It's exceedingly difficult to update a blog when your work schedule is 9 pm - 2 am. These are prime blogging hours. Blime hogging prours. Hime progging blours.
سأكتب أكثر غدا إن شاء الله
Man Arabic's so damn pretty.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Librarians
I somehow today found myself reading articles on Wired.com about child porn and pornography in general. This reminded me of something very important:
Librarians are awesome. Librarians are Great Americans. The librarian cliché of kindly, moderate, reasonable older women (a trope that is probably exceedingly annoying) is mixed with an implacable dedication to the right to privacy and the right to access information. Librarians are activists that people pay attention to. Librarian resistance to the PATRIOT Act is well-documented, often witty, and steadfast.
One of the articles I read dealt with a law that would require libraries to install porn-blocking software on their computers to receive federal funding. Part of the evidence was a black binder filled with printed color images from sites that could be potentially be accessed from libraries without the software. Part of the librarian's argument rested on the fact that books and magazines about sex were standard parts of their library collections anyway. To quote the article:
Enough said.
Librarians are awesome. Librarians are Great Americans. The librarian cliché of kindly, moderate, reasonable older women (a trope that is probably exceedingly annoying) is mixed with an implacable dedication to the right to privacy and the right to access information. Librarians are activists that people pay attention to. Librarian resistance to the PATRIOT Act is well-documented, often witty, and steadfast.
One of the articles I read dealt with a law that would require libraries to install porn-blocking software on their computers to receive federal funding. Part of the evidence was a black binder filled with printed color images from sites that could be potentially be accessed from libraries without the software. Part of the librarian's argument rested on the fact that books and magazines about sex were standard parts of their library collections anyway. To quote the article:
When the Justice Department's Zick showed her the black smut-binder and asked if those items would be included in the library's collection, Morgan replied that some of the images were "similar" to items already owned by Fort Vancouver.
Zick wondered: "What are they similar to?"
Replied Morgan, with no sign of a blush: "Different ways of having sex. The hot teen pussy one. We have books on lesbian sex that might be similar... We do have books that show sex acts similar to that."
Enough said.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Real Lives
There's this game called Real Lives put out by "Educational Simulations Products" that lets you experience, in painful and hilarious detail, the actual lives of people from around the world, based on statistical data available from all over. From the website:
Except that you won't ever be a lawyer in the United States because everyone in the world is poor and has a goiter. Insofar as this is intended to be an educational sim it's been successful. So far I have learned:
1) Illegal immigration is the best choice a poor person could make.
2) Political activism will always get you arrested.
3) Seriously everyone has a goiter.
Games that start you out somewhere impoverished (mostly China and India, for demographic reasons) all follow a similar pattern. You are born, you have some talent that's almost enough to make you a musician or artist or pro athlete, but not quite, so you go to trade school cause you failed to make it to college, then you graduate and work as a salesperson, get married, scrimp and save, and then illegally immigrate to Europe or the US or Japan. Also you will be crushingly unhappy (probably around 15% happiness) and have a goiter.
The best games are the ones that go beyond the sort of numbing tragedy of the poor and really plumb the depths of the human suffering. I played a game where I was born in some country in Africa (Namibia?) to a 16 year-old soldier father and a 15 year-old subsistence farmer mother. We all had goiters, and I was stunted. I was gifted with exceptional artistic ability, but then my father was killed in some war and my mother died of AIDS or cholera or something so I had to work as something like a manual laborer. I lived on meager food and in a makeshift dwelling, but then finally found a man that loved me and could support me. We got married and then I died. I think it was malaria.
The only places where people don't have goiters are America and Europe and Japan, but if you happen to be born there (wildly unlikely) you will most likely be dumb as a rock and go to trade school and work as a salesperson and then when you retire to some island nation at 65 you'll contract a liver parasite and die.
In all seriousness – and against my best efforts – I'd have to say this game has genuinely given me a bit of perspective on my (apparently) insanely privileged life. In contrast with the vast majority of the world (and my country), I'm in no danger of starvation, I'm going to university, and my life, in all likelihood, will not consist of a series of senseless tragedies and absurd loss. Also I don't have a fucking goiter.
EDIT:
Experience life as a:
• Peasant farmer in Bangladesh
• Factory worker in Brazil
• Policeman in Nigeria
• Lawyer in the United States
• Computer operator in Poland
or any of thousands more ...
Except that you won't ever be a lawyer in the United States because everyone in the world is poor and has a goiter. Insofar as this is intended to be an educational sim it's been successful. So far I have learned:
1) Illegal immigration is the best choice a poor person could make.
2) Political activism will always get you arrested.
3) Seriously everyone has a goiter.
Games that start you out somewhere impoverished (mostly China and India, for demographic reasons) all follow a similar pattern. You are born, you have some talent that's almost enough to make you a musician or artist or pro athlete, but not quite, so you go to trade school cause you failed to make it to college, then you graduate and work as a salesperson, get married, scrimp and save, and then illegally immigrate to Europe or the US or Japan. Also you will be crushingly unhappy (probably around 15% happiness) and have a goiter.
The best games are the ones that go beyond the sort of numbing tragedy of the poor and really plumb the depths of the human suffering. I played a game where I was born in some country in Africa (Namibia?) to a 16 year-old soldier father and a 15 year-old subsistence farmer mother. We all had goiters, and I was stunted. I was gifted with exceptional artistic ability, but then my father was killed in some war and my mother died of AIDS or cholera or something so I had to work as something like a manual laborer. I lived on meager food and in a makeshift dwelling, but then finally found a man that loved me and could support me. We got married and then I died. I think it was malaria.
The only places where people don't have goiters are America and Europe and Japan, but if you happen to be born there (wildly unlikely) you will most likely be dumb as a rock and go to trade school and work as a salesperson and then when you retire to some island nation at 65 you'll contract a liver parasite and die.
In all seriousness – and against my best efforts – I'd have to say this game has genuinely given me a bit of perspective on my (apparently) insanely privileged life. In contrast with the vast majority of the world (and my country), I'm in no danger of starvation, I'm going to university, and my life, in all likelihood, will not consist of a series of senseless tragedies and absurd loss. Also I don't have a fucking goiter.
EDIT:
0 years old
I was born a boy in a village in Ethiopia's Gonder Region, not far from the city of Gonder.
Happiness: 16
Intelligence: 86
Artistic: 61
Musical: 87
Athletic: 32
Strength: 32
Endurance: 56
Appearance: 52
Conscience: 52
My parents have named me Tulu. My surname is Sarsa-
Dengal. My mother, Leki-Ye-Delu, is 16 and my father, Kelile,
is 18. I have no brothers or sisters.
1 year old
Growth stunted from inadequate protein.
2 years old
Died in a fire.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Symptomatic Amorophilia
It's outrageous how emotionally refreshing it is to shout at someone and then tell them how much you love them you love them you love them.
God I've been drowning in string band music. It's amazing. I ache for it. When I'm truly enjoying music I appear to be experiencing a moderate-to-severe back spasm. When I'm truly in love I appear to be experiencing a bout of nausea and a migraine headache. When I'm truly blogging I appear to have Cotard's Syndrome.
God I've been drowning in string band music. It's amazing. I ache for it. When I'm truly enjoying music I appear to be experiencing a moderate-to-severe back spasm. When I'm truly in love I appear to be experiencing a bout of nausea and a migraine headache. When I'm truly blogging I appear to have Cotard's Syndrome.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Crow Medicine
I've written elsewhere that I believe that Old Crow Medicine Show, besides just being good, are in fact important. Of course, I'm certainly not immune to simply aggrandizing my preferences to make them appear founded in some greater truth and thereby elevate my tastes to something profound. Whatever the verdict on their importance, they are good music.
I first heard Old Crow on KPFA ("KPFB in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno") in the late evening driving into town off highway 99 to see my girlfriend – 20 minutes on the road burning gas for a conversation about God and a donut. It was crossing the dry sandy river when I heard a song from the back of my mind, something I'd heard earlier but could never quite remember. KPFA has good music at night; it was "I Hear Them All," with some of the most sophisticated lyrics written, to say nothing of written by an old-time folk and bluegrass band.
I hear the sounds of tearing pages
And the roar of burning paper
All the crimes in acquisition
Turn to air and ash and vapor
* * *
Have you ever kissed in a riverbed, surrounded by weeds and pushed into coarse sand on the bottom? A dry river is such a good, dangerous place to kiss. They say fear sometimes feels like love; the reverse is certainly true. Passion is a panic, a giddy terrified rush to be consumed by something external, to lose your self – to die, in other words. A river is such a wonderful place to die with someone.
* * *
I haven't been writing much lately. My poetry has become too content with speaking to people who already know what it's saying – my dad, Patrick, fM. Magazine back in high school – or worse, talking to itself. I read that when Nietzsche got a typewriter he wrote differently, changing his style, even some of his thoughts; of course by that point he was already starting to go insane. I'm desperate to reach the poetic in Arabic – to read and to write and to submerge myself, be consumed by it. Passion is a suicide. You can hide from yourself in another language, but wouldn't that be fantastic? "Dad, I wrote this poem in Arabic, what do you think-oh-wait-you-can't-translate-poetry-sorry-Dad."
I think I'm good with a sort of wandering prose. Especially late at night, the time in the few hours just before dawn, known traditionally as the "blogging hour."
I first heard Old Crow on KPFA ("KPFB in Berkeley, KFCF in Fresno") in the late evening driving into town off highway 99 to see my girlfriend – 20 minutes on the road burning gas for a conversation about God and a donut. It was crossing the dry sandy river when I heard a song from the back of my mind, something I'd heard earlier but could never quite remember. KPFA has good music at night; it was "I Hear Them All," with some of the most sophisticated lyrics written, to say nothing of written by an old-time folk and bluegrass band.
I hear the sounds of tearing pages
And the roar of burning paper
All the crimes in acquisition
Turn to air and ash and vapor
* * *
Have you ever kissed in a riverbed, surrounded by weeds and pushed into coarse sand on the bottom? A dry river is such a good, dangerous place to kiss. They say fear sometimes feels like love; the reverse is certainly true. Passion is a panic, a giddy terrified rush to be consumed by something external, to lose your self – to die, in other words. A river is such a wonderful place to die with someone.
* * *
I haven't been writing much lately. My poetry has become too content with speaking to people who already know what it's saying – my dad, Patrick, fM. Magazine back in high school – or worse, talking to itself. I read that when Nietzsche got a typewriter he wrote differently, changing his style, even some of his thoughts; of course by that point he was already starting to go insane. I'm desperate to reach the poetic in Arabic – to read and to write and to submerge myself, be consumed by it. Passion is a suicide. You can hide from yourself in another language, but wouldn't that be fantastic? "Dad, I wrote this poem in Arabic, what do you think-oh-wait-you-can't-translate-poetry-sorry-Dad."
I think I'm good with a sort of wandering prose. Especially late at night, the time in the few hours just before dawn, known traditionally as the "blogging hour."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)