might be the best anyway)

Indefinite Divisibility (1942)

And this, this one, man. I've been to The Met before and don't ever recall being so enthralled with a piece before. Hell, I don't recall ever seeing this one at all! But for Pete's sake, this is not only huge, but you could examine it for hours. It's also made of encaustic, which is a mixture of paint and melted wax, so the texture is actually reminiscent of a cave wall. It's so perfect. Please, for the love of Pete, go just to see this. Stare at it for hours. A dumb picture on my dumb site doesn't do any justice...

Victor Brauner, Prelude to a Civilization (1954)

Now get back to your american football and beer. I can't tell you how nervous I am about this Pats possible perfect season right now.

Friday's Always A Good Day For Some Sabbath

I've neglected writing (and I mean really writing) the past few days for a few reasons, the main one being that my brain has been so incredibly jumbled with thoughts that I have failed to get any structure underneath or behind them. Wednesday I got a whole bunch done, primarily finishing J-K Huysmans' The Damned (Là Bas) and making an ultimately successful trip to the Met.

I guess it makes sense to start discussing the book, but I really have no idea where to start. For starters I thoroughly enjoyed the read; Huysmans' prose is phenomenally descriptive and entrancing (apparently that is a word!), bordering on the "otherworldly". I only vaguely know what I mean by this latter description, but I think it stems from the characters inhabiting a social environment far removed from the mainstream fin-de-siècle Paris in which the story is set. Detest of the modern world has lead these few characters towards infatuation with a form of "romantic medievalism" and Catholic Mysticism (otherwise known as Western Occultism). Huysmans based the main character, Durtal, on himself, and the pessimism mixed with Catholic occult obsession foreshadows the author's eventual adoption of Catholicism.

Though I am a lapsed (or shed) Catholic by upbringing, I do find elements of the occult rather intriguing: the history of symbolism and saints and sacrilege. Huysmans dutifully researched for this book and, actually, the core plot device is the production of a biography of Gilles de Rais by Durtal. I highly recommend looking into this character (I'm not going to spoil any fun here!) because he is quite interesting on his own, regardless of how his story is woven into the novel. Ultimately, what drove people crazy about this book when it was published was the description of Satanism, its rites, its culture and its connection with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.

While it may seem that I am not the type of person that would go for such an un-Naturalist work like this (and I'm a bit surprised myself), the pessimism of the main agents, their dialogue and what moves them through life transfixed me in a manner that left me ready to return to the dark ages of magic and occultism and saintly miracles. Possibly within all of us there are seeds of romanticism and assorted wonderments that need feeding. They counter the extreme rationalism of our wired world of glass and missiles and plague. Perhaps I abhor so much new age rubbish because of the methodology and not so much because of the nature of what may be unknowable to our instruments and material tools...

Hans Memling The Last Judgment 1467-71

You and Your Meat: A Stupid Love Story That Needs to End

I'm really excited at the moment as I turned (well, clicked) to the NYTimes "Week In Review" section to find a piece about the livestock industry. I can't for the life of me remember when I've ever seen (that is, if there ever has been) a piece like this in the Times. As I've now been vegetarian (and sometime vegan) for almost a third of my life (wow, really? crazy), this has been an issue of great importance to me. There have been times when I've wavered on certain aspects of the animal-rights agenda (and certainly resuming the occasional consumption of eggs and dairy constitutes such), but there are some things you just can't argue with. Regardless of your take on the ethical/moral issues involved with animals, it must be accepted that factory "farming" of livestock is an environmental disaster. As parts of the world experience an increase in wealth, meat consumption also rises, contributing towards the destruction of tropical rainforests, increased greenhouse emissions (more than transportation!!!), polluted water systems/watersheds, and greater consumption of the world's grain supplies in the form of livestock feed. The Times piece goes into more detail on all these aspects, and i urge you to pass this article on to your friends and cohorts. It doesn't take a preachy tone, it doesn't tell you how to lead your life or change your habits, it simply relates the facts on what a meat-heavy diet is doing to this planet.

Check out the article for yourself here: "Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler"

PowerRangerRickshaw

Sometimes you just have one of those nights. I think I was still a little bit delirious on Friday after having seen Mastodon and Neurosis at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple (Hank from Stay Fucked was there, too, and posted a good review on his site, Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches). That place was awesomely creepy and good for exploring of the type that non-masons probably aren't supposed to partake in whatsoever.
But I digress. Friday night I was chillin with Sam, he who used to post here on basketball until he got too lazy, before heading out on the town. To give an idea of what kind of mood we were in, a snippet of conversation:

S: "It's not very often you're the only person in the world doing something at a given time, but I think right now we're the only people in the world watching the Australian Open Women's Final and listening to One Last Wish..."
A: "...and really stoned..."
S: "yes."

And later that night, with the aid of our good friend Stefan, we're pretty sure we created the world's longest (and therefore, BEST) portmanteau:

A.C. Earlgreyhoundofbaskervillageidiotsavantguardianangelofdeath-
metalheadcheeseplatterpussyringoffirefighters

if you have a better one, we'd love to hear it.

Stefan and Dirk going to the spring semiformal

Not really sure how Stefan got himself into this mess! What wacky guy!

A Rambling Might Pass For An Idea

A few days ago I was going through some notes/writings from a while back and came across some prescient lines that were almost two years old. I don't normally get overly excited about a lot of my past jotted-down mental notes, but in this case I had just been reading Jonah Lehrer's latest piece in Seed Magazine, "The Future of Science...Is...Art?" I highly, highly recommend reading the whole piece and now I'd really like to read his new(ish) book, Proust Was A Neuroscientist. Now Lehrer himself is a neuroscientist and the premise of his piece in Seed (where he is also an editor) was that there are many places in the scientific world where reductionism is reaching it's limits of comprehension and understanding. Foremost in the author's...um...mind, is his own field of neuroscience, but his ideas certainly translate to the worlds of string theory (see my previous post) and cosmology to name but a couple.

After finishing The Elegant Universe last week I decided to cool it on science books and read some fiction. In the ensuing mental vacuum I picked up J-K Huysmans' The Damned and Zola's Germinal. Now I'll be posting more on those in a few days, but I'd like to note that fin-de-siècle France was a fantastic period for me to jump into. Romanticism was being overtaken by naturalism (in literature anyway), yet there was still the obvious tension between the medieval/pre-Enlightenment mindsets and the positivist, urban, scientific worldview. Without going too far into (what would at this point be) an incoherent discourse on art and science, I'd just like to address Lehrer's ultimate point that in order for science to maybe move to a higher level of understanding, it needs to take a few cues from artists. Really what would be incredible is for more artists and scientists to learn from each other (Lehrer suggests keeping artists-in-residence at science institutions for one) and to push each other deeper into their respective fields. Really it would be great for the lines between these disciplines to become much more blurred.

Anyone who follows what I write about here will notice a mix of science and literature that informs and inspires my writings and music. So I decided I'll post, at the risk of maybe a little embarrassment, the original, unedited notes, "On the Apocalypse," I made on an inspired day in April of 2006:

the apocalypse can be interpreted as the time when the reign of illusion over peoples' lives comes to an end.
it is considered a horrific event in the minds of those who desire/prefer to live under such illusions and would like such perspectives to continue on earth.
conversely, it is not seen as a horrific event by those with a more rational and scientific outlook. in fact, it is not seen as something that is even necessarily "real" and could possibly be considered as another illusion in a world teeming with them.
if it is the time that Lucifer comes, then it will be the time that brings light to humanity. Lucifer is the "bringer of light" which can be associated with knowledge and learning. The "darkness," the time ruled by magic and illusion is defeated by the bringing of light and knowledge to the world.

another, less black-and-white, way to look at this is that light and dark must coexist, lest they lose their meaning in reference to one another. since the world will possibly never be fully understood (since science only looks to cancel out falsities and doesn't concentrate on certain, final "answers") there will always be a sense of mystery and darkness about things.
those who favor the mysterious will fear the bringing of light, lest it destroy the illusions that govern their lives. those who favor science will always distrust those who base their worldview on illusion and magic because of their irrational aspects.
ultimately, art is based on a combination of the two; a realization that it is the coexistence of these elements that give the universe its beauty and that also drives us to further understanding lest we become complacent and lazy in our mystical thinking.

I hope any of that made any sense at all to somebody outside my brain and if it starts some kind of discussion or conversation, awesome. In the meantime go read Lehrer's piece in Seed.

Oh, If Only I Knew What He Was Talking About

Brian Greene - The Elegant Universe

Alright, this is going to be a bit of a bullshit post, if only because I finished this book a week ago. I had a great post in my head, but my internet was spotty and I failed to write anything down or take notes for myself. That was stupid of me, though certainly not the first time that's ever happened.

With that caveat in mind, here's the main point (I think) I wanted to make last Monday. As much as any book on string theory can be, The Elegant Universe is a winner. Greene boils down the essentials in an incredibly simple fashion with easy-to-understand and insightful analogies. String theory is mind-bogglingly complex; it stretches beyond what most humans are capable of imagining (and that includes many of the involved scientists). Without knowing the math behind all this, it remains difficult (in my opinion) to perceive this microscopically small world, so I commend Dr./Prof./Mr. Greene for his efforts in trying to make all this accessible to the layman. I can't possibly begin to describe this world here and it would be a crime for me to try. Realistically, I need to reread whole chapters at some point because there is so much that I had to skim through because I simply did not understand what was going on.

My own ignorance notwithstanding, what I found lacking in this work was some of the storytelling. A good deal of the book is devoted to the history and development of string theory, Greene lays down the foundations of 20th century physics as it relates to the most modern conceptions of how the world has begun to appear to modern theorists. However, in an attempt to ground and humanize many of the "characters" here, the main story tends to drag; details of the lives of these (mostly) men and their situations come at the cost of attention to the flow of ideas. I guess that would be my only critique, as I found my attention wandering about 3/4 of the way through when that should really be where things are picking up steam and careening towards a conclusion. This isn't to say that Greene is a terrible narrator, but I think some editing of the storyline could have helped me keep focus when the physics started to get more complicated and outright weird.

I definitely recommend The Elegant Universe for those uninitiated in the world of string theory (much as I was). Given that this book was written a couple years ago, a lot of this work has been furthered in that elapsed time. I've been trying to find "updates" of sorts, but I'm finding material hard to come by. I'm also looking for anything that might be able to tie chaos theory in with any of this string business. If anyone knows of anything, point me in the right direction...